First, lose the title and name--you don't sound at all like Captain Kirk or reflect his values or attitudes, so drop the fake name and get a better one, like Captain Bligh (and yes, I know all about what a magnificent navigator Bligh was and that he commanded a ship-of-the-line under Nelson at Copenhagen--he was also an inflexible ass).

Now, to the notion that the "miserablists" have won. No freakin' way. In fact, what has won for eight years are the Ostrichists, who have buried their heads up their arses and pretended that our lifestyle is "non-negotiable"--as if you could negotiate with the weather! America is run by, and will continue to be run by, the "what, me worry?" class until literally nothing can be done but triage. Like all highly developed societies (see books by Olsen and Tainter) we have entrenched elites who have the negative ability to defend their interests, and they will do so as the Titanic sinks. The laws and customs and mental frameworks are so entrenched that it will be close to impossible to adapt to change. Our only hope is an economic collapse or other disaster that shakes things up so completely that current elites are left incapable of resisting the changes necessary to see us through this crisis.

Last time I checked, the last economic collapse we had here in 1929-33 did not lead to people selling thier children into slavery in great numbers. Things were very bad, and some people did face starvation. But that is what I meant as the context was obviously America, not Africa. So your cheap attempt to avoid the rest of the point kinda fails.

Please allow me to be completely clear. An economic collapse a la 1929 would be awful. Sitting on our hands and waiting for the full fury of global climate change (whatever its cause) to hit us before mobilizing our full resources to combat the problem and its fallout would be worse. I think you can grasp that, Captain. Therefore, I argue for the lesser of two evils, for if we do not nulify the power of entrenched interests in oil, coal, uranium, automobiles, construction, and real estate, then we will not see serious steps taken to mitigate the effects of climate change until it is too late. To tackle the problems we face, we will have to overcome the power not only of corporations and the investor class, but the structure of Federalism which will give a few states (Texas, Alaska, West Virginia, Louisiana) an overwhelming incentive to gum up the works and protect their jobs and incomes to the detriment of everybody else (and, when the shit hits the fan ecologically, themsleves, but they will avoid this obvious truth until it is too late). If you see some more likely or better scenario in which we will act to effect positive change (and I still think we can act and make things better) I am all ears.

launched an unprovoked invasion of Canada, gave millions to the Montana, Idaho, and Michigan Militias, overflew our air space, and threatened us with attack, I think we'd be doing more than testing our missiles. Iran has, rhetoric aside, shown good sense and restraint in all this. But of course, that is because they know that war will be awful, as it was when Iraq, with America's blessing, attacked them in 1980. It is only an idiot plurality of people here that think that war is just a wonderful way to get what you want. And as long as we can borrow money to pay for it, and send largely poor, rural volunteers to fight in it, war (i.e. mass murder) will remain a likely option.

If anybody ever actually read "The Wealth of Nations", they'd notice that it assumes certain conditions, and that said conditions will perpetuate themselves endlessly. These conditions, a mass of petty producers, with low start-up costs and capitalization, each specializing in a particular product, entering a free marketplace were CONSUMERS set the price, was a partial pricture of Britain circa 1776-1873. If these conditions apply, and you have an honest judiciary and the rule of law, then a free market system more or less works. However, once you have the rise of the corporation, with massive capitalization and economies of scale, where producers represent wealth and power and can manipulate governments and markets, then some countervailing powers become necessary and proper. Smith wanted to believe that nobody who entered the market had any power, just either a good or money. This is no longer true. Vast wealth means power, and the marketplace is no longer a meeting place of equals. So the "free market" utopia, as ardently desired by Libertarians today as the "worker's paradise" was by Commies of the past, is just as delusional as any dream of utopia. What we need is logic and decency, not dogma, Right or Left.

BTW, that free market wonderland called Victorian Britain gave us the Irish Famine (because the market would solve the problem, don't you starving Micks get that!) and was thoroughly outperformed by the monopolies and cartels of Germany and the United States after 1880--Smith, whose whole book was an attack on monopolies, would have been dumbfounded by this.

Thomas Friedman is there to tell the better educated and less rabid members of the ruling establishment what they want to hear. He plays to their prejudices and willful ignorance. He lets them think that they are moderate and reasonable when they are killing people and pushing them around and forcing them into his "golden straightjacket". That is how he got to be where he is, and that is why he stays where he is.