Comment on Anon reads about Milton Friedman

• wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Neoliberalism would have come one way or the other.

  That’s a part of the lie that “capitalism is inevitable.”

  It’s not. Just because the world is a certain way for a time, doesn’t mean it has to be, and the world is never done changing and evolving.

  The world we live in today is the result of millions of decisions that humans have made. Collective decisions, individual decisions, competing decisions, strategic decisions. It all adds up and substracts and the net result is the world we have today.

  Capitalism isn’t inevitable. Oligarchs only want you to believe that so you accept it as the so-called “real world.”

  Maybe Friedman wasn’t the guy that made neoliberalism the dominant system today, but if we didn’t have Reagan or Thatcher, we wouldn’t have austerity for the poor and “trickle-down” supply-side economics as the main standard methods of political economy.

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  • silverneedle@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    That’s a part of the lie that “capitalism is inevitable.”

    Incorrect. Capitalism was practically everywhere in the 70s when Neoliberalism came onto the scene. It was already there. Neoliberalism is a logical development within capitalism as capitalism reaches the highest possible productivity achievable with it.

    There is nothing super special about Neoliberalism when you look at the way the world was before WWII.

    but if we didn’t have Reagan or Thatcher

    Great man/woman theory.

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    • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I never claimed that neoliberalism is what gave us capitalism. What’s with people arguing against points I never made?

      I said claiming that “we would have neoliberalism one way or another” is a part of the lie that “capitalism is inevitable.” Nothing you said refutes that.

      but if we didn’t have Reagan or Thatcher

      Great man/woman theory.

      Not at all. Heads of state of influential world superpowers absolutely have a disproportionate effect on the development of the world for decades and even generations after their time in office.

      If you can’t see that, then I guess you believe the world is purely deterministic and human choice doesn’t matter, so then I guess you’re also a nihilist who says we shouldn’t vote or fight for climate action or even resist fascism, because apparently the people in power don’t matter, and human choices don’t matter, so why the fuck should anyone try to make a difference anyway?

      I guess we can’t hold anyone in power accountable for the results of their decisions, because that would be “great man/woman” fallacy, right? Let’s all stay in bed and drink ourselves into comas, because capitalism and neoliberalism aren’t the results of human choices, but somehow some inevitable part of existence itself.

      Go home.

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      • silverneedle@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        the lie that “capitalism is inevitable.”

        It was inevitable in the development of class society, at least when we look at history. So that is not a lie. If capitalism is inevitable, what is there to be afraid of? Capitalism is the state of the world. Similarly I can say, “communism is inevitable”, which I adhere to.

        To deepen this whole thing let’s consider capitalism as historically progressive from the standpoint of a 16th century someone. Capitalism was needed to create the worker and the worker as a class. Capitalism gave us Marx, Fourier, Lafargue, Kropotkin and all the others that knew or at least felt that the story doesn’t end with capitalism.

        Heads of state of influential world superpowers absolutely have a disproportionate effect on the development of the world for decades and even generations after their time in office.

        That is what it looks like. You don’t see the strategizers, funders and victims that enable these decisions.

        If you can’t see that, then I guess you believe the world is purely deterministic and human choice doesn’t matter.

        On a, well, deeper level I cannot refute determinism, but I don’t believe in it as a method of considering the world as I don’t know everything and everything needs to be known to be a successful determinist.

        so then I guess you’re also a nihilist who says we shouldn’t vote

        Yes, democracy as a principle does not create new structures within society but reproduces the status quo. I’d advise to look at how people actually push change forward. That happens simply by joining a cause or leaving it. No voting necessary. In addition to that there are quite a few absurdities in democracy, like letting people vote on who gets to be killed. Stalin was a democrat in that he sent goons to villages and then let the mob decide who gets sacrificed. Democracy is too despotic for my taste, it certainly fulfilled none of my needs as a prole. Please don’t call me a nihilist though, I am older than 16.

        or fight for climate action or even resist fascism

        Oh yes, let me resist a system like fully ramped up fascism that I have no avenue in fighting because there is no workers’ movement. Genius idea.

        I guess we can’t hold anyone in power accountable for the results of their decisions, because that would be “great man/woman” fallacy, right

        Sure. They could be reformed if they are forcibly proletarized, fully expropriated and such. At the same time I adhere to no particular moralism around this, if they are held to account as you say then that is something people ought to do with no expectation that one ought to join in.

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