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Dec 6th, 2017
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Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 19,831 Likes: 180
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 19,831 Likes: 180 |
So what benefits have you seen coming from liberalism over the last 40 years that we benefit from today? Well, there's legal weed and gay marriage... Perhaps it was liberalism that prevented us from being taken over by fascists....not counting Reagan, Bush, or Trump...maybe liberalism will take the country back from fascists sometime in the next 40 years? It's a struggle, it's a tug of war. Neither side gets to explore the most extreme policies in their play book and neither side gets completely ignored. That we are even alive suggests that whatever it is we are doing has worked up to this point. Y'know something I've noticed...it's a lot easier to change things for the worse than it is to change them for the better. And if you don't know what you're doing you should probably hire someone who does or leave it the f*ck alone.
Good coffee, good weed, and time on my hands...
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Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 17,177 Likes: 254
It's the Despair Quotient! Carpal Tunnel
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It's the Despair Quotient! Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 17,177 Likes: 254 |
So what benefits have you seen coming from liberalism over the last 40 years that we benefit from today? Well put. 
As far as "what benefits I've seen coming from liberalism over the last forty years that we benefit from today", I can only say that, putting aside gay marriage and the legalization of weed, far less than the benefits I was lucky to receive the FIRST twenty-three years of my life, which would put me around 1980 or 81, when the whole thing began to be unwound and dismantled.Those would be the benefits of the New Deal economy in which I was raised those first twenty-three years. So it would be important to me to try to revive the best aspects of that era, revive a 21st century version of the New Deal, reshape capitalism once again as a tool that serves working families first, as it once did when I was growing up. I think that either Bernie or Liz would be a valuable asset to help make that happen but of course it won't happen unless we also give them the kind of Congress that can cooperate. If we don't achieve that, we will witness a lot of noble aspirations, and a lot of obstruction to match. If we DO achieve that, but we put one of those old retread establishment drones in, like Biden, we will see a lot of frustration but it might be survivable. But I am interested in more than just surviving.
"The Best of the Leon Russell Festivals" DVD
deepfreezefilms.com
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Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 17,177 Likes: 254
It's the Despair Quotient! Carpal Tunnel
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It's the Despair Quotient! Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2004
Posts: 17,177 Likes: 254 |
You framing as the result of a radical left?
Fine. I would argue some of that, if that interpretation is correct. I am not laying the blame for Franken exclusively at the feet of the radical Left. Not by a long shot. But there is a lot of pent up energy that got misdirected, especially in the opening salvos of the MeToo saga. I view Franken as much more than collateral damage, even though, technically speaking, that's what he was. We have needed his help and missed out on it in the last year and a half and as a result, the strongest voices have been much more like the establishment neolib drones you referenced. Simply put, we should have been a lot more careful swinging that cannon around. We appear to have shot ourselves in the femoral artery.
"The Best of the Leon Russell Festivals" DVD
deepfreezefilms.com
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Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133 |
Externalization - how is it accounted for in the Capitalism ideology?
I was hoping that our Senator Hatrack would provide a more informed explanation, as a practicing Classical Liberal, than I can do with the more superficial knowledge that I possess. As an admittedly oversimplified summary, I understand the Classical Liberal economic model to say that unregulated free markets will provide the best outcomes because self-interest will always prevail - eventually - so negative trends, such as social and environmental decline, will be naturally mitigated. This might be possible if the self-interest was enlightened, but my speculation is that it is seldom so. We might say that a weakness of the CL economic model is that it externalizes the fact that enlightened self-interest among the human animal is as rare as hen’s teeth (notwithstanding a potentially lucrative market for chicken molars...).
Some examples of externalization might be interesting. This is following two posts above; one representing a triple-bottom-line business model (people, planet, profit), the other addressing global warming.
The Patagonia link (Tin Shed Ventures) is all about a company that is trying to acknowledge and act on a triple-bottom-line model - they would like to stop externalizing the costs of doing business. Patagonia may be as good a model for the CL economic philosophy as can be found, but they admit that enlightened self-interest is not an easy row to hoe.
The other post, which concerns global warming, is a rich vein to mine for examples of the failures of free market Capitalism to achieve the best outcomes, but I want to provide just one very interesting case of externalization - climate change denying. The Deniers are responding to just one thing. They do not want to have to account for the effects of climate change as a part of doing business, because they think that doing so will make things cost more. Their self-interest is unenlightened and they very much desire to continue to externalize the burgeoning social and environmental costs, not to mention the unavoidable economic costs.
To tie this back to another thread on Conservatism, I don’t see externalization as a conservative quality. Odd, isn’t it, that Conservatives are the primary proponents of not being conservative?
I call this the Conservative Rule of the Opposite Thang, with the acronym ConROT. Special emphasis on the “Con”.
Senator Hatrack may have a persuasive contrary opinion... Yo, Hatrack! Now that you are back, how's about tendering an opinion on externalization?
You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.
R. Buckminster Fuller
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Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133 |
You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.
R. Buckminster Fuller
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Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133 |
*****crickets***** I reckon Classical Liberalism forgot to allow for externalization.
You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.
R. Buckminster Fuller
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Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133 |
*****crickets***** I reckon Classical Liberalism forgot to allow for externalization. Do you suppose they were wrong then, and still wrong now?
You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.
R. Buckminster Fuller
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Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Apr 2010
Posts: 12,004 Likes: 133 |
I'm gonna take this as a complete debunking of the Classical Liberalism myth. 
You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.
R. Buckminster Fuller
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Joined: Aug 2007
Posts: 1,655
member
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member
Joined: Aug 2007
Posts: 1,655 |
Externalization - how is it accounted for in the Capitalism ideology?
I was hoping that our Senator Hatrack would provide a more informed explanation, as a practicing Classical Liberal, than I can do with the more superficial knowledge that I possess. As an admittedly oversimplified summary, I understand the Classical Liberal economic model to say that unregulated free markets will provide the best outcomes because self-interest will always prevail - eventually - so negative trends, such as social and environmental decline, will be naturally mitigated. This might be possible if the self-interest was enlightened, but my speculation is that it is seldom so. We might say that a weakness of the CL economic model is that it externalizes the fact that enlightened self-interest among the human animal is as rare as hen’s teeth (notwithstanding a potentially lucrative market for chicken molars...).
Some examples of externalization might be interesting. This is following two posts above; one representing a triple-bottom-line business model (people, planet, profit), the other addressing global warming.
The Patagonia link (Tin Shed Ventures) is all about a company that is trying to acknowledge and act on a triple-bottom-line model - they would like to stop externalizing the costs of doing business. Patagonia may be as good a model for the CL economic philosophy as can be found, but they admit that enlightened self-interest is not an easy row to hoe.
The other post, which concerns global warming, is a rich vein to mine for examples of the failures of free market Capitalism to achieve the best outcomes, but I want to provide just one very interesting case of externalization - climate change denying. The Deniers are responding to just one thing. They do not want to have to account for the effects of climate change as a part of doing business, because they think that doing so will make things cost more. Their self-interest is unenlightened and they very much desire to continue to externalize the burgeoning social and environmental costs, not to mention the unavoidable economic costs.
To tie this back to another thread on Conservatism, I don’t see externalization as a conservative quality. Odd, isn’t it, that Conservatives are the primary proponents of not being conservative?
I call this the Conservative Rule of the Opposite Thang, with the acronym ConROT. Special emphasis on the “Con”.
Senator Hatrack may have a persuasive contrary opinion... Yo, Hatrack! Now that you are back, how's about tendering an opinion on externalization? Externalization? Until you brought this BS line of thinking I have never externalized anything. It is like deconstructing something another method of obfuscating what is being discussed.
The state can never straighten the crooked timber of humanity.
I'm a conservative because I question authority.
Conservative Revolutionary
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Joined: Aug 2007
Posts: 1,655
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Joined: Aug 2007
Posts: 1,655 |
The Debate: Is America’s future capitalist or socialist? (Vox). Again, a lengthy, but readable, discussion of a big idea. It's really the difference between Ocasio-Cortez' and Elizabeth Warren's visions of liberalism. We've had several threads about new economic thinking and how broken capitalism is. This encapsulates many of them. I would much rather have broken capitalism than working socialism. In another thread someone said that a source I used is questionable. VOX is not questionable, it is an extremely biased and therefore unreliable source!
The state can never straighten the crooked timber of humanity.
I'm a conservative because I question authority.
Conservative Revolutionary
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