Obama’s Speech Last Night…
I thought it was awesome. And I like Obama. I voted for the man. However, I’m 100% AGAINST his position of tossing any more welfare to the banks and credit companies. Either I’m insane, or ahead of my time, but that money would’ve been better spent putting this country back to work building real wealth and advancing our society (hiring scientists, engineers, doctors, construction workers, …artists…heh) instead of tossing our money paying down the claims on fake wealth concocted by these dick financiers and bankers that gave us the worldwide economic mess we’re in. There was a time in this country when someone could work their job and be able to support a spouse and a household. That’s the way things should be. Nowadays, people like me, and I imagine a lot of you, have to scratch the fucking earth just to get by on their own. Fuck the bankers, fuck the finance cacks who robbed us and continue to rob us wholesale, and fuck the people and politicians who support this immoral and corrupt system.
And…I’m back to drawing. 
February 25th, 2009 at 12:05 PM
The banks have screwed up big time. The party is over and the people who are part of this system have to be made to realise this, especially at a time when industry the world over is suffering.
Spend the money on fixing America’s bridges and building high speed railways in California and Florida and NOT on giving Bank of America yet another excuse to keep their private jets!
February 25th, 2009 at 2:03 PM
Funny, it’s not even just infrastructure. You have lots of people with scientific and academic backgrounds going to waste out there while some worthless investment asshole is paying his or herself billions in bonuses from government welfare. Their asses should be unemployed and/or in jail.
And now we have a bunch of fakeass “populists” griping about bailing out other peoples’ bad mortgages, yet they weren’t nearly as vocal when the gov was handing out welfare to Wall Street. See, the bitchslap was created for these sorts of people. *facepalms*
February 25th, 2009 at 8:26 PM
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams made an interesting speech at the Sinn Fein conference in Dublin earlier this week. I’m not really his biggest fan but what he said made sense: those responsible for this mess should face criminal neglegence charges.
February 27th, 2009 at 2:15 PM
Oh yes, yes I agree completely. Unfortunately, that’s not the way things work. The REAL problem, in my opinion, is that our entire country – infrastructure, economy, and government combined – is built around the love of money. Take away the money, and everyone pulls out. Put in money, and some people will do anything to get it in their pockets. And while the actual percentage of people that would do such a fucked-up thing is relatively low, the number of people with access to and power over the money makes it a virtual certainty that it will happen, and that it will happen again.
Unfortunately, I have no idea how to fix this, and I’m not sure we can. It would involve the restructure of our entire country, and I don’t think anyone, even me, is ready for something like that.
A couple of people might face criminal charges, and they would certainly be highly publicized, but the extent of the fuckup makes it physically impossible to arrest everyone, or we’d have to build another five prisons just to hold them for their court dates.
February 27th, 2009 at 3:25 PM
@pressyuk: A fairly pervasive problem here in the States is a severe lack of real class conciousness or mass recognition of the social contract. The culture is geared towards worship of wealth and the wealthy. I don’t fault people for wanting wealth, but I do fault people for greed and selfishness in the pursuit of that wealth and being incapable of recognizing that most wealth, especially the obscene type, is gained through massive exploitation of working people. With that worldview, Americans in general defend or shy from condemning the obscene accumulation of wealth and the people who accumulate it, believing they’ll be the ones collecting sometime in the future. Yeah, fat chance.
February 27th, 2009 at 3:53 PM
@mathguy: I have this discussion quite often with people who identify as liberal and anarchist as opposed to my hard-left socialist orientation. It is entirely possible to shift the economy in such a direction that emphasizes advancing our species. The problem is that the current economy we have now is a war-based economy. We’ve had a war-based economy since WWII. And that economy was created with mass mobilization on all levels, which is ironic since conservatives like to talk about our badass economy and free markets while not recognizing the fact that it was born out of collective mobilization (i.e. mass government spending on the war effort, the GI Bill, and low-interest federal loans).
Dismantling a war-based economy would require another mass mobilization doing other stuff, and there’s a LOT of other stuff that can be done in this country aside from building weapons and hiring people to shoot them. But I don’t see that happening until we’re actually in a depression-type situation.
I love Obama, and a lot of good things are rearing their heads i.e. bank nationalization, drug legalization, a more progressive tax system. But I voted for him fully knowing he was going to be another steward of capitalism, in this case trying to give it CPR. And on those grounds, he and the rest of the country have to be pushed to stop the CPR, let capitalism die its natural death like feudalism before it, and come together to build something new, more sustainable, and revolutionary.
February 28th, 2009 at 10:58 AM
@Edgy: Socialism is a nice dream, but it’ll never amount to more than that without a lot of work.
The first major problem with it is that human nature requires some type of status symbol to differentiate you from the shmuck across the street. Socialism by itself does not produce anything like that…you’d need something more.
The second major problem is that socialism essentially requires an authoritarian government to take control and deal with the transition. We don’t have one of those, and most of us wouldn’t put up with one either. The biggest problem with that, however, is that history has shown that, once in power, people tend not to want to just walk out of it – and that is what socialism expects.
So no, I don’t think capitalism is going anywhere – no matter its flaws, it is the best system we have – but I don’t argue that a partial nationalization of the banks is a bad thing. As an investor in the banks, the goverment might make more money, and they’ll have a good-sized vote in the major issues the banks deal with, like lending practices.
In fact, I’m afraid I have to argue with your assertion that they’re giving capitalism CPR at all. Capitalism inherently takes full advantage of human nature, and while this does mean that occasionally someone will take advantage of the system, it means that the general movement of capitalism will be up, not down. The market will recover…it always has.
I have no problem with changing production away from weapons, but…to what? Basic economics shows that people will produce what will bring them the most immediate profit. Long-term projects just aren’t very profitable for some time, and therefore get shoved off to the back burner. And there’s no way to change that – give people tax credits for having long-term projects, and that won’t get them to work on the projects. Other production, like microchips and oil, is already running at the maximum profit for the markets that exist.
To change weapons production to something else, you’d have to do one of two things: either develop something entirely new that everyone needs, or develop a brand new market for an existing product (which is highly unlikely condsidering that the entire globe is already accessible.)
I am, of course, open to other ideas…I just don’t see any.
And if you’re wondering, I consider myself a liberal/libertarian.
February 28th, 2009 at 12:44 PM
@mathguy: We’d have to respectfully agree to disagree then. I’d have to contend with some of your points a bit. Culture and trade itself provides the differentiation that you talk about in regards to human nature. I don’t argue against those things since that’s part of human nature; in fact I’m very much involve in both with ETD. Second, inherently correlating socialism with authoritarianism is a false assertion since you can find many examples of authoritarian exercises of power under the Western democratic system. Ironically the US is beginning to resemble the old Soviet Union in a lot of its approaches to security, foreign policy, and censorship. And that’s actually a libertarian critique.
In addition, the internet is a very socialist technology, yet none of us would make the claim that it’s repressing us in any way.
Also, I’d argue we’re starting to have socialism of the very backwards kind i.e. socializing the ginormous losses of all these banking institutions but apparently privatizing all the gains to these shareholders and executives, who, under the principles of capitalism and free market ideology, should be the ones taking the losses and heading to the poorhouse instead of growing fat on obscene bonuses paid for by public money. Instead, collectively we are being forced to buy this debt and have it be paid down by multiple generations of taxpayers in the hopes that they’ll eventually bring about some return, which is insane and immoral. If the free marketeers are so confident about their system and the value of these shares, why are WE being forced to buy into the losses? Even under the most extreme libertarian priniciples, people shouldn’t be coerced into paying for these losses.
And I’d REALLY have to contend with you that capitalism is not undergoing CPR. All these bank bailouts are CPR. There’s several trillion dollars of fake debt wealth out there created out of wholesale mortgage fraud and arcane credit instruments. The claims on wealth in this country are potentially 4 to 5 times what actual GDP is. Almost half of the world’s GDP is in question right now. Your average person right now should not only be questioning whether or not any of this is sustainable, but also whether or not the system its borne out of will even survive as it has.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW1003o7ZzQ
Our point of disagreement here is simple. You’re more economically libertarian, while I’m more of the belief that the economy should be guided and reasonably regulated by the public and its institutions. Fact is, technology exists out there that isn’t being fully exploited and distributed under capitalism. We can put research, production, and marketing into that instead of arms. We can make the use of oil and coal for fuel obsolete, build more efficient means of transportation, refurbish our schools, go Manhattan Project on cancer and other horrible diseases, and a whole list of other stuff. If the US gov is running at a loss, at least run at a loss building things that could spur a new economy. That’s not gonna happen giving welfare to undead banks with seemingly no end in sight.
I’m not of the belief that the market has the right to determine everything, just like God doesn’t have the right to determine whether or not I want to fornicate.
March 2nd, 2009 at 7:40 AM
It’s a good thing I don’t mind admitting when I’m wrong.
I was basing my issues with socialism on Marx’s idea of the authoritarian government taking over and eventually just “giving it up” to the people, which obviously isn’t going to happen (see exhibits A and B, named “Russia” and “China”.) I didn’t even think of another way for it to happen. That’s my bad.
And I’m actually not of the opinion that the market has the right to determine everything either. Most of what I said was just what seems like fact from my viewpoint…I didn’t mean to imply that I actually agreed with it all. I certainly agree that the market should be regulated (and sometimes heavily), but there are some basic problems that the government as it is cannot solve. Witness: the basic electric car. Without being too invasive, the government can provide incentive tax breaks to companies working on the electric car, they can heavily tax those companies that do not produce an electric car within five years, they can increase the MPG requirements, they can reduce the EPA’s auto emissions maximum, but none of these things will actually force a given auto company to build an electric car.
And I can certainly appreciate that our entire economy is built on everyone accepting those little pieces of paper as wealth when they really mean next to nothing. And I certainly question whether any of the staggering amounts of debt are sustainable, but the system as a whole, I believe, can survive.
I think essentially our point of disagreement is actually even simpler. When I look within the system, I see an enormous volume of problems, but I also see enormous potential when working within the system. When you look within the system, you see all the problems and look for a better way. Correct me if I’m wrong, but we’re seeing the same problems and looking for the same solution, just from opposite sides of the problem. I’m not entirely sure.
I’m working off of traditional Marxist socialism…I get the feeling now that that’s not what you’re looking at. Am I right?
March 3rd, 2009 at 12:27 AM
@mathguy: Well, Russia and China are very bad examples of trying to implement something resembling traditional Marxist/Leninist socialism. The Bolsheviks, especially under Stalin, operated under the assumption that socialism meant centralizing power in the state and suppressing market forces, which led to a lot of very awful and backwards stuff (even Lenin saw that slippery slope fairly soon before his death). Maoism tried to modernize China, but failed to account for the fact that the country was under feudalism right up until the revolution took place (yeah lots of luck trying to go from serfdom to even basic capitalism in 5 years; turning dumbass peasants into skilled industrial workers is definitely not an overnight thing). Seriously, you’d find the biggest critics of Stalinism and Maoism to be people who identify as Marxist/Leninists.
If you actually read the Communist Manifesto, the planks are actually pretty reasonable for the most part barring some very antiquated and xenophobic stuff about migrants and rebels i.e. the formation of a people’s political party, progressive taxation, public education and transportation, abolition of child labor, increased expansion of state-owned industries, a nationalized banking and credit system, etc. The main idea from actual Marxism was to demand a commons for working people within their old capitalist system, not have men who were fresh out of mass-scale warfare (WW2 and the Chinese Civil War respectively)to attempt to replace capitalism with their interpretations of utopian communism via authoritarian state control and kill millions on the process.
We’re actually in agreement in a lot of ways. Capitalism, like Paul Volcker said, may survive. But as he said, not all of it. Which means the rest of us are going to have to come up with something entirely new to plug the gaping economic whirlpool we’re all swirling towards. And I posit a “new way” as opposed to sticking to the “old way” because as things are, it’s impossible to reform “their” capitalism in any meaningful fashion that would protect the common man’s self-interest. The financial industry’s already set the terms of how our lives are going to be spent for the next couple of decades. They want us and our children to pay them the fake wealth they made up and that they believe they’re owed. You can’t work within that system, not without heavy financial loss on your end and your family and future family. It has to be fought tooth-and-nail.
Funny thing, I’m sure if Marx were around, he’d very much agree with both our angles on this.