US POLITICS SPRING 2011: Let's just call off this country.

like I think I am a capitalist? that is, I like distribution of labor & being able to save my labor using money, & the variety of the marketplace, etc. I get that local / state / fed gov gives all kinds of bs tax incentives to massive corporations & that US corporations treat people like shit...but I guess I think it's awfully dorm-room-y bullshit to say "capitalism is the problem" b/c tbf I don't want to have to work on a farm b/c it's hot & smelly & pretty hard work! but I'm happy to pay someone else to do those shitty jobs if that's what they'd rather do with their time...I don't think that all makes me Michael Milken but I dunno.

lol u must be a blue dog

If you'd like a command economy, allow me to propose my candidacy for benevelolent despot.

a benevelolent despot, is that like a dictator that does standup

"a funny thing is going to happen to you on the way to the labor camp"

LOL

If my despotism is truly benevolent, there most certainly won't be any stand-up. More like Dick Cavett, sit down drollery.

My labor camps will consist of madatory karaoke until wills are broken.

SIGN ME UP

Euler, bartering and a gold standard aren't incompatible with 'capitalism', which mostly just refers to property rights/who controls the 'means of production'. and that strict definition is sorta useless in 2011 when we all work in the service sector. every country in the world has its own mixed economic system that and using sweeping terms like 'capitalism' to describe them is lazy/pointless. I mean people here who support unions are not 'anti-capitalist', they're supporting an institution within 'capitalism'.

Yeah, it may not be very sexy, compared w/1848 or 1870, but mostly we're just arguing about arcane details in mixed economies, even in China and Vietnam. The real anti-capitalism or anti-modern-economy is probably the kelptocracy 'models' of Africa or the Balkans or Russia - these are the economies that least serve the common good.

SIGN ME UP

Would you like maple syrup or sriracha w/ your gruel?

both plz

Thesis, antithesis.... synthesis!

and here I've been subsisting on bark and water like a sap

absolute freedom and power for aerosmith, indentured servitude for everyone else

finally a man with a clear political vision I can support. Shakey for alderman!

and here I've been subsisting on bark and water like a sap

Tbf, your cover of 'Hey Ya' was an embarrassment to the proletariat.

im anti-capitalist! i reject the enlightenment notion of the undivided subject, and the politico-economic systems that stand upon it!!!

can we erase today's posts itt?

why do you hate laughter

to max: this is the kind of dorm-room-y thing I was talking about; like, I know what "the enlightenment notion of the undivided subject" means (I teach classes on this stuff) & yet I don't really see what that has to do with my wanting to make some cash teaching a class rather than picking cucumbers, or to get paid in cash rather than in cucumbers. I was just teaching the Genealogy of Morality Book I last week, where Nietzsche talks about how "the subject" is an illusion, & it's like, yeah, that's cool, but it's just impossibly hard for me to know what that means in practice...I guess because my ~background~ is Enlightenment, but it's not like the Chinese don't want to get paid b/c they have a different conception of the self.

where are these people who 'want' to pick cucumbers?

Euler you are basically arguing with rage against the machine lyrics - I wouldn't overthink this

ha well i was kind of making a joke, i dont really know either. i suppose one place to start would be question of contracts, which are (i think) necessary for free exchange of cucumbers and class-teaching and cash and so forth? and this requires (right?) a free undivided subject who can enter into said contract? i dont know i decided not to go to grad school

I have often felt this desire to pick cucumbers. Fortunately, it has always abated after picking fewer then ten. Usually just two or three are enough.

i think we all need to get high to have this conversation unfortunately

im also not a scholar of china or chinese thought or of the enlightenment or really of anything but wouldnt the argument be that capitalism and the post-enlightenment western notion of self go hand-in-hand and that chinese bros desire to get paid only insofar as said chinese bros have also taken on the idea of the subject? (not to mention that what does it mean for a chinese dude/dudette to 'want' to 'get' 'paid' and for what reasons and does 'getting' 'paid' even mean the same thing to "us" as it does to "the chinese" &c &c more quote marks)

I thought the localist anarcho-whatthefuckist view was that we should return to a life of the soil instead of the crippling reliance on technology which distances ourselves from...eh, I don't get it, but I though cucumbers were part of it.

they are, so are long walks in the woods

wait is this lesbian porn now

Hollywood has taught me that all disaffected urban professionals would prefer to be picking cucumbers are you saying Hollywood is full of liars

lol Dan

max I feel you on all that & yet I just want to get what difference it makes in practice, like what are the alternatives for society that don't take on the ~Enlightenment self~? I want to imagine this whole new world but I end up just thinking of Hobbiton, like it's that hard for me to figure out what the alternatives are.

all concepts of rights currently in effect rest on the notion of the enlightenment self. it may be basically fake mysticism if you dig into it, but i'll take it, given the real alternatives.

there is no self, only aerosmith

max I feel you on all that & yet I just want to get what difference it makes in practice, like what are the alternatives for society that don't take on the ~Enlightenment self~? I want to imagine this whole new world but I end up just thinking of Hobbiton, like it's that hard for me to figure out what the alternatives are.

― Euler, Wednesday, April 20, 2011 2:50 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

fascism? this is kind of where heidegger ended up, right?

i mean, that or writing epic fantasy series

my only point was that provided that FOX NEWS didn't succeed in convincing most of the country that OPEC is to blame for the whole thing, that the speculation driving up oil prices to levels that are fundamentally harmful to hundreds of millions of people could be used to persuade these hundreds of millions that things like the free market and deregulation are not exactly all that they're cracked up to be, and that maybe even something sinister like 'socialism' would be preferable to the current sstatus quo...

(to which iatee responded: 'mouthbreathers who still drive cars can suck it!')

Here's where I recommend Jacques Barzun again, who argued that what we call "the Enlightenment" and its consequences are overstated.

American "capitalism" has essentially changed since Reagan, amping up the unregulated-theft factor

(or, back to the pre-Teddy Roosevelt, pre-union future)

so did heidegger! xp

oil prices are harmful to millions of people! In that it's still too cheap.

iatee OTM. oil shoul be like $100/gallon imho. that would result in some serious changes purt quick

thinking I'll take Visa ads on my trains over dirigisme

but at least those trains would run on time

http://henpantha.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/sarah-palin-wink.jpg?w=300&h=269

my only point was that provided that FOX NEWS didn't succeed in convincing most of the country that OPEC is to blame for the whole thing, that the speculation driving up oil prices to levels that are fundamentally harmful to hundreds of millions of people could be used to persuade these hundreds of millions that things like the free market and deregulation are not exactly all that they're cracked up to be, and that maybe even something sinister like 'socialism' would be preferable to the current sstatus quo...

(to which iatee responded: 'mouthbreathers who still drive cars can suck it!')

― music loves drugs (Drugs A. Money), Wednesday, April 20, 2011 2:55 PM (1 minute ago)

well all of these are right - opec sucks and can pretty much manipulate prices at will, which it has in the past and will continue to do. we also do depend far too much on their oil and are pretty myopic when it comes to how we're going to deal with energy in the future - demand plays a role but not as large of one as the received wisdomocracy would have you believe. and speculation due to negligent deregulation over the past few decades has played a sigificant role in oil prices as well (and food prices, and other commodities) - it's the latter thing that doesn't get much press unfortunately

http://www.infrastructurist.com/2011/04/20/americas-low-gas-prices-a-global-perspective/

do you believe in American exceptionalism drugs? are we a magic people who don't have to abide by the laws of supply and demand?

we have an alternative to capital: politics. sucks, doesn't it!

"democracy is the horizon of something something" - jacques derrida

American "capitalism" has essentially changed since Reagan, amping up the unregulated-theft factor

I have a friend whose thesis concentrates on how the American political system has been afraid to accept the ways in which capitalism has changed.