I read Doc Searls whenever I get a chance:
Ralph thinks We the People means We the Government. So do most of your basic Democrats. Your basic Republicans think We the People means We the Market. So Democrats like solving problems with Big Government while Republicans like solving problems with big market. ^
This is an interesting division that reveals how politics is not duality, but a circularity. If Democrats on the left believe in government, they’re all for centralized power, which I’d always thought as a tenet of the right. But as Searls says, the Republicans on the right believe in emergent forces and markets, which makes them more like anarchists with credit cards in my book. When I read stuff like this, I feel less compelled to see politics as anything but a show projected on the wall of the cave, while the real power lies in demographic change, convincing masses of people of ideas, technologies and markets.
To this we add some Malthusian mathematics:
Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another…. But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit — in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all. ^
We each want that house in the suburbs, and we’re all using politics to duke it out. It will be interesting to see how this is resolved from 2015-2020 as oil supplies pass the profitable retrieval point using today’s technology.