You see Neoliberalism is also a form of Authoritarianism, or more precisely it’s a way of transforming Democracy into Oligarchy.
Which is why people rolled the dice on Trump - b/c the only other alternative was Hillary Clinton, so people chose to play Russian Roulette rather than that known quantity.
I need to update the words I use - e.g. I have been calling that “plutocracy”, but yeah neoliberalism seems to mean essentially the same thing? In the end at least. I really don’t like that word though, b/c it is basically the polar opposite of “liberal” - which I think is perhaps by design, as in describing people who present themselves as “liberal” but by virtue of being “neoliberal” they are the opposite.
That aside though, I also do not like it b/c that leads to a word creep, b/c what will come after that - post-neoliberalism? Nouveau-neoliberalism? :-) We are seeing the same effect with neoconservatism as well - as in, what the hell does it even mean!? And especially, how is neoconservatism any different from neoliberalism, especially when both devolve to mean the same thing as plutocracy!?
Wording aside though, absolutely yes: press bought with money, check, judiciary too, check (though it arguably took longer, and I think not strictly speaking in the precise manner in which you said but… yes, there’s no use quibbling intricacies when it amounts to the same end of agreement).
What did you think of the CGP Grey’s Rules for Rulers video? If you have any suggestions for a video to watch after that one, I am interested. That one messed me up, emotionally, and I still am not past it, b/c it highlights, as you said, that there IS no fixing this - this is simply how it is going to be, from now on. The Golden Era in the USA that, regardless of whether it truly even existed (expecially for e.g. black people), is definitely over. As soon as corporations started to amass more power than people could ever hope to - e.g. people die, and have to breathe, eat, sleep, etc., but corporations have special exemptions that give them super-human status, essentially making them Giants in the land of us mere pawn-style Humans. Even the CEOs of those institutions are helpless before their might, if the Board of Directors were to want to get rid of them.
We are fast becoming slaves to corporations, and while government was the only thing rivaling their strength, the power of misinformation seems to be reducing those hallowed institutions to weak ghosts of their former selves, or rather more like a cancer patient, barely able to move their arms a bit and even that ability fast waning until there will soon be nothing left. The wasps have laid eggs in the brain of this caterpillar, and when they finish hatching and eating us from the inside there will be nothing left. Nor will revolution likely work, when they have all of nukes and drones on their side and the rest of the people have… what, possibly slightly better AI? Even which weapons will end up being used in that fight seem to have not yet been defined.
At this point, maybe we should put all our hope into the EU to save democracy? :-P But if so, it won’t be for everyone, and I think the USA is probably too far gone… :-(
Yeah, that’s exactly what I think happenned in the US to elect Trump.
Agree that the words do not mean what they seem, but then again what else is new: NAZI stands for National Socialist German Workers’ Party and at least 2 of those things are the opposite of what they really stood for. The misnaming of political parties and ideologies is probably a hill not worth dying on, IMHO.
I like and agree with the Rules for Rulers video, though I think it oversimplifies things, especially in Democracies: if it was that simple, why is there such a massive difference in median quality of life and wealth between the US and, say, Sweden or why has oil-rich Norway not turned in to a Dictatorship, or why the difference between present day US and 1960s US - same country, same rules, yet hugelly different wealth distribution, quality of life and social mobility levels.
Clearly there are a lot more factors at least in Democracy.
Not that I think that video is wrong - I can actually see a lot of that in my own country both before and after Fascism was overthrown - I just think it’s not enough to explain everything.
Can’t really recomend any other videos: I’ve built my views on politics from reading a lot in quite a number of subjects (Finance, Behavioural Economics, Psychology, Mathematics and so on) as well as crossed with my life experience including membership in political parties. I don’t think this is easilly replicable and it would most definitelly not fit a couple of videos, which given the very pressures of seeking Youtube views and aimed for audience means the videos by need be very simplified views of reality.
As for Corporations, never forget that they do not have a will of their own - it’s all people doing the choices behind the veil of the corporation and those choices are made for the personal upside maximization of those people, even if only indirectly (which is why you see massive CEO payouts when it’s seldom in the best interest of the corporation). IMHO, the personification of corporation is a trick in Modern Capitalism meant to help deflect the blame away from the decision-makers within the corporation to the corporate entity itself, which is how for example a CEO of an airplane maker can decide to cut corners in the building of their planes, leading to hundreds of avoidable deaths, and yet instead of the CEO ending up in jail for Manslaughter it’s the company that ends up paying a fine - the system all the way through levels of the State such as the Legislative and Judiciary are set-up to stop certain elite from getting punished in the same way as non-elites would and the Press often cooperates by going on and on about the Corporation itself and never mention the CEO(s) who made the decision.
(I suspect that the solution for the current problems with corporations is simply going after the individuals themselves making the decisions in the name of the corporations. I’m probably not the only one who thinks so, which is why you often see people on the Internet advocating for prision sentences for CEOs of corporations for the crimes who for public consumption are attributed to the corporations)
I would be more worried about dynastic hold on Power and Money than explicitly about corporation, as corporations are simply agents and façades for those holding power.
Which is why people rolled the dice on Trump - b/c the only other alternative was Hillary Clinton, so people chose to play Russian Roulette rather than that known quantity.
I need to update the words I use - e.g. I have been calling that “plutocracy”, but yeah neoliberalism seems to mean essentially the same thing? In the end at least. I really don’t like that word though, b/c it is basically the polar opposite of “liberal” - which I think is perhaps by design, as in describing people who present themselves as “liberal” but by virtue of being “neoliberal” they are the opposite.
That aside though, I also do not like it b/c that leads to a word creep, b/c what will come after that - post-neoliberalism? Nouveau-neoliberalism? :-) We are seeing the same effect with neoconservatism as well - as in, what the hell does it even mean!? And especially, how is neoconservatism any different from neoliberalism, especially when both devolve to mean the same thing as plutocracy!?
Wording aside though, absolutely yes: press bought with money, check, judiciary too, check (though it arguably took longer, and I think not strictly speaking in the precise manner in which you said but… yes, there’s no use quibbling intricacies when it amounts to the same end of agreement).
What did you think of the CGP Grey’s Rules for Rulers video? If you have any suggestions for a video to watch after that one, I am interested. That one messed me up, emotionally, and I still am not past it, b/c it highlights, as you said, that there IS no fixing this - this is simply how it is going to be, from now on. The Golden Era in the USA that, regardless of whether it truly even existed (expecially for e.g. black people), is definitely over. As soon as corporations started to amass more power than people could ever hope to - e.g. people die, and have to breathe, eat, sleep, etc., but corporations have special exemptions that give them super-human status, essentially making them Giants in the land of us mere pawn-style Humans. Even the CEOs of those institutions are helpless before their might, if the Board of Directors were to want to get rid of them.
We are fast becoming slaves to corporations, and while government was the only thing rivaling their strength, the power of misinformation seems to be reducing those hallowed institutions to weak ghosts of their former selves, or rather more like a cancer patient, barely able to move their arms a bit and even that ability fast waning until there will soon be nothing left. The wasps have laid eggs in the brain of this caterpillar, and when they finish hatching and eating us from the inside there will be nothing left. Nor will revolution likely work, when they have all of nukes and drones on their side and the rest of the people have… what, possibly slightly better AI? Even which weapons will end up being used in that fight seem to have not yet been defined.
At this point, maybe we should put all our hope into the EU to save democracy? :-P But if so, it won’t be for everyone, and I think the USA is probably too far gone… :-(
Yeah, that’s exactly what I think happenned in the US to elect Trump.
Agree that the words do not mean what they seem, but then again what else is new: NAZI stands for National Socialist German Workers’ Party and at least 2 of those things are the opposite of what they really stood for. The misnaming of political parties and ideologies is probably a hill not worth dying on, IMHO.
I like and agree with the Rules for Rulers video, though I think it oversimplifies things, especially in Democracies: if it was that simple, why is there such a massive difference in median quality of life and wealth between the US and, say, Sweden or why has oil-rich Norway not turned in to a Dictatorship, or why the difference between present day US and 1960s US - same country, same rules, yet hugelly different wealth distribution, quality of life and social mobility levels.
Clearly there are a lot more factors at least in Democracy.
Not that I think that video is wrong - I can actually see a lot of that in my own country both before and after Fascism was overthrown - I just think it’s not enough to explain everything.
Can’t really recomend any other videos: I’ve built my views on politics from reading a lot in quite a number of subjects (Finance, Behavioural Economics, Psychology, Mathematics and so on) as well as crossed with my life experience including membership in political parties. I don’t think this is easilly replicable and it would most definitelly not fit a couple of videos, which given the very pressures of seeking Youtube views and aimed for audience means the videos by need be very simplified views of reality.
As for Corporations, never forget that they do not have a will of their own - it’s all people doing the choices behind the veil of the corporation and those choices are made for the personal upside maximization of those people, even if only indirectly (which is why you see massive CEO payouts when it’s seldom in the best interest of the corporation). IMHO, the personification of corporation is a trick in Modern Capitalism meant to help deflect the blame away from the decision-makers within the corporation to the corporate entity itself, which is how for example a CEO of an airplane maker can decide to cut corners in the building of their planes, leading to hundreds of avoidable deaths, and yet instead of the CEO ending up in jail for Manslaughter it’s the company that ends up paying a fine - the system all the way through levels of the State such as the Legislative and Judiciary are set-up to stop certain elite from getting punished in the same way as non-elites would and the Press often cooperates by going on and on about the Corporation itself and never mention the CEO(s) who made the decision.
(I suspect that the solution for the current problems with corporations is simply going after the individuals themselves making the decisions in the name of the corporations. I’m probably not the only one who thinks so, which is why you often see people on the Internet advocating for prision sentences for CEOs of corporations for the crimes who for public consumption are attributed to the corporations)
I would be more worried about dynastic hold on Power and Money than explicitly about corporation, as corporations are simply agents and façades for those holding power.