Knowing this inevitability, I think the best a government and its people can do is to create mechanisms to protect the less powerful and wealthy from outright vampirism and theft, and to safeguard somehow against outright capture by oligarchs.

And every time a government does this, the mechanisms are eventually gutted or completely undermined by corporate influence while the people are looking elsewhere. I think the most obvious example of that is fact that the Glass Steagal Act was repealed by a bi-partisan consensus at the end of the last century. Obviously, Glass Steagal was passed for a good reason, and some would argue that it allowed the current near-collapse to occur. Its obvious that banks wanted that legislation repealed and the government did it for them, and since enough time had passed since the last financial disaster, no one was paying attention.

Like the other systems you describe, capitalism, of course is a generic term. But it seems to me that in the form we know it, and as it has been exported world wide, its destined for bad news. I'm not sure its salvageable as a system, unless the current system collapses completely and we're left to start from scratch. And even then, its a world view that forces the powerful to reach for the nadir of corruption. Anywho...I also don't think socialism or communism will be the answer. On an existential note, I think the current phase of human development is doomed. The best we can hope for is a collapse so extreme that it allows us to go back to more humble if arduous roots. That's probably a bit too dark for a Saturday morning, but its the first cold morning after Summer here.

Seems like the problem. There's nothing unusual about the current bank empire. Viewed historically, its simply a continuation of a cycle that began soon after the US began to nationalize with the advent of telegraph and railroad. Corporations and banks develop huge influence over government, burden the people with labor and economic feudalism, the system collapses from its own corruption and myopia, the government steps in to regulate in order to avoid uprisings. And then the cycle begins again with government financing and facilitation of the banking sector and corporations after a generation or two forget how damaging it is to let corporations run rampant through a society. You can see this clearly through a few cycles of near economic collapse beginning after the civil war. What we may be seeing here is only the beginning of the end of the current cycle, with the government failing to reign in banks, and the collapse only forestalled for a short time. As always, this could very well be the last one. It seems pretty clearly to be the destiny of humans in a capitalist system; no other paths or choices seem available.

By the way DCLaw, good post.

The nomination for the prize occurs in February. But the decision isn't made until September. That's around the time that Obama declined to follow up on a Bush plan for a missile shield around Russia and a reduction in the US's nuclear arsenal. Its conceivable that that action was the impetus for the decision, and that it may seem like a bigger deal to Europe, given where all of our missiles are pointed at. They may have been overtaken by the moment, I suppose. Not saying that this was a good choice for the prize, given the fact that the winner was involved in two wars at once. But there's no need to make it seem even more ridiculous than it actually is either.

Your post made me laugh [in a good way] several times.

However, I have to wonder what this obsession is of the white posters [and you'll forgive if I assume you're white] here with needing to exclude Obama from every racial category that currently exists in America. I find that this happens with those who claim to be most color-blind, somehow. In fact, I've never heard a black person [outside of Al Sharpton] who opined that Obama wasn't a "real" black person. What I do find is white people here claiming that Obama isn't black, because black is [insert my white definition of black]. And he isn't African because his mother is white.

Don't get me wrong, I think its an issue worth addressing, because of the holes it punches in the American idea of race. I actually wrote something about this particular issue a while back, but it was only in the context of what I perceived a hesitance in the electorate to elect an African American in the US who didn't have some mitigating quality--a white mother, or an African parent--to differentiate them from what they considered to be the average African American. But can't Obama be a black man if that what he wants to call himself? What else does he need? What if you didn't know anything about his background? Indeed, if he was an orphan raised by a white family? What would he be then?

Where does your need to qualify the authenticity of race of others come from? I ask respectfully. I've never really encountered this attitude anywhere else.

Yep. They did it as a challenge to the most powerful person on earth. It was smart. It's one of the best ways to MAKE peace possible. It's almost shaming him into doing it.

Why not? That really worked with Begin. He was so shamed into peace that it took him nearly three years to bomb Iraq and four years to kill nearly 20,000 Lebanese in 1982.

Hey Glenn why don't you organize a peace march. It could be called

'Live up to the Prize"

While I'm not sure that's in Glenn's power to do, that's actually a fantastic idea. A series of marches on Washington called "Live up to the Prize".