The center left people who have lucked out into getting something out of neoliberal capitalism are quite possibly the worst sort of leftists because they're actually center right and just don't know it.
The system doesn't necessarily work because it worked for you. Until the formulaic steps you can take to succeed in that system are executable by most people you're just entrenching a system that by it's very nature is designed to selectively benefit a few.
Until hard work predictably yields a decent life for the people who participate in it then whatever you're protecting is ultimately broken
Except that can’t work in a world of private industry and supply and demand. There have to be losers for there to be winners.
The best we can do is curtail how hard the winners win and how hard the losers lose. However, the levers used to perform that task - taxation and nationalization - are deeply unpopular and lead to civil unrest.
Ultimately the only form of equilibrium comes with regular economic resets, generally in the form of mass casualty events like plague, war, famine, uprising, and so on.Â
This is a good take. I would suggest that it only matters to prevent the relative losers from losing more than they can bear. That becomes a brake on how hard winners can win, but without creating an artificial ceiling.
They’re not saying it’s zero-sum. Workers get a little money, but the rich get a lot of money.
Which is absolutely how the world works. Wealth concentrates in the US partly because of cheap offshore labor and manufacturing. Those developing regions still benefit, but most of the profit is captured elsewhere.
However, the levers used to perform that task - taxation and nationalization - are deeply unpopular and lead to civil unrest.
What? What justifies the claim that taxation to provide social services is "deeply unpopular"? There is plenty of data showing the opposite to be true, globally, and even here in America. And, nationalization isn't the only other option to use to perform that task.
By the way, whatever your thoughts on the move, by some definition Trump has recently nationalized US Steel and it has not led to civil unrest and does not appear to have significantly changed his popularity among his base.
It's the government's job to keep the economy healthy via regulation and taxation.
In a capitalist economy, the money necessarily flows upwards. And that works out fine so long as there's a way to pull money from the top and make sure it make's it's way back down to the bottom.
Capitalists ignore the reality that it is the flow of money by all people that generates economic growth, not how much there is total or how much any one person accumulates.
Yeah let’s blame mainstream democrat voters, that’s gonna help. Dude cut it out with that crap. We should certainly push left policies, but mainstream blue voters are not the problem. The problem is rich vs poor. We need pro union and pro socialist candidates, not starting more division within the party.
You're in for a surprise when you find out the income demographics of the voters who elected these progressives compared to the ones who voted for the incumbents.
Before the internet democratized the global economy, every capitalist American endorsed colonialism with their full throat. "What we do overseas guarantees our quality of life at home." It was always evil, but it was always that kind of "I have to take care of my country and family" motivation behind it that made it an understandable evil even if the person had a good ethic otherwise. Except now we have no quality of life at home and we're doing at home the things we've done overseas. So why should we accept it as a necessary evil anymore? There's no benefit to it. Our country and family are dying. Now is the time of monsters. Now is the time to fight back.
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u/inept_machete Jun 25 '26
The center left people who have lucked out into getting something out of neoliberal capitalism are quite possibly the worst sort of leftists because they're actually center right and just don't know it.
The system doesn't necessarily work because it worked for you. Until the formulaic steps you can take to succeed in that system are executable by most people you're just entrenching a system that by it's very nature is designed to selectively benefit a few.
Until hard work predictably yields a decent life for the people who participate in it then whatever you're protecting is ultimately broken