Freedom is not safe

You seem to be a sucker for slogans over substance. In reality, the Ayn Randian objectivists and Austrian economics buffs who dominate the Libertarian Party are advocates of unbridled capitalism and Social Darwinism and champion the rights of hierarchies and captains of industry at the expense of workers, minorities,and the environment. They are mainly concerned with captalist property rights and market distribution of natural resources and private property. The Foundation for Economic Education, the movement's first think tank, was bankrolled by some of the largest corporations and lobbying fronts in the country.” The hippies member favoring weaker drug laws are majorly out resourced. In an infamous 2010 interview with Rachel Maddow, Rand Paul admitted he had a problem with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because it restricted the liberties of private business and industry to discriminate against their customers. Rand Paul On 'Maddow' Defends Criticism Of Civil Rights Act, Says He Would Have Worked To Change Bill (VIDEO) | HuffPost So maybe it gives wings to some people, but clips the wings of those seeking to gain equality.

 

Ohhohohohohohoho! Hey, I just wanna say this: You got China going all right. In fact, by surrendering your factory jobs and manufacture of goods to the East, you got China going so good, they're now threatening to take over. You gave them the keys to the kingdom. The 2000's is shaping up to be a Chinese century. You know what that means, right? It means that you, the USA, are no longer number 1. China is, not you. All because the American employer in his greed felt that the American worker doesn't deserve a living wage and wanted cheaper labor. And now you're suggesting that you should surrender more of your jobs to South-America next? Good luck with your unemployment numbers.

Hey, how does it make you feel to know that China owns much of your debt today, while simultaneously their military grows in strength? If they one day take over completely, there won't be any liberty or freedom left to speak of. Just a short list of things the CCP allows you to do, and a long list of things you're NOT allowed to do.

 

We've learned from history. Time to move ahead. Nobody's going anywhere in the future if all mired down in the past.

 

My mom is still alive and has that. It's a huge bummer.
My guess is you haven't had kids.

 

You're talking ancient history. A lot has happened since. Try looking at more recent history.

 

These people have never taken the shortest political quiz ever.

 

I'm at the point now where on public roads I'm ATGATT.

 

Maybe by the time we populate Mars.

 

You seem to have fallen prey to the notion that there is such a thing as "equality" among persons.

 

I'm elated that you not only noticed that but clearly spelled it out, thanks!
I was saying forty something years ago that we were making a mistake. And things only got worse. Guess who else was on the bandwagon... yep, he who cannot be named. But our brilliant city dwellers... Anyway,

That's why we have to decouple. We don't give more away in more places, we move things around. Critical stuff back home, stuff that's less critical closer to home (i.e., Latin America).

 

Trud

You were the one that brought up this history, you thought it important to mention but when it becomes clear you don’t really know that much about history you turn around and say its unimportant and that we shouldn’t get mired in the past.

It seems to be a case of your beliefs trumping the actual history – where history conflict with your beliefs it is the history that has to be forgotten as unimportant.

You say ‘We've learned from history’ but have you? It seems to me that you are learning nothing about anything that doesn’t fit in with your ideology, your beliefs.

Anything that doesn’t fit in with what your ideology, your beliefs have to be rejected because otherwise you might come to the realisation that your beliefs are the things that are wrong

Thing is you can learn from history but only if you are willing to learn.

 

I’m really not sure what Trudgin is going on about here but I would make some comments

After been heavily promoted by wealth the dominant economic model in the US over the last forty years has been the free market ideology of neoliberalism – which first got adopted by the majority of Republicans and later even by many right leaning Democrats and in that time one of the most vocal supporters of that ideology have been the right-wing libertarians.

In the main the biggest critics of neoliberalism and those that were sounding the loudest warning cries about it have been left wingers – I was warning about it long before I even first posted on this site (some called it back then Thatcherism or Reaganomics) and for many years on this site I’ve written extensively against neoliberalism.

It really did seem to become basically that those that identified as right wingers were neoliberals and those on the left were opposed to it.

I would recommend as a primer on the subject – A brief history of Neoliberalism – David Harvey

 

Here is a very old post on neoliberalism -

It seems to me that 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 classical liberalism).

People in many nations fought for voting rights, social benefits, safer working conditions, progressive taxation, and decent living wages. The result of that movement was that the economic benefits of production were much more distributed. Many people saw their wages grow and in the period between the end of WWII and 1970 many in Europe and the US gain middle class status.

But 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 what we are getting in is the dismantling of the distributive system in the developed countries while in some developing countries the conditions resemble what was happening in the west before people’s struggle to get rid of exploitation (the fire in Bangladesh that killed over a thousand factory workers comes to mind).

So what can be done well as James K Galbriath has argued –

“We must confront the global inequality crisis. For this, we must, in the final analysis, raise real wages in the countries with which our workers compete, expand their markets for our goods, and reduce their pressure on our wage structure”

To me what neoliberal inspired right wingers seem to be aiming for is for a few to be able to exploit the many more easily across the globe.

I think we need to fight again for social balance but this time it has to be global. To counter the economic globalisation that has already taken place we need social globalisation to be brought in, and that means social global governance to counter the already in place economic global governance.

 

Non-neoliberal neoliberalism

What I also noticed during the last 20 years is the rise of a different branch of neoliberalism which was nationalistic but also free market – these are basically the same as the old neoliberals (with free market economic models and Social Darwinist social models) but they wanted to drop the globalisation aspect.

They wanted to marry a domestic neoliberalism with an anti-neoliberalist protectionist foreign policy

That promoted free market policies at home and abroad but also wanted protectionist policies for the US that favoured the US over foreign markets.

With the idea of not allowing the outsourcing of manufacturing and production to none US countries and putting tariffs up to protect such things as US mining and production, while still pushing for example deregulation, the cutting of welfare and weak government oversight within the US.

This seemed to appeal to many working-class Americans that had been taught to hate anything supposedly ‘left wing’ but also didn’t like the loss of Americans jobs as a result of neoliberal globalisation.

This new neoliberalism would not be brought about by the market globalisation bringing about the conditions that force places like the US to dismantle distributive systems because that globalisation would be there so the new order would have to be imposed, and for that the right people, the people that believed in the ideology would have to be in power.

Really nationalistic neoliberalism makes a mockery of the supposed free market foundations of neoliberalism, but it didn’t have to make sense it just had to appeal to the two aspects of right wing thought nationalist self-interest and not being socialism.

 

That's called "misquoting".

 

The problem with extensive "high level" theoretical musing is that it can sound as if it's coming from an intelligent source of wisdom when upon scrutiny it lacks common sense practicality.

In many cases it acts as a smokescreen to obfuscate the underlying ulterior motive. In others it's just confusion.

I like the KISS approach - direct and to the point. For example, if you want more of something, subsidize it. If you want less of something, tax it. Common sense practicality that never fails because it's rooted in natural human motivation.

 

Trud


The problem with simple is that it can also be simplistic and is often guided by simple beliefs rather than be directed and based on often complex reality.

Isn’t that a quote attributed to Ronald Reagan?

It is simple, very simple but then comes the question of what you want and what you don’t want and why and do the arguments stand up to reality.

This formula was used by right wing ideologies to argue that public assistance (healthcare, welfare, social services) should be cut because it encouraged (made more) dependency and laziness and that the wealthy should have tax cuts because they would make more wealth (which would trickle down helping everyone) as tax was the only thing stopping that from happening.

It was simple - if you want common people to work harder, stop giving them public assistance. If you wanted the wealthy to work harder (or at least their money), you give them more money through tax cuts.

The problem was that neither of these beliefs were true, there was no culture of dependency and trickle down never happened (as many critics warned).

First I’d say that many people’s ideas of what is common sense can be diametrically different and then once again point out that humans don’t live natural lives, humans have created often complex material, social and political systems, that can have an effect on our motivations making them anything but simple and straight forward.

 

Trud

KISS– (keep it simple, stupid)

I didn’t think it was that difficult to understand or ‘high level’ – I'm sorry you found it so hard to understand, if you tell me the bits you found too difficult for you or which you found confusing and I can try and simplify them for you.

 

Your guess is wrong. I have four. My guess is you're gettin' up there, which is why you dodged the question about your age.

 

There is such a thing as equal protection under the laws and lack of discriminatory practices. That's the equality that's important to me. Next you'll be telling us you're a natural aristocrat or some kind of superior specimen of humanity, which would be a hoot. Objectivists suffer from delusions of grandeur.