Destructive Creativity

by digby

I don’t now about you, but I’m getting a little bit freaked out by these bridge and mine accidents. You get the feeling that the country is coming apart at the seams.

It’s very important to recognize that this isn’t just a series of unrelated accidents or bad luck. This is the result of the great conservative experiment in deregulating everything back to the 19th century and starving the treasury by demagoguing government.

Rick Perlstein points out in this epic e.Coli Conservative post that this experiment once even had a delightfully obfuscatory name: The Creative Society:

Coal mining fatalities had been declining since 1926: yes, the last time mine safety was this bad the Charleston was all the rage. Then, in 2006, the most coalminers died than had in any one year in a decade. We’re up to the largest percentage increase in 107 years.

Why? How? By formula. They use corporate contributions to weaken government regulations, and to help cripple unions. They wage fierce anti-union jihads to keep workers and their advocates powerless. They violate even existing anemic safety rules, while pushing the mineral seams beyond all earthly limits to squeeze forth just a teensy bit more precious profit.

Then they call the result a “mine accident.”

When Ronald Reagan ran for governor of 1966 he proposed what he called the “creative society”—government mobilizing the energies of the people” and “helping them organize their own solutions to these problems” by hiring business “experts” instead of civil servants. For example, since state hospitals and mental institutions were “in a sense, hotel operations,” an expert committee of hotel operators could oversee them instead of “government planners.” read on…

The conservatives have sold this country on a free lunch for decades now. Who needs government? Taxes are evil, no matter what they’re used for. Government bureaucrats are incompetent by definition — corporate bureaucrats, on the other hand, are creative, entrepreneurial geniuses who can solve all problems without it costing you anything! Don’t worry, be happy.

How’s that working out everybody? Are we feeling pretty happy?

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