Liberals Can’t Address _______________ Because It Means Confronting Capitalism
You can put a LOT of stuff on that line
Neo-liberals get so upset when you mention that leftism actually begins at the desire to see capitalism and such businesses end. They still believe in a free market is self regulating when that’s not the case at all, a free market will result in monopolies. Neo-liberals are left of Republicans but we’re talking a small matter of degrees. Neo-liberal policies and economics are what got us into this mess, they won’t get us out of it.
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Wild how you say that second paragraph like it doesn’t show what a massive coward you are, posting a disagreement and immediately saying you’re running away because you’re sure they will hurt your feelings (lol right after you accuse them of making assumptions). It’s honestly baffling how commonly people seem to see that as a power move to brag about.
I’m curious what they posted. I wonder if they don’t know that neo-liberalism is actually a thing and what I’m referencing here. I avoided the term liberal because it’s being used in media and everyday language to mean “left” when even liberal is itself another ideology that isn’t heavily left leaning like it’s implied.
I’m just frustrated that people don’t know these terms have actual ideology to them and that I’m using it in regards to that. On other sites I’d be called a MAGAt for disparaging neo-liberalism while being well entrenched in left wing ideologies.
Their first paragraph was about how you said some things based on only reading a few words about them or something, like the whole liberal/neoliberal conversation hasn’t been going on for a while.
And then their second paragraph was saying they are going to block you because they know you’ll be condescending, judgemental, and insulting.
I just wonder how we got to this point where so many people have so little resilience against what others say while disagreeing with them, even if it gets insulting. And while I don’t think anyone is obligated to engage with someone being like that, I’ve always seen block functions as a tool to deal with ongoing harassment not one-time disagreement (or in this case, the potential for disagreement).
I’ll be honest, I have a dim view of neo-liberals anymore. I’ve seen what happens when their masks come off and you see who they are. It tends more to a reactionary response than the civility they put forward initially.
I agree with you, block function is for harassment or truly disingenuous people. I’ve also learned that apparently blocked people can still respond to you on Lemmy you’ll just never know. So they can say disparaging things about you without you every knowing.
That’s the way block functions should work IMO. So they can’t be used to abuse others without them even knowing. As I understand, you can block someone on Facebook and then post numerous status updates about them with full conversations with their social group and they’d have no idea unless someone tells them.
Yes I’m at the mercy of the cruel hatemongers. Unless I submit to their hatred, I am a coward. Thanks for identifying yourself.
You preemptively blocked them because you assumed they would respond in a certain way and then act like a victim that just managed to avoid destruction.
And no, refusing to submit to something isn’t cowardly. But poking it and immediately hiding away from it is.
To be fair, I’m not owed anything from them in terms of conservation or argument. We seem to have this hitch up that when someone makes a statement that’s an open invitation to an argument with them. It’s not, and I let that door swing both ways as well. They’re not entitled, and neither am I.
No one’s owed participation in their discussion but you can just walk away from a conversation you no longer want to participate in. But what happened here is more like they popped up to disagree with you then immediately acted as if you were wronging them with a reply that you hadn’t made and that don’t seem in character with your other comments here.
It was an attempt to manipulate the situation into one where they are a victim and are thus the “winner” by fighting back against your attack that you hadn’t even made and sidestepping any discussion at all.
If they didn’t support capitalism and the world Reagan built they wouldn’t be a neoliberal.
You’re literally getting upset about it right now.
Yeah I couldn’t possibly be talking about the fact that this person is clearly labeling people “neoliberal” who aren’t. Thanks for your valuable input tho
I don’t see how a comment that very specifically calls out neoliberals and only neoliberals is doing that.
Personally, I think the overall premise of the post is flawed, socialism is more than capable of destroying the planet with overproduction, but that comment even narrows the post’s criticism of liberalism as a whole into only neoliberalism.
The thing is that there really isn’t much incentive for a capital based society to change course on something until they have gotten as much money from it. So we’ll continue using fossil fuels until it’s no longer profitable then they’ll turn around and start selling the breathing masks needed to survive. A bit of hyperbole, maybe. I look the far right in the USA and say we’re past the point of satire or hyperbole.
Who was that comment written for? “Neoliberals get upset…” It was written with a dual purpose. 1) virtue signalling (I am morally righteous, unlike others) 2) “all these neoliberals on here are gonna be put in their place by this post. Ha!”
Considering there isn’t really a big population of neoliberals here, and given the constant tankie circle jerking I see here every day, I don’t feel my assumptions here are at all unwarranted.
You have a poopy attitude
This thread is full of reasonable actors though. Definitely nothing fucked up here at all. Except me of course.
If you believe what you wrote, one would have to assume this comment was meant to pick a fight
Have you considered just leaving Lemmy altogether, since you seem to have sich a problem with so many people? Or do you secretly enjoy the strife?
A better question is why are you okay with the strife? You either don’t notice which is not plausible, or you’re a target or perpetrator of the bile. Those last two options are not at all pleasant.
All the time. I hate the strife. I hate the fact that like 10% of the users here are hateful zealots or bigots. Now why do you ask if you aren’t looking to pick a fight?
But you need it. You need the strife. It’s why youre still asking me questions. Your self identity is rooted in love of the stroked up arguments you tickle here, but pretend to be an unwilling participant of. And the sweet release for you is the micro hit of dopamine you get when you proudly proclaim (like a toddler) that you’re blocking someone.
Now go ahead and ask further questions.
I had correctly tagged you years ago, though I should’ve also added “armchair psychologist”. I won’t miss you.
As long as conservatives continue to exist, the normal people will be forbidden from regulating the pollution industry or addressing climate change.
Friendly Reminder: ALL neo-liberals are conservatives and should be mercilessly dealt with as such. The existence of any conservative, such as Schumer or Jeffries, actively harms everyone.
We can use whatever is proven to work better for healthy people and the climate and follow proven models. We can see how getting off fossil fuels is a good thing for human health. This is the only safe blue dot we have, yet so many think it’s disposable and can’t wait for some better life later in a magic realm. They trash the planet and don’t support politicians that want to help, if they ever have enough majority. It’s tribalism and dualism, two peas in a toxic pod, and won’t change if the wealthy keep getting their way.
Capitalism needs a great big continuous series of swift kicks to the balls.
I’d say start with Musk, but knowing of his broken pp problem and his eternal cuckness, he’s probably already into this sort of treatment.
One time I had a guy try to get me to do this to him, and I couldn’t hold back and started to make fun of him. But he ended up being so earnest and pathetic, that I had to stop making fun of him. For all of you that are into this (except musk and other evil people and evil people supporters), I hope you find what you’re looking for.
Capitalism culminates in child rape. Real intelligent species we got here.
Good news: with every passing day, it’s becoming more and more obvious that capitalism is fundamentally incompatible with democracy and ecology.
Bad news: we’re still about to pass environmental thresholds that will have irreversible consequences, and likely lead to an ecological catastrophe.
I mean you say “becoming increasingly clear” but it’s been clear as day for about two centuries for socialists. Any progress happening now on that front is just retaking lost ground.
I think it became clear when the oil companies had their internal climate scientist prove it was them, and had that information leaked, and I believe that research was done 30 or 40 years ago?
Longer – closer to 50 years ago.
Of course. I meant ‘more and more obvious’ for the general population.
Ah yes, all those socialist climatologists from the 1800s were warning of climate disaster.
(Just pointing out that their wording specifically referenced the environment and it was in response to an article about climate change)
I mean that’s fair, but it’s also a nitpick since I’m clearly referring to the democracy part of their comment.
I wasn’t trying to nitpick, just saying they made a decent point. Regardless of who else knew capitalism was harmful, science being a new indicator of that fact is significant.
Two centuries of worry from socialists and we’re still where we’re at. They seem pretty fucking useless, ngl.
“We’re still where we’re at” says the person presumably working a 40 hour work week.
I don’t, thank you for 200 years of concern for climate change. Well spent!
Because most people are ignorant and stupid, case in point.
Seems like smugly dismissing people as ignorant and stupid is an ignorant and stupid way of creating change. No points for good thoughts and no action!
I’ve taken plenty of actions on top of voting. E.g. helped set up a local community food sharing network, volunteer my time on an anarchist community, built my own house, grow my own vegetables, and try my best to support leftist candidates. How about yourself?
Well don’t you know, they wrote those comments!!
Really? Can you point to a democracy that has done much of note that doesn’t have an economic system based on free market capitalism?
NASA spearheaded the tech behind megawatt wind turbines. Bell Laboratories built the first practical silicon photovoltaic cell. England and the US perfected Hydroelectricity.
Unbridled capitalism is the problem. Well regulated and taxed free market capitalism has proven it’s self quite well.
Really? Can you point to a democracy that has done much of note that doesn’t have an economic system based on free market capitalism?
*points to a bombed-out shell of a city*
*points to a council massacred by some suspiciously well-armed drug gangs*
*points to a nation that has survived centuries of economic siege*
For some reason, wealthy liberal democracies get kind of angry whenever you try something other than strictly regulated neocolonial capitalism.
Can you be specific where you are pointing as I can find all that stuff in countries that were attacked or interfered with by non wealthy liberal democracies…
The core problem here is that unbridled capitalism has a very strong tendency to emerge from well regulated capitalism, because the rich won’t stop until they’ve turned the former into the latter. It’s a stopgap measure but it doesn’t fix anything on a long timescale. Case in point: The developed world today.
And authoritarianism seems to develop from poorly implemented big S socialism. Humans are quite good at thwarting any system to their own benefit…
What? You mean global cartels controlling a plurality (if not majority) of the world’s wealth break the free market? Say it ain’t so!
Seriously, getting everybody to forget the basic fact that the fossil fuel industry is a cartel is one of the first priorities of the fossil fuel industry’s propaganda playbook. This article might as well be written by one of their FUD propagandists.
Cartels are natural parts of capitalism, I don’t know why you’re pretending they’re somehow not capitalist for using the mechanisms of capitalism to gain control of capital.
The ability to weaponize capital markets doesn’t make them inherently bad.
Nobody said that, I’m simply pointing out that cartels are part of capitalism, free market or no, and don’t “break” anything. They’re an inevitable consequence of the system.
I find the kind of absolutism found in the headline, extremely unhelpful, not to mention total horse shit.
“Liberals” (and I’m not even getting into what people here defined as “liberals”) absolutely can confront capitalism in order to address environmental concerns, they just don’t like to and find it very difficult. But it is absolutely possible, and, with enough cajoling, absolutely will do so.
This “us versus them” attitude, and this level of absolute defeatism only makes the job much more difficult for everyone. Instead, I suggest we all focus on how to get the job done rather than focusing on all of the barriers in our way.
You don’t want to get into definitions because it makes your entire point moot. Liberals are capitalism. Its the driving force of liberalism. They go hand in hand. The liberal revolutions were capitalist revolutions. This is an inescapable fact. The most core component of liberalism is private property, which is what capitalism is built on.
Liberals will never abandon capitalism because they are capitalism.
Y’all realize that the fossil fuel industry already isn’t a capitalistic entity, right?
Oh, so “liberal” means whatever you want it to mean
Gotcha
If by what i want it to mean you mean what it has literally always meant for 300 years yeah sure.
There’s a lot of daylight between “the exact thing a word means” and “the messy group of people who can currently be vaguely be defined that way”. Most ‘capitalists’ are just working class people who’ve been tricked or don’t do a lot of thinking. It’s wrong to conflate them with the rigorous meaning of a word that predates any living person.
Tricked or not its what they support and what they vote for.
A couple things. The Americans who call themselves liberals didn’t vote for this, and the American liberals who did vote for it were aided and abetted by the most radicalised and financially empowered conservative oligarchs in literal human history. So if your only goal is to put as many people as possible into a toilet and flush it, great job. If not, you might have lost your way.
Yet, you still can’t seem to define it in any meaningful way. Just vague references to other subjective vagaries.
Case in point
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Pretty sure my definition was extremely meaningful. Which is why you have gotten so huffy about it.
Says the person who has to project their feelings onto others because they couldn’t defend their position. Or even explain it.
And while I’m very happy for you that you take a great deal of meaning in those vague and subjective references in your previous comment, if you can’t even define them, how can you expect anyone else to take any meaning from it?
I understood it perfectly well. What part were you confused by?
Thank you for a sane take. You are correct in every way.
It also doesn’t help that it seems to conveniently forget that the fossil fuel industry is an international cartel. It breaks capitalism by virtue that it can control its entire market and a great many markets (and governments) to which it’s connected.
The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.
You do not understand capitalism very well if you think cartels are abberant.
They do not break capitalism.
They are capitalism.
Either oligopolies or monopolies are the theoretical end point of basically any possible unregulated capitalist market structure given enough time, or enough corruption (‘subsidies’).
If you think thats not correct, please do tell me how global financial markets work.
I’m sure its just very close to that theoretical idea of perfect competition and a near infinite number of nearly equillvalent actors, right?
And money itself, currency, definitely not like a cartel, I’m sure.
Greatest trick the devil pulled on you was just telling you a childish fantasy was reality, and then you just kept on liking that idea, because it made for simple heroes and simple villains.
I think we are all well aware capitalism is working exactly as intended.
It’s not actually confronting capitalism. It’s about holding the responsible parties accountable while phasing out products that damage and/or change the ecosystem.
The responsible parties are the capitalists who profit off the status quo. So yeah, capitalism.
Reigning in socialized costs while appropriately taxing the practiced profits would be a good start.
Confronting capitalism means they might have to set aside their comforts for once, which they won’t do.
The title says it all.
“In every American community there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects. Ten degrees to the left of center in good times. Ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally. Here, then, is a lesson in safe logic…”
-Phil Ochs Introduction to “Love Me, I’m a Liberal” (1966)
Liberals won’t take on the ecocidal billionaires incinerating the planet because they own too much of the incinerators stock.
Tfw you can’t differentiate between economic, social or political systems.
I love seeing it. We’ve got a party in power that’s rolling back environmental protections, rolling back regulations, increasing the amount of pollution companies are allowed to dump, while backing a far-right dictator to take over and decimate the Amazon rainforest but, BUT, it’s actually the minority party that’s been thwarting their efforts’ fault.
See I figured the people trying to ban cancerous pesticides and fund green technology would be the good guys, but now from this article I see that actually they’re the bad guys all along!
Guess this election I’ll just stick my thumb up my ass and dance around the living room to the sound of my own superior thinking instead of voting. That’ll show’em 👍
The world is more complicated than deciding who is the bad guys and who is the good guys.
One party would let companies sell you cancerous pesticides and call it infant formula if the bribe is right.
The other will spend all of their time and effort attacking marginal issues which don’t directly affect the bottom line of the fossil fuel companies.
It looks like they’re trying to save the climate but, as it turns out, we’re not going to reverse centuries of industrial activity by providing $500 off a plug-in solar unit or making it so that pesticides can’t be applied 4 weeks before harvest instead of 2. They pick their battles, and their chosen battlefields are ones that are in no danger of disrupting the fossil fuel hegemony.
You should still vote, just don’t buy into the idea that neo-liberals, R or D, are going to make meaningful changes which would harm fossil fuel companies. There are some leftest candidates running, support them or vote for the lesser evil.
Not voting is always the wrong strategy.
The rule is, always vote for the left-most person running that has a chance at winning. Progressive socialists are the only way forward. But sometimes you gotta hold your nose and vote for the person that’s simply not running on the protect-the-pedophiles platform.
The choice isn’t as hard as people are pretending that it is
Until you factor in that both of them are pathological liars.
