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Fried Watermelon posted:Brian Pallister has money in the pig industry I was unaware you could invest in police services.
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May 8, 2017 18:20
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Suffering is bad and all and should be avoided but man a pig barn fire probably smells amazing.
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May 8, 2017 18:24
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The Butcher posted:Suffering is bad and all and should be avoided but man a pig barn fire probably smells amazing. Only if the barn was made from Hickory or Maple wood.
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May 8, 2017 18:32
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The Butcher posted:Suffering is bad and all and should be avoided but man a pig barn fire probably smells amazing. Probably doesn't sound all that good though Y'know, with all the screaming
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May 8, 2017 18:40
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Drive by a Maple Leaf pork facility with the windows down, should give you a good idea of what burning pigs smell like.
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May 8, 2017 18:41
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Hint: it loving reeks. I pass by the Maple Leaf factory on the way home and nooooooope.
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May 8, 2017 18:51
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EvilJoven posted:We've seen the wealthiest make a focused effort to ensure that neo-liberal centrist globalist capitalism is the only viable way to live, even if it required a tremendous effort to sabotage any other way of working as a society. They've spent decades and billions of dollars doing everything from deliberately sabotaging the collective welfare state and public assets managed by the state for the good of the populace in order to sell it off to themselves to deposing foreign governments and installing puppet governments willing to toe the line. Okay but how did it happen. What did they spend billions on? How did the left go from a juggernaut of the 50s and 60s to the ineffectual milquetoast political force it is today. It seems like any socialist idea is so thoroughly discredited in today's discourse that the entire post 1980s milennial generation can't even conceptualize it. If I tell struggling youths that government and big business thoroughly shafted us and that it used to be different. They take on two positions: either A) we don't work hard enough and should bootstrap or start a business because hoping the govt will save us is stupid and lazy or B) yeah we got shafted but we can't change who runs the place. May as well do what we can and possibly break the law to get ahead because nobody will come help you. Everyone else thinks left wing governments mean they can't drive cars, purchase property or pay their bills because of taxes. Yet they can't do those things anway under a capitalist system either? Worst of all I see people who say Trudeau is hosed and out to lunch yet life under his government isn't so different from Stephen Harper. It's almost like your political party of choice is less about actual policy and more about "branding" and identity. The outcomes remain the same but the face is all you get to choose. I'm pretty sure if we had a left wing populist movement we'd probably cause a political upheaval. So why isn't there one? Why is populism always right wing? How exactly was the power taken away? Why did every single politician suddenly decide they'd no longer look out for us anymore? How did we go from Willy Brandt, FDR, and Kennedy to this post Reagan disaster? Kraftwerk fucked around with this message at 19:06 on May 8, 2017 |
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May 8, 2017 19:01
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Kraftwerk posted:Okay but how did it happen. What did they spend billions on? How did the left go from a juggernaut of the 50s and 60s to the ineffectual milquetoast political force it is today.
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May 8, 2017 19:12
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Kraftwerk posted:How exactly was the power taken away? Why did every single politician suddenly decide they'd no longer look out for us anymore? How did we go from Willy Brandt, FDR, and Kennedy to this post Reagan disaster? Maybe you should stop asking what your country can do for you and instead, ask what you can do for your country. What are you doing for your country?
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May 8, 2017 19:22
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Complaining, but like, a lot.
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May 8, 2017 19:28
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Kraftwerk posted:Okay but how did it happen. What did they spend billions on? How did the left go from a juggernaut of the 50s and 60s to the ineffectual milquetoast political force it is today. This is a huge, huge question. There are a ton of answers and you'll never find one that's 100% convincing and covers everything. For me, I would break it down into a few factors. First, capital and the upper classes having all the power and presiding over a tremendously unequal society is not some historical aberration, it's actually the historical norm. The right wing, conservatives, whatever you want to call them, have traditionally been the most powerful part of society, because their goal is to preserve existing power structures and they tend to be backed by those who have benefited greatly from whatever those power structures are, whether it's ancient landowners and nobles or contemporary billionaires. They support the system that put them on top, and because they're on top they have tremendous amounts of power, however you define power in the current system (land, serfs, soldiers, today money). So where did the historical aberration of sustained wage growth, relative equality, and democracy come from? It was actually a fairly short period from the 1940s to the 1970s that we really experienced those things, and they came about because of the Depression and the Second World War. An entire generation lurched from crisis to crisis, with those crises emerging out of a massive financial meltdown and resulting in the largest war and worst genocide the world had ever seen. As we started to pick up the pieces after the fact, a new global order emerged where the democracies got together and decided that they couldn't let that happen again, so they actually built welfare states and unions and ensured that the gains of the economic system were shared more evenly than ever before, because they realized that economically desperate people were likely to become insecure and angry and turn their anger on others, as they had in Nazi Germany, and the end result of that was a conflict that seemed apocalyptic to the point of threatening the comfortable lives of wealthy people in other countries. This was also the heyday of Keynesian economics. People rightly pointed to the Great Depression as the biggest trigger of the war, and turned to Keynes's theories as the way to avoid major economic crises like that in the future. And for a few decades we had sustained growth that actually benefited all classes (I won't say it benefited "everyone" because as we should all know, this was still a time when large parts of the population were disenfranchised and excluded from the benefits of society, particularly racial minorities and women). Of course it didn't last. As Blyth points out in the article I posted, the side effects of Keynesian economics focused on stimulus, full employment, and wage growth was inflation, and inflation is bad for wealthy investors (but good for ordinary people), since investors lend money and ordinary people borrow it. If I borrow $100,000 from you to buy a house, and we agree to a fixed loan at 5% interest, but inflation is then 6% per year, in real terms my debt is actually shrinking year-over-year, and by the time I've paid back the whole loan, you as the lender have actually lost money. I end up with a house for cheaper than it would have cost had I paid cash up front, and you end up with money that can buy less goods than when you loaned it to me. That's a bad deal for you. So what happened to that system? It hit some crises in the 1970s, partially caused by the oil shocks (an external factor that can't really be blamed on Keynesianism) and partially caused by the fact that although Keynesianism was a better system than what we had before, it still wasn't perfect and ran into some trouble of its own. I'm not an economist and I can't really explain the problems it ran into. Seriously if you're interested in this buy Mark Blyth's book Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea. And it turned out that there was already a ready-made replacement for Keynesianism that had been percolating in right-wing think tanks for decades, based on the theories of some Austrian economists and guys like Milton Friedman. We call it supply-side economics, neoliberalism, and a host of other names, but it was basically the Reagan Revolution: cut the size of the state, deregulate, unleash the financial markets, and allow global competition rather than restricting capital flows. It focused on controlling inflation rather than full employment and wage growth, to the benefit of the investor class and the detriment of everyone else. This coincided with a technological revolution beginning in the 1980s that automated, offshored, and eliminated entire industries that had previously been some of the largest beneficiaries of the sustained shared growth of the 40s-70s. Their unions were attacked, their workplaces were closed, and their bosses were finally able to get better returns by simply moving their money to different countries, so they did. The result was the deindustrialization of developed economies and the advent of economies based on information technology and financial services, which generate massive returns for wealthy and highly-educated sections of society but leave out millions of people. In the 80s neoliberalism was also coupled with conservative social policies, attacking both the economic and the social foundations of the communal welfare state as inefficient and incorrect. Society was composed of individuals with individual interests, not a community with shared interests. Competition rather than cooperation became seen as the best way forward. So what happened? Why did the left collapse so dramatically in the 80s? The long and short of this particular narrative is that Keynesianism hit some rough times and seemed to be out of ideas to get through the crises of the 70s. Neoliberalism seemed to offer a solution, and it was a solution that coincided very well with technological developments that were taking place simultaneously, shrinking the size of the globe and its economic systems. This new system worked so well in the 80s and made so many people incredibly rich that they invested very heavily in maintaining it, and especially filled in the gaps with credit. At the same time, free trade and automation drove down consumer good prices, so that even if high-paying jobs were being eroded, people were still able to live relatively well by buying cheap goods and living off credit. This system of neoliberal economics and conservative social policies was so electorally effective that it essentially destroyed the old left in the 1980s. Everywhere in the west, you saw the emergence of Third Way movements: Tony Blair's New Labour in the UK, Chretien and Martin's Liberal Party in Canada, Clinton's New Democrats in the US, and so on. Essentially, these groups took older centre-left parties and reoriented them, adopting neoliberal economic policies because they were so popular with the electorate. They cozied up to Wall Street financiers and got funding for their election campaigns from small numbers of wealthy donors rather than large numbers of lower-class people or unions, by ensuring the wealthy that they wouldn't touch the policies that were making them so rich. It was a Faustian bargain where the left sold itself to the wealthy to get power. Sometimes this was done with good intentions, i.e. "hey at least if we get in power we'll be able to do some good for the people of the country, even though it won't be very much". Sometimes it was more of a cynical adoption, saying "well the right is winning, how do we win instead?" since after all politician is a career. And that's how we got where we are today. For two and a half decades now we've been told by every side that neoliberal economics is the only possible paradigm. It's the age of TINA--There Is No Alternative. Our choices are the neoliberal party that thinks minorities should have equal opportunity to be oppressed by capital, and the neoliberal party that thinks minorities should be more oppressed by capital than white people. And coincidentally, as economic differences between the parties have become more and more marginal, social differences have to be exaggerated in order to justify party loyalty. We fight elections over abortion and gay marriage rather than over economics, because the economic differences between establishment parties are minuscule. There's the "cut government a lot" party and the "cut government a little" party, and those are our choices. We operate in a hegemonic discourse of neoliberalism where we accept that individuals are rational economic actors, competition is better than cooperation, we have no control over global markets or technological innovations, and the state doesn't actually have the power to regulate things even if it wants to. We barely even have the vocabulary to express an alternative discourse except on the fringes, which increasingly become popular as people search for an alternative only to be told that there is no alternative by every respectable politician in every political party. It's no wonder that the younger generation has difficulty conceiving of a real alternative, because they're never offered one. For their entire lives they have lived within this discourse. On the other hand, there's an external factor which is that young people also haven't lived their lives within the Cold War paradigm of Capitalism Good, Socialism Bad. Young people are actually remarkably open to socialist and neo-Keynesian ideas, when they are presented to them by someone like Bernie Sanders (or Justin Trudeau lmao). Being able to examine the tenets of social democracy on their own merits rather than within a discursive framework of Freedom Versus Communism has meant that young people are probably the most socialist-minded generation since the one that lived through the Second World War. We're just also more likely to get suckered in by style over substance, as proven by politicians like Obama and Trudeau. Part of that is a perennial problem of youth, in that young people simply don't have the experience of getting screwed over by popular politicians before, so I think we're more likely to take them at face value. And of course I'm sure I'm forgetting tons of stuff in here. Basically if you want to know how we got here, read Mark Blyth. Of all the commentators on the current state of global political economy, in my opinion he's the person who gets it the most. jfc this is a horrible text wall, don't read this because it's nowhere near comprehensive enough to actually cover everything that has happened over the last century of capitalist development. vyelkin fucked around with this message at 19:52 on May 8, 2017 |
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May 8, 2017 19:49
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Thank you vyelkin for writing the effort post that I couldn't.vyelkin posted:jfc this is a horrible text wall, don't read this because it's nowhere near comprehensive enough to actually cover everything that has happened over the last century of capitalist development. Hey it's way better than my 6 sentence post that can be summarized by 'Oligarchs who are politicians and oligarchs who would rather just buy politicians take away the pay and benefits of the working masses bit by bit through legislation, political pressure levied against foreign governments and sometimes by propping up terrible politicians who make them money while overthrowing good politicians that cost them money'. EvilJoven fucked around with this message at 19:56 on May 8, 2017 |
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May 8, 2017 19:51
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I really appreciate the effort posts and I'll definitely get Mark Blythe's book. I'm just saddened that having remembered how it was for my parents and the second wind we experienced in the Clinton years that there's absolutely nothing to look forward to and no way to mount an effective resistance against the current order. I can see how with no other alternative right wing populist parties are gaining ground because people are so shell shocked by the neoliberal world order that they'd welcome anyone and anything offering something even remotely different. We are either going to have a massive crisis/world war soon or the world will be divided between haves and have nots with borders being irrelevant. I still think that our generation has it better than any other that came before it. As hosed as our society is now you still have a chance to survive cancer, live with HIV till old age and despite the media attention- likely be very safe and secure from crime or violence. We just won't have any economic power and will likely need to live with far less stuff.
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May 8, 2017 20:13
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Resurgence of left-leaning politics could probably start with getting an actually left-leaning leader as part of the Federal NDP rather than this boring centrist Layton-Mulcair stuff we've been putting up with for the last 15 years. Second would probably be making a much bigger deal out of electoral reform and PR which would allow for some compromise in the HoC other than just whatever 39% voted majority we have currently. Third would be some sort of reform to make the Senate elected and accountable for their actions, I know I post "Abolish the Senate" a lot, but I would rather see an effective 2nd house in government than the pile of poo poo we have now.
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May 8, 2017 20:26
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Don't lump Layton and Mulcair together. Layton could very likely have beaten Trudeau and Harper if not for his untimely death.
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May 8, 2017 20:33
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Risky Bisquick posted:Don't lump Layton and Mulcair together. Layton could very likely have beaten Trudeau and Harper if not for his untimely death. TBH he probably would have made a good showing if he ran posthumously
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May 8, 2017 20:37
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Risky Bisquick posted:Don't lump Layton and Mulcair together. Layton could very likely have beaten Trudeau and Harper if not for his untimely death. I've heard this so many times but I don't believe it. I'd LIKE to believe it.
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May 8, 2017 20:51
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vyelkin posted:This is a huge, huge question. There are a ton of answers and you'll never find one that's 100% convincing and covers everything. For me, I would break it down into a few factors. Posts like this is why I lurk this thread and put up with the dumb gimmick posters. Thanks and I'm adding Blyth's book to my To Read list.
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May 8, 2017 21:13
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Risky Bisquick posted:Don't lump Layton and Mulcair together. Layton could very likely have beaten Trudeau and Harper if not for his untimely death. I doubt he could have beaten Justin "Sexy Bongripz" Trudeau. Held onto more seats than Mulcair, maybe
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May 8, 2017 21:23
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Do you think in a decade conservative voters will decide on who to vote for by saying "he looks like a guy you'd like to have a bong rip with"?
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May 8, 2017 21:46
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Fried Watermelon posted:Do you think in a decade conservative voters will decide on who to vote for by saying "he looks like a guy you'd like to have a bong rip with"? No, it'll still be all about which minorities they'll gently caress over.
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May 8, 2017 21:50
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Kraftwerk posted:We are either going to have a massive crisis/world war soon or the world will be divided between haves and have nots with borders being irrelevant. If WW3 doesn't wipe us out before then, the massive crisis will transitioning to a post-industrial world as automation progressively replaces all of our jobs, even the ones we conveniently outsourced to cheap developing countries. And the disgruntled labour masses complaining that "dey took our jerbs" vote en masse for right-wing populists like Trump or Le Pen with protectionist agendas because they refuse to come to terms with it and consider any state-controlled attempt at welfare or basic income as "handouts". Hell, I fully expect my cushy game programmer job to be automated out of existence before I come close to reaching retirement age. I for one welcome the singularity, where we will all spend time hooked up to VR alternate universes in order to simulate having a job again.
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May 8, 2017 21:52
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James Baud fucked around with this message at 12:48 on Aug 26, 2018 |
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May 8, 2017 21:56
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I do think it pretty amazing that as we come closer to the sci-fi utopia of robots doing all our jobs, we simultaneously come closer to the dystopian vision of a perpetually unemployed underclass. We've managed to take the theoretically benevolent idea of not having to work because a machine can do your job effortlessly and turned it into a thing of nightmares because our economic system is structured to very efficiently funnel all the gains of automation to the wealthy while ruining the lives of those whose jobs are automated. Because we're so wedded to the idea that only working, having a job that you go to every day, makes you worthy of existing as a person.
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May 8, 2017 21:58
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James Baud posted:Oh come on. Layton outperformed historical norms because the Conservatives were so effective at tagging Ignatieff as "just visiting" after Dion had proven an incredibly uninspiring compromise candidate at the same time that most of Quebec finally got bored with the Bloc and separatism in general. Albertans just vote for the polar opposite of whoever hosed up most recently. After Danielle Smith crossed the aisle and Alison Redford turned out to be mafia or whatever we had no regressive FYGM heroes to look up to. Lost, alone and vulnerable we shacked up with the first party to give us a kind word.
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May 8, 2017 22:01
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PK loving SUBBAN posted:I've heard this so many times but I don't believe it. I'd LIKE to believe it. Nah, you're right. Layton and Mulcair were progressive but also experienced realists with too much integrity to stay stupid poo poo like they're going to implement all TRC recommendations, anything less would be unacceptable. Real progressives can't win against nonsense because their well thought out, realistic plan considers the limitations and baby steps required for actual implementation. When the left embraces nonsense, you get Leap Manifesto which is even worse nonsense than the Liberal nonsense and then the conservatives win.
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May 8, 2017 22:07
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Leap is an aspirational document. Not a platform.
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May 8, 2017 22:14
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That's a nuance that will in no way be lost on the electorate.
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May 8, 2017 22:15
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If whomever's leading the NDP in the next election doesn't speak like a loving Starfleet captain then we're right and proper hosed and most of you know it
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May 8, 2017 22:17
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It's cool how the media devotes 40% of its election coverage to the BC Greens because it's only fair that this totally serious major party be given the hearing it deserves. Meanwhile the federal NDP was lucky if it got 5% time back when it had "only" 20 seats in parliament
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May 8, 2017 22:19
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Better to run three elections on working towards something like Leap than running three elections on promising a bridge or a new pipeline. Also I feel like there'd still be the hurdle of media for Layton; I suspect significant enough amounts of canadians still trust "papers of note" and their endorsements (a lot of whom pretty much switched from endorsing the tories to the liberals the moment Trudeau was the leader).
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May 8, 2017 22:21
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THC posted:Leap is an aspirational document. Not a platform. They called it a manifesto... ironically?
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May 8, 2017 22:24
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Postess with the Mostest posted:They called it a manifesto... ironically? A manifesto is a broad ideological statement, not necessarily something you're planning on implementing right away.
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May 8, 2017 22:26
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Weren't there NDP leadership candidates talking about how Leap should be acted on enthusiastically and immediately? Or is my chronology totally broken?
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May 8, 2017 22:30
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Agnosticnixie posted:A manifesto is a broad ideological statement, not necessarily something you're planning on implementing right away. It's not a public declaration of intentions?
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May 8, 2017 23:04
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I can see how the average Canadian might miss the distinction
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May 8, 2017 23:08
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THC posted:It's cool how the media devotes 40% of its election coverage to the BC Greens because it's only fair that this totally serious major party be given the hearing it deserves. Meanwhile the federal NDP was lucky if it got 5% time back when it had "only" 20 seats in parliament Remember when Adrian Dix refused to go negative and he got called pathetic and a wuss and lost his job instead of being called the bright future of provincial politics Part of me hopes the Greens keep picking up steam, so that they become inconvenient to the BCLP and the media turns on them. Weaver thinks Postmedia was mean to him before.
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May 8, 2017 23:14
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Black Bones posted:I doubt he could have beaten Justin "Sexy Bongripz" Trudeau. Held onto more seats than Mulcair, maybe Mulcair, as lovely as he was/is, nearly beat Trudeau. His NDP held a lead for quite a while during the election. It was only after the whole balanced budget thing that Trudeau was able to switch tactics and portray himself as the leftiest choice. Layton may have fallen into the same trap, but I think the chances are much better he would have avoided it. Not because he was better than Mulcair in any sort of ideological sense, but he was a much better campaigner.
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May 8, 2017 23:15
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loving Mulcair. I have no idea what that guy was thinking going all milquetoast centrist when he was that close.
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May 8, 2017 23:17
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Falstaff posted:Mulcair, as lovely as he was/is, nearly beat Trudeau. His NDP held a lead for quite a while during the election. It was only after the whole balanced budget thing that Trudeau was able to switch tactics and portray himself as the leftiest choice. "Healthcare, Elder Care, Mulcair  "An orator for the ages
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May 8, 2017 23:18
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