Replace “Liberalism” with “Neoliberalism,” Rod:
And it’s not the end of Neoliberalism. To borrow from Churchill: it’s not the end; it is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. I think the collapse will come fast, maybe in a few years.
This is a very good thing indeed. We’ve seeing the collapse of the rotten Neoliberal world order that has dominated our world since about the late 1970s.
You would think many more people on the left and heterodox economic left would see this. But it’s disappointing how few do.
Instead, what we’re seeing is a type of mental derangement and collective hysteria from most of the Left, who are wrapped up in their contemptibly stupid narrative that Trump is Literally HitlerTM.
In fact, you can see how deranged the Left is in its treatment of Milo Yiannopoulos.
Milo Yiannopoulos is a gay, promiscuous, partly Jewish, cultural libertarian, with a dash of civic/cultural nationalism. He certainly has harsh criticisms of the cultural left, Third Wave Feminism, and SJWism, and he likes to make outrageous statements now and then, but if you listen carefully to what he says, most of what he says is fairly reasonable.
Secondly, Milo has never identified explicitly as Alt Right, and all he ever claimed to do was to report fairly on their movement:
(It is true that Milo downplays the extremism of the hardcore Alt Right, but this is probably because Breitbart and people attracted to it briefly flirted with the label, even though Breitbart’s politics are clearly not hardcore Alt Right, nor white nationalist.)
In fact, Milo explicitly rejects overtly racial white ethno-nationalism:
But for the insane Left, Milo is Literally HitlerTM or a Neo-Nazi, despite the fact that Milo isn’t either of these things.
This is how warped and sick our Leftist political culture is in 2017: a gay, promiscuous, partly Jewish, cultural libertarian who supports some kind of civic nationalism is Literally HitlerTM to the barking mad Left.
Of course, it would be too much to expect Leftists or even the media these days to do their friggin’ research properly and go and carefully research what the *actual* hardcore Alt Right thinks of Milo. If they bothered to do this, they would discover that the actual Alt Right hate and despise Milo with an extreme hatred:
Milo was to my understanding, at one time a "Gay Christian" who was opposed to Gay Marriage. Then he supposedly changed when he fell in love with someone. Not exactly a sign of moral stability.
ReplyDeleteHe's just the flavor of the month as far as I'm concerned. Here today, gone tomorrow.
Yes, changing your mind isn't evidence of thought or maturation, it's looney-tunes stuff.
DeleteIt's funny Kevin that you seem to think LK's point is about the eternity of Milo. His point is really about how unhinged and partisan the Left's reactions have become, with Milo as an illustration. Wanna bet *that* is here today, gone tomorrow?
I don't think anyone here is saying Milo should be a role model.
DeleteWanna bet *that* is here today, gone tomorrow?
DeleteNahhh... I'd rather bet that the "Unhinged" Xenophobic reaction to Cultural Diversity is here today, gone tomorrow ;-)
Wow @Identity Politics being the flavor-of-the month whipping boy. I hear the right, left, center etc etc throwing that term around. Imagine how far Women's suffrage or the Civil Rights movement would have gotten without a focus on the Identity of their respective constituencies.
ReplyDeleteMore here today gone tomorrow stuff.
Kev, identity politics doesn't just go away, it takes different forms with different periods.
DeleteI don't recall making any claim to the converse.
DeleteThe mainstream Left in Australia has virtually given up on talking about anything local. They're all so freaked out by Trump that even the modest gains of Pauline Hanson (and her party's rubber stamping of Liberal union-busting legislation - against the interests of her constituents) can't hold their attention.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, the far Left here is less economically literate than at any time in living memory. The majority have no idea that money is created as interest bearing loans by private banks. Any suggestion that there might be better processes for creating new money renders one suspect, because Hitler and 'that Federer (sic) were against interest'. The reference, presumably to Gottfried Feder and not the contemporary tennis player, Roger Federer, is otherwise broadly correct.
But so what? Hitler liked dogs. Presumably Australia's Trots will campaign for the removal of dogs on the basis of their fascist connotations at some stage. Idiots.
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"The majority have no idea that money is created as interest bearing loans by private banks"
DeleteYou might increase your credibility by dropping the tinfoil stuff. Just sayin'.
Do you think? See, I'd reckon that when Sir Mervyn King, who was the head of the Bank of England for ten years, says something about how banks operate in the economy, then what he's saying is probably based on fact.
ReplyDeletehttp://positivemoney.org/how-money-works/how-banks-create-money/
And it's not just Merv. Any number of academics in the UK and Australia (and even a few in the US, I understand) are onto the reality of money creation. Steve Keen, Bill Mitchell and your own Stephen Zarlenga all get it. Australian mainstream leftards reject the concept - as above - not because it's wrong (though they generally just don't know either way) - but because it's a 'fascist' issue.
In any case, a financial system that transfers wealth from the poor to the rich is not really core business for them any more. The structural misogyny associated with gender specific public toilets is far more pressing for the triumph of socialism, apparently.
Just sayin.
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Show me where Steve Keen and Bill Mitchell state that the Fed lends US Dollars at interest to the government. Better yet, show proof of same.
DeleteBecause I don't think you can:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010407044745/http://members.home.net/flaherty15/conspire.htm#7
Okay, apparently you were talking about something different than the Fed. Yeah banks issue loans @interest, that's not even an issue AFAICS. There's no way it would be different, because Private Banks are in it to make money.
DeleteThat's correct. I wasn't referring to the US Federal Reserve, but to the way in which new money is created in Australia, and in the UK as I understand it.
ReplyDeleteMy point was that the Australian mainstream left fails to understand the significance of this. Or is too distracted by hip social issues to care.
When you say 'there's no way it would be different', I wonder what you mean?
I can imagine imagine, for instance, a scenario where private banks operate as most people think they do now; as a safe store for savings and a place that facilitates loans of people's investment savings to borrowers. This MIGHT be a loan at interest, but it doesn't need to be. The example of the Swedish JAK Bank shows that if savers agree to receive no interest on their savings, they can have zero interest loans in return. But more important than any of that is that JAK Bank works on a 100% reserve basis. So loans from JAK Bank are - really - loans of someone else's hard earned savings, rather than new money created in a double entry book keeping exercise.
Why this matters is that it shows how private banks can operate without having the power to create new money. Imagine, if you will, a world where the central bank - separate from the state - creates enough new money to keep the economy functioning properly and gives it to the government of the day to spend into circulation. Inflationary!! I hear you cry. But not necessarily. If the amount of new money so created was determined by the need to inflate / deflate the economy, the central bank could control inflation more effectively by directly managing the creation of new money than by the current (in Oz) piss-weak manipulation of official interest rates, which is ignored by commercial banks and fails to provide any stimulus when needed.
The benefits of such a system are too extensive to explain in one post, but I'd suggest reading Huber and Robertson's 'Creating New Money' as a start.
A failure to imagine an alternative to the current Money Power makes us susceptible to Margaret Thatcher's TINA (there is no alternative) argument for neo-classical economics. In Australia, our mainstream leftists cannot do so, despite the historical legacy of great Labor politicians like Jack Lang, Frank Anstey, Eddie Ward and our most under-rated economic reformer, Allan R. Jones, all of whom have written at length about the importance of a national seigniorage system for beating interest.
Private banks may be in it to 'make money', but that doesn't mean they have to have a virtual monopoly on the creation of new currency.
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Idk if No-Interest accounts would fly in the US. People seem to want that immediate return.
DeleteI'm no fan of QTM so, I have no problem with fiat, non-fixed currency being created to get the economy going, especially on Public Spending projects. Preferably Non-Military.
I think people in Oz have been conditioned to think that lending and borrowing naturally involves interest charges.
DeleteSo even though the majority will pay far more than they earn in interest over the course of their lives, this is accepted as business as usual - just a part of life.
The JAK Bank example shows that by foregoing the earned interest, most people can be better off by avoiding the interest costs associated with borrowing.
Ellen Brown has done some good work in looking at the effect of interest on the economy as a whole. Overall, the wealthiest top few percent benefit from it. The next 10 or so percent break even over the course of their lives. The bottom 85% lose.
But that's not a message you'll see on any Australian TV program any time soon. Instead, you get ads showing satisfied consumers buying high end real estate with finance provided by and living happily ever after. The conditioning goes on..