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Thursday, March 26, 2020

There Oughta Be a Law

I have read "The Communist Manifesto", but not "Das Capital".  I don't remember the Manifesto saying much about communism, it mostly talked about what was wrong with capitalism.  Maybe "Das Capital" is the one that explains how communism was supposed to work.  From what I've picked up from other sources over the years, I think that communism would work if people did it right, but the same could be said about most any system.  It seems logical that, if people like a system, they will make it work, and that, if they don't like a system, they will make I fail, but I don't think that's always the case.  Many, perhaps most, people don't care about ideology, all they care about is what works out best for themselves and their friends.  They will work with, against, or outside of any system to get what they want.  That doesn't mean they don't pay lip service to whatever system they have been conditioned to accept, it just means that "There's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip." - Shakespeare?

I think, if you want to start a new system or modify or even overthrow an existing system, you need to come up with a catchy name or phrase that hasn't been used before, at least not in recent memory.  If you call it anything that ends with "ism", half the people will reject it and the other half will make a nuisance of themselves extoling its virtues.  Do you remember how, when we were kids, the grown ups used to say, "There oughta be a law....." a lot?  It wasn't always about politics or legal matters, it was often about stuff that's not within the domain of any legal system like, "There oughta be a law against rain on the weekends."  I can't remember the last time I heard anybody use that phrase, I suppose it died out with our parents' generation and would be new to most people alive today.  I don't know how we would incorporate it into our organizational title, "The There Oughta Be a Law Party"  seems kind of cumbersome, but we could work out details like that later.  Meanwhile, try this out for size:

There oughta be a law against building luxury apartments instead of decent affordable housing.
There oughta be a law against insurance companies running up the cost of health care.
There oughta be a law against advertising and packaging that adds nothing to a product but cost.
Here's one of mine:  There oughta be a law against sports programs pre-empting my TV shows.

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Meanwhile the virus marches on.  Last I heard, Michigan has almost 3000 cases and 60 deaths.  None in Cheboygan County so far, but the single case in Otsego County has grown to eight.

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