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Kemper Boyd posted:Being really into "technocracy" is one of those weird nineties things really. It's such a Fukuyaman "ideology no longer exists because liberal democracy won" kinda thing. Yeah it was really funny how everyone thought that because some wannabe communists broke their country faster than the capitalists could break theirs all ideological conflict would be resolved forever.
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Oct 15, 2017 09:05
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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blowfish posted:agreed but IMO Dude you're the epitome of the arrogant dumb-as-rocks wanna-be technocrat. You want us to bulldoze cultural heritage sights and put water supplies at risk to build oil pipelines not because you think they would be beneficial in any way (in fact you concede the pipelines are unnecessary, wasteful, and bad for everyone including the companies proposing them), but in order to 'stick it' to local communities and rub their faces in the fact that their government doesn't represent nor care about them and will gently caress them over for no reason at all just to put them in their place. And then you wonder how demagogues and fascists start getting elected.
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Oct 15, 2017 09:10
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) get thrown off a cliff or something
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Shbobdb posted:Populism gets a bad rep because no matter the change, it's going to be bad for the old elites. Fascism aligns itself with capital but this tends to be new capital. That's why the Tag von Potsdam is so noteworthy. The Nazis in Germany (as well as the Fascists in Italy and Spain) got rid of the old elites even while installing new ones of their own. Communism (obviously) also clears out all the old elites. So, those with power are going to oppose populism in their own self-interest.
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Oct 15, 2017 09:15
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VitalSigns posted:Lol at you whingeing about the unwashed masses refusing to quietly kill themselves. i'm literally laughing out loud at butthurt forums poster VitalSigns still falling for my shittiest gimmick posting ever like a year after that thread finished By all means please give me an argument for why politicians going "let's build a wall to keep out them Mexicans and give you back your McJobs" or "KKKlimate change is actually not real and anyone who believes in it is just a LIEberal shill" without repercussions is cool and good.
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Oct 15, 2017 09:25
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A Buttery Pastry posted:I don't know about Italy and Spain, but the Nazis were pretty chummy with some of the really old elite. Isn't that like Coup 101, needing to bring some of the old order along with your new plans even while you gently caress someone else over to reward your own followers? Tag von Potsdam was about them getting chummy with the elites.  How did that work out for Hindenburg and the Junkers? The old guard, including the loving von Moltkes, were strongly anti-Nazi. Old nobility also comprised around half of the members of plots against Hitler in '38 and '44. It is true that as a result of Potsdam (and later the Night of the Long Knives), a lot of conservatives thought they could use and control the Nazis (part of this was firmly rooted in the patrician idea that the rabble will recognize and submit to the natural authority of nobility). The German elite was a military elite so they fought along side Nazis but aside from the act of waging war (which both groups really really liked to do) they weren't very chummy at all. blowfish posted:agreed but IMO The KMT: The most democratic party ever.
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Oct 15, 2017 09:29
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Shbobdb posted:The German elite was a military elite so they fought along side Nazis but aside from the act of waging war (which both groups really really liked to do) they weren't very chummy at all.
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Oct 15, 2017 09:35
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blowfish posted:By all means please give me an argument for why politicians going "let's build a wall to keep out them Mexicans and give you back your McJobs" or "KKKlimate change is actually not real and anyone who believes in it is just a LIEberal shill" without repercussions is cool and good. It's not good and it's not cool, obviously. I am relieved to learn that your "use state power to back oil companies bulldozing cultural sites out of spite for the people who live there" opinions were not sincere. 
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Oct 15, 2017 09:36
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Fair enough. I was thinking of the Krupps, who were pretty well-established at this point, but I see your point about the German elite proper still being the military-nobility. The Krupps are new money. Well established new money, but new money nevertheless. That's precisely who would find fascism appealing. And the Bohlen und Halbachs just got their coveted "von" with unification in '71, so it's understandable that they would view their interests as being aligned with state interests, as opposed to real nobility. For a contemporary example, look at old vs new money in Southern France. New new money goes hard for FN and the older new money (bonapartists mostly) that used to comprise AF joined FN; whereas old money sticks with traditional conservative parties.
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Oct 15, 2017 09:58
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Shbobdb posted:The Krupps are new money. Well established new money, but new money nevertheless. That's precisely who would find fascism appealing. And the Bohlen und Halbachs just got their coveted "von" with unification in '71, so it's understandable that they would view their interests as being aligned with state interests, as opposed to real nobility.
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Oct 15, 2017 10:58
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Ytlaya posted:This is true, but it's also true that if elites are given too much power/influence they create systems that enrich themselves at the expense of non-elites. Yes but in a world run on on technology where conflict could end life on our planet nationalist populism is currently a more fundamental threat than the globalist elites. The Kingfish posted:Experts are not necessarily "elite" jfc. There isn’t a clear dividing line between experts, leaders and elites
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Oct 15, 2017 13:50
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asdf32 posted:Yes but in a world run on on technology where conflict could end life on our planet nationalist populism is currently a more fundamental threat than the globalist elites. They are both a threat to life on earth, because the greed, incompetence, and callousness of the latter empowers the former.
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Oct 15, 2017 14:00
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The Kingfish posted:Experts are not necessarily "elite" jfc. Most people would be shocked to know the real histories of some of the systems the world runs on. Drunks just slapping poo poo together at the last minute.
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Oct 15, 2017 15:48
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BrandorKP posted:Most people would be shocked to know the real histories of some of the systems the world runs on. Drunks just slapping poo poo together at the last minute. This x100
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Oct 15, 2017 16:07
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VitalSigns posted:They are both a threat to life on earth, because the greed, incompetence, and callousness of the latter empowers the former. Kind of circular. If the populists succeed at replacing the existing technocratic elites (possible) and are worse (basically certain) I’ll blame the populists...because they’re worse.
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Oct 15, 2017 19:26
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asdf32 posted:Kind of circular. If the populists succeed at replacing the existing technocratic elites (possible) and are worse (basically certain) I’ll blame the populists...because they’re worse. But no, you see, the populists are just a natural product of the prevailing socioeconomic order and poor innocent ordinary people cannot help themselves at the voting booth! (technically true, but gently caress 'em all anyway they're still assholes regardless of why)
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Oct 15, 2017 19:29
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Hmm if only there were some alternate solution that isn't rich cunts making stupid reactionary policies they think appeal to poor people and rich cunts making stupid reactionary policies that appeal to them.
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Oct 15, 2017 19:38
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The left still doesn’t get that it’s been fanning the populist flames for decades without noticing all the benefits have been going to the right.
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Oct 15, 2017 19:51
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asdf32 posted:The left still doesn’t get that it’s been fanning the populist flames for decades without noticing all the benefits have been going to the right.
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Oct 15, 2017 19:52
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drat left wanting things like liveable wages and bargaining power for workers, should just shut up! What we need is more technocratic centrists to do gently caress all forever while facilitating massive wealth disparity that'll never have any bad consequences.
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Oct 15, 2017 19:53
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asdf32 posted:The left still doesn’t get that it’s been fanning the populist flames for decades without noticing all the benefits have been going to the right. The GOP has been the party of populism for decades. The Democrats could have harnessed populism for themselves in 2008 but willfully chose not to.
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Oct 15, 2017 19:54
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The Kingfish posted:The GOP has been the party of populism for decades. The Democrats could have harnessed populism for themselves in 2008 but willfully chose not to. thanks obama
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Oct 15, 2017 20:08
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asdf32 posted:Kind of circular. If the populists succeed at replacing the existing technocratic elites (possible) and are worse (basically certain) I’ll blame the populists...because they’re worse. The thing is, most "technocratic elites" aren't actually that smart. Like, I know a heck of a lot of these folks, and they're good at saying things in a way that sounds smart/persuasive (at least to other people who are part of the same socioeconomic class), but most of them aren't any more capable of successfully/accurately navigating the complexities of modern society than any random person off the street. People with those skills exist, but they generally end up with far less influence than powerful interests who just manipulate what expertise they have towards their own enrichment. The finance industry is a good example of this. Despite having a bunch of people with expertise and degrees from elite universities, they still end up loving things up because the overall direction is determined by people who either lack expertise or use the expertise they have towards self-enrichment. edit: Also, climate change is a good example of why "sure, the wealthy might gently caress over the poor to enrich themselves, but at least they keep things relatively stable!" isn't actually true in the long term. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 21:08 on Oct 15, 2017 |
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Oct 15, 2017 21:06
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Maybe its the fact that people assume others must be competent. Like not the people they work with, because they are all idiots, but other people in other jobs must surely be super smart and wise and etc. The belief that a lot of our systems and structures are, at best, cobbled together with glue would be horrifying to a lot of people. It's such a shame that it is true and that even masters of the world and very intelligent people are just as prone to making gigantic gently caress ups and being dicks.
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Oct 15, 2017 21:25
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Ytlaya posted:The thing is, most "technocratic elites" aren't actually that smart. Like, I know a heck of a lot of these folks, and they're good at saying things in a way that sounds smart/persuasive (at least to other people who are part of the same socioeconomic class), but most of them aren't any more capable of successfully/accurately navigating the complexities of modern society than any random person off the street. People with those skills exist, but they generally end up with far less influence than powerful interests who just manipulate what expertise they have towards their own enrichment. What are you talking about? The global elite has been slow to deal with climate change meanwhile nationalist populism actively destroys climate agreements and campaigns to brings back coal. One is infinitely better than the other.
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Oct 15, 2017 21:29
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asdf32 posted:What are you talking about? The global elite has been slow to deal with climate change meanwhile nationalist populism actively destroys climate agreements and campaigns to brings back coal. One is infinitely better than the other. Donald Trump: Definitely not part of the global elite.
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Oct 15, 2017 21:31
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asdf32 posted:What are you talking about? The global elite has been slow to deal with climate change meanwhile nationalist populism actively destroys climate agreements and campaigns to brings back coal. One is infinitely better than the other. The elite knew that climate change was a thing back in the 70s, and they spend the time following that covering it up so it didn't hurt profits.
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Oct 15, 2017 21:34
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asdf32 posted:What are you talking about? The global elite has been slow to deal with climate change meanwhile nationalist populism actively destroys climate agreements and campaigns to brings back coal. One is infinitely better than the other. Then where have been the large scale attempts at cutting back Greenhouse emissions from countries like China, India and the USA?
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Oct 15, 2017 21:38
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Josef bugman posted:Then where have been the large scale attempts at cutting back Greenhouse emissions from countries like China, India and the USA? Its this fallacy: Josef bugman posted:Maybe its the fact that people assume others must be competent. Like not the people they work with, because they are all idiots, but other people in other jobs must surely be super smart and wise and etc. on a national scale. The Kingfish fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Oct 15, 2017 |
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Oct 15, 2017 22:28
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Also, there's the fact that most of the things in our current society that we can attribute relatively high standards of living towards weren't pushed by elites and wouldn't exist if not for the efforts of the working class. A world where well-off managerial-professional types run everything without any pushback is basically the gilded age continuing indefinitely. That includes social issues; educated elites weren't responsible for black civil rights - black people were.
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Oct 16, 2017 00:00
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asdf32 posted:What are you talking about? The global elite has been slow to deal with climate change meanwhile nationalist populism actively destroys climate agreements and campaigns to brings back coal. One is infinitely better than the other. Climate change is a weird place to make your stand because the majority of Americans believe in it and want to do something about it. The opposition to this comes entirely from elites who profit from inaction. Donald Trump, Rex Tillerson, the Kochs, the Paul Ryans and Scott Pruits of the Republican party who make party policy, etc are nothing if not elite. The Democrats, supposedly the party on the side of the experts fighting climate change, can't even propose the policies we need not because their constituencies don't want them but because a knot of rich capitalists influential in the Democratic party resolutely oppose any climate change policy that would be worth a drat so all we get is half-assed bullshit. You're confusing experts who know what they're talking about, with the capitalist and political elites who actually wield economic and political power. While these elites are generally trusting of experts and often take their advice, those same elites become as resolutely hostile to expert opinion as the most inbred redneck fundy out there the second the expert opinion would negatively impact their profits and status. And unfortunately most of the major problems facing America and the world are intimately tied up with the depredations of the capitalist class. Did the elites take expert advice when the Democrats joined with Republicans to deregulate the financial sector, lol no. They were warned what a terrible idea it was, and ignored those warnings in favor of trusting their friends and donors and all the finance folks they met at swank cocktail parties who talk like them and sound smart. Did the elites listen to expert opinion when they made the 2009 stimulus 1/3 the size that expert economists warned them it needed to be to pull the country out of recession? Lol no, they catered to the rich 1% who were afraid big deficits would necessitate higher taxes on them. Did they listen to experts who told them how to control costs when they reformed the health care system, lol no, the people's costs are their elite friends' profits. Did they listen to experts who told them that without a public option there would be no incentive for insurance companies to compete on cost or even service counties with older sicker populations, lol no again that would affect profits. And then you wonder why people stop trusting your elite idols, when they ignore expert opinion again and again when it conflicts with their financial interests, and gently caress the country and the people. The idea that the political and economic elites in this country are just dutiful public servants, free of ideology, carrying out the recommendations of experts to create the best of all possible worlds is a loving joke. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Oct 16, 2017 |
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Oct 16, 2017 02:41
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Ytlaya posted:The finance industry is a good example of this. Despite having a bunch of people with expertise and degrees from elite universities, they still end up loving things up because the overall direction is determined by people who either lack expertise or use the expertise they have towards self-enrichment. This is a good example of "feature, not bug." In the public sector, making as much money as humanly possible is the correct thing to do. You should try to avoid breaking laws, but sometimes laws get in the way of making as much money as humanly possible and so those laws are bad. When you are a public servant, that kind of thinking is called "corruption" but it's baked into the private sector.
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Oct 16, 2017 03:56
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Shbobdb posted:Populism is just the mass line in action. It's cool to see a shbobdb post that isn't neck deep in some internet persona nonsense (though i spose time will tell) because this post is dead on Think power dynamics. Mass movements are a threat to states, which have historically done everything they can to control and supress them.
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Oct 16, 2017 04:08
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VitalSigns posted:Climate change is a weird place to make your stand because the majority of Americans believe in it and want to do something about it. The opposition to this comes entirely from elites who profit from inaction. Donald Trump, Rex Tillerson, the Kochs, the Paul Ryans and Scott Pruits of the Republican party who make party policy, etc are nothing if not elite. The Democrats, supposedly the party on the side of the experts fighting climate change, can't even propose the policies we need not because their constituencies don't want them but because a knot of rich capitalists influential in the Democratic party resolutely oppose any climate change policy that would be worth a drat so all we get is half-assed bullshit. Climate change is a classic tragedy of the commons problem and a global problem which make it a perfect problem for highlighting the dangers of both populism in general and the specific nationalist populism that’s ascendant right now. Populism isn’t about what’s popular in a 51% majority sense but instead is about whipping up enough people into a motivated furor Climate change agreements which inevitably involve national sacrifice and complex negotiations are always going to be fantastic targets for populist and particularly nationalist attack. Say what you want about the existing global elite but they are global and have succeeded at submerging nationalism and creating rudamentary global systems and institutions which are a necessary foundation for global agreements and global cooperation.
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Oct 16, 2017 16:10
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Except all the ones who do the exact opposite of that. Also lol that you think nationalist populism and elitism are in any way exlcusive.
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Oct 16, 2017 17:17
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asdf32 posted:Climate change is a classic tragedy of the commons problem and a global problem which make it a perfect problem for highlighting the dangers of both populism in general and the specific nationalist populism that’s ascendant right now. neat. what if one of the things I say is "they are actively fighting any efforts to address the problem of climate change for fear it will hurt their bottom line" do you have a response beyond "well what if they didn't tho"
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Oct 16, 2017 20:01
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The conflation of "experts" and "elites" is a very important point. Experts and expertise are great, I have no problem with them. The problem is that the journalists and media people who are the ones screaming about populism aren't experts at anything other than stoking their own egos. People like Vox Dot Com are not experts, this cannot be repeated enough
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Oct 16, 2017 21:57
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It feels like equating experts and professionals with "Elites" is intentional, in an attempt to discredit them for personal profit. 
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Oct 16, 2017 22:07
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icantfindaname posted:The conflation of "experts" and "elites" is a very important point. Experts and expertise are great, I have no problem with them. The problem is that the journalists and media people who are the ones screaming about populism aren't experts at anything other than stoking their own egos. People like Vox Dot Com are not experts, this cannot be repeated enough The old meritocracy joke, remade for the modern era. Expert (n.): Person who says what the 1% want to hear. see Paul Ryan, Cerebral Wonk, Steve Bannon, Malevolent Genius, and Matt "No Number Of Bangladeshi Deaths Is Too High To Keep My Slacks Cheap" Yglesias, Professional Thing Explainer.
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Oct 16, 2017 22:09
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Helen Highwater posted:Populism is bad because at its root, it assumes that there are always simple answers to complex problems. Most people don't think too hard about politics or the externalities of policy so simple solutions seem attractive. Reduce crime by increasing prison sentences, lower unemployment by kicking out immigrants, run the economy like a household budget, etc. Populists tap into these 'common sense' beliefs only to find that actually simple solutions don't work. If they did, then those problems wouldn't even exist anymore. pretty much this: it's just that it's pretty hard sometimes to distinguish the cases where the ruling elite only out for themselves has screw the pooch one too many times demands a reaction and the times when the mass popular uprising are blindly following either an idiot or evil-doer whose gonna make things worse. Because it's usually it's both things at the same time. The most successful populists in US history were insider politicians who ran as outsiders: FDR and Reagan are good examples
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Oct 16, 2017 22:25
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Talmonis posted:It feels like equating experts and professionals with "Elites" is intentional, in an attempt to discredit them for personal profit. It sorta depends upon the specific field/industry. Scientific experts aren't generally going to overlap with what people generally consider "elites", but experts in areas like finance often will (since the industry itself self-selects for people from certain types of backgrounds). More importantly, areas like science are better at building a reasonable consensus, compared with heavily political ones like economics where there's often no universal consensus due to the influence of ideology. Regardless, if you had to judge our current society, decisions are definitely more dictated by "elites" than they are experts (or more accurately, it's dictated by the experts who elites choose to listen to).
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Oct 17, 2017 00:12
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