In one of his posted articles - "Sex, God and Time" - he wrote about sex as a reality in life, about God from the perspective of one who reflects in profound soul searching and about how time can change our perspectives. Although he writes very long articles, I finished reading two, despite my short attention span. He is a good read, as a jargon puts it, and if you have a bias against most of the Filipino celebrities, reading him will break that bias.
I sought out his blog when I read by chance his comment on Facebook that probably it's time to "rethink capitalism", in response to the growing frustration in the United States about the pampering by the US government of the few billionaires on Wall Street, despite their mind-boggling incomes, while 90 percent of the country's more than 300 million population are having a hard time making both ends meet. Latest media reports culled from the statistics of the US Census Bureau indicate that about 26 million Americans are living in poverty.
The implication is that capitalism is a failed economic system because it benefits only a few.
Since two weeks ago, a small group of Americans launched a movement called "Occupy Wall Street" to bring this disparity to the attention of the public and the US government. Although the motley crowd has not articulated any clear demand, they are protesting against a broad range of issues, from the corporate greed of the Big Business in Manhattan, social inequality and even climate change, among others.
The protest reminded me of our own complaints against capitalism when we were still college students in Manila during the time of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos. As left-wing student activists, we were then supporting the Marxist cause. The protest leaders, mostly affiliated with the underground Communist Party of the Philippines, exploited issues like tuition fee, workers' low wages, corruption in government and arbitrary arrests of those suspected to be Reds.
Working my way to college as a security guard, I could not miss the social inequality. At the Lyceum of the Philippines where I pursued a course in journalism, we set up our own newsletter, Sigaw (Shout), which echoed the Marxist cause to install a "democracy of the proletariat" in the country in place of capitalism - the democracy of the social elite, Big Business in particular.
If the Soviet Union did not crumble in 1991, I have no doubt that many Americans will forget the American Dream and pick the Marxist cause, particularly because, like the politicians in the Philippines then and now, many US politicians, mainly the Republicans, are supporters of Big Business to the detriment of the common good.
A news item dispatched by the Associated Press last Sunday said that one of the protesters during a street march on Brooklyn Bridge vent his outraged against the government's bailout of big firms in Manhattan, which used the money to give hefty bonuses for their executives at a time when the rest of the populace was reeling from the economic crunch.
"When the bailout money was spent on bonuses and stuff, everyone was outraged, but no one did anything because no one feels like they can," the AP story quoted 22-year-old Jesse Wilson as saying. Being a former activist, I can feel his frustration over the callousness of the rich running big businesses on Wall Street.
Sadly, in the capitalist economic system, Big Business calls the shot. It can pull strings. When President Barack Obama floated a proposal to impose higher taxes on big businesses, the Republicans immediately came to their defense and labelled such a proposal as a "class war". Many American also were not outraged against the Republilcans' reaction and succumbed to the political soundbites of their election campaign.
E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote an article with The New York Times last week about the reactions of the "conservatives" in American society on the comment of billionaire Warren Buffett that he was paying less taxes than his office secretary. Dionne suggested that the newspaper Wall Street Journal, instead of supporting Buffett, was outraged by his comment and called for Buffet's disclosure of his tax return.
"Thus did the Wall Street Journal editorial page call on Buffett to 'let anyone else in on his secrets of taxi avoidance by releasing his tax return'," Dionne said in his article.
The Wall Street Journal article gives a hint that corporate giants on Wall Street have "secrets of tax avoidance" and it was obscene for it to call on Buffett to disclose his tax returns while sparing the other billionaires from doing the same. It makes you angry to think that their sense of fairness is drowned when money talks.
Should we then "rethink capitalism?"
I agree with Jim Paredes that it's about time for the world to reexamine the economic system for its flaws to be corrected, particularly at this time when people's values have become too relative. The social malaise, which was felt in Third World nations a long time ago, has started creeping not only in the United Sates but also in developed countries like Britain, where the phone hacking scandal involving the media empire of tycoon Rupert Murdoch has given us a clue.
Of course, we cannot turn to Marxism. Communism is a dead horse.
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Of course, we cannot hark back to Marxism. Communism is a dead horse.
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