4 ms·
Capitalism is when bad things happen. And the more badder they are the more capitalism it is!
by 0x3f 9mo ago
Capitalism is when bad things happen. And the more badder they are the more capitalism it is!
- keybored 9mo agoThis was the logic the West used throughout the life of the Soviet Union but for [Cc]ommunism.
- 0x3f 9mo agoArguably people still do this with 'socialism'. Calling everything communism is now a bit _too_ cliche.
- muwtyhg 9mo agoNo, calling things/people/ideas communist is still 100% in play by the Republican party. McCarthy-ism is in full swing, and they've even added "antisemite" as another hot label they can throw on people to tarnish them. They have called the people protesting "raging commies" and other, similar phrases. Trump has called judges that act against him communist as well [1] [1] https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/featured/calling-communists-trump-attacks-enemies-label-loaded-historical-baggage/ https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/featured/calling-commun...
- tormeh 9mo agoI don't think the parent said it was. This is clearly closer to mercantilism, given the degree of government involvement.
- 0x3f 9mo agoThey've claimed this is the result of or at the behest of 'ultra capitalism'. I don't even mind hyperbole--call it fascism if you want--but at least use the dimensionally-correct terms. This is like when people call everything 'neoliberal'.
- orwin 9mo agoIsn't neoliberal just Friedman and the Chicago boyz' liberalism? So policies enacted by Reagan, Pinochet and Thatchers?
- 0x3f 9mo agoSort of and to varying degrees. Neoliberal is a funny one because it's used as a thoughtless pejorative by both the left and right. I've heard people say housing policy has failed because it's too neoliberal meaning too free market, and then other people say it's failed because it's too neoliberal i.e. too much government intervention. Neoliberalism is basically just markets-by-default and evidence-based alternatives when they fail.
- orwin 9mo ago> Neoliberalism is basically just markets-by-default and evidence-based alternatives when they fail. That's not though. I think the name is from the 'New classical school', oppose Keynesian economics. I think the meaning drifted to mean supply-side economics (direct inheritor from the Chicago school and the new classical school). Neoliberalism can't be 'evidence-based' when it rejects basic observation (like those from MMT. You can reject MMT 'solutions', that's fine, I do too. Don't reject evidence though).
- 0x3f 9mo agoLet's be honest, even being an MM theorist is a form of self selection that enables another kind of discussion. Neoliberal disagreement with MMT is categorically different from e.g. its disagreements with neocons or socdems in general. The latter are often just moral beliefs or running with first principles in a way that niche economic frameworks are not. I think your criticism of it as not being 'evidence based' because it 'rejects basic observation' is emotive but fundamentally it's still a technical criticism, not a moral one. Neocon criticisms of neoliberalism (even if they misidentify what that means) revolve around the decay of traditional values, for example. Socdems around inequality (which to them is ipso facto bad).
- scotty79 9mo agoI recently saw an interesting explanation. The point was, that capitalism is not (just) an economical system. It's a system of power in which capital can (and almost always does) overrule everything else. If you take this stance, capitalism is to blame for all the good and bad things that happen in the capitalist country. Democracy is just the way how capital rules.
- 0x3f 9mo agoAren't all country-scale (economic, governance, etc.) systems also 'systems of power'? It's not like the most powerful people of the USSR didn't leverage that system. Whatever the rules are, people end up adapting to and gaming them to entrench and grow their own position, typically at the expense of everyone else.
- keybored 9mo ago> It's a system of power in which capital can (and almost always does) overrule everything else. ... Democracy is just the way how capital rules. That’s a contradiction.
- scotty79 9mo agoDepends on how you understand democracy. It's a contradiction only if you understand democracy as a theoretical ideal. Practical democracies, as implemented in western countries, in recent decades proven themselves to be completely controllable by capital, both the democratic elites and democratic masses. I think we should rather go with practical outcome not the stated theoretical ideas. It's also a good way of evaluating communism and probably other systems.
- keybored 9mo agoI see we are going with the definition of democracy where it is one in the headlines and stops being one if you go into the text or interrogate it.
- filoeleven 9mo ago
- BigglesB 9mo agoI’m reading “ultra-capitalists” here as “those that control an extreme proportion of capital” rather than “those who believe really strongly in capitalism as a system”, though tbf that venn diagram may well be a donut…
- 0x3f 9mo agoTechnically, Venn Diagrams don't show _degree_ of overlap :) Although re your actual point: the current admin only gifts things like this to a chosen few; a small subset of those with extreme capital. So it seems much more appropriate to call it cronyism, or some such thing, rather than capitalism in the sense of merely controlling capital.
- filoeleven 9mo agoCrony capitalism is a well-established term for a reason.
- 0x3f 9mo agoRight, to distinguish it from regular capitalism. Specifically to denote it as not-really-capitalism. _Crony_ is really the operative term.