Election 2020

[pbrower2a]

(12-11-2020, 12:14 AM)Einzige Wrote: It's amazing how little any of you are willing to question anything systemically.

Let me give you an example from the government.

Herbert Hoover initiated programs that Roosevelt expanded into the New Deal. Carter deregulated trucking, airlines etc. Obama expanded Dubya's drone programs and Trump utilized Obama's  concentration camps for immigrants.

The problem is capitalism. This is not to be understood as a mere call from expanded social programs: social programs are intrinsic to capitalism. Nor is it a call directed for a vulgar class war against the rich. A real revolution would require a total transformation in the way we lead our lives. It would require a profoundly radical dropping out from the mechanisms of production and open revolt against all existing instrumentalists of Capital.

Covid is in some ways a fauxdemic in the sense that Capital has been primed for a shift to a distributed form for a long time now. Most manual labor is going to be automated soon. The response to the crisis is meant to facilitate a shift in this direction.

295,000 people have already died of it, which is close to the populations of St. Louis, Cincinnati, or Columbus. We have had as many as 3000 people dying in one day of this horrible disease, so there's nothing faux about it. It is not a result of capitalism; the lethality results from a politician bungling it into the disaster that it is, news media (particularly those related to the Hard Right and sympathetic to the quack President that we now have), and, yes, some horrible decisions of Big Business (like keeping people working in crowded conditions. 

Much of the fault lies with people who fail to take reasonable precautions. Yesterday I drove past the equivalent of Hyde Park (London) in my town, and I saw a bunch of people with Trump banners (protesting the 'steal' of the election that their idol claims to have won)... but no masks. People should be washing their hands frequently (although I can't vouch for them not doing so), not congregating in large groups, and of course, wearing masks. A gathering like that is about as dangerous as an HIV party forty years ago when people have reckless, unprotected sex not knowing who is infected... except that, so far as I recall, nobody had that.  But there have been COVID-19 parties... and people have died as the result of the unwise revelry. Yes, I know about spectacular stupidity, like having hurricane parties or throwing objects into Big Cat enclosures at the San Francisco Zoo (I made a comment about that in the Wikipedia article about the incident in which a tiger got out of the enclosure, chased down its tormenters, and killed or mauled them:  

Quote:Provocation of any large animal, especially a large predator, is extremely dangerous. Behind far flimsier enclosures than any zoo would ever have lurk some large predators which have obvious similarities of proportion, behavior, and abilities to those of tigers. They are dogs, and they have knocked down, burrowed under, vaulted, or scaled fences when provoked. Anyone who throws objects at a dog out of malice stands to be hurt. The tigress in question was only about twice as large as some of the larger dogs, but it was a tiger, and merited some wholesome respect as a very large and resourceful predator.

Zoo animals are not as patient with humans as are dogs, but they are not put in zoos to be humiliated or provoked by zoo patrons any more than a pet owner would keep a pet dog to be humiliated or provoked by passers-by.Pbrower2a (talk) 03:52, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Capitalism has been around for several centuries, but I am more likely to fault bad political leadership and corrupt media (although those media are capitalist, there's a huge difference between the main TV networks and FoX News on this one). The combination of irresponsibility with great power, whatever the political system, makes tragedy practically certain at times. 

If I had been told that over 300,000 people would die of some unforeseen cause in America during the Trump Presidency I would have likely ascribed it to some war for profits.  Not that would a capitalist fault, just as it was in part the fault of pig capitalists that Adolf Hitler initiated World War II. Capitalism is simply an economic technique, and like any force or technology -- or for that matter a large predator... can kill people. It's up to the wisdom and morality of capitalists, like everyone else, to not expose people to undue risks.  

How big is 300,000 people? That is roughly the population of St. Louis, Cincinnati, or Pittsburgh. 

Cities with these pro sports teams:

 

The smallest city not a suburb to have a major-league MLB, NBA, NHL, or NFL team, Green Bay, is considered a major-league city. (So in case you say that the Los Angeles Lakers really play in Inglewood or call the dump Pontiac, Michigan a former Big League city for having the Detroit Lions... having two or three such teams allays all doubt) None of these cities has an NBA franchise, but they have two (Cincinnati) or three (Pittsburgh and Cincinnati) franchises. 

The incompetence and neglect of our Coward-in-Chief has cost the equivalent of lives of one of three major-league cities. Two more days of carnage of the scale of the one-day horror of 9/11 puts us there. Capitalism? No. Trump.    



Here's my take on Hoover: he was still tied to the ethos of the Gilded Age revival of the 1920s and the strictures of economic thought of Gilded-Age capitalism (keep government small, don't run deficits, make sure that the little man gets hurt because he can either adapt or show his unworthiness to live).  He broke the rules at times, but had he stuck to his relief measures (or as Ronald Reagan said, stay the course) instead of abandoning them when they did not seem to work fast enough he might have gotten some recovery. The real mistake was to not back the banks... and as banks failed, people lost their savings, businesses lost their funds for wages and payables, and.. well, one failure brought about another. FDR backed the banks and stuck to what he started.   

I agree with you on this: Big Business makes Big Government necessary at the least for preventing near-wars between capitalists. The auto industry and Big Oil may have put America on the road, but they compelled America to build roads to accommodate the "gas buggies" that are still around, if very different in style and function, a century later. Big Business also means gigantic corporate bureaucracies that impose their own economic management upon us, and for that we need a welfare state to mitigate the effects of plutocratic choices that can bring mass poverty and catastrophic pollution.