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Atlas Mugged: The Ayn Rand Six Step
Imagine your landlord coming to you one day and saying, “It’s everyone for himself. We’re not going to supply heat or water or electricity any longer, and we’re not going to conduct repairs.”
Of course, you and the rest of the tenants wouldn’t stand for such a thing . You’d kick him out if you could and move out if you couldn’t.
But suppose, over the years, he cuts the part of the portion of your rent that goes to utilities and repair work. Year after year, he’d stop by and announce his cuts with great fanfare, telling you how much money you’ll save.
On each visit, as he handed out the meager savings, he’d rail about how the utilities were incompetent, and filled with lazy workers, and that repair and maintenance work was a rip-off perpetrated by equally lazy laborers.
“We’re gonna show them,” he’d say, “The market will take care of these bozos.”
Meanwhile, year after year, you pay a little less. Things might get a little ragged. The maintenance man might not show up every day; the fire alarms might stop working; the elevators get stuck more, there’s an occasional power outage, water’s a bit murky … but there’s those savings.
Unbeknownst to you, most of the money the landlord saves is going to upgrade the top floor where he and his cronies live, bringing in their own dependable power and clean water. But you don’t investigate much because … there’s those savings.
Every time you passed him in the hall, he’d give you his spiel. “Those repair guys are thieves,” he’d tell you, again and again. “And you might as well burn money as give it to the utilities,” he’d say with a sage nod of his head. “Just wait ‘til those market forces hit, that’ll show them.” But he’d begin to add a new verse to his rant. “And hey. What about those gays in 3G? Or the Mexicans in 2D? Disgrace how they double up like that …”
Then finally, one year, he announces he can no longer afford to supply heat, electricity or water, and he can’t be repairing anything that breaks any longer. “Just not enough money – besides, look what’s happening around here … throwing more money at those lazy good-for-nothings is no solution.”
Now imagine complaining to him about the frozen pipes, or your child’s pneumonia and him responding with: “Hey. It’s all about the market – if you want it, figure out a way to get it – the market will provide if you’re diligent. Look at the top floor. Besides, it’s all the fault of those Mexicans. Or those gays … or …”
Would you believe that crap? Would you put up with it?
Of course you wouldn’t.
Yet that is precisely the game the Republicans have been playing for years. Call it the Ayan Rand six step. Step one: discredit government. Step two, starve it. Step three, when the underfunded government can’t perform, stand back and say “I told you so.” Step four, create the myth of the individual uber-alles – the Marlboro man on steroids; Step five, if anyone gets wise, find a scapegoat and blame it on them – gays, immigrants, government workers; government working gay immigrants. Step six, when things get bad, divide and conquer – “if it wasn’t’ for them…
So now we are waiting for the magic market to deliver us from a crisis caused by the unconstrained market; we are loath to give the government a penny even though no one else is going to do the things it used to do and do well – the things that created the conditions for a broadly shared prosperity and an open, fair, and transparent market. Now, we are on the verge of shivering in the dark, as we point fingers to any of the various scapegoats the Republicans have created.
Now, their plutocratic bosses have free reign, and they’re gutting the building as we fight among ourselves.
The solution to bad government is good government, not no government.
The solution to envy and jealousy at public sector employees’ pension and benefits is not to strip theirs, but to get ours back.
Our strength comes not from how the strongest or luckiest among us exploit the rest, but from how we come together as a country to do that which we must do together. Indeed, we are great in proportion to how we treat the least fortunate among us, not the most.
The reason it feels like the United States is collapsing around our collective ankles is because it is – if we relinquish all responsibility to “the market” it will strip the walls, tear out the pipes and wires and raise the roof, selling our present and future to make a quick buck. That’s what markets are supposed to do.
And if we buy into some uber-individualist fairy tale about survival of the fittest, we’ll all be handing over a bigger share of our rapidly diminishing paychecks to the CEOs and CFOs of Goldman Sachs or Exxon and we’ll be SOL, as our biggest export will continue to be high wage jobs to China, India, Germany and other countries that haven’t bought into the Ayn Rand fantasy – or nightmare.
That’s why we need government. Because our freedom and welfare are indeed in danger – but not from government; rather from those who point fingers at government in hopes that you won’t notice they’re robbing you blind, in the name of a mutant form of free-market economics that’s really only existed on the pages of a second rate polemic masquerading as a novel.
269 Comments so far
Show AllSir, you have made my morning. Thank You.
VP
When I attempted to read her shit, I gagged, I'm not surprised to read from you that she was a sociopath.
Her more infamous books were total garbage, boring beyond belief. The fact that the Repubican Party's philosophy is derived from the fiction Ayn Rand,who died while receiving Social Security and Medicare, her devotee's did not rush to her rescue with donations to get her off of those benefits that she had paid into shows her supporters liked Ayn because her writing worshiped narcissism fit their mold,narcissists The "Left Behind" series is also fiction able to dupe the pretend christians into believing their own exceptionalism. Their false doctrine of the Rapture trumpeted from their towers of babel feeds into the pretend christians narcissism and American exceptionalism which actually means nothing because America includes North, South, Central America. The Repubican philosophy is based on fiction, delusions appealing to narcissism which fits into the USAn society being instilled with mindlessness for the purpose of consumerist,narcissistic gluttony.
Thanks everyone,
I learned quite a bit about Ms. Rand from all of your arguments.
Please check this article out, from Gore Vidal in 1961,
http://www.gorevidalnow.com/2011/06/gore-vidal-on-ayn-rand-in-1961-she-has-a-great-attraction-for-simple-people/
Gore Vidal says, ""Our only political party has two right wings, one called Republican, the other Democratic. But Henry Adams figured all that out back in the 1890s. 'We have a single system,' he wrote, and 'in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and circuses."
http://dailybail.com/home/gore-vidal-our-only-political-party-has-two-right-wings-one.html
A very complex discussion indeed. Rand and objectivism, Vidal and democracy. What about Plato and his Cave Allegories?
What you assert may well be true, but the "both sides are teh bad" isn't the topic here. As to Randians, I'd say the Republicans have that title, cold.
Ayn Rand was an atheist. But yes, both her rantings and the Christian fundamentalists' rantings are deslusional.
Alan Greenspan once said on DemocracyNow! that Ayn Rand was one of his intellectual mentors.
Margaret Thatcher said that she did not believe that there was such a thing as "society" - just individuals. Exactly what Rand preached.
Look what laissez faire capitalism has done to the world! Not only to people, but to the environment, to animals, to nature, to clean water, fresh air, etc. Destruction! Destruction! Destruction! and More! More! More! as if there was no end to resources....
Considering the short time human beings have inhabited the earth compared to the existence of the earth - we certainly have plundered and destroyed - we are like a cancer in the earth body determined to destroy the entire living organism.
First, 'America' in the common vernacular means the United States of ... not the pair of new world continents.
Second, Rand's philosophy, called Objectivism, is not part of the traditional Republican ideology. Objectivism has been warped by it's late contemporaries, but it is part of one strand of Libertarian thought. Has little to do with consumerism, but is an individualist view supporting capitalism.
Your ignorance of the philosophical anthropology aside, your opinion of Rand's novels is completely off, they were actually extremely well written, enthralling, and are examples of literary and philosophical genius.
The problem is not your inability to read, or your shallow understanding of the issues, the problem is your mind is closed.
Oh please......"literary and philosophical genius" ???? Dogmatic drivel. She idolized and worshipped the ego, especially hers.
Anti-Philosopher 3000- Your mind is closed, and in your first sentence you reveal it. As for Rand's "philosophy" (self titled- objectivism) is total subjectivism, and were excellent examples of erotic propaganda and nothing more. As for your diagnosis of "our" problem, spare us. What economic system are you claiming this objectivism leads to? Her work is shallow and simple fascist capitalism apologia.
Your exceptional narcissism is so delusional it's beyond description. Obviously, you've never met anyone outside of that midget minded Iittle world of yours. I've met people from South America who call refer to themselves as being from America, South America..Their are Mexicans whom are from Baja California, and are Californians. Take a geography class. As for you, you wouldn't know a capitalist from a business person. What is your and Ayn definition of capitalism? You still don't realize that Ayn wrote fiction which you construe as fact, proving you don't know the difference between fiction and non fiction and/or truth all the while pontificating fiction as your reality and condemning those that know Ayn wrote fiction and bad fiction at that but that is her prerogative. I can only assume that you sent her money while she was sick, receiving Medicare and living on Social Security in accordance with her hypocrisy and yours. A self professed narcissistic exceptional philosopher. well you just as well praise yourself and the nonsense you write, for no one else is.
When I read Atlas Shrugged back in the '70s, I enjoyed it very much. I didn't "get" any kind of message from it, although I did get some fantastic mental images, like the speeding train moving through mountain passes, over vast golden landscapes of golden fields of wheat; and that dream world hidden in the mountains that described so well the haven I'd always wished for.
I have been totally floored seeing what the book has become, and what kind of person Ayn Rand was.
The retention of those images is not surprising since, if memory serves, most of them (or at least some) were meant as sexual metaphors. Congratulations. Be proud. If that's all you take away, you will never be tainted and will have gleaned all the stimulation you should allow yourself from her work.
Thanks alot.
She believed in each person doing his/her own thing as long as they were doing what SHE wanted them to do.
No, what THEY wanted to do. (See how that is ironic, you are telling people what YOU want them to believe, rather than referring to her rational arguments as written in her work, just to manipulate people reading this and get them to do what YOU want them to do)
Anti Philosopher 300 - It was ironic insertion of juxtaposed meaning, Oh Great Philosopher And Thinker Of Big Things. She advocated cruelty and power, oppression over others and hate. Just look at the effect these ideas of hers had on HER.
First, 'sociopathic narcissist' is redundant. Sociopaths are people incapable of empathy due to emotional trauma or brain structure, and fall on the psychological spectrum between narcissists and psychopaths. Narcissism itself is a clinical diagnosis of someone who has unrealistic self-confidence to the point of harm.
Rand, although self-confident to the point of conceit, was not clinically a narcissist, she had the ability to back up all her ideas with rational arguments.
In its pure form, Rand's individualist form of capitalism is not inconsistent with socialist forms of government, as long as people are given freedom to 'opt-out', and although some of our less enlightened sociopaths have warped her Objectivism to meet their needs of late, this doesn't diminish the power or the genius of her work. It only demonstrates our inability to deal with her rational ideas, and the Libertarian's cunning ability to manipulate ideals to their own ends.
A careful reading of Atlas Shrugged within the context of its time, would actually prove that today, the very Bankers that are living off the workers in America, have become the parasitical corporate bureaucrats that Rand hated. The coin has flipped, but the logic is sound.
"The solution to envy and jealousy at public sector employees’ pension and benefits is not to strip theirs, but to get ours back." How do we do that, when we don't have any jobs anymore?
Like the people in Wisconsin did. Like the peaceful demonstrations in Egypt. Think Poland in the eighties. We stand in solidarity behind those that still have their jobs, instead of thinking by tearing down unions, we'll all end up with jobs. Deficit and debt hysteria and forced financial austerity only serve the minority financial interests.
The author says: “The solution to envy and jealousy at public sector employees’ pension and benefits is not to strip theirs, but to get ours back.”
Granted, but on the other hand, government employees stripped naked like the rest of us is a terrific wake-up call for them. As I see it, they've generally been a detriment to sharing the wealth for several decades now, a kind of "we've got ours mentality." Reminds me of Shirley Jackson’s famous short story “The Lottery.”
I can't describe how disgusted I am by your "wake-up call" comment. And no, I am not a public employee. I know of absolutely NO public employees who believed the way you claim. Thanks for demonstrating perfectly how the divide-and-conquer strategy of the elite has been such a resounding success.
The first word out of my mouth about the comment I quoted was: “Granted.” You know, as in when someone agrees.
On the other hand, looking for something good in all this mess: My experience is that the vast majority of pensioned government employees, at every level, simply do not care most of us have no retirement plan except suicide, poverty, or involuntary hospice (i.e. no health care coverage).
You and I rightly worry the police are going to be the last regular citizens with a pension plan. So maybe “wake-up” calls like this one will help avoid that. What will it take to get citizens off their asses and start protesting? I stand by my comment.
You are so wrong on so many levels.
Through the 80's and 90's, while private sector employees raked in salaries far in excess of those given public employees, the public employees BARGAINED IN GOOD FAITH to give up pay increases for robust health and retirement benefits. Now that the shit has hit the fan, people like you feel they are being selfish by insisting that these benefits should not be stolen from them.
Every single one of the literally hundreds of public employees I have met are upset with people like you for one main reason -- instead of standing with them; instead of defending their bargaining rights; instead of seeing these attacks as attacks on ALL of us, you gripe and whine about the meager scraps they have.
You are facing the wrong way with your pitchforks and rotten tomatoes.
SO TRUE! The average wage has been so depressed by day labor and competition with slave labor countries that our standard of living has been lowered. When the smoke clears the only thing standing is what the UNIONS gave us. And that's what you get when you stand together - get the hint. Unions against the Tea Party - that's what the next election will come down to.
We need to fix our trade agreements to get our jobs back. We need to super tax companies that use foreign labor. If they don't like it they can always move to China and see how much of their earnings China keeps and if their kids show no aptitude they get no education and can work alongside slave labor in their own companies.
Strategy 1. a. Learn to recongnise divide and conquer when perpetrator is in mid sentence.
1.b.Look for commonalities, whatever binds us together as the amygdala impaired attempt to indoctrinate us.
I am a pubic employee, and I completely agree with you. Not, that I want to lose my paycheck. But looking at the people around me: the "I've got mine, because I deserve it" mentality is rampant. People forgot the they got theirs not because they deserve it, but because someone fought for it, went to jail, and maybe even died.
This sort of absolute horseshit is why there is very little reason to feel anything but despair for this country. You have no clue how sad your comment is.
"that is precisely the game the Republicans have been playing for years" ...
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Though lots of what Mr Atchenson says is undoubtedly true this article comes off as another piece of worthless d-craven propaganda. And worse than that, it actually trivializes real arguments against ayn rand libertarianism by using them as a partisan vehicle to attack big bad republicans.
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By leaving the D's unmentioned he's implying that they have not been complicit in what he calls the 'Ayn Rand six step" ....
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But wasn't it Bill Clinton who proclaimed that the era of big government was over ... 15 years ago? And isn't it Obama today who is demanding we accept austerity measures while he dismantles social security? Didn't he proclaim that he "loves the free market" ... whatever that may mean.
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Shouldn't the Bush tax cuts (referring to Mr. Atchenson's analogy the tax cuts would be like the landlord taking your money to upgrade the top floor where he lives, while neglecting your apartment and shrugging his shoulders saying "the money's just not there") .. shouldn't the Bush tax cuts now be known as the Obama tax cuts? The tax cuts originally passed through congress with the help of Dems too, especially in the senate .. where over 1/4 of the D's voted for it.
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Atchenson should be embarrassed for promoting such transparent campaign season propaganda drivel(save yourself from the Republicans!) ... It's D-craven propaganda not even cleverly covered up in the guise of what's ostensibly meant to be an informative article about free market ideologues in gvmnt.
Yep.
Totally agreed. I felt like I was reading Daily Kos for a moment there. What's happened to Common Dreams?
I hate to have to be the one to point it out, but there are "weaknesses" from the other direction too.
You dont have to agree with Ayn Rand to be a Libertarian
Libertarians are opposed to "regulation" not because they are necessarily heartless bastards but because of a little thing called "regulatory capture" whereby regulatory government agencies serve privileged interests not the people; real Libertarians believe that government should not privilege anyone.
Libertarians point to the Federal Reserve, creation of the privileged (Latin: privi lege - "private law") bankers and their government partners as the real source of the impoverishment of the people. The Fed can create money out of nothing and government career pols love this because they can use the money to go to war and further their careers without having to directly tax the people.
How does this work? When you create money out of nothing, you dilute the money already in existence. INFLATION IS A HIDDEN TAX. Inflation is actually not prices going up but the value of the money going down.
Libertarians believe that without the bankster-Fed scam, the MIC, the "War on Drugs" and all the rest, our country would be far, far wealthier - obviously - and there would be little need for welfare. True Libertarians do not condone crony capitalism, so they are not like, say, the Bushs; dont favor Empire, and so are not neocons and dont believe government should legislate religion, so they are not in favor of government legislating anyone's religious beliefs, including their own.
In short, Libertarianism is far, far more wide open than the propaganda against it ever admits.
Now, I have my disagreements with Libertarianism, just as I have with socialism, communism and anarchism, but I want to see a true marketplace of ideas whereby all four of them are recognized as having good ideas. Left versus Right is the old obsolete paradigm. And if progressives want to further their ideas, they at least have to be intelligently conversive with true libertarianism and not the kind of propaganda put out by the MSM, the Democratic operatives-writers AND fundamentalist progressives.
The outright hysteria I often see on CD about Libertarianism is counter-productive and silly. The Old Paradigm is dead - it's time to put everything on the table and think outside ALL the boxes
What I meant Rick is that the "weaknesses" are not only from democratic party propaganda but also from fundamentalist Progressives and misinformation they seem to have absorbed.
True Libertarians are just as aware as progressives that the Dems and the Repubs are both owned by the same plutocracy, but progressives seem misinformed about this. Part of the reason is probably because plutocrats and crony capitalists often cherry-pick Libertarian ideas and use them to further their interests, and are thus pseudo-Libertarians who progressives take for the real thing, something that can be remedied by research.
What I am saying here is that those "Libertarians" people here are freaking-out about are the pseudo-Libertarians mistakenly regarded as Libertarians. Plutocrats and crony capitalists often try to use or take over Libertarian organizations, ideas and even the Libertarian Party, and try to use them just as they do the Dems and Repubs.
The Kochs are not true Libertarians, for example.
True Libertarians point to the Fed-Bankster cartel as the real threat to liberty and the source of economic misery. Fake Libertarians are owned by the cartel - get it? I am hardly an expert on Libertarianism but what I can gather is that these "Beltway Libertarians" who are owned by the plutocracy hate Ron Paul because he is an enemy of this cartel and crony capitalism, which is NOT the same as the "free market."
The free market is actually defined as completely non-coercive interactions and associations, and the privileged usury of the Fed-Bankster cartel, by which we are FORCED to accept their system is considered by real Libertarians to be at the root of all the rest of State coercion and corruption.
For all these reasons, an alliance between REAL Libertarians and REAL Progressives makes sense, and i think Kucinich, Nader and Chomsky agree.
Is Ron Paul a true libertarian?
Do true libertarians such as RP believe that gov should protect property rights above all else? If a slave owner owns slaves, does a gov have a right to interfere in the property rights, the slaves of that slave owner? What about private business discriminating against any specific group?
"rue Libertarians point to the Fed-Bankster cartel as the real threat to liberty and the source of economic misery."
Yes. And they would replace it with the gold standard. Even more economic misery.
"The free market is actually defined as completely non-coercive interactions and associations, and the privileged usury of the Fed-Bankster cartel, by which we are FORCED to accept their system is considered by real Libertarians to be at the root of all the rest of State coercion and corruption."
Right fine. Get rid of all government. A government protecting property and capital rights is behaving coercively.
You dont want your property rights protected? I think you do.......
True Libertarians are opposed to slavery in all forms.
Libertarianism actually has a lot to offer in terms of Relocalization and for people who want to create VOLUNTARY associations and communities in the face of the coming MIC-Bankster-caused financial collapse that is INEVITABLE!
What is it people here dont understand about the consequences of an ever-expanding fiat/paper currency? See post above on "regulatory capture."
Government is a tool used by the plutocratic cartels to rip us all off. True Libertarians are actually opposed to the transnational-corporate elite. Whether Ron Paul is or remains a "true" Libertarian I dont know - he could be lying. But the point is that the system IS going to collapse soon from an even bigger reality - Peak Oil (whether or not Paul believes it or not) so...you are going to have to learn to live without government help anyway.
We are all going to have to voluntarily come together and provide for ourselves. All I am suggesting is using whatever ideas that work from many different philosophies.
You have a problem with reading comprehension? I think you do....
This is what I said:
"Do true libertarians such as RP believe that gov should protect property rights above all else? "
Did you note the ALL ELSE part? Should I repeat it, since you do not appear able to read?
"True Libertarians are opposed to slavery in all forms."
Answer the question. If a slave owner owns slaves, does a gov have a right to interfere in the property rights, the slaves of that slave owner? What about private business discriminating against any specific group?
Don't weasel. Yes or no?
"What is it people here dont understand about the consequences of an ever-expanding fiat/paper currency? See post above on "regulatory capture." "
What is it people like you, who don't understand about the consequences of currency based on gold? Oh wait, you do, Which is PRECISELY why you libertarians want it.
"True Libertarians are actually opposed to the transnational-corporate elite. "
In that case Paul isn't one.
"But the point is that the system IS going to collapse soon from an even bigger reality - Peak Oil (whether or not Paul believes it or not) so...you are going to have to learn to live without government help anyway. "
Ah the vaunted logic of the libertarians. Peak oil means having to live without gov.
And again sure, let's live without gov. ALL OF IT.
"We are all going to have to voluntarily come together and provide for ourselves. All I am suggesting is using whatever ideas that work from many different philosophies."
Which means government.
Well said and exactly as I see it. Many here complain more about those who have commandeered others' ideas and abused them for their own purposes, then they are complaining specifically about the original ideologies themselves.
Similarly it should be seen as a false claim assuming 'Liberalism' is the essential basis for Capitalist abuses, when in fact it is 'Neoliberalism' that is at fault. Even conservatism isn't nearly as toxic or dangerous as Neoconservatism... And isn't it interesting that each of these 'neo- ideologies' really is just another means of perpetuating imperial frames and perspectives, and for promoting 'deregulation'? This is how imperialists like the Koch brothers operate, by hijacking others ideas and poisoning the well/the terminology for the rest of us.
All forms of liberalism have capitalism at their core, as one one of their foundations.
Neoliberalism is one form of liberalism, the form that takes that capitalist foundation to the extreme logical conclusion.
No, it isn't neoliberalism at fault. It is capitalism at fault. The capitalism that all forms of liberalism embrace; all the "good" forms of liberalism struggle to balance their embrace of capitalism with their other goals.
If you hate Capitalism indelibly, then you hate the market indelibly. You only support the dispensation of goods 'needed' (i.e. approved), and 'not needed' (i.e. not approved by the authorities employed to determine these issues). You believe in no form of true freedom.
This is a ridiculous, opposition to capitalism is based on the belief in and love of freedom! Capitalism is at its root the expression of tyranny- the exercise of capital is the exercise of control over others, it is a system of control over the decision about what is "needed" and "not needed", it is the mechanism of permission to engage in any activity. With all your talk of Libertarianism and deregulation what you propose is to give up all freedom and relinquish total control to Capital, what you propose is to take freedom and give liberty to the oligarchs to do as they please. Opposite of capitalism is People exerting control of the economy- this is freedom- to decide what to make, how it is distributed, and how it is consumed. Earlier I indirectly asserted that Libertarianism is a facet of fascism, and it is- in your posts it is clear you misunderstand the meaning of Anarchy- it is not the absence of government, it is the State of Being Self Ruled, it is a fulfillment of Economic Democracy, those who do the work decide what is made,how it is distributed, and how it is consumed. You advocate the absence of regulation- would you abolish the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, those are regulations over the conduct of government- regulation is not the problem, it is the enforcement of regulation that is the problem.
re: "This is a ridiculous, opposition to capitalism is based on the belief in and love of freedom!"
Thank you for at least admitting that there is a spiritual component to this concern.
re: "Capitalism is at its root the expression of tyranny- the exercise of capital is the exercise of control over others"
Unbridled Capitalism could be called greed. "Greed is good". What a sickening mantra. Greed is *not* good, but greed is like love, it is a primal drive. But this drive is actually a distortion of another drive: to Thrive. When people want to thrive, they wonder why others around them are sometimes not driven to thrive as much as they are. 'Why aren't theses people dedicated to a more radical view of beauty or balance, or efficiency etc. than I am? They just don't understand how important it is to be dedicated to a good cause...'
So Capitalism takes an essentially good drive and distorts it. How do we correct the distortion? By reigning in Capitalism, like we reign in a draft horse. An unpredictable engine like a horse is not without its hazards, and responsibilities, but when properly employed can be extremely helpful.
re: "what you propose is to take freedom and give liberty to the oligarchs to do as they please"
Sorry, but this is simply a ridiculous claim. Period.
re: "you misunderstand the meaning of Anarchy- it is not the absence of government, it is the State of Being Self Ruled, it is a fulfillment of Economic Democracy"
And crime will be eliminated, how?
re: You advocate the absence of regulation- would you abolish the Constitution, the Bill of Rights"..."regulation is not the problem, it is the enforcement of regulation that is the problem"
Do you advocate the abolition of reading comprehension? My whole point is that MORE REGULATION, properly applied of course, must be employed. Those who rail against proper regulation are like pirates, pillaging any economy for their own benefit, and misusing the systems that were put in place to facilitate BALANCED free trade. *Free As Possible Markets* is what I've always said must be our aim. And the system shouldn't be 'reffed' like like a football game (though this is a better metaphor than used by most, it is still too enmeshed within the business world paradigm)... it should be overseen and administered like a wild game preserve..
Thank you for admitting it.
There is no such thing as "unbridled" capitalism. The very goal of capitalist and capitalism is to ensure a system where they are unbridled, where they can extract maximum returns from their capital.
That is capitalism. And that is why liberalism is ultimately a failure. All the "good" things that liberals like you might want, are defeated by the belief in capitalism, the belif that people have a right to maximise returns on capital above all else.
If you want more regulation, then you are not capitalist.
"There is no such thing as "unbridled" capitalism. "
I know its hard to believe, but once upon a time, there was such a thing as sensible legislation and rule-of-law. And as much as I regret the tendency for systems without sufficient failsafes to produce the results we now see, I recognize that once again, *it's not that there is an inherent evil to the prosperous flow of capital, and nothing evil about saving, investing and even some speculation*... What we're seeing is the result of a system managed essentially like a ponzi-scheme, with a corrupt and privately controlled, private-interest serving Fed.
I want the Fed to be nationalized, and for banks, and money to serve the people, not the ultra-rich. What I don't want is the idea that we have to rethink everything from the ground up in order to get it right. We need rule-of-law, and the understanding of limitations to finite resources, and the full endorsement of *compensated* exploitation, and truly meaningful regulation.
And by the way, if you still think I'm a neo-liberal, I'd say your an... ehh, I'll wait for a response before going there.
"know its hard to believe, but once upon a time, there was such a thing as sensible legislation and rule-of-law. And as much as I regret the tendency for systems without sufficient failsafes to produce the results we now see, I recognize that once again, *it's not that there is an inherent evil to the prosperous flow of capital, and nothing evil about saving, investing and even some speculation*... What we're seeing is the result of a system managed essentially like a ponzi-scheme, with a corrupt and privately controlled, private-interest serving Fed."
You miss the point. Capitalist always seek to get rid of those regulations. Capitalists will always seek to maximise returns on their capital. Capitalists will always seek to create the conditions in which they can maximise returns on their capital.
"And by the way, if you still think I'm a neo-liberal, I'd say your an... ehh, I'll wait for a response before going there."
Again you miss the point. I'm saying that the difference between neoliberalism and other forms of liberalism is not as big as liberals like to claim, see your idolisation of capitalism.
Salusa Secondus __Your condescending admonitions about the past being some pleasure cruise are just as ripe and decayed as Ayn Rand's ideas. Please designate the time period you are referring to so we can have a specific consideration of what you posit. As for your lame regrets, again spare me the condescension. What we are seeing is Capitalists engaged and engorged by the system of Capitalism As for your redress to the situation- do you want to be compensated for your exploitation- or is it you want to be compensated by the exploitation of me? Let's enforce the regulations we have now, and the laws, or do think that we should only look forward? Just what system of Economic Governance are you proposing? IS IT neo liberalism- or just Capitalism- or is the first just a methodology of the latter?
Wrong.
You are demonstrating the problem with liberals and liberalism.
You are so enamoured with capitalism, that you have confused and conflated it with the market. People being able to trade goods AND labour freely, has nothing to do with capitalism.
And you have just demonstrated why despite your whininig about people confusing liberalism with neoliberalism, there is not much difference between liberalism and neoliberalism.
Well, what I call Capitalism, is the flow of Capital, connected to the capability of individuals to personally buy, spend, and save for the most part according to their personal interests. I am, 'as you say' so enamored with that, yes.
I also don't think it's possible to exist in a world without the flow of money, or Capital. But this certainly doesn't make me a Capitalist, who is specifically a person that makes money off of managing money, or someone who espouses this as a favorable strategy.
I am a Democratic Socialist, like Bernie Sanders, who believes that if we can get acts like The Glass Steagall Act (Banking Act of 1933) and the Sherman Antitrust Acts reinstated, mass market speculation, derivatives gambling and the undermining of US sovereignty by multinational mega-financiers can be curbed and made illegal again.
re: "And you have just demonstrated why despite your whininig about people confusing liberalism with neoliberalism, there is not much difference between liberalism and neoliberalism."
And you have just demonstrated how ideology can narrow one's vision and insert scorn between those who should be your compatriots, ruining our opportunity to cooperate for a better future. From your tone, I think it seems obvious what you are offering is not going to be in my better interests, so why should I be sympathetic to you? I'm just sayin, cause if what you've got to offer is based on a better, safer, happier, harmonious world, I'm not 'feelin' it'.
A liberal, neo or not, is not my ally.
You should not be sympathetic to me. Equally, I am not sympathetic to you.
"better, safer, happier, harmonious world, I'm not 'feelin' it'."
Everyone claims to want this. Including neoliberals.