Mix Communism with it

There is an old saying in Bengali, ”Bhuter mukhe Ram Nam”, literally translated it comes to “Ghost is praying to God”, or you are praising the same thing that you used to denounce. I felt quite the same when I first thought of writing this blog.
First half of 2005, I was relishing every word in Atlas Shrugged, and felt that some one has written something I so much wanted to read. Around the same time I made a trip to Bangalore from Mumbai with that book in my hand to hear from my first love that I have been very selfish and she has nothing to do with me. I was sad but not because she called me selfish.

Over the years I have thought about the word selfish and as the credit crunch tightens the noose around the economy I feel I have been too prejudiced with the positive side of selfishness just as lot of others are too prejudiced with the negative side of the noun attitude. Few days ago Fareed Zakaria wrote in cnn that it makes no sense in helping the Detroit big three, because they are not any better than a job program. He stopped short of suggesting that federal government should stop loaning them taxpayer money and let them shut down. I respect Mr. Zakaria’s world views but probably he didn’t want a backlash, after all the guys working in the large auto industry also watch cnn.
America has been proud of the Detroit auto industry for the last 100 years, but now when they need a loan to stay in business in a recession that ate up Lehman Brothers, this is what they get. Isn’t this selfish, oh yes it is, and I’m not really proud of this selfishness.
A large part of GM's expenses are attributed to retiree benefits and employee welfare. Quite some time back I watched in the History channel that America planned about its senior citizens in the 1930s and 1940s at the height of the great depression and WW2. This was to make sure that the workforce is not wary of getting old.
The workers from 1940s to 1990s made America what it is today. They worked long hours to fulfill the American dream, which is not of course husband wife and a dog (this is how a desi girl described her American dream in a matrimonial website). The employees now, who work 7 hour days, plan 2 hours for an one hour working lunch are not the ones who are building the country, if they were then the companies would not depend on cheap contractors(whom they can fire anytime) to execute their projects.

American democracy consists of two frontline parties, the Republican Party with its conservative base, and the Democrats with its middleclass and somewhat socialistic base. The American people flirt with these two parties every few years and give one the authority to govern them. This time it has been the Democrats led by Barack Obama with his thought of distribution of wealth.
My unease with socialism has always been reasoned with the fact that it corrupts people. But this time with the $50 billion ponzi scam of Madoff and the huge housing scam that led to this credit crunch has given more food for thought about the evils of unregulated free market capitalism.
The epicenter of terrorism Pakistan is fed with huge Military arsenal by both US and China, but a Shia Iran in a Sunni middle east cannot buy surface to air missiles from Russia for it defense. The unipolar world is not really doing a great job in curbing today’s menace. Here is why I used the word communism rather than socialism; there is a political aspect to it. The evil empire was not doing a bad job after all in keeping the balance of power.