7 ms·

Populism is the result of global economic failure

46 points by mathoff 10y ago

s_kilk 10y ago
Basically: neoliberalism is shit and everyone hates it. People who are deeply invested in this ghastly status-quo quake at the prospect of the proles finally demanding a less insane mode of economy, hence all the blithering about populism.
- erelde 10y ago
  USA "proles" fell for populism and elected the worst neocapitalist team possible, against their own interests, that's what we're talking about when we talk about "populism". By and large people (demographically) who voted for the democrats won't be much affected by the GOP gov, but the people who voted for the GOP will be badly affected. If a mod comes here, I vote for closing this post, I feel it is very very prone to political flame wars.
  - dukeluke 10y ago
    I agree this post is prone to a flame war, but it's also a really important conversation for people to have. Many people don't understand why the election went the way that it did. How can we discuss this important topic correctly?
  - DarkKomunalec 10y ago
    Sharing your country and resources with immigrants is also against one's self-interest, but we don't label that as irrational.
    - lumberjack 10y ago
      How about your stop shitting on immigrants and blaming them for everything? It only fosters irrational hate and causes unnecessary violence. It's not like those immigrants are occupying good paying low skill jobs that could otherwise be done by Americans. They do fruit picking in California for below minimum wage. Immigration is used as a scapegoat. Look at Germany. They have the same policies. They have immigration. They have open borders and they have free trade policies and they fully embrace globalism. Yet Germany retained its high paying relatively low skill jobs and the US didn't. The reason is simply that the various CEOs in the respective countries decided on different business strategies. In the US it seems they decided to go with low cost manufacturing in China/Mexico.
      - DarkKomunalec 10y ago
        Immigration increases the supply of low-skilled labour, thus lowering wages. And since a good deal of the US economy is based on exporting, the increase in the demand for labour due to the presence of immigrants is smaller (i.e., they don't have to be in the US to buy iPhones and Snickers bars). Finally, people are naturally tribalistic - you can blame evolution for that one. Until we fix that, immigration will increase ethnic tensions, which serve as a distraction for corporations to use while they rob you. But I guess I'm just being irrational..
        Sone7 10y ago
        It does seem a little bit irrational to state that immigration is being used by corps to distract us, while ignoring the positive aspects of it. Also, saying that people are naturally tribalistic, because of evolution, fails to take into account that we're not slaves to our impulses, and that evolution blatantly favours cooperation over competition.
        DarkKomunalec 10y ago
        Tribalism is as much about cooperation as about competition - help the virtuous Us to drive out the villainous Them. It makes it no less easy to abuse however, e.g. "Look at those no-good black welfare queens with their 12 kids paid for by good honest white people! Cut social spending!"
        candiodari 10y ago
        Some credit should be given to the war cry of the current (still pretty much current) regime : let's help the favored classes (I would say the weak, but lots of weak classes find themselves excluded) and everything will get better for everyone ! And then, for about 16 years, since the crisis of 2000 ... it didn't get better for everyone. Real income has been dropping since the 1980s, but it was almost steady until 1999. And then healthcare, fuel/energy and education really exploded. Of course this is the result of the crisis in 2008, which was of course not caused in 2008, but before then. Obama got elected on the same platform as Trump, really. He was going to change things. Hope and change. The famous blue and red posters, his own characteristic style, all very memorable and well executed. An abundance of hope, but I must say the change was found somewhat lacking. Despite a nobel peace prize, Guantanamo was not closed, and there was a massive 2008 crisis, rather than a recovery (yes Obama promised an economic recovery from the situation BEFORE the 2008 crisis, remember ? The Bush tax cuts were the big bogeyman at the time). Then the experience of the crisis came. Even if you weren't one of the people who kept the debt but lost their home, very few people did well during the crisis. Then there was the initial pullback, but aside from the 1% with lots of stocks nobody was really made whole. Then the FED "fixed" this. They came up with what's commonly known as the "PCE deflator" because of oil. You see, because of the huge fuel/energy price rise people were using much less energy, and as a result it shouldn't be counted in inflation (or else inflation would have been close to 10%). Likewise, people use less housing, same reasoning. That's great, but ... people still had less fuel/energy as a result, the banks just refused to count that as inflation. There's a famous Y Combinator article titled "There's a remarkable correlation between the quality of life and energy use". Likewise people have enjoyed less housing, all of which is not counted ... Despite this massive adjustment to favor economic indicators under Obama, his policies have not improved the situation of the average American. All together I would say that, on a large average, and without counting inflation, Americans have gotten back about half of what they lost in the 2008 crisis. Counting CPI inflation sadly I'd say it's more like 20%. And now they elect the other party. The response "They must be evil racists !" (because let's be honest, "tribalism" is no more than a euphemism) seems like it might be missing the point a bit, aside from being entirely unhelpful.
  - gremlinsinc 10y ago
    Ben studebaker called the rise of Trump in his article which had a really broad overview of what neoliberalism is, and he basically postulated that it's on the way out and we can EITHER have Nationalism (Trump) or Egalitarianism (Bernie Sanders)... sadly for America, he was ABSOLUTELY right, but nationalism won out... But that might not hold true, as we can easily flip flop back and forth till one side shows true progress at fixing the shit wrong with America. https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2016/02/10/why-bernie-sanders-is-more-electable-than-people-think/ https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2016/02/10/why-bernie-sanders... That was written last February back when people actually thought it insane that Hillary Clinton could lose to Donald Trump -- doesn't sound so crazy now though.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  > neoliberalism is shit and everyone hates it. Is this similar to how democracy is the worst system of governance except for all the others? What's terrible about neoliberalism that a more populist route will fix without being worse in other ways?
  - arethuza 10y ago
    I think the problem is that neoliberalism is an ideology and suffers the same problem as all other ideologies - their advocates only care about purism of concepts and not whether things work or don't work in the real world. e.g. I'm rather happy with our socialist NHS in the UK - I don't want socialism in many other areas but for health it seems to have made sense. I don't want an ideologue coming along and trying to dismantle it just because they disagree with the founding concepts rather than how it actually works.
  - gremlinsinc 10y ago
    Neoliberalism, and for that matter democracy (our Republic actually, since USA isn't a democracy) WAS devised by the 'elite' class. -- Washington, Jefferson, et al were all the elites of their times, Jefferson was a very rich slave owner. The problem I think is we get tied to the 'historical' or national pride of the constitution when there's many flaws in the way our government was setup, and it was always a rigged game - rigged for those with money/economic sway. There has never been a gov't yet that really put the needs of it's poorest people at the forefront of the constitution. (Some european countries come close like Denmark) -- but only after recent changes in the past 100 years -- the problem is changing ANYTHING in a country as big as America with a political establishment that contols BOTH parties is nearly impossible. Should we blindly follow people who are rich enough to command others? Now that we have the internet/technology why can't we have where we vote on issues, or pick ANYBODY we admire and trust to vote for us? -- I don't want to vote on all tech stuff so I might delegate my vote to Bill Gates on issues tagged 'tech', environmental stuff I'd delegate to Bill Nye, etc.. They could vote or re-delegate their collective votes to someone else like Bernie Sanders, or John Mccain.
gkya 10y ago
Populism is the failure of compulsory education and the beginnings of the fall of the 20th century western nation-state. The system favours the more-popular over the objectively-superior, and the biased, ancient mass schooling makes that the rule instead of the exception. We'll have to abolish nations and any sort of tribalism---how sophisticated might it be---or it'll decay by itself hurting everybody until it disappears.
- Mikeb85 10y ago
  So you're suggesting more indoctrination and the abolition of states aka. conquest and colonialism? Because the way we're going, there's going to be another world war long before people willingly succumb to a global state...
  - gkya 10y ago
    I'm not suggesting those, nor am I suggesting anything at all. I just say what I think the reasons and the future trajectory is. No need to be binary about the potential political changes. I only say that nation-states are bad, I din't say that states per se are bad. Also, the next world war won't be before anything but the end of all of us. I didn't ever say anything about a global state, but what I think indeed is that, analogous to programming, state should be contained in the smallest possible context, that is, I think that smaller, more focused states with more direct democracy and with more (respective to today's nation-states) people that indeed share common values, would be more stable and peaceful. I know that such an idea will get many objections (even I do have my objections), but I believe such a political situation would be better for everyone.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  There's no lack of education that makes people accept other people that don't share your values (like secularism) and are against what you stand for. Unless by "education" you mean brainwashing, which is something totalitarian states excel at (horseshoe theory and all)
  - gkya 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
grabcocque 10y ago
This is the same argument left academics have been using to excuse the repeated failure of electorates to vote for socialism for a century. It's not a new argument. And it nicely avoids left wing thought ever having to take responsibility for its own electoral failures.
- lumberjack 10y ago
  That's true. In the Netherlands the centre-left just lost a huge amount of seats. People voted for socialism when socialists had good ideas like building the welfare state or reforming healthcare to make it more inclusive. Nowadays they don't want to deviate from the same economic policies that the centre-right proposes. So then what's the point of voting for them?
- ue_ 10y ago
  Can you give any more references to the sort of thing you're talking about? I believe it's lack of significant class consciousness and the large-scale remnants of propaganda from the Cold War (on which many if not most people are misinformed about Socialism) which are the biggest obstacles to electing a Socialist candidate.
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    What's there to be misinformed about socialism when they gave us the Berlin Wall and big socioeconomic disadvantages that were not solved even in East Germany today (not to mention Eastern Europe as a whole). Those are facts, not misinformation. Not to mention the usual excuses of "not real socialism" And those were the ones who got the "best" socialism "Class consciousness" is divide and conquer crap
    - ue_ 10y ago
      > Not to mention the usual excuses of "not real socialism" I feel as though I've gone into this a thousand times. If I had a penny for every time someone said this, I'd invest in stocks and shares and become a capitalist. The act of refusing to back up or defend all or any implementations or interpretations of an idea, especially given pre-existing economic conditions and various external factors is by no means making a No True Scotsman fallacy. Even if I were to accept your premise that Socialism actually existed in GDR, it wouldn't rule out anarcho-Communism, anarchism, communalism, gradualist Communism, non-Leninist Marxism and a whole host of other leftist ideologies. Class consciousness refers to the proletariat recognising their interests as a class; it is only divide and conquer in the sense that recognising the division of society (albeit a little more fuzzy nowadays) between the bourgeoisie and proletariat is a startig point to conquer capitalism.
stat_enthusiast 10y ago
Honestly this is a terrible article. I don't know why these "journalists" have such a hard time stepping out of their bubble. Ask a trump supporter it's great for me but it blows my mind how ignorant these cosmopolitans are. I just hope they keep their head in the sand so we can get another 4 years
- zzalpha 10y ago
  You do realize you haven't said anything of any substance, right? I believe an accurate summary would be as follows: "Terrible article. Bad. Ignorant elites. Wrong." Care to provide any useful insight? Just... something?
zip1234 10y ago
I see Donald Trump and Brexit more as a protest against the status quo--which does not mean that the entire system is terrible. It could just mean that people want reforms that benefit the public good and not just some Senator's home state.
- tunap 10y ago
  Many people rationalized their vote for Trump as a) Not HRC and b) looking for the "change" that was never realized by the last admin. We got both, although we most likely won:t get the "change" we were intending.
- dukeluke 10y ago
  An issue with the current system is that while the people wanted a change candidate, our two-party political system almost successfully suppressed a change candidate from emerging from both sides, and _did_ successfully suppress one of them, Sanders. If the political system can't adapt to change, then how can it successfully evolve?
friedman23 10y ago
I find it extremely amusing when one side bashes the other for being anti intellectual and then goes on to bash economists. Anyway, I stopped reading at wage slave, what a load of crap.
- Sone7 10y ago
  Er, mainstream economists. Considering their record, mainstream economists seem far more anti-intellectual than most of their 'bashers'. Though your handle suggests this might be hard for you to swallow. Also, wage slaves do exist. America is full of them, and it's very much deliberate and intentional. I knew an extremely kind and bubbly lady with the incredible skill of recognizing every one she's ever met, no matter how long ago. She could remember their name, and the names of their whole family. She worked two crap paying full-time jobs to support her small family, and did not have any options, because of America's totally fucked welfare system. That's a wage slave. With respect, if you think wage slavery isn't a thing in America you're in a very strange bubble.
  - friedman23 10y ago
    > Considering their record, mainstream economists seem far more anti-intellectual than most of their 'bashers' You don't explain why you believe this. Please go ahead and explain why you believe that economists are anti intellectuals and please explain what their horrible record is. > She worked two crap paying full-time jobs to support her small family, and did not have any options, because of America's totally fucked welfare system. That's a wage slave. No you don't understand. I know that a term called 'wage slave' exists and that people have given it definition that is completely unrelated to what actual slavery is. I think it is insulting to the actual slavery that still exists on this planet. Suffering because of your stupid life decisions is not slavery.
    - Sone7 10y ago
      Alright, I'll do my best. Your ignorant comment about people's "stupid life decisions" (ever hear of a thing called "bad luck"?) suggests I'll be pissing into the wind, but alright. Most mainstream economists (with a few 'sort of' exceptions like Hayek and Krugman) think of their field as a science, when it's really not. They speak as if they had authority and empirical evidence, when they really don't. They allow economic warfare against Africa, South America, poor Americans, Greece, Italy, Ireland, etc. to go unchecked. They issue recommendations that consistently favour the wealthiest, the central banks, the status quo. Those who differ, such as Varoufakis, are ridiculed and chuckled at, while ignoring their arguments. They lack any introspection or ability to examine their mistakes. Few, very few, mainstream economists chose to make their voices heard about the economic crash of '08. Contrary to the myth they spread that it was "unforeseeable", many people knew that house prices were getting way out of control. I knew, my friends knew, but somehow economists didn't know... Goldman and others deliberately sold shitty bundles, and mainstream economists let them off the hook completely, even when the facts came to light. Now it's happening again, and they're still silent. They quote Adam Smith to support their arguments, though he would have hated the system we have now. Alternative views to the dogma of mainstream 'economic theory' are mocked, rather than engaged with. In the history of economic brutality - colonialism, apartheid, the financing of wars - there are very precious few economists willing to speak up about the effects on the least well off. They get denounced as naive, and have trouble finding jobs. Where are the mainstream economists talking about the future of our species, the ones with some fucking vision, some foresight, some creativity, some unique thought, some compassion? Unem-fucking-ployed, that's where. Almost by definition, mainstream economists refuse to challenge the status quo. And the status quo is fucked for the vast majority of human beings. We are nowhere near our potential, and mainstream economists spend their time debating miniscule changes in tax policy. Despite the economic impact and effects of unchecked global surveillance, they say nothing. Despite the economic impact of continuous increases in military spending, they say nothing. They'd lose their cushy job, and deep down they fucking know it. And after all that, they only speak up whenever someone comes along who wants to help people and bring them together. They're trotted out on Fox News and CNN to denounce Bernie Sanders' economic policies, despite the fact that those policies are practically substandard in Europe. What did they say about Trump? In comparison, nothing. And yes, "actual slavery" exists. But in what economic course in the world do students grapple with those issues? Where are the leading lights, the clear voices in economics telling us what we can do about it? Feel free to tell me how wacky, unrealistic and naive I'm being. Projection is a funny 'ol thing. But here's your major clue that they're full of shit, and anti-intellectual - in the history of mainstream economists, time and time again they've been proven utterly wrong about major things. "Trickle-down", "austerity", "cutting taxes on the rich drives growth", Brexit, Trump, '08. But there's never any reflection, never any expansion into inter-disciplinary approaches. Economics, as taught today, tries to make people simple, cogs in a vast machine that only economists can understand. And even though they've been wrong more often than nutrionists, and more catastrophically, the text-books stay the same. Inequality grows, and we're told it's a good thing. Too many times economists have told us it's raining while we're being pissed on. The real, respected, popular intellectuals - Feynman, Sagan, Einstein, Chomsky tell us that mainstream economists are full of shit, and they've saif it far more eloquently than I could. But economists sniff, and scoff, and laugh at how ignorant they are, before calling poor people stupid and endorsing the latest scam on the people of Earth. I haven't had breakfast yet, so I hope this doesn't come across too harsh. I'm sure I made some mistakes, and I know I swore a lot. Rather than nit-pick, please engage with the major points.

46 points by mathoff 10y ago

Basically: neoliberalism is shit and everyone hates it. People who are deeply invested in this ghastly status-quo quake at the prospect of the proles finally demanding a less insane mode of economy, hence all the blithering about populism.

erelde 10y ago
USA "proles" fell for populism and elected the worst neocapitalist team possible, against their own interests, that's what we're talking about when we talk about "populism". By and large people (demographically) who voted for the democrats won't be much affected by the GOP gov, but the people who voted for the GOP will be badly affected. If a mod comes here, I vote for closing this post, I feel it is very very prone to political flame wars.
- dukeluke 10y ago
  I agree this post is prone to a flame war, but it's also a really important conversation for people to have. Many people don't understand why the election went the way that it did. How can we discuss this important topic correctly?
- DarkKomunalec 10y ago
  Sharing your country and resources with immigrants is also against one's self-interest, but we don't label that as irrational.
  - lumberjack 10y ago
    How about your stop shitting on immigrants and blaming them for everything? It only fosters irrational hate and causes unnecessary violence. It's not like those immigrants are occupying good paying low skill jobs that could otherwise be done by Americans. They do fruit picking in California for below minimum wage. Immigration is used as a scapegoat. Look at Germany. They have the same policies. They have immigration. They have open borders and they have free trade policies and they fully embrace globalism. Yet Germany retained its high paying relatively low skill jobs and the US didn't. The reason is simply that the various CEOs in the respective countries decided on different business strategies. In the US it seems they decided to go with low cost manufacturing in China/Mexico.
    - DarkKomunalec 10y ago
      Immigration increases the supply of low-skilled labour, thus lowering wages. And since a good deal of the US economy is based on exporting, the increase in the demand for labour due to the presence of immigrants is smaller (i.e., they don't have to be in the US to buy iPhones and Snickers bars). Finally, people are naturally tribalistic - you can blame evolution for that one. Until we fix that, immigration will increase ethnic tensions, which serve as a distraction for corporations to use while they rob you. But I guess I'm just being irrational..
      - Sone7 10y ago
        It does seem a little bit irrational to state that immigration is being used by corps to distract us, while ignoring the positive aspects of it. Also, saying that people are naturally tribalistic, because of evolution, fails to take into account that we're not slaves to our impulses, and that evolution blatantly favours cooperation over competition.
        DarkKomunalec 10y ago
        Tribalism is as much about cooperation as about competition - help the virtuous Us to drive out the villainous Them. It makes it no less easy to abuse however, e.g. "Look at those no-good black welfare queens with their 12 kids paid for by good honest white people! Cut social spending!"
        candiodari 10y ago
        Some credit should be given to the war cry of the current (still pretty much current) regime : let's help the favored classes (I would say the weak, but lots of weak classes find themselves excluded) and everything will get better for everyone ! And then, for about 16 years, since the crisis of 2000 ... it didn't get better for everyone. Real income has been dropping since the 1980s, but it was almost steady until 1999. And then healthcare, fuel/energy and education really exploded. Of course this is the result of the crisis in 2008, which was of course not caused in 2008, but before then. Obama got elected on the same platform as Trump, really. He was going to change things. Hope and change. The famous blue and red posters, his own characteristic style, all very memorable and well executed. An abundance of hope, but I must say the change was found somewhat lacking. Despite a nobel peace prize, Guantanamo was not closed, and there was a massive 2008 crisis, rather than a recovery (yes Obama promised an economic recovery from the situation BEFORE the 2008 crisis, remember ? The Bush tax cuts were the big bogeyman at the time). Then the experience of the crisis came. Even if you weren't one of the people who kept the debt but lost their home, very few people did well during the crisis. Then there was the initial pullback, but aside from the 1% with lots of stocks nobody was really made whole. Then the FED "fixed" this. They came up with what's commonly known as the "PCE deflator" because of oil. You see, because of the huge fuel/energy price rise people were using much less energy, and as a result it shouldn't be counted in inflation (or else inflation would have been close to 10%). Likewise, people use less housing, same reasoning. That's great, but ... people still had less fuel/energy as a result, the banks just refused to count that as inflation. There's a famous Y Combinator article titled "There's a remarkable correlation between the quality of life and energy use". Likewise people have enjoyed less housing, all of which is not counted ... Despite this massive adjustment to favor economic indicators under Obama, his policies have not improved the situation of the average American. All together I would say that, on a large average, and without counting inflation, Americans have gotten back about half of what they lost in the 2008 crisis. Counting CPI inflation sadly I'd say it's more like 20%. And now they elect the other party. The response "They must be evil racists !" (because let's be honest, "tribalism" is no more than a euphemism) seems like it might be missing the point a bit, aside from being entirely unhelpful.
- gremlinsinc 10y ago
  Ben studebaker called the rise of Trump in his article which had a really broad overview of what neoliberalism is, and he basically postulated that it's on the way out and we can EITHER have Nationalism (Trump) or Egalitarianism (Bernie Sanders)... sadly for America, he was ABSOLUTELY right, but nationalism won out... But that might not hold true, as we can easily flip flop back and forth till one side shows true progress at fixing the shit wrong with America. https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2016/02/10/why-bernie-sanders-is-more-electable-than-people-think/ https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2016/02/10/why-bernie-sanders... That was written last February back when people actually thought it insane that Hillary Clinton could lose to Donald Trump -- doesn't sound so crazy now though.
TulliusCicero 10y ago
> neoliberalism is shit and everyone hates it. Is this similar to how democracy is the worst system of governance except for all the others? What's terrible about neoliberalism that a more populist route will fix without being worse in other ways?
- arethuza 10y ago
  I think the problem is that neoliberalism is an ideology and suffers the same problem as all other ideologies - their advocates only care about purism of concepts and not whether things work or don't work in the real world. e.g. I'm rather happy with our socialist NHS in the UK - I don't want socialism in many other areas but for health it seems to have made sense. I don't want an ideologue coming along and trying to dismantle it just because they disagree with the founding concepts rather than how it actually works.
- gremlinsinc 10y ago
  Neoliberalism, and for that matter democracy (our Republic actually, since USA isn't a democracy) WAS devised by the 'elite' class. -- Washington, Jefferson, et al were all the elites of their times, Jefferson was a very rich slave owner. The problem I think is we get tied to the 'historical' or national pride of the constitution when there's many flaws in the way our government was setup, and it was always a rigged game - rigged for those with money/economic sway. There has never been a gov't yet that really put the needs of it's poorest people at the forefront of the constitution. (Some european countries come close like Denmark) -- but only after recent changes in the past 100 years -- the problem is changing ANYTHING in a country as big as America with a political establishment that contols BOTH parties is nearly impossible. Should we blindly follow people who are rich enough to command others? Now that we have the internet/technology why can't we have where we vote on issues, or pick ANYBODY we admire and trust to vote for us? -- I don't want to vote on all tech stuff so I might delegate my vote to Bill Gates on issues tagged 'tech', environmental stuff I'd delegate to Bill Nye, etc.. They could vote or re-delegate their collective votes to someone else like Bernie Sanders, or John Mccain.

gkya 10y ago

Populism is the failure of compulsory education and the beginnings of the fall of the 20th century western nation-state. The system favours the more-popular over the objectively-superior, and the biased, ancient mass schooling makes that the rule instead of the exception. We'll have to abolish nations and any sort of tribalism---how sophisticated might it be---or it'll decay by itself hurting everybody until it disappears.

Mikeb85 10y ago
So you're suggesting more indoctrination and the abolition of states aka. conquest and colonialism? Because the way we're going, there's going to be another world war long before people willingly succumb to a global state...
- gkya 10y ago
  I'm not suggesting those, nor am I suggesting anything at all. I just say what I think the reasons and the future trajectory is. No need to be binary about the potential political changes. I only say that nation-states are bad, I din't say that states per se are bad. Also, the next world war won't be before anything but the end of all of us. I didn't ever say anything about a global state, but what I think indeed is that, analogous to programming, state should be contained in the smallest possible context, that is, I think that smaller, more focused states with more direct democracy and with more (respective to today's nation-states) people that indeed share common values, would be more stable and peaceful. I know that such an idea will get many objections (even I do have my objections), but I believe such a political situation would be better for everyone.
raverbashing 10y ago
There's no lack of education that makes people accept other people that don't share your values (like secularism) and are against what you stand for. Unless by "education" you mean brainwashing, which is something totalitarian states excel at (horseshoe theory and all)
- gkya 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

grabcocque 10y ago

This is the same argument left academics have been using to excuse the repeated failure of electorates to vote for socialism for a century. It's not a new argument. And it nicely avoids left wing thought ever having to take responsibility for its own electoral failures.

lumberjack 10y ago
That's true. In the Netherlands the centre-left just lost a huge amount of seats. People voted for socialism when socialists had good ideas like building the welfare state or reforming healthcare to make it more inclusive. Nowadays they don't want to deviate from the same economic policies that the centre-right proposes. So then what's the point of voting for them?
ue_ 10y ago
Can you give any more references to the sort of thing you're talking about? I believe it's lack of significant class consciousness and the large-scale remnants of propaganda from the Cold War (on which many if not most people are misinformed about Socialism) which are the biggest obstacles to electing a Socialist candidate.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  What's there to be misinformed about socialism when they gave us the Berlin Wall and big socioeconomic disadvantages that were not solved even in East Germany today (not to mention Eastern Europe as a whole). Those are facts, not misinformation. Not to mention the usual excuses of "not real socialism" And those were the ones who got the "best" socialism "Class consciousness" is divide and conquer crap
  - ue_ 10y ago
    > Not to mention the usual excuses of "not real socialism" I feel as though I've gone into this a thousand times. If I had a penny for every time someone said this, I'd invest in stocks and shares and become a capitalist. The act of refusing to back up or defend all or any implementations or interpretations of an idea, especially given pre-existing economic conditions and various external factors is by no means making a No True Scotsman fallacy. Even if I were to accept your premise that Socialism actually existed in GDR, it wouldn't rule out anarcho-Communism, anarchism, communalism, gradualist Communism, non-Leninist Marxism and a whole host of other leftist ideologies. Class consciousness refers to the proletariat recognising their interests as a class; it is only divide and conquer in the sense that recognising the division of society (albeit a little more fuzzy nowadays) between the bourgeoisie and proletariat is a startig point to conquer capitalism.

stat_enthusiast 10y ago

Honestly this is a terrible article. I don't know why these "journalists" have such a hard time stepping out of their bubble. Ask a trump supporter it's great for me but it blows my mind how ignorant these cosmopolitans are. I just hope they keep their head in the sand so we can get another 4 years

zzalpha 10y ago
You do realize you haven't said anything of any substance, right? I believe an accurate summary would be as follows: "Terrible article. Bad. Ignorant elites. Wrong." Care to provide any useful insight? Just... something?

zip1234 10y ago

I see Donald Trump and Brexit more as a protest against the status quo--which does not mean that the entire system is terrible. It could just mean that people want reforms that benefit the public good and not just some Senator's home state.

tunap 10y ago
Many people rationalized their vote for Trump as a) Not HRC and b) looking for the "change" that was never realized by the last admin. We got both, although we most likely won:t get the "change" we were intending.
dukeluke 10y ago
An issue with the current system is that while the people wanted a change candidate, our two-party political system almost successfully suppressed a change candidate from emerging from both sides, and _did_ successfully suppress one of them, Sanders. If the political system can't adapt to change, then how can it successfully evolve?

friedman23 10y ago

I find it extremely amusing when one side bashes the other for being anti intellectual and then goes on to bash economists. Anyway, I stopped reading at wage slave, what a load of crap.

Sone7 10y ago
Er, mainstream economists. Considering their record, mainstream economists seem far more anti-intellectual than most of their 'bashers'. Though your handle suggests this might be hard for you to swallow. Also, wage slaves do exist. America is full of them, and it's very much deliberate and intentional. I knew an extremely kind and bubbly lady with the incredible skill of recognizing every one she's ever met, no matter how long ago. She could remember their name, and the names of their whole family. She worked two crap paying full-time jobs to support her small family, and did not have any options, because of America's totally fucked welfare system. That's a wage slave. With respect, if you think wage slavery isn't a thing in America you're in a very strange bubble.
- friedman23 10y ago
  > Considering their record, mainstream economists seem far more anti-intellectual than most of their 'bashers' You don't explain why you believe this. Please go ahead and explain why you believe that economists are anti intellectuals and please explain what their horrible record is. > She worked two crap paying full-time jobs to support her small family, and did not have any options, because of America's totally fucked welfare system. That's a wage slave. No you don't understand. I know that a term called 'wage slave' exists and that people have given it definition that is completely unrelated to what actual slavery is. I think it is insulting to the actual slavery that still exists on this planet. Suffering because of your stupid life decisions is not slavery.
  - Sone7 10y ago
    Alright, I'll do my best. Your ignorant comment about people's "stupid life decisions" (ever hear of a thing called "bad luck"?) suggests I'll be pissing into the wind, but alright. Most mainstream economists (with a few 'sort of' exceptions like Hayek and Krugman) think of their field as a science, when it's really not. They speak as if they had authority and empirical evidence, when they really don't. They allow economic warfare against Africa, South America, poor Americans, Greece, Italy, Ireland, etc. to go unchecked. They issue recommendations that consistently favour the wealthiest, the central banks, the status quo. Those who differ, such as Varoufakis, are ridiculed and chuckled at, while ignoring their arguments. They lack any introspection or ability to examine their mistakes. Few, very few, mainstream economists chose to make their voices heard about the economic crash of '08. Contrary to the myth they spread that it was "unforeseeable", many people knew that house prices were getting way out of control. I knew, my friends knew, but somehow economists didn't know... Goldman and others deliberately sold shitty bundles, and mainstream economists let them off the hook completely, even when the facts came to light. Now it's happening again, and they're still silent. They quote Adam Smith to support their arguments, though he would have hated the system we have now. Alternative views to the dogma of mainstream 'economic theory' are mocked, rather than engaged with. In the history of economic brutality - colonialism, apartheid, the financing of wars - there are very precious few economists willing to speak up about the effects on the least well off. They get denounced as naive, and have trouble finding jobs. Where are the mainstream economists talking about the future of our species, the ones with some fucking vision, some foresight, some creativity, some unique thought, some compassion? Unem-fucking-ployed, that's where. Almost by definition, mainstream economists refuse to challenge the status quo. And the status quo is fucked for the vast majority of human beings. We are nowhere near our potential, and mainstream economists spend their time debating miniscule changes in tax policy. Despite the economic impact and effects of unchecked global surveillance, they say nothing. Despite the economic impact of continuous increases in military spending, they say nothing. They'd lose their cushy job, and deep down they fucking know it. And after all that, they only speak up whenever someone comes along who wants to help people and bring them together. They're trotted out on Fox News and CNN to denounce Bernie Sanders' economic policies, despite the fact that those policies are practically substandard in Europe. What did they say about Trump? In comparison, nothing. And yes, "actual slavery" exists. But in what economic course in the world do students grapple with those issues? Where are the leading lights, the clear voices in economics telling us what we can do about it? Feel free to tell me how wacky, unrealistic and naive I'm being. Projection is a funny 'ol thing. But here's your major clue that they're full of shit, and anti-intellectual - in the history of mainstream economists, time and time again they've been proven utterly wrong about major things. "Trickle-down", "austerity", "cutting taxes on the rich drives growth", Brexit, Trump, '08. But there's never any reflection, never any expansion into inter-disciplinary approaches. Economics, as taught today, tries to make people simple, cogs in a vast machine that only economists can understand. And even though they've been wrong more often than nutrionists, and more catastrophically, the text-books stay the same. Inequality grows, and we're told it's a good thing. Too many times economists have told us it's raining while we're being pissed on. The real, respected, popular intellectuals - Feynman, Sagan, Einstein, Chomsky tell us that mainstream economists are full of shit, and they've saif it far more eloquently than I could. But economists sniff, and scoff, and laugh at how ignorant they are, before calling poor people stupid and endorsing the latest scam on the people of Earth. I haven't had breakfast yet, so I hope this doesn't come across too harsh. I'm sure I made some mistakes, and I know I swore a lot. Rather than nit-pick, please engage with the major points.