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  #21  
Old 06-28-2016, 08:27 PM
MrPots MrPots is offline
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Originally Posted by donquixote99 View Post
'Destroying the old system' is not what got us to the moon.

Pol Pots revolution worked out poorly, and he did think he had a plan.

Question # 1 from Pio, was 'is a sustainable strategy achieveable?' The question assumes a sustainable strategy exists, and let's make that assumption for now. Let's say it's mainly a matter of getting investment in the right things. How can that be done?
Sustainable strategy IMO only works in Star trek movies. Greed has a way of perverting even the best intentions.
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  #22  
Old 06-28-2016, 08:29 PM
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This is a very relevant issue. A workerless age risks being a 'demandless age,' in terms of the classic consumer-demand driven economy. Even worse, what I see of populations denied work suggests a pretty dsytopian future.
Indeed. Man needs something constructive to occupy his time, otherwise he become destructive.
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It occurs to me that republicans seem to view black, Mexican, LGBT, Muslims and poor people in the same light as Nazi Germans once viewed Jewish people. We must be vigilant that it goes no further.
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  #23  
Old 06-29-2016, 10:51 AM
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Can we talk about what a new system could be?
Talk of a completely new economic system seems a bit absurd considering that even the modest proposals of Bernie Sanders were rejected as too extreme.
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  #24  
Old 06-29-2016, 11:34 AM
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Originally Posted by Tom Joad View Post
Talk of a completely new economic system seems a bit absurd considering that even the modest proposals of Bernie Sanders were rejected as too extreme.
How we get from here to there is a further question.

Like, it's not easy to hike from Tuscaloosa to Tacoma, but if you don't know you're aiming for Tacoma the thing becomes really unlikely.
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Last edited by donquixote99; 06-29-2016 at 12:00 PM.
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  #25  
Old 06-29-2016, 11:55 AM
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It occurs to me that the fundemental question here is one of philosophy. Economics makes a fetish of it's graphs and things, and likes to makes like it's just super-accounting, but I think at base it is philosophy--indeed, it is where modern philosophy is done--thus the irrelevance of the guys now called philosophers.

There are lots of byways where philosophy gets bogged-down, but the big question always has been and is 'How should people live? What the right way to arrange everything?' So who answers this for us these days? Economics, in particular the now-ascendant neoliberal economics. And the school answer is thus 'everything should be arranged so that activity takes place through people organized in private firms that compete in free markets.' The market, in this philosophy, is the measure of all things. Profit is what is good. Loss is what is bad. And taxation and regulation are sinful things that distort the market's all-righteous workings.

It's a rather amoral philosophy--success in the market justifies, or excuses, just about anything. It's rules thus allow it to be a deceitful philosophy, that actively seeks in recent years to hide that it even is a philosophy. This explains why modern neoliberals have stopped calling themselves neoliberals.

I think before we plan to launch solar power satellites or develop renewable biomass energy, we need to develop an overarching philosophy. The one measure of value now is the accrual of private assets in a market economy. Shall we not assert the primacy of values that are now devalued? Which one or ones should be central?
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Last edited by donquixote99; 06-29-2016 at 11:59 AM.
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  #26  
Old 06-29-2016, 12:10 PM
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The core of neoliberalism is the commodification of everything. If it exists, it can be bought and sold, including, in some important ways, human beings. This is ideology, not philosophy and is so toxic that it must be done away with, utterly and permanently. It's beneficiaries will resist with all the power of the institutions and governments they control.
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  #27  
Old 08-03-2016, 11:19 PM
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Which Countries Are Best At Converting National Wealth Into Well-Being http://n.pr/2avE9gS

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  #28  
Old 08-04-2016, 07:20 AM
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Very on-point, Pio. I want to dig further into the measures of well-being they are using. They are very correct that national income, by itself, isn't it.
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  #29  
Old 08-04-2016, 08:08 AM
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Originally Posted by Boreas View Post
Listening to Thom Hartman are we?

I too think understanding leoliberalism is critical to our understanding of the mess we're in. It is the economic manifestation of Randian Objectivism. It is "end stage capitalism". There's nothing left for Capitalism to devour but itself.

This cannot be stopped. The forces of neoliberalism are so powerful and so entrenched that nothing, short of a popular uprising on a global scale, will overturn the system. This will have to play itself out and it will not be pretty.
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Originally Posted by finnbow View Post
Before one replaces a system, one needs to have another system pretty much worked out in advance. Otherwise, anarchy and chaos reign.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...6b1_story.html
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Originally Posted by Boreas View Post
In some, but not all, cases, the established system is so entrenched and the beneficiaries of the system so powerful that an orderly transition from the old system to the new isn't possible. As with the American Revolution, the old system became an insurmountable obstacle in the path to a new system. This leaves only two alternatives: either you wait for the old system to destroy itself, a process that took 200 years post revolution for the British empire, or you overthrow the system by any available means. Only then can you begin to put a new system in its place.

The Post article neglects to mention that out first go, the Articles of Confederation, was a bust and that we had to scrap it and start over in 1787. The Constitution, adopted 2 years later, was our second try and it failed to prevent the crisis our country faced 70 years later.
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Yeh, it's worked out really well in the Mideast and Russia and it remains to be seen how the transition in the UK goes now that they've bought a pig in a poke.
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What may be preferable isn't always possible.

See my late edit.

And Russia is still around 100 years later. China too.
nice exchange

somethings to ponder

thanks!
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