Monday, July 16, 2012

Sara Robinson — The New Totalitarianism: How American Corporations Have Made America Like the Soviet Union

Free-market capitalism was supposed to save us from the tyranny of faceless apparatchiks. But that's not what happened.
Read it at AlterNet
The New Totalitarianism: How American Corporations Have Made America Like the Soviet Union
by Sara Robinson
(h/t Kevin Fathi via email)

4 comments:

Major_Freedom said...

That's because free market capitalism has not happened! It was relentlessly attacked by both right and left wing intellectuals. Well, the intellectuals got what they wanted. How in the hell can then talk out of the other sides of their mouths and blame anyone but themselves?

Good lord. It's punching someone repeatedly in the stomach because you're against them feeling no pain, and then when they develop an ulcer, you say "See? Humans are not healthy enough to be free! Our attacks on stomach freedom have been justified all along! We need "strong" leaders to get us out of this dreary mess free stomach ideologues are responsible for!"

One of the tell tale tactics of anti-market ideologues is their attempts to blame the non-existent free market, instead of themselves for refusing to understand and fight for it.

It's your classic pass the buck to the next guy irresponsibility and intellectual dishonesty.

Major_Freedom said...

Yes yes, I know: "Utopia".

Reagrdless of what you think about it, it is silly to attack a non-existent "Utopia" for why people's actions didn't have desirable consequences.

Left and right wing anti-market ideologues have to admit that the undesirable consequences is a result of their own mishaps.

This is, by the way, another supremely valuable component of the free market. When things don't go the way people wanted them to go, it is far more difficult to pass the buck and blame others. This is because costs are maximally internalized to individuals. If their profit, psychic or material, is a net negative, then their own past actions which incurred costs, are more harshly personalized and individuals can't blame others as easily.

The more socialized everything gets, the less each individual's actions are able to be connected to outcomes. Individuals in socialism can always blame others for the undesirable consequences. In a private property order, individuals are more easily identified as either promoting or inhibiting the extent of desirable consequences.

American corporations have not made the US into the USSR. It is the STATE that has turned the US into the USSR. Corporations are basically POWERLESS without the mommy and daddy state. They are otherwise at the mercy of the fickle consumers, who have no problems at all bankrupting decades old multi-national businesses who screw up.

The state that progressives and conservatives wanted to expand, to "help poor people", is the very same state that is responsible for the corporatism we have today.

Lick it up progressives and conservatives. I suspect you won't like the taste of an empty refrigerator.

Tom Hickey said...

MF: That's because free market capitalism has not happened!


This is pretty much what many of my Eastern European frields say about communism in their countries, too. They say they were really inspired learning about socialism in school and they were very disappointed to learn that it was never actually tried in practice since it didn't benefit elites. They are also pretty shocked at how the US treats people at the bottom, too. In those countries everyone was at least taken care of.

Major_Freedom said...

Tom Hickey:

MF: That's because free market capitalism has not happened!

This is pretty much what many of my Eastern European frields say about communism in their countries, too. They say they were really inspired learning about socialism in school and they were very disappointed to learn that it was never actually tried in practice since it didn't benefit elites.

It's the exact opposite. It is precisely because socialism benefits the elites that your idealistic friends were disappointed to learn that socialism was about the poor, but the powerful.

Capitalism is actually the poor man's system. It is the system whereby he is most economically free, since his property rights are respected and systematic wealth confiscation is low/nonexistent.

Poverty is not abolished by gift giving. If that were true, most of Africa would have risen out of poverty. What actually raises people out of poverty is property rights protections and economic freedom.

The best help is the help that people give themselves, since they know themselves best. I don't know what everyone wants, so I call for protecting individual rights and let individuals get what they want.

It's how the US rose out of poverty and became the most prosperous nation ever.

They are also pretty shocked at how the US treats people at the bottom, too. In those countries everyone was at least taken care of.

I'm sure they were even more shocked at the prosperity difference.