How should a government, country, group of people, or humanity be run. This seems to be a difficult thing to figure out. Throughout history we have seen a small group of people swear they have some kind of special gift that enables them to rule over others. From kings & Queens to Holy Men, they all claim to be divinely gifted to live above the rest. Today, the Holy Men have been joined by Holy Women and together they preach "prosperity." The kings and queens have mostly been replaced with what we like to call the 1%. The elite among us. They try their best to convince us we have to fight, that we have to compete, that we have to be afraid of each other. One of the most profound things I have ever heard was in reference to the reason millennials see things so different than boomers. The reason boomers are so aggressive and competitive is they were taught life was a pyramid. you had to fight your way to the top and only the toughest survive. Millennials grew up with the web. They learned that although that monitor looked great, without each component of that monitor working perfectly that monitor was useless. The concept of each component no matter its size is important to the overall quality of the product. The screen and the casing are probably the most looked at part, but their not actually the most important. The most important part is typically hidden. The mother board and all the various circuit boards are the most essential parts of this and all other electronic components. We once had to make these large, but as technology has progressed we have made these components. Smaller components lead to better designs and improved performance. One compliments the other and as one improves so does the other. We are told that competition leads to innovation and better workers. Personally, I don't believe that. Competition leads to bitterness and mistrust. Passionate people are the most innovative and the best workers. When you get multiple passionate people together on the same project and the possibilities are endless. For too long the focus has been on money and power and not on beauty, life betterment for all, and taking care of our planet and everything on it. It's time we put aside our differences, make amends for the harm we've done and work together so our children will have a better future.
President Obama, 2011 speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, the same location where Roosevelt had given his New Nationalism speech a century earlier:
At the turn of the last century, when a nation of farmers was transitioning to become the world’s industrial giant, we had to decide: Would we settle for a country where most of the new railroads and factories were being controlled by a few giant monopolies that kept prices high and wages low? Would we allow our citizens and even our children to work ungodly hours in conditions that were unsafe and unsanitary? Would we restrict education to the privileged few? Because there were people who thought massive inequality and exploitation of people was just the price you pay for progress.
Theodore Roosevelt disagreed. He knew that the free market has never been a free license to take whatever you can from whomever you can. He understood the free market only works when there are rules of the road that ensure competition is fair and open and honest. So, he busted up monopolies, forcing those companies to compete for consumers with better services and better prices. Today, they still must. He fought to make sure businesses couldn’t profit by exploiting children or selling food or medicine that wasn’t safe. Today, they still can’t.
Now, for this, Roosevelt was called a radical. He was called a socialist, even a communist. Today, we are a richer nation and a stronger democracy because of what he fought for in his last campaign: an eight-hour work day and a minimum wage for women, insurance for the unemployed and for the elderly, and those with disabilities; political reform and a progressive income tax.”
Roosevelt understood that political inequality and economic inequality go hand in hand, devoting paragraphs in his Osawatomie speech to his era’s crisis of political inequality:
“Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. The duty of Congress is to provide a method by which the interest of the whole people shall be all that receives consideration.”
