Why does the Right acquiesce to negative stereotypes?

Fantastic first two posts, they sum up perfectly the position of the right.

Poetic satire even!

as for the right and freedom...please?

the right and especially the neo-liberal right (often mis-titled as libertarians or even anarchists) expect the apparatus of the state - (law and punishment in confiscation of property and/or imprisonment and the threat there of) to prop up their economic "freedom", to protect their "contracts". But of course don't want to be taxed / pay for such hired goons. Perhaps some feel that the answer to have private police and courts / prisons etc. The USA is certainly well on the way there, and what an equal opportunity culture that is?

What is really being advocated, the end game, is through financial power to have the actual power to be modern feudal princes. But there is the economic reason the dark ages were well "dark" for everyone save a few nobles. Advancement wasn't exactly fantastic in such "liberal for the rich" times. Lots of effort and money spent on rent-seeking opportunity, (conquests, civil wars, etc.) but not a lot on progressing human endevour, mush like today. We haven't sent a human to the moon or another planet since the 70's around the same time the neo-liberal agenda of worshiping profit-seeking took hold. Let's not even go into how state provided research through universities etc. has invented and fueled the entire information / tech sector. And now look at where our universities are going, having to finance themselves, they prostitute their research out to corporations seeking profit orientated goals, reducing the scope of research into profitable areas AS PERCEIVED TODAY, but most great scientific discoveries that offer revolutionary human progress happen by accident, or unintentionally - ask any physicist. Don't forget either, Fees come back denying some education and reducing the potential of human capital in our society. The right will talk of loans and such and paying your way, but this is just a smoke-screen for developing more rent-seeking opportunity for existing capital.

Fundamentally seeking individual freedom without a parallel drive towards mutual aid, is based on the self-sufficient myth. There is no business today standing on its own two feet, by that I mean has not benefited form the research and development paid for by public taxes, none who do not receive the benefit of publicly educated employees, and none who put their hands in their pockets and voluntarily finance such.

The right talks of cutting or reducing all welfare including child benefits, free education, etc. ie all that does not offer short-term and guaranteed ROI. (note work for welfare / jobbridge is ok, as that is essentially corporate welfare) Its natural, they have short term goals next quarters profit margins, share prices etc. These are not compatible with long term societal provisions. Hell, like that famous neo-liberal they lack the vision to provide for their own retirement and old-age medical expenses. It takes a certain level of stupidity not to recognise the VALUE of investing in children etc. and providing open-ended and broad opportunity to maximise the potential number of Einstein's out there.
But that stupidity, ultimately, is the right's position, some neo-liberals even suggest businesses could educate their employee's children but at the same time suggest education should be "task relevant", i.e. people / children should be conditioned not educated to be useful for industry. (farmed?) After all we are talking about human "resources" not human beings! Of course when we look at the neo-liberal policy leaders like the American "Bush" family, we can understand why education and human progress is held at such low esteem by the right.

Forget education, how about shelter, how many business provide childcare for their employees? Or do they just expect someone else to do that and not have to pay at all? Does the next employee generation just pop into existence? ;-) The nature of capitalist enterprise is to keep overheads as low as possible and to maximise profits for the SHAREHOLDER. They cannot be trusted to keep themselves alive by providing for the next generation THEY WILL NEED voluntarily.

And when we examine international trade agreements such as TTIP, allowing corporations the "freedom" to challenge and potentially overrule democratic decisions of once sovereign states behind the closed doors of special international courts invented and presided over by the same international law firms who drew up the agreements, drafted the laws and advised their funded politicians to vote on, we really understand the right's agenda and why even the shambolic semblance of democracy and state control (funded by taxes) is to them an annoying uncertainty, a "risk factor", a hindrance!

Of course, as history teaches us, there is only so much people will take before they take the heads off the nobles.

Is there really just a left and right, though?

Are Milton Friedman and Mussolini in the same basket?

Valmont wrote: »

And history has taught us that the far-left always think violence is the answer.

1. Murder capitalists/overlords
2. ?
3. Socialist utopia

ah yes.. the old the socialist hasn't a clue how to run the country....

as if the capitalists have? you can dress it up in glossy manifestos to publish before election time, but they are never followed and never work in a broad societal sense, of course they sure do for the circle of pals... Getting them blessed by inept departments and cronies hardly counts as peer review? It is the same class who design and approve of policy, a risk-averse class of people, the greatest risk being of course, any threat to their own modus operandi and status. You can't expect the Orwellian pig to police themselves? After all they believe that "some animals are more equal than others", because I'm worth it? and the poor are lazy and deserve it!??? and such "values" and "valuing" of people and policy colour their judgement, as is natural! Impartiality is a myth, and economics is not like physics!

btw the far left anarchist position is to allow for direct democracy, you know with instant recall, and not professional politicians, but communities forming their agendas and picking one of their own to voice such, not picking the lesser of two evils , prepacked and tailored by corporate sponsors as they do now.

This promotes "evolution" not utopia, it means mistakes, but mistakes owned by the people not imposed upon them, and it means swift correction, not parties hanging on to power when they know they no longer have the mandate of the people save in artificial legalistic grounds.

and yes it means no rent-seeking, which capitalism itself now recognizes to be the "seeds of its own destruction" (G<R ) That is why Proudhon stated that "Property is Theft", not that people should not be secure and have their own place, quite the opposite, believing in occupancy equating to ownership and other homestead ideas, but rather that rent-seeking is theft.

Back in his day rent-seeking was just renting, but today whole sectors of parasites exist in many different forms. And they often protect and prevent innovation, development and new entrants to markets to keep their deals sweet. Its all trickle-up.

Look at average Joe in Ireland and what is stolen form him?

he's a PAYE worker, in Dublin city say...

The company he works "under" adopts the traditional rule of good business:
1/3 Profit, 1/3 rent / rates etc. and 1/3 wages

So for Joe 4 out of every 12 days he's working for himself, ok right? but wait...

1/2 of what he gets is taxed directly or indirectly, at least, probably more!

So that's 2 days out of 12!

but again wait....

now Joe goes home and hands over half his take-home pay to his landlord....

So for every 12 days Joe works, he gets to keep 1 for his family, the rest is given to rent-seekers. (Given how tax is now spent in this country, and how little of it provides for poor Joe and family who - "earn too much" haha! )

So 2 in 24 days, (a working month is 20 days), so in a year of slavery Joe sees the benefit of less than 24 days. Effectively 11 months is for them, and 1 for him.

But working is for saps, and all the capitalists know this, lazy money is where its at! Rent-seeking baby!!!

Time is the only capital we can't increase, but with capitalism you can be lucky and fall out of bed in to riches, be born with them, or have great luck and timing and gain them, the necessary capital to be part of the game, part of the parasites who as I have demonstrated steal more than 90% of the work time of Average Joe with their trickle-up economic games.

Oxfam tell us 1% of the worlds population own 99% of the wealth, is it any wonder when Average Joe and family hand them so much?

And the right is basically about protecting that system!

jank wrote: »

Much like the rest of the rant the above is not true.




If Joe is a PAYE worker then why is he paying 1/3 of his income in rent as a 'company' and then pay another bit on top of this to his landlord?

Me thinks you need to edit your story to make it at least plausible if not even remotely reflective on reality.

No my friend, perhaps it is you who needs to think a bit more and not embarrass yourself? who generates the money to finance the business rent? Consider the service sector?

Does a law firm have directors who dig deep into their pockets (from their inheritance say) to pay for the business premises rent? Or is it already factored into the business plan and part of the total earnings of the firm cover it? eh? so 1/3 of what the business earns goes on rent, that's a typical figure, ergo 1/3 of what is earned , so proportionally, 1/3 what everyone earns in the business contributes towards the rent. Get it now?

so if there was no rent, in theory 1/3 of total income would be freed up, shared in the same proportion amongst the employees (and directors/ owners are usually employees too) everyone would DOUBLE their salary!!! (as salaries account for one third already, one 1/3 plus 1/3 is double 1/3, I know I'm really laboring here, but it seems maths isn't everyone's forte)

Niall Keane wrote: »

so if there was no rent, in theory 1/3 of total income would be freed up, shared in the same proportion amongst the employees (and directors/ owners are usually employees too) everyone would DOUBLE their salary!!! (as salaries account for one third already, one 1/3 plus 1/3 is double 1/3, I know I'm really laboring here, but it seems maths isn't everyone's forte)

Who would build these rent-free houses, out of interest?

karma_ wrote: »

By the way, since no one else appears to have mentioned it, the quote in the OP is incorrect and currently makes little sense.

It's a misquote, of something that's almost cliched at this stage, but which did make sense to me, albeit in rather awkward English.

In my middle age I've come to the conclusion that the vast majority of people are essentially idiots up until they hit their mid twenties. I include my-once-self in that group.

This is because in youth we tend to be hot-headed, seeking to right the World's wrongs and will favour action over thought. By the time we grow older, we become more cynical, realistic and realize that good intention can often cause more harm than good and that we should consider the consequences of our actions before acting them out.

Niall Keane exemplified the position of leftist-youth quite well in his earlier post; evangelizing the usual underpants gnome logic that would solve everything and then ignoring any glaring criticisms that followed. His closing comment that "people will take before they take the heads off the nobles" was indicative of this action over thought philosophy, where revolution is presumed to lead to utopia as an article of faith rather than deductive conclusion.

Still... sometimes I miss the omniscience of my youth.

AngryHippie wrote: »

I cannot recall any company in the history of ever that decided split the profits between all the employees, who took no risk, and were paid for their contributions to the organization.

Labour managed enterprise - this was practiced to some degree of success in former Yugoslavia, but it is still less efficient than a capitalist enterprise, for various reasons.

Actually, coops are another example related to of this kind of model, so I wouldn't rule it out altogether.