Battle of Demons

There is apparently some ideological storm brewing between Steve Bannon and Paul Ryan.

There is much about Bannon’s views on economics and the financial industry as described in this article from New York Magazine that I agree with.

Unfortunately, his good ideas are so twisted up with and by terrible religious ideas and white supremacy as to make him more a threat to the economy and civil society than even Paul Ryan (whose worship of Ayn Rand is both ludicrous and dangerous).

I agree that “corporatism” is bad for everyone. There’s nothing inherently wrong with corporations, but when they have too much power and are not subject to ethical constraints or anti-trust action, they destroy the economy (by placing too much power in too few hands) and tear the social fabric (by reducing their workers and their customers to faceless commodities). Corporatism seeks market share, short-term profit and stock market valuation above all else instead of creating value, serving customer needs, and investing in a work force that can afford to participate in the economy.

This bad behavior has been ravaging America for decades by shipping capabilities overseas in the interest of short-term cost cutting and concentrating market share to the point that no one is served, not even customers, except shareholders.

In the case of the financial industry, this unbridled power has already nearly destroyed the world economy. And, because the bad actors are so wealthy–and, as a result, so powerful–they have been almost wholly uncorrected. The banks are still allowed to be both traditional retail banks and risky investment banks. The staggeringly large financial bailouts the industry received did not also come with corrective rebuke. There are fewer, even larger banks now than before 2009 and the same people are still in charge, garnering even more wealth and power. Instead of being restricted in their ability to crash the world economy, the risk is even higher that they will do it again.

If Bannon weren’t corrupted by his bizarre notion that “Judeo-Christian values” undergirded the historical success of capitalism–coupled with a white nationalist ideology that makes him balk at Silicon Valley’s success because it has too many south-Asian people in it; if he weren’t poisoned by delusion and hatred, he could possibly be a force for good in the world.