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readingatwork
Jan 8, 2009

Hello Fatty!


Fun Shoe

The Kingfish posted:

Serious discussions about good and evil are for children

Correct.

Good and Evil don’t actually exist outside of very narrowly defined systems of values and ethics that are all manmade and ultimately flawed. Furthermore, the terms apply poorly to people since most human beings have complex mixes of both traits that a) don’t neatly balance each other out like an accounting ledger and b) aren’t useful for making decisions with. Particularly those political in nature.

The concepts are also incredibly situational. To quote a person I used to know “the bitter reality is that sometimes the hateful old pedophile is actually the right man for the job”, which I’ve always found depressing but profoundly true. Rick Santorum may well be a good man and father, but I’m convinced he’d be an awful president. Likewise Obama may well have been a decent leader in a more sane political climate, but in America as it is now his inclinations towards politeness (and his fondness for Gilman Sachs money and meritocracy, lets be real here) accomplished little and ultimately gave us Trump. Ironically, a version of Obama that was more of an rear end in a top hat in most ways but better in one or two others may have been a better president.

So yeah, who gives a gently caress if billionaires are evil people. They have too much money, so we need to take it away. And they will fight against the policies we need, so we shouldn’t vote them into office. HTH everybody.

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Koalas March
May 21, 2007



Kokoro Wish posted:

I skipped to a small breaksown of other issues, beyond being a billionaire and thus incapable of representing the American people, etc, of why Oprah looks like she'd be god awful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFxgQN5fydc&t=561s

I like how this video states she did xyz on her show.. without showing any clips of said show. I fast forwarded admittedly, but didn't see any lol.

Show me clips, not quotes from other sources saying she straight up propagandized poo poo without showing her you know, actually doing that.

I am super wary of poo poo like that and you should be too.

JeffersonClay
Jun 17, 2003

by R. Guyovich

joepinetree posted:

For other people who may be genuinely confused as to what neoliberalism is, I recommend "Neoliberalism: a Critical Reader,").
OK I did that, here’s the definition of neoliberalism offered in chapter 2:

quote:

Contemporary neoliberalism, which emphasises the efficiency of market competition, the role of individuals in determining economic outcomes, and distortions associated with government intervention and regulation of markets, is principally associated with the Chicago School of Economics
That’s exactly the definition I’ve been defending. This is from chapter 3:

quote:

The Washington consensus is a set of neoliberal ideas, demanding of developing countries that they should achieve macroeconomic stability (typically by cutting government spending, including subsidies to the poor), deregulate their domestic markets, privatise state enterprises, and open their economies to foreign trade and finance.
Again, this is exactly the definition of neoliberalism I’ve been using.

quote:

In that, you will find a chapter that discusses the sort of Third Way brand of neoliberalism that you find in Clintonites and Blairites
Here’s a more complete section on third way.

quote:

It shares with neoliberalism the acceptance of the dominance of the market in economic life and the extension of the market into all areas of human activity. The market and the pursuit of profits is viewed as the best (or perhaps only) way of organising the economy. But the Third Way does acknowledge a role for government in the correction of ‘market failure’: as discussed below, the Third Way accepts that monopoly positions arise which should be constrained by regulation or anti-trust policies, and that government should be involved in the provision of goods and services such as education and health.
I’m guessing this is the definition you’re using when you describe Obamacare as neoliberal. But it’s a terrible definition. Why? Because as you’ve been forced to admit, nearly every policy and politician is predicated on or advocates a market economy, so defining neoliberalism in that way makes it largely useless for describing actual policy differences. Let me demonstrate.

If we use my definition of neoliberalism (deregulation, austerity, tax cuts, free trade, privatization)
neoliberal policies and advocates
Milton Friedman
Friedrich Hayek
Abolish the EPA
School vouchers
Repeal Obamacare
Mitt Romney
Margaret Thatcher

non-neoliberal policies and advocates
Paul Krugman
John Keynes
Carbon Taxes
UBI
Minimum wages
Obamacare
Bernie Sanders
FDR
Full communism now

If we use your definition of neoliberalism (uses markets to achieve policy objectives)
neoliberal policies and advocates
Milton Friedman
Friedrich Hayek
Abolish the EPA
School vouchers
Repeal Obamacare
Mitt Romney
Paul Krugman
John Keynes
Carbon Taxes
UBI
Minimum wages
Obamacare
Bernie Sanders
FDR
Margaret Thatcher

non-neoliberal policies and advocates
Full communism now

A definition that cannot distinguish between Hayek and Krugman, Friedman and Keynes, or FDR and Thatcher is not real useful.

Red and Black
Sep 5, 2011

Koalas March posted:

I like how this video states she did xyz on her show.. without showing any clips of said show. I fast forwarded admittedly, but didn't see any lol.

Show me clips, not quotes from other sources saying she straight up propagandized poo poo without showing her you know, actually doing that.

I am super wary of poo poo like that and you should be too.

The clips are at around 10:50

joepinetree
Apr 5, 2012

JeffersonClay posted:

OK I did that, here’s the definition of neoliberalism offered in chapter 2:

That’s exactly the definition I’ve been defending. This is from chapter 3:

Again, this is exactly the definition of neoliberalism I’ve been using.

Here’s a more complete section on third way.

I’m guessing this is the definition you’re using when you describe Obamacare as neoliberal. But it’s a terrible definition. Why? Because as you’ve been forced to admit, nearly every policy and politician is predicated on or advocates a market economy, so defining neoliberalism in that way makes it largely useless for describing actual policy differences. Let me demonstrate.

If we use my definition of neoliberalism (deregulation, austerity, tax cuts, free trade, privatization)
neoliberal policies and advocates
Milton Friedman
Friedrich Hayek
Abolish the EPA
School vouchers
Repeal Obamacare
Mitt Romney
Margaret Thatcher

non-neoliberal policies and advocates
Paul Krugman
John Keynes
Carbon Taxes
UBI
Minimum wages
Obamacare
Bernie Sanders
FDR
Full communism now

If we use your definition of neoliberalism (uses markets to achieve policy objectives)
neoliberal policies and advocates
Milton Friedman
Friedrich Hayek
Abolish the EPA
School vouchers
Repeal Obamacare
Mitt Romney
Paul Krugman
John Keynes
Carbon Taxes
UBI
Minimum wages
Obamacare
Bernie Sanders
FDR
Margaret Thatcher

non-neoliberal policies and advocates
Full communism now

A definition that cannot distinguish between Hayek and Krugman, Friedman and Keynes, or FDR and Thatcher is not real useful.

Point me to the section in the book where minimum wage, FDR or Keynes are categorized as neoliberal (for starters). You are so deeply dishonest that I am not going to waste my time with you until you do so.

Kraftwerk
Aug 13, 2011
i do not have 10,000 bircoins, please stop asking

Nevvy Z posted:

How much does it cost to cure people of their irrational fear of atoms? I'd invest in that and mincome experiments. Leftism is cool but the planet is cooler.

Okay that sounds good to me. Yeah I'm super confused why billionaires don't commit more of their money to eliminating certain problems for mankind.

I mean if I had 50 billion dollars I'm sure I could live like a loving KING and still have enough money left over to resolve at LEAST one major problem afflicting society... (energy, healthcare etc...)

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

JeffersonClay posted:

there's no difference between Bernie Sanders and Bill Clinton

OK great if there's no ideological differences here then you won't mind supporting Berniecrats forever and encouraging your fellow smart sensible liberals to do so as well, right, and also advocating seizing all corporations and turning them over to worker ownership since there will still be a 'market' and is thus ideologically indistinguishable from the 1996 Welfare Reform act.

The outcomes are the same according to yall, therefore if everyone who thinks this gets behind Bernie then we'll have party unity and definitely win, so this is obviously the only smart sensible way forward.

JeffersonClay
Jun 17, 2003

by R. Guyovich

VitalSigns posted:

OK great if there's no ideological differences here then you won't mind supporting Berniecrats forever and encouraging your fellow smart sensible liberals to do so as well, right, and also advocating seizing all corporations and turning them over to worker ownership since there will still be a 'market' and is thus ideologically indistinguishable from the 1996 Welfare Reform act.

The outcomes are the same according to yall, therefore if everyone who thinks this gets behind Bernie then we'll have party unity and definitely win, so this is obviously the only smart sensible way forward.

No, you dolt. I think there are plenty of ideological differences between Bill Clinton and Bernie Sanders. But if we define neoliberalism as "policies which employ markets to achieve outcomes", they both advocate for neoliberalism. That's why that definition is dumb.

If, however, we define neoliberalism as "tax cuts, free trade, deregulation and privatization" then Bill has some neoliberal advocacy and Bernie does not. That's why my definition--the bog standard orthodox economic definition--makes sense.

joepinetree posted:

Point me to the section in the book where minimum wage, FDR or Keynes are categorized as neoliberal (for starters). You are so deeply dishonest that I am not going to waste my time with you until you do so.

Ah yes, the blatent dishonesty of reading the book you asked people to read and posting quotes which supported my argument and contradicted yours. The gall.

FDR and Keynes were both ideological defenders of regulated markets and believed them to be inherently superior to socialist alternatives. The minimum wage, much like the elements of obamacare you describe as neoliberal, is just a market regulation which requires workers to participate in said market to derive any benefit. It's incoherent to call obamacare neoliberal and not the minimum wage.

the black husserl
Feb 25, 2005

joepinetree posted:

Point me to the section in the book where minimum wage, FDR or Keynes are categorized as neoliberal (for starters). You are so deeply dishonest that I am not going to waste my time with you until you do so.

From what I can see, you're calling any politician who intends to use the current capitalist economic system as a means to accomplish a policy/social goal, rather than just tearing down the system outright, a neoliberal.

That's fine but I agree it's not a very useful or common definition. But honestly, "neoliberal" is just kinda evolving into a generic pejorative for a certain political identity group. Lately it's more like "Quisling" or "rear end in a top hat" than something that illuminates any kind of discussion.

withak
Jan 15, 2003


Fun Shoe

Kraftwerk posted:

Okay that sounds good to me. Yeah I'm super confused why billionaires don't commit more of their money to eliminating certain problems for mankind.

I mean if I had 50 billion dollars I'm sure I could live like a loving KING and still have enough money left over to resolve at LEAST one major problem afflicting society... (energy, healthcare etc...)

This is 100% not the mindset of someone who could ever accumulate 50 billion dollars.

Owlofcreamcheese
May 22, 2005
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!
Buglord

Kraftwerk posted:

Okay that sounds good to me. Yeah I'm super confused why billionaires don't commit more of their money to eliminating certain problems for mankind.

I mean if I had 50 billion dollars I'm sure I could live like a loving KING and still have enough money left over to resolve at LEAST one major problem afflicting society... (energy, healthcare etc...)

Isn't that Bill Gates whole thing now?

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

captainblastum posted:

All that I tried to say is that merely looking at a number, the amount of wealth somebody has, is not a valid way to determine if they are good or evil, or even their general level of morality.

You can't just look at a number, like how many kids Roy Moore touched, and determine if he's good or evil.

What if he had really good reasons, like he had their parents' permission, or he wanted to follow God's example when he knocked up 14-year-old Mary?

twodot
Aug 7, 2005

You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

withak posted:

This is 100% not the mindset of someone who could ever accumulate 50 billion dollars.
Well a sufficiently murderous Walton might.

the black husserl
Feb 25, 2005

Kraftwerk posted:

Okay that sounds good to me. Yeah I'm super confused why billionaires don't commit more of their money to eliminating certain problems for mankind.

I mean if I had 50 billion dollars I'm sure I could live like a loving KING and still have enough money left over to resolve at LEAST one major problem afflicting society... (energy, healthcare etc...)

Modern wealth doesn't make you a true sovereign. You still have to play by the rules of the game or the US Government will literally send soldiers into your compound, murder you, and replace you with Pinochet 2.0.

If you tried to "fix" a societal problem like healthcare, the medical industry would either kill you, imprison you, or get the US Government to do it. Billionaires are tapped into the system more than anyone else. They couldn't fix anything even if they wanted to.

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

JeffersonClay posted:

No, you dolt. I think there are plenty of ideological differences between Bill Clinton and Bernie Sanders. But if we define neoliberalism as "policies which employ markets to achieve outcomes", they both advocate for neoliberalism. That's why that definition is dumb.

If, however, we define neoliberalism as "tax cuts, free trade, deregulation and privatization" then Bill has some neoliberal advocacy and Bernie does not. That's why my definition--the bog standard orthodox economic definition--makes sense.

So you do think there's an ideological difference between someone who supports forcing the poor to buy unaffordable health insurance from corporations and somebody who says "hey the government should just pay for health care directly rather than laundering tax money into corporate profits for entities that will still do everything in their power to discourage and deny people seeking health care", you're just objecting to a specific word to describe the difference and you want a different specific word or what.

VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Jan 11, 2018

JeffersonClay
Jun 17, 2003

by R. Guyovich

VitalSigns posted:

So you do think there's an ideological difference between someone who supports forcing the poor to buy unaffordable health insurance from corporations and somebody who says "hey the government should just pay for health care directly rather than laundering tax money into corporate profits for entities that will still do everything in their power to discourage and deny people seeking health care", you're just objecting to a specific word to describe the difference and you want a different specific word or what.

I don't care about a term to describe the difference between those two policies, I just don't want that term to be neoliberalism because that's already very useful in differentiating between Keynesians and the Chicago school/libertarians. If we redefine it to mean "embraces markets, even regulated ones" that distinction disappears.

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

Like I'm willing to call it whatever you want. We can call it "squigglefloop" if you like, provided you promise you aren't going to write a whole buncha posts about how "squigglefloop" doesn't even really exist and actually if you say Obamacare is an example of "squigglefloop" policy then so is the UK's NHS and everything in Sanders' platform and these are all the same and if you criticize the ACA you're either a wicked Communist or a moron who should be a communist but doesn't know it.

JeffersonClay
Jun 17, 2003

by R. Guyovich
I just wrote a bunch of posts about how neoliberalism actually exists but it's not the same thing as some people are asserting :shrug:

Incidentially the UK's NHS is one of the few policies which would not be neoliberal under the "employs markets to deliver services" definition so maybe the problem here is you don't know what you're talking about? Consider the possibility, at least.

joepinetree
Apr 5, 2012

the black husserl posted:

From what I can see, you're calling any politician who intends to use the current capitalist economic system as a means to accomplish a policy/social goal, rather than just tearing down the system outright, a neoliberal.

That's fine but I agree it's not a very useful or common definition. But honestly, "neoliberal" is just kinda evolving into a generic pejorative for a certain political identity group. Lately it's more like "Quisling" or "rear end in a top hat" than something that illuminates any kind of discussion.

No. It is far more specific than that, and the book I mentioned goes into detail (which is what makes JeffersonClay's objections obviously in bad faith).

Neoliberalism refers to the historical movement that emerged as a response to the system commonly called a"embedded liberalism" that existed from the end of the second world war to roughly the start of the 70s. It is not a clear cut definition because there was never anyone who claimed the mantle of "neoliberal," but it has a clear historical meaning. During that period between the end of WW2 and the early 70s, economic policy was marked by Keynesianism on the economic front and an attempt to decommodify services on the social front. Healthcare is a problem? Take the market element out of it and run it as a basic right offered by the government. Trains are running late? Nationalize them. The economy is doing poorly? Create a jobs program. So the embedded liberalism period included two different sets of ideas: Keynesian on the macro economic front and social democratic on the social policy front (but markets still existed everywhere). Note that keynesianism isn't necessarily social democratic, and welfare programs aren't necessarily keynesian. They just happened at the same time.

With the end of the Bretton Woods system, the embedded liberalism model starts to crumble. On the macroeconomic front, it involves replacing the sort of expansionist Keynesian policies of the era with more austerity driven ones, which can range from the sort of monetarist policy of a Milton Friedman or the open trade type of policy of a new Keynesian like Krugman. They are lumped together because at some of their most basic, they share key ideas with regards to macro policy: an independent monetary authority that is tasked with keeping inflation low, lack of capital account controls, and fluctuating exchange rates, which in turn means fiscal discipline (because you are hosed if you have to run high interest rates to cool down inflation). On the social front, it means that services that were previously decommodified are in turn turned over to the private sector. In other words: services that were previously not even on the market at all become part of the market. The key idea there is that the role of the government is no longer to provide the services directly as a basic right that citizens have, but to instead provide the regulatory apparatus that creates incentives so that that service operates more as a market. So instead of operating prisons directly, governments instead create a market with regulations so that private providers do that in an "efficient" manner. Instead of fixing schools directly, the government instead sets up a system where schools are competing with each other, so that market principles will take care of it. And, in healthcare, it means that instead of the government providing those services directly, it sets up a regulatory apparatus so that market incentives will take care of them (like, say, running a federal marketplace for private insurers to compete with each other that is regulated in a way that market incentives take care of problems people have with healthcare).

Now, in a number of areas, the United States never set up the sort of social democratic institutions that became the norm in the rest of the developed world. The main reason for that is basically racism. So the US never set up a comprehensive welfare state, never set up a universal healthcare system, etc. But that simply means that in a lot of areas the US institutions were just plain conservative. So Obamacare wasn't part of a dismantling of social democratic style universal healthcare. But it was most definitely an alternative to social democratic style universal healthcare. The fact that there wasn't a universal healthcare system to "dismantle" with Obamacare isn't what defines it as neoliberal or not. The fact that it is the model that is being pushed around the world as an alternative to the sort of social democratic universal healthcare system is.

So neoliberalism is not just "any type of capitalism" or "anything market related." It is specifically "making the things that the embedded liberalist (or social democratic) model took away from the market part of the market."

Edit: and for the record, if the whole thing with NeoKeynesian, new Keynesian, Keynesian and Post Keynesian confuses you, this is a good primer:
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-main-difference-between-Keynesians-post-Keynesians-and-new-Keynesians



Edit 2: The reason most current neoliberals have a hard time understanding what neoliberalism is is because they cannot envision a world where the sorts of policies that were common for 4 decades are realistic now. If you think that the sorts of policies that were the norm for most of the period following WW2 are just plain old impossible nowadays, that that the full range of possible policies that you can imagine are the ones that you can find in the oped page of the ny times, then of course you are going to think that neoliberalism is just a made up word.

joepinetree fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Jan 11, 2018

gohmak
Feb 12, 2004
cookies need love

captainblastum posted:

This is so loving dumb. A person's morality is not defined by their wealth.

Not according to the bible.

captainblastum
Dec 1, 2004

VitalSigns posted:

You can't just look at a number, like how many kids Roy Moore touched, and determine if he's good or evil.

What if he had really good reasons, like he had their parents' permission, or he wanted to follow God's example when he knocked up 14-year-old Mary?

Just to be clear, you think that having money is equivalent to raping children?

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
"Neoliberalism" does have a specific historical and policy meaning, but, as Orwell said of the word "fascism," it "has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’[,]" at least among leftist discourse.

Basically you're all technically correct in different ways but talking past each other.

twodot
Aug 7, 2005

You are objectively correct that this person is dumb and has said dumb things

captainblastum posted:

Just to be clear, you think that having money is equivalent to raping children?
If you have enough money where spending that money could conceivably prevent children getting raped without impacting your daily life? Yeah.

joepinetree
Apr 5, 2012
Nah, it still has a pretty specific meaning. But if you prefer to call Obamacare "market based alternative to what used to be the existing paradigm of direct government provision" that is fine with me.

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011


JeffersonClay posted:

Incidentially the UK's NHS is one of the few policies which would not be neoliberal under the "employs markets to deliver services" definition so maybe the problem here is you don't know what you're talking about? Consider the possibility, at least.

The NHS still relies on the market to obtain goods and services it uses to deliver healthcare so it still employs a market in some fashion and thus, according to you, is like worker-owned cooperatives indistinguishable from Third Way Liberalism because none of these things is Full Communism Now

JeffersonClay posted:

If we use your definition of neoliberalism (uses markets to achieve policy objectives)
neoliberal policies and advocates
Milton Friedman
Friedrich Hayek
Abolish the EPA
School vouchers
Repeal Obamacare
Mitt Romney
Paul Krugman
John Keynes
Carbon Taxes
UBI
Minimum wages
Obamacare
Bernie Sanders
FDR
Margaret Thatcher

non-neoliberal policies and advocates
Full communism now

VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 05:17 on Jan 11, 2018

captainblastum
Dec 1, 2004

twodot posted:

If you have enough money where spending that money could conceivably prevent children getting raped without impacting your daily life? Yeah.

That's very specifically not what I'm asking.

Calibanibal
Aug 25, 2015

im getting ratfucked by jeffersonclay, and im lovin it

Typical Pubbie
May 10, 2011

Koalas March posted:

I like how this video states she did xyz on her show.. without showing any clips of said show. I fast forwarded admittedly, but didn't see any lol.

Show me clips, not quotes from other sources saying she straight up propagandized poo poo without showing her you know, actually doing that.

I am super wary of poo poo like that and you should be too.

You just made a bunch of posts about how billionaires are all evil, and now you're right back to defending a billionaire media mogul. The goon time stamped the video literally 1 minute before the clips begin.

edit: There's a clip of Oprah gaslighting a black woman who (politely) called her out for pushing the Iraq War. You're going to stand up for that? Idpol is a brain disease.

Typical Pubbie fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Jan 11, 2018

Koalas March
May 21, 2007



Typical Pubbie posted:

You just made a bunch of posts about how billionaires are all evil, and now you're right back to defending a billionaire media mogul. The goon time stamped the video literally 1 minute before the clips begin.

edit: There's a clip of Oprah gaslighting a black woman who (politely) called her out for astroturfing the Iraq War. You're going to stand up for that? Idpol is a brain disease.

You're trying too hard. Saying a video is terribly edited isn't the same thing as defending the subject. Especially when you're specifically asking for more dirt on them.

Also, it should be noted, that I work in the entertainment industry so I'm naturally skeptical that just having an episode featuring something automatically means you're endorsing that thing. I've also done professional editing, so I know how easy it is to take something innocuous and make it appear sinister and vice versa. I've done both. I'm not gonna lie, I've done some shady stuff in pursuit of good TV. When her show premiered tabloid talk shows like that they were less than 20 years old iirc. I would actually like to talk more about that but I'm getting ready for bed. It's after midnight here..

But basically the gist is, producers at that point we're just giving people the trash they wanted to see. I don't think anyone was aware of the damage showcasing certain things could actually do. Granted I'm talking about before Oprah became OPRAH and when tabloid talk shows in general were new and everything was kinda like the wild west of day time TV. I don't think anyone could have predicted how badly lovely entertainment like that could really effect our society. But anyway if anyone is actually interested in this discussion I'll pick it up in the morning.

Koalas March fucked around with this message at 06:37 on Jan 11, 2018

Typical Pubbie
May 10, 2011

Koalas March posted:

You're trying too hard. Saying a video is terribly edited isn't the same thing as defending the subject. Especially when you're specifically asking for more dirt on them.

It's not badly edited. It makes a claim and then supports that claim with clips from the show. This all happens in under 2 minutes from where the time stamp begins.


Koalas March posted:

Also, it should be noted, that I work in the entertainment industry so I'm naturally skeptical that just having an episode featuring something automatically means you're endorsing that thing. When Oprah's show premiered tabloid talk shows like that we're less than 20 years old iirc. I would actually like to talk more about that but I'm getting ready for bed. It's after midnight here..

But basically the gist is, producers at that point we're just giving people the trash they wanted to see. I don't think anyone was aware of the damage showcasing certain things could actually do. Granted I'm talking about before Oprah became OPRAH and when tabloid talk shows in general were new and everything was kinda like the wild west of day time TV. I don't think anyone could have predicted how badly lovely entertainment like that could really effect our society. But anyway if anyone is actually interested in this discussion I'll pick it up in the morning.

Oprah's net worth was 1 billion by the end of 2002. She had been a household name since the end of the 80s.

VitalSigns
Sep 3, 2011

captainblastum posted:

Just to be clear, you think that having money is equivalent to raping children?

Hoarding millions and millions of dollars is similar to other morally repulsive actions in the sense that, the more of it you do, the less and less likely it is that you're a good person who has good reasons for doing it because of a bizarre confluence of extenuating circumstances.

Condiv
May 7, 2008

Sorry to undo the effort of paying a domestic abuser $10 to own this poster, but I am going to lose my dang mind if I keep seeing multiple posters who appear to be Baloogan.

With love,
a mod


VitalSigns posted:

Hoarding millions and millions of dollars is similar to other morally repulsive actions in the sense that, the more of it you do, the less and less likely it is that you're a good person who has good reasons for doing it because of a bizarre confluence of extenuating circumstances.

being wealthy in a world where kids starve to death is morally repulsive on its own. no-one says these people should have to take an oath of poverty or something to be good, but if you're one of the 2043 billionares in this world while people are still being poisoned by toxic water in flint michigan, you are evil

WampaLord
Jan 14, 2010

captainblastum posted:

Just to be clear, you think that having money is equivalent to raping children?

captainblastum posted:

That's absolutely not what I was saying and you know it.

:ironicat:

Condiv
May 7, 2008

Sorry to undo the effort of paying a domestic abuser $10 to own this poster, but I am going to lose my dang mind if I keep seeing multiple posters who appear to be Baloogan.

With love,
a mod


the billionares of this world could band together and solve the flint water crisis on their own if they wanted to, at minimal cost to themselves.

if each gave 1 million dollars to the cause, you'd have 1.9 billion more dollars than congress just allotted to flint michigan

Condiv
May 7, 2008

Sorry to undo the effort of paying a domestic abuser $10 to own this poster, but I am going to lose my dang mind if I keep seeing multiple posters who appear to be Baloogan.

With love,
a mod


if every billionare coughed up 60k, they would have enough money together to match the $120m congress just dedicated to the flint water crisis

RuanGacho
Jun 20, 2002

"You're gunna break it!"

Wealth tax over 500k in assets tied to inflation.

Ditocoaf
Jun 1, 2011

Fine, getting money doesn't make you a bad person, keeping money is bad when you could donate it without becoming not-rich. You aren't evil the instant you inherent a billion dollars, but every day you pass without putting that money somewhere else is an act of selfish cruelty. So anyone who "is a billionaire" can safely be judged to be a moral failure.

steinrokkan
Apr 2, 2011



Soiled Meat
I don't think you are evil, but you are probably going to be affected by your new status in ways that have consequences that may be perhaps described expressively as evil, and that even if your intentions are pure, you will instinctively flock towards advocacy for the remaining, not so noble members of the billionaire club and towards replicating their behavior as you become socialized among them. And because of that will be more or less complicit in their collective effect on the world.

I mean, it is most apparent in the way people with vast amounts of money as a whole approach social problems they face, even those they experienced first hand as part of their identity prior to becoming rich. Regardless of their background, they are likely to embrace solutions that are at best not linked to the rest of society, or even actively hurt it - when they encounter crime and decay in urban areas around where they need to exist, their solution is to fortify themselves in gated communities, when they encounter failing public infrastructure that disadvantages people, their solution is to invest into a parallel, private system of infrastructure, when they have to deal with the effects of public education on their children, their solution is to make sure there's plenty of private schools to choose from and so on and so forth.

In short, if somebody like that chooses to become a policy maker, I don't think they are going to be able to overcome this habitual privilege that hurts the masses by being exclusionary and inefficient.

steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Jan 11, 2018

Kilroy
Oct 1, 2000

JeffersonClay posted:

I just wrote a bunch of posts about how neoliberalism actually exists but it's not the same thing as some people are asserting :shrug:

Incidentially the UK's NHS is one of the few policies which would not be neoliberal under the "employs markets to deliver services" definition so maybe the problem here is you don't know what you're talking about? Consider the possibility, at least.
The problem is that you're a dumb baby who picks stupid poo poo to nitpick over with the aim of proving that you're the smartest person in the thread, and people keep falling for it because, for whatever reason, it doesn't occur them that you could be this pedantic and annoying. And dumb.

Pointing out that neoliberals are coming from a place that is not that far off1, purely ideologically speaking, from laissez-faire capitalism, is not a particularly profound point to make. Like the first paragraph of the Wikipedia entry will tell you that soo... thanks for Googling for the rest of us? I guess? The part that you miss is that the people who are generally subscribing to this "ideology," as it were, are basically doing so in a naked defense of global capital. Whereas laissez-faire might, one hundred-fifty years ago, have been offered up as some kind of broader economic vision for society to organize around, neoliberalism is purely a tool used by the ruling class and its servants to inform how exactly they are going to gently caress over the rest of us and what excuses they are going to make as they do it. It is important to understand this distinction because then you will understand why it is hard to pin down neoliberals when they abandon their so-called ideals the instant they no longer serve the purpose of justifying oppression, or when it is necessary to ever-so-slightly ease up on the austerity and the boot crushing the neck of the oppressed (i.e. the rest of us) to barely avoid full-scale revolt. And that is precisely how something like the ACA can come directly from neoliberal technocrats, because neoliberals will put aside laissez-faire whenever they need a different tool of control.

The distinction you are trying to make, of neoliberalism in an economic sense, is irrelevant, because neoliberalism is a purely political tool. You see a contradiction where there is none.

In other words:

Kilroy posted:

JC is sort of right in that the philosophical underpinnings of neoliberalism look an awful lot like those of laissez-faire capitalism, but as usual he is only technically right on a minor point while missing the bigger picture, such as the history of 20th-century capitalism that led to the rise of neoliberals in the first place. And on that point they look rather a lot different from nineteenth-century laissez-faire capitalists.

Few people put together an arbitrary set of a priori philosophical principles and then just execute on them (some people convince themselves they do this, like e.g. JC here I expect), and so understanding that history is important to understanding where and when neoliberals will break from their stated ideology - because they will, just like anyone else. The fact that ACA isn't, very strictly speaking, a "neoliberal" policy makes for a curious anecdote, but that it was a policy dreamed up and executed by neoliberals - first by the GOP at the state level in MA and then by Democrats at the national level fifteen years later - is a matter of historical record. And to understand how and why that happened, and how to combat it, you need a deeper understanding of neoliberalism than "oh it's just synonymous with laissez-faire capitalism :smug:" completely divorced from any historical context.

1. Actually you said identical which is a whole other pedantic bullshit thing I could nitpick over if I were you, which thank goodness I am not.

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Nosfereefer
Jun 15, 2011

IF YOU FIND THIS POSTER OUTSIDE BYOB, PLEASE RETURN THEM. WE ARE VERY WORRIED AND WE MISS THEM
Musk/Zuckerberg 2020!

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