Election 2020

[Bob Butler 54]

(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.

Even in a communist government, a bad leader can have a few good ideas that his followers expand upon. Not unusual or uniquely associated with democracy or capitalism.

I do agree that labor or some way of acquiring wealth was once and is still required. Automation requires less labor. The adjustment I have promoted is a lessening of the 40 hour work week and retiring an age less than 65. Both numbers were reduced regularly at one time, but have become sacred. If society is less obsessed with luxuries and acquiring stuff, cutting the time spent on work is natural. I can see future societies much more oriented to things like family and sports.

I agree that labor must be rethought, but the basic system is not the problem. There are solutions within the traditional system. The basic response might give a barely living wage to the person not willing to work, or cannot find a job. If you did labor, you would get significantly more. In the extreme we are no where near yet, you could not be allowed to reproduce on the minimum government dole. Much balancing to be done. Little willingness to do it. Among other things, the red are adamantly opposed to anything that smells of giving benefits to the working poor.

Biden’s team has a surplus of economists who are educated, well trained, experienced, and set in the old ways. I’m not sure that the building back better movement can get far enough outside the box. Still, I am looking for more out of Biden’s team that the Marxist thinkers. As they say up in Maine, you can’t get there from here.