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>the world is run by the same neoliberal ideology that says the market is always right and intervention is wrong. Did "neoliberal ideology" inspire the Soviet

by Aunche 4y ago

>the world is run by the same neoliberal ideology that says the market is always right and intervention is wrong. Did "neoliberal ideology" inspire the Soviet Union to drain the Aral sea? Did neoliberal ideology inspire Easter Islanders to deplete their forests? If your only solution to environmental destruction is change the ideology of the world to match your own, then you don't really care about the environment at all.

ElevenLathe 4y ago
Those environmental disasters were clearly created by other warped, bad ideologies. Neoliberalism is another example.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Warped? I can understand the desire for such a framing, but I think that is unhelpful, partly because nobody likes being told their ideology is warped, and partly because all ideologies are misaligned — it's not like anyone really has a perfect idea of what a well-aligned ideology even looks like, though we can all see the failures after they happen, rather we just tell ourselves that we do know and it's «insert your own preference here» that is The One True Way. Laissez-faire capitalism basically died as hard in the Great Depression as Soviet-style socialism did with the fall of the Iron Curtain, but while capitalism as a whole shifted in response to that, and the actual (non-conspiracy-theory) version of the WEF's Great Reset is an attempt to replace neoliberalism, communism… well, based on conversations I still have with an ex who self-identifies as anarcho-Communist (Marxist?), communism is still busy convinced that class-consciousness is only one election/strike action from taking over the world like it's 1866 and the aristocracy is still a big deal.
  - ElevenLathe 4y ago
    I would call any ideology that destroys the environment of the society that holds it "warped" and "bad" but maybe that's just my personal bias.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Did "neoliberal ideology" inspire the Soviet Union to drain the Aral sea? Well, no, stagnant state capitalism is different kind of capitalist exploitation than neoliberalism. > If your only solution to environmental destruction is change the ideology of the world to match your own, then you don’t really care about the environment at all. Caring about the environment is an ideological position, and obviously ideologies which reject it (as both state and market capitalism do) are going to be problematic for the goals of those who accept it as long as the latter are dominant.
- j33zusjuice 4y ago
  > Caring about the environment is an ideological position, and obviously ideologies which reject it (as both state and market capitalism do) are going to be problematic for the goals of those who accept it as long as the former are dominant. Did you mean, “As long as the latter are dominant,” or are you suggesting that environmentalists* are dominant? What I think you intend to say is “capitalists will be problematic for environmentalists as long as there are more capitalists than environmentalists,” but that’s not what you said. * I’m using “environmentalist” to mean “people that care about the environment,” even if there’s another meaning or connotation to the word.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Did you mean, “As long as the latter are dominant,” Yeah, kept switching the phrasing around, and apparent the last part of that sentence got out of sync with the first part. Edited it to correct.
eyelidlessness 4y ago
You have had a knee jerk reaction to the description of an opposing ideology, but if you hadn’t you would see that the description of the problem was factual and ideologically neutral apart from rejecting the problem. I, too, ideologically oppose any motive to extract more from the environment than it can sustain. And I see more problem with your reflexive, defensive ideological counter reaction than GP’s correct summary and incomplete list of offensive programs.

by Aunche 4y ago

ElevenLathe 4y ago

Those environmental disasters were clearly created by other warped, bad ideologies. Neoliberalism is another example.

ben_w 4y ago
Warped? I can understand the desire for such a framing, but I think that is unhelpful, partly because nobody likes being told their ideology is warped, and partly because all ideologies are misaligned — it's not like anyone really has a perfect idea of what a well-aligned ideology even looks like, though we can all see the failures after they happen, rather we just tell ourselves that we do know and it's «insert your own preference here» that is The One True Way. Laissez-faire capitalism basically died as hard in the Great Depression as Soviet-style socialism did with the fall of the Iron Curtain, but while capitalism as a whole shifted in response to that, and the actual (non-conspiracy-theory) version of the WEF's Great Reset is an attempt to replace neoliberalism, communism… well, based on conversations I still have with an ex who self-identifies as anarcho-Communist (Marxist?), communism is still busy convinced that class-consciousness is only one election/strike action from taking over the world like it's 1866 and the aristocracy is still a big deal.
- ElevenLathe 4y ago
  I would call any ideology that destroys the environment of the society that holds it "warped" and "bad" but maybe that's just my personal bias.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> Did "neoliberal ideology" inspire the Soviet Union to drain the Aral sea? Well, no, stagnant state capitalism is different kind of capitalist exploitation than neoliberalism. > If your only solution to environmental destruction is change the ideology of the world to match your own, then you don’t really care about the environment at all. Caring about the environment is an ideological position, and obviously ideologies which reject it (as both state and market capitalism do) are going to be problematic for the goals of those who accept it as long as the latter are dominant.

j33zusjuice 4y ago
> Caring about the environment is an ideological position, and obviously ideologies which reject it (as both state and market capitalism do) are going to be problematic for the goals of those who accept it as long as the former are dominant. Did you mean, “As long as the latter are dominant,” or are you suggesting that environmentalists* are dominant? What I think you intend to say is “capitalists will be problematic for environmentalists as long as there are more capitalists than environmentalists,” but that’s not what you said. * I’m using “environmentalist” to mean “people that care about the environment,” even if there’s another meaning or connotation to the word.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Did you mean, “As long as the latter are dominant,” Yeah, kept switching the phrasing around, and apparent the last part of that sentence got out of sync with the first part. Edited it to correct.

eyelidlessness 4y ago

You have had a knee jerk reaction to the description of an opposing ideology, but if you hadn’t you would see that the description of the problem was factual and ideologically neutral apart from rejecting the problem. I, too, ideologically oppose any motive to extract more from the environment than it can sustain. And I see more problem with your reflexive, defensive ideological counter reaction than GP’s correct summary and incomplete list of offensive programs.