Neoliberal economics

On July 09 2018 03:08 Baalim wrote: You missed the point again. There is no correlation between economic freedom (capitalism) and income inequality, if there were as loco and now you claim, you would see the most capitalist countries having the highest GINI scores, yet they don't. It doesnt matter if the 3rd world is more or less capitalistic today than it was 60 years ago to the point of correlation between economic freedom and income inequality, you have provided nothing but non-sequitur fallacies. Also those measures weren't applied, while indeed the world bank wants to put neoliberalism in latinamerica and they have had minimal sucess, there has never been austerity or a reduction of budgets and the size of the state in any latinamerican country, and actually half of latinamerica is or was just recently sunken by leftitst leaders, Lula daSilva and Dilma Rouseff in Brazil, Kirchner in Argentina, Evo Moralez in Bolivia, Chavez and Maduro in Venezuela, Castros in Cuba and you can add Honduras, Panamá and now Mexico elected a socialist president and the country who is doing the best of all latinamerica is Chile who happens to be the most economically free.

Inequality was reduced in latin america as it shifted away from capitalism under the pink tide movement in the early 2000's. citing wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_tide "At the end of the 1990s and early 2000s, the region’s initial unsuccessful attempts with the neoliberal policies of privatization, cuts in social spending, and foreign investment left many countries with high levels of unemployment, inflation and persistent inequality. [30] ... Some of the initial results after the first pink tide governments were elected in Latin America included a reduction in the income gap,[5] unemployment, extreme poverty,[5] malnutrition and hunger,[2][52] and rapid increase in literacy.[2]

When you say the world bank had minimal success implementing neoliberal policies in latin america you are wrong on this claim, take mexico as one example, from 1982 right up to the economy's collapse in late 1994, the Mexican government implemented virtually all of the adjustment policies promoted by the World Bank and the IMF. The richest 20 per cent of the population received 54.2 per cent of national income in 1992, against 48.4 per cent in 1984. And it's a similar story in other countries in Latin America.

I think it is fairly idiotic to use gini charts and indexs from the heritage institute instead of trying to look at economic history and finding the causes that have greatly increased inequality in nations. Picking from that chart of top 20 nations that are unequal, you get the highly capitalist nations, but you don't get any information other than that. China, Russia and India have all had drastically increased inequality since 1990, all having had increased privtization in their economy. yet they don't make it onto their charts. yet that is an important set of countries one might want to study if you want to know whether capitalism correlates with inequality.

According to economic historian ha joon chang, the global economic system is run as a 'do as i say, not do as i do' principle, the rich nations engage in Keynesian measures but made sure the third world didn't, when they could control them as one example.. The pink tide was an era where north america lost control of latin america. The countries in sub-saharan africa are the most capitalist in the world . They are the ones with free markets imposed on them, along with the rest of the third world, while the rich nations use some sort of keynesianism when they feel like it.

Another thing that is important in knowing is that there has been a global shift towards increased inequality, in all countries, over the last few decades. New Zealand doesn't make it onto the country with high inequality index, but it's inequality has increased massively over the last few decades. It only doesn't reach that top 20 chart because every other country has also had increased inequality. it received a full structural adjustment program from 1984-1993, opened up it's economy, did a lot of what you could define as capitalist. It still preserves some government intervention as all rich nations do, but it's a lot more capitalist than it used to be, and yes it's inequality has gone way up as a direct result.

So yes there is a clear direct correlation between capitalism and inequality and those charts don't say shit.

From your own wikipedia "pink tide" article:



LOL thats pretty much a map that paints in red the countries which economies are in tatters, hell I dont think I could have found a better support for my argument, thanks for that.





Argentina - The Kirchners, direct nepotism, probably the most hated presidents in Argentinian history, many close political associate in jail, Judge issued Cristinas arrest but she had diplomatic immunity, the argentinian peso plummeted to historic levels
Bolivia - Evo Morales.... a fucking dictator
Brazil - Lula Da Silva is in jail... Dilma Rousseff impeached
Ecuador - Correa destroyed its already small economy
Nicaragua - Daniel Ortega.... another fucking dictator
Venezuela, - Chavez and Madura, another 2 fucking dictators lol.
Guyana - aaaaaaand another dictator


Are you seriously going to argue with me about the economy and leftist president in latinamerica using examples as Venezuela? are you going to go full Loco and claim that Chavez was a great president too?

On the subject of Mexico there was never an austerity measure, these libertarian policies you claim were forced by the WB and IMF were never established, its almost impossible to enforce austerity as I've argued multiple times because of the nature of the state.

The only neoliberal policies carried out were privatization, but since we are a deeply corrupt mercantilist country these privatizations were simply signing off government infrastrcture to politicians, as I told earlier, thats how TELMEX the biggest telecom company in latinamerica was signed to Carlos Slim Helu which was a couple of years ago the richest man in the world.

Even a decade of this pseudo privatization of Telmex it was a total monopoly, only a few years ago competing companies opened their doors and forced Telmex hegemony to tone down its abusive practices, and fyi Pemex which is the mexican oil company its state owned, schools have a sindicate so strong that they constantly sway presidential elections and are corrupt to a degree you people in the civilized world can barely imagine.

But please keep lecturing me on the economy of my own country

i'm pretty sure you made a claim about latin america, about inequality and capitalism and i showed it wasn't true, now your changing the topic to something i didn't discuss. The claim i made about mexico was true, and IMF/WB always force their policies on the public, you can threaten governments with capital flight or military intervention, support rebels inside the country, or you can get ones that are compliant but don't represent the interests of the public, which is often the case. Typically the elites in that country get big amounts of private capital out of structural adjustment, so they win and are cool with it, but the public loses. The public never wants austerity, or structural adjustment...ever. They arn't involved in the political process, and get no choice in the matter

On July 12 2018 00:14 Stroggoz wrote: i'm pretty sure you made a claim about latin america, about inequality and capitalism and i showed it wasn't true, now your changing the topic to something i didn't discuss. The claim i made about mexico was true, and IMF/WB always force their policies on the public, you can threaten governments with capital flight or military intervention, support rebels inside the country, or you can get ones that are compliant but don't represent the interests of the public, which is often the case. Typically the elites in that country get big amounts of private capital out of structural adjustment, so they win and are cool with it, but the public loses. The public never wants austerity, or structural adjustment...ever. They arn't involved in the political process, and get no choice in the matter

you didnt show it was true, you said the most free the market is the most inequality, there is literally zero correlation shown.

You first said that latinamerica was pushed to free markets by the WB and IMF, then you said latinamerica pushed back with leftist leaders since the 90s.

According to your view in economics those countries with leftists leaders should be thriving and its quite the opposite.

How is africa an example of true free markets, you are crazy, africa just like latinamerica are mercantilist with heavy presence of a corrupt state with high inequality and low class mobility.

PS: I already agreed that the WB and IMF are shit and abuse developed countries, no discussin there but that doesnt have anything to do with how an economy performs under free or controlled markets and individualism and collectivism

no completely free market society exists but yes sub saharan africa is quite far in the free market camp. They are not mercantalist.

I think most right wing economists agree with loco and I on this topic, that capitalism has the most inequality. the argument u see from the right and those pushing structural adjustment is that inequality will increase under structural adjustment but that growth will increase in the long run. same goes for those on the right and capitalism, that it increases inequality but it also increases gdp per capita, so everyone is better off with the given increase of inequality. That's what i got from right wing economists like milton friedman and others that defended globalization later on.

Yes there isnt a completely free market and African countries arent the closes to free market the world has, thats such a ludicrous thing to say, please back it up with data, or an index, since you say the wikpedia numbers are cooked, please show us your metrics to make such a bold claim.


No, they don't agree with you/loco on that lol, neither are those numbers I posted above that you just claimed as false without providing contradictory evidence.

Hard socialism, like the USSR, DPRK, Mao's China, Cuba indeed generate a plateau in a gaussian wealth distribution, the "1%"* remains extremely wealthy and powerful, in this case through the high ranking positions in the state, in fact these people are far more powerful than anybody in a free market could be.


mercantilism (soft collectivism, leftism, assistencialism, protectionism etc) - high inequality, low class mobility
free market (libertarianism, individualistm etc) - inequality, high class mobility
hard collectivism (abolition of private property, communism etc) - low inequality but top 1% still as wealthy and powerful, non-existant class mobility.


I made that last part to make clear my point that the the further you go from capitalistm the less inequality isn't true, the only way to remove it is to totally remove private property like Loco advocates, however that model has the itsy bitsy problem of having to bulldoze the corpses of the millions who starve to death.

On July 12 2018 15:13 Stroggoz wrote: no completely free market society exists but yes sub saharan africa is quite far in the free market camp. They are not mercantalist. I think most right wing economists agree with loco and I on this topic, that capitalism has the most inequality. the argument u see from the right and those pushing structural adjustment is that inequality will increase under structural adjustment but that growth will increase in the long run. same goes for those on the right and capitalism, that it increases inequality but it also increases gdp per capita, so everyone is better off with the given increase of inequality. That's what i got from right wing economists like milton friedman and others that defended globalization later on.

what do you say to ppl who say this?

i've been getting a lot of push back on "poverty is just the price you pay for technology/competition/progress". i'm not the best communicator of ideas and even though u can have technological progress without such rampant poverty through alternative systems, there's this attitude of "disprove this statement to disprove capitalism". iono it's weird. alot of my friends are very capitalist and very clever in the mental gymnastics to make things work but so inflexible in their thinking to try even momentarily to view things in a different paradigm.

On July 14 2018 02:23 qwe5408 wrote: Show nested quote + On July 12 2018 15:13 Stroggoz wrote: no completely free market society exists but yes sub saharan africa is quite far in the free market camp. They are not mercantalist. I think most right wing economists agree with loco and I on this topic, that capitalism has the most inequality. the argument u see from the right and those pushing structural adjustment is that inequality will increase under structural adjustment but that growth will increase in the long run. same goes for those on the right and capitalism, that it increases inequality but it also increases gdp per capita, so everyone is better off with the given increase of inequality. That's what i got from right wing economists like milton friedman and others that defended globalization later on. what do you say to ppl who say this? i've been getting a lot of push back on "poverty is just the price you pay for technology/competition/progress". i'm not the best communicator of ideas and even though u can have technological progress without such rampant poverty through alternative systems, there's this attitude of "disprove this statement to disprove capitalism". iono it's weird. alot of my friends are very capitalist and very clever in the mental gymnastics to make things work but so inflexible in their thinking to try even momentarily to view things in a different paradigm.

Yeah it's a big debate in 20th century politics/philosophy. John Rawls the well known political philosopher argued that inequality is fair so long as it increases the wealth of those less well off. Well, i think i agree with that, or at least think it's worth trying. Ok, rawls political philosophy is very abstract, and you can make a lot of crazy conclusions on what his ideal society would like like based on your interpretation of the facts. If one wants to look at the current existing system and claim that inequality here is making everyone better off, they have to show it. And the easiest way to show that is looking at the say the richest 100 corporations, and their share holders, and we can see if they are improving the lives of the poor or not. The economy has also grown very monopolistic and oligopolistic, with price collusion among several industry leaders being the industry standard. That's another form of rent-seeking, since it's collecting profits off monopoly power.

Well, from what i can tell a lot of them are doing the opposite. They are enriching themselves at the expense of the poor. And a lot of them are making a lot of money without effecting the poor. Joseph Stiglitz, the economist we are both familiar with has been critical of the rich and making money off rent seeking behaviour. (the term in economics for making money for oneself without actually creating wealth for society.) The FIRE economy (finance insurance real estate), now takes up a huge portion of our economy, and the people in that sector can get paid crazy amounts of $$. The FIRE economy is largely rent seeking behavior, it's gambling in the sense that poker is gambling, and doesn't contribute much at all to the rest of society. Sometimes it indirectly harms the poor, like when speculative frenzies on food prices drove the price up and caused riots in thirty countries after the 2008 crisis (susan george, 2010).

Then there are corporations that are actively increasing their wealth at the expense of the rest of human civilisation; energy corporations. I've encountered comments by those who work in the energy industry and seriously think they are going around lifting third world countries out of poverty. Ok, but those people are delusional. Pretty clear what's going on there, and pretty clear it's going to make everyone far worse off in the long run, with africa and india/bangladesh getting hit the worst. I mean not just the hundreds of millions of people dying, the destruction in ecology will be bad for scientific progress. Every species that become's extinct is another lost potential discovery in science.

Then there is the wage system. A lot of people point to the massive growth rates that come from it, and point to this as progress. But there are a lot of things about that system that don't seem progressive about this. For one, a lot of the stuff that is made in china is junk-you need to sufficiently propagandise people to sell it to them. And it's like economics textbooks point out, this kind of advertising is undermining the ability for people to make rational choices, which are deemed necessary for a free market. Another thing is that it requires human beings to become as stupid as it is possible for a creature to be. If you work in the wage slave system your repeatedly doing the same tasks over and over again...their is a lot of lost potential in a human being if they just become an extension of a machine, and that's bad for making everyone better off.

There is also an argument that you need to pay people large amounts of money to incentivize them to be creative and work. I don't think that is that true, the people who claim this are largely economists and havn't provided any evidence to back it up. scientists get paid a salary-sometimes it's pretty good money, but a lot of the innovative work comes from people who are young in the field, in the post doc level which doesn't get paid much. Imo in most cases you can only do that job if your very passionate about what your doing. You have to do a lot of creative work at that level to advance anyway, i think.

So yeah the only way to asses the claim that inequality is making everyone better off, is to go through the activities of a huge sample of the richest people in the world and check to see if their activities are making people better off, and not too many people can be bothered to do that. if there was a full study into this topic i'd be very interested in reading it.

Really great stuff Stroggoz

Once piece I am not so sure about:

There is also an argument that you need to pay people large amounts of money to incentivize them to be creative and work. I don't think that is that true, the people who claim this are largely economists and haven't provided any evidence to back it up. scientists get paid a salary-sometimes it's pretty good money, but a lot of the innovative work comes from people who are young in the field, in the post doc level which doesn't get paid much. Imo in most cases you can only do that job if your very passionate about what your doing. You have to do a lot of creative work at that level to advance anyway, i think.

There is a certain amount of pride, family pride, and expectations in getting a doctorate and working at a prestigious university for post doc. There is a fascination and passion for the subject in all cases but I think it is like the devil and the angel on the shoulders. In times of sameness or burnout that high paying corporate job starts looking appetizing. Or, the high paying corporate job is what a lot of people are brought up on. I think it's just a matter of what the market price is and what can be negotiated. My brother was just sort of a passionate physics nerd that lost the passion and had to grind out his dissertation a little bit and then got his PhD. He then turned into this ruthless negotiator and is doing very well for himself monetarily. Big data for a criminal bank sounds criminal and horrible but he loves it and lives quite comfortably albeit perhaps he is not quite alive and not quite dead (undead).

I have a cousin who is doing a post doc at Harvard in Chemistry. Both his parents are chemists and sort of pushed him towards that his whole life. There were and are expectations. After all, he is his parent's vanity. My cousin is a pretty chill dude though and I could tell in conversations even before he went to grad school that chemistry was his shit. I don't know if he cares about awards or accolades. He is one guy that might truly be in the end-itself. ~$40,000 (or less) is probably enough to do something you love in most cases. I don't know how far that money would go in Boston though and the overtime with out pay could become tiresome. There is a danger to becoming a hyper entrepreneur of the self and a self-exploiting achievement-subject.

I guess I didn't provide any factual information or even take a stand on much. Maybe the main point is that when Neoliberalism is dictator there will always be that pull for more prestige and profit (and productivity). I think even in my cousin's case there is a drive for prestige and the knowledge that he could probably negotiate a $100,000+ salary if he wanted to. So, discover something great in science or make a high salary are choices people would live to have. So, that has to be a part of it. Or, maybe not. I can only really speak for myself when I was playing poker. I LOVED playing 5 NL but there was always in the back of my mind that I could play 200 NL or 1k NL and play for a living. I was passionate for streaks in my career and one definitely needs passion to move up but part of that later in my career was to be a boss. I wonder how much money is "fuck you" money? But, that is what I was going for.

The want of a high salary is conditioned. I think most people do not understand that the utility of money is not linear. And, also the fact that after a certain amount say around $80,000 depending on where one lives money does not buy "happiness." Actually, I don't entirely agree with that. I think someone people understand the value of money, time, sovereignty and how to spend it. Most just consume. That is where there are steps that develop. I don't want to list all the objects that can be consumed but typically these types of consumers want the same level (the highest level they can afford) of everything so there are jumps/steps. It would be weird to see a guy in a $50 shirt, $50 pants, $80 shoes living in the low rent part of town with a Porsche 911. It's much more common to see a woman wearing some on sale Zara and some Nikes and a Coach bag in a Toyota Camry. That is then extended to everything one could possible consume. So, maybe that is a salary of $30-60,000 where $20,000 can get some of those things and $80k is consuming frugally. To "level up" to the next level might take $100,000. Actually, that's not exactly right and I never consumed exactly like this when I was a hyper consumer but for the most part it's true. I think what I forgot in the equation are people are always striving for higher and more. So, I remember I got this really expensive Le Corbusier lamp that was way out of my "level" but I got it because it was impulsive and I wanted it and I wanted to be on that level. In a way that is what I was motivated by. I would buy a pair of $400 Hugo Boss pants. I certainly couldn't afford an entire wardrobe of Hugo Boss but I wanted THOSE pants. I stayed at the W Hotel in Chicago. So, I needed large amounts of money and I wanted large amounts of money to do my work. Everything was always a negotiation in order to negotiate for me (I meant to write "more" but me is also very appropriate). Barely anyone is going to take less if more can be negotiated. There is stuff to buy and things to do. I need the money so I can buy more. So, I can "BE" more. These are all symptoms of the Neoliberalism Dictatorship.

On July 14 2018 06:40 Stroggoz wrote: And the easiest way to show that is looking at the say the richest 100 corporations, and their share holders, and we can see if they are improving the lives of the poor or not. The economy has also grown very monopolistic and oligopolistic, with price collusion among several industry leaders being the industry standard. That's another form of rent-seeking, since it's collecting profits off monopoly power.

You are misunderstanding, you are seeing again as if the more free market, the more inequality and the more inequality the more overall wealth, thats not how it works, inequality is a requirement for this economic model that generates that wealth, its just that, wealth and inequality do not have a direct correlation.

Those 100 corporations aren't the way to show anything, because as you stated these corporations are monopolies that stifle the free market through lobbying and anti capitalist practices like price-setting etc, so indeed these corporations increase inequality without increasing wealth/productivity, but they are an example of exactly the opposite of what you are saying.


On the subjects of wages for creative work there are studies who show people underperforming in "bonuses" schemes, so indeed it doesnt squeeze the maximum performance in certain fields but if you dont offer that they will walk to other place, care to give another sistem where these people dont underperform withouth destroying the economy?

not really sure what you mean baal. I was treating Qwe's post as a seperate topic from the previous discussion on whether capitalism has the highest inequality. All i was interested there is whether the massive wealth inequality makes society richer overall. And yes i think looking at the activities of the richest and top 100 corporations is a good way to test that hypothesis, got any better idea's on how to test it?

As for the previous topic, on further reflection i think i disagree with a lot of what i said earlier, there is too much interaction between the economies of different nation states to test if huge inequality and free market capitalism correlate. As an example afrca's inequality is surely contributed to by protectionist policies from US agribussiness, and protectionist IP laws like the TRIPs agreement. And also the US where inequality is very high is an example of a society that arn't really free market societies and where the rich do intervene in the economy using the government to make themselves richer.

No system i have to offer, i advocate democratic governance in the economy but that is for reasons unrelated to motivation. I think you gotta go through every industry and try things out one by one. Different industries attract different personalities so they will have their own unique motivations. I don't have any evidence but i think human creativity is biologically hardwired so that humans would largely pursue creative work on their own rather than vegetate, and it is only in an anti social culture that this creative drive won't properly manifest itself.

Yes rikd, social prestige is surely a factor in motivating people. Society just has to try and get rid of vice motivations.

How do we get rid of vice motivations? I know how I did it to some degree so I guess the answer lies somewhere in there but again my brain is a bit scrambled from work and I don't even know if I could express it at the moment. No one needs another long post from me at this point. I will say I have peculiar experiences that have gotten me to this point.

On July 15 2018 05:38 Stroggoz wrote: not really sure what you mean baal. I was treating Qwe's post as a seperate topic from the previous discussion on whether capitalism has the highest inequality. All i was interested there is whether the massive wealth inequality makes society richer overall. And yes i think looking at the activities of the richest and top 100 corporations is a good way to test that hypothesis, got any better idea's on how to test it? As for the previous topic, on further reflection i think i disagree with a lot of what i said earlier, there is too much interaction between the economies of different nation states to test if huge inequality and free market capitalism correlate. As an example afrca's inequality is surely contributed to by protectionist policies from US agribussiness, and protectionist IP laws like the TRIPs agreement. And also the US where inequality is very high is an example of a society that arn't really free market societies and where the rich do intervene in the economy using the government to make themselves richer. No system i have to offer, i advocate democratic governance in the economy but that is for reasons unrelated to motivation. I think you gotta go through every industry and try things out one by one. Different industries attract different personalities so they will have their own unique motivations. I don't have any evidence but i think human creativity is biologically hardwired so that humans would largely pursue creative work on their own rather than vegetate, and it is only in an anti social culture that this creative drive won't properly manifest itself. Yes rikd, social prestige is surely a factor in motivating people. Society just has to try and get rid of vice motivations.

Then we agree on most things, in fact a free market creates inequality but how does it behave in long iterations we dont really know if wealth keeps flowing to the top, we see it but mostly because of the interferances in it, basically all the legan and illegal ways to control the government and viceversa, and its something difficult to model given the relative irrationality of the market/buyer.

If we discovered that indeed it followed a perpetual acumulation of wealth then a redistribution mechanism should be deviced, idially UBI, people like Loco disagree with this because it leaves the hierarchy structure intact, which I think its required in a society with limited resources and primitive behavior.

BTW Ortega in Nicaragua just started killing students and dissidents lol, so add him to the list of murderous dictators from the left in latinamerica.

On May 12 2018 22:57 MezmerizePLZ wrote: Everyone loves to talk about how awful everything is, how the gap between rich and poor only grows, how you cannot support a family with no skills/education anymore. It's viewed as a conspiracy by the rich to keep the poor down. You're born into the world with nothing, and nothing is guaranteed. We talked about this in another thread, but with market forces, of course unskilled labor is worth shit when globalization opens the door for billions of workers in poorer countries like China/India, etc. Along with other trends of specialization becoming more and more important. Alas, trends are not as dire as they seem. https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content...Two-centuries-World-as-100-people.png I don't fkin get why we are having a spending deficit in the U.S. during such a long expansion, but politicians always just kick the can down the road.

you can see why (((they))) love globalisation while walling off their own insulated enclave

"A new investigation published by The Intercept exposes how a libertarian think tank called the Atlas Network is remaking Latin American politics with the help of powerful conservative institutions and funders in the United States, some of whom you may recognize, such as the Koch brothers. The Intercept reports the Atlas Network is behind dozens of prominent groups that have supported right-wing forces in the anti-government movement in Venezuela, as well as those who ousted Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. We are joined by The Intercept’s Lee Fong, who covers the intersection of money and politics. His new piece is tilted, Sphere of Influence: How American Libertarians Are Remaking Latin American Politics."



(This is a couple years old but I wasn't aware of it)

On July 18 2018 23:48 Baalim wrote: BTW Ortega in Nicaragua just started killing students and dissidents lol, so add him to the list of murderous dictators from the left in latinamerica.

It's true that he is a murderous dictator, but this tells us nothing about what led to this, what were the forces that led to this kind of violence and corruption. We have to pay attention to details here: these protests and the repression that came with it were the result of slashing pensions, outlawing abortion, Ortega being increasingly pro-business and having extremely low social spending -- clearly these are not positions that are associated with the left. Quite the contrary, they are positions associated with neoliberal Republicanism.

I think the situation in Nicaragua is the best one for me to sympathize with your hatred of leftism, because you are used to seeing these bankrupt parties, but it is also the best one for me to illustrate the mistake of generalizing and oversimplify the left axis as a single, homogeneous left. Like, this obviously has absolutely nothing to do with the leftist revolution in Rojava or Mexico. Pointing to this and saying "this is leftism, this is socialism, it always leads to this" is dumb, and taking the absolute opposite position, the position of reinforcing the imperialist, profit-over-people agenda, which has robbed these people of the possibility of living well in their countries in the first place, that is a tragic mistake. The corruption and the failures of these regimes only represent these regimes, they do not represent the entire left and what is possible, in fact from this we can see that he is only a "socialist" in name carried from the past -- neither his social or economic policies are socialist.

Authoritarianism (born out of and maintained through hierarchical structures of organization) and the pressures to conform to an homogeneous neoliberal America are the causal factors here, not 'leftism'. The underlying capitalist system was never done away with; they still had to operate within it, making bad alliances that lead to bad results, while trying to rebuild from the insane amount of damage that the US caused to their land and economy, while still under their threats and sanctions. A rational person should be completely disillusioned with these so-called socialist governments once they look at them, but they shouldn't fail to make the causal links to the capitalist/imperialist ideology that it sought to free itself from unsuccessfully and which not only breed these revolutionary efforts but corrupts them as well.

A short history of what happened post-war:

Ortega’s tendency within the Sandinistas, the terceristas, had always favoured an approach that married armed insurrection to cross-class alliances with business owners, the churches, professionals on one hand and shanty-town dwellers and the unemployed on the other. This strategy is echoed in other Latin American left nationalist movements. In 2006 Ortega won the presidential elections, with a former Contra leader as his running mate. He firmed up his alliance with the Catholic Church and as a part of this deal introduced strict legislation against abortion where before in the 1980s he had supported abortion rights. He also formed an alliance with the Constitutional Liberal Party. He began to build alliances with Iran, Cuba and then Venezuela. Recently he has increased his ties with China and Russia. He was again re-elected in 2011 and in 2016. He increased his support of business in this period. Using the assets from the confiscated land and property, Ortega and his wife Vice-President Rosario Murillo, together with other Sandinistas formed an alliance with big businessmen to build up a considerable business conglomerate, which includes control of various media outlets. Meanwhile Nicaragua’s social spending per head is one of the lowest in the region. 62% of the population live in dire poverty, whilst there are around 250 multimillionaires who have prospered under Ortega. This April 18th Ortega announced cuts in pensions and increases in social security contributions as dictated by the International Monetary Fund. This was a bridge too far for many. Barricades were erected in towns south of the capital Managua, and heavy fighting with police and army has resulted in many deaths. The unrest has continued now for three months and shows no signs of abating. The movement has increasingly called for the removal of Ortega and Murillo. The USA for its part, whilst looking favourably on Ortega’s pro-business positions, is disturbed by the Nicaragua-Venezuela-Cuba axis, and the links with Russia, China and Iran. The revolt in Nicaragua must not be allowed to be hi-jacked by the US, who would install another reactionary regime more compliant with their policies. The whole sorry scenario in Nicaragua, and indeed in Mexico and Venezuela, reveals the bankruptcy of leftist politics in Latin America. It is even more imperative that a pan-American revolutionary anarchist movement is developed, a movement based on the working class, peasantry and indigenous peoples, not tied to any of the power blocs, and that the road to social revolution is opened."

"I only came across the revelations about Friedman’s sordid beginnings in the footnotes of an old book on the history of lobbying by former Newsweek book editor Karl Schriftgiesser, published in 1951, shortly after the Buchanan Committee hearings ended. The actual details of Milton Friedman’s PR deal are sordid and familiar, with tentacles reaching into our ideologically rotted-out era.

It starts just after the end of World War Two, when America’s industrial and financial giants, fattened up from war profits, established a new lobbying front group called the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) that focused on promoting a new pro-business ideology—which it called “libertarianism”— to supplement other business lobbying groups which focused on specific policies and legislation.

The FEE is generally regarded as “the first libertarian think-tank” as Reason’s Brian Doherty calls it in his book “Radicals For Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern Libertarian Movement” (2007). As the Buchanan Committee discovered, the Foundation for Economic Education was the best-funded conservative lobbying outfit ever known up to that time, sponsored by a Who’s Who of US industry in 1946.

A partial list of FEE’s original donors in its first four years includes: The Big Three auto makers GM, Chrysler and Ford; top oil majors including Gulf Oil, Standard Oil, and Sun Oil; major steel producers US Steel, National Steel, Republic Steel; major retailers including Montgomery Ward, Marshall Field and Sears; chemicals majors Monsanto and DuPont; and other Fortune 500 corporations including General Electric, Merrill Lynch, Eli Lilly, BF Goodrich, ConEd, and more.

The FEE was set up by a longtime US Chamber of Commerce executive named Leonard Read, together with Donaldson Brown, a director in the National Association of Manufacturers lobby group and board member at DuPont and General Motors.

That is how libertarianism started: As an arm of big business lobbying."

https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/mil...vpw1bdKT6CRbGVdITvJmW-vCNA2GRNJvLbmDo

The only thing that is guaranteed is anguish and death. People are not born into this world with nothing. Look at Trump. He had a multimillionaire mentor and $100 milly trust fund upon his first breaths. So, we can't really do anything about death besides make things safer and healthier and prolong life a little bit. There are things we can do about anguish and suffering. Shouldn't we be focusing on that? No one chooses anguish and suffering. No one chooses to be a baby in Africa that has those bugs that eat their eyes so they die from that or they die from starvation or whatever fate becomes them. So, we rush to make cold profit and many people get sick. Some people can buy nice couches, country club memberships, and boats. Maybe a boat gets you some freedom out on the open seas like some sort of modern day pirate drinking luxury rum and singing pop songs but does it really anesthetize the looting and the pilfering in the form of more margin, charming sales pitches, more hours in the office, numbers in a spreadsheet, the expectation of being a perfect brand, man, whatever. There have got to be better markers of how we are doing as citizens of earth. Not fucking comparing GDP numbers. Nike and Apple should not be allowed to exploit and mistreat workers to such an extent that they are building deterrents because too many people are killing themselves.

On May 12 2018 22:57 MezmerizePLZ wrote: Everyone loves to talk about how awful everything is, how the gap between rich and poor only grows, how you cannot support a family with no skills/education anymore. It's viewed as a conspiracy by the rich to keep the poor down. You're born into the world with nothing, and nothing is guaranteed. We talked about this in another thread, but with market forces, of course unskilled labor is worth shit when globalization opens the door for billions of workers in poorer countries like China/India, etc. Along with other trends of specialization becoming more and more important. Alas, trends are not as dire as they seem. https://ourworldindata.org/wp-content...Two-centuries-World-as-100-people.png I don't fkin get why we are having a spending deficit in the U.S. during such a long expansion, but politicians always just kick the can down the road.

https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty This is the best response i've found to those talking about progress in recent years.

Gini coefficient is not a great measure of inequality, especially for those not educated in economics. A small difference from .45 to .53 or w/e won't look like much to the ordinary person. Many economists have stopped using the gini measure and are using a lot of better ways to measure inequality.

there's something like 2-3 trillion being extracted from the global south every year in interest payments on loan sharking (imf, world bank), tax evasion, (transfer pricing and misinvoicing), and increasingly they are losing wealth from climate change, which is already 580$ billion a year according to one study.