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(03-13-2022, 08:40 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: (03-12-2022, 05:26 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: (snip)
America has not gone pervasive reforms on the scale of the New Deal since the 1930's aside from the Civil Rights struggle (the latter did not challenge capitalism). Since then we had some tough times due to the energy crunch of the 1970's and the rise of a neoliberal ideology that has solved one problem (price stability) at the expense of workers' rights, economic inequality, declining real pay, the disappearance of economic security for anyone not already filthy-rich, huge private debt for working and middle classes as a substitute for adequate pay, despotic management, great concentration of economic power, the ravaging of huge parts of America that once prospered, the rise of anti-rational culture and religion, and the celebration of elite vice. The ethos of those elites is that the rest of us suffer while displaying the "Happy to serve you smile" that one sees on dumb schmucks in many retail places (stupidity is a virtue in American mass culture).
It will likely take some ecological, military, economic, or political disaster to force us to reach bottom and rebuild a more humane, equitable, and sustainable order. We have faced little of the type. Maybe we really needed a full-blown meltdown analogous to the Great Depression to smite the power of monopolists and the executive elite (itself becoming muc like the Soviet nomenklatura) instead of a cheap recovery so that neocon interests could not buy the system.
While we probably disagree about just how right vs left they are, I do think we're at least talking about mostly the same people.
As someone still in the Enlightenment mode I can state that any ideology or economic doctrine that degrades human existence is reactionary. Stalinism is as reactionary as Nazism and Ku Kluxism. The style may be different, but the result is the same. Trying to place someone like Idi Amin, Bokassa I, Satan Hussein, Ruhollah Khomeini, Vladimir Putin, or any one of the three emperors in all but name of North Korea on the conventional left-right spectrum is futile and meaningless.
I am old enough to remember the GI generation when it really ran things, and the difference between them and the Boomer elite could hardly be more obvious. Around 1940 many GI's expected to be sweated in factories because WASP privilege was still entrenched. Then came the Second World War, when largely-Catholic "ethnics" found themselves in command and proved themselves. Returning GI's often found themselves with the opportunity to attend college and show that they were up to par with men of early privilege. A GI executive had often worked on the shop floor and held his former co-workers in respect for their necessity. So if one knew poverty as a child (most GI's had hardscrabble lives in childhood) but recognized capitalist productivity as the engine of prosperity, then such was fine in management. For Boomer executives, empathy for the worker has been treachery
Quote:Capitalism doesn't work when people can pull up the latter behind them and buy up the game. To me, that's the main issue here. In fact, The Constitution accounted for this with strict limits on the terms of corporations, which were only allowed as a means of facilitating temporary projects for the public good before being dissolved. One political test I took separated out scales for public vs private ownership from scales for low vs high levels of regulation, which I thought was a useful distinction, because you can support private ownership, but also be skeptical that a deregulated market can properly account for externalities (I scored high on private ownership, but only medium low on regulation).
Precisely: capitalism then morphs into an aristocratic order. Toil is then not so much the creator of wealth as something that 'losers' do as peons or proles, their servitude evidence of failure of character. To be sure, joint-stock corporations were new in America, and the first giant enterprise was DuPont Corporation, which largely supplied munitions to the fledgling Republic. To build something big like a canal or railroad or to do something on a large scale like meat-packing, canning, or oil production would require a corporation.
In theory, Marxist socialism is hostile to aristocracy, but Marxist-Leninist regimes have typically developed bureaucratic elites that can become aristocratic in the sense of denying access to bureaucratic power except to those that they choose -- like their children. If the executive elites of private industry in America had to choose between a Soviet system in which they are the elites and free enterprise they would pick Communism.
I think that Milton Friedman was onto something when he suggested a solution to pollution: tax it. Customers will eventually pay.
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.
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(03-13-2022, 01:18 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: As someone still in the Enlightenment mode I can state that any ideology or economic doctrine that degrades human existence is reactionary. Stalinism is as reactionary as Nazism and Ku Kluxism. The style may be different, but the result is the same. Trying to place someone like Idi Amin, Bokassa I, Satan Hussein, Ruhollah Khomeini, Vladimir Putin, or any one of the three emperors in all but name of North Korea on the conventional left-right spectrum is futile and meaningless.
Yes, it's often easy to take for granted the basic idea that the government is even supposed to give a shit about freedom and prosperity in the first place. For example, you'll notice that China doesn't do as much to cover up their civil rights abuses as America or Europe do....because they don't even pretend to care about them in the first place.
Quote:I am old enough to remember the GI generation when it really ran things, and the difference between them and the Boomer elite could hardly be more obvious. Around 1940 many GI's expected to be sweated in factories because WASP privilege was still entrenched. Then came the Second World War, when largely-Catholic "ethnics" found themselves in command and proved themselves. Returning GI's often found themselves with the opportunity to attend college and show that they were up to par with men of early privilege. A GI executive had often worked on the shop floor and held his former co-workers in respect for their necessity. So if one knew poverty as a child (most GI's had hardscrabble lives in childhood) but recognized capitalist productivity as the engine of prosperity, then such was fine in management. For Boomer executives, empathy for the worker has been treachery
in your defense, I sometimes call boomers the "jedi/sith" generation, with just as many "jedi" boomers fighting the "sith" boomers as other generations (I think Neil Howe even makes a reference to this)
Quote:Precisely: capitalism then morphs into an aristocratic order. Toil is then not so much the creator of wealth as something that 'losers' do as peons or proles, their servitude evidence of failure of character. To be sure, joint-stock corporations were new in America, and the first giant enterprise was DuPont Corporation, which largely supplied munitions to the fledgling Republic. To build something big like a canal or railroad or to do something on a large scale like meat-packing, canning, or oil production would require a corporation.
In theory, Marxist socialism is hostile to aristocracy, but Marxist-Leninist regimes have typically developed bureaucratic elites that can become aristocratic in the sense of denying access to bureaucratic power except to those that they choose -- like their children. If the executive elites of private industry in America had to choose between a Soviet system in which they are the elites and free enterprise they would pick Communism.
exactly. right and left alike, an understanding of history is the best panacea for the rosy No True Scotsman delusions that plague idealistic youth (idealist like anyone who is young and idealistic, not just youth of the Idealist generation archetype)
Quote:I think that Milton Friedman was onto something when he suggested a solution to pollution: tax it. Customers will eventually pay.
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JasonBlack
(03-13-2022, 01:18 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: As someone still in the Enlightenment mode I can state that any ideology or economic doctrine that degrades human existence is reactionary. Stalinism is as reactionary as Nazism and Ku Kluxism. The style may be different, but the result is the same. Trying to place someone like Idi Amin, Bokassa I, Satan Hussein, Ruhollah Khomeini, Vladimir Putin, or any one of the three emperors in all but name of North Korea on the conventional left-right spectrum is futile and meaningless.
Yes, it's often easy to take for granted the basic idea that the government is even supposed to give a shit about freedom and prosperity in the first place. For example, you'll notice that China doesn't do as much to cover up their civil rights abuses as America or Europe do....because they don't even pretend to care about them in the first place.[/quote]
Humanistic values are difficult to achieve, but the results are better than anything else. Marxism-Leninism is basically a wealth cult that promises that it can do better than capitalism in creating prosperity by cutting out the greedy plutocrats, but it disconnects from such concepts as material cost (the Soviet system treated fossil fuels as objects of inconsequential cost, which was a huge mistake) and customer choice (nearly everything is offered as cheap and shoddy, which is itself wasteful. "Socialist" states had horrible records of environmental degradation.
Dictatorships all have the predicate of fear. For a short time, fear is a strong motivator... but keep using it with few rewards for desired results, and it grinds people down.
Quote:Quote:I am old enough to remember the GI generation when it really ran things, and the difference between them and the Boomer elite could hardly be more obvious. Around 1940 many GI's expected to be sweated in factories because WASP privilege was still entrenched. Then came the Second World War, when largely-Catholic "ethnics" found themselves in command and proved themselves. Returning GI's often found themselves with the opportunity to attend college and show that they were up to par with men of early privilege. A GI executive had often worked on the shop floor and held his former co-workers in respect for their necessity. So if one knew poverty as a child (most GI's had hardscrabble lives in childhood) but recognized capitalist productivity as the engine of prosperity, then such was fine in management. For Boomer executives, empathy for the worker has been treachery
In your defense, I sometimes call boomers the "jedi/sith" generation, with just as many "jedi" boomers fighting the "sith" boomers as other generations (I think Neil Howe even makes a reference to this)
But the "Sith" monsters have prevailed, at least in economic matters. They successfully gamed the system to their benefit at the expense of everyone else. It could be that the world changes greatly when people are no longer able to get away with such. Easy money that results from bureaucratic power or management of scarcity will be taxed heavily when such becomes a necessity for general survival.
Speaking of one huge shortage -- affordable housing -- that was also a big concern in the 1940's, too. The cycle returns.
Quote:Quote:Precisely: capitalism then morphs into an aristocratic order. Toil is then not so much the creator of wealth as something that 'losers' do as peons or proles, their servitude evidence of failure of character. To be sure, joint-stock corporations were new in America, and the first giant enterprise was DuPont Corporation, which largely supplied munitions to the fledgling Republic. To build something big like a canal or railroad or to do something on a large scale like meat-packing, canning, or oil production would require a corporation.
In theory, Marxist socialism is hostile to aristocracy, but Marxist-Leninist regimes have typically developed bureaucratic elites that can become aristocratic in the sense of denying access to bureaucratic power except to those that they choose -- like their children. If the executive elites of private industry in America had to choose between a Soviet system in which they are the elites and free enterprise they would pick Communism.
exactly. right and left alike, an understanding of history is the best panacea for the rosy No True Scotsman delusions that plague idealistic youth (idealist like anyone who is young and idealistic, not just youth of the Idealist generation archetype)
Much of what is wrong with any society is the abuse of power. Revolutionaries who have overthrown one set of exploitative overlords find it easy to requisition the immovable luxuries and those luxuries left behind in haste of the former rulers.Those luxuries become a moral snare.
One must hope for the best and guard against the worst.
Quote:Quote:I think that Milton Friedman was onto something when he suggested a solution to pollution: tax it. Customers will eventually pay.
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Of course, pollution is not the only externality. The people who got lavish bonuses for making mass lay-offs were taxed normally -- but without having to pay Social Security taxes. People laid off were no longer paying into the system until they found new work, but the bonuses were not taxed. When the GI's ran things, how many subordinates one had was typically a positive for determining the pay of managers.
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.
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