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I have zero faith in "free market" ideologues, because what we actually get when they gain power is just favoritism for "free market" ideologues.
by rectang 1y ago
I have zero faith in "free market" ideologues, because what we actually get when they gain power is just favoritism for "free market" ideologues.
- aswanson 1y agoSame. This era has exposed them as the shameless hypocrites they are.
- resters 1y agoThere is not and has never been any trace of free speech or free market "ideology" from Trump. Perhaps as a talking point but never in any policy or action. Trump is the anti-libertarian, severely authoritarian and moving things toward a centrally planned economy!
- kristopolous 1y agoIt was always about power accumulation. Integrity, honesty, and principles is literally what they mean by the word "woke" when they harass people for being it.
- akoboldfrying 1y ago> Integrity, honesty, and principles is literally what they mean by the word "woke" No it isn't, and saying things like this just adds noise. What they mean by the word "woke" is a worldview that delegitimises the things they aspire to or worked hard for (status based on power based on individual agency), and prioritises other forms of social currency (victimisation by external forces) in a way they find performative.
- dboreham 1y agoDidn't you just say exactly the same thing as the parent comment?
- akoboldfrying 1y agoI can't tell if this is trolling. If you genuinely don't think that each side has principles, which in fact overlap considerably, you aren't very curious about the world. ETA: In case you are genuinely interested in learning about how liberal and conservative people differ psychologically, Jonathan Haidt is a very good person to read.
- kristopolous 1y agoOne groups principles are hierarchy, control, and cruelty. Arbitrary corrupt incompetency is what they're looking for. Caring about other, having respect, being sensitive, these are all 'woke' things from the "great awakening" cult. I want more affordable college and the people in charge want to send people like me to concentration camps through kangaroo courts. This is the difference.
- supplied_demand 1y agoThe people who go on about “woke” are the most performative victims of all. Invoking the word “woke” for things they don’t like is a form of that performative victimization.
- intermerda 1y agoYou can extend the "free market ideologues" to include more groups such as those who were very concerned about free speech for exactly four years from 2021-2024. Same people were concerned about politicization of justice department, but only when certain Presidents are in office. Same goes for "respect for constitution". "Family values" was abandoned quite a while ago. Wilhoit’s Law has never been truer.
- sidibe 1y agoCan't forget being "for the rule of law".
- matwood 1y agoBack the blue, unless of course it's the Capitol Police.
- MathMonkeyMan 1y agoI tend to think of "rule of law" as describing the fairness of the courts. But then you need effective law enforcement for the courts to mean anything.
- bunderbunder 1y agoOr, in my city, the cops who blew the whistle on other cops for electrocuting people's testicles as a means of extracting forced confessions. The "back the blue" crowd absolutely hates those guys.
- rayiner 1y agoMost of these examples are good ones, but this one actually isn’t. I don’t know what part of the country you’re from, but in the south violence against the government is treated as distinct from violence against fellow citizens. I don’t want to debate the substance of the view, I’m just pointing out that it’s not actually contradictory like you’re implying. I grew up in virginia when it was a red state, my first reaction would’ve been relief that it was still possible. But it also would’ve been my first reaction 25 years ago when I was a Gore supporter in a Bush county. Jefferson’s tree of liberty and all that. I suspect this divergence comes from people who have internalized the 1960s civil rights movement view, and whose chief concern is the government protecting minorities from the majority. Meanwhile, the more traditional Anglo-american view is chiefly concerned with protecting the majority from the government.
- legitster 1y agoTrump was never actually a "free market" idealogue. And the GOP officially dropped any mentions of it from their party platform a few years ago. If anything, they are doing exactly what they promised. They were against globalism and elites and international agreements and governance and they are being true to their words.
- jayd16 1y agoAgainst elites but appoints billionaire cronies. Make it make sense.
- zelphirkalt 1y agoWhen I read "elites" it always makes me wonder what kind of elites are meant. Surely not elites in intelligence or wisdom and knowledge. Does it mean just having tons of money? What does it mean to be an elite university in contrast to being an elite person?
- fullshark 1y agoThe “libertarians” who are in bed with Trump however…
- linguae 1y agoThe behavior I’ve seen from so many libertarians from 2017 onward, especially during the pandemic, January 6th, and Trump’s reelection, has revealed so much to me and has made me rethink my libertarianism. So many libertarians, when pressed, would gladly align themselves with the far-right for their own benefit, whether to accelerate the destruction of the state they hate so much, or whether because, deep down inside, they agree with the far-right on social views, and libertarianism was simply a cover for them to promote abhorrent social views. I’ve read a lot of Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell back in the 2000s and the first half of the 2010s. I also voted for Ron Paul in the 2008 and 2012 primary and regular elections. I used to consider myself a Rothbardian-style libertarian. While I still view the Austrian School of Economics with high regard, my biggest problem with Rothbardianism is Rothbard’s 1990s turn to the right before his passing around 1995, and its deleterious effect on libertarianism. Rothbard supported “right-wing populism” as a way for the libertarian movement to advance. Rothbard supported Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential run (though Rothbard would fall out with Buchanan over the latter’s support for protectionism), and Rothbard even went as far as to support the notorious David Duke’s gubernatorial campaign in Louisiana. This right-wing populism strategy led to the paleolibertarian movement, which is limited-to-no government fused with a culturally conservative outlook. However, it’s this cultural conservative mindset that has led so many libertarians to be so enamored with Trump. Trump, after all, is a much more bombastic version of Buchanan, who has a similar ideology. It seems protectionism can be overlooked when people view “wokeness,” and not a breakdown of rule of law, is the biggest problem in American society… Ironically, it was Rothbard himself who complained earlier in his career about right-wingers who “hated the left more than they hated the state,” yet so many libertarians today are willing to embrace the far-right because they view the left as enemy #1. If I had a dollar for every time I saw a post or article sympathetic to Pinochet, I’d probably have enough for a nice MacBook Pro. I realized over the years that while I’m still very skeptical of government power, I don’t hate the state, and I prefer good government over chaos. I value liberal institutions and feel they should be defended.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- nostromo 1y agoTrump is in no way a free market ideologue and has made that very clear. Or are you talking about Elon?
- rectang 1y agoThe wider Trump administration, and Musk in particular for his DOGE work which has included firing regulatory enforcers.
- bloppe 1y agoThe wider Trump administration is extremely anti-free-market. They're very explicit about it. The Republican party is nothing like it used to be.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 1y agoThe Republican party only persists as a name. The Trump party has long subsumed it.
- bloppe 1y agoThat's always been a feature of the 2-party system. I mean, the Democrats were once the party of southern white supremacists. We don't really get new parties, but the parties we have change over time as the coalitions within them rearrange. I think a multi-party parliamentary system would be better at finding middle ground, but it's silly to say that the two-party system keeps politics "fixed".
- sjsdaiuasgdia 1y agoTrue, the make-up and priorities of both Republicans and Democrats have changed a few times over the years. I would say that in this case, it's a party aligning to an individual far more than it has ever been in the past. Racist Southern Democrats didn't become Republicans because they were enamored with a Republican leader, they changed parties because they found themselves misaligned with the Democratic Party's pivot to civil rights. I wholeheartedly agree that a parliamentary system would serve the US better.
- _2d30 1y agoTrump has literally been prattling about his love of tariffs for decades and was explicit about his plans to heavily leverage tariffs during his campaign.. I think you might just want an excuse to believe what you already believe
- fullshark 1y agoI just think a lot of democrats really haven't paid attention to how Trump has morphed the Republican party and the realignment that has been going on. They still think of a Republican as George w. Bush / John McCain / Mitt Romney even though they have all been effectively excommunicated from the party. I think part of it was hope was Trump was a momentary blip but that's obviously no longer the case.
- potato3732842 1y agoEveryday people have been clamoring for some sort of change for a long time. 00s at least. It reached a boiling point in the late 2010s and you had a nearly parallel rise of Trump and Bernie. The difference is that the republicans couldn't keep a lid on Trump and his backers like the democrats did to Bernie. So Trump got in and then politicians "built in his image" started getting elected all over the place. So now the republicans have a party that more accurately reflects what people want. And they'll use that to mop the floor with the democrats until the democrats turn their own party over to reflect what voters want.
- andrekandre 1y ago> reflect what voters want. and what do they want?
- kibibu 1y agoChange.
- zelphirkalt 1y ago
- tim333 1y agoIt's hard to label Trump a free market ideologue. He's more Mr tarrif man. If you want free markets look more to Lee Kuan Yew and Singapore (#1 on the "Index of Economic Freedom"). One of the virtues of proper free markets is the markets largely figure which companies win in a relatively non corrupt way, rather than politicians leaning on the scales.
- digianarchist 1y agoThe Singaporean government's hand in it's own economy is larger than a lot of self-professed communist states - Temasek Holdings, Mediacorp, DBS Bank, Singapore Airlines etc etc.
- _t9ow 1y agoI never understood why libertarians/free market proponents think that Singapore is the paragon of laissez-faire economics. Try studying the country's housing market policies, for example, and you'll quickly realise that the government is extremely interventionist. The difference is between Singaporean policymakers/civil servants and their counterparts from elsewhere is that the former are actually world-class in terms of competence, and their interventions are generally very well-designed/well-justified.
- chgs 1y agoSingapore is the example of a (relatively) benevolent dictator over decades.
- _t9ow 1y agoI wouldn't call it a dictatorship -- no label neatly applies to Singapore, but calling it a dictatorship (even if benevolent) is quite incorrect. Describing it as a soft authoritarian country is much more appropriate.
- tim333 1y agoMaybe free in some areas eg. trade and less so in others.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- loeg 1y agoTrump isn't a free market ideologue and never has been. I'm not sure what you expected. He didn't conceal his viewpoints; if you are surprised, I think you weren't paying much attention.
- grugagag 1y agoI don’t know about markets but he claimed to be a free speech ideologue. But then he bought twitter and proved otherwise.
- afavour 1y agoThe Republican Party on the other hand is very much in favor of the free market… or was. Many long time Republicans turned on a dime and deserve to be called out on it.
- bilbo0s 1y agoI think it's a bit more accurate to say that many long time Republicans claimed to support free markets. It's a little naive to believe that they actually meant any of that in reality. Them and their donors were growing fabulously wealthy off of functionally non-free markets.
- YetAnotherNick 1y agoThey don't even claim to support total free market as end goal. Both party support free speech and free trade on principle, but support what shouldn't be free is highly political.
- __MatrixMan__ 1y agoSuch has been the US agenda in the developing world since the 70's. It's sort of odd to see them do it to themselves though. It's as if they became confused and started believing their own cover story.
- nosefurhairdo 1y agoTariffs are antithetical to free markets.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1y agoArguably, a similar problem exists for "big government" ideologues, except more severe. https://fee.org/articles/10-crazy-examples-of-unrelated-waste-and-partisan-kick-backs-in-new-covid-bill/ https://fee.org/articles/10-crazy-examples-of-unrelated-wast...
- afiori 1y agoEvery voice on that (except the last one as it is too vague) is popular with the relevant electorate. I dislike how a bunch of random unrelated shit is stuffed together into a single bill but that is because the US is a vetocracy.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1y agoIsn't manufacturing more cars in the US also popular with the electorate?
- afiori 1y ago1) not the point, that list of criticisms was a bad list of criticisms 2) whether anything that happened in the last month is going to promote more domestic manifacturing is quite dubious at best. As a quick excercise: - for almost every industry new factories would be needed to significantly increase domestic production - you are disencintivized to mix foreign and domestic materials if you plan to export (as you are going to pay potentially double tariffs) - most things (especially cars) have long supply chains - building a factory takes both non-trivial investment and at least a few months And you get that for many products it would take sorta lenght_of_supply_chain * (few_months + gathering_fund_permits_time) All this to still get quite a few counter tariffs on exports.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago>1) not the point, that list of criticisms was a bad list of criticisms My claim was merely that the situation was analogous. So yes, it is the point, in my view. There is a grey area where you can do things that the electorate may want, which also happen to benefit your cronies. This overall issue is more severe for big government types, since more largesse is getting handed out. I'd additionally highlight your use of the term "relevant electorate". Which underscores that "cronies" and "voters" may be the same people. Direct Tesla subsidies would probably be quite popular with Tesla workers. That's a relevant electorate. Would that therefore make direct Tesla subsidies defensible? That's what your argument seems to imply. >2) whether anything that happened in the last month is going to promote more domestic manifacturing is quite dubious at best. I suspect some of the items from the FEE list won't be particularly effective at their stated goal either. In general, people will disagree about the likely effectiveness of government programs. So I'm not sure "likely effectiveness" is a great way to check for favoritism.
- wesselbindt 1y agoIdeology is their sales pitch, it's for you and me to consume. It has nothing whatsoever to do with their goals and intentions. This has been true of Thatcher and her deeply protectionist policies all the way up to today with Trump and his tariffs. We're not choosing between regulations and no regulations, we're choosing between regulations that benefit the working class and regulations that benefit the owning class. (Although I suppose it could be argued that in the US you choose between regulations that benefit the owning class and regulations that benefit the owning class more)
- throw10920 1y agoWhat "free market" ideologues are you talking about? Seems like you're just intentionally making the hasty generalization fallacy (same one that leads to racism) to attack a group that you don't like for ideological or emotional reasons, especially because Trump was never a free market idealogue, and the tariffs are evidence of that.