03-28-2021, 11:32 PM
(03-28-2021, 02:20 PM)Einzige Wrote:[*](03-15-2021, 05:20 AM)David Horn Wrote: The rate at which this is amassing wealth for the few and penury to many -- all that in the world's wealthiest nation -- shows how quickly we can revert to something akin to Feudalism. We can control this, but it requires the will to oppose the richest and most powerful among us.[*]
[*]Paranoia and Conspiracy. With the arrival of Deep Fakes, the ability of large numbers of otherwise rational people to fall through a rathole just got bigger. Since this is not limited to the US, I may have to move this up the list in the future.
The amusing thing here is that billionaires, who tilt towards an American liberal worldview owing to their breadth of exposure to the world and class interest, generally agree, which is why e.g. Richard Branson (Former CEO of Virgin Records), Elon Musk and others endorse things like UBI. High inequality tends to create a threatening proletariat. More, a UBI would justify stripping the other elements of the social safety net.
But their proposed solutions solve nothing long term. A UBI would generate liquidity short term, but is entirely dependent on taxation to fund. Insofar as those receiving such a subsidy would no longer pay taxes, the onus then would be on the haute-bourgeoisie to fund this programme. But they suffer the most from the effects of the declining rate of profit. A UBI-sustained capitalism might last a generation or two before the entire thing fell apart. It can, at best, buy the capitalists time to ride little Elon's rocket ship to Mars.
Do not presume the stupidity of capitalists. Some have been wise enough to read about their enemy Marxism. If they have really good lives because of capitalism, they do not want it to come to an end in either Marxist revolutions or apocalyptic wars. The stupidest among the capitalists believe that the overt repression of fascism that enforces monopoly power and disembowels both a welfare state and any person (perhaps even literally) who shows signs of dissent. (Even the Nazis are not known to have burned people at the stake, broken people on the wheel, or disemboweled or impaled people as a means of murder). Such a regime almost invariably goes on a course of war to spread its ideology in places in which such is unwelcome and that regime ends up with too many enemies at once. These days, such a war could culminate in a nuclear exchange that kills the perpetrators of such a regime. The other is to spread some of the wealth around through non-profits and through taxation. This may be better for us all than bloated bureaucracies that seem to pay off people who if broke might turn to Marx and one or more of his successors for inspiration on how to overthrow a thoroughly-nasty system.
I agree with the libertarians on this: the fault with America isn't that it is "too" capitalist; it is instead that America is not capitalist enough. I am satisfied that capitalism at its healthiest allows only capitalists to get rich. Maybe there are a few exceptions such as highly-successful creative people and top-level professionals... but I look fondly upon the time in which the high-school science and math teachers might be among the top ten percent of income-earners in a community. Back then Americans had their priorities straight. Much business was small, with veritable cottage industries in retailing, finance, and manufacturing.
The neoliberal era that began with Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America" may have recently ended, with COVID-19 showing how flawed the assumptions behind neoliberalism are.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.