>
>
> This is just a depressingly huge strand of American political thought. I
> think a lot of the people that hold these ideas are actually folks the left
> failed to organize - but who would otherwise be the most receptive --
> representing the poverty of real class war analysis in the US. I think it
> was Chomsky who said in the 1930s these were the same kind of people the CIO
> and related labor groups were organizing. But in contemporary USA they're
> just cut loose into the twilight void of conspiracy theory and
> survivalist-type stuff.
>
>
Maybe it's an Australian thing but there's also this eccentric constituency
of 'silver-bullet radicals/liberals' with crazy one-note reform ideas that
they think will fix everything without anybody losing. Right now over here
there's a resurgence of (Henry) Georgism, this idea that a land tax will end
boom and bust, remove the need for income taxes, boost small business, end
inequality, etc etc etc. It's not a big movement but they pop up all over
the place. I guess it appeals to the same kind of people who went for
Douglas Credit ('social credit' in New Zealand) back in the day, updated for
the housing-bubble 2000s.
Cheers, Mike Beggs