“Although I didn’t read every single word.....he sounds like a commie to me.”
Not a commie, but a relentless statist. What I think this guy is trying to do, and the appearance on the guardian tends to reinforce that, is to provide an alternate construct for the statists to retain some level of relevance. His premises are that the state and it’s cronies are about to collapse of their internal rot. Not that controversial idea these days except to those in deep denial. The question is what then? He is looking for a sort of open source state that is benevolent and wonderful. A competing perspective to this is agorism.
Frankly I think neither perspective is correct. I think that collapse is to be avoided where possible as it’s just as likely to spawn a dark age as a renaissance. If things are going to collapse, you want as soft a landing for you and yours as possible.
I did not get the impression at all that he wanted to strengthen government power. More that he was against the concentration of power (public and private) that our corrupted systems (crony capitalism) have spawned.
I liked the article and agreed with some of it especially his points about the national security state. Totally unsustainable and corrupted. And no worth. And I think that his point that capitalism seeks to maximize profits and externalizes costs is spot on. Of course that is the goal! Don’t think it is evil to have this as the goal, we just need to keep a better accounting of all costs and give producers the information they need to price correctly. Accurate accounting of costs — all costs — would be a benefit to the markets. Prices are a communication, a signal that tells us about supply and demand and a part of that equation are costs.
Anyway, it was an interesting article. Some leftist trappings for sure, but hell it was the Guardian after all.