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by Jtype
1493 days ago
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Utopian thinking has always, and will always, lead to disaster. There will never be a 'perfect' world for humanity, we have enough historic evidence to show how foolhardy it is to try. On the other hand, optimizing for a better balance than we have currently is possible. We had much lower levels of income disparity in the middle of the 20th century and we could certainly aim to restore those levels. However, that would be difficult in our globalized economy of the past 40 years. This is the part of neo-liberalism that is causing the most problems for the non-elite. Globalization is leveling the field for the non-elite of the world, American wages are stagnant or dropping by real value, while wages are rising in east and southeast Asia(for example). The global elites are winning no matter what. The only way to change this is to restrict globalization and international corporations, just changing US laws to tax the rich more or break up us companies won't change much as global elite will give up their citizenship and international companies will detach from their us divisions. You will need a global effort at this point to affect any change to the system, and even then you will have serious problems. And that is only for minor changes to the system. The fact that we have interconnected most of the world in the way that we have means that any disruptions to the system are global and everyone suffers. |
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Two responses to this:
1) Please don’t communicate in absolutes (always, never, etc); you’re speaking for yourself only and I don’t share your limited imagination. Attempts to set arbitrary axioms like this is a dialog-shutdown tactic and I don’t share your perspective.
2) Perhaps you’ve intuited this, but you didn’t respond to my actual argument (that the GP is arguing in favor of the status quo); so instead you have to invent a straw man where I’m an idealist with his head in the clouds, so that you can have something you’re qualified to respond to. Congratulations!
> On the other hand, optimizing for a better balance than we have currently is possible.
Why say this if you’re going to spend the rest of your post talking about how any change to adjust the status quo will be undermined by “global elites” (your phrase, not mine)? I’m not sure you’re actually interested in this beyond a rhetorical feint.
You’re making the same argument as GP, know you have nothing new to share, yet still insist on browbeating anyone who points out the system isn’t producing good outcomes.
> The fact that we have interconnected most of the world in the way that we have means that any disruptions to the system are global and everyone suffers.
How convenient! Spoken like an ant, excited to watch the grasshopper starve.