Libertarians believe in the meritocracy and so to them if a person is poor then it's their own fault. And so if a person suffers because he is poor, and if he gets exploited by the wealthy, and if his life is miserable, it is of no concern to anyone else because he gets what he deserves. There seems to be no humanity in this viewpoint.
The brain is neuroplastic and middle class and upper class children get better nutrition and a more intellectually stimulating environment which greatly increases intelligence and confidence. But the poorest children often don't get this chance and can go on to repeat what their parents did and so stay poor. Throw in learned helplessness, where the poorest people often think there is no point in trying to get ahead because they believe they will always fail, and you have a vicious circle which is difficult to break.
What sort of meritocracy is it when most libertarians have not been brought up in a very poor family and so got a massive leg up without doing anything for it? This leg up means they can ride on the backs of poorer people and live the good life.
The libertarians believe that all well if you leave the market alone without any government interference but this would create a very rich and powerful merchant class who will use their market power to forever force wages down. Every Chinese civilization collapsed because for the same reason, where a wealthy merchant class developed who then drove the middle class out of business, just like Jeff Bezos is doing today. Wages then collapsed and people lacked purchasing power to keep the economy going. Capitalism has a fault line and needs to be regulated.
Yo, Bezos was poor:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/09/amazons-jeff-bezos-son-of-a-teen-mom-to-a-105-billion-fortune.html
All the iconic producers have to do is open up their own robust online stores and let UPS and Fedex do the fulfillment.... Amazon goes away...
ReplyDelete"All the iconic producers have to do is open up their own robust online stores and let UPS and Fedex do the fulfillment.... Amazon goes away..."
ReplyDeleteExactly.
In addition there is Alibaba to compete with Amazon as a peer in the global ecommerce market that is taking over retail and I suspect has already taken over wholesale. My importer friends used to travel a great for buying but now it is almost exclusively through the Internet and ebanking.
Capitalism has a fault line and needs to be regulated.
ReplyDeleteBecause the "government" is God. Granting them great powers means granting great powers to Trump, the Deep State, Saddam Hussein, Stalin etc....
Such insight.
“Middle class and upper class children get better nutrition and a more intellectually stimulating environment which greatly increases intelligence and confidence. But the poorest children often don't get this chance and can go on to repeat what their parents did and so stay poor. Throw in learned helplessness, where the poorest people often think there is no point in trying to get ahead because they believe they will always fail, and you have a vicious circle which is difficult to break.”
ReplyDeleteDifficult indeed. One manifestation of learned helplessness is the false belief that money is physical and limited, and that monetarily sovereign governments run on tax revenue.
For example, Tucker Carlson asks why taxpayers should subsidize Amazon workers with Food Stamps when Jeff Bezos can easily afford to pay his workers more. Bezos is a scumbag, but taxpayers don’t subsidize anything at the federal level. Food Stamp benefits are created out of thin air, and they help everyone in the lower classes, not only the direct recipients of food stamp money.
Side note: the U.S. government gives Food Stamp benefits to 42 million Americans in order to prevent a national revolt. Throughout world history, almost all popular revolts have been triggered by hunger. The causes are many, but the trigger (i.e. the incendiary match) is almost always hunger. Average people submit to endless abuse, but they rebel when they get hungry.
The U.S. government knows this. That is why right-wing politicians constantly threaten to cut Food Stamps, but they never do. Trump, for example, says he wants to cut Food Stamps funding by more than $213 billion, or nearly 30%. But Trump won’t dare, since it would cause a genuine revolt.
Also the Food Stamp program works with mega-bank JP Morgan Chase in 24 states, Affiliated Computer Services (a subsidiary of Xerox) in 15 states, and eFunds Corporation in 10 states. These three corporations collect hundreds of millions of dollars in fees for helping to administer the program. They would squawk if a politician tried to cut food stamps. Furthermore some Congress people have investments in these companies.
“Capitalism has a fault line and needs to be regulated.” ~ Kaivey
Capitalism is already regulated by the rich, for the rich. For one consistent idiot above, this is just fine. (He even looks like an idiot.)
We need capitalism to be regulated for everyone’s benefit.
Do you know what I find odd, Konrad, is that Tucker Carlson clip came from a libertarian site and they put it up because they thought the libertarian had the better argument. But Tucker Carlson wasn't trying to win any economic debate, his argument was just on plain humanitarian grounds, on fairness and human decency. In the end he hesitated when challenged by the libertarian and said that it was not American or Christian to treat workers like that.
ReplyDeleteWhat's odd is that I thought Tucker Carlson wiped the libertarian out with his compassionate argument, but this must have meant nothing to the libertarians who put the video up because to them, only pure economics counts. Capitalism is God even if people starve. Their meritocracy is that if you climb up the ladder you are entitled to treat people below you as mere objects. The libertarians can't see that Tucker wins the argument and that most people who come to their site would agree with him. That the video discredits their argument, but they lack so much empathy they can't see it.