AFL CIA.

Agree, except for the "build back better" Biden quote at the end

Exactly. There's very little real democracy in the workplace, where we spend most of our time.

Untrue. You can have capitalism without a capitalist class, with a system of worker-owned enterprise, which is still capitalistic (enterprise is privately owned) but the owners and the workers are the same people.

@@annoloki You mean a Commune?

@@annoloki when the workers own the means of production that's socialism not capitalism. lol!

@@Singularity.82 there's zero democracy in the workplace unless it's a worker owned co-op.

It's hard to be angry at Warren Buffet. He has humor and good advice for small investors. He manages a fund that offers good opportunity for people who have no talent or time for making investment decisions. He only one person in the plutocracy. If faulted for US foreign policy decisions, he would probable reply that he does not make those decisions; politicians do. They are elected by the voting public, who are a lazy collection of TV addicts. He may privately disagree with US warring, but his position as CEO of a major corporation precludes his taking a public position on them. That is as good an excuse as any person could offer. The same applies to Charlie Munger, his CFO and lifelong partner.

@@alvin8391Oh i am convinced that many rich people are lovely, good natured and carry themselves with humility. I am not concerned with those that much, but those who seemingly can't get enough of anything they get their grabby little hands on and then maybe laughing into our faces while trying to get away with corruption and worse. At times there might be a certain amount of Moloch in a cybernetic sense being part of the problem. When societies, corporations, governments, pretty much any human organised group reaches certain complexities, then selforganisation due to installed processes for such may counteract each other unintentionally for lack of apprehension of said complexity. Meaning roughly the left arm doesn't know what the right arm is doing. Some old Greek made an observation about democracies turning into plutocracies when the rich are loosing their virtues, but instead follow greed and envy to then pose with their wealth and flaunt it into everyonce face. Then asserting control is sometimes just a way to cover up once own weaknesses. (remember how Trump tried to micro manage messaging and perceptions pf mishaps on twitter?)

@@kinngrimm I actually don't think that is true what the Greeks said. Rather I think plutocracies happen when the rich get so much power they can bend the state to their will rather than being subservient to the will of the state. I think we should keep in mind that the rich are human and so are inherently flawed. If you think about it we already account for this in democracies with various checks and balances and limited power so that the faults of individuals will be checked by others. We also try to promote pluralism in politics so that there is a variety of flaws and therefore not any single flaw can be unchecked.

@@MrMarinus18 "Rather I think plutocracies happen when the rich get so much power they can bend the state to their will rather than being subservient to the will of the state." Which happens when your character is not virtues, has no sense for community, no sense for proprieties, morals, no integrity, no virtues. I wouldn't mind to restrict riches itself though, giving a maximum to what a human can own, so when one has no virtues, the damage they could do would be limited. Noone is born with virtues, they often need to be hard fought for and do cost energy to uphold. Ofcause it is easier not to which then makes you virtueless, giving in to animal instincts, greed, envy etc. Checks and balances only work if there are enough to uphold them, usually those who have virtues. Our systems are for people who are imperfect and therefor the system can always be perfect aslong there are people that arent, there is a chance for the system to fail eventually. Which is why we need to put more effort in choosing our leaders. I recently saw on the channel "big think" a take on that by a scientist to sort out f.e. sociopaths so they wont get into office. It is an approach many of us thought i believe needs to happen. That we have besides the willingness to power also people having to meet certain say psycological criteria. Aslong we can not put such into our democracies in an objective form, i doubt democracies will make the cut thinking of some of the problems we are facing. That to me would be part of the checks and balances.

@@kinngrimm I can see where you are coming from but I'm a bit more pessimistic. I don't think there can ever be a "virtues" person. People are inherently flawed. How we get around that is that we are all flawed in different ways so the virtues of one can compensate for the flaws of the other and vice versa. It's why I am a strong proponent of low level worker representation on corporate boards. A big problem with corporate boards is that they are all the same kind of people and so have the same flaws. Having many people who are the same reinforces their flaws and usually makes them lose sight of them. I tend to think of the billionares not as evil creatures. But rather as people with way too much unchecked power who can not be a healthy member of society.

Thank you. Blinkered was nice.

It is an excellent info piece, and it would have been SUPERB had He discussed more on China and Russia in this scenario.

AFL CIA

I feel horrible for spreading our horrible political ideas and philosophies to Canada. I can see that some people are becoming neolib populists there.

"In 1896, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius speculated whether and how carbon dioxide emissions could lead to increases in atmospheric temperature and a 'greenhouse effect' (Fleming, 1998). At this time, the media-mainly newspapers-were at the early stages of rapid and large changes." One other thing that was though were early out and got a lot of attention was "Limits to growth" i think was the title by the Club of Rome where it was about environmental impacts and ressource depletion arround 1972. Which is a couple of years before i was born and still through all my life i got to hear about what companies fucked up and produced environmental hazards just to get a few more dollars and often enough they got a way with it, sometimes even without having to pay up. Meanwhile the real costs in death or sever illness had to be carried by citizens. George Carlin would likely have said: "nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care" If we end up on the dumbster pile of failed evolutionary branches, i would not be surprised ... at all. Till then we are the once increasing the pile by causing a mass extinction event as it looks. Just from that perspective, maybe ending up on that pile sooner than later wouldn't be as bad. Sound grimm i know, but i am really tired of people taking advantage of just about anything.

His view, if I heard it right, was that 1988 is the year when climate change started being talked up in the mainstream media. He didn't say 1988 was the year climate change was recognised as an issue of global concern. Slight difference, but important. Only that that was the year when mainstream media begun to spotlight it. He probably knows - as you correctly point out - that climate change was an issue in research, lecture halls & in big fossil fuel businesses well before 1988. Just not the media (ie public arena).

@@kinngrimm Yes, Limits to Growth came out in 1972. Small is Beautiful was released the following year. Those titles, along with Silent Spring, published a decade earlier, and the introduction to Diet for a Small Planet (1971) were key to forming my political leanings as a young adult. They should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of the environmental and climate change movements. Our instructor included material on climate change, more specifically on its effect on sea life and coral reefs, in a geology class in 1981. So it was being discussed in academia even in first year courses.

You were to have such an enlightened grade school teacher.

@@polishtheday Doesn't it just tear you up at times, knowing how soon some things were recognized and then having to endure all those who would work against change only so they could keep some sort of dominance? Laws holding those back that want a positiv change, but those who pollute and lie and cause desease and death, they just pay some lawyer, some lobbyist, some polititian, some media campaign to set people on a wild goose chase against those who actualy work in their interests. I can't be the only one who is getting more and more angry with how this system works for those rich fucks, while we pretty much are like lemmings walking to the cliff.

You've got to forgive him. He's still an American at the end of the day. I think in the lecture last week, he said he thought Thatcher and Reagan were genuine in their beliefs that neoliberalism would improve everyone's lives. He can't accept that leaders within the "democratic" West could possibly be dishonest or power hungry and that leaders in the "authoritarian" countries may be genuine in their concerns.

@@BobsTankRS Yes, American liberals will in the end be American liberals. Although Prof Slivers seems to be one of the better ones. I guess we will never know exactly what exactly the likes of Thatcher and Reagan really thought, but have no doubts that they were genuine in their belief that certain people / classes should benefit and that others (unions / workers) should bear the cost. I understand that (but don't agree with it). What is worse, in my opinion, is the position adopted by the so-called centre left leaders (Clinton, Blair, Schroder et al) in the 2nd wave / phase of neoliberalism. They witnessed the initial impact of neoliberalism (under Thatcher & Reagan) and their political traditions should have pushed them in a different direction, yet they chose to double down on neoliberallism and imbue it with notions of rights that play at the margins that never challenge the status quo. We are paying the price of their transformism even today. Never forget, Never forgive.

@@BobsTankRS that also surprised me lol Reagan and thatcher knew what they were doing, just like the authoritarian leaders we feel free to critique (as we should)

Putin has repeatedly stated that Russia depends upon oil and gas for its economy. Trump let Putin off the hook on climate change by withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Putin has also repeatedly stated that climate change will benefit Russia by warming things up in the cold Tundra. Indeed, Putin sees the opening up of the Arctic as an opportunity for more oil and gas exploration and extraction in Siberia and above the Arctic Circle. Positioning nukes in the Arctic Cicle and positioning nuclear-powered ice breakers would give Russia control of vast areas on newly-opened sea lanes in the Arctic. Russia is a gas station protected by nukes. Russia would have cooperated with the Paris Agreement, though. Trump let Putin off the hook and appointed a former CEO of Exxon-Mobil to exploit their oil and gas leases in Russia with a prospective nine trillion in revenues. Don't forget the deals in uranium whereby the Saudis would get nuclear technology and Russian uranium. Michael Flynn had those deals sown up the moment Trump was sworn in, according to General Flynn's text messages. I'm not saying that the US is innocent. Indeed, energy and food production rule the global economy. Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe. Russia is a gas station with nukes with hopes of gaining warm-water ports, as explained by Peter the Great.

I'd say the current us political regime's stance on China goes far beyond exceptionalism, trending into counterproductive and myopic saber rattling. There's room for US decision makers to have legitimate concerns about China without actively making the situation worse.

Any chance they were scripted ahead of time/planted?

@@kimpersson6577 Probably not. It’s an academic venue where these kinds of questions are normal.

He means that the neo-liberal project was pretty much completed in the 90's and had become the status quo. Once an ideology becomes the status quo it kind of ceizes to exist cause it's not an ideology anymore, it's just the reality.

@@MrMarinus18 interesting thought, it’s like saying Christianity ceased to become Christianity after emperor Constantine and is just slave morality Post 300ad. This may be the type of sentiment only philosophers share with each other, though.

That's exactly the problem. Capitalism is based on stealing wealth, and when it's all already stolen, what's left to pillage? That's the 2008 approach, print trillions and give it to the rich b/c they are "owed" the money from the poor who are laid off and losing homes. So they increasingly rely on state money to bail them out. Eventually it will collapse b/c it is unsustainable. In the 1920s, they had to institute the New Deal b/c there was a genuine threat of revolution. This time around, Idk. I hope that may happen, but they might also just let masses of people die off which is happening through overdoses, suicides, and militarization against the poor.

Credits (loan and borrowing), which is actually not a solution

you just figured out what capitalism is. It’s the maintaining of a low skilled class circa 1600s. Before capitalism, men passed down their trade to children and a family would own the land machinery and raw materials to make goods and sell locally for retail or to merchants for wholesale. If your name was potter that didn’t mean you worked in a kitchen ware factory, you worked for your family. Things went to shit with assembly lines and industrialism because then it took 10 people to produce. This gave an excuse to owner to pay workers a percentage of what they need to survive. It was then that local trade names became useless. Nobody except the owners liked capitalism until capitalism fell in 1920s and was replaced with Keynes economics which is where the worker is actually paid his lost wages which are supplemented by his own taxes. This explains why baby boomers did so well. Reagan put an end to social programs and forced all housewives into the workforce with trickle down economics and wages have stagnated for 40 years, this explains why millennials and z struggle.

Yes, ohlzas correct, whole point of capitalism is to get investment, grow, and merge so that the owner of the company can sell off. Contrast this with socialism which is private companies that make all their profits from production and services.

Not me really. "Government spending" can mean anything. I mean Saudi-Arabia has very high government spending on it's military, spy network, megaprojects, bribes and all those kind of things. Finland also has very high government spending but it spends it on totally different things. So "government spending" is a very vague term. I mean within the talk he also points out how the rescue of the banks in 2008 massively increased wealth inequality through government spending. Government spending is different from private spending as it's more a transfer of assets from one section of the economy to another. This can lead to growth if you move assets from a less productive area (like a pile of gold of a billionare) to a more productive area (like healthcare). However austerity in 2008 was about doing the opposite so had the opposite effect. So trying to make a case between government spending and inequality without specifying what that government spending is, is a very misleading argument.

Good point. ... How much are you discounting the relative consistency of private sector spending? It is the majority component of GINI measurements. ... It is no doubt a very technical debate over the degree of validity in any such measurement. @@MrMarinus18

With politicians I also think we need to let go somewhat of the idea of "skill" and think of it more in political terms. The problem is that consultants drain the confidence of leaders and also removes them from accountability. They no longer feel confident to take a risk on something and stand by it and carry responsibility when it fails.

I think though consultancies could be reigned in with a few simple law changes. Mainly that they are held accountable for the advice they give and if that advice turns out bad they had to not only reimburse their client but they also have to make a note of that on their record. They must also be forbidden from recommending figures above a certain station. The reason for this is that consultancy companies usually serve as a middlemen for powerful people to go from one position to the next. So if you want to become the CEO of a company the best way to do that is to make plenty of use of consultancy companies as they will recommend you for that position.

@@MrMarinus18 I tend to refer to that as part of what I call the Condottieri problem

@@ungainlytitan1460 Can you explain that a little more please?

@@MrMarinus18 The condottieri were the mercenary captains of medieval and renaissance Italy and in the latter period often did not fight an actual battle at the end of a campaign. Often coming to a mutual agreement as to who won. See Machiavelli "The Prince". I believe there is a similar issue in C suite land where the club of potential CEO's are known to each other and are connected enough to play the game to their benefit rather than that of the stockholders or stakeholders.

nah it started in the mid-seventies

@@avinashreji60 Carter stagflation was a different beast. We had a recession at the peak of USA labor union participation. With an OPEC induced energy crisis thrown in for good measure. At a time when wages would normally adjust to lower demand, the unions were demanding ever higher compensation. High inflation rate led to even higher interest rates. Leading to high inflation. And business slowed to a near halt. But hen we bounced back until shortly after Y2K.

Neoliberalism In the early 1970s, a group of democrats and republicans formed a whole new type of American conservatism and social engineering and that type of engineering has been coined, neoliberalism. The concept of neoliberalism formed out of laissez faire economics and evolved into something much worse in post ww2 europe. In an autopsy report on German industries that put all their hope into hitlers government to protect them, the western business leaders came to the conclusion that since they are already the masters of industry they might as well be entitled to managing governments and propaganda as well. The mission objective of neoliberalism in america was an ambitious one and can be confirmed by reading the powell memo from 1971 but much of what I have written here came during the Reagan administration. The plan: 1) talk the fortune 500 companies into pitching 10% of quarterly earnings into buying off all the American politicians of both parties, all government officials in every agency, all the media outlets and the anchors they pay and all the judges and courts. 2)pay the media to stop criticizing the private sector so car manufacturers can ship all jobs overseas and effectively turn America into a service economy instead of a production economy. 3)Pay government / cia to plan coups in oil rich nations so that an American / British oil oligopoly can control production / price of all global oil. 4)Pay the politicians of both parties to never pass working class legislation and only pass corporate laws and gerrymander districts so the corporate candidates always win. 5)Pay the courts and judges to hurt enemies and protect corporations. 6)social engineer wedge issues. the main objective here is a way to drive a wedge straight through the working class and get half of them to vote pro corporate without even realizing it, the Republican Party is built to constantly pass corporate law. (All mainstream media including msnbc steer viewers to the center right, all social media is also meant to attract left leaning people and steer them to the right. Fox is the status quo, it keeps all republican voters from becoming too anti establishment while making their audience feel like a counter culture. The Democratic Party is historically for working class so when democrats win majority, the donors can only pay them to create “do nothing caucuses” and that’s exactly what they do. If dems were paid to pass corporate laws like republicans, they would face uncertain primaries much like Kristen sinema.) 7)platform evangelicals to get Christians to ignore pro abortion biblical texts (numbers 5 11 22) and become anti abortionist cafeteria Christians so they vote Republican. 8)Adopt a southern strategy that gives a black welfare queen scapegoat to all the southerners that used to vote democrat before the civil rights movement so they now vote Republican. 9)establish trickle down economics so that all mothers and housewives in lower and middle class households have to enter the workforce and much like abortion, feminism can become a huge wedge issue that helps more American vote republican, while at the same time the low labor market value will benefit the owners. (ironically enough, it was Reagan and the “conservatives” that promoted the nuclear family but ultimately pushed through these anti family policies with reaganomics and forced all low skilled conservative mothers and housewives into the workforce, it was not a surprise that crime exploded because no parents were at home anymore) 10)implement financialization: deregulate wallstreet to the point where corporations and the oligarchs that own them will never lose power. have the fed quantitatively ease gambling losses of those oligarchs and corporations so they never financially lose by printing more money. 11)Never allow competition in the market or an end to planned obsolescence by merging in new and successful companies into existing conglomerates that essentially function as oligopolies. 12)Make sure only laborers are taxed and never shareholders and owners. 13)when quantitative easement causes the inflation rate and interest rates to rise, sacrifice labor by laying off millions of corporate workers and kick them out of economy so they stop spending and it will ease interest rates and borrowing for corporations will become affordable again and gambling and quantitative easement can continue. 14)make certain lower class families never organize worker cooperatives and become financially independent of employers and government by simply adding a few positions to college campuses and firing leftist economic professors. Blacklist anyone from media that promotes worker cooperatives and make sure the narrative is always off economics and on trans people turning children trans or something and if economics are the topic make sure it’s capitalism vs the Soviet planned economy or capitalism vs social welfare programs and never capitalism vs worker cooperatives. After reading the memo, nixon made powell a Supreme Court justice just two weeks later. There were a few snags in this plan though, in 1973, Nixon and the neoliberal front which by this point probably included the cia, had access to opposition research on republican politicians that would never accept dark money so they could defeat them in primaries in 74 but they didn’t have any research on dems and had to break into offices to retrieve them. This came to be known as the watergate scandal. Carter getting elected in 76 also slowed down the movement. In 79, the neolibs and cia got the Iranian hostages(something caused by one of those oil coups) released but they decided to keep them held by their Iranian captors for 100+ more days than they were negotiated free so that carter would be hurt in the ‘80 election. Reagan was elected and was far more successful than nixon at implementing powells plan. Today we are living in powells neoliberal america where the donor class wants you to think they only donate to one party but even trump has admitted to donating to democrats because the system is entirely corrupt. The post 80s neoliberal infrastructure mostly works by main stream media making dem voters think everything is gops fault and republican voters think everything is dems fault. It’s called divide and conquer. There’s no such thing as Republican and democratic fighting, theres just one group that has both parties in their pocket. If there are any policies in this country you do not like, blame the people that own the politicians and courts and media and government. They are the fortune 88. They are an oligarchy. The oligarchy’s main motivation is to keep ALEC going as much as possible. ALEC is a corporate think tank that passes corporate legislation. This type of legislation and social policies like anti gay or anti abortion laws actually kills local economies. the neoliberal deep state dont care about red state economies though because they live in nyc and San Francisco where those social policies don’t reach them but all the corporate laws that kill small businesses do reach them in blue states. Anyone that gets in the way of ALEC has to be removed from the equation. Donald trump can’t win general (electoral) elections anymore because his personality motivates people that don’t even vote to get registered and vote against the gop. this hurts ALEC and ALEC is all that matters to the people who actually own everything in this country. They don’t care about aborted fetuses, they’ve owned the Supreme Court for 30 years and have allowed 30 years of fetal murder and only now shot down roe only to hurt trump and maga for a few election cycles so they can retake the Republican Party which they see as there’s.

Populism usually happens when politicians lie. It's an expression of distrust in the political establishment and what they say.

@@MrMarinus18 That (usually well-deserved) mistrust is what creates the substrate, the mindset that makes folks susceptible to being led on by populist agitators.

@@joschafinger126 The thing is though people are not the obedient drones the elite often likes them to be. They want to have some agency in their lives too. So if they know that they can't trust the establishment then they will search for someone they can trust.

@@joschafinger126 I do think you are wording it in a very accusatory manner. I can not blame people for listening to someone else if the establishment has failed them.

@@MrMarinus18 As I said, the lack of trust in "traditional" politicians *does* tend to be justified, to the extent that I'd say that leaders such as the UK's Tony Blair and Germany's Gerhard Schröder are very much to blame for the rise of populism we are witnessing now (speaking from a European perspective): the neoliberal turn of social democracy has eliminated its ability to address social injustice and channel discontent, thus its credibility. In the US, the ratchet effect with its rightward tendency has had the same results.

I feel like your question is going of the basis that neoliberalism is an ideology instead of a system that is apart of the greater idea of market fundamentalism (a.k.a the concept of their being only one correct and true way to run an economy.) Also you're essentially asking a question that goes more into the nature of humans and how they react to and use power when put into positions of authority. Interestingly enough, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato argued that democracy gave too much freedom to individuals based on the concept that humans are wired to preserve themselves. He thought that in a system where everyone has a right to rule, selfish individuals who do not care about "The People" would be able to obtain power and wreck havoc. Is he correct in this notion?

@@henrydavis6983 I do believe neoliberalism to be an ideology rather than a system within a greater idea. The reason for this is that one acceptation of ideology is a set of beliefs and ideas shared by people to form systems. In this sense, once market fundamentalism fails to explain economic events, as it commonly does, all you are left with is the neoliberal shared 'belief' propagated by the powers that be, ergo, an ideology. Then, I don't separate human nature from the results of human reasoning. I see power, ideology and economics as intertwined and therefore prone to errors if compartmentalized and not seen in a systemic approach (e.g. like market fundamentalism does). Plato did believe in a caste of governors, but then Plato was from the aristocratic class which could've biased his reasoning and second, he was reasoning under a given context and struggles (maybe he saw Spartans' way of society as preferable as they were being subjected). I would rather ask why the system breeds individuals that desperately seek power and then cause havoc to their fellow human beings (The People).

​@@henrydavis6983Ask Hunter Biden! LOL

Money isn’t real it represents a trust and that trust is gone. This is why communism will probably win, it will be an economic shift made out of necessity and I’m not talking about Bolshevism but demonetized worker cooperatives that don’t rely on bunk government currencies with little value but just goods and services and the work it takes to plan a demonetized local economy

Neoliberalism In the early 1970s, a group of democrats and republicans formed a whole new type of American conservatism and social engineering and that type of engineering has been coined, neoliberalism. The concept of neoliberalism formed out of laissez faire economics and evolved into something much worse in post ww2 europe. In an autopsy report on German industries that put all their hope into hitlers government to protect them, the western business leaders came to the conclusion that since they are already the masters of industry they might as well be entitled to managing governments and propaganda as well. The mission objective of neoliberalism in america was an ambitious one and can be confirmed by reading the powell memo from 1971 but much of what I have written here came during the Reagan administration. The plan: 1) talk the fortune 500 companies into pitching 10% of quarterly earnings into buying off all the American politicians of both parties, all government officials in every agency, all the media outlets and the anchors they pay and all the judges and courts. 2)pay the media to stop criticizing the private sector so car manufacturers can ship all jobs overseas and effectively turn America into a service economy instead of a production economy. 3)Pay government / cia to plan coups in oil rich nations so that an American / British oil oligopoly can control production / price of all global oil. 4)Pay the politicians of both parties to never pass working class legislation and only pass corporate laws and gerrymander districts so the corporate candidates always win. 5)Pay the courts and judges to hurt enemies and protect corporations. 6)social engineer wedge issues. the main objective here is a way to drive a wedge straight through the working class and get half of them to vote pro corporate without even realizing it, the Republican Party is built to constantly pass corporate law. (All mainstream media including msnbc steer viewers to the center right, all social media is also meant to attract left leaning people and steer them to the right. Fox is the status quo, it keeps all republican voters from becoming too anti establishment while making their audience feel like a counter culture. The Democratic Party is historically for working class so when democrats win majority, the donors can only pay them to create “do nothing caucuses” and that’s exactly what they do. If dems were paid to pass corporate laws like republicans, they would face uncertain primaries much like Kristen sinema.) 7)platform evangelicals to get Christians to ignore pro abortion biblical texts (numbers 5 11 22) and become anti abortionist cafeteria Christians so they vote Republican. 8)Adopt a southern strategy that gives a black welfare queen scapegoat to all the southerners that used to vote democrat before the civil rights movement so they now vote Republican. 9)establish trickle down economics so that all mothers and housewives in lower and middle class households have to enter the workforce and much like abortion, feminism can become a huge wedge issue that helps more American vote republican, while at the same time the low labor market value will benefit the owners. (ironically enough, it was Reagan and the “conservatives” that promoted the nuclear family but ultimately pushed through these anti family policies with reaganomics and forced all low skilled conservative mothers and housewives into the workforce, it was not a surprise that crime exploded because no parents were at home anymore) 10)implement financialization: deregulate wallstreet to the point where corporations and the oligarchs that own them will never lose power. have the fed quantitatively ease gambling losses of those oligarchs and corporations so they never financially lose by printing more money. 11)Never allow competition in the market or an end to planned obsolescence by merging in new and successful companies into existing conglomerates that essentially function as oligopolies. 12)Make sure only laborers are taxed and never shareholders and owners. 13)when quantitative easement causes the inflation rate and interest rates to rise, sacrifice labor by laying off millions of corporate workers and kick them out of economy so they stop spending and it will ease interest rates and borrowing for corporations will become affordable again and gambling and quantitative easement can continue. 14)make certain lower class families never organize worker cooperatives and become financially independent of employers and government by simply adding a few positions to college campuses and firing leftist economic professors. Blacklist anyone from media that promotes worker cooperatives and make sure the narrative is always off economics and on trans people turning children trans or something and if economics are the topic make sure it’s capitalism vs the Soviet planned economy or capitalism vs social welfare programs and never capitalism vs worker cooperatives. After reading the memo, nixon made powell a Supreme Court justice just two weeks later. There were a few snags in this plan though, in 1973, Nixon and the neoliberal front which by this point probably included the cia, had access to opposition research on republican politicians that would never accept dark money so they could defeat them in primaries in 74 but they didn’t have any research on dems and had to break into offices to retrieve them. This came to be known as the watergate scandal. Carter getting elected in 76 also slowed down the movement. In 79, the neolibs and cia got the Iranian hostages(something caused by one of those oil coups) released but they decided to keep them held by their Iranian captors for 100+ more days than they were negotiated free so that carter would be hurt in the ‘80 election. Reagan was elected and was far more successful than nixon at implementing powells plan. Today we are living in powells neoliberal america where the donor class wants you to think they only donate to one party but even trump has admitted to donating to democrats because the system is entirely corrupt. The post 80s neoliberal infrastructure mostly works by main stream media making dem voters think everything is gops fault and republican voters think everything is dems fault. It’s called divide and conquer. There’s no such thing as Republican and democratic fighting, theres just one group that has both parties in their pocket. If there are any policies in this country you do not like, blame the people that own the politicians and courts and media and government. They are the fortune 88. They are an oligarchy. The oligarchy’s main motivation is to keep ALEC going as much as possible. ALEC is a corporate think tank that passes corporate legislation. This type of legislation and social policies like anti gay or anti abortion laws actually kills local economies. the neoliberal deep state dont care about red state economies though because they live in nyc and San Francisco where those social policies don’t reach them but all the corporate laws that kill small businesses do reach them in blue states. Anyone that gets in the way of ALEC has to be removed from the equation. Donald trump can’t win general (electoral) elections anymore because his personality motivates people that don’t even vote to get registered and vote against the gop. this hurts ALEC and ALEC is all that matters to the people who actually own everything in this country. They don’t care about aborted fetuses, they’ve owned the Supreme Court for 30 years and have allowed 30 years of fetal murder and only now shot down roe only to hurt trump and maga for a few election cycles so they can retake the Republican Party which they see as there’s.

Lesi You're throwing haymakers

You pick the lesser evil in a two party system I guess no real choice to represent your true political beliefs

Well it demonstrates why leaving neoliberalism behind is so difficult, as public opinion is within the market system, with the opinion forming process being outsourced to the highest bidder. Not so sure I would call it an "analysis" though ;-)

Your ideas interest me. I think we need more plebiscites, yes, and a set of rules for determining which laws - including criteria for laws that have already been passed - should go to plebiscite automatically, but full on direct democracy could be a true and epic disaster as well.

I fully agree with you about classical direct democracy, where the peoples have to vote every time, but modern (or mixed) direct democracy can take the best of both models. So you will only vote if you are interested in that topic or if you think the representative has crossed the line. The role of the parties is to come up with specialists to offer solutions to the people's problems, but the people must decide which solutions will be put into practice. And if a solution is wrong, we don't have to wait 4 years to fix it. Anyway, the owner's watchful eye fattens the cattle

@@vladdumitrica849 While I still would advocate my more limited form where only laws affecting x issue (say federal benefits) are automatically sent to referendum, I would certainly join your republic. To make this a reality, can you please start talking to rich folks about your ideas and then found a town in Nunavut, Canada following your rules? I will move there if you manage to get any municipality going with direct democracy.

I think he actually speaks on what you're referring to when he said that both left and right wing economist/politicians were captured by neo-liberal ideology. And what do you think happens to academia when government are supposed to be hands off and not invest? Stagnation and austerity.

Human beings are greedy & selfish. Academics conveniently forget & so quickly.

@@SlickSimulacrum What an insightful and educated response. Care to refer to an article refuting the point made?

How can they achieve this when our lives are dependent on oligarchs.

Ww3 will be hard to beat

That’s why it is a democratic republic

You are making a basic error. "Transfer power from politicians to people" makes NO sense. Politicians in the US have very little power, it's their corporate donors that have the power. Modern Democracies can only function through elected representatives who are only accountable to their voters, NOT solely to their donors. This is why America does not function as a democracy.

@@marquisejoubert6129 it is a republic, but a plutocratic one. you seem pleased that the people do not rule. enjoy your position, until the tumbrills roll, and the blade drops.

@@ivandafoe5451 There's always direct democracy, or the Chinese system, which has local, daily, highly accountable democracy, then those local representatives elect their regional representatives, on up to General Secretary and Chairman.

@@marquisejoubert6129 the usa is an oligarchy not a democratic republic.

You don't need to 'believe': he clearly feels that this language is appropriate for our time. That itself is significant progress. But he will need pushing, of course.

@@NicholBrummer Good point

​@@NicholBrummer he's very apologetic towards Biden.

@@NicholBrummer Biden is so consumed with his Ukraine project that he can't even address domestic issues like the train derailment chemical poisonings. Plus Trump is polling above him by 7 points already, 70% of Americans say he shouldn't be running again, and things are only getting worse for him on all fronts.

Biden is a power addict, he can be tired of something, yet be unable to give it up... maybe he just wants to stop the trickle down, maybe he was just tired and needed a nap!

Political economy factions of left 1) oppose ALL identity politics or 2) oppose some ID politics--- those which focus on purely cultural psycho logical social, off the deep end,, each ID group chauvinism + supremacism.

ah yes, bc I am transphobic I will not proceed to sprout misinformation about a complex social issue. If you actually look at data about what the public thought about trans people before it got made a big issue in recent years, you will find out, that most people didnt care/ accepted trans people. Afterwards maybe you should look at some actual studies about trans people and talk to them, before being an asshole So maybe be quiet.

i think the so called 'left' has been co-opted by neoliberals to the point the only difference is social policy not economic. the NDP for the most part has stayed an economically left party. there isnt that choice in america

Well democracy according to marxsists is liberation from all forms of private ownership

Marxism has been a horrible in predictions

Expanding credit. Sixteen tons and what do you get.

Nixon mentioned global warming

You should ad Labor in Australia for embrace of neoliberal economics. They started it.

Overton Window

Biden's kept his promise and blown up Germany industry's gas supply.

@@casteretpollux 💀

Biden is indeed a right wing democrat. But I think he genuinely loves the US and cares about democracy and so will do what he can to prevent it from becoming a dictatorship.

Wot

If you watch footage of Nancy pelosi in the late 90s early 2000s she was against core aspects of neoliberalism such as de industrialization of the US

Look up AFL CIA.

@@casteretpollux Did you mean AFL-CIO or are we talking about conspiracy theories?

Torturer. Criminal.

False gods will start nuclear war.

For power and profits

I dont think you have to forgive him. They were stupid and cruel. In broad strokes he agrees with us now, so that's something, and a better arc than I see in most punlic servsnts. So if you want to forgive, that's a starting point, but I certainly dont see much policy focus on correcting the harms caused, and indeed his stance on policing continues to be broadly wrong and harmful.

@@jsrodman biden has not changed at all. he's been a pathological liar and oligarchy puppet his entire career.

Biden is a neoliberal. The crime bill is a perfect example of that, instituting violence and mandatory minimums in a racist manner against the poorest demographic populations, to profit police, legal, and prison budgets, for a strong police state. Oh and to populate the rampant slave labor camps within the prison system.