'The Language of Capitalism Isn't Just Annoying, It's Dangerous' (theoutline.com) 510
An anonymous reader shares a report: When General Motors laid off more than 6,000 workers days after Thanksgiving, John Patrick Leary, the author of the new book Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism, tweeted out part of GM CEO Mary Barra's statement. "The actions we are taking today continue our transformation to be highly agile, resilient, and profitable, while giving us the flexibility to invest in the future," she said. Leary added a line of commentary to of Barra's statement: "Language was pronounced dead at the scene." Why should we pay attention to the particular words used to describe, and justify, the regularly scheduled "disruptions" of late capitalism? Published this month by Haymarket Books, Leary's Keywords explores the regime of late-capitalist language: a set of ubiquitous modern terms, drawn from the corporate world and the business press, that he argues promulgate values friendly to corporations (hierarchy, competitiveness, the unquestioning embrace of new technologies) over those friendly to human beings (democracy, solidarity, and scrutiny of new technologies' impact on people and the planet).
These words narrow our conceptual horizons -- they "manacle our imagination," Leary writes -- making it more difficult to conceive alternative ways of organizing our economy and society. We are encouraged by powerful "thought leaders" and corporate executives to accept it as the language of common sense or "normal reality." When we understand and deploy such language to describe our own lives, we're seen as good workers; when we fail to do so, we're implicitly threatened with economic obsolescence. After all, if you're not conversant in "innovation" or "collaboration," how can you expect to thrive in this brave new economy? [...] Calling our current economic system "late capitalism" suggests that, despite our gleaming buzzwords and technologies, what we're living through is just the next iteration of an old system of global capitalism. In other words, he writes, "cheer up: things have always been terrible!" What is new, Leary says, quoting Marxist economic historian Ernest Mandel, is our "belief in the omnipotence of technology" and in experts. He also claims that capitalism is expanding at an unprecedented rate into previously uncommodified geographical, cultural, and spiritual realms.
These words narrow our conceptual horizons -- they "manacle our imagination," Leary writes -- making it more difficult to conceive alternative ways of organizing our economy and society. We are encouraged by powerful "thought leaders" and corporate executives to accept it as the language of common sense or "normal reality." When we understand and deploy such language to describe our own lives, we're seen as good workers; when we fail to do so, we're implicitly threatened with economic obsolescence. After all, if you're not conversant in "innovation" or "collaboration," how can you expect to thrive in this brave new economy? [...] Calling our current economic system "late capitalism" suggests that, despite our gleaming buzzwords and technologies, what we're living through is just the next iteration of an old system of global capitalism. In other words, he writes, "cheer up: things have always been terrible!" What is new, Leary says, quoting Marxist economic historian Ernest Mandel, is our "belief in the omnipotence of technology" and in experts. He also claims that capitalism is expanding at an unprecedented rate into previously uncommodified geographical, cultural, and spiritual realms.
Book (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Book (Score:5, Funny)
But think about all the extra money he would make from royalties from the book. A lot of people will pay top dollar to reinforce their views against capitalism.
The biggest problem is that I am not sure if I am being sarcastic or not.
Re:Book (Score:5, Interesting)
But think about all the extra money he would make from royalties from the book. A lot of people will pay top dollar to reinforce their views against capitalism.
The biggest problem is that I am not sure if I am being sarcastic or not.
Any conflicts you might have are probably based on the differences between unfettered and controlled capitalism. Capitalism in it's purist form is suicidal. What is surprising is that more people don't realize that an economy based on greed needs some control over that greed. Since greed lies along a spectrum, from people who are altruistic, to people who can and do kill other humans to secure wealth in their sociopathic level of greed. Some want it all.
It also tends toward the common mistake of humans that they don't understand simple math. Pure capitalism will attempt to accumulate all other money, especially in it's corporatism mutant form. The simple math is an equation. If the corporation has no customers, or almost no one can afford to buy their products - it makes no money. If all of the potential customers are out of work because " The actions we are taking today continue our transformation to be highly agile, resilient, and profitable, while giving us the flexibility to invest in the future.." as the lady said, they miss the profitable part.
It's all well and good to make money. A lot of it is fine. I loves me my money. But in today's corporatism/capitalism world, it appears that some folks think you can make money without having any customers. Or by demanding first world prices at the some time as demanding third world wages.
Re:Book - FTFY (Score:4, Insightful)
I absolutely cannot. Because Communism is always destroyed by the first person who succeeds. The effect of greed is such that while the greediest spout about egalitarianism , but their greed causes them to want anything but competition. If I want all of the power that is possible to have , upon success, I will do everything to take others things , and ascertain that the deck is stacked in my favor.
You aren't wrong. I hope you weren't trying to disagree with me. Any pure 'ism destroys itself because it makes fatally flawed assumptions.
Re: (Score:3)
You seem to think that wealth is a constant sum and that an increase for one person requires an equal reduction for another.
While there are certain limits to the amount of wealth products - outside of running the presses and faking it - the fact remains that the driving force of greed will cause the most driven and likely successful among us will want any and all wealth. They do want to reduce other's wealth as long as they can accumulate it for their own.
They put throttles on engines because if allowed to run wide open, the engine soon destroys itself. While some might want the engine to run wide open all the time, others w
Re: (Score:3)
Funny you should bring up books but "Dianetics: The Modern 'non'Science of 'un'Mental Health" to be clear I added the non and the un, I could not leave those words in the referenced state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org], eww.
I think corporations are being pushed out of spiritual realms, too many voices too compete with and pretty much same with cultural, again too many voices to compete with. They focus on politics, controlling legislation and tilting in their favour and beyond to establishing long term
Re:Book (Score:4, Insightful)
Explain to me how creative works can even be encouraged to exist without copyright. Let's say I write a book and spend 6 months on it. I think - all I have to do is sell 10,000 copies and I can afford to sit down and write another book. But no. The first guy who buys a copy starts selling copies of it for pennies and nobody buys it from me. I am broke and destitute and never write a book again. Copyright encourages competition - but only useful competition. Like encouraging there to be other authors out their writing their own books.
Re:Book (Score:5, Insightful)
That's true if, and only if, you can't milk it for about 3 generations longer than you actually live. That's ridiculous. And hardly an incentive to ever create anything again if you already made enough that you and your great-grandchildren can still live off it.
It's never been faster from creation to commercialization than today. And at the same time copyright has never been longer.
Re:Book (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet that doesn't make copyright itself an anathema to capitalism. Without copyright at all, the market wouldn't exist at all. Capitalism doesn't like markets not existing.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Book (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that I am endorsing a return to it, but many of the great works that we still celebrate today were done so under the system of patronage. The idea is that you, as an author or musician, find a rich person who wants to be famous for "discovering" you. They pay you a salary to create works, and you do so. The patron then releases those to the public, and is rewarded with fame.
Alternatively, a great many works of art are created as hobbies, without requiring monetary encouragement. Community theaters typically don't pay their casts. Humans, being very strange apes, are motivated very strongly by acceptance and praise.
And, lets also not forget that we live in the age of kickstarter/patreon. The public at large can decide to pay you to create a work of art, no strings attached.
Now, I do not personally believe that either of these is as effective as a limited term of copyright, but you did ask to have other systems explained to you.
Re: Book (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, copyright didnâ(TM)t exist anywhere until 1710, and then only in England. It didnt spread elsewhere for quite a while, with most of Europe adopting it in the mid 19th century, and the rest of the world (by force through colonialism and imperialism) until the 20th.
But creative works have existed since before written history. So if your contention is correct that creative works wonâ(TM)t be created and published without copyright, please let me know how you explain the existence of works that predate copyright.
Re: Book (Score:3)
The United States did not grant copyrights on sound recordings until 1978, literally over 100 years after Edison invented the phonograph. Yet we seem to have had a burgeoning record industry. We did not grant copyrights on architectural works until 1990 and buildings predate written history. So your argument is rather crap, I should say. Want to take another crack at it?
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We rely on it for our bullshit bingo. Don't teach managers to talk like people, those speeches they tend to hold in front of all of us would get a lot more boring if we can't do our beer betting pool anymore!
Re:Book (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Book (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know what it's gonna be replaced by, but capitalism in its actual sense is already dead. The key features are in many areas already gone or on the way out, with competition and the demand side as the decider of the "best" product being two of the most important parts that are already gone or pretty much gone in most areas.
Where they still exist, capitalism still works pretty well. Where they don't, well, it's been replaced by a corporate dictate of products and prices.
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Ok, capitalism as our form of economy and doing business is on the way out. Capitalism itself would be a pretty good idea, I think we should try it once again if we get around to it.
Re: (Score:3)
I know I shouldn't feed the AC's, but.... If capitalism was a natural, emergent phenomenon, we would see it expressing itself in more than just humans. Fiddler crabs would be investing in each other with pebbles. Swallows would be transporting coconuts for trade with bunnies. No ant has ever received a paycheck.
If anything I would think that it would be easier to argue communism is the default social order in nature, though personally, I don't believe there is any thing natural about any economic system
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The only thing wrong with capitalism are too few capitalists.
-GK Chesterton
The point is well made, however, Capitalism is as much a form of social engineering as communism is.
Re: Book (Score:4, Interesting)
Taking is just simple harvesting of a accumulation of resources. It's people and animals naturally do when they come across useful things.
Yes, I was just watching a cat try to take a piece of chicken from another cat. Very natural. Did not turnout well for him.
To maintain exclusive access requires Force to artificially maintained control
Of course it requires force to hold on to something which others wish to take by force. The cat defending its piece of chicken understood that very well. The question is which party is initiating the use of force.
Your use of the appeal to nature fallacy notwithstanding, it's asinine to suggest that the person holding on to what they already have is the one initiating force. It's almost as asinine as suggesting that the concept of ownership is somehow unnatural. Just ask the cats.
Re: Book (Score:4, Interesting)
Taking is just simple harvesting of a accumulation of resources. It's people and animals naturally do when they come across useful things. also things tend to flow from where there's more to where there is less when allowed to follow natural courses. To hold onto something is to take it out the natural Flows In Cycles. To forcibly prevent natural harvesting of Resources by others that you would like to hold on to. That's the concept of ownership. To maintain exclusive access requires Force to artificially maintained control
If I were in a primitive state of nature, and I had just spent an hour gathering berries to eat by a stream in the sun for my lunch, I don't think it would be very nice (or "natural") for Oog, who spent the morning sleeping in the sun, to take my berries away from me. I wouldn't just hand them over, so Oog would have to initiate the takeover by force to take them from me (hitting me over the head, perhaps, with the thighbone of a deer). Which is when I would be forced to shoot Oog with my Glock 17.
To suggest that it is "natural" for someone to take from another when they come across useful things, and that to hold on to things that one has accumulated is somehow "unnatural", is to describe a world in which I have no desire to live naturally.
I believe that it is right and proper for me to seek to better my circumstances, by accumulating things which will make my circumstances better. And I believe that it is quite natural for me to retain that which I have accumulated for my own use. If I must use force to do so, then my use of force is natural.
There will always be those among us who will seek to better their position the easy way, taking by force or subterfuge that which others have worked to accumulate. I have no use for such people.
Re: (Score:3)
When we get really clever (and people study more physics, chemistry and biology, rather than politics and law, and get better money for doing so), then we'll have a good shot at thinking our way around the pollutants, and obtaining newer sources of resources that have previously been inaccessible. That's pretty much the story of the rise of humanity.
The story of humanity is that we expand to consume all natural resources, and then our societies fail. More cultures have done this and vanished than are still around. Our Easter Island Heads are iPhones and BMWs.
Re: Book (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop it with the tribalism already.
It's not Team Capitalism against the rest of the world. Attacking critics of a concept with fallacies such as ad hominems is simply irrational.
Capitalism has its merits and its flaws. In a lot of markets it simply doesn't produce what we want as a society, but in others it absolutely does. Arguments encouraging thinking critically about capitalism as a way to organize a society are much more fruitful than defending capitalism to the death, with all the rhetorical devices you can think of.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Book (Score:3, Insightful)
How about "bbbbut every fucking time it's been tried"?
Venezuela is just the most recent example, and a particularly funny one because just a decade or so ago American commies (including idiots on Slashdot) were celebrating it's transformation and crowing about how wonderfully everything was going once Hugo nationalized everything.
Re: Book (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and successful capitalism is dependent on regulation and social programs to prevent disaster.
Maybe the answer isn't to run amok with an extremist ideology.
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"Any success of socialist programs in the Western World is dependent on a Capitalist economy to subsidize them."
And vice versa. Government and "socialism" in the west produces a healthy, mobile, educated population. If you look at the 19th century capitalism, the lack of these things was a major limitation for industrial expansion in the UK. It was at this point that public education was invented, as well as what we would now call social housing.
Public health care came a lot later and required two world war
Re: Book (Score:3)
You do understand that socialism isn't what is killing Venezuela right? I hate hearing this stupid talking point over and over. Authoritarianism is what is killing them.
True. It's not the water which kills a drowning man; it's the lack of oxygen.
Re:Conceive alternative economy (Score:5, Insightful)
Those are all extremes and fail because they are so. Capitalism has worked best in the past when properly regulated. The keyword is properly. Breaking up Ma Bell was great for telecommunications in this country. Unfortunately we don't do this anymore. The very idea that we have banks or other companies that are too big to fail should be a sign that we're not regulating properly.
It is a difficult task and even harder to maintain over the long haul as corporations have way too much influence in government and also will do what they can to corrupt the intent of many regulations whether it be through lobbying congress or embedding stooges like Ajit Pai. Too many regulations or regulations that don't make sense and you stifle innovation, not enough and corporate greed leads right back to its destructive roots.
Growing up in Vermont when I did was during the birth of Ben and Jerry's. They had a novel concept that local companies should support the local community every way they can. They instilled a corporate morality into their company and it provided a great example where a corporation can actually do a lot of good and still make a lot of money. They pooled dairy farms in the surrounding area helping those farmers even to this day. They've grown so they are helping even more farmers today despite being sold to a much larger corporation. Most business owners border on the sociopathic though and will not see spending money on the local community as anything but a loss of profit.
Ford had it right while not being perfect he understood that to make a product you have to pay workers enough to afford your product. That is overly simplistic of course as there is a lot more to society than a paycheck. If Ford helped build roads and schools they would have had even larger demand and people to fill the demand. I've yet to work for a company in my professional life that understood the concept of soft dollars without just seeing it as sunken costs. Hard dollars is all a lot of people seem to understand.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ben and Jerry's used capitalism to sell mediocre ice cream to sheep willing to pay a higher price to feel good. Starbucks and Apple do the same thing. Apple and Microsoft used capitalism to take pre-existing ideas, repackage them, and sell the result. Apple wrapped them in a pretty package and sold them for more. Microsoft wrapped them in a brown-paper wrapper and sold lots. That is the nature of capitalism, find a consumer for your product. Not everyone wants to wait in line at Starbucks for mediocre, o
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Ben and Jerry's used capitalism to sell mediocre ice cream to sheep willing to pay a higher price to feel good.
Once upon a time, they made better than average ice cream. Sadly, those days are gone. Now it's pretty crappy ice cream, and lots of the other ingredients are crap, too.
The breakup of Ma Bell was good because they owned technology no one else had.
The technology was well-understood, as it was simple. It was good because they had a monopoly, and consumers suffered predictably.
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The best way to change how a person thinks is to change the way s/he talks.
Oops, sorry. I should not have said it was the "best" way. That was double-plus ungood. More like it's one of the most pernicious ways.
It is, as it sidesteps any kind of plausibility control. It is also for most people the most efficient and effective way to manipulate them. Does not do anything for those that can think non-verbally or in a second, unaffected language, but that is a minority anyways. I have wondered for a long time why this language manipulation has this strong effect, but it turns out most people critically depend on their native language to think, go with any trend, no matter how demented, and are completely unable to cr
True thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
When companies have the power to disrupt societies, one manager thinking and taking bullshit can do a lot of damage. It always has been that way but these days or highly optimised society has become more fragile which makes bullshit more likely to cause damage.
False thing. (Score:3)
Every person has the power to disrupt society. However their effect is dependent on how many people are listening to them. The thing is it isn't the quality of their message, but enough people listen to them, they will get followers and cause damage.
Companies have bosses who employee thousands of people so what they say there is a number of people listing to them.
Re: (Score:2)
Bosses: "Agree with me, if you like employment... or decent hours, pay raises, and a career path."
I haven't personally had a boss like this. I don't know if I'm typical or lucky, but I do know some have real jerks above them with no realistic options to leave for a better situation. That's why it is so important to legally decrease their influence.
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Hey boss, I found something new.
It offers more of money and less of you.
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It would be better to note that this works in every field that operates on free market capitalist principles. The end game of free market capitalism is death of free market capitalism by self-serving giant monopolies in each field. Doesn't matter if its in steel production, oil production or propaganda production.
That is why the solution has typically been to constrain this tendency of market economies through sovereign intervention when it begins to tilt towards monopoly in a certain field by breaking mono
So is there a solution? (Score:3)
My current fantasy solution approach would be a progressive profits tax linked to market share. Any company that dominates a market too much would face a choice between reproducing by splitting into competing companies or paying extremely high tax rates. The division into competing companies would give people more choice and freedom while reducing the tax rates so the shareholders received better returns. The other option of paying high tax rates would pay for the government to regulate the monopolist more
Re: False thing. (Score:3)
Re:True thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
GM is adjusting to the transition from internal combustion engines to electric; it's not one manager or one company, it's the entire industry. Some product lines and manufacturing facilities are obsolescent. Society will move on.
He also claims that capitalism is expanding at an unprecedented rate into previously uncommodified geographical, cultural, and spiritual realms.
This guy has no room to talk about gobbledygook.
But that aside it shouldn't surprise anyone that capitalism is expanding; it's the best economic system of the alternatives we have. Communism has failed every time it's been attempted.
Re:True thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
But that aside it shouldn't surprise anyone that capitalism is expanding; it's the best economic system of the alternatives we have. Communism has failed every time it's been attempted.
With apologies to Churchill, it's the worst form of economic organization, except for all the others.
Re:True thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
There is this pervasive and pernicious notion that the United States is somehow the bastion of free market capitalism and that Europe (particularly the Scandinavian countries) are immensely socialist. If you start looking at very specific parts of each, you can find plenty of examples where there is a sharp contrast, but taken as a whole, they are very similar.
Re:True thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
Your sources are all US influence groups with a vested interest in saying the US isn't free enough, and maybe it will be if they just loosen up a few more regulations...
Please state what points they are making that you think are valid.
Re:True thing. (Score:4, Interesting)
"GM is adjusting to the transition from internal combustion engines to electric; it's not one manager or one company, it's the entire industry. Some product lines and manufacturing facilities are obsolescent. Society will move on."
While this is true, it's not insightful. It's misleading.
Sure the "entire industry" is transitioning, hopefully, but the entire industry isn't failing while doing so. Other companies aren't laying off due to obsolesce, in fact there's no evidence that the transition has produced obsolesce at all. Look where GM has laid off, does closing down EV lines look like something a company would do because EV transition has made facilities obsolete?
Re:True thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
Lets not forget that:
- there are always people behind any corporation, there is a person writing, reading and executing these directives
- there are no black and white situations when considering human beings (mostly - as otherwise this very statement would contradict itself)
- there is no country implementing pure capitalism, it's usually various blends
- countries implementing various blends of capitalism having democratic governance are the best places for people to live guaranteeing them stability, freedom and prosperity
- we the people (in democracies) have the power to fix the problems of our state
- the time we live is the best so far in human history, the most stable, the easiest - especially in the so called "western democracies"
Re: True thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: True thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
All Western economies are a blend of those ideas. Presenting them as a dichotomy (as GP did) as a response to any criticism towards capitalism is fallacious, misleading and defeatist.
Re: True thing. (Score:4)
Well, judging from how capitalism fares, I have a hard time telling what exactly the failure here is.
Mostly that of the people. Capitalism is harder to debunk and more personal, but it's still the same lie as communism.
Re: True thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
Capitalism is harder to debunk and more personal, but it's still the same lie as communism.
Wait, no it isn't. They are literally opposite lies. Capitalism is a lie of meritocracy, while communism is a lie of equality.
Re: (Score:3)
The flavor may actually be better without the hogshit and cockroach that sneaks in there.
To imply that nationalized utilities, national armies and social security mechanisms are somehow equivalent to the 'hogshit and cockroach in hotdogs' and have not contributed to prosperity is disingenuous bullshit.
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That's the language of corporate bullshit. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not the language of capitalism.
"late capitalism" is better than "late socialism" (Score:3, Insightful)
You know, after you run out of other people's money.
Like the millions fleeing Venezuela have discovered.
Funny, if the US is so damn bad, why don't "progressives" support building a wall around it to keep people out of the awfulness?
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The wall will spend other people's money so I guess it's a wall built by socialism.
How about you build a personal responsibility wall around your own property?
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"late capitalism" is better than "late socialism". You know, after you run out of other people's money. Like the millions fleeing Venezuela have discovered.
False dichotomy and false equivalence. Authoritarianism is what ruins economies, not socialism. Democracy is vital to keeping power in check.
Funny, if the US is so damn bad, why don't "progressives" support building a wall around it to keep people out of the awfulness?
Because the awfulness is disinformed people like you who do not want to learn but are easily manipulated, not refugees looking to stay alive. If we could build a physical barrier could keep your kind of willful ignorance out then I'd help build it myself.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Democracy is vital to keeping power in check.
This does not appear to be the case.
It still allows the elite to collude and, say, form effectively a bi-partisan" one party system out of it. Or allows a bunch of parties that collude to throw up a "cordon sanitaire" to keep the popular ("populist") voice out of it. Or allows a guy to get himself elected president, then president-for-life. Say the guy who said that "democracy is like a train; you get off when you get where you want to be." (US, various countries in Europe, Turkey(!); other obvious referenc
Re: (Score:3)
Democracy is vital to keeping power in check.
This does not appear to be the case.
It still allows the elite to collude and, say, form effectively a bi-partisan" one party system out of it.
It's true that Democracy in the US needs some improvement in representation, such as ranked voting.
Or allows a guy to get himself elected president, then president-for-life.
once you stop having elections to replace leaders, you stop being a democracy.
That is, democracy by and of itself is not sufficient, for it can itself be subborned.
Absolutely correct. Democracy needs people to maintain it.
You have not shown it is necessary either. Eg. with a vigorous king who regularly chops heads off of his uppity barons so the rest'll keep their heads down (and who otherwise doesn't do much more than give barons jobs to do) you might have decent checks on power as well. Barbaric, yes. Effective, that also. No democracy, yet functional checks on power.
If the barons can be killed on a whim then are not the power, the king is. In your model, there is no check of power on the king.
Because the awfulness is disinformed people like you who do not want to learn but are easily manipulated, not refugees looking to stay alive.
Read: The "progressives" like their labour cheap
If that is true then why are "progressives" also advocating for a higher minimum wage? Do they want cheap labor only to pay them more money?
This is a 70s era sociology department trick: If you agree with it, it's true. If you disagree, it's "relative", or the sayers are "disinformed", or what-have-you.
No, I
Re:"late capitalism" is better than "late socialis (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing is that a lot of folks reduce this whole topic down to a binary point of capitalism versus socialism. That's not just you saying, better of two evils, but there others that would say, "socialism is the only cure to capitalism" or some BS like that. The whole thing is that our current model of capitalism isn't good. It encourages less diversity and bigger more centralized, more too big to fail companies. I'm not saying ditch capitalism, but clearly our current approach is less than ideal.
Funny, if the US is so damn bad, why don't "progressives" support building a wall around it to keep people out of the awfulness?
I have no idea what that has to do with anything other than sounding edgy. I'm not progressive in the sense of economics or security in any sense, but even I think the wall is a silly idea. The US as a nation doesn't adequately fund anything, hell we've got bridges that have millions of people going over it that have spent the last two decades needing repairs. But some wall that 99.995% of the nation will never see is going to kept tip-top? Call me skeptical, but even if the wall got built, I'll put my dollar here on parts of it falling down and the number of people caring about that, being countable on one hand in two/three decades hence.
Re:France, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada (Score:5, Interesting)
The yellow vests were fighting against (Score:3)
Just because France is doing OK doesn't mean they don't have to fight tooth and nail against their ruling class to keep it that way.
I remember there was a comedy group that dressed up as stereotypical billionaires and went around to Republican rallies thanking the (obviously working class) people there for all the tax cuts and deregulation. Not one person called them out for being trolls. They couldn't tell. That's the trouble with the America
Re: (Score:3)
Re:France, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, what we do to all of the Southern continent with our foreign police really pisses me off. We wreck their economies and governments and then we bitch that refugees from the disasters we caused come up her and take our jerbs.
The term "jerbs" is what really pisses me off.
"jerbs" = "someone else's jobs"
When it comes around to your own job though, suddenly people around here don't like the H1B program. Funny, that.
Yep, that was kinda the point (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why we need to push real solutions to the problem. There are a ton of out of work construction workers seeing Mexican and South American immigrants doing the jobs they used to do. Just like there's a mountain of out of work tech workers seeing their jobs go to H1-Bs. Workers in America need to learn solidarity. They need to understand that if you make a living by working you are a member of the working class no matter what color your collar.
If us techies don't start doing that then the blue collar guys are going to get tricked into voting for folks that'll screw us all over. Maybe "tricked" is the wrong word. If they've been abandoned what's the point of caring if the elites in Silicon Valley get screwed? That's where the concept of "stigginit" comes from. Where you're just lashing out.
What's frustrating is that in 2018 we should be able to see these things for what they are: common tactics by our ruling class used to divide and conquer the working class. Race, religion, collar color, wedge issues. Over and over again we see the same pattern. We even have numerous examples of the ruling class talking about how they're going to create issues to separate us (go google the history of how abortion became a political issue in America sometime).
The tricks are all there out in the open, but nobody really seems to call them out on it. Bernie Sanders does I guess (he repeatedly tries to bring folks together) but not sure how far he's gonna get. They're already running adverts on TV against him and he hasn't even announced he's running for the primary...
It's not considered racist in the slightest (Score:3)
There's a couple of problems here:
1. There's a growing right wing media engine that makes good money scaring folks with SJWs. The Youtube skeptic community has been overrun by them. It's not hard to see why. Nobody likes SJWs. Not even other SJWs. They're annoy little jerks who completely miss t
Re:France, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmmm...you mean like Nicaragua? Daniel Ortega, that paradigm of left wing-nut populism, is currently throwing opponents into jail and refuses to allow the people to unelect him. Last we heard, the U.S. hasn't had squat to do with Nicaragua for several decades during which he became Dear Leader, stopped being Dear Leader, and now is Dear Leader again...for life...which may not be long for him.
Cuba has had an exemplary left wing-nut government for many years...still sucks. Try starting a political party there and see what Castro's goons (they are still there after he went all stiff and incommunicado) do to you.
Last we checked, the Central American gangs were winning the drug war, and they won't brook any opposition to their loving rule. Yep, those countries should be breaking out into Left Wing Heaven any day now.
Re:France, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada (Score:5, Insightful)
I do agree with you that we should just stay the fuck out of other countries business though. If they want to try to build their own little socialist utopias, let them.
Re:France, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
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The U.S isn't different. In fact several of those countries are more free economically than the US and have far less government interference.
The only thing different about the US is you spend a lot of your money invading other countries instead of providing health care for people. That's about it. And in fact your government spends more per capita on health care than other advanced countries, but your health care system is so screwed up that spending doesn't actually provide health care for most people.
"Language was pronounced dead at the scene"? (Score:4, Insightful)
You probably have a weak argument if you put it into the passive voice so you don't have to admit that it originates with you. I pronounce good writing dead at the scene of this shill's Twitter account.
Re: (Score:3)
You probably have a weak argument if you put it into the passive voice so you don't have to admit that it originates with you. I pronounce good writing dead at the scene of this shill's Twitter account.
It's a play on a common reporting line: "X was pronounced dead on the scene/on arrival/etc."
Re: (Score:2)
In those cases, it is clear who declared the person deceased, and it is literally true. In this case, the book-shilling stooge apparently wanted to obscure his own agency in making a ridiculous claim about language.
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Also, it doesn't even make sense. How does a buzzword filled sentence that is clear to the target audience kill the language?
It's called a "Narrative" (Score:5, Insightful)
Put another way: "If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.".
Works too. This is why we need to teach critical thinking via the humanities in school. Critical thinking _can_ be taught, but you need a subject that's simple enough for folks who don't do it naturally and where being 50% right has value. STEM doesn't work for that. You'll note the wealthy make it a point to give their kids a well rounded education. This is why.
Re:It's called a "Narrative" (Score:4, Insightful)
The humanities have done enough damage, wouldn't you say? The "speech is violence" nonsense on modern campuses can be directly traced to their "teachings".
Critical thinking should absolutely be taught, but let's not leave that to a racist and misandric group of idiots.
Re: (Score:3)
The humanities typically include black and feminist theory courses, often with an emphasis on oppression by white male European decedents. I'd say that tying together that and the resultant behavior isn't a fallacy at all.
As far as the impact, one need look no further than the variety of violent protests to conservative speakers to dismiss your point as foolish. Not that the political ideology is relevant, merely that someone they disagree with was coming to speak on campus and thus they protested.
So much
So .... (Score:2)
So ... everyone who was upset about the biased NR opinion piece from an opinion journal will be showing up anytime now to complain about this one.
Right? Guys?
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Buzzwords buzzwords buzzwords (Score:2, Funny)
Calling our current economic system "late capitalism" suggests that, despite our gleaming buzzwords and technologies
So he decries the use of buzzwords and than invokes the buzzy "late stage"
Look there is no reason at all to think we are in "late stage" capitalism. Capitalism as Adam Smith defines it has only really been tried in the 19th and 20th centuries and the societies that embraced it are still existent. We don't know where this road ends or if it ends.
All Leary's argument unless the book actually bears little relation to the summary (highly possible this is slashdot) shows is his imagination is as manacled by la
Re: (Score:2)
Calling our current economic system "late capitalism" suggests that, despite our gleaming buzzwords and technologies
Look there is no reason at all to think we are in "late stage" capitalism. Capitalism as Adam Smith defines it has only really been tried in the 19th and 20th centuries and the societies that embraced it are still existent.
How you figure? Capitalism has been one of the two natural ways that humans have interacted since they started trading. They either exchanged value for value through mutual agreement (free market capitalism), or one group forcefully took from another (crony capitalism, socialism, monarchies, etc). Granted, Adam Smith did pen a good description of how capitalism actually works, but did it not exist way before he was even thought of?
Comment removed (Score:3)
wha? (Score:3)
What is new, Leary says, quoting Marxist economic historian Ernest Mandel, is our "belief in the omnipotence of technology" and in experts.
That's new? What were they doing in 1955 then if not having '"belief in the omnipotence of technology" and in experts'?
Or is this some value of "new" that I am not familiar with?
Demoracy is worthless... (Score:5, Insightful)
...the reality is the reason we have so many problems is because people who are irrational have equal power with the people who are rational.
For those who rail at these words, the reality is right now we live in a lawless oligarchy that's has been basically stealing everything that is nailed down and has been since the US's founding. To even suggest any modern capitalist state "is a democracy" is just utter bullshit when it has been owned lock stock and barrel by corporations for most western states history with brief interruptions of world war 1 and world war 2 and the cold war to try to soften the ruthless harshness of capitalist societies.
Now with the fall of the USSR corporations are unchecked and out of control and being enabled by a heavily indoctrinated public.
Don't think so? Every time IP law came up for review to benefit the public it was pushed to benefit the rich and their corporations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The reality is the general public in the US worships their robber barrons. George carlin said it best about americans.
Carlin [youtube.com]
Look at the distribution of wealth, it is just insane, anyone who thinks they live in a society that benefits the many is uninformed.
US distribution of wealth
https://imgur.com/a/FShfb [imgur.com]
Wealth in america [ucsc.edu]
Re: Demoracy is worthless... (Score:3)
This only comes from the ones behind the curve (Score:2)
"Deploy" language? (Score:4, Informative)
Some pointy-haired types talk all in buzzwords. It's annoying, in fact, it's just as annoying as the author, who uses phrases like "deploying language".
Meanwhile, capitalism remains the only system to heave literally billions of people out of poverty. Generally speaking, the only people who have a problem with capitalism are either pure socialists (who believe that all your marbles belong to the government) or corporate cronyists (who believe that all your marbles belong to companies - enforced by the government). And sure enough: this book was "inspired by a previous work of a similar name: the Welsh Marxist theorist Raymond Williams’s 1976 book Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society."
For your reading delectation, I leave you with the concluding paragraph from one of his papers [boundary2.org], if you can stand this sort of navel-gazing prose:
When we consider innovation’s religious origins in false prophecy, its current orthodoxy in the discourse of technological evangelism—and, more broadly, in analog versions of social innovation—is often a nearly literal example of Rayvon Fouché’s argument that the formerly colonized, “once attended to by bibles and missionaries, now receive the proselytizing efforts of computer scientists wielding integrated circuits in the digital age” (2012, 62). One of the additional ironies of contemporary innovation ideology, though, is that these populations exploited by global capitalism are increasingly charged with redeeming it—the comfortable denizens of the West need only “stand back and admire” the process driven by the entrepreneurial labor of the newly digital underdeveloped subject. To the pain of unemployment, the selfishness of material pursuits, the exploitation of most of humanity by a fraction, the specter of environmental cataclysm that stalks our future and haunts our imagination, and the scandal of illiteracy, market-driven innovation projects like Mitra’s “hole in the wall” offer next to nothing, while claiming to offer almost everything.
That's a myth actually (Score:3)
The TL;DW (didn't watch, it's youtube after all) is that the World Bank set an arbitrary definition of "poverty" ($1/day or so) and then periodically changes the numbers to make it seem like folks are lifting out of poverty (now it's $1.06/day and a million more are making $1.08/day, congrats, 1 million "lifted out of poverty").
Meanwhile the actual quality of life of those million people hasn't changed in the slighest...
It's a trick meant to keep you from questioning the estab
Author check (Score:2)
JP Leary is just another tired Marxist who wishes he could have stormed the barrikady with Lenin, Stalin, and the gang. Haymarket books is likewise a collection of aging hippies and millennial socialists romanticising the glory days of axe-handle-swinging unionists throwing bombs at police.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/aut... [jacobinmag.com]
Fuck radicals of both ends of the spectrum. We need to ignore them more.
I don't know (Score:3)
Capitalism is not Imperialism (Score:2)
The main issue is that the Imperialism leads to an imperialistic world war.
Society of shareholders (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't have powerful agents (i.e. corporations) act as sociopaths and have society as a whole succeed. There are two solutions to this - reduce power of corporations (i.e. socialism) or change rules governing corporate behavior to disincentivize antisocial behavior (i.e. strong regulation and anti-monopolist laws). Without this, we will have a new era of Robber Barons. Arguably, silicon valley technocrats are already there.
Capitalism is profit for the owners... (Score:3)
It's not the language, it's the actions (Score:5, Informative)
I think people are overly concerned about the MBA-speak used, but aren't paying sufficient attention to the actions of said MBAs.
"Late-stage capitalism" or whatever you want to call it is about squeezing every single drop of productivity out of an already-stretched system. This is where the disruption comes in...everyone is focused on removing every pocket of slack. Replace taxi companies with a phone app that summons drivers directly to you to kill taxi companies. Outsource every single corporate service to the lowest bidder rather than hiring people directly to lower your costs. It's a race to the bottom and if you ask me, it is beginning to have an effect on society in general.
When I graduated in the late 90s, it was still very common for people to have decent mid-level jobs at large companies. A generation before, it was even more pronounced. Now, in the name of agile and disruption, businesses are killing any stability that was there in favor of contracting positions and outsourcing functions. The problem is this...in a previous time it was possible to party your way through a management degree, get randomly selected for some generic position at a company, and use that position to establish a decent family life. The societal change that's happening is that fewer people are able to stay employed in an area. This will eventually lead to people being more nomadic, having fewer children, renting apartments instead of buying houses, and not contributing to any sort of community.
Once you're out of your 20s, most people aren't really excited about pulling up stakes and moving across the country over and over again to chase yet another contract position. Those plants GM is closing are going to dump a ton of previously well-established workers into the nomad pool, chasing lower-wage positions. Union factory work used to be the only way for people with less education to earn enough to support a decent quality of life. This is the disruption people need to think about. If you put the work in by getting educated, your reward should be a stable living that lasts a career. The problem is that these cycles of consolidation and slack-removal are growing shorter and people are likely to experience a major disruption more than once in their working lives.
Economies that have humans involved need slack. The current system just assumes we're machines.
More than buzzword bingo (Score:3)
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The laws of supply and demand don't apply anymore. Can you actually buy what you want? What you want can probably not even be built because some corporation holds a patent hostage that doesn't allow someone who would build it for you to build it, so you have to instead buy their inferior, spyware riddled crap. Can you get the internet access you want? Or does the monopoly of a certain cable company hold you hostage to pay through the nose for a crappy line with nonexistent support because they bought the lo
Re:So-Called-Experts (Score:4, Informative)
The laws of supply and demand don't apply anymore. Can you actually buy what you want? What you want can probably not even be built because some corporation holds a patent hostage
I disagree - the laws of supply and demand still apply. You can buy whatever you want, but due to lack of demand, what you want may be really expensive - If you really want it, you can buy the patents, maybe buy some politicians, and pay to have what you want produced.
so you have to instead buy their inferior, spyware riddled crap
Demand isn't about what you (or I) individually want to buy, it's about what the market as a whole wants to buy. You may not want to by spyware riddled crap, but spyware riddled crap sells well because most people (the market) don't care about the spyware and most people find that the lower price (as enabled by the presence of the spyware) is preferable to paying a higher price for a product without the spyware. If enough people want to purchase and are willing to pay for systems without spyware, systems without spyware will be produced.
Or did some soda corporation decide that it's not in their interest to offer the flavor you want and they bully the local cornerstore into not offering any competing sodas if they want to get the discount they need to stay competitive?
Perhaps the soda flavors that are available are the flavors that the majority of people want to buy? Granted soda manufacturers advertise to generate demand and sway consumer opinion, but if enough people wanted a particular flavor, those people could pay to advertise as well.
I agree that it sucks to be in the minority on the demand side, because it means that I can't buy what I would like to at a reasonable price, but that doesn't mean that supply and demand is dead, it means that it is alive and well.
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What else would they prefer? DR-DOS?
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The only reason that markets have been enshrined, is that the left has done everything in their power to destroy anything that looks like a religion (unless it a poorly copied imitation of a eastern religion that ignores everything other than sitting with your eyes closed and chanting while wearing strange clothes).
There has been a strong push to have government take the place of religion (so said leftist can have some control over it) along with the spiritual and charity functions it once assumed, with an
Re: (Score:3)
In other words, we didn't have enough checks on capitalism in the law. But people were more moral before so it wasn't a huge problem. Now, capitalism is suddenly in dire need of checks and balances.
Re:Compared to what? The language of communism? (Score:5, Insightful)
PS - Sweden is capitalist. Note that they have a stock market...
Venezuela does too, it is called the Caracas Stock Exchange. So Venezuela is just as capitalist as Sweden, and I guess the U.S.
So why are righties always claiming that Venezuela is socialist through-and-through and proof that socialism always fails?
Because they define all successful economies as "totally capitalist, man!" and all failed economies as "proof of the universal failure of socialism everywhere". In other words it is plain dishonesty. All economies in the world of any size are mixed economies, with some level of regulation for the capitalist component (and the socialist component as well, for that matter).
Venezuela's economy tanked because its government was taken over by corrupt incompetent authoritarians whose only interest is self-aggrandizement.
But don't worry, that can't happen here.