Conservatives against Capitalism?

[untermensche]

I can't answer that.

I know. You can't answer the difference between a voluntary hierarchy and an involuntary hierarchy. You're only now grudgingly admitting that the former might even exist, which contradicts everything you believe.

You are talking about a game.

I am talking about power over lives.

 

[coloradoatheist]

I know. You can't answer the difference between a voluntary hierarchy and an involuntary hierarchy. You're only now grudgingly admitting that the former might even exist, which contradicts everything you believe.

You are talking about a game.

I am talking about power over lives.

At the NFL level it's their job too.


And we have talked about this before. A hierarchical group is the most efficient system to run a group with a large amount of people.

 

[untermensche]

You are talking about a game.

I am talking about power over lives.

At the NFL level it's their job too.


And we have talked about this before. A hierarchical group is the most efficient system to run a group with a large amount of people.

All a hierarchical power structure has to do is prove it is needed.

Then it is not imposed.

And efficiency is the last gasp of having no moral justifications.

 

[LordKiran]

You are talking about a game.

I am talking about power over lives.

At the NFL level it's their job too.


And we have talked about this before. A hierarchical group is the most efficient system to run a group with a large amount of people.

Nah. Computer based data driven consensus is the best way to lead a society, and will likely be what we end up with assuming we don't fall to authoritarianism first. Hierarchies have historically been the best way to structure a society due to limitations in administrative technology and infrastructure, but as ai development gets better and better over the next few decades, The concept of a hierarchy will become woefully antiquated.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

At the NFL level it's their job too.


And we have talked about this before. A hierarchical group is the most efficient system to run a group with a large amount of people.

All a hierarchical power structure has to do is prove it is needed.

Then it is not imposed.

And efficiency is the last gasp of having no moral justifications.

According to some guy named untermensche, all hierarchical power structures are imposed. He left no exceptions. That means even in games, and even when the game IS a career.

 

[LordKiran]

All a hierarchical power structure has to do is prove it is needed.

Then it is not imposed.

And efficiency is the last gasp of having no moral justifications.

According to some guy named untermensche, all hierarchical power structures are imposed. He left no exceptions. That means even in games, and even when the game IS a career.

Strictly speaking that's not incorrect. After all how can you have a power structure without someone to set it and impose it on others? Compliance isn't really a factor here, since there would be no hierarchy without those who keep it. The idea of a voluntary hierarchy is just one where all parties are considered complicit.

 

[untermensche]

All a hierarchical power structure has to do is prove it is needed.

Then it is not imposed.

And efficiency is the last gasp of having no moral justifications.

According to some guy named untermensche, all hierarchical power structures are imposed. He left no exceptions. That means even in games, and even when the game IS a career.

You have not shown one hierarchical structure that is necessary.

 

[LordKiran]

According to some guy named untermensche, all hierarchical power structures are imposed. He left no exceptions. That means even in games, and even when the game IS a career.

You have not shown one hierarchical structure that is necessary.

The state. This isn't because Heriarchy is anything particularly virtuous, its just the best way we currently have to organize ourselves at a societal level. But that wont always be the case. Marx's vision of a post state world may come true eventually should we ever incorporate artificial intelligence into the government apparatus... Though perhaps not in our lifetime.

 

[Trausti]

According to some guy named untermensche, all hierarchical power structures are imposed. He left no exceptions. That means even in games, and even when the game IS a career.

You have not shown one hierarchical structure that is necessary.

Necessity is a matter of subjective opinion. Nature does not care about your opinion.

 

[untermensche]

You have not shown one hierarchical structure that is necessary.

The state. This isn't because Heriarchy is anything particularly virtuous, its just the best way we currently have to organize ourselves at a societal level. But that wont always be the case. Marx's vision of a post state world may come true eventually should we ever incorporate artificial intelligence into the government apparatus... Though perhaps not in our lifetime.

Is democracy the same thing as hierarchy?

- - - Updated - - -

You have not shown one hierarchical structure that is necessary.

Necessity is a matter of subjective opinion. Nature does not care about your opinion.

You have no handle on "nature".

Human nature is humans adapt to their environment. They are created by their environment.

 

[Trausti]

You have not shown one hierarchical structure that is necessary.

Necessity is a matter of subjective opinion. Nature does not care about your opinion.

You have no handle on "nature".

Human nature is humans adapt to their environment. They are created by their environment.

So it's just a crazy coincidence that hierarchies developed in all human societies in all different environments. Nothing to do with nature. Nope. It's not like humans are animals or anything.

 

[untermensche]

You have not shown one hierarchical structure that is necessary.

Necessity is a matter of subjective opinion. Nature does not care about your opinion.

You have no handle on "nature".

Human nature is humans adapt to their environment. They are created by their environment.

So it's just a crazy coincidence that hierarchies developed in all human societies in all different environments. Nothing to do with nature. Nope. It's not like humans are animals or anything.

Men have dominated women for centuries and relegated them to second class status.

Are they a second lower class?

It is the nature of a few that they want to boss around others.

But there is nothing that says we have to arrange a society around the desires of those few.

 

[LordKiran]

You have not shown one hierarchical structure that is necessary.

Necessity is a matter of subjective opinion. Nature does not care about your opinion.

You have no handle on "nature".

Human nature is humans adapt to their environment. They are created by their environment.

So it's just a crazy coincidence that hierarchies developed in all human societies in all different environments. Nothing to do with nature. Nope. It's not like humans are animals or anything.

Naturalist fallacy. Humans are not animals in the sense that we cannot be blamed for our base instincts. Humans are more than capable of overriding their natural 'programming' as evidenced by the thousands of people who commit suicide every year. You never hear about chickens killing themselves because their rooster boyfriend left them for another hen.

In fact you know what we call it when someone doesn't have control over their base impulses? We call them thieves, we call them rapists, and we have traditionally treated such people as morally flawed or failed in some way.

 

[coloradoatheist]

You have not shown one hierarchical structure that is necessary.

Necessity is a matter of subjective opinion. Nature does not care about your opinion.

You have no handle on "nature".

Human nature is humans adapt to their environment. They are created by their environment.

So it's just a crazy coincidence that hierarchies developed in all human societies in all different environments. Nothing to do with nature. Nope. It's not like humans are animals or anything.

Naturalist fallacy. Humans are not animals in the sense that we cannot be blamed for our base instincts. Humans are more than capable of overriding their natural 'programming' as evidenced by the thousands of people who commit suicide every year. You never hear about chickens killing themselves because their rooster boyfriend left them for another hen.

In fact you know what we call it when someone doesn't have control over their base impulses? We call them thieves, we call them rapists, and we have traditionally treated such people as morally flawed or failed in some way.

Hence why Pol Pot had his killing fields and Stalin has his camps.

 

[LordKiran]

You have not shown one hierarchical structure that is necessary.

Necessity is a matter of subjective opinion. Nature does not care about your opinion.

You have no handle on "nature".

Human nature is humans adapt to their environment. They are created by their environment.

So it's just a crazy coincidence that hierarchies developed in all human societies in all different environments. Nothing to do with nature. Nope. It's not like humans are animals or anything.

Naturalist fallacy. Humans are not animals in the sense that we cannot be blamed for our base instincts. Humans are more than capable of overriding their natural 'programming' as evidenced by the thousands of people who commit suicide every year. You never hear about chickens killing themselves because their rooster boyfriend left them for another hen.

In fact you know what we call it when someone doesn't have control over their base impulses? We call them thieves, we call them rapists, and we have traditionally treated such people as morally flawed or failed in some way.

Hence why Pol Pot had his killing fields and Stalin has his camps.

Sure, why not?

 

[lpetrich]

I must comment on some things. I think that untermensche's posts fit in very well with Norberto Bobbio's view of the Left and the Right -- he rather fervently rejects hierarchy.

As to Bono saying that Africa needs capitalism, the people of that continent need better productivity, not necessarily capitalism. It must also be productivity that benefits them, rather than some distant absentee landlords. I think that the best economic models are the "Asian Tigers": Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. They built local businesses rather than make themselves economic colonies.

As to why the Left has been more successful at taming capitalism than the Right, I think that the Right ties its hands a lot -- and lets itself be bought. It's hard for the Right to make a coherent case against big banks, for instance, when many right-wingers make heroes out of capitalists. Banker conspiracy theories don't help a lot, and insinuations that big bankers are all Jewish or whatever villains also don't help a lot.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I must comment on some things. I think that untermensche's posts fit in very well with Norberto Bobbio's view of the Left and the Right -- he rather fervently rejects hierarchy.

As to Bono saying that Africa needs capitalism, the people of that continent need better productivity, not necessarily capitalism. It must also be productivity that benefits them, rather than some distant absentee landlords. I think that the best economic models are the "Asian Tigers": Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. They built local businesses rather than make themselves economic colonies.

As to why the Left has been more successful at taming capitalism than the Right, I think that the Right ties its hands a lot -- and lets itself be bought. It's hard for the Right to make a coherent case against big banks, for instance, when many right-wingers make heroes out of capitalists. Banker conspiracy theories don't help a lot, and insinuations that big bankers are all Jewish or whatever villains also don't help a lot.

The Asian Tigers have an even bigger advantage--they aren't kleptocracies. The two big things holding countries back is kleptocracy or central control dictating the markets (which always ends up seriously out of line with what works.)

 

[lpetrich]

I recently found this nice review of that book.

“Conservatives Against Capitalism” Looks at an Unlikely Marriage

The marriage between capitalism and conservatism has been a strange one. While conservative parties around the world differ widely in their composition and specific policy proposals, conservatism as an ideology can broadly be described as a defense of the established order. Social stability, the maintenance of tradition, and a hierarchical view of society tend to be consistent aspects of any conservative creed.

It’s precisely these characteristics of conservatism that make American conservatives’ wholehearted embrace of capitalism so puzzling. In its purest form, capitalism is a revolutionary ideology par excellence, at least in terms of its social consequences. In its constant search for new markets, labor, materials, and technologies, free-market capitalism mercilessly upends communities, industries, social classes, and even basic human norms and values.

The profoundly destabilizing nature of such an economic system was identified by no less than Karl Marx, who observed that in capitalist societies, “All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned.”

Author Peter Kolozi:

“There’s an inherent tension that some conservatives have recognized in the current system, which is that capitalism is inherently revolutionary. It throws everything up in the air and is a destabilizing force in society,” Kolozi told The Intercept. “Many of the things that conservatives want to define and protect, such as community and a hierarchical structure of society based on tradition, are by their nature threatened by capitalism.”

After mentioning Reaganism and Reaganites' support of anything-goes capitalism,

At the same time, radical laissez-faire policies helped empower an entirely new set of elites, many of whom came from the burgeoning financial sector. The ascendance of this new elite was made possible by the deregulation of financial markets, as well as improved communications and transportation links under globalization. Allegedly unmoored from the specific national interests of the United States, these “globalists” — as they are derisively called today by the likes of Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and others of their type — have been blamed for grossly enriching themselves at the expense of Trump’s preferred community, loosely defined as white middle America.

Then Trump and his belligerent nationalism.

Some of Trump’s economically protectionist inclinations happen to resonate with left-wing concerns about the immiseration of the American working class under global capitalism. The destruction of America’s manufacturing sector by a combination of outsourcing and automation has had undeniably grievous effects on workers. Left alone to face the cruel vicissitudes of the market, regions of the country that decades earlier helped build a thriving manufacturing sector have now been seemingly abandoned to the ravages of opioid addiction, urban blight, and family dissolution.

...
Trump’s brand of xenophobic populism seems to be trickling down to his supporters in the media. In a segment on his Fox News show, Tucker Carlson recently lambasted Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for exploitative policies toward workers and for amassing huge amounts of personal wealth at the expense of public well-being. This embrace of economic populism by an avowed conservative like Carlson — who also regularly uses his platform to promote white nationalist positions — could signal a future in which European-style, right-wing politics gains a meaningful support base in the United States.

In response to this slow-motion catastrophe, left-wing politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and others have argued in terms that echo some of Trump’s economically nationalist positions, particularly on trade. ...

However, the Right does nationalism much better than the Left.

 

[lpetrich]

In Europe, far-right parties in France, Poland, Hungary, and the Netherlands have discovered a potentially winning combination of ethnonationalism mixed with support for welfare state policies. Trump won the American presidency on an eerily similar platform, railing against immigrants and minorities while periodically hinting at his dissatisfaction with the dilapidated American health care system and concentration of wealth on Wall Street.

Like supporting Medicare for All while clarifying that it's Medicare for All Real Americans.

For all their differences, there is one key aspect of the intellectual history charted in “Conservatives Against Capitalism” that deals with an issue of shared concern on both the left and the right: the need for community. One of the grim consequences of the Social Darwinian pressures unleashed by free-market capitalism has been the destruction of networks of community, family, and professional associations in developed societies.

These so-called intermediate institutions have historically played a vital role giving ordinary people a sense of meaning and protecting them from the structural violence of the state and the market. Their loss has led to the creation of a huge class of atomized and lonely people, cut adrift from traditional sources of support and left alone to contend with the power of impersonal economic forces.

In the early 20th cy., such people often ended up supporting Fascist and Communist movements.

“There is this notion of community that I think the left and right can have a constructive conversation about,” Kolozi, the author of “Conservatives Against Capitalism,” said in our interview. “Ideas of community differ, but there is a sense from many people, on both sides, that we can’t just exist as isolated individuals. What that actually means and what those communities look like is a subject of debate, but it’s a value that both sides share.”

...
“There is a real potential now for a change in the conservative position on whether to regulate the harsher aspects of the market. If you look at the politics of young people today, they tend to widely share a more critical perspective on the question of what capitalism has delivered for society,” said Kolozi. “I don’t think conservatives will become socialists, ever. But a much more regulated capitalism is something that they are going to have to seriously think about accepting in the foreseeable future.”

 

[Derec]

Ahum. So the poor in the US are poor because of socialism/communism? Yeah right...

The poor in the US have been far better off than the poor in actually existing socialist countries like the Soviet Union.