Reply #28: You've touched on an interesting point here

[IrateCitizen]

That being the accumulation of global investment capital by the United States through international banking institutions essentially controlled by the US Treasury (i.e. the IMF).

Emmanuel Todd discusses this in his latest book, After the Empire. Essentially, Todd (a French demographer and historian who predicted the imminent demise of the USSR in 1976) presents the idea that the United States is actually a weak country, attempting to hold on to a hegemony that no longer exists in order to avoid facing the reality that the rest of the world is finding out that it can live WITHOUT the US at the same time that the US is discovering that it cannot get along without the rest of the world.

There are two things primarily that are allowing the United States to maintain a seeming position of global hegemony: rampant consumer spending, and accumulation of nearly all global investment capital. While US industrial output accounted for over 1/2 of all global output in the years immediately following WWII, our economy is becoming increasingly overshadowed, from a production standpoint, by both the Japanese economy, and the European economy led by the relatively new Franco-German leadership. Without the industrial production of these regions -- the Pacific rim led by Japan, and the European region led by France and Germany -- the US economy would collapse because it would not be able to hog the investment capital for itself that is necessary to maintain consumer spending at present levels.

The reason I have not mentioned military hegemony to this point is because it is largely meaningless in the current world climate. Despite massive expenditures, the US military is largely bogged down in an unsuccessful occupation of a decimated country in the Middle East. Even if we are "successful" in maintaining control over the Middle Eastern oil spigot, Europe and Japan will simply turn increasingly to a stabilizing and recovering Russia to meet their energy needs. Furthermore, should Europe and Japan decide that it is no longer in their best interest to support the consumer spending of an increasingly reckless and arrogant United States, the United States as we know it will largely cease to exist. We will almost immediately come to realize a 20% reduction in living standards, and will suddenly have to play by the rules of the rest of the world. However, this will also require a bit of short-term pain on the part of Europe and Japan as well, even if the ultimate outcome would most likely be a much better world in many ways.

Anyway, thanks for stimulating an interesting discussion. As a democratic socialist, I agree with many of your observations. While a market economy in some form is the most efficient way of delivering goods and services, the startling lack of democracy within the current capitalist system is quite alarming -- and is simply highlighting the fact that political democracy cannot co-exist with economic oligarchy (or even totalitarianism). We need to look for models that combine the best aspects of a market economy with the foresight and egalitarianism that is possible under various forms of socialist organization.