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In a serious suggestion, Progressives need the kind of spineless, shameless, manipulative liars that the Right has made part of their standard operating procedure. Not true believers who will throw themselves on pikes for the glorious revolution, but true believers who will take every advantage that is available. Don't just shine a light on the evils of racists and cops and prosecutors and billionaires and landlords and insurance companies and anti-LGBT organizations... fully fabricate lies about them that are even worse and more provocative. Ruin their lives with misinformation and libel and conspiracy theories. Apparently we live in a post-truth world, and there are literally no consequences for lying. It's the only weapon we have left that can actually affect the Right-wingers who have spent 40 years deconstructing worldwide democracy.
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Dec 16, 2019 04:09
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 07:45 |
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Amethyst posted:What makes you think a trustworthy leader will get to the top of the pack by lying? Why would that change the current system where the most cynical liar wins and sells out the movement immediately? Cynicism is the problem, but it's going to be hard to combat that if the idealists are forever out of power because the cynics just keep dunking on them.
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Dec 16, 2019 04:20
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UnknownTarget posted:These are all related and the idea that capitalism is not going to go away is correct. Capitalism is a very natural process. It's literally evolution, but in market form. Not only have the billionaires accumulated unfair amounts of wealth, they did it in ways that are at least impossible for the current generations (who can only try and buy wealth-producing things from the existing billionaires), and at worst directly gaining their wealth on the backs of conquest and genocide. The point of this analysis has multiple important points. One, the end of history isn't real; where the wealth in the billionaire class's hands came from is a relevant point. In the past, we considered it fair that we might close a loophole that let them get away with bad behavior, but don't take away their toys that they earned "legally". We're at the point where tracing the problems back to their roots and correcting them are necessary if we're going to have a functional society going forward. Two, recognizing the social truth that wealth literally equals power needs to inform our sense of justice. Making it difficult to concentrate wealth into billionaire-levels is socially necessary not out of jealousy or fairness, it's out of the need to maintain law and order and democracy. Whether that's from 95% marginal tax rates and economic "creative destruction" that make it impossible to keep a huge business profitable for too long, or strict antitrust regulation, or both, preventing generational concentrations of power from happening in the future (assuming we can break up the billionaires in the first place) is an important part of the social contract.
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Dec 16, 2019 20:11
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If ten people became billionaires in the tech boom, that kind of proves the point that it's just random luck and opportunism, not an actual feature of a society. edit: the biggest expenses for most people today are food and housing, both of which are constrained by land, and there's no more land without someone holding a deed and charging ever-increasing market rates to use, let alone own. That's what ran out during previous generations. Infinite Karma fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Dec 16, 2019 |
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Dec 16, 2019 22:56
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UnknownTarget posted:What's a left vs. what's a right solution for forcing the elite to be accountable for their actions? Destroy the elite vs. fantasize about being the elite.
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Dec 25, 2019 19:03
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Traditionally the left want to end the class war by removing the ruling class, and the right love the ruling class. But to answer the real question, holding elites accountable is virtually impossible. Whatever systems there are, they can be subverted to tilt towards the powerful (read: rich in modem times). So we make it extremely hard to hold on to power for long enough to make a difference. High marginal taxes, high property taxes, high corporate taxes, and high estate taxes, vacancy taxes, stock trading taxes... basically tax everything that allows capital to extract rents without performing labor, and keep the top of the market unstable so nobody can hold on to billions indefinitely. If there are a few billionaires who are able to capture the zeitgeist and ride success to fortunes we can't control, we build the system so that lightning-in-a-bottle success needs to be continually performed (which is impossible) to hold on to it. Markets can do some of the work as everybody else catches up and replaces the monopoly power of the lone genius.
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Dec 25, 2019 20:27
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 07:45 |
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There's no inherent reason that "the people who capture profit/excess value" need to be exclusively management and hierarchical decision makers. If workers owned the profits of their company instead of stockholders/investors, in addition to their salaries, and management wasn't able to set themselves disproportionate salaries, you have at least the start of a sustainable structure. Capitalists complain that entrepreneurs take risk and all kinds of other bullshit to justify them turning their small initial stake into a massive fortune when a venture succeeds. Removing founders as a privileged group and forcing separation of financial underwriting and executive control of businesses is the second part of making the structure workable.
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Dec 29, 2019 20:38
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