Arkle wrote: So, tell me people who I mostly have blocked so I won't see your reply anyway but play along...
And they say comedy is dead.
Boy, it's almost as if Communism, Socialism, and the various forms of Capitalism (from Laisez-faire(sp?) to Keynesian) are just ECONOMIC philosophies and have little to no bearing on someone's morality whatsoever.
I'm not sure its entirely fair to judge governments in moral terms, mostly because I'm not at all convinced that morality is what people really want from their government. Jimmy Carter is, to all appearances, a profoundly moral man. He is also widely viewed as one of the least effective presidents in modern times. Most of the men the world celebrates as great leaders possessed deep moral failings. Their people often loved them regardless. It's not that I think that morality is counterproductive to leadership or anything...just that it seems largely independent.
Debates about which economic philosophy has managed to have more people die under its watch always struck me as the modern equivalent of arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It's not like we have a limited array of choices in that department. All modern economic systems are hybrids anyway, and we are forever tinkering with the margins, producing subtle but meaningful effects throughout.
But much to the dismay of economists and politicians everywhere, the two disciplines are forever tied at the hip. Dysfunction in one begets dysfunction in the other. There's a reason that White Nationalism is suddenly bursting back onto the scene after languishing for several decades, and it's not that we've been 'too tolerant.' It's not even gay marriage or the taking down of Confederate monuments. Those are just rallying cries; the real problem is that
we're coming up on 20 years of economic stagnation. Yes, I know GDP continues to grow at a decent if slow pace, but that doesn't matter
when literally ALL of the gains are being eaten by the very top. And for many in the lower 50%, things aren't just staying the same...
they're quickly getting worse. People are getting screwed, and they know it, but the forces that are screwing them are so big, so remote, so...untouchable...that they either collapse in despair or fall into irrational anger. Either way, faith in the system erodes and support for extremists grows.
Whenever you have prolonged periods of economic distress, you get Communists and Nazis. We're a very right wing country, so the Nazis got here first, but if we don't fix the underlying problem, it's only a matter of time before the Communists show up too.
