(08-25-2021, 12:11 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(08-25-2021, 11:24 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:(08-24-2021, 06:19 PM)galaxy Wrote: (Sorry to make a new thread just for this, but I couldn't find a better place to post it)
https://buffalonews.com/news/state-and-r...7d2d1.html
This quote immediately brought my mind to S&H when I read it. It's an extremely 4T thing to say and to set as a goal. Her whole speech was very saecular, but this is the sentence that stood out above all others.
As chaotic as it may look on the ground, in many ways we are "doing the 4T thing" as a nation in spite of ourselves. Stay hopeful, friends.
No apology needed. The faults of Andrew Cuomo were of personal behavior and character, and not his agenda.
As a general pattern, liberals do not suffer their rogues. Right-wingers do, at least if they are on the authoritarian track. One of the most flagrant examples is Adolf Hitler, who drove a woman to suicide and staged an insurrection against the shaky Weimar Republic and then became the leading player in German politics (if never winning an outright majority) on a campaign on law-and-order and 'family values'. Donald Trump isn't quite as bad, but he still has a large following. Should he run for President he would get at least 45% of the popular vote against an Obama-like pol. (Obama is one of those "do the crime and do the time" types, and his family values are beyond reproach).
Liberals have had their Regeneracy. They want a trustworthy government capable of doing real good for people... and no scandals of sex or corruption. Some conservatives may already want that, but the GOP to which they have long connections wants a government that well serves the rich and powerful while pandering to mass anger and mass superstition. The old sort of conservative who still prefers personal initiative to either crony capitalism or a bloated welfare state has no real home. The fascistic (right-wing populist) part of the GOP is taking over the Party and squeezing out those with a more libertarian approach to economics.
Yes, although the "libertarian approach to economics" and worship of "personal initiative" is part and parcel of "well serves the rich and powerful", and those "pandering to mass anger and mass superstition" ALSO even-more do the former (called neo-liberalism or free-market economics, trickle-down economics, social darwinism etc.). It's a complete package, each aspect bound up with the other, and the libertarian economics aspect is just as nefarious as the mass superstition aspect. Both aspects must be defeated now after 40 years of regression, or our nation and our world is headed for destruction.
The real question may be even trickier: how do we deal with the End of Scarcity?
I remember when the factory was the most exit from of poverty. That of course is over as factory employment is highly unreliable except perhaps in food processing, where pay is abysmal. Meat-packing plants and dairies may be largely in rural areas, but those are classic sweatshops.
Anyone who expects Big Business to be a solution is a fool. Most giant enterprises are deeply advanced into the latter stages of the corporate life cycle. They seem more intent on upholding the status quo, buying politicians, and having bloated bureaucracies to control assets and the behavior of those unfortunate to do the real work. That's bureaucracy, and bureaucracies do not create wealth. The main effect that I see in corporate bureaucracies is that they effectively bribe the Best and Brightest to accept the rules of plutocracy and not contemplate Marx, Marcuse, or even Orwell. So clean up in the morning, put on clothes that resemble those of a workingman setting off to church on Sunday, commute in a late-model car for about an hour, put in eight hours doing work whose purpose is incomprehensible (and would likely be troubling if one contemplated such), leave in the same late-model car, perhaps stopping for a coffee on the way home if the traffic jam is too severe, get home to a McMansion, dress down as if one were about to go golfing, zap some entrée, and watch perhaps some PBS, some news, or perhaps a sporting event because one is too tired to do anything else... PBS is of course "nobler" than what ill-educated people watch... and then undress, go to bed, and lather, rinse, and repeat.
Bureaucratic entities other than those tax-funded (the government and in effect government contractors) or that operate on a cost-plus basis (insurance companies and hospitals are prime examples) do not innovate. As a general rule their costs rise faster than revenues.
We need new small businesses to
(1) fill niches that bankrupt entities leave behind
(2) create opportunities for people who would chafe in giant enterprises
(3) create jobs and generate public revenues through sales taxes
(4) adapt quickly to customer desires -- better than late-stage bureaucratized behemoths
(5) serve as a capital market (banks recycle loan payments into new loans)
(6) have a focus on the owners' income instead of buying politicians.
Small businesses create wealth. Almost everyone else devours the seed corn.
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.