Half sane then. That's better than none at all.

I ... won't take the bait this time. Very sunny here for a change, going for a walk.

Good for you. Enjoy it. My best friend's mother passed away, he couldn't be there for her because of COVID and due to curfew I can't be there for him either. I had extra hugs with the kids instead. That was my sunshine for the day.

My condolences and ... carpe diem, my friend.

People maintain all sorts of delusions. One delusion: I could be rich, too. Another delusion: People get rich by their own efforts; work hard, get rich. Rich people deserve what they have. Yes, Mark, Jeff, and Bill earned every cent!

Do I have a choice about severe inequality? Do you? No. It's deeply, systemically embedded and protected by laws and courts. — Bitter Crank

We'd likely be deluded if we thought we could be billionaires, but I don't think it's a delusion to think we could be richer than we are, if we so desired. All sorts of things are decided for us, like where we were born, who we were born to, what sorts of parents we had, the schooling available to us, our race, our gender, and on and on. Those things no doubt matter. There are things we can choose, like how hard we wish to try in school, what sorts of subjects we migrate to, whether we want to work at the non-profit or go to law school, and all sorts of stuff. I'm not willing to say every cent received is well earned, but I can't say the opposite either. Hard work and good decisions do pay off, but, sure, there are those undeserving of their riches and of their poverty, but more or less, the system does generally predictably reward and punish those who engage in certain behaviors.

I also don't see inequality as a bad thing. The concern should be over inequity, not inequality.

What did you have for breakfast?

The chooks are laying at half-speed. So I've started eating more cereal, and also cut back on coffee consumption. Wife has settled on a combination oats, dates and dried mulberries, which has an excellent aroma.

I can trace my slender but sufficient means to numerous decisions I made in college and in employment. I'm not complaining about my own case. And yes, I can see that many people made decisions that led to their having much more wealth than myself, placing them solidly in financial security. I'm not complaining about their cases either.

The kind of inequality that is also inequity is the share of wealth held by the 1% vs. the 99%.

The disparity of wealth between the 1% and 99% (which to a significant extent was engineered through tax law) distorts the whole economy. It isn't Mark's, Jeff's, and Bill's high-end furniture, wine cellar, and house as such that is the problem. It's the draining of cash out of the 99% that is the problem (see the French economist Thomas Pikety).

:up:

My weekday usual: a pot of hot tea (black, very strong), a glass of cranberry juice, 2-3 hardboiled eggs & 1 small-ish blueberry bran muffin.

Then walk for 1-2 hours ...

Half sane then. That's better than none at all. — frank

Which is better than you. We could do this all day where you make an assertion, I question it and you evade it. I would have expected such an amazing claim to be supported by amazing evidence. I thought you actually had a quote of Trump saying, "I want all you armed wackos to rush the Capitol and take hostages". Instead you answer my question for specifics and how what Trump said was different than what Dems have said, with a question about what the Dems said. Do you see the problem yet?

The insane popularity of Trump stems from the impression he gave of himself as a savior to America, particularly to Americans living on unstable economic ground.

In his campaign he hit on nostalgia for the stability that existed in the 1960s and promised to bring American jobs back to the US and basically reindustrialize the US.

The response of Democrats like Obama to this was incredulity. He had the same response to Sander's plans for reform.

The Democrats basically stood for the status quo which was for the continuation of grotesque concentration of wealth.

Sanders and Trump both stood against the status quo, but Trump was a man poor white Americans could identify with. Trump actually is racist and his plan to go backwards to the 1960s meshes with white supremacist goals.

Largely due to internet culture there was communication among Trump's supporters who ranged from people who innocently longed for a return to the economic stability of the 1960s, to people who longed for a return to segregation and possibly a black holocaust.

After the events of America's Year of Crap, 2020, race relations were highlighted in the minds of everyone.

It's not a neoliberal plot to turn the focus to the racist element of Trump's supporters and ignore the desire among them for simple economic peace of mind. Neoliberal ideas are built in to our common sense now. We've forgotten how to think beyond it or think big enough to plan for something else.

It's all just circumstances that accidently benefit neoliberalism that we don't see what's innocent about support for Donald Trump.

On Polanyi: (wow)

"There are, he noted, two kinds of freedom, one good and the other bad. Among the latter he listed ‘the freedom to exploit one’s fellows, or the freedom to make inordinate gains without commensurable service to the community, the freedom to keep technological inventions from being used for public benefit, or the freedom to profit from public calamities secretly engineered for private advantage’.

"But, Polanyi continued, ‘the market economy under which these freedoms throve also produced freedoms we prize highly. Freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of meeting, freedom of association, freedom to choose one’s own job’. While we may ‘cherish these freedoms for their own sake’,—and, surely, many of us still do—they were to a large extent ‘by-products of the same economy that was also responsible for the evil freedoms’.33

"Polanyi’s answer to this duality makes strange reading given the current hegemony of neoliberal thinking: The passing of [the] market economy can become the beginning of an era of unprecedented freedom. Juridical and actual freedom can be made wider and more general than ever before; regulation and control can achieve freedom not only for the few, but for all. Freedom not as an appurtenance of privilege, tainted at the source, but as a prescriptive right extending far beyond the narrow confines of the political sphere into the intimate organization of society itself. Thus will old freedoms and civic rights be added to the fund of new freedoms generated by the leisure and security that industrial society offers to all. Such a society can afford to be both just and free.34

"Unfortunately, Polanyi noted, the passage to such a future is blocked by the ‘moral obstacle’ of liberal utopianism (and more than once he cites Hayek as an exemplar of that tradition): Planning and control are being attacked as a denial of freedom. Free enterprise and private ownership are declared to be essentials of freedom. No society built on other foundations is said to deserve to be called free. The freedom that regulation creates is denounced as unfreedom; the justice, liberty and welfare it offers are decried as a camouflage of slavery.35 The idea of freedom ‘thus degenerates into a mere advocacy of free enterprise’, which means ‘the fullness of freedom for those whose income, leisure and security need no enhancing, and a mere pittance of liberty for the people, who may in vain attempt to make use of their democratic rights to gain shelter from the power of the owners of property’. But if, as is always the case, ‘no society is possible in which power and compulsion are absent, nor a world in which force has no function’, then the only way this liberal utopian vision could be sustained is by force, violence, and authoritarianism. Liberal or neoliberal utopianism is doomed, in Polanyi’s view, to be frustrated by authoritarianism, or even outright fascism.36 The good freedoms are lost, the bad ones take over."

David Harvey, Brief History of Neoliberalism

The chooks are laying at half-speed. So I've started eating more cereal, and also cut back on coffee consumption. Wife has settled on a combination oats, dates and dried mulberries, which has an excellent aroma. — Banno

I'm about to move and will have room for chickens. How hard are they to keep? We have coyotes, hawks, and owls and probably there are foxes and raccoons nearby. How hard is it to keep them safe?

Sadly, and it's most sad because there's no difference between black, white etc. Or even between a fly or a roach or a plant or a dog or a person. We're all the same. But we will kill each other over made up distinctions.

We've lost an occasional flock.

A few years back we had "Death in the night" visit us once every few months - one chicken would disappear, without fuss, without a trace. After a few months a spotted quoll was found not far off - unfortunately, road kill.

I didn't mind providing the occasional chicken takeaway for an endangered species.

But foxes - one found a hole and took the entire flock (eight hens at the time) in a night. Lesson: keep an eye on the fences.

I've an open pen that's maybe five by five metres, with a small tree in the middle for protection from raptors. Deep litter of straw and leaves. I keep two to six hens - four at present. A twenty kilo bag of grain lasts a couple of months. Three eggs a day. Very easy to care for.

Sadly, and it's most sad because there's no difference between black, white etc. O — Dharmi

So you would say there is a race war taking place?

Sadly. I think there is. I think the ruling classes like to pit people against each other for their own schemes, and there are so many people easily driven by emotion and hatred conditioned by the modes of material nature to behave in such a way.

Sadly. I think there is. I think the ruling classes like to pit people against each other for their own schemes, and there are so many people easily driven by emotion and hatred conditioned by the modes of material nature to behave in such a way — Dharmi

I've come to the same conclusion.

:up:

:up:

When inequality between the rich and the poor is widespread and rampant, better to have serious disunity among the masses. That's the scheme of the ruling class I guess.

They've been doing this for hundreds of years. Profit and power is their objective, and if they can ruin people's lives to get it, they will.

I've been reading about neoliberalism. I don't think there are CEOs or oligarchs who try to instigate racial conflict. They don't have to. There's generational inertia where a child comes into a community that's waiting to pass on anger and fear. In that sense, today's racism is old.

But neoliberalism became a sort of social virus that reorganized America and to some extent the world to think of health only in terms of the health of Wall Street. The doctrine is to let Main Street disintegrate as long as Wall St. is ok.

This is why there is zero will or funds available to do something about it. I think 180Proof is right that there is a war on African Americans and brown people that has deep roots. On the other hand, BitterCrank is right that concentration of wealth has created a sense of loss among whites that leaves them vulnerable to manipulation. So the war is old and new at the same time.

I've been reading about neoliberalism. I don't think there are CEOs or oligarchs who try to instigate racial conflict. They don't have to. There's generational inertia where a child comes into a community that's waiting to pass on anger and fear. In that sense, today's racism is old. — frank

There are. The whole of WWII was their doing. And the Cold War. Google "Wall Street Trilogy" it goes in depth on this. All three sides in WWII and the Cold War were ran by Wall Street.

But you're not supposed to point this out. That the real Nazis and real Communists are actually right in our own backyard. AND they won the war. The Nazis won the war. But again, you're not supposed to point this out.

Those same people own the media that tells people what to believe and do in this country, and fund the university system which teaches people the "official narrative" But, I'm sure they're not related at all and we should just trust what they say.

Interesting. But the US wasn't sitting at the adult's table prior to the world wars. Britain and France were the global exploiters back then.

That's right. America was originally one node within the larger Anglosphere, the British Empire. So actually, yes. Then of course, the British Empire collapsed. But the apparatus of that empire has not. The same families of elites who lived then own everything today. Then of course, the American Empire stepped up. And it's currently in it's state of collapse as well.

The real power in the world are the Anglo-American elites, well at least since the past few hundred years. Not throughout the whole history of time, obviously.

True. I'm still getting my head around the development of global neoliberalism. There are a lot of moving parts. :grin:

Well, neoliberalism is just recasting liberal economics, hence "neoliberalism." That liberal economics was created during the British Empiricist period within the nascent British Empire.

Adam Smith, was a friend of David Hume, he created it, and David Ricardo basically created the version that exists today.

And where do the assumptions of British Empiricism come from, well, medieval Scholasticism: nominalism. It all goes back to nominalism.

When you believe in nominalism, there's no inherent values or natures to things, so there is no inherent value to things in the world. They're just commodities you sell on a market. And it's value and price is subjective. The value of your land is subjective, of your life, of your drinking water, of your food, of your children and of your country. This is nominalist economics. I don't call it neoliberalism, it's nominalism.

The neoliberalism I'm talking about is a post ww2 philosophy that identifies various threats to freedom. Freedom is the key word, and the almighty good is a free market.

Any government intervention of any kind is anathema because only the market knows what ought to be done for the health of society. People don't know, nature knows.

But post ww2, people in power identified social instability as the greatest threat to mankind. This led to embedded liberalism where labor unions had significant political power and there was an assumption that corporations should be interested in the welfare of communities. This was the 1960s. If they only hadn't been so incredibly racist back then, we would live in a totally different world now.

Im still not totally clear on what happened in the 1970s. Capital accumulation faltered. That means there wasn't enough demand in the economy to create the conditions for successful investment. Real interest rates were sometimes negative.

If you think of the economy as a circulatory system with demand as the pumping heart, the lack of demand was flooding the system. In medicine it's called congestive heart failure and the solution is to forcibly dry the system out with diuretics.

Lol. As you can see, I'm still trying to understand it, anyway, neoliberalism, which had been around for a while, presented itself as a solution.

The neoliberalism I'm talking about is a post ww2 philosophy that identifies various threats to freedom. Freedom is the key word, and the almighty good is a free market. — frank

Yes, so am I. "Neoliberalism" comes out of classical liberalism, classical liberalism comes from British empiricism, and British empiricism comes out of nominalism.

So nominalism is what the true issue is. From my perspective. I know the history of economics, I have a degree in it. I have degrees in politics, economy, philosophy, international relations all of these things we've been discussing.

If there is no inherent value to anything, then the market (by which is truly meant: the Oligarchs, the "owners of the country" as George Carlin put it,) decides the value.

The money-power, the State-corporate apparatus, decides the value.

I think 180Proof is right that there is a war on African Americans and brown people that has deep roots. On the other hand, BitterCrank is right that concentration of wealth has created a sense of loss among whites that leaves them vulnerable to manipulation. So the war is old and new at the same — frank

:up:

And where do the assumptions of British Empiricism come from, well, medieval Scholasticism: nominalism. It all goes back to nominalism.

When you believe in nominalism, there's no inherent values or natures to things, so there is no inherent value to things in the world. They're just commodities you sell on a market. And it's value and price is subjective. The value of your land is subjective, of your life, of your drinking water, of your food, of your children and of your country. This is nominalist economics. I don't call it neoliberalism, it's nominalism. — Dharmi

:up: