Liberalism and why I despise it

Rat

But the things you promote only seem to help wealth.

You rant against ‘higher taxation, more laws and bureaucracy’ and ‘global governance’ which is the same things wealth doesn’t want either – that is why it pushes for lower taxation, deregulation, the cutting of ‘red tape’ and moves to block regulations that might constrain its activities

As to ‘global governance’

The political history of the 20th century (in the industrialised nations) has been to one degree or another about the curtailment of the adverse effects of 19th century exploitative capitalism (some call it classical liberalism).

People in many nations fought for voting rights, social benefits, safer working conditions, progressive taxation, decent wages etc. The result of that movement was that the economic benefits of production were much more distributed. In many nations that movement reached its zenith in the 60’s.

From the 70’s onward a new idea was promoted in some of these nations (often referred to as neo-liberalism) it was in many ways opposed to the ‘distributive’ system that had developed. One thing it promoted was economic globalisation, which basically allowed back some aspects of exploitative capitalism by promoting the moving of production to nations that had not developed the more distributive systems away from those nations that had.

In this way the long fought for distributive system has been undermined in those places where it had developed. Neo-liberals argue that to ‘compete’ in the global market the elements of the distributive system need to be dismantled what is needed they say is deregulation, the cutting of welfare, tax cuts that benefit the rich, lower wages, weak government oversight etc etc.

So now we have a global 21st century version of exploitative capitalism and the only way to counter it is by fighting for a global distributive system, and that means global governance.

Many national governments went along with globalisation out of short term self interest or ignorance but many are now waking up to what has happened when they discovered that money has gone global and their tax systems are national. And there is talk of some type of global tax system in the air – it would be a good start but…

I think we need to go further; we need international institutions that can enforce globally the same type of regulations that curtailed the adverse effects of 19th century exploitative capitalism.

See also -

[FONT=&quot]Kicking global wealth out of the driving seat.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/s...d.php?t=353922[/FONT]

 

Yeah and people are like this with their beliefs (religious or conspiratorial) because that's how the human brain works when confronted with information or postulations that challenge a dearly beloved belief backed by emotional passion. Both religion and conspiracy theories do this by taking the reader (or indoctrinee) on a fantastically intelligent sounding story, with a lot of begging the question fallacies.

Begging the question fallacies ( areas in a narrative where the reader is expected to reach a foregone conclusion based on partial information he or she was just told is important to the indoctrination process because it gets them involved and willingly believing the narrative.


It's the same "design" of thought pushing that pickup artists use with chicks to bed them, the same template con artists use to steal from victims, and the same marketing strategy corporations and political campaigns will use to sell to the public a domestic/foreign agenda favorable to the elite.


Pressed Rat thinks he's a rebel but he's being manipulated by the same elites he thinks he's fighting against.


A good counter question is why would the 1% or .0001%, elites gain by disproving global warming?

If it is real and sea levels rise, that means flood debris everywhere damaging civilizations everywhere. It'll be a mess, and messes aren't by defacto profitable, especially since a LOT of businessss are located in flood plane zones. (Talk to a geologist they'll tell you people have a habit of building towns in valleys and flood plane areas.


Where is the profit, except for big coal and oil industries?

If one does push global warming and succeeds, how is selling Green energy like wind and solar and geothermal and hydroelectric power a bad thing? If anything it means more competition in the energy generation industry which in classical economics means more domestic competition and lower prices

Now cheap manufacturing in China has thrown a monkey wrench into solar panel production domestically, so few jobs are being generated. But still.

 

Balbus - unlike you, I am not against people with wealth if they fairly earn it. Even though I am not a fan of money and think it's an artificial means of hierarchical control, I am against the government taxing people (and private businesses) on this fiat money which is printed by a private banking cartel out of nothing and used to enslave people and entire nations with artificial debt. One thing about liberals who promote government intervention for every artificially created problem is that they don't even understand how the monetary system works and the ruse by which money comes into existence in the first place. You never address central banking or the Federal Reserve, which is the source of most of the economic woes that exist. You probably cannot even tell me what fractional reserve banking is.

The biggest corporations which are in bed with government don't fear regulations. If anything, they like government regulations because it puts smaller businesses out and helps to eliminate competition. The biggest corporations all have government lobbyists working for them, so why would they fear regulations when they are basically immune from them? The fact is that most government regulations HELP big business rather than hinder it. You think regulations are good, not because they are but because that is what you have read and want to believe. The fact is, if you were to eliminate the government from the equation altogether, there would be no need for regulations. The problem lies with corporatism and the merger of governments and corporations, where the corporations become the size of governments themselves (because they are in fact part of the government).

Socialism (and corporatism) creates poverty and suffering. It steals wealth from those who rightfully earned it, and redistributes it, making everyone equally poor except for the state the the corporations, which become our overlords. Most of the economic problems that exist were caused by government intervention in the first place. The government then uses those problems to justify even more control and more manipulation, and that's when people start losing their rights and freedoms, which has happened. That is when you have a socialist nanny state where the government reigns supreme and even the most basic of rights fly out the window.

It's ironic you want a globalist system which will be run by the same corporate elites who have created most of the problems you speak of in the first place. It's people like you who play into exactly what the power structure wants.

You claim you want to eliminate wealth from power? Pfft... not from what I can tell.

------------------

monkjr - the global warming swindle is more about controlling the population than anything else. It's about passing international laws which override national sovereignty (moving us closer to world government), enacting global carbon taxes, and telling people how they must live their lives (when the elites dictating this have many times the "carbon footprint" of the average individual). Eventually the government will tell people what they can and cannot eat, where and where not they can travel to, etc. We are fast approaching a time when every car will be fitted with a transponder and taxed by the mile for its carbon output. This won't do anything but steal even more money from the people and transfer it to the government so it can control our lives even more. If you think the government and internationalist bureaucrats like Al Gore and Maurice Strong give two shits about the environment, you are simply naive.

Wind and solar energy are both inefficient energy sources on their own. It's a shame, because I do believe there is technology that exists which could completely eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels, yet the technology is being suppressed because it has the potential to free humanity, which is the last thing the people in power want. So instead they give us false alternatives like solar and wind energy, which will never put the oil industry out of business because they are ineffective energy sources on their own and designed to ultimately fail.

 

Deleted

 

Rat

Explain what you mean by fair and earned?

I mean there are those that work hard for long hours for low pay and there are those that don’t - is that fair? Is a market speculator making millions dollars a year actually worth more to society than a sewage worker on $40,000? Is it fair that some people are born into advantage and other are not? In the 1950’s CEO pay was 25-50 times that of an average worker that had risen to 300-500 times by 2007 was the CEO working less in the 1950’s?

 

Rat

Rat many have tried to talk to you about your economic thinking but the problem is that in the end it all seems to go back to conspiracy, misdirection and downright lies.

For example

Posts 95 to 104 here
http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=432054&highlight=half&page=10

It was about free market vs Keynesian ideas and first you falsely call Keynes a fascist and then say darkly that “Keynes was a member of the elite Royal Institute for International Affairs at Chatham House, and was good friend of the Federal Reserve bankers, with connections including Lord Rothschild himself.”

The mention of the Royal Institute for International Affairs and Rothschild both hinting at conspiracy.

Then you pointed to your own youtube video that turned out to be full of inaccuracies and lies and when confronted with these you stopped posting.

And I’m sorry to say that is you usual MO.

 

Rat

Again you hint at a conspiracy and your belief in it

Have you any real evidence for this assertion?

As I’ve tried to explain on many occasions this argument is often framed in terms of production - the production of energy and the resources needed to produce the energy.

But talking of production is a bit of a capitalistic con game.

Its not production that needs to be addressed first - it is consumption; it should be about saving energy.

The problem is that in a capitalistic context production is the one that is emphasized because its about ‘making money’ it doesn’t matter if it’s wind or coal, nuclear or oil, it’s about selling a product - ‘energy’ - to people and making - cha-ching - a profit.

But in lessening consumption…well there is little profit in that for a capitalistic investor (although there is for the individual).

Look at virtually every developed or developing city or individual home with a thermal camera and you will see the waste, and that is all energy being sold at a profit. Energy companies and the people that invest in them want us to waste energy.

In the cold we turn up the thermostat and in the heat we turn up the air-conditioner. I mean we still build towers of steel and GLASS in the middle of deserts, huge greenhouses, that are only then habitable through the use of air conditioning.

If we insulated the buildings we have and built all new ones to suit their environment and with a mind toward low consumption in regard to lighting, heating and cooling, then production would not be such an issue because we would find we were producing way too much – BUT ‘bang!’ there goes the energy sectors profits.

I’m all for renewable energy, but we have to get out of the ‘market’ mindset that is generally pushed my most media – which seems fixated on ‘production’ (meaning production of profit) and move toward thinking about limiting production (less profit for companies but better outcomes for the individual and wider society ).

 

monkir

Good question and its complicated but in my view its basically because free market/neoliberal ideas are geared to short-term thinking.

It is about the maximisation of profit NOW not what the consequence of that will be. Cheap energy produces cheap products, from the extraction of materials to manufacturing to transport. A company not directly related to oil or coal might voluntarily use a more expensive power source but in a short-termist ‘free market’ someone else is going to undercut by using the cheaper but long term dangerous power source

It’s the kind of mentality that brought about the fate of the dodo and the passenger pigeon the gratification of the now over the long term consequences.

Regulation by some form of governance has usually been the way to limit or stop the harm of such activity, environmental laws against pollution, protected animals, water use regulations etc.

Also wealth is cushioned from many consequences by wealth.

Again I’d repeat what I said above to Rat about energy production (see above).

Competition is about wasting energy so more can be sold, it’s the same short termist way of thinking.

At the moment fracking has brought down US energy prices but is that resource being husbanded not in my view instead a lot of it is going to be wasted because of an infrastructure set up to waste energy.

 

Okay point heard and agreed.

Infrastructure and the culture of waste is a huge problem.

Somehow along the way after WWII, USA's culture became really flamboyant and showy about having and using more more more.

Think about the fad of the Hummer, in the middle of the wars in the Middle East in the 2000's.

The conservative in me, was like "this makes no sense" why are you making the country spend more GDP on fuel inefficient cars domestically. If you want to support the troops, do so by conserving resources like citizens did in WWII with fuel and steel.

The culture of waste is a huge problem.

 

This is, once again, completely untrue.

The reason that people don't choose solar is because the upfront installation cost is so high. New solar panels are perfectly capable of supporting a home filled with energy efficient appliances used responsibly... the problem is that they cost 12k or so upfront and it's hard for most people to find an extra 12k, especially since coal or nuclear or hydro is still fairly cheap.

But the technology is light years ahead of where it was and keeps improving... and at the same time, electronics and appliances are far more efficient than they were, and they continue to grow more efficient. They have solar panel backpacks that charge laptops available right now.

There are building techniques available that can cut down on the financial and environmental costs of heating and cooling a house. There are designs for smaller cars that are smaller and incredibly efficient. Solar is almost definitely the perfect energy source, and I've been seeing more and more panels popping up in my community.

Solar is also not a resource that is exportable, unlike oil... and with their own panels people could essentially live off-grid. People choose oil because it's cheap and regulation is being intentionally delayed or rejected in the name of profit... but the global pressure means that they can only delay for so long, and if the right person gets elected, then the whole operation will stop being profitable.

Why don't you build an insane conspiracy around that? Oh right, it's because you only trust information from the oil companies.

 

Liberalism and why I despise it

The problem with the title of this thread is that you have to understand ‘liberalism’ can have different meanings to different people.

I mean to be liberal is to be a champion of liberty, of freedom, and few would claim that they didn’t believe in that. But again very few would champion the reality of total liberty. As the writer of the OP points out he wouldn’t actively champion anarchism or think that it would work in reality

So liberty always seems to be limited in some way as to benefit society as a whole. And one of the great debates of political thought has been what ‘freedoms’ should be given and what limited and what ‘freedoms’ benefit society and which harm it.

It is one of the ironies of US politics that ‘liberalism’ is associated with supposed ‘left wing’ because of its connection with ‘social liberalism’ while ‘economic liberalism’ is very much championed by the US right, especially right wing libertarians.

So both sides are ‘liberal’ but just with differing ideas over what freedoms should be given and which they think would benefit society most.

The US idea of a liberal can I believe cause confusion in debate I mean the poster says he has “a problem with liberalism and its various forms” which is akin to saying he has a problem with freedom in its many forms, which I don’t believe is not what he means at all.

Now virtually all political philosophies believe in some form of governance. The disputes seem to come over what each side sees at the best form of governance and over what each side thinks should be the purpose of such governance.

And here we get another strange characteristic of US politics the argument is often not expressed in terms of competence (of being good or bad) but in size. Big vs Small, More vs Less and so on, which to me seems to miss the whole point of the debate over ‘good’ governance.

For example tyranny -absolute power residing in one person - is a great definition of small government but history would indicate it is not the best model for ‘good’ governance. Same with weak government which so often brings about a political power vacuum into which step other entities, like religion, militia’s, criminal gangs and warlords, with agendas that often are detrimental to society at large.

The thing is - are the mechanisms and institutions that are put in place to ward against tyranny and the detrimental effects of weak governments to be called ‘big government’?

They probably would require a lot more people being involved, the voters, the representatives, the lawyers, the judges, along with the managers and workers that grease the wheels; it’s also got to have the laws and the regulation and most probably a constitution.

To me what seems to be behind the Small government argument is the desire to maximize economic liberalism while limiting social liberalism and that the Small government argument is there to try and hide what lies behind it.

Yet much of that social liberalism was brought in to protect against other types of harm often caused by 19th century economic liberalism.
The political history of the 20th century (in the industrialised nations) has been to one degree or another involved the curtailment of the adverse effects of 19th century exploitative capitalism.

People in many nations fought for voting rights, social benefits, safer working conditions, progressive taxation, decent wages etc. The result of that movement was that the economic benefits of production were much more distributed, and to me that’s what many on the right want to reverse.
The big government rhetoric and the sloganeering about ‘freedom’ are just a smoke screen it goes back to how some feel society should be ordered and the roll government should have in it.

Some think society should be run by - and for the benefit of - a few and believe the role of government should only be about protecting the rights, privileges and above all property of those few.

This is there ‘small government’ stripped of any power it might have to improve society to the benefit of all.

 

I don't agree with your last two paragraphs.

But I do agree with everything else. There is definitely a smokescreen and terminology confusion regarding any word with the root "liberal" in it.

When people debate and discuss politics they tend to do so casually without making much distinction and noting all the times in history when things/terms were "rebranded" or marketed politically even though the substance of what was being sold politically with certain catchphrases and labels was very different to a previous historical movement or philosophy from the past bearing the same or similar sounding name.

 

I totally agree..man has no way manage himself..and cant and hasnt..the only answer is Jehovah and the promised paradise earth in the bible.

 

I don't think that's what Pressed Rat was saying...

 

Is that called "whittle" as opposed to "shoot"? For the liberals it has to be Humean theology these days.

 

"Spunging" vs. "trolling"; wow, I'm going to Texas for margeritas.

 

What are you implying?

 

why do you never make sense?

 

Because I am a free man to my physical soul. My morals cannot evolve without the fighting at the Evolution. :sunny: And read (or listen) can I make more sense? Would not the physical reality be ingratiated with meaning if words would realized by the contradiction to ...

 

oh ok, cool.