The Democratic leadership have redesigned the Congress to be a bribery distribution system. You either do what you’re told, by the donor/oligarchs, or the $$$$ go to your opponent, and you’re primaried or voted out. Our entire Congress is structurally corrupt. Voting is meaningless.
The Democratic leadership have redesigned the Congress to be a bribery distribution system. You either do what you’re told, by the donor/oligarchs, or the $$$$ go to your opponent, and you’re primaried or voted out. Our entire Congress is structurally corrupt. Voting is meaningless.
Don't be silly. It's not just the Democratic party. This is the problem with clinging to what passes for as capitalism. Capitalism and democracy cannot co-exist. And as long as the hoi polloi secretly dream of getting rich quick (which they think Trump did, but he didn't; he was born into money, which is true of most people with serious money), there will always be people ready to stop thinking for someone like Trump. Or Biden. Last time I looked the Congress was being run by the Republicans? Don't mistake me. I am not happy with the DNC. At all. the system is rigged. We've never succeeded in limiting the power of the capitalists. If we don't, this country will be yet another failed state.
We did succeed in limiting capitalism! 'The corporate compromise' in Europe (social programs,) NDP in Canada, and the U.S. New Deal. The Chicago School of econ, now dominant, is based on little more than an abiding hatred of the New Deal. They're openly anti-democratic; Milton Friedman said capitalism is most efficient with governments like Pinochet's.
In the late '70s, neolibs usurped the D party. Subsequently the D elite dumped the New Deal ideals, abandoned labor, passed finance deregulation, and signed profoundly undemocratic treaties like NAFTA and the WTO.
THis is the analysis that most resonates with me. I find that too many people, who assume they know what's going on....disregard the history of social movements and governments that did achieve some good for the entire society by creating universal programs like Canada's Medical Care Act.
How socialism became the evil...how so many see it as synonymous with communism...is a mystery to me. As soon as you see yourself as an individual....and society as a market place, you are on the road to serfdom of one kind or another. Getting rid of all regulations was an insane idea...we all should have known that only crooks want an economic free for all. Arguing that private capitalists were more 'efficient' than government was another pseudo idea, that flew in the face of most evidence.
We could return to a mixed economy....stop hating taxation by demanding fair and progressive taxation.....stop cutting educational programs in favour of private schools for the children of the wealthy....we could make housing a right...build homes that last at least a century, stop turning everything, including some of our children, into 'commodities' for sale on the open market.....
WE COULD TAKE A REFRESHER COURSE IN DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM, STOP SUBSIDIZING EXTINCTION INDUSTRIES LIKE FOSSIL FUELS AND NUCLEAR, AND ORGANIZE OUR TOWNS AND CITIES SO THAT HOMELESSNESS AND WANT DO NOT EXIST.
Yes. We might all have to do with less.........and do more to produce wealth than we do to consume it. But that could give our lives meaning...and the isolation and lack of meaning that so many of us live with now wouldn't be long missed.
The biggest failures I see are failures of the imagination, failures of the heart and failures of ambition. We've settled for conspicuous consumption and boredom and lonliness.
Sucks to be us...it could be so very different. There are many alternatives to the gulags we subsist in now.
here here!!! sometimes private capitalists are more efficient than the gov't though... I. mean, the gov't could not have come up with the Mac, or an iPhone. I think this is why European countries are social democracies run by mixed socialist/capitalist Econ policies.
If you think either the Mac or the IPhone were essential to a well running social democracy, you are right. But having a social democracy doesn't prevent private capital from inventing gadgets........it simply prevents them from believing they are all there is to a society.
Currently, we've given all control to wealthy corporations. Have you heard about the disaster it is living near any of those big bitcoin creators?? Google what people are enduring with noise pollution in parts of Texas to see the wonders unbridled private capital (parasiting quite often off public subsidies) can bring to ordinary people.
Not to mention the waste of electricity they constitute for a climate constrained world trying to get off fossil fuels and onto a clean electrical grid.
Sorry. I grew up in the Middle East watching my country rape my adoptive countries. I don't call expanding imperialism "limiting" capitalism. Not at all. The New Deal might have helped men, but not women particularly. I know Chicago has a LOT to answer for. But then the neocons are a mixture of a number of influences, as I have already detailed elsewhere (and been told my thinking is muddy), Zionism not least of it all. I really don't see imperialism and proxy colonialism as a form of limited capitalism.
You seem to be confusing the New Deal, which was about domestic programs, with what happened after WWII. And for that matter, after WWI, which was explicitly about empire. The Arabs had helped the Allies by fighting the Ottoman Turks, who were on the side of the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. Then the Arabs were betrayed. Their nations were turned into resources for the remaining Fr. & UK empires and the emerging US one, the needs of their peoples ignored.
As for women, the New Deal was good. Look up Frances Perkins. She was FDR's closest advisor when he was NY governor and became the New Deal Secretary of Labor. Eleanor Roosevelt was a prominent figure in her own right; she was friends with Marion Anderson at a critical time. She supported strikers and went out to meet with ordinary citizens in public.
The Admin. passed finance and bank regulations, helped labor to organize, and put people to work like in the CCC, WPA, etc. All of which the Chi School loathed--most of all because these programs worked. FDR regularly spoke directly by radio to Americans, known as the "Fireside Chats." The assumption was that the average person was smart enough to understand the political and economic issues that effected them.
Thank you for mansplaining. I am not confusing the two. I am saying capitalism was NOT limited; it was expanded throughout the world. Obviously. Look at our foreign policy and what actually drives it. Stop exploring your navel. I do not live in the 1930's. Do you?
"Mansplaining?" Okay, I'm trans M, a two-spirit, non-binary, but biologically F and had to live with the usual indignities for 53 years. Your writing is not clear... but you did dismiss the New Deal re: women and controls on capitalism.
The monied class did conspire to get rid of New Deal regulations like Glass-Steagall, which was dumped by Clinton. The Powell memo is an example of their agenda.
You're missing my main point. Which is that runaway capitalism is not inevitable and there are ways to contain it. It WAS limited--then the Ds of the 80s onward unleashed it. We're living with the neolib econ decisions they made, yet there is a proven alternative.
That "navel" comment is a silly ad hominem. Go read my other comments on this thread if you want a nuanced view of the wide variety of subjects I've been "exploring." From econ to ecology, to labor activism, to history, to the way indigenous people connect to the land, to physics, to the differences between processes of the left and right hemispheres of the brain.
Who cares? Well, all these subjects impact how we view the world. Seeing from different angles makes for an appreciation of how complex reality is. Like the blind men and the elephant--each had a piece of the whole.
Of course I "don't live in the '30s." But I sure wouldn't rule out Depression 2.0. Not understanding the past means not seeing why events happened or what could have happened differently. Or could be different right now.
As George Santayana said "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I'd add that indigenous peoples value the practical knowledge and the wisdom passed down over generations, a living past. Without the past, we'd float in a disconnected, isolated now. And future would have no meaning.
Thank you for sharing how you are colonized. The problem with the internet is you don't really know who you are talking to. Our land was dispossessed. My grandfather farmed the old way--as our ancestors did in Japan for god knows how long. Stop preaching to me. You don't know me and your blather is full of assumptions that are very far off the mark. I am sorry you are so male-identified you come off as a male, which you are not. As I say, I have never lived in the 1930's. But I have lived under American imperialism my entire life. And it is not limited capitalism. If you care about ecology and indigenous people (which to some degree we all are), capitalism is the greatest danger we face.
I agree. Capitalism depends on poverty and the disenfranchised. Pelosi oversaw, with the support of the Republicans and the billionaires, to recreate the Congressional system of complete corruption. We are an oligarchy. The good, not great, news is that this country is going to collapse. The demise of the dollar, my refusal to pay my student loans, will bring this misbegotten pile of BS to its knees. Yup.
Seriously?! I'm glad I am not. For many reasons. One, I have experience with many of the ills we are facing. But mostly I don't think I could stand more than two more decades of this. Thank god the older you get, the faster time moves. Thank god.
I knew at 19 what I most wanted was wisdom. I was raised in a family and culture that respected elders. At 76, as a dedicated autodidact with an extremely diverse life's history, I understand much. Including that wisdom is an elusive goal--the more you know the more you realize what you don't know. Sigh.
ugg, SCOTUS turned congress and the senate and the entire fed political system into a bribery distribution through a series of rulings! neither party had anything to do with how utterly corrupt our system has become other than green lighting judges required by the Heritage foundation. a simple minority is all the is required and none of those judges got in when the dems had a majority in the senate.
The Democratic leadership have redesigned the Congress to be a bribery distribution system. You either do what you’re told, by the donor/oligarchs, or the $$$$ go to your opponent, and you’re primaried or voted out. Our entire Congress is structurally corrupt. Voting is meaningless.
Don't be silly. It's not just the Democratic party. This is the problem with clinging to what passes for as capitalism. Capitalism and democracy cannot co-exist. And as long as the hoi polloi secretly dream of getting rich quick (which they think Trump did, but he didn't; he was born into money, which is true of most people with serious money), there will always be people ready to stop thinking for someone like Trump. Or Biden. Last time I looked the Congress was being run by the Republicans? Don't mistake me. I am not happy with the DNC. At all. the system is rigged. We've never succeeded in limiting the power of the capitalists. If we don't, this country will be yet another failed state.
We did succeed in limiting capitalism! 'The corporate compromise' in Europe (social programs,) NDP in Canada, and the U.S. New Deal. The Chicago School of econ, now dominant, is based on little more than an abiding hatred of the New Deal. They're openly anti-democratic; Milton Friedman said capitalism is most efficient with governments like Pinochet's.
In the late '70s, neolibs usurped the D party. Subsequently the D elite dumped the New Deal ideals, abandoned labor, passed finance deregulation, and signed profoundly undemocratic treaties like NAFTA and the WTO.
THis is the analysis that most resonates with me. I find that too many people, who assume they know what's going on....disregard the history of social movements and governments that did achieve some good for the entire society by creating universal programs like Canada's Medical Care Act.
How socialism became the evil...how so many see it as synonymous with communism...is a mystery to me. As soon as you see yourself as an individual....and society as a market place, you are on the road to serfdom of one kind or another. Getting rid of all regulations was an insane idea...we all should have known that only crooks want an economic free for all. Arguing that private capitalists were more 'efficient' than government was another pseudo idea, that flew in the face of most evidence.
We could return to a mixed economy....stop hating taxation by demanding fair and progressive taxation.....stop cutting educational programs in favour of private schools for the children of the wealthy....we could make housing a right...build homes that last at least a century, stop turning everything, including some of our children, into 'commodities' for sale on the open market.....
WE COULD TAKE A REFRESHER COURSE IN DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM, STOP SUBSIDIZING EXTINCTION INDUSTRIES LIKE FOSSIL FUELS AND NUCLEAR, AND ORGANIZE OUR TOWNS AND CITIES SO THAT HOMELESSNESS AND WANT DO NOT EXIST.
Yes. We might all have to do with less.........and do more to produce wealth than we do to consume it. But that could give our lives meaning...and the isolation and lack of meaning that so many of us live with now wouldn't be long missed.
The biggest failures I see are failures of the imagination, failures of the heart and failures of ambition. We've settled for conspicuous consumption and boredom and lonliness.
Sucks to be us...it could be so very different. There are many alternatives to the gulags we subsist in now.
here here!!! sometimes private capitalists are more efficient than the gov't though... I. mean, the gov't could not have come up with the Mac, or an iPhone. I think this is why European countries are social democracies run by mixed socialist/capitalist Econ policies.
If you think either the Mac or the IPhone were essential to a well running social democracy, you are right. But having a social democracy doesn't prevent private capital from inventing gadgets........it simply prevents them from believing they are all there is to a society.
Currently, we've given all control to wealthy corporations. Have you heard about the disaster it is living near any of those big bitcoin creators?? Google what people are enduring with noise pollution in parts of Texas to see the wonders unbridled private capital (parasiting quite often off public subsidies) can bring to ordinary people.
Not to mention the waste of electricity they constitute for a climate constrained world trying to get off fossil fuels and onto a clean electrical grid.
Agree.
Sorry. I grew up in the Middle East watching my country rape my adoptive countries. I don't call expanding imperialism "limiting" capitalism. Not at all. The New Deal might have helped men, but not women particularly. I know Chicago has a LOT to answer for. But then the neocons are a mixture of a number of influences, as I have already detailed elsewhere (and been told my thinking is muddy), Zionism not least of it all. I really don't see imperialism and proxy colonialism as a form of limited capitalism.
You seem to be confusing the New Deal, which was about domestic programs, with what happened after WWII. And for that matter, after WWI, which was explicitly about empire. The Arabs had helped the Allies by fighting the Ottoman Turks, who were on the side of the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. Then the Arabs were betrayed. Their nations were turned into resources for the remaining Fr. & UK empires and the emerging US one, the needs of their peoples ignored.
As for women, the New Deal was good. Look up Frances Perkins. She was FDR's closest advisor when he was NY governor and became the New Deal Secretary of Labor. Eleanor Roosevelt was a prominent figure in her own right; she was friends with Marion Anderson at a critical time. She supported strikers and went out to meet with ordinary citizens in public.
The Admin. passed finance and bank regulations, helped labor to organize, and put people to work like in the CCC, WPA, etc. All of which the Chi School loathed--most of all because these programs worked. FDR regularly spoke directly by radio to Americans, known as the "Fireside Chats." The assumption was that the average person was smart enough to understand the political and economic issues that effected them.
Thank you for mansplaining. I am not confusing the two. I am saying capitalism was NOT limited; it was expanded throughout the world. Obviously. Look at our foreign policy and what actually drives it. Stop exploring your navel. I do not live in the 1930's. Do you?
"Mansplaining?" Okay, I'm trans M, a two-spirit, non-binary, but biologically F and had to live with the usual indignities for 53 years. Your writing is not clear... but you did dismiss the New Deal re: women and controls on capitalism.
The monied class did conspire to get rid of New Deal regulations like Glass-Steagall, which was dumped by Clinton. The Powell memo is an example of their agenda.
You're missing my main point. Which is that runaway capitalism is not inevitable and there are ways to contain it. It WAS limited--then the Ds of the 80s onward unleashed it. We're living with the neolib econ decisions they made, yet there is a proven alternative.
That "navel" comment is a silly ad hominem. Go read my other comments on this thread if you want a nuanced view of the wide variety of subjects I've been "exploring." From econ to ecology, to labor activism, to history, to the way indigenous people connect to the land, to physics, to the differences between processes of the left and right hemispheres of the brain.
Who cares? Well, all these subjects impact how we view the world. Seeing from different angles makes for an appreciation of how complex reality is. Like the blind men and the elephant--each had a piece of the whole.
Of course I "don't live in the '30s." But I sure wouldn't rule out Depression 2.0. Not understanding the past means not seeing why events happened or what could have happened differently. Or could be different right now.
As George Santayana said "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I'd add that indigenous peoples value the practical knowledge and the wisdom passed down over generations, a living past. Without the past, we'd float in a disconnected, isolated now. And future would have no meaning.
Thank you for sharing how you are colonized. The problem with the internet is you don't really know who you are talking to. Our land was dispossessed. My grandfather farmed the old way--as our ancestors did in Japan for god knows how long. Stop preaching to me. You don't know me and your blather is full of assumptions that are very far off the mark. I am sorry you are so male-identified you come off as a male, which you are not. As I say, I have never lived in the 1930's. But I have lived under American imperialism my entire life. And it is not limited capitalism. If you care about ecology and indigenous people (which to some degree we all are), capitalism is the greatest danger we face.
I agree. Capitalism depends on poverty and the disenfranchised. Pelosi oversaw, with the support of the Republicans and the billionaires, to recreate the Congressional system of complete corruption. We are an oligarchy. The good, not great, news is that this country is going to collapse. The demise of the dollar, my refusal to pay my student loans, will bring this misbegotten pile of BS to its knees. Yup.
You must be very young. Corruption in the Congress WAY predates Pelosi.
This is simply the latest iteration. I wish I was very young.
Seriously?! I'm glad I am not. For many reasons. One, I have experience with many of the ills we are facing. But mostly I don't think I could stand more than two more decades of this. Thank god the older you get, the faster time moves. Thank god.
I knew at 19 what I most wanted was wisdom. I was raised in a family and culture that respected elders. At 76, as a dedicated autodidact with an extremely diverse life's history, I understand much. Including that wisdom is an elusive goal--the more you know the more you realize what you don't know. Sigh.
The World is changing larger and faster than even the wealthy parasites can imagine. Language & Revolution go hand in hand. It will be a surprise…
Just the product of a dying Empire.
The sooner the better.
ugg, SCOTUS turned congress and the senate and the entire fed political system into a bribery distribution through a series of rulings! neither party had anything to do with how utterly corrupt our system has become other than green lighting judges required by the Heritage foundation. a simple minority is all the is required and none of those judges got in when the dems had a majority in the senate.