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Although this thread does not function under the same strict guidelines as the USPMT, it is still a general practice on TL to provide a source with an explanation on why it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion. Failure to do so will result in a mod action. |
On November 30 2024 23:30 Magic Powers wrote:
The belief in equality of opportunity is fundamental for the idolization of people such as Donald Trump and Elon Musk. If there is equality of opportunity, then they're the product of a good system. If there isn't, then they're the product of a bad system. Therefore there must be equality of opportunity or else people would have to realize that they've been idolizing two completely inept scumbags. Yeah because nothing exemplifies equality of opportunity like people born into wealth...
If your going to idolize the wealthy atleast look at people who actually started with (almost) nothing.
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On November 30 2024 23:37 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2024 23:30 Magic Powers wrote:
The belief in equality of opportunity is fundamental for the idolization of people such as Donald Trump and Elon Musk. If there is equality of opportunity, then they're the product of a good system. If there isn't, then they're the product of a bad system. Therefore there must be equality of opportunity or else people would have to realize that they've been idolizing two completely inept scumbags. Yeah because nothing exemplifies equality of opportunity like people born into wealth... If your going to idolize the wealthy atleast look at people who actually started with (almost) nothing.
But those are really hard to find. If you look at the actually wealthy, it turns out that most of them were born into wealth. Almost as if those people have much more opportunities than people who are born into poverty.
Dishwasher to Billionaire bootstrap stuff happens incredibly rarely. Millionaire son to billionaire is a much more probably story.
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Is anyone else following the protests in Georgia? Do you think we're looking at Georgia's Maidan revolution? Georgians are protesting against the government (pro-Russian kleptocrats) suspending the country's EU accession process after a blatantly rigged election. You can find lots of footage of graphic police brutality towards peaceful protesters on Reddit and in mainstream media:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Sakartvelo/
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On November 30 2024 21:12 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2024 20:59 RvB wrote:On November 30 2024 02:22 Nebuchad wrote:On November 30 2024 01:02 RvB wrote:
This post and the Wikipedia article made your point much clearer for me thanks. Theoretically I think you're right. On the right it's considered natural and sometimes desirable to have a hierarchy on a societal scale. To use more Marxian terms the far left strives for a classless society. In reality it never accomplishes this. It always devolves into an authoritarian nightmare where the old establishment is replaced by a new one. The centre left is a different story but they also usually operate in liberal democracies with market economies. In terms of observation alone my perception is that it's clearly beneficial for humans to have less rigid social hierarchies, like we had centuries of very rigid social hierarchies under kings and nobles by birth and so on and humans struggled under these, while the few privileged on top had a nice life. So I feel like this statement from the right, that social hierarchies are desirable, is demonstrably wrong. But I also don't necessarily think that the right is fooling itself, I feel like they understand this too and they just don't want to make life better for all humans, just for themselves and a select few, and they perceive that they'll be part of the privileged class. If you're only concerned about some humans, then it's not difficult to imagine scenarios in which you benefit from other humans being exploited. I think all systems of governing in general are vulnerable to authoritarianism, but I would agree with you that democracy is less vulnerable than what the Soviets did for example, cause power is more centralized. I don't think you require a class system to have a market economy, actually I believe that a market economy with no class system makes a lot more sense. Just eliminate the authoritarian nature of that system, and much like happened in the political system in the transition from royalty to democracy it will lead to a loosening of its social hierarchy. If you're not creating good conditions for your workers as a manager, they can elect someone else who will. It would be harder for a company to hide that they're facilitating climate change for profit, or that the shareholders are paying themselves 500 times more than their workers for not doing much at all, if they were directly accountable for their decisions. The less power is in a single person's hands, the less the system is vulnerable to authoritarians. That you think the right just wants to make life worse for people says more about yourself than the right. Billy is right. What matters, for liberals like me at least, is equality of opportunity. That will always lead to differences in outcome and as a consequence social hierarchies because humans have different skills, capabilities, and desires. Coming back to the example of the doctor, you feel that there's not a ton of social power derivated from it. I disagree. Doctors are upper class in status and income. The high status extends to the workplace. For good reason since they're experts in their fields. Your proposal to organize society into jobs that are essential for society is creating a social hierarchy. You've split society into essential jobs and non-essential jobs where one comes with more status and income. It's a good example of the left replacing one hierarchy with another. It raises the question of how you'd decide what jobs are essential. Centralising the decision making under a governement entity or something similar concentrates a lot of power in few hands. Democratically choosing comes with its own share of issues. It'll inevitably lead to special interest groups advocating for their own jobs to be designated as essential. We can already see where that leads with farmers in the EU. Poor policy that costs billions, hurts consumers, and leaves poor farmers in the developing world worse off. I'm aware of the concept of market socialism. It's already possible to create a company that you propose. Yet nobody does it. The closest are cooperatives. Cooperatives work well in some sectors. It's a good type of company to exist but not good enough to use them for every market. If they were much more efficient than regular companies we'd see them out compete them. That leads me to the conclusion that people don't want the type of companies you propose and that they're not more efficient so lead to worse capital allocation. It makes everyone worse off in the end. But here's the thing, in society currently we obviously don't have equality of opportunity, and yet liberals support the current system, so that doesn't make a ton of sense to me. How can you claim to be in favor of equality of opportunity and then support a status quo that doesn't have this equality of opportunity that you support? From my standpoint as a leftist, it looks more like you're into saying, very loudly, that you are into equality of opportunity, and then doing absolutely nothing to make that equality of opportunity come about; and you know, actions speak louder than words. Especially when I couple that with the way you portray the left as wanting equality of outcomes. Obviously nothing I've described in these posts leads to equality of outcomes, if you read Marx you won't find equality of outcomes, equality of outcomes doesn't make much sense on its face because we aren't equal as individuals and we're not going to do the same things. I understand it's not very charitable of me but I honestly don't have a charitable interpretation, maybe you can help me out with that. It also fits very nicely because we're having this talk between people who lead, for the most part, very decent lives, so it fits with my "preconceived notion" of the right being in it for themselves. "I am very in favor of equality of opportunity, the system that we have right now, and it just so happens that I used my equal opportunity to make a decent life for myself, I must have been deserving. Sorry that this other guy didn't make it but hey, he had the opportunity."
I support the status quo insofar liberal democracy with a market economy is the best system to achieve equality of opportunity. That does not mean that the system is perfect. I am in favour of liberal reforms. It has nonetheless proven more effective than anything else. Dengs market reforms and the reforms in India of the license Raj pulled hundreds of millions out of poverty. Name me a system that has done better. All you have is some theoretical construct. It's rich to accuse others of doing nothing to achieve a certain thing and then do nothing of your own even though our current society allows you to do so. There's nothing stopping leftists from creating companies with more workplace democracy.
As to the equality of outcomes this is certainly a component of leftist thought. It's possible to aim for more equal outcomes without every person having the exact same. Policy such as wealth taxes are clearly desired because it creates more equal outcomes.
Your last paragraph is a giant strawman. Where do I say that we live in a society with equality of opportunity. It's the best system to achieve it. We've never had so much of it in history. Yet people like Trump exist who receive a small loan of a million dollars from their dad. I'm not blind to that. Liberalism is not mutually exclusive with helping the poor or unfortunate. I'm in favour of policy like a negative income tax to help the poor.
Lastly you should stop with the assumptions about me and my life. You have no idea what my background is and the experience I have with poverty.
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On December 01 2024 04:24 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2024 21:12 Nebuchad wrote:On November 30 2024 20:59 RvB wrote:On November 30 2024 02:22 Nebuchad wrote:On November 30 2024 01:02 RvB wrote:
This post and the Wikipedia article made your point much clearer for me thanks. Theoretically I think you're right. On the right it's considered natural and sometimes desirable to have a hierarchy on a societal scale. To use more Marxian terms the far left strives for a classless society. In reality it never accomplishes this. It always devolves into an authoritarian nightmare where the old establishment is replaced by a new one. The centre left is a different story but they also usually operate in liberal democracies with market economies. In terms of observation alone my perception is that it's clearly beneficial for humans to have less rigid social hierarchies, like we had centuries of very rigid social hierarchies under kings and nobles by birth and so on and humans struggled under these, while the few privileged on top had a nice life. So I feel like this statement from the right, that social hierarchies are desirable, is demonstrably wrong. But I also don't necessarily think that the right is fooling itself, I feel like they understand this too and they just don't want to make life better for all humans, just for themselves and a select few, and they perceive that they'll be part of the privileged class. If you're only concerned about some humans, then it's not difficult to imagine scenarios in which you benefit from other humans being exploited. I think all systems of governing in general are vulnerable to authoritarianism, but I would agree with you that democracy is less vulnerable than what the Soviets did for example, cause power is more centralized. I don't think you require a class system to have a market economy, actually I believe that a market economy with no class system makes a lot more sense. Just eliminate the authoritarian nature of that system, and much like happened in the political system in the transition from royalty to democracy it will lead to a loosening of its social hierarchy. If you're not creating good conditions for your workers as a manager, they can elect someone else who will. It would be harder for a company to hide that they're facilitating climate change for profit, or that the shareholders are paying themselves 500 times more than their workers for not doing much at all, if they were directly accountable for their decisions. The less power is in a single person's hands, the less the system is vulnerable to authoritarians. That you think the right just wants to make life worse for people says more about yourself than the right. Billy is right. What matters, for liberals like me at least, is equality of opportunity. That will always lead to differences in outcome and as a consequence social hierarchies because humans have different skills, capabilities, and desires. Coming back to the example of the doctor, you feel that there's not a ton of social power derivated from it. I disagree. Doctors are upper class in status and income. The high status extends to the workplace. For good reason since they're experts in their fields. Your proposal to organize society into jobs that are essential for society is creating a social hierarchy. You've split society into essential jobs and non-essential jobs where one comes with more status and income. It's a good example of the left replacing one hierarchy with another. It raises the question of how you'd decide what jobs are essential. Centralising the decision making under a governement entity or something similar concentrates a lot of power in few hands. Democratically choosing comes with its own share of issues. It'll inevitably lead to special interest groups advocating for their own jobs to be designated as essential. We can already see where that leads with farmers in the EU. Poor policy that costs billions, hurts consumers, and leaves poor farmers in the developing world worse off. I'm aware of the concept of market socialism. It's already possible to create a company that you propose. Yet nobody does it. The closest are cooperatives. Cooperatives work well in some sectors. It's a good type of company to exist but not good enough to use them for every market. If they were much more efficient than regular companies we'd see them out compete them. That leads me to the conclusion that people don't want the type of companies you propose and that they're not more efficient so lead to worse capital allocation. It makes everyone worse off in the end. But here's the thing, in society currently we obviously don't have equality of opportunity, and yet liberals support the current system, so that doesn't make a ton of sense to me. How can you claim to be in favor of equality of opportunity and then support a status quo that doesn't have this equality of opportunity that you support? From my standpoint as a leftist, it looks more like you're into saying, very loudly, that you are into equality of opportunity, and then doing absolutely nothing to make that equality of opportunity come about; and you know, actions speak louder than words. Especially when I couple that with the way you portray the left as wanting equality of outcomes. Obviously nothing I've described in these posts leads to equality of outcomes, if you read Marx you won't find equality of outcomes, equality of outcomes doesn't make much sense on its face because we aren't equal as individuals and we're not going to do the same things. I understand it's not very charitable of me but I honestly don't have a charitable interpretation, maybe you can help me out with that. It also fits very nicely because we're having this talk between people who lead, for the most part, very decent lives, so it fits with my "preconceived notion" of the right being in it for themselves. "I am very in favor of equality of opportunity, the system that we have right now, and it just so happens that I used my equal opportunity to make a decent life for myself, I must have been deserving. Sorry that this other guy didn't make it but hey, he had the opportunity." I support the status quo insofar liberal democracy with a market economy is the best system to achieve equality of opportunity. That does not mean that the system is perfect. I am in favour of liberal reforms. It has nonetheless proven more effective than anything else. Dengs market reforms and the reforms in India of the license Raj pulled hundreds of millions out of poverty. Name me a system that has done better. All you have is some theoretical construct. It's rich to accuse others of doing nothing to achieve a certain thing and then do nothing of your own even though our current society allows you to do so. There's nothing stopping leftists from creating companies with more workplace democracy. As to the equality of outcomes this is certainly a component of leftist thought. It's possible to aim for more equal outcomes without every person having the exact same. Policy such as wealth taxes are clearly desired because it creates more equal outcomes. Your last paragraph is a giant strawman. Where do I say that we live in a society with equality of opportunity. It's the best system to achieve it. We've never had so much of it in history. Yet people like Trump exist who receive a small loan of a million dollars from their dad. I'm not blind to that. Liberalism is not mutually exclusive with helping the poor or unfortunate. I'm in favour of policy like a negative income tax to help the poor. Lastly you should stop with the assumptions about me and my life. You have no idea what my background is and the experience I have with poverty.
I will need you to expand on what "liberal reforms" are because to me liberal reforms are like when you privatize a bunch of stuff, and obviously that makes inequality worse as it results in a larger percentage of what happens in your society being operated for profit.
It is on its face absurd to claim that capitalism is the best system to achieve equality of opportunity. The class system of capitalism, the thing that capitalism is built around and maintains, with on one side a capitalist class and on the other side a working class, is responsible for the main inequality of opportunity that we observe on the global scale today. It is legitimately no less absurd than claiming that Apartheid is the best system to fight racism. There's a meme that you may know that floats around on this topic, it goes: "The problems are very bad while the causes, the causes are very good".
The post would be too long if I attacked this claim from every angle available. Systemically, a capitalist benefits from a more inequal system. There's a reason why they do unionbusting, there's a reason why they don't present illegal immigrants with the same working conditions as people with college degrees. As a capitalist you have a direct incentive to want people to have as few opportunities as possible, because not having opportunities limits their options, and if they don't have options they'll settle for a worse deal with you and accept worse working conditions, and that will increase your profits. The more opportunities people have available to them, the less vulnerable they are to exploitation.
That's for the internal logic on a systemic level, but we can also just look at the real world. In the real world, in this liberal capitalist system, there is a consistent transfer of wealth to the richest people on earth. All of these stats are getting worse, not better. You think the best system to achieve equality of opportunity is a system that, when given free reign on the planet for 40ish years, yields the result of a society that has increased levels of inequality? That is unlikely.
Is it difficult to imagine a system that has better results than that? Even social democracy, with all its flaws, had better results, so no, it isn't difficult. Again market socialism would be exponentially better simply through the weakening of the social hierarchy that causes the inequality in the first place. You can introduce the question of "efficiency" in there, I have no doubt that capitalism is more efficient, in the same way that a dictatorship is more efficient than a democracy. But then you have to acknowledge that you value efficiency over equality of opportunity. I wouldn't.
On December 01 2024 04:24 RvB wrote:
As to the equality of outcomes this is certainly a component of leftist thought.
May I interest you in the wikipedia page on "equality of outcome", that has an entire section titled "Conflation with Marxism, socialism and communism".
On December 01 2024 04:24 RvB wrote:
Lastly you should stop with the assumptions about me and my life. You have no idea what my background is and the experience I have with poverty.
Not directed at you as an individual, as you point out I don't know your story. It is unheard of for capitalism to be defended by people who say "I had equal opportunity but I'm an undeserving human, I suck. That's why I'm at the bottom of society, and that is good and justified". The survivorship bias in this line of argumentation is inescapable.
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Update on the situation here, we have the results of the parliamentary elections:
PSD - 22% - conservative social-dems
AUR - 18% - far fight traditionalists
PNL - 14% - liberals-ish
USR - 12% - reformist libs
SOS - 8% - far right insanity mode
POT - 6% - far right, new party riding the Georgescu wave
UDMR - 6% - ethnic Hungarian party
Those percentages are the share of the votes that they received, the share of MPs each of them will have will be slightly higher as every party below 5% gets nothing.
Most likely there will be a PSD+PNL+USR+UDMR coalition but there's an outside chance of a PSD+far right coalition. It's nigh impossible for someone to be in the ruling coalition with PSD without tanking in the next election, so at best we delay the inevitable.
The only way the far right can diminish is if they themselves govern. And we're at the point where the only way to keep them from governing is by having an alliance full of contradictions made of everyone else.
The vote abroad was 55% far right, those folks are not integrating in the countries they work in. They spend their time on 'Romanians in [insert country]' online groups, watching Romanian TV, and going out only with their Romanian co-workers. And they're very frustrated about their role in those societies.
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As for the presidential run-off, the recount is finished for the votes inside the country but there's still a bunch of votes from abroad yet to arrive and be recounted. Nonetheless, so far there were no differences that would change the order of the top 3 and the Constitutional Court just validated the 1st round. So we'll have Georgescu vs Lasconi next Sunday.
Polls are all over the place, lots of people are refusing to talk to pollsters and it's assumed that refusals are leaning more far-right based on the differences between polls and results in both the presidential 1st round and the legislative elections.
Facebook/Youtube/Whatsapp/Tiktok are completely full of pro-Georgescu content and comments. Most of us that aren't into fascism and pseudo-science had to have painful hours-long talks with family members to attempt to pull them out of that trance.
The media made the same mistakes as with Trump in the US, 90% of everything is about Georgescu while his opponent Lasconi is invisible. They show a bunch of clips of Georgescu saying stupid shit and expect it to be self-evident to the people watching them. But it isn't, the people watching them spend all day talking about astrology, alternative medicine, the dangers of 5G, energies, crystals, UFOs and ghosts. There's an erroneous assumption that we operate on similar knowledge bases and logical frameworks, that something obviously stupid to you is obviously stupid to everyone, but it's clearly not. Debunking is a difficult process that takes a lot of effort and the media isn't doing that, they're just going "we found another clip of him saying something silly!" and that's all.
At this point I'm 95/5 that he'll win.
There won't be any immediate foreign policy changes, he backtracked on previous statements about leaving the EU and NATO and so far not even the far-right parties are touching that.
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The vote abroad was 55% far right, those folks are not integrating in the countries they work in. They spend their time on 'Romanians in [insert country]' online groups, watching Romanian TV, and going out only with their Romanian co-workers. And they're very frustrated about their role in those societies.
But in this, there are some self-selecting effects. The Romanians who integrate well into a new country usually stop being Romanians and become citizens of that new country at some point, and probably care more about the politics where they live rather than those where they originated from. The ones who stay Romanian and always vote in Romanian elections are more likely to be the ones who don't integrate well.
And yeah, we notice increasingly that western democracies just don't know how to handle social media, and autocracies abuse this to destabilize us. Then local idiots also do some destabilization on their own.
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On December 01 2024 07:14 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2024 04:24 RvB wrote:On November 30 2024 21:12 Nebuchad wrote:On November 30 2024 20:59 RvB wrote:On November 30 2024 02:22 Nebuchad wrote:On November 30 2024 01:02 RvB wrote:
This post and the Wikipedia article made your point much clearer for me thanks. Theoretically I think you're right. On the right it's considered natural and sometimes desirable to have a hierarchy on a societal scale. To use more Marxian terms the far left strives for a classless society. In reality it never accomplishes this. It always devolves into an authoritarian nightmare where the old establishment is replaced by a new one. The centre left is a different story but they also usually operate in liberal democracies with market economies. In terms of observation alone my perception is that it's clearly beneficial for humans to have less rigid social hierarchies, like we had centuries of very rigid social hierarchies under kings and nobles by birth and so on and humans struggled under these, while the few privileged on top had a nice life. So I feel like this statement from the right, that social hierarchies are desirable, is demonstrably wrong. But I also don't necessarily think that the right is fooling itself, I feel like they understand this too and they just don't want to make life better for all humans, just for themselves and a select few, and they perceive that they'll be part of the privileged class. If you're only concerned about some humans, then it's not difficult to imagine scenarios in which you benefit from other humans being exploited. I think all systems of governing in general are vulnerable to authoritarianism, but I would agree with you that democracy is less vulnerable than what the Soviets did for example, cause power is more centralized. I don't think you require a class system to have a market economy, actually I believe that a market economy with no class system makes a lot more sense. Just eliminate the authoritarian nature of that system, and much like happened in the political system in the transition from royalty to democracy it will lead to a loosening of its social hierarchy. If you're not creating good conditions for your workers as a manager, they can elect someone else who will. It would be harder for a company to hide that they're facilitating climate change for profit, or that the shareholders are paying themselves 500 times more than their workers for not doing much at all, if they were directly accountable for their decisions. The less power is in a single person's hands, the less the system is vulnerable to authoritarians. That you think the right just wants to make life worse for people says more about yourself than the right. Billy is right. What matters, for liberals like me at least, is equality of opportunity. That will always lead to differences in outcome and as a consequence social hierarchies because humans have different skills, capabilities, and desires. Coming back to the example of the doctor, you feel that there's not a ton of social power derivated from it. I disagree. Doctors are upper class in status and income. The high status extends to the workplace. For good reason since they're experts in their fields. Your proposal to organize society into jobs that are essential for society is creating a social hierarchy. You've split society into essential jobs and non-essential jobs where one comes with more status and income. It's a good example of the left replacing one hierarchy with another. It raises the question of how you'd decide what jobs are essential. Centralising the decision making under a governement entity or something similar concentrates a lot of power in few hands. Democratically choosing comes with its own share of issues. It'll inevitably lead to special interest groups advocating for their own jobs to be designated as essential. We can already see where that leads with farmers in the EU. Poor policy that costs billions, hurts consumers, and leaves poor farmers in the developing world worse off. I'm aware of the concept of market socialism. It's already possible to create a company that you propose. Yet nobody does it. The closest are cooperatives. Cooperatives work well in some sectors. It's a good type of company to exist but not good enough to use them for every market. If they were much more efficient than regular companies we'd see them out compete them. That leads me to the conclusion that people don't want the type of companies you propose and that they're not more efficient so lead to worse capital allocation. It makes everyone worse off in the end. But here's the thing, in society currently we obviously don't have equality of opportunity, and yet liberals support the current system, so that doesn't make a ton of sense to me. How can you claim to be in favor of equality of opportunity and then support a status quo that doesn't have this equality of opportunity that you support? From my standpoint as a leftist, it looks more like you're into saying, very loudly, that you are into equality of opportunity, and then doing absolutely nothing to make that equality of opportunity come about; and you know, actions speak louder than words. Especially when I couple that with the way you portray the left as wanting equality of outcomes. Obviously nothing I've described in these posts leads to equality of outcomes, if you read Marx you won't find equality of outcomes, equality of outcomes doesn't make much sense on its face because we aren't equal as individuals and we're not going to do the same things. I understand it's not very charitable of me but I honestly don't have a charitable interpretation, maybe you can help me out with that. It also fits very nicely because we're having this talk between people who lead, for the most part, very decent lives, so it fits with my "preconceived notion" of the right being in it for themselves. "I am very in favor of equality of opportunity, the system that we have right now, and it just so happens that I used my equal opportunity to make a decent life for myself, I must have been deserving. Sorry that this other guy didn't make it but hey, he had the opportunity." I support the status quo insofar liberal democracy with a market economy is the best system to achieve equality of opportunity. That does not mean that the system is perfect. I am in favour of liberal reforms. It has nonetheless proven more effective than anything else. Dengs market reforms and the reforms in India of the license Raj pulled hundreds of millions out of poverty. Name me a system that has done better. All you have is some theoretical construct. It's rich to accuse others of doing nothing to achieve a certain thing and then do nothing of your own even though our current society allows you to do so. There's nothing stopping leftists from creating companies with more workplace democracy. As to the equality of outcomes this is certainly a component of leftist thought. It's possible to aim for more equal outcomes without every person having the exact same. Policy such as wealth taxes are clearly desired because it creates more equal outcomes. Your last paragraph is a giant strawman. Where do I say that we live in a society with equality of opportunity. It's the best system to achieve it. We've never had so much of it in history. Yet people like Trump exist who receive a small loan of a million dollars from their dad. I'm not blind to that. Liberalism is not mutually exclusive with helping the poor or unfortunate. I'm in favour of policy like a negative income tax to help the poor. Lastly you should stop with the assumptions about me and my life. You have no idea what my background is and the experience I have with poverty. I will need you to expand on what "liberal reforms" are because to me liberal reforms are like when you privatize a bunch of stuff, and obviously that makes inequality worse as it results in a larger percentage of what happens in your society being operated for profit.
The distributional effects of for profit industry are not so clear cut as you claim. In general private companies are more efficient leading to lower prices. That benefits all consumers. The way profits are distributed also matters. Regular people are large investors as well through pension funds and the like. The distributional effects depend on the specifics. A blanket statement that it leads to more inequality is nonsense.
To answer your question some other reforms are free trade agreements, liberalise labour laws, liberalise zoning laws to make house building easier, make immigration easier, decrease distortionary subsidies (e.g. interest rate deduction) and public investment into education. I assume you disagree with the effect of many of these policies.
It is on its face absurd to claim that capitalism is the best system to achieve equality of opportunity. The class system of capitalism, the thing that capitalism is built around and maintains, with on one side a capitalist class and on the other side a working class, is responsible for the main inequality of opportunity that we observe on the global scale today. It is legitimately no less absurd than claiming that Apartheid is the best system to fight racism. There's a meme that you may know that floats around on this topic, it goes: "The problems are very bad while the causes, the causes are very good".
The post would be too long if I attacked this claim from every angle available. Systemically, a capitalist benefits from a more inequal system. There's a reason why they do unionbusting, there's a reason why they don't present illegal immigrants with the same working conditions as people with college degrees. As a capitalist you have a direct incentive to want people to have as few opportunities as possible, because not having opportunities limits their options, and if they don't have options they'll settle for a worse deal with you and accept worse working conditions, and that will increase your profits. The more opportunities people have available to them, the less vulnerable they are to exploitation.
What's absurd is the arbitrary division of society into a capitalist class and a working class. There's not such a neat distinction. For instance, in The Netherlands a large majority of citizens are investors because we have hundreds of billions in our pension funds. Does that make them working class or capitalists? They own part of the means of production in a capitalist system.
People with college degrees have better working conditions because they're higher skilled. High skilled labour has always had better working conditions. It has little to do with capitalism. What you're describing is more a caricature of the evil capitalist than reality. An employer benefits from a highly skilled and happy employee as well. Nevertheless there are clear instances of abuse. That's why we give the state the monopoly on violence. There's nothing contradictory between liberalism and regulating excesses or public investment into things that benefit everyone like education.
That's for the internal logic on a systemic level, but we can also just look at the real world. In the real world, in this liberal capitalist system, there is a consistent transfer of wealth to the richest people on earth. All of these stats are getting worse, not better. You think the best system to achieve equality of opportunity is a system that, when given free reign on the planet for 40ish years, yields the result of a society that has increased levels of inequality? That is unlikely.
That's not true. Inequality within countries has risen. However, inequality between countries has decreased. Inequality within countries has also been falling for a decade. If we look at poverty it has also decreased rapidly:
Finally, the world is doing much better than we thought not only at eliminating extreme poverty – reducing the $2.15-a-day headcount ratio – but at also reducing poverty at a higher poverty line. Using the World Bank's preferred poverty lines of $3.65 a day and $6.85 a day (reflecting the medians of lower-middle-income and upper-middle-income country poverty lines), we find that poverty rates at these higher thresholds have declined to 30% and 50%, respectively, of their 1990 levels for the world distribution of disposable income or consumption
source
If we look at equality of opportunity relative mobility has increased in the developed world and decreased in the developing world. The biggest problem in the developing world is the treatment of women. Poor treatment of women is not because of capitalism.
source
Is it difficult to imagine a system that has better results than that? Even social democracy, with all its flaws, had better results, so no, it isn't difficult. Again market socialism would be exponentially better simply through the weakening of the social hierarchy that causes the inequality in the first place. You can introduce the question of "efficiency" in there, I have no doubt that capitalism is more efficient, in the same way that a dictatorship is more efficient than a democracy. But then you have to acknowledge that you value efficiency over equality of opportunity. I wouldn't.
Classical social democracy wanted to achieve socialism by democratic means. The social democratic parties worked in the liberal democratic framework. Attempts to move further towards socialism ended in stagflation. That's why the centre left reformed in the 90s. There's little reason to believe market socialism will work any better. In fact free market capitalism has already shown itself to be more efficient than planned economies and the mixed planned & market socialism of for example Yugoslavia.
I don't have to acknowledge efficiency is more important than equality of opportunity because dictatorships aren't more efficient than democracies. It's a popular myth that autocrats like the perpetuate. Almost no autocratic country managed to become a developed one except Singapore and some small oil states. Dictatorships struggle to build the inclusive institutions required to become a developed economy. A good example is the Russian army. It was supposed to be an example of how a country with one man rule is more efficient than democracies. Putin invested a lot of money and attention to modernise the army. Despite that it performed poorly in Ukraine.
Show nested quote +On December 01 2024 04:24 RvB wrote:
As to the equality of outcomes this is certainly a component of leftist thought. May I interest you in the wikipedia page on "equality of outcome", that has an entire section titled "Conflation with Marxism, socialism and communism".
I have. The part about Shaw says the same thing I do:
Shaw's 1914 series of lectures, where he argued for a gradual incremental process towards equal incomes, mostly by levelling-up from the bottom through union activity and labor laws, minimum and basic incomes as well as by using such mechanisms as income and wealth (inheritance) taxes to prevent incomes rising at the top. In the end, the goal would have been achieved not at absolute equality, but when any remaining income differences would not yield any significant social difference.
en.m.wikipedia.org
Show nested quote +On December 01 2024 04:24 RvB wrote:
Lastly you should stop with the assumptions about me and my life. You have no idea what my background is and the experience I have with poverty. Not directed at you as an individual, as you point out I don't know your story. It is unheard of for capitalism to be defended by people who say "I had equal opportunity but I'm an undeserving human, I suck. That's why I'm at the bottom of society, and that is good and justified". The survivorship bias in this line of argumentation is inescapable.
It's a straw man. Equality of opportunity does not mean everything that happens to you is because you deserve it. For instance, imagine you and I are exactly the same. We have exactly the same opportunities. When we're 20 I am hit by a truck. Because of that I can't work anymore. You fulfill your potential and have a succesful career. Would anyone say that I am an undeserving human? That you are more deserving than me? Of course not. That's also why it's necessary to take care of the poor. I mentioned a negative income tax before.
This is my last post since I don't have much time. Thanks for the discussion.
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Black youth in the US compared to white youth are almost 5 times more likely to be arrested. This is by design, it starts in school. They have literal cages in the schools. Black kids get punished far more harshly and more frequently for the same behavior than white kids. It's not because white kids are better people, they're just not getting punished the same way.
The inequality is systemic and it's a built-in feature of capitalism, not a bug. Lower skill workers have less negotiative power and are therefore easier to control by greedy CEOs. Black people fall into this class much more than white people because of the persecution they face from a young age.
And the media further propagates this discrimination by depicting drug dealers in TV as being black far more often, even though there are fewer black than white drug dealers.
By no means are they the only group that faces such discriminiation. But it's the clearest evidence we have that little progress was made regarding inequality in a capitalist setting.
The solution to that lies in less discrimination, and that can be accomplished - in part - by strengthening worker unions. If lower skill workers can't negotiate individually, then they can instead do it collectively. This needs to become more normalized.
Ending racial discrimination is also a very important angle, as that will also help white people indirectly (because it requires decriminalization of various minor offenses altogether).
If you think capitalism doesn't encourage inequality, you haven't been paying attention.
Also, fewer people in poverty is not because of more capitalism. It's because of better social safety nets, which is a socialist concept. Ironically the US has fewer social safety nets, and it's also a more capitalist country. Not a coincidence.
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On December 05 2024 01:33 RvB wrote:
The distributional effects of for profit industry are not so clear cut as you claim. In general private companies are more efficient leading to lower prices. That benefits all consumers. The way profits are distributed also matters. Regular people are large investors as well through pension funds and the like. The distributional effects depend on the specifics. A blanket statement that it leads to more inequality is nonsense.
Of course yeah the statement is a generalization. I think it's particularly easy to argue that this generalization is correct because privatization is pushed by the donor class of the rightwing parties everywhere, and the people in that donor class are all capitalists and shareholders. They do it because they think it benefits them. I think they know what they're talking about. But if you look in detail I'm sure you can find some minute examples that buck the trend.
When something is privatized, the first thing that can happen is that it becomes a commodity, so you can be made to pay for it when you otherwise wouldn't have had to. I have a vague memory that electricity is one of those? Maybe that's just because of the Tesla vs Edison rap battle lol. Either way water would be one of those, healthcare, education, defense, police and prisons are others. It can only lower the price if the other option had a price as well. Just about every sector in which privatization doesn't cause significant harm to society is already privatized.
For the rest, the pattern is the same: what happens when healthcare is privatized? Well you see it in the States, the wealthy have access to super efficient health care, available to them directly when they need it, while others refuse to call an ambulance for fear that it might bankrupt them. Let's go with education, what happens when we privatize education more? The options that are available for free or for less money become less funded and worse, and the wealthy send their kids to good schools where they can get a good education. In all of these cases the main effect is a reinforcement of the hierarchies of society, and as a direct result less equality of opportunity.
On December 05 2024 01:33 RvB wrote:
What's absurd is the arbitrary division of society into a capitalist class and a working class. There's not such a neat distinction. For instance, in The Netherlands a large majority of citizens are investors because we have hundreds of billions in our pension funds. Does that make them working class or capitalists? They own part of the means of production in a capitalist system.
What do you mean "arbitrary", it's literally the definition of capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Because the means of production are private and operated for profit, it logically follows that there are some people who own them, and some other people who don't, that's how private ownership means. If you work for a living, then you're from the working class. If people work for you and you make a living from the profits that their labor generates, then you're from the owner class. The working class and the owner class are mechanically opposed to each other because they have opposed incentives. If the worker makes a better living, that money is taken from the profits, which means that the capitalist makes less. If you refuse to consider this distinction, there are many dynamics of capitalist society that will be out of your reach.
The distinction is important in a discussion on equality of opportunity because when capitalists take a larger share of the wealth of a society, such as they're doing today, it narrows the opportunities of the rest of the population, making the system overall more inequal.
On December 05 2024 01:33 RvB wrote:
People with college degrees have better working conditions because they're higher skilled. High skilled labour has always had better working conditions. It has little to do with capitalism.
You get immigrants with college degrees who can't get their degrees accepted and are forced to work in worse conditions, regardless of the skills they have. You get researchers with a high skill in their fields but their field has low funding so they make very little, especially in universities and in science. It isn't high skill that correlates with higher pay, it is opportunity. Opportunity is sometimes random but most of the time it is directly related to capitalism.
On December 05 2024 01:33 RvB wrote:
That's not true. Inequality within countries has risen. However, inequality between countries has decreased. Inequality within countries has also been falling for a decade. If we look at poverty it has also decreased rapidly: (world bank stuff)
So the World Bank stuff is a talking point. I don't think the amount of people who make $2.15 a day is very impactful when it comes to equality of opportunity, clearly these people don't have access to the same life as I do, let alone as a successful CEO's son does. There are debunkings out there that we can look at if you really want to but ultimately the main thing is that it's irrelevant.
"Inequality within countries has risen", now that's the relevant part. One might ask why that is the case. Now I would answer that it is because of capitalism: as a system capitalism provides a larger share of power and influence to capitalists, and in turn they use this power and that influence to improve their conditions as a class, which results in the conditions for the rest of us getting worse. Seems to make sense to me. But you have to have another theory, since capitalism is the best system at providing equality of opportunity, it can't be responsible for decreasing equality of opportunity like this. So what is that other theory?
On December 05 2024 01:33 RvB wrote:
I don't have to acknowledge efficiency is more important than equality of opportunity because dictatorships aren't more efficient than democracies. It's a popular myth that autocrats like the perpetuate. Almost no autocratic country managed to become a developed one except Singapore and some small oil states. Dictatorships struggle to build the inclusive institutions required to become a developed economy.
But that isn't their aim, is it? Their aim is to do what the dictator wants them to do. They're pretty efficient at that. Much more efficient than representative democracies are at doing what the electors want them to do.
On December 05 2024 01:33 RvB wrote:
I have. The part about Shaw says the same thing I do:
You must have skimmed the beginning then, when it said:
"Bernard Shaw was one of the few socialist theorists to advocate complete economic equality of outcome right at the beginning of World War One. The vast majority of socialists view an ideal economy as one where remuneration is at least somewhat proportional to the degree of effort and personal sacrifice expended by individuals in the productive process. This latter concept was expressed by Karl Marx's famous maxim: "To each according to his contribution"."
On December 05 2024 01:33 RvB wrote:
It's a straw man. Equality of opportunity does not mean everything that happens to you is because you deserve it. For instance, imagine you and I are exactly the same. We have exactly the same opportunities. When we're 20 I am hit by a truck. Because of that I can't work anymore. You fulfill your potential and have a succesful career. Would anyone say that I am an undeserving human? That you are more deserving than me? Of course not.
But that's a very different situation. In this case you would have deserved more and you got unlucky. What if we're given the exact same opportunities, you don't get into any kind of accident, but it turns out I'm much better than you, and therefore I get to the top of society and you don't?
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The Constitutional Court just invalidated the presidential election. Even if they're legally in the right it's the worst possible outcome. Lasconi's chances against Georgescu had improved dramatically in the last few days, and even if he had won he could have been impeached/suspended by parliament if he were to try anything crazy.
We're fucked. A month ago we were a stable democracy, now we're scrambling to exchange all our currency and updating our English resumes. Georgescu still has a few million people in a trance with his mystical bullshit and he just became their martyr, the rage will only escalate.
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The dramatic decision comes after the declassification of the secret reports by the Romanian intelligence services showing the involvement of Russia in influencing voters through an anti-Western propaganda campaign supporting Georgescu.
Can't he just say he's not responsible for whatever his Kremlin buddies do in the internet? Looks like it's going to be very easy for him to present himself as a martyr fighting against the corrupt deep state or something like that.
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On December 06 2024 22:50 Sent. wrote:Show nested quote +The dramatic decision comes after the declassification of the secret reports by the Romanian intelligence services showing the involvement of Russia in influencing voters through an anti-Western propaganda campaign supporting Georgescu. Can't he just say he's not responsible for whatever his Kremlin buddies do in the internet? Looks like it's going to be very easy for him to present himself as a martyr fighting against the corrupt deep state or something like that.
Another issue is that he ignored all electoral regulations and declared 0 spending, I don't know if he could have been legally validated.
This is a failure of the state, authorities should have acted before the first round instead of ignoring what the low ranked candidates are doing and ending up in a situation where an invalid candidate is in the run-off.
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On December 06 2024 22:32 Dan HH wrote:
We're fucked. A month ago we were a stable democracy, now we're scrambling to exchange all our currency and updating our English resumes. Georgescu still has a few million people in a trance with his mystical bullshit and he just became their martyr, the rage will only escalate.
I'm sorry but the only thing that changed from last month is that a mask has slipped.
It's nothing specific to Romania either.
Most of the western world would behave the same way when established elite feels genuinely threatened.
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Northern Ireland25033 Posts
On December 06 2024 22:32 Dan HH wrote:
The Constitutional Court just invalidated the presidential election. Even if they're legally in the right it's the worst possible outcome. Lasconi's chances against Georgescu had improved dramatically in the last few days, and even if he had won he could have been impeached/suspended by parliament if he were to try anything crazy.
We're fucked. A month ago we were a stable democracy, now we're scrambling to exchange all our currency and updating our English resumes. Georgescu still has a few million people in a trance with his mystical bullshit and he just became their martyr, the rage will only escalate.
What happens next in this?
I assume you’re also concerned that, even if correct that this decision will bolster Georgescu’s anti-establishment posturing?
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On December 07 2024 00:58 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On December 06 2024 22:32 Dan HH wrote:
The Constitutional Court just invalidated the presidential election. Even if they're legally in the right it's the worst possible outcome. Lasconi's chances against Georgescu had improved dramatically in the last few days, and even if he had won he could have been impeached/suspended by parliament if he were to try anything crazy.
We're fucked. A month ago we were a stable democracy, now we're scrambling to exchange all our currency and updating our English resumes. Georgescu still has a few million people in a trance with his mystical bullshit and he just became their martyr, the rage will only escalate. What happens next in this? I assume you’re also concerned that, even if correct that this decision will bolster Georgescu’s anti-establishment posturing?
The entire presidential election process starts from scratch from a date that's yet to be determined. It's unclear if the current president will stay on until the result of the new election or if the senate majority leader will be interim president. Lots of things are up in the air, as this is unprecedented.
And of course this will only make people lose more confidence in the process and feel proven right that the system is rigged.
So far the leader of the main far-right party, Simion from AUR, told their supporters to stay home and not take to the streets. He's likely to be the biggest winner from all this, although I have no idea what to expect.
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Northern Ireland25033 Posts
On December 07 2024 01:34 Dan HH wrote:Show nested quote +On December 07 2024 00:58 WombaT wrote:On December 06 2024 22:32 Dan HH wrote:
The Constitutional Court just invalidated the presidential election. Even if they're legally in the right it's the worst possible outcome. Lasconi's chances against Georgescu had improved dramatically in the last few days, and even if he had won he could have been impeached/suspended by parliament if he were to try anything crazy.
We're fucked. A month ago we were a stable democracy, now we're scrambling to exchange all our currency and updating our English resumes. Georgescu still has a few million people in a trance with his mystical bullshit and he just became their martyr, the rage will only escalate. What happens next in this? I assume you’re also concerned that, even if correct that this decision will bolster Georgescu’s anti-establishment posturing? The entire presidential election process starts from scratch from a date that's yet to be determined. It's unclear if the current president will stay on until the result of the new election or if the senate majority leader will be interim president. Lots of things are up in the air, as this is unprecedented. And of course this will only make people lose more confidence in the process and feel proven right that the system is rigged. So far the leader of the main far-right party, Simion from AUR, told their supporters to stay home and not take to the streets. He's likely to be the biggest winner from all this, although I have no idea what to expect.
Thanks for the clarification
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Things are very calm, we expected chaos after the decision but there hasn't been a single peep IRL from Georgescu's supporters. Not even two guys holding a "down with this sort of thing" piece of paper, nothing. This was supposed to be their Messiah, the savior of the nation, the state just kneed him in the nuts and no one cares enough to take it outside of Facebook and Tiktok. The Bucharest stock exchange is up and our currency the RON is doing fine.
I'm extremely glad things are going this way but this is also incredibly strange.
Authorities are now raiding some businessmen that illegaly financed him and they're also raiding people that promoted the Iron Guard/Legionary Movement and displayed fascist symbols. Some influencers that promoted Georgescu fled the country.
Some explanations for the docile reaction might be:
- The largest share of his supporters are from rural areas and workers abroad, the're heavily outnumbered in cities and protests only make sense in cities
- None of the far right leaders and parties instigated their supporters to take to the streets
- Despite appearing that all our arguments were falling on deaf ears, I now think a large share of them did in fact understand them and developed doubts about this weirdo, but were ashamed to admit they were duped
- A lot of Georgescu's support was rather based on opposition to Lasconi/USR, religious people in particular perceive the latter as being too progressive and are scared of them
We might still pay a price for this in the presidential election re-make and future elections, but even that isn't a certainty. In hindsight, what looked like a terrible decision to me at the time might be exactly what's necessary for the state to do to protect a democracy from suicide.
These events need to be heavily researched and understood.
- Online spaces created this illusion that everyone wants this which pressured less-informed people to join what appeared to them as a nice grassroots movement of national identity renewal and not miss out. Maybe botting got the snowball starting, but by the end of it it was mostly real people doing it. The craziest among us are the loudest, they write 100 Youtube/Facebook comments a day while you might write 3 a month. Lots of people are swayed by majority opinion and social media makes it easy for small conspiracy theories or pseudo-science to appear to have major support which over time turns to real major support.
- We need to be nicer and praise people that have the courage to ask stupid questions, admit they were wrong, or change their mind in light of new information - this should be seen as desirable rather than scary. I think a lot of what happened during COVID was also because of this perception that people need to stick to their initial position or else they'll be seen as stupid.
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Northern Ireland25033 Posts
Cheers for the insight as ever Dan!
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EPT
