[lbo-talk] LA: A Dynasty, A City

[Jerry Monaco]

Yes, in my current studies of the rule of law and society in the Roman
Republic I have been reading a lot about the politics of water.  This led me
to read, as a base of comparison about New York's politics of water, from
the Bank of Manhattan onwards and of the welfare state of water (our
hydraulic imperialism) in the west.  I have come across the Boswell's in
this context.

But this again brings up the question I asked earlier.

It seems to me that to a large extent (and with a few prominent exceptions)
the rulers and owners of our society were tied to particular geographic
regions.  This meant that the nexus of their wealth could be used for rent
seeking from the federal and state governments, that rebounded to their base
region in one way or another.  This rent-seeking was not for the benefit of
the non-owning classes of that region, except accidentally, but it did tie
local ruling groups to the fate of their general locality.

Is it possible that one effect of growing corporate globalism is to make it
so that regionally based ruling classes are no longer matter?  Thus the less
powerful regionally based "little bourgeoisie" can be treated as a comprador
class.  Each particular region of the U.S. can be treated with the disregard
of a third world country. In the mean time the rent-seekers in congress are
engaged in what amounts to small time graft for their districts, the crumbs
of empire, but mainly work to provide incentives for the transnationals that
live nowhere.
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