6 ms·

All ideologies, including "neoliberalism," are mind-viruses that prevent those infected from seeing reality as it truly is, as complex as it is. I routinely com

by cs702 3y ago

All ideologies, including "neoliberalism," are mind-viruses that prevent those infected from seeing reality as it truly is, as complex as it is. I routinely come across people who naively believe the "invisible hand of the free market" is the solution to everything everywhere, even in those cases when the evidence suggests otherwise. I'll take a pragmatic person over an ideological one any day. One of my favorite quotes in that regard is from Lee Kuan Yew, a controversial figure who is credited with transforming Singapore into one of the world's most advanced economies in one generation: "We are pragmatists. We don't stick to any ideology. Does it work? Let's try it, and if it does work, fine, let's continue it. If it doesn't work, toss it out, try another one. We are not enamored with any ideology."[a] [a] Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/187723.Lee_Kuan_Yew https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/187723.Lee_Kuan_Yew

Spivak 3y ago
How do you overcome the "what should you try" problem? That seems to be the primary use of ideology, providing the base justification for rallying people behind attempting any given course of action or in cases where you know you'll have an effect but it's not really measurable. In practice even deeply ideological people end up being pragmatic changing course in the face of evidence of things not working or having the intended effects. I'm not sure how I would approach issues like, "should we have slavery or indentured servitude," "should women be considered full persons legally or considered extensions of their husband," "should we have state sponsored religion or let people worship as they please" in a way that's pragmatic and doesn't ultimately rely on ideology or appeal to god/natural order.
- cs702 3y ago
  > I'm not sure how I would approach issues like [examples] in a way that's pragmatic and doesn't ultimately rely on ideology or appeal to god/natural order. A long list of people, many of whom are way smarter than me, have written about this issue extensively over the centuries. As a starting point from which to branch off, I'd recommend the book "Enlightenment Now" by Steven Pinker.
kjkjadksj 3y ago
Singapore certainly has an ideology. You don’t just start publicly caning people for smoking a joint out of pragmatic logic.
- zozbot234 3y ago
  Caning people is way more humane than letting them rot in prison for decades on end, as is done in the "civilized" U.S. And no one can deny that it's pragmatically effective. The main problem if anything is that it's too cheap and effective, which is bad since you're sometimes going to beat up some folks who will later turn out to be innocent. You want criminal punishment to be costly to the authorities that are going to impose it.
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    You get caned as well as sent to prison sometimes. You also get hanged for just a pound of weed, a pretty typical yield for 1-2 outdoor plants.
- cs702 3y ago
  Many people made the same argument to Lee Kuan Yew when he was alive. His response: "Mine is a very matter-of-fact approach to the problem. If you can select a population and they're educated and they're properly brought up, then you don't have to use too much of the stick because they would already have been trained. It's like with dogs. You train it in a proper way from small. It will know that it's got to leave, go outside to pee and to defecate. No, we are not that kind of society. We had to train adult dogs who even today deliberately urinate in the lifts."[a] [a] https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/187723.Lee_Kuan_Yew https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/187723.Lee_Kuan_Yew
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    That explains a lot if he saw his constituents as little more than dogs to be beaten and trained.
    - 3y ago
LegitShady 3y ago
It goes along with (I think?) a rather famous Dostoevsky quote > “It was not you who ate the idea, but the idea that ate you (Dostoyevsky, Pevear and Volokhonsky, 1995)
novagameco 3y ago
I don't think neoliberalism is a real ideology; the term, to be honest, is a pejorative used by leftists to discredit anybody further right of social democrats. The people accused of being neoliberals are rarely ideological. Liberalism (not the American kind, rather classical liberalism) is about adherence to a scientific worldview and making policies based on sound evidence.
- CalChris 3y ago
  I don't think Milton Friedman would qualify as a leftist in his 1951 essay: Neo-Liberalism and its Prospects https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/internal/media/dispatcher/214957/full https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/internal/media/dispatcher/...

by cs702 3y ago

Spivak 3y ago

How do you overcome the "what should you try" problem? That seems to be the primary use of ideology, providing the base justification for rallying people behind attempting any given course of action or in cases where you know you'll have an effect but it's not really measurable. In practice even deeply ideological people end up being pragmatic changing course in the face of evidence of things not working or having the intended effects. I'm not sure how I would approach issues like, "should we have slavery or indentured servitude," "should women be considered full persons legally or considered extensions of their husband," "should we have state sponsored religion or let people worship as they please" in a way that's pragmatic and doesn't ultimately rely on ideology or appeal to god/natural order.

cs702 3y ago
> I'm not sure how I would approach issues like [examples] in a way that's pragmatic and doesn't ultimately rely on ideology or appeal to god/natural order. A long list of people, many of whom are way smarter than me, have written about this issue extensively over the centuries. As a starting point from which to branch off, I'd recommend the book "Enlightenment Now" by Steven Pinker.

kjkjadksj 3y ago

Singapore certainly has an ideology. You don’t just start publicly caning people for smoking a joint out of pragmatic logic.

zozbot234 3y ago
Caning people is way more humane than letting them rot in prison for decades on end, as is done in the "civilized" U.S. And no one can deny that it's pragmatically effective. The main problem if anything is that it's too cheap and effective, which is bad since you're sometimes going to beat up some folks who will later turn out to be innocent. You want criminal punishment to be costly to the authorities that are going to impose it.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  You get caned as well as sent to prison sometimes. You also get hanged for just a pound of weed, a pretty typical yield for 1-2 outdoor plants.
cs702 3y ago
Many people made the same argument to Lee Kuan Yew when he was alive. His response: "Mine is a very matter-of-fact approach to the problem. If you can select a population and they're educated and they're properly brought up, then you don't have to use too much of the stick because they would already have been trained. It's like with dogs. You train it in a proper way from small. It will know that it's got to leave, go outside to pee and to defecate. No, we are not that kind of society. We had to train adult dogs who even today deliberately urinate in the lifts."[a] [a] https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/187723.Lee_Kuan_Yew https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/187723.Lee_Kuan_Yew
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  That explains a lot if he saw his constituents as little more than dogs to be beaten and trained.
  - 3y ago

LegitShady 3y ago

It goes along with (I think?) a rather famous Dostoevsky quote > “It was not you who ate the idea, but the idea that ate you (Dostoyevsky, Pevear and Volokhonsky, 1995)

novagameco 3y ago

I don't think neoliberalism is a real ideology; the term, to be honest, is a pejorative used by leftists to discredit anybody further right of social democrats. The people accused of being neoliberals are rarely ideological. Liberalism (not the American kind, rather classical liberalism) is about adherence to a scientific worldview and making policies based on sound evidence.

CalChris 3y ago
I don't think Milton Friedman would qualify as a leftist in his 1951 essay: Neo-Liberalism and its Prospects https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/internal/media/dispatcher/214957/full https://miltonfriedman.hoover.org/internal/media/dispatcher/...