The System Must Be Overhauled

 My landlady offered to allow me to read her copy of  The System by Robert B. Reich.  I've never read a book by him, but I'd seen what he's had to say on various issues online.  I also liked the back cover summary.  I thought Reich was likely to be insightful.

                                  

Reich says that the income of most people is either stagnant or has declined.  I can certainly confirm that this is true in my own case.  My income has declined since the beginning of the 21st century.

I liked Reich's rather pointed observation that the U.S. has a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, but no Domestic Corrupt Practices Act.  Perhaps the text of a Domestic Corrupt Practices Act would be too long, requiring too many specifications in order to be effective.  I think it would also continually be amended by Congress because new technologies would cause the evolution of new corrupt practices involving those technologies. 

As I read Reich's description of the irresponsible behavior of corporations, it occurred to me that they were like unruly children.    If a community is aware that a company had moved precipitously after considerable investments were made for them at their previous location, they should definitely refuse to make any similar agreement with that company.  If the company then decides to leave, I would say "Good riddance to bad rubbish."

He shows parallels between The Gilded Age at the end of the 19th century and our current era.  I felt particularly enlightened by the reasons why Senator John Sherman introduced what became known as the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1890.

I also learned about the Glass-Steagall Act, which Elizabeth Warren was continually mentioning during her Presidential campaign.  It separated commercial banking from investment banking.  This meant that commercial banks couldn't make risky investments with their depositors' money.  The Glass-Steagall Act was repealed in 1999. Robert Reich warned against it.  

In the final chapter, Reich addresses Jamie Dimon of Chase.  He tells him about the policies Dimon needs to support including "treat the environment as your largest stakeholder and fight like hell to preserve it."  The reason he gives for it is that even his biggest shareholders won't survive if the planet becomes uninhabitable.  I pointed out in my notes that the technology that science fiction novels develop for humans to survive on other planets that were otherwise uninhabitable, could be used on an uninhabitable Earth.  It's not a good idea, but unfortunately it does seem likely.  It's more likely than the idea that our irresponsible corporations will follow extensive environmental regulations to keep Earth habitable.  So in the future we'll all be wearing spacesuits when we go outdoors on our own planet, and living in sealed artificial environments because Earth is too toxic. In fact, I've seen science fiction novels like that. 

We can't rely on Jamie Dimon and others of his ilk to become environmentalists.  If we want to avoid the future I've described, we'll have to create an even more extensive body of environmental laws, and break up those powerful corporations who would prevent those laws from existing.