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It Seems To Me That Our Problem Has A Lot Less To Do With The Mechanics Of Solar Power Than The Politics Of Human Power—specifically Whether There Can Be A Shift In Who Wields It, A Shift Away From Corporations And Toward Communities, Which In Turn Depends On Whether Or Not The Great Many People Who Are Getting A Rotten Deal Under Our Current System Can Build A Determined And Diverse Enough Social Force To Change The Balance Of Power.

The Fact That Trump's Refused To Divest From His Labyrinth Of Business Holdings, The Fact That He's Continuing To Profit From His Brand And Indeed Create All Kinds Of New Opportunities To Profit Off The Presidency Is Outrageous. The Flip Side Is That He's Left Out A Lot Of Levers Through Which To Pressure Him. You Know, The Reason You Want A President To Divest From His Business Holdings Is That Foreign Governments Can Try To Exert Pressure On Him By Becoming Customers Of These Hotels And Inflating The Value Of How Much They're Willing To Pay For A Trump Brand.

It Is Eminently Possible To Have A Market-based Economy That Requires No Such Brutality And Demands No Such Ideological Purity. A Free Market In Consumer Products Can Coexist With Free Public Health Care, With Public Schools, With A Large Segment Of The Economy -- Like A National Oil Company -- Held In State Hands. It's Equally Possible To Require Corporations To Pay Decent Wages, To Respect The Right Of Workers To Form Unions, And For Governments To Tax And Redistribute Wealth So That The Sharp Inequalities That Mark The Corporatist State Are Reduced. Markets Need Not Be Fundamentalist.

It Is Our Great Collective Misfortune That The Scientific Community Made Its Decisive Diagnosis Of The Climate Threat At The Precise Moment When An Elite Minority Was Enjoying More Unfettered Political, Cultural, And Intellectual Power Than At Any Point Since The 1920s.

It's Certainly Something We Haven't Seen Before In Terms Of A Fully Commercial Global Brand - Really A Family Of Brands - Not Just Trump But Also Ivanka, Who Has A Sub-brand. We've Never Seen This Before. We've Had Presidents In Financial Conflicts Of Interest Before, But This Phenomenon Where A Sitting President Image Avatar Is Out There Selling Golf Courses And Condominiums, Even As He Is In Office And Having The Value Of His Personal Brand Inflated Dramatically By Fact Of His Being President, Is New Territory.