Modern Day Marxism

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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by Username17 »

You should always be on your guard when people say that something is a "moral question, not an economic one", or when people say that something is an "economic question, not a political one." There is simply no such thing as a question which affects economics and not politics, and there's no such thing as somehting that affects politics without having economic implications.

Sure, labels like Socialism and Democracy only refer to the economic or political spectrum, but there really isn't any change you can make that won't affect both spectrums. If somebody tells you that something is economic and not political, they are trying to take your voice away and make sweeping changes behind your back. If somebody tells you that something is a moral question and not an economic one, they are trying to get you to put your vote behind something that they don't think they can convince you is in your best interests. The "all economics" argument is the words of a tyrant. The "all morality" argument is the last refuge of someone with no logical arguments at all.

But remember guys, labels like "conservative" and "liberal" don't necessarily mean what you think they do. For those of you keeping track, here are the historical positions of many prominent social labels, which in modern times have been largely spin doctored into incoherence:

The Liberals: There's a reason that the ruling Liberal Party in Australia is what Americans would consider the Conservatives. The Liberal Agenda is to remove restrictions on Markets. That is, they want Capitalists to be able to do whatever they want with their money, and they want Laborers to be able to compete freely for jobs. Liberals are against tarriffs, and slavery, and predjudice, all because they interfere with an open market. They are also against taxation, government regulation, and even government oversight for the same reason. Liberals think that Slavery is wrong because it prevents free competition for jobs, and that the FDA is also wrong because it prevents free competition in the arena of creatively labelling food.

The Conservatives: Often confused with "conservationists", who are attempting to keep things (usually "the environment") about how they are now, the conservatives are interested in preserving the power of the powerful. Historically, that meant that conservatives represented the aristocracy, but they can stand in for really anyone who happens to be running the show at the moment. Part and parcel of protecting that power is of course expanding it. So the conservatives want the wealthy to be more wealthy, and the powerful to be more powerful.

So that's why Crossfire was such a piece of crap - when it comes to many of the important issues a Liberal voice and a Conservative one are identical. Sure, the Liberal wants the working man to be able to quit his job at will, and the conservative wants chicken fixing plants to be able to lock the doors on their employees - but when it comes to really important issues like "Should Tyson be able to package and sell unsafe meat?" or "Should Ford be alowed to force the labor force to compete for jobs against the starving inhabitants of Ethiopia?", the positions of those two groups is the same.

We don't have a political voice in the US that argues against capitalism, or even argues for power distribution ithin the capitalist system.

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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by Absentminded_Wizard »

There's a difference between classical liberals and modern liberals. The liberal position Frank outlined is classical liberalism, the language of which has been hijacked by many modern conservatives to advocate plutocracy*. Sometime around the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while conservatives were using the rhetoric of classical liberalism to nefarious ends, liberalism morphed into its modern form (socialism lite--lots of government regulations and social programs, but without government ownership of industry or an extensive European style welfare state). That's where the confusion comes from.

*But to be fair, some modern conservatives really are classical liberals. Milton Friedman explicitly calls himself one.
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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by PhoneLobster »

The labels of left and right, conservative, liberal, even to some extent socliaist or environmentalist cover broad swathes of the political spectrum and if you must be a total ass about it you can argue the terms until everything is meaningless and we vanish back into our own existentialist navels.

But the simple fact of the matter is that modern day western politics falls into several camps. The current ruling camp certain western countries (US, Australia, Britain) is, regardless of its name distinctly "right of center" using their OWN labelling system.

The seek to demolish unions, the middle class, welfare, public education, public health and public utilities. Regardless of the fact these are all vastly popular and successful programs.

And more importantly these are all programs implemented by those who predate the current representatives of the main opposing political tradition, by the labelling of the right, the left.

When I point out how popular these "lefty, commy, regulationist, etc..." policies are I use the words that the right use to point out that the political traditions they viliffy are responsible for the success of the society they lost control of and are currently managing to once again hi-jack.

As for whether regulationist policies are regularly associated with fluffy and humanitarian ideals, well, maybe not, just look at China. But they ARE pretty uniformly associated with the wealth and success of societies and ARE currently painted by the right as filthy borderline communist left wing insanity.

As such as a random grass roots member of what is painted as "the left" I am more than happy to adopt whole heartedly the successful and powerful policies of regulation and the happy friendly fluffy policies of social welfare. Because a combination like that will make "the left" an unbeatable brand name.

Really if "the right" keep on going with the "we are evil and greedy" plus the "we are irresponsible and unable to govern" policies they are walking a pretty crazy line when it comes to their own survival. Bush is a prime example, the only thing keeping him going now is support from rabid religious fanaticism, and he isn't even keeping THEM happy.
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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by Josh_Kablack »

PhoneLobster at [unixtime wrote:1120969744[/unixtime]] Bush is a prime example, the only thing keeping him going now is support from rabid religious fanaticism,


I can't tell if that's gross oversimplification or just wishful thinking.

Although the religious right is a key voting bloc for Bush and similar politicians within the Republican Party, it's hardly the only one. Bush enjoyed pretty widespread and broadbased support in his re-election bid where ~51% of the USA voted for him.

"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by dbb »

PhoneLobster at [unixtime wrote:1120969744[/unixtime]]
The seek to demolish unions, the middle class, welfare, public education, public health and public utilities.


PL, I have to ask, at this point, what part of the U.S. you live in.

My mother's family is almost entirely Southern Baptists from the deep South, from a state that went for Bush by 12 points in 2004 -- exactly the kind of people who are often talked about in horrified tones in the place where I presently live (northern California) as "Bible thumpers". If you asked them whether they supported this agenda -- you would be lucky to get only a funny look and a remark about the peculiar ideas people have about the South. (If you were unlucky, you might not get another invitation to tea.)

In fact -- between the northeast, the South, the west coast, and the midwest (all of which I've lived in at various times) -- I don't think any of them hold more than a tiny minority of people who think in the way you describe. The word we have for them is not "Conservative". It's "Libertarian", and -- if you look closely -- you will find that by and large they are almost as mad at Bush as the Green Party is. You will also find that they registered so few votes in the last election that CNN doesn't even list them on the main results page.

The vast majority of people in the U.S. don't want to demolish public health, public education, and public utilities -- they want more, cheaper, and better from them.

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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by The_Hanged_Man »

dbb at [unixtime wrote:1120869137[/unixtime]]You're going to give PL an aneurysm if he thinks you're calling him a "conservative commentator". :)

--d.


Sadly, today a lot of "liberal" commentators take as Gospel truth conservative propaganda. Things like "People of Faith are Republicans" and junk.
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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by Josh_Kablack »

dbb wrote:
The vast majority of people in the U.S. don't want to demolish public health, public education, and public utilities


Well I haven't actually heard anyone try to demolish "public health" I have heard some pretty scathing critiques of public assistance for health care or (heaven forfend) a Canadian style single payer system.

And as for public education, only one of my state's Senators supports it, and he took significant criticism for that position in his 2004 re-election debates.

And as for utilies...remind me why again we re-elected a close personal friend of Kenneth Lay?
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by dbb »

The general public doesn't necessarily want single-payer health care -- but try suggesting the removal of Medicare and Medicaid and see how far you get. What they want, essentially, is the Big Rock Candy Mountains -- they want the best health care possible, and they want it as cheap as possible, and ideally they want it free. A distrust of having government run the health care system should not be interpreted as a distrust of having government pay for their health care. This is a subject that's near and dear to my heart -- my spouse-to-be works in the health care industry, so I am frequently exposed to rants about how screwed up the present system is.

Having anything other than a state-run primary school system is such a fringe position that Bush -- who is nobody's idea of the teachers' unions' best buddy -- dumped approximately $22 billion more into education funding between 2001 and 2003, increasing spending on education essentially by half.

As for public utilities -- there's a difference between having public utilities, and having honestly run public utilities.

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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by Username17 »

Josh wrote:And as for utilies...remind me why again we re-elected a close personal friend of Kenneth Lay?


Because the election system of the US is that if the certified tally of states whose weighted totals are themselves more than half the electoral college individually are reported as having more votes for one candidate than any other that man becomes president.

And many states are currently using electronic vote counting machines that have no oversight and are created and run by close personal friends of Kenneth Lay. There are districts in Ohio where apparently ten times as many people voted for George W than actually are registered to vote in that district. If you just reduce George's votes to the actual number of people living in each district, Bush didn't take Ohio, and if he didn't take Ohio, Kerry should be president.

We'll never know if Bush got more votes than Kerry did over all, but it's damned obvious that by our own byzantine electoral system, he shouldn't be president now. In 2000, Gore really did get more votes in Florida than Bush did, and when the full count finally happened after it no longer mattered, that was confirmed without doubt. In the 2004 election, however, there are no longer records, which means that it is entirely possible that more people overall voted for Bush than for Kerry.

So that's why we re-elected him. It's because our presidential elections are only slightly more legit than Mexicos in the eighties. But as to why Bush could actually get enough votes that his cronies felt confident enough to fraud themselves the rest of the way - I have no good answer.

Part of it is that in the run-ups to the election, polls were conducted asking people what the Bush Administration's stance on various issues were, and Bush supporters got them wrong much more often than right.

For example: Bush supporters thought that the Bush administration said that Iraq had WMDs.

And Bush Supporters thought that he supported a wide array of treaties that he opposed. I mean, 84% of Bush supporters thought that Bush favored including labor and environmental standards in trade treaties! Where they got that, I have no idea, since he doesn't support those in US law.

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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by PhoneLobster »

wrote:PL, I have to ask, at this point, what part of the U.S. you live in.


I come from a geogrpahically large and population poor part of the US that is so disenfranchised that the president bosses us around and sends us to stupid wars, we implement all his stupid policies about a million years after the rest of the US has already proven them to be counter productive and we don't even get to vote in any US election.

We call it "Australia".

As to ideas about bible thumpers and Bush's re-election. Well, aside from the fact he stole the election (read the tech news some time, at least 47 provable major electoral errors, all coincidentally in his favour) he did get a big pile of votes and those voting for him fell into two camps. One of those camps voted for him for "moral" reasons, since he is utterly immoral its pretty clear that this is code for "we is hating womens rights to abotion, stem cells, muslims and evolution in schools and Bush boy panders to us a bit".

Just go looking for the articles about conservatives cock crowing about sith lord Rove's master electoral strategies that hinge upon the "evangelical" vote, watch them announce with pride how they made history in 2000 by proving that the evangelicals could give you the presidency when you had most other special interest groups stacked against you.

How true is it that "evangelicals" gave Bush his victories? Well the conservatives seem to believe it, the evangalicals seem to believe it. Bush continues to try to pander to them in his words if not his actions, which is more than he does for most.

The evangelicals are emboldened and openly claiming their victory, demanding Bush pays what he owes them, telling their supporters that now is the time to cement their control over the US. They even get junket trips to the white house. What the heck was Schiavo if not pandering to these loonies? Certainly the polls showed the majority of American citizens were disgusted, who else was it for?

One indicator of the power they now believe they hold in America is the sudden increase in challenges to the teaching of evolution, even attempts to have the very definition of SCIENCE changed in schools accross the US. And TWO test cases on public sponsored ten commandments in courts.

Its believed to have been so successful that OUR prime minister used the same trick to win OUR last federal election (Which he did with the support of ultra right Family First, a three month old front for our own america spawned loony evangelicals, the "Pentacostals" or however they spell it)

As to attacks on the great productive institutions of the left...

The republicans can't really destroy public health in your country because you don't have it. But they prevented a Clinton plan that would have moved you towards it, and have implemented their own plans which have moved away from it (and towards giving randomly huge amounts of tax payer money to private companies for no reason).

They ARE actively trying to destroy what little welfare system you have, according to the polls against massive popular resentment, (coincidentally giving randomly huge amounts of tax payer money to private companies for no reason).

Bush's "no child left behind" policy has been woefully underfunded (as in he keeps promising more than he supplies) and widely criticised by, you know, school boards, teachers, and everyone who knows everything, as having actually made things WORSE accross the whole country. It has even amazingly involved Bush's secretary of education publically referring to the National Education Association as a "Terrorist Organization". But then any plan that involves taking money AWAY from schools that perform badly is bound to be shite.

And as for unions, trade and responsible economics? You're kidding me right?

But don't think this is limited to your country, Bush is part of a world wide movement in policy and political thinking that ignores reality and history in favour of brutal dogma and faith in "free" markets and invisible sky fairies. We face the same thing here in the United States of Australia (on a somewhat delayed time table and starting from a more socially equitable origin).

And WE can't even blame Diebold voting machines directors who publically promise Bush the election in advance and call for their country to only give voting rights to Christians.

But we can blame the Americans for being a bad influence on little impressionable Johnny. Them and Tasmania.
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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by dbb »

Your conviction is obvious, and rather than make this thread any more contentious than it already is, I will merely express disagreement with a number of your points and leave it at that.

--d.

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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by dbb »

About the Ohio registered-cast totals: the only documentation (and fairly sparse documentation) I can find about this kind of thing is with Cuyahoga county, see:

here (scroll down for extract from the Cleveland Plain Dealer)

and
here

and

here
.

This should not be taken to represent a "no fraud" claim on my part -- one's trust in the Plain Dealer, the Chronicle, and the Post respectively will have a lot to say about whether you think the explanations they present are reasonable and accurate. As near as I can make out, the claim is that the "ballots cast" totals are thrown off because they're counted by city, not by distract, and (my guess) that gerrymandered districts result in some cities being part of 2 or 3 different districts.

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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by Neeek »


One of the articles wrote:"We're in the Bible Belt. There's still enough people that have got enough Christian in them that they vote their morals over the pocketbook and praise God, because I'm one of them," she said.


So, what she is saying is that these people vote, then lie about who they voted for when they walk out of the building (remember the exit polls were about 50% different from the votes themselves)? Sounds like a moral bunch of people to me. Oh wait.

Exit polls are so accurate, btw, that they are used by the US government to ensure the integrity of voting in other countries where elections might be tampered with.


Another one of the articles wrote:42578 Florida Broward 2004-11-02 13:33:31 PST Machine problem - machines
switching are switching vote kerry to bush -- this happens prior to
confirmation screen. {cr}{newline}{cr}{newline}- other voters complaining about
the same thing 12 11


One of several examples of this, mind, and that's only considering the people who both noticed it and complained.


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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by dbb »

On exit polls: I have found Mark Blumenthal's posts on the subject to be clear, convincing, and significantly demystifying. Blumenthal is no Republican hack -- he is a professional pollster for the Democratic party, so, if anything, you would expect a skew in the other direction. I invite you to read some of his material (see here for his "Frequently Asked Questions" on exit polls) and form your own opinion on them.

I will reserve comment on the Florida matter until I have some hard data, except to comment that if you are going to rig a machine to vote for the wrong person -- it would be a very odd choice to have it tell the voter he was voting for the wrong person, rather than telling him he was voting for the person he had intended to, and count the vote the other way.

I very much dislike the "no paper trail" problem of electronic balloting, and would prefer that it be eliminated entirely.

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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by PhoneLobster »

Somebody isn't looking very hard for articles about election stealing and the like in the US.

Certainly any google search with Diebold will net you plenty of material.

Like Diebold executive promising Ohio to Bush, here

What about this guy behind the funding to Diebold and ES&S voting machines? Howard Ahmanson. Here
, Sounds like a nice fellow doesn't he?

Major republican donors and religious fundies on their boards not enough? How about a senator who was unexpectedly elected by the machines? This
, is a rather nice article in general, dig down about half way to see the fun revolving around Hagel.

How secure is Diebold against rigging?
Here
This
That
And this

What about exit poll results? Apparently you guys had some of the most accurate exit polls in the world, oddly right up until the 2000 election and every major election since.
Here
, is a nice piece about exit polls and the odd bias of the discrepencies in the 2004 election. Its a nice site in general actually.

And just for a laugh check out this other job Diebold has landed... On their site

Now I've spent way too much time on this but I'm done. But there is A LOT more out there. Indeed my problem isn't a SHORTAGE of material its that there is way way too much.

I don't see too much point wasting my time finding more. If you don't know already you probably don't WANT to know, especially if you can't find anything on a search.

Hell you can go down to your local books store and buy books on this stuff, including some of the biggest sellers of the last decade. IT ISN'T HARD TO FIND.
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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by dbb »

You're entitled to your opinion. I do suggest you take a look at Blumenthal's site; he has a great deal to say on exit polls, and he has sufficient expertise on the subject to know what he's talking about.

I don't understand why you seem to feel that this line of discussion is somehow a personal attack that warrants your lashing out at me, but in all honesty, this is largely unimportant.

To your actual points: whether or not Diebold executives are Republicans or even Republican activists, this fact does not constitute any evidence of wrongdoing on their part, any more than it would if Diebold's actual programmers were -- like a majority of the programmers I know and work with -- Democrats.

That Chuck Hagel's opponent claims he cheated -- well, seriously; you've just been defeated in a race, by a margin so large that the state wouldn't even order a hand recount, by a man with ties to the electronic voting industry -- call me cynical, but accusing him of cheating is pretty much the obvious move there. Is there any evidence? Not that I can find in the article, just innuendo, and you can bet if Mother Jones had any evidence they wouldn't be covering it up -- the last time they had something nice to say about a Republican was about the 10th of Never.

Diebold's software is buggy and insecure? As someone who works in the computer industry, I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in this establishment. And if you'll look up a ways -- you'll see that I in fact support the elimination of no-paper-trail voting and, really, electronic voting entirely. But that Diebold systems are buggy and insecure is not evidence that fraud actually occurred. That's not to say there's no reason to doubt their veracity -- there's ample reason to doubt it. But there's a huge step between "these machines suck" and "these machines were used to steal the election".

Blumenthal deals with the exit poll question here. In short -- the exit polls have been inaccurate before, and one of the main exit pollsters in fact warned CNN in 2000 that they were getting less accurate, not more accurate.

There is indeed a lot of material out there. A lot of that material -- the vast majority of it -- is poorly sourced, poorly documented, written by someone with a partisan axe to grind in one direction or another, and often riddled with errors, misconceptions, and hyperbole. And that's exactly what we can't afford to rely on.

Voter fraud is a hugely important issue -- possibly (in fact, probably) the most important issue a democracy can face -- and it deserves to be treated seriously. It is absolutely vital that where it does occur, it be exposed, stamped out, and the perpetrators punished to the absolute fullest extent of the law -- and you will find me cheering the prosecutors on. That very importance obligates us to deal in the clearest, most convincing, most unimpeachable evidence we can find -- because if we get lazy, if we just settle for throwing stuff at the wall and seeing if we can get something to stick -- sooner, rather than later, something's going to get debunked, and then who's going to listen?

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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by Username17 »

I've gotta agree with Phone Lobster here. If you don't know that our elections are fixed, it's because you've voluntarily decided not to. That part of the discussion should be over.

Anyway, this caught my eye:

PL wrote:we implement all his stupid policies about a million years after the rest of the US has already proven them to be counter productive


You'd be speaking, most probably, about the Neo-Liberal economic agenda of the Bush Administration. Those policies have been proven time and time again to be self destructive, but I'm not sure whether they can be considered counter productive.

First, the way any Capitalist Economic Theory that is worthy of getting capitalized propagates itself is through management of demand. The classic invisible hand model, for instance, creates demand on the back of speculation. That means that four rich people have an idea for something that people might want, they each hire four people to make that thing, and then it turns out that only one of those things actually is something that people want, sixteen people have something they want (the employees of all four investors), three people are less rich, and one person has a lot more money. The problem is that if one person consistently guesses right, he gets all the money and no longer needs to speculate and noone has any money to buy things so noone else speculates either and the economy collapses.

The Keynesian method is a little different, and historically much more successful. You have the government get into wars and start social and employment programs, and the people paid by the government in these capacities act as a quasi-bottomless source of economic demand. Ideally this means that speculation will always occur, and jobs and stuff keep getting produced. It's never failed exactly, but like all capitalistic models it generates a lot of waste and ever increasing economic disparity.

But the Neo-Liberal model is a whole new approach that took the world by storm starting in the early eighties. You generate all demand by taking out huge loans and writing ennormous subsidies to all your friends. It's not stable, but is very successful. And here's why:

Neo-Liberalism can out-compete any other economic model ever devised.

How? Because competition in this case means getting people to buy your stuff such that you keep making a profit. The Neo-Liberalist economy is getting all of their production for free, because they are deferring all costs to future generations. That means that they are making a profit if people will buy their products at any price at all. Meanwhile, any "balanced standard" economy is going to be up a creek, because they have to sell their goods for no less than the total real production cost or close up shop.

So if you are trying to do some sort of crazy "responsible" economic policy, and some country across the ocean is going Neo-Liberalist, they will sell every product that you can make to your own people for less than it costs for you to make it yourselves. Ouch. Now you can take comfort from the fact that eventually they are going to have to pay the bill for all this, and that their economy is going to die a death that they might not be able to recover from - but the fact is that your economy is going to take that self same dive first.

The Neo-Liberalist Dumping Game is a deadly spiral, and no nation or economist has ever come up with a successful extrication policy. But the fact is that if you don't jump on that band wagon, that bandwagon is going to jump on you. So just about every nation in the world has elected to jump on, even nominally Communist countries like China and the Soviet Union. Of course, some nations have already collapsed under that strain, and others are on the brink of collapse.

In the United States, the stock market has gone up and down, but our jobs economy hasn't rebounded even in the wake of massive borrowing and wartime expenditures. Have you wondered why that is?

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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by dbb »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1121233545[/unixtime]]I've gotta agree with Phone Lobster here. If you don't know that our elections are fixed, it's because you've voluntarily decided not to. That part of the discussion should be over.


While I don't happen to agree with that sentiment -- and I won't try to argue you out of it, since I do have doubts about the trustworthiness of the existing election system (and I'm not sure I can imagine a system that would handle 300 million votes and not leave doubts) -- I appreciate your expressing it in a relatively noninflammatory way.

(Edit: originally, I had a question here, but honestly I don't think it's necessary, and I don't really want to be tempted to get further into this part of the discussion -- so I think I'll just snip it out.)

--d.
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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by PhoneLobster »

null wrote:You'd be speaking, most probably, about the Neo-Liberal economic agenda of the Bush Administration. Those policies have been proven time and time again to be self destructive, but I'm not sure whether they can be considered counter productive.


Well I probably could have worded it better, mostly by less specifically sourcing the stupid policies we adopt from the US (and also the UK) at Bush's feet. Its probably better to start with Thacher and Reagan and work out from there.

You are right to a certain extent about the borrowing and subsidy and so forth. But the agenda in question is more complex than that and includes a number of other major initiatives.

1) Privatization of everything. Utilities like power and water, communications and everything under the sun. Though a policy that is very unpopular with the public governments around the world STILL push the privatization of utilities as a means of making them cheaper and more efficient for the government, the citizen. Problem is that as innefficient as government run utilities may be privatized ones are WORSE. There are countless stories of privatization debacles, in my country and around the world, like privatized british rail and water, the california energy crisis, that big new york blackout thingy, the semi privatization of Telstra here, our own privatized and semi privatized power disasters here in various states of Australia etc...

2) The destruction of public education. I suppose this could be considered borrowing from a future generation, but the very next one, and its a bit complex. Beyond a shadow of a doubt education creates wealth, recent studies have shown pretty much the most productive thing you can have in a community to generate wealth and jobs is a University. We are moving toward a non subisidised University model similar to yours that has already decimated the sectors of education, science and medicine in Australia, but we keep moving in the same direction. Our universities currently face massive financial ruin if it weren't for full fee paying foriegn students, mostly from Asia. Unfortunately our universities are becoming lower standard and more crowded due to the cuts and are losing their reputation, while at the SAME TIME the Asian countries these students are coming from are throwing wads of money at brand new high quality education institutions. Within ten years we will be sending students to them!

3) Destruction of public health. Its not borrowing from a future generation to loot the public coffers. Its borrowing from THIS generations life and limb to do it. Here in Australia our public hospitals are increasingly underfunded and understaffed, meanwhile the public pays vast amounts of money to help fund so called private hospitals that are similarly undermanned (see destruction of education) more dangerous, more expensive and underproductive. And one of the biggest costs on our federal health budget? A massive private health insurance rebate to encourage people to jump into the private health system (against their own best interests). Worse the private health insurance companies have actually absorbed the rebate by raising prices so its just free money in THEIR pockets.

In addition to that there are other policies outside of the neo-liberal economic agenda that we adopt from the UK and US.

I pointed out earlier that conservatives in the US like to say how they now rely on "evangelicals", and like I said now our government does to. Our PM took that page right out of Rove's play book.

You know how Bush tried that whole anti gay marriage thing as a wedge issue? Guess who tried to copy that piece of crap (actually I think ours actually made it into law in a watered down but disgusting form).

Notice how Bush and co push the anti abortion agenda to pander to their fools. Right after the election handed to him in part by the same kind of Australian fools John took EXACTLY the same page from the US book to try and impinge on Australian abortion rights with an assualt on late term abortions and calls for a national abortion registry (both moves either recently applied to or attempted in the US to destroy womens fertility rights).

Bringing religion into schools, fighting against proper sex education in high schools, and many other things that are known to cause harm to society are applied here in some insane attempt to become more like the US.

I expect that within a matter of months we will see a sudden emergence of "Intelligent Design Controversy" and an Auzzie form of Schiavo (or perhaps Schapel is our Schiavo in a twisted nationalist/racist rather than theocratic way).

Anyway. There is more to it than a need for short term looting to compete on a purely economic scene. And might I add if this short term looting is so vital for success... whats up with Chile and Russia? And most of South America and Africa for that matter... They do all the looting like its a world bank wet dream.
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Count Arioch the 28th
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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Slightly off topic here, but I want to share anyway.

My buddy Matt and I were in a coffee shop. This young college girl was telling this old guy about her lesbian experiences. Thanks to the things I've learned in this thread, Matt and I had a very loud debate about economics, completely ruining the old guy's boner. (Unless socialism gives him wood.)

Best thing is, despite Matt being an economics major and knowing a lot mroe than I do, I managed to keep from looking stupid. (Not an easy feat for me at all.)
In this moment, I am Ur-phoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my int score.
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Crissa
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Re: Modern Day Marxism

Post by Crissa »

RandomCasualty at [unixtime wrote:1120161215[/unixtime]]Well, back then the strongest ruled. You still had alpha males, just like wolf packs do now. And that's the natural thing. Some people are rulers, some people are followers and the weak die off from natural selection.

More BS.

Greaaat.

Josh_Kablack at [unixtime wrote:1120975114[/unixtime]]Bush enjoyed pretty widespread and broadbased support in his re-election bid where ~51% of the USA voted for him.

He had 51% of the vote. As pointed out earlier, the majority in the USA do not vote, either because they do not care, or because the government or workplace disenfranchises them against voting; see 'Right to Work' laws and State Identification requirements.

RandomCasualty at [unixtime wrote:1120250265[/unixtime]]
The selfless are in fact 'weak' in Darwinian standards, they're the ones that go hungry and die.

Untrue.

Humans are a tribal animal, and the success of one's genes has more to do with the success of your tribe than your personal success.

Explain, under Darwinian rules, why humans would have menopause when most other animals, and all other mammals, do not? Out living a certain age does not work; people have lived to ripe ages in a community for thousands of years - also, given a proper diet, other primates do not suffer this, even though they live twice as long in captivity.

RandomCasualty at [unixtime wrote:1120761881[/unixtime]]People are still riding bikes to work over there.

This is bad how? I ride a bicycle to work... So does my spouse. It's cheaper, less impact on the environment, is healthy, and has a similar range.

dbb at [unixtime wrote:1121093818[/unixtime]]PL, I have to ask, at this point, what part of the U.S. you live in.

...

The vast majority of people in the U.S. don't want to demolish public health, public education, and public utilities -- they want more, cheaper, and better from them.

And less taxes, less 'regulation'. This is exactly the 'voting against their best interests' that has been mentioned before.

While they may be for these things, it is the stated policy, though not the rhetoric, of the Republican leadership.

-Crissa
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