EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 149
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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets. Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12379 Posts
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NewSunshine
United States5938 Posts
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Wulfey_LA
932 Posts
On April 29 2018 03:41 Nebuchad wrote: We should probably appropriate SJW fwiw. I'm willing to fight for social justice. Guilty. If you are serious about liberal values, then yeah, expanding rights the powerful enjoy to the weakest of society has to be a priority for you. And that is but a sneeze from being an out and out SJW right there. Consider even going with neoliberal too. This blog convinced me to go with neoliberalism and adopt the term with pride. https://medium.com/@s8mb/im-a-neoliberal-maybe-you-are-too-b809a2a588d6 Elsewhere in the neoliberal sphere there is a push towards going ahead and adopting SJW too. You can't have economic justice and opportunity without the social aspect as well. + Show Spoiler + EDIT: the Bernie kids and their anti-capitalist, anti-incrementalism, and anti-technocracy memes have soured me on Progressive. I want nothing to with that term. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12379 Posts
On April 29 2018 04:20 Wulfey_LA wrote: Consider even going with neoliberal too. Ahahahah no thanks. I wasn't a liberal and neoliberals are worse. | ||
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a_flayer
Netherlands2826 Posts
If you find yourself on the side of "Free market! Except if your country has a government that we don't like, then we block your nation from the global free market and sanction you in an attempt to cause you to go bankrupt so everybody can blame your government!", then you're a neoliberal. For example if you think it's OK to sanction Russia for doing to the US and Ukraine exactly what the US did in Syria. Or if its OK to sanction Russia for Crimea when not sanctioning the US for Iraq. Then you're a neoliberal. Because you're pushing your own crap on others, and telling people that thinking otherwise or being in opposition to that is "simply wrong". If you had even an inkling of a desire to invade Iraq because you thought Saddam's a dictator, maybe removing him was necessary anyway... even now, despite all the lies about WMDs, and all the subsequent chaos? (and even if he did have WMD, LOL everybody has them), then you're a neoliberal. Or if you've ever found yourself thinking "Wasn't it nice when all those Iranians were wearing jeans in those pictures from the 50s! They should go back to that!", then you're probably a neoliberal. It's not nice. It's not good or bad. Just fucking let them decide what they want to do. How to handle existence as a society of people in a nation in an incredibly complex world. Wearing jeans is meaningless garbage, anyway. If they want burkas they can have fucking burkas, even if its enforced by the government, who cares. We're stripping people down over here so what's the difference. Let me have another go: Neoliberalism: Thinking to yourself that we are the best, so everybody must do as we say. It comes as an extension of colonialism, where we had the biggest weapons, so we told everybody "do as we bid". We forced them into adopting our way of doing things. Now, turn to today, and you've got corporations - and the people behind them - who are saying "we have the most money, so we get to decide policy, since we must be the best for having all this money!" And they do it in the third world countries for their own benefit as much as they do it here. All that's neoliberalism in politics as far as I'm concerned. It works on both a global scale and a national scale. Hell, you can also apply it to media. Hollywood is a small concentration of people who are deeply invested in the media and have a long reach. They must be the best right, cause they made it in Hollywood? So now they get to tell everybody around the world: this is how people live, this is what you must believe, these social values are important, etc. Coastal elites telling everybody what's the truth, etc. It's become a plague, really. It's everywhere. Terrorism is only the natural reaction to neoliberalism. Of course, it is no coincidence that all the states I mentioned before are terrorist states according to a lot of neoliberals. "American exceptionalism" was probably the worst expression of neoliberalism. | ||
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dragonswarrior
389 Posts
On April 29 2018 04:34 a_flayer wrote: Neoliberalism: Thinking to yourself that we are the best, so everybody must do as we say. It comes as an extension of colonialism, where we had the biggest weapons, so we told everybody "do as we bid". We forced them into adopting our way of doing things. This guy gets it. Yea Neoliberalism is basically just conservatism with socially progressive values, but in relation to what someone said earlier about not being able to have economic justice without social justice you also can't have social justice without economic justice so Neoliberals are kinda just awful. The DNC is, as far as I can tell, basically a neo-liberal institution. In any event I'm actually not sure if reclaiming SJW is a good thing. It's kind of a shallow term. *shrugs* | ||
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iamthedave
England2814 Posts
On April 29 2018 04:20 Wulfey_LA wrote: If you are serious about liberal values, then yeah, expanding rights the powerful enjoy to the weakest of society has to be a priority for you. And that is but a sneeze from being an out and out SJW right there. Consider even going with neoliberal too. This blog convinced me to go with neoliberalism and adopt the term with pride. https://medium.com/@s8mb/im-a-neoliberal-maybe-you-are-too-b809a2a588d6 Elsewhere in the neoliberal sphere there is a push towards going ahead and adopting SJW too. You can't have economic justice and opportunity without the social aspect as well. + Show Spoiler + EDIT: the Bernie kids and their anti-capitalist, anti-incrementalism, and anti-technocracy memes have soured me on Progressive. I want nothing to with that term. The problem with 'reclaiming' SJW is that the people that the term refers to - and though it's uselessly vague it does refer to a specific kind of liberal - are people that most on the left don't like either. The pushy 'get in your face and virtue signal like it's going out of style' sort who make a lot of noise about things that are pretty minor, exist to be aggrieved over things, make mountains out of molehills, but - critically - don't actually do anything. SJWs are the sort who would spent an hour harassing someone over cultural appropriation of a hairstyle and film it so they can let their youtube buddies know they did, but rarely go to a BLM rally if the chance were available. I'm not even sure there's a proper analog on the right. But the reason that I was keen to stamp on the term when it was used is because those sorts of people couldn't have the sorts of discussions we have here because they generally know very little about how politics actually work. Or indeed, very little about how people actually work, either. Even if you consider the TL politics thread to be rubbish, it's still of a standard where SJWs would struggle to participate meaningfully, because they'd fly off the handle when I, or Greenhorizons, and god forbid Danglars or other right wing poster had the temerity to disagree with them. If it sounds contradictory to say its uselessly vague while also referring to a specific kind of liberal, the reason that both are true is because actual SJWs are very hard to pin down because they don't have any specific qualities, other than being vaguely left wing, and the term itself has been over-used into oblivion by Conservatives. So it both refers to a particular phenomenon and contains almost no useful information at the same time. Truly, a word of our time. | ||
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Wulfey_LA
932 Posts
We like markets — a lot. We are liberal consequentialists. We care about the poor. We care about the welfare of everyone in the world, not just those in the UK. We base our beliefs on empirics, not principles. We try not to be dogmatic. We think the world is getting better. We believe that property rights are very important. But we’re comfortable with redistribution, in principle. Because we’re consequentialists we don’t think that property rights are morally significant in and of themselves — they’re a useful rule that allows the economy to function properly but there is no intrinsic value to them. A neoliberal is someone who believes that markets are astonishingly good at creating wealth, but not always good at distributing wealth. Of note, 2018 neoliberalism is the neoliberalism of President Obama, not President Reagan. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23569 Posts
On April 29 2018 04:20 Wulfey_LA wrote: If you are serious about liberal values, then yeah, expanding rights the powerful enjoy to the weakest of society has to be a priority for you. And that is but a sneeze from being an out and out SJW right there. Consider even going with neoliberal too. This blog convinced me to go with neoliberalism and adopt the term with pride. https://medium.com/@s8mb/im-a-neoliberal-maybe-you-are-too-b809a2a588d6 Elsewhere in the neoliberal sphere there is a push towards going ahead and adopting SJW too. You can't have economic justice and opportunity without the social aspect as well. + Show Spoiler + EDIT: the Bernie kids and their anti-capitalist, anti-incrementalism, and anti-technocracy memes have soured me on Progressive. I want nothing to with that term. "‘Neoliberal’ is a term of abuse " roflmao. It's not a "term of abuse". I think it's pretty funny so many neoliberals went with "you guys made that up and it's mean!" and then actually invented "alt-Left" to be a term of abuse (since 'Bernie Bro's' is sexist and a little racist sorry a-flyer haha) I presume you don't mean "kids" in the pejorative sense, but merely that Bernie crushes everyone in the under 40 demo? So "kids" just means the majority of people in the US born after 1970 The article basically described neoliberals as shitty libertarians that think the government should use capitalism/markets to fix the problems of capitalism/markets. I guess it's making more sense why people resisting progressives are claiming they'd rather another Trump presidency than a progressive Democratic party. Because libertarians/Republicans are closer to neolibs than progressives are. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12379 Posts
Neoliberalism loves free markets, small government, few regulations. If the government is involved it's generally to further the free market, for example by creating new markets through privatization. Neoliberalism was also instrumental in giving us austerity politics with the whole low spending/low taxes thing. But hey, at least you don't discriminate between people (unless they're foreigners of course), so bonus points for that. It's magical that you legit thought all leftwingers needed to embrace neoliberalism was to read a manifesto. | ||
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
There's also really a lot of bad stuff in that characterisation of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is a system of governance, not military imperialism. Practically speaking, most neoliberals seem to favour soft power and globalisation over guns and battleships, and that colonialism is bad doesn't strike me as controversial among most 'neoliberal' parties or individuals. It's accurate to say that neoliberalism likes markets, but there's not a lot of wrong with that because markets are actually pretty good at organising complex systems. I also think it's fairly inaccurate to describe neoliberalism as a system of 'small government'. Much of neoliberalism doesn't seem to be that concerned with size of either government or corporations, the tendency towards 'smallness' is more of a conservative or libertarian feature. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23569 Posts
On April 29 2018 06:15 Nyxisto wrote: I mean the basis of far-left ideology is a literal manifesto, so there's that There's also really a lot of bad stuff in that characterisation of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is a system of governance, not military imperialism. Practically speaking, most neoliberals seem to favour soft power and globalisation over guns and battleships, and that colonialism is bad doesn't strike me as controversial among most 'neoliberal' parties or individuals. It's accurate to say that neoliberalism likes markets, but there's not a lot of wrong with that because markets are actually pretty good at organising complex systems. I also think it's fairly inaccurate to describe neoliberalism as a system of 'small government'. Much of neoliberalism doesn't seem to be that concerned with size of either government or corporations, the tendency towards 'smallness' is more of a conservative or libertarian feature. Not our neoliberals. They love war so much Trump launching missiles is one of the few things that drew praise from the neoliberal circles. Perhaps like our "far left" is center elsewhere, our neoliberals are further right than most. I think a handful of people having more wealth than most everyone else definitively shows markets as they exist aren't great at organizing complex systems, they are fantastic at shifting more wealth towards the wealthy and tricking people into thinking that's not markets/capitalism working as intended. | ||
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a_flayer
Netherlands2826 Posts
On April 29 2018 06:22 GreenHorizons wrote: Not our neoliberals. They love war so much Trump launching missiles is one of the few things that drew praise from the neoliberal circles. Perhaps like our "far left" is center elsewhere, our neoliberals are further right than most. I think a handful of people having more wealth than most everyone else definitively shows markets as they exist aren't great at organizing complex systems, they are fantastic at shifting more wealth towards the wealthy and tricking people into thinking that's not markets/capitalism working as intended. I am pretty sure neoliberals everywhere love war. It comes with those colonial instincts, I'm afraid. I see plenty of neoliberals in Europe with the same attitude. As for tricking people into thinking it's not markets/capitalism working as intended, yeah... the free market allows the money to control the message because money controls the media. And the message is obviously not going to go against its owners. | ||
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IgnE
United States7681 Posts
On April 29 2018 06:15 Nyxisto wrote: I mean the basis of far-left ideology is a literal manifesto, so there's that There's also really a lot of bad stuff in that characterisation of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is a system of governance, not military imperialism. Practically speaking, most neoliberals seem to favour soft power and globalisation over guns and battleships, and that colonialism is bad doesn't strike me as controversial among most 'neoliberal' parties or individuals. It's accurate to say that neoliberalism likes markets, but there's not a lot of wrong with that because markets are actually pretty good at organising complex systems. I also think it's fairly inaccurate to describe neoliberalism as a system of 'small government'. Much of neoliberalism doesn't seem to be that concerned with size of either government or corporations, the tendency towards 'smallness' is more of a conservative or libertarian feature. are "soft power and globalisation" euphemisms for drone strikes, political agitation, financial restructuring, and the imposition of extraterritorial property regimes? | ||
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Kyadytim
United States886 Posts
On April 29 2018 05:36 Wulfey_LA wrote: There is a whole lot of citation free neoliberal bashing going on here. Do you guys think your idle opinions without citations mean anything? From the article I posted, abridged: Of note, 2018 neoliberalism is the neoliberalism of President Obama, not President Reagan. I read that article. What separates me and people like me from neoliberals as described in that article is that we tend to think that the market has failed to effectively distribute resources in places we currently use them, such as food and basic shelter, and we don't want to spread that failure into significant fields such as healthcare or the environment. We also tend to believe that markets have failed at properly valuing various human endeavors, with finance professions being overvalued and education professions being undervalued, for example. This has also lead to a societal problem where people are judged based on their wealth and income as a proxy for their quality as a person. We also tend to prioritize things we agree with neoliberals on differently. In practice, neoliberals tend to put property rights above caring about the poor. Also, the paragraph on property rights reads to me like something Republicans say when they're talking about cutting welfare programs. We believe that property rights are very important. Predictable and formalised ownership of scarce resources is extremely important. It allows people to make long-term plans for the future, which incentivises improvement of their own circumstances. Overriding property rights capriciously undermines the incentive people have to hold off from consuming and invest in their futures instead Specifically the parts about incentivizing improvement of their own circumstances and holding off from consuming, which together look very much like the conservative position that poor people are poor because they failed to care about bettering themselves, and don't deserve to have any small pleasures in life.So I guess if thinking that trusting in the markets to see to it that people live happier, healthier lives has failed is anti-capitalist, that makes me anti-capitalist. And I feel pretty confident in saying that the current markets actively reward making people feel unsatisfied with what they have and engage in more unhealthy behaviors. Most commercials tell people that what they have isn't good enough (get a new car, buy this brand of whatever), or encourage unhealthy behavior (large food portions, unhealthy food) using empirically proven psychological manipulation techniques that most people aren't aware of, much less prepared to fight back against. Also, I was pro Bernie. I'm all for incremental changes and I'm for technocrats and policy wonks, but sometimes having a visionary, someone who can clearly communicate their belief that the solutions they are talking about will achieve the desired goals, is important for drumming up support for the incremental changes on the way to reaching the goals. Basically, twenty pages of charts, graphs, and studies showing the benefits of some small changes to the tax code to make it more progressive terrible at persuading voters, especially when compared to easily memorable sound bites. In conclusion, I want to comment on the conclusion of Sam Bowman's article, where he said: A neoliberal is someone who believes that markets are astonishingly good at creating wealth, but not always good at distributing wealth. What is clearly missing from the entire article is anything that persuades me that he (and neoliberals like him) care that the market is not always good at distributing wealth. I already spoke about the paragraph on caring about poor people, but the overall tone of the article had very strong pro-market, pro-property rights views and what seemed very much like cautious hedging that yes, well, making the smallest possible concessions on those two points too keep poverty from becoming too big of a problem is acceptable. | ||
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zlefin
United States7689 Posts
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Nyxisto
Germany6287 Posts
On April 29 2018 07:58 IgnE wrote: are "soft power and globalisation" euphemisms for drone strikes, political agitation, financial restructuring, and the imposition of extraterritorial property regimes? no, not at all but soft soft power and globalisation are real improvements over (cold) wars, autocracy and global poverty, which is what we had in place before the world engaged in the so dreaded neoliberalism. Do you think the imposition of 'extraterritorial property regimes' is somehow exclusive to contemporary life? This is the first time in human history that people outside of the developed world actually have been able to accumulate at least some significant amount of wealth at all, so that's a big step up in the first place. If you're going to ask polemically, I'll take drone strikes over carpet bombing and financial restructuring over the iron curtain | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23569 Posts
On April 29 2018 08:41 zlefin wrote: kydaytim what makes you think it's the market that has led to a failure in effective distribution of basic shelter? (and which basic shelter are you talking about, as there's quite a lot of degrees involved, and i'm not sure which level/aspects of shelter you're referencing) The large numbers of people without homes in ratio to the much larger number of homes without people seems to be a fairly glaring indicator, but Kydaytim is probably building that understanding on a variety of other factors. Are you under the impression that the market hasn't failed in this regard? | ||
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Kyadytim
United States886 Posts
On April 29 2018 08:53 GreenHorizons wrote: The large numbers of people without homes in ratio to the much larger number of homes without people seems to be a fairly glaring indicator, but Kydaytim is probably building that understanding on a variety of other factors. Are you under the impression that the market hasn't failed in this regard? This is mostly correct, but my overall thinking is a little more judgemental. Ignoring the number of unoccupied homes, though, the market has failed to provide some sort of extra dense housing that's more like dorms in that there's only very small bedrooms and larger communal bathrooms. It hasn't even managed anything close to sufficient beds in homeless shelters. | ||
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zlefin
United States7689 Posts
On April 29 2018 09:06 Kyadytim wrote: This is mostly correct, but my overall thinking is a little more judgemental. Ignoring the number of unoccupied homes, though, the market has failed to provide some sort of extra dense housing that's more like dorms in that there's only very small bedrooms and larger communal bathrooms. It hasn't even managed anything close to sufficient beds in homeless shelters. how small a bedroom would you consider acceptable? (area-wise that is; the figures i'm familiar are with for sq ft, but it's easy enough to convert whatever units you're used to) at any rate; often the lack of such housing has nothing to do with market failure. it's that various laws and regulations prohibit the creation of such housing (at least at rates and sizes that would be affordable in the open market). local zoning boards are often very powerful; and NIMBY-ism affects local politics a great deal. and variuos other land use policies often heavily restrict hte supply of available land to build on, which drives up the price of land, which causes everything to become more expensive. | ||
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