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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Yeah, everyone knows what the Republicans did to foster the rise of Trump with the Southern Strategy. The article Elle linked is about the role of the Democrats in the rise of Trump, which is abandoning trust busting to focus on social issues, thus allowing the environment for megacorporations like Comcast, Monsanto, and Walmart to form which caused the rise in authoritarianism and, well, fascism because people feel like they have a lack of control of their own lives.
Franklin D Roosevelt, 1938. Yes, one of the major Allied leaders of World War II associated trust busting with fighting fascism.
The article also notes that trust busting and social progress are not mutually exclusive.
edited 25th Oct '16 10:51:50 AM by GameGuruGG
Wizard Needs Food BadlyInteresting that the two would meet over the defense of whistleblowers - that's not something Wikileaks seems to care about much... outside "Go to Russia", that is.
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiotNo one EVER suspects the Spanish Accusition!
They're usually too busy blaming Hillary.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Unfortunately, "break up the banks" and other cries of that nature ignore the reality that everything is much more integrated than it used to be, and the high-tech, global corporation model isn't going away without some sacrifices, like, for example, our cool gadgets.
The core of the problem is the failure of regulation to meaningfully prevent these giant entities from doing dirty stuff without serious repercussions. There's plenty of blame to go around, but when Democrats call for "sensible regulation" and Republicans call for "no regulation at all"...
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I don't actually know if I, personally, would advocate for trust-busting. Some of that is acceptance of my own ignorance of what that would mean, some of it is I don't personally have a problem with companies like Google existing who have mostly done more good than bad. I do acknowledge that corporations have power and the only body that really has the means to be a check on abuses of that power is the government, but being of a economic sorta-conservitive bent, the things I would advocate would be more in terms of consumer protection laws, grants for startups and small businesses, disentangling government-backed monopolies like the one cable telecoms have and so on. I'd also like to see corporate personhood weakened and the liability protections offered by corporate law taken away if the executives of the company are breaking the law.
Unfortunately, there's no going back to the old times when small businesses and plucky entrepreneurs could deliver all the products needed to keep our society going. We are looking at a paradigm shift in which we move over the cusp into a society in which wage labor as a fundamental element of life will no longer be a requirement, and the balance of power will look like "corporations make stuff, governments give people money to buy it with." Or, we'll descend into a technocratic dystopia in which the new robber barons keep a small technological class dependent on them to run the machines of production and everyone else in hand-to-mouth serfdom.
Like coal mining and carriage driving, certain ways of life become obsolete and have to be moved on from. It's not good or bad; it's just a fact.
edited 25th Oct '16 11:26:44 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"While I don't disagree that we are going to have to deal with the paradigm shift away from "everyone has to have a job" I don't see it happening this administration. The article I linked outlined how the Democratic shift to supply-side economics came up through academia and we would need some similar impetus to create the monumental shift we're talking about.
Also, we still somehow have to answer the question "how will this be paid for?"
We're going to make Canada pay for our shift to socially and economically liberal policies.
edited 25th Oct '16 11:45:32 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.edited 25th Oct '16 12:19:08 PM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects."How will we pay for it?" is still a question rooted in old modes of thought. Money is not some kind of fixed commodity that you can run out of as a country. It is a means of accounting for transactions of things that have value. If people need 1000 loaves of bread a day, they have enough money to buy 1000 loaves of bread, and the money they pay is enough to keep the bread-makers in business so they can make more loaves, then it doesn't matter how that money is denominated or where it comes from. Government's role in this is to control the supply of money so that the equation doesn't get too far out of balance.
Government itself does not have a balance sheet. It is literally the maker of the money. It can have as much as it wants, any time it wants. Giving money to the government reduces its value to zero. Money has value only when it's in the hands of someone other than its issuer. This is all such simple stuff yet it defies "common sense" logic, which says that the government is just a big business, or a big household, or something.
Yes, we "pay for" our society by giving everyone all the basic stuff they need, flat out, no strings attached. The work needed to produce all of this stuff will either be automated by technology, or will be paid out in wages above the minimum stipend for living. The people who thus labor will be able to afford better stuff than the ones who don't. One can allow the labor market the freedom to set wages at whatever level makes the system work, as long as it is recognized that everyone must be able to afford all basic necessities at minimum.
This assumes that there cannot ever be enough labor for the entire working-age population to find satisfactory employment, a condition we seem to be rapidly approaching. The alternative is what we're seeing the first twinges of now: widespread disenfranchisement, poverty, and revolutionary stirrings among a society that is the most prosperous, per-capita, in the world.
edited 25th Oct '16 12:23:59 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"@Canada should build a wall around Belgium: ... But Belgium doesn't even border Canada.
edited 25th Oct '16 12:23:38 PM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Hillary killed Able?
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.