Some of this is going to be US-centric.
Relative powerlessness to do anything about all other items on this list
Global warming (expandable!)
Iraq War
I’m a citizen of a country that tortures people and makes them disappear
We’re all “good Germans” (see above two, several from below)
Erosion of civil rights (see: war on drugs, war on terror)
Non-global warming environmental issues
We’re not going to get onto clean energy sources before we can’t use dirty ones/there aren’t dirty ones left so the last two humans face off with clubs over a preserved bottle of Penzoil in a couple decades.
Media consolidation and lack of discussion of topics on this list
Corruption
Politicization/Evangelism of military
Politicization of other government services (TSA)
Quality of educational system (particularly race/class discrimination)
Societal inability to find reasonable compromises (see: war on drugs, erosion of civil rights, also: health care/copyright laws)
Wealth concentration
… and so on
I don’t know, looking that over, none of it seems particularly unreasonable to be anxious about.
Scraps | 29-Oct-07 at 6:01 am | Permalink
Yeah.
I used to think there was no time and place that I’d rather have been born. Now I’m thinking, oh, twenty years earlier.
It is a lesson in what runaway capitalism looks like.
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joel | 29-Oct-07 at 3:11 pm | Permalink
Yeah, because the late 80′s were just the model of restrained capitalism. *sigh*
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Scraps | 30-Oct-07 at 5:36 am | Permalink
I figured someone would figure I was just taking a cheap shot at capitalism. As far as the “unrestrained” part goes — eliminating the checks and balances — the late 80s were just ramping up to what we have now.
I’ve been pretty much signed on with capitalism my whole adult life. Despite its obvious flaws; they seemed like lesser flaws than those of other systems. I have to admit, I feel like a bit of an idiot for that now. But each to their own view of the future.
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Evan | 30-Oct-07 at 9:12 am | Permalink
Scraps has it right. Runaway capitalism includes integration between the capitalists and the government, and that’s the source of the corruption Derek mentions. Corruption is really just the buying and selling of government intervention in the market. If the constitution limited government power within the market (basically guaranteeing a free market) much of the corruption problem would be eliminated.
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