Backing the bullies
Musk is more evil and alarming than I had realized.
Elon Musk is rapidly transforming his enormous wealth – he’s the richest person in the world – into a huge source of unaccountable political power that’s now backing Trump and other authoritarians around the world.
Musk owns X, formerly known as Twitter. He publicly endorsed Donald Trump last month. Before that, Musk helped form a pro-Trump super political action committee. Meanwhile, the former US president has revived his presence on the X platform.
Musk just hired a Republican operative with expertise in field organizing to help with get-out-the-vote efforts on behalf of Trump.
…
At least eight times in the past 10 months, Musk has prophesied a future civil war related to immigration. When anti-immigration street riots occurred across Britain, he wrote: “civil war is inevitable.”
The European Union commissioner Thierry Breton sent Musk an open letter reminding him of EU laws against amplifying harmful content “that promotes hatred, disorder, incitement to violence, or certain instances of disinformation” and warning that the EU “will be extremely vigilant” about protecting “EU citizens from serious harm”.
Musk’s response was a meme that said: “TAKE A BIG STEP BACK AND LITERALLY, F*CK YOUR OWN FACE!”
Elon Musk calls himself a “free speech absolutist” but has accepted over 80% of censorship requests from authoritarian governments. Two days before the Turkish elections, he blocked accounts critical of the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
And his friendly relations with authoritarians often seem to coincide with beneficial treatment of his businesses; shortly after Musk suggested handing Taiwan over to the Chinese government, Tesla got a tax break from the Chinese government.
None of this seems particularly benign.
Robert Reich’s article is his usual ludicrous collection of distortions; he’s been gunning for Musk ever since he took over Twitter. People like Reich are just mighty pissed that the half of the population who are not left-wing get to voice their opinions in public.
They think that a cabal of what could be called the “Guardian, NYT, NPR, BBC” consensus should get to impose whatever censorship they deem appropriate, for the good of all. The great unwashed need to be told what the acceptable opinions are.
It reminds me of Muslims explaining to me that Muslim countries do indeed have free speech, but, panels of wise and benevolent Islamic scholars do, of course, decide the acceptable limits of proper speech, for the good of everyone. Kamala has just said something along those lines.
So you overlooked
Musk, Reich, and…Kamala. Always belittle the woman yeah?
@Ophelia:
OK, I’ll address it:
This is distortion by Reich. He’s trying to give the impression that Musk favours “authoritarian” governments. But that 80% figure actually relates to all governments. This article is the source. Governments listed as requesting takedowns include Germany, France, Japan, and Australia.
Musk’s/Twitter’s policy is that they fight censorship requests, but in the end have a general policy of complying with the law of that country. (I presume we do think that in general companies should obey the law?)
In the case of Turkey, Twitter under Musk fought the takedown requests in the courts, but in the end they complied (as Turkish law required). They did, though, make public the court orders demanding this, making it clear that they were acting under duress. Musk’s decision then was that complying was better (for people in Turkey as much as anything) to comply with the takedowns rather than have Twitter banned in Turkey.
In the current dispute with Brazil and Supreme Court Justice Moraes, Musk made the opposition call. Moraes asked for 140 supporters of ex-President Bolsanaro to be permanently banned (including journalists and sitting members of the Brazilian legislature). Importantly, Moraes’s court order instructed that Twitter must do this while keeping secret that they were acting under court instruction!. How about that for being authoritarian? That’s a big difference from the Turkey situation.
It was at that point that Musk refused, and published the court order, including the demand for secrecy. Things have escalated from there. Twitter is currently banned from Brazil, and Moraes has ordered that any Brazilian using a VPN to try to get round the ban and access Twitter be subject to draconian fines. How about that for being authoritarian?
Musk’s case is that Moraes is the one acting illegally, and that many of his orders violate the Brazilian constitution and Brazilian law. But since he is the head Supreme Court Justice there is no-one to overrule him. Musk does have a good case here (as far as I can make out). Moraes has now also ordered the seizing of SpaceX bank accounts in Brazil to try to pressure Musk. (SpaceX is a totally different company from Twitter, they are just both mostly owned by Musk.) How about that for being authoritarian?
Overall, I’m siding with Musk. He’s doing his best despite the authoritarianism of governments such as Turkey and Brazil. While he may be less than perfect, Musk is generally on the right side of things, and his free-speech instincts are generally good.
Ophelia, do you approve of the situation in Germany, where a podcast is legally ordered to be taken down and where the podcasters are fined, because they referred to a man as “he”? Do you want the freedom to call Valentina Petrillo and Imane Khelif “men” and refer to them as “he”? There are many who would love to censor that as hateful “misinformation”. Musk is one of the few people with clout who will stand up for your right to do that. Kamala Harris won’t.
So two things:
1. If people can’t say what they want on twitter/X, then they won’t use it.
2. If less people use twitter/X, then there is less profit.
It’s fairly clear that power and profit are the motivators here. Has Musk compromised in some cases? Sure he has, hence >>
Absolutely, and more profitable. More exposure for twitter/X, more users, and a bigger soapbox for Musk.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1830656672211103825
No need to cite Turkey or anywhere else. While I try my best to avoid guilt by association, supporting Trump, who shouldn’t be in charge of anything that gives him power over anyone or anything, is guilt enough for me. Trump is an authoritarian. Remember January 6, 2021? He has shown he is unwilling to recognize the results of the American electoral process. He has no business running again. He has disqualified himself for the position he is seeking, having broken his Oath of Office the first time he had it.
@twiliter:
It’s clear that profit is *not* a major motivator here. Musk’s purchase of Twitter and the way he is running it make no sense at all as a way of making money. (Perhaps power and influence, yes, and perhaps desire to avoid making a big loss plays a role.)
Rather, his primary motivation is because he really does think that a free-speech public square where everyone can voice opinions is a necessary part of a healthy democracy.
@Your Name’s not Bruce?
Perhaps, but overall, nowadays, it’s the left who are way more authoritarian than the right. It’s the left who simply won’t tolerate dissent from their opinion. It’s the left who want people banned from social media for the wrong opinion; it’s the left who want people put in jail for speech that they judge to be “harmful”; it’s the left who want to end people’s careers if they have the wrong opinion. It’s the left who dominate large swathes of academia and are openly boastful of the fact that they won’t allow any non-left people to be hired (despite lauding “diversity” as their lode-star); it’s the left who drummed Kathleen Stock out of academia and who ended Graham Linehan’s career as a writer (and there are dozens and dozens of similar but less-well-known cases); it’s left-wing people who will end friendships over a difference of opinion, and who can’t even contemplate having a friendship with someone who votes Republican. Indeed, mostly they can’t even countenance speaking to such people.
Overall, these days — and astonishing as this may be, given history — it is the right-wing who tend to be more tolerant and accepting of differences and who see value in free speech. And saying that is not intended to laud the right; rather, it’s intended to illustrate how loony the left has become.
And that’s without considering the left-wing policies of decriminalising crime, open borders, rejecting notions of truth and objectivity (in favour of ideology), and rejecting all notions of merit (in favour of “identity”).
@Coel – tell me you’re a RWNJ without telling me you’re a RWNJ.
Is it red or blue states in the USA banning books? Interfering with elections? Purging voter rolls on spurious grounds?
Which nation has greater freedom of speech – UK or Turkey?
Which nation treats its citizens more equally – France or Iran?
Which nation is more likely to invade a neighbor – Russia or Germany?
Almost every advance in human rights has come about by the hard work and unrelenting focus on our shared humanity by those on the Left. The Right has fought us every step of the way, gassed us, bashed us, murdered us, simply for believing we can create a better world. And we did.
And I for one am not prepared to stand by while you cheer on Musk, Trump, et al who will grab everything for themselves and leave you with nothing but rags and a sense of shame that you could be so stupid as to fall for their grift. And then, when you are cold, tired, and hungry, it won’t be a Billionaire who bathes your wounds and brings you sustenance; it will be one of us, on the Left, that you so despise.
Well of course that’s what he’d have us believe, but I don’t. Healthy democracies (which requires some unpacking), don’t have wealthy elites or authoritarian nationalists running them, nor do they have dictators of any stripe. It could be argued in fact, that capitalism itself leads to a kind of social heirarchy that is antithetical to a liberal democracy. I mean you can believe him at his word, but the evidence suggests otherwise.
I noticed Coel, in your response to my post, that as far as you’re concerned, Trump’s actual attempt at a coup only shows that “perhaps” Trump is an authoritartian. Had it succeeded, how likely is it that Trump would have held any more elections?
And what “necessary part” did the events of January 6, 2021 play in the functioning of “a healthy democracy?” Why would Musk back someone who tried to subvert the Constitution, and overthrow the government in order to stay in power past his legal term of office, if he wasn’t okay with that? How does Musk’s support of Trump make the United Staes of America a better place?
And even if he wasn’t a greedy, self-serving, power-hungry narcissist, Trump is still a convicted felon, a rapist, and a fucking moron.
Ah, Coel’s back, with his usual stream of self-pitying, ideological nonsense, foisting on what he regards as a monolithic ‘left’ the faults of the extreme right – the stale, banal and disingenuous tactic that is used over and over again to justify the views that he and his like hold. He has learned his unpleasant little lessons all too well, so well that he cannot look at them critically. I expect that, like Autism Capital & Musk, he regards himself as an alpha male as well.
Well said Rev David B @ 11. And the rest of yiz.
[…] a comment by Rev David Brindley on Backing the […]
Elon Musk and Donald Trump are pefect for each other because they’re both examples of failing up. And in the warped and corrupted times we’re in, incompetent people can fail all the way up to the top: the richest man on the planet and (for a while there) the most powerful political figure on the planet.
Musk did not achieve his wealth through great feats of leadership, innovation or business acumen. He has never come off especially intelligent; on the contrary, he reveals how clueless and bumbling he is almost every single day. His biggest asset has always been his breathtaking hubris, which if anything is fuelled by his own Dunning-Kruger lack of self-awareness, plus family wealth. But his big break came — the moment his wealth went supernova — after his dinky little e-bank startup was gobbled up by larger startups during the chaos of the first dot-com boom, and it ended up a part of PayPal, right before PayPal was itself bought by the biggest fish of the ’90s dot-com boom: eBay. By that point, Musk had already been flagged as a gross liability: incompetent and arrogant to the point of delusion. His colleagues in the C-suite hatched a scheme to oust him: they convinced him to take a vacation in Australia and then promptly mustered lawyers to terminate his employment the minute he was safely out of the country and out of reach of the tools he’d have needed to thwart them.
But his severance package included shares in the company which, after it was bought by eBay, netted him a quarter of a billion dollars.
He made his great fortune being a bumbling (but rich and arrogant) jackass who happened to be in the right place at the right time. Same as Mark Zuckerberg and countless other infuriating little tech-bro man-children.
That kind of money has such a strong gravitational pull, it can spontaneously create a black hole, an unstoppable force that pulls in more and more money all on its own.
And that’s more or less what happened with Musk. He had enough money and hubris to turn his dudebro playtoy hobbies into going concerns: “I wanna make spaceships and futuristic looking cars! Make it happen!” And with a bottomless black hole of money behind him, the engineers and investors and managers who actually did have the skills to get this stuff done were all sucked into his orbit.
And he’s plainly bad at running those companies; it’s the other executives who work doubletime to limit the damage he does. He routinely makes poor executive decisions that his executives have to scramble to work around or fix.
One thing he’s consistently good at is extracting money from his companies, though: despite Tesla’s poor performance lately (largely due to Musk’s ineptitude), he manipulated the board of directors into approving the largest pay package in human history for himself, a staggering 45 BILLION dollars. That’s what stupid + arrogant + rich can do for you.
Musk is no intellectual, and he’s no free speech absolutist, either: his platform censors mentions of rival platforms — notably Substack, which really does put its weight behind free speech principles — and it penalizes people for referring to others as “cis” simply because he doesn’t like the term (I happen to agree with him that the word is stupid but I disagree with him that people should be censored for using it in reference to others). And he wields his power to keep his family’s unpleasant secrets out of the spotlight, too. For example, his extensive Wikipedia entry bears no mention of his stepsister Jana with whom he was raised in a blended family, probably because she has had two children by the man who raised them both, Elon’s father (and Jana’s stepfather) Errol, in a Woody Allen-like situation that is only techinically, biologically not incest, but surely is incest in terms of the household dynamics. And Musk is notoriously controlling over his own children (now 13 and counting I believe?), wielding his power to deny their mothers access to see them.
Musk is not a great man and he is not guided by any great principles at all. He’s a mercurial man-child, a boy king tyrant whose advisors are in a constant struggle to temper his whims. Remember, shortly after he declared on a whim that he’d buy Twitter, he had another whim and tried to back out of the deal. He was ultimately forced by finance laws to follow through with his binding pledge to buy Twitter, and he was bitterly and publicly angry about it for a couple months. How quickly the Elon fanboys have forgotten those details.
I’m very grateful that Musk has allowed gender-critical speech to be platformed on Twitter. But that’s just about the only thing I’ve ever seen him do that I don’t think is stupid or just plain evil.
You can see why such a man would be in Trump’s corner: like Musk, Trump made his fortune through stock market shares in a useless tech startup (Truth Social). Like Musk, Trump is a product of a wealthy family, endowed with blinding amounts of hubris and very little intellect. Like Musk, Trump is focused solely on feeding his immediate desires and accumulating endless wealth so that he can punish anyone who ever tried to make him do his homework or put his toys away.
They’re made for each other and they’re horrible people, both of them.
That’s a sharp summation, Arty. Good one.
One thing about allowing GC speech though; I’m sure this was done to stimulate activity on the platform and prevent an unchallenged takeover by the trans goons, who are smaller in number. Again, more users, more activity (through conflict), therefore more profit.
I know everyone else has had their say on Coel’s boot-licking, but I have to address one additional element of his initial post, here:
Left-wing and right-wing, despite the names suggesting so, are ~not~ equally represented among the population. We know from poll after poll that the majority of the US, for instance, actually support left-ish positions across the board, both economic and social. (The trans rights lobby uses this to their advantage by keeping their definitions vague, so that people assume that the “rights” they are lobbying for are the same rights the gay and lesbian community have largely won.)
The reason elections are so close (though, even then, the Dems tend to win numerically, only being constrained by gerrymandering and the Electoral College from actually dominating elections in proportion to their numbers) is that the right wing is desperate, and thus highly motivated. Turnout is considerably different on the two sides, with conservative voters showing up at very high percentages.
So, yeah, Coel’s lying from pretty much the first paragraph, here. Sad, really.
Thank you very much, Artymorty & Freemage. Regarding ‘alpha males’, it hardly seems ‘manly’ (or ‘womanly’, for that matter) to spend one’s life nursing grievances, grievance-mongering, and rehearsing tired and lying tropes and talking-points from the extreme right fever-net, and from the sort of stuff published by Trump’s laughably titled ’Truth Social’. I do not like feeling contempt for others, but I find it difficult not to in the case of such people.
There are of course plenty of responsible Republicans around: on the Bulwark website, for instance; and there are honourable and intelligent people like Judge Luttig, Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Tim Miller – and a very great many more. The sophomoric assertion that those on some wholly, bogey-man fictitious ‘left’ refuse dialogue with Republicans is wholly untrue.
@twiliter:
No, actually, that could not be argued. Capitalism has led to the most prosperous, stable, peaceful, liberal, well-functioning democracies that the world has ever known.
Just ask yourself why swathes of the third world are trying to migrate to capitalist countries.
Judge Michael Luttig on why he is endorsing Kamala Harris:
https://youtu.be/U123XRqAYEs?si=Iwxzc-aUDYCedVE6
@Rev David Brindley:
Supposed book bans by the right are wildly exaggerated. Mostly they are just some books being removed from libraries. And in some cases this is sensible (is a graphic depiction of oral sex really appropriate for 8- and 9-yr-olds?).
And it’s the left who, for example, declare that stopping circulation of a book is a hill they will die on, or phone bookshops to persuade them not to stock a book because the author has an opinion they dislike.
And anyhow, the left don’t need to “ban” books, they simply don’t don’t stock them in the first place. School librarians are skewed wildly to the left, and studies have shown that they are (for example) 30 times more likely to stock a book by a noted Democratic politician than an equivalent book by a Republican.
Both. Both gerrymander. Both try to pack rolls. Both dispute elections. Recently it’s the left who has, for example, lied about and shut down the Hunter Biden laptop story in order to save their candidate (I’m not saying the right wouldn’t do similar, but they haven’t had the power to censor social media and mainstream media that the left has had).
Not sure what this has got to do with anything. I was commenting on politics in countries like the US and UK.
What a ludicrously biased sumary of history. The hard left has created some of the worst regimes, including Soviet Russia, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and routinely turns countries into basket cases (e.g. Venezula).
Where did I cheer on Trump? Quote me.
Capitalism produces mass prosperity. That’s just a fact. People get rich by producing stuff that others want. And that benefits everyone. Economics is not a zero-sum game. You have no understanding of how the world works.
It will be billionaires who, over time, have played a major role in producing the prosperity that then allows countries to fund health care and a welfare state.
I don’t despise the left, or indeed anyone. I do make critiques of them. It’s people like you who despise people, as is clear from your indignant tone.
Sure, for now, tempered by democracy itself. Democracy is but one form of government that keeps all-out capitalism at bay, and this is the argument — that unharnessed capitalism has potentially catastrophic outcomes. It can be, and has been argued. Since when can’t things like this be argued? We already see gross perversions of capitalism at the fringe.
@Freemage:
Interesting. Can you back that up with stats and a cite?
Differences of opinion are not “lying”.
Being wrong is not in itself “lying”.
Interpreting anything you dislike as being a “lie” means you’re not a good-faith person.
Just ask yourself what role capitalism plays in the ever widening gap between the haves and the have nots and you will have answered that question (maybe). But that’s an invitation, not a directive.
@Artymorty:
Musk doesn’t really need a defence, His track record — with multiple different companies — speaks for itself.
But just one point. His career was not based on family wealth. His parents can be considered rich by South African standards, but not by American standards (roughly 30,000,000 Americans have the sort of ~1M$ wealth that his dad had when they were growing up).
His father was indeed an early investor in Musk’s companies, giving him and his brother $10,000 for a start up. That’s a level that vast numbers of Americans would get from their parents for a house purchase or whatever.
So your suggestion that this is all just wealth attracting wealth is just wrong.
You have to be dumb to reduce every criticism of every kleptocrat to “capitalism versus everything else”.
You have to be dumb to selectively filter out all the terrible things that @Coel’s idols do.
It’s never a good sign when your defence of your idols is reduced to a game of “oh yeah well I can think of other people who are worse”.
If your ideals, your idols, your political ideology, is constantly ruddered into a game of who’s ultimately less terrible, then your ideals, your idols, and your political ideology are plainly fucking terrible.
You’re in a glass-half-empty world and you’ve solidly earned a sidelining because your ideas are shit.
@twiliter:
There is not an “ever widening gap between the haves and the have nots”. Over the long term, capitalism has produced prosperity for the masses. In terms of standard of living and lifestyle, it is the broad middle classes who now enjoy the fruits of capitalism.
It is the non-capitalist countries that are more unequal, or only equal in the sense of everyone being poor. And if we go back in time, to the 1930s, or to the Victorian era, or back to medieval feudal times, it was those societies that were vastly unequal, with “have” robber barons lording it (literally) over the “have nots”.
@Artymorty:
What has Musk ever done that is actually so terrible?
Maybe not in your neck of the woods, fella. Have you been to many 3rd world countries? Have you been to South Africa? I have and a few others, and I have not adopted your perspective as a result. Even here in the US it’s quite evident. Come visit me here in Atlanta some time and I’ll show you what I’m talking about. Really! It’ll be fun and enlightening for both of us!
Separating his infant children from their mothers despite their desperate pleas? I know, that’s all too human for a sociopath like you to understand. You’ll just have to trust us non-ghouls that humans find that horrific.
@Artymorty:
I don’t know enough about that side of things to comment. I suspect you don’t either. And, where parents fall out over children, I certainly wouldn’t judge based on only one side of the story.
The ready resort to snide personal nastiness illustrates my point about the intolerance of the left. Too many on the left just can’t accept that a decent human being could have a good-faith disagreement with them.
No, sorry. that’s not good enough, you creep. You have all the resources in the world to know enough to comment. So fucking comment. Do not duck or play dumb. Comment.
Yes or fucking no: it’s reasonable for Elon Musk to deny the mothers of his children access to their children.
Do not stop looking until you’ve figured out the answer. Do not set it aside for someone else to deal with. Right here, right now: do not dismiss the issue.
Elon Musk abuses the mothers of his children. Real women are affected by this. Sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up and focus on this massive abuse of power.
Or, just carry on proving to everyone else that you’re a terrible, delusional creepy man who doesn’t know who to let go of your pet delusional ideas.
(Hint: we already know the answer to this. You’re a creep.)
@twiliter:
OK, well, in lauding capitalism, rejecting the idea of an “ever widening gap between the haves and the have nots” I was referring to the Western liberal democracies with capitalist economies.
Yes, things are bad in the Third World, especially where they have *not* adopted that Western model (where they have, such as Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, things are fine).
Yes, I’ve been to South Africa. It’s going off the rails owing to becoming a tribal kleptocracy. Hiring is based on identity, not merit. Instead of nurturing a capitalist economy to produce wealth, instead the government just tries to milk it.
In South Africa, only 7 million adults are engaged with the productive economy and so pay tax, whereas 30 million are on government handouts. That 30 million then vote for the government so that their handouts will continue.
@Artymorty:
Yes, my above reply (#32) is indeed good enough. Sorry, but it is.
Well I don’t live on the US West Coast anymore, but I have seen the extreme homeless problem in SF, LA, Seattle, and Portland. I can show you examples here in the South as well. The belief that capitalism has little to do with this problem, or hasn’t indeed created it, is somewhat blinkered.
@twiliter:
It is rather bizarre to blame that on “capitalism”. Homelessness is usually caused by drug or alcohol addiction, or mental health issues, or (in some cases) returning war veterans being unable to cope. It has also been increased by social policies that provide for the homeless and thus facilitate being homeless.
Homelessness is not intrinsic to capitalism, as can be seen from the fact that, for example, Singapore does not have a homelessness problem. It’s thus weird to blame capitalism for the issue
And I’m not claiming that Western capitalist-economy liberal democracies are perfect or free of faults, I’m saying they’re way better than any alternative.
I shall just remark that Judge Michael Luttig, an interview with whom I linked to above and who is endorsing Kamala Harris, is a lifelong Republican and a member of the Federalist Society. He also advised Pence, who is also refusing to support Trump, on his constitutional duties in the run-up to January the 6th. The claim that people belonging to that entirely fictitious entity, the ‘left’, do not speak to Republicans, is wholly untrue. There is, for example, that excellent website, The Bulwark; there are, in addition to Luttig, honourable people like Tim Miller, Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney and a great many other Republicans, who are perfectly happy to converse with ’the left’ and work with them. A very right-wing Republican, James Lankford, worked with Democraticand Republican colleagues to create a bi-partisan border bill, which was irresponsibly shut down by the MAGA crowd on the cynical orders of Trump so that he could keep the issue of border crossings alive in the run-up to the election. But of course none of this matters to a person who likes ‘mavericks’, and is so bound by his prejudices that he cannot see beyond them.
The suggestion that Kamala Harris is equally as bad or almost as bad a choice as Trump is ridiculous. I note that Coel has provided no reasons to back up his claim that she is as bad as Trump. Nor has he noted the success of the US economy under Biden. It does not appear to matter to him at all that on January the 6th Trump incited an insurrection that was intended to destroy American democracy, or that a second Trump presidency would be dangerous not only for the US but for the world. Nor, it seems, does he care about the sick lies that pour constantly from Trump’s mouth. Nor, it is clear, does he care about the destruction that the Tories have inflicted on British society and the British economy.
Finally, I think it is better that everyone, including myself, should simply ignore Coel. He provides no serious perspective on anything, and when challenged ducks, weaves, evades, and addresses only tangential issues, and not the principal objections that have been made to what he so confidently proclaims. Leave him to stew in his own juice.
There are symptoms, and then there are root causes.
@twiliter:
Insisting on attributing everything that is wrong to “capitalism” is like attributing everything wrong to “racism” or to “Inshallah”, it’s an ideological stance.
#twiliter
One of those root causes is surely the neo-liberal ideology that believes in unregulated capitalism, unchecked by any regulation by government, and a wholly free market that will somehow in some unspecified future right itself (after causing huge suffering along the way) and lead us into some bright, shiny Utopia where all will be happy. That ‘invisible hand’ that in the end will right all wrongs. It seems not to occur to its advocates that a wholly unregulated capitalism encourages bad actors to behave badly for a quick buck, as has happened in Britain in the case of the privatised water companies and elsewhere, and also brings about the gulf that has grown between the very rich and the lower paid members of our societies. When this is coupled with the idea that if an individual is poor, it is their own fault, whatever the circumstances they were born into or the kind of education they received, or the assumption that the poor have a naturally lower IQ than people whose only interest is making money and so may be callously tossed, in good Ayn Randian style, on to the scrapheap, matters are made far worse. This is why I am very glad to see both Biden and Harris recognising the importance of trade unions.
…attributing everything that is wrong to “capitalism”…
I was waiting for that “gotcha” buddy. I did no such thing. Which ones are causes vs. symptoms is up to you.
Thanks for giving an example on what is causal vs. symptomatic, Tim (so I didn’t have to, this gets tedious). Systems with certain parameters and preconditions have certain outcomes, and it’s complex — too complex to get into here, and besides, I’m not all that educated on economic theory to be honest. But back to the original point, an exposition of the dynamics of capitalism won’t explain why Musk is greedy, selfish, and power hungry with any relevance, but it can describe the environment in which people like this thrive. Staying on track isn’t easy with our friend Cole. His mind wanders far afield sometimes (to which I can somewhat relate). :)
Sorry, I meant Coel, not Cole. Not intentional.
So let’s re-cap:
twiliter: “… I have seen the extreme homeless problem in SF, LA, Seattle, and Portland.”
me: “Homelessness is usually caused by…”
twiliter: “There are symptoms, and then there are root causes.”
Tim: “One of those root causes is surely the neo-liberal ideology that believes in unregulated capitalism, unchecked by any regulation by government, …”
Except that I can’t help noticing that the places just mentioned (“SF, LA, Seattle, and Portland.”) are the most Democratic-voting places in the US.
And San Francisco is spending literally billions on the homeless (I’ve seen estimates of over $100,000 per homeless person per year — yes, really). Somehow I don’t think it is “neo-liberal ideology” that is doing this? (Just maybe it is their decriminalisation of crime and their vast subsidies to the homeless that are helping to create and perpetuate the problem?)
As so often, the left-wing analysis just collides with the facts.
And hardly anyone believes in “… unregulated capitalism, unchecked by any regulation by government …”, that’s a bogeyman made out of straw.
So it’s not really capitalism, it’s the Dems? Do they operate in a different system then? I don’t know how to steer back onto the main track here.
@twiliter:
It is indeed a capitalist system. But it is not “… neo-liberal ideology that believes in unregulated capitalism, unchecked by any regulation by government”, which was what I was responding to (I did quote it explicitly!).
That sort of “neo-liberal ideology” is not actually implemented anywhere, so is not the root cause of anything.
Anyhow, yes, capitalism should be wrapped around by all sorts of social structures in a decent society. But, no, capitalism is not the problem and not the cause of most social ills. Indeed, it’s part of the solution, since it generates prosperity.
Okay, Coel, so you say those homeless problems are in the Democratic voting areas. I have spent the largest portion of my life in deep red states; homelessness is rampant there, too, but gets a lot less press. Walking down the streets of Lincoln , NE in the winter is quite depressing, as the homeless tumble around in large numbers. Hardly a blue state. Lincoln does have a large portion of Democratic voters, but the district reliably votes Republican because the legislators drew so many counties into the district.
As for:
Some people get rich; most do not. The way to get truly rich is to make sure you don’t pay your workers well. And only someone not paying attention could ignore the fact that the middle class is shrinking, and that many working class families have to have multiple jobs just to pay the bills. In the US, they have few protections, and one medical emergency could send them into a spot they will never get out of.
And don’t tell me I don’t understand how the world works, because I do. I know how the world outside of humans works, as an ecologist. As someone who has taken multiple economics courses, political science courses, and business courses, I have seen the worst of them as economics. In my last economics class, the instructor put up graphs that showed exactly what you are saying: the country has been doing better overall since deregulation. The problem? The graphs didn’t show that, because they were actually from before deregulation. He didn’t even change the axes to fake it well; the class just assumed the graph showed what he said it did. Who knows? I might have, too, if I hadn’t seen a graph in the Wall Street Journal that morning showing the exact opposite pattern. As a scientist, I was curious. So I looked at the graph…something I have been trained to do.
In every economics class I have had, the instructors have lied. Blatantly, obviously, in such a way that any student who cares to take three minutes to check it out could figure out that they lied. And yet none of the economics students in my class figured it out. They were busy genuflecting at the altar of deregulation, and they didn’t want to know it was a lie.
I must admit, I never expected it. I had a bit of a tendency to be more trusting that someone employed by a major research university would be more honest, would not be so blatantly lacking in integrity. I learned a lot in my economics classes, but not what they wanted me to learn.
And not all homelessness is caused by alcoholism, or drug use. It can be caused by a lot of things. I had a friend in college who insisted all homelessness is by choice, because he spent a year homeless on the beach with a lot of friends, who all had not only homes, but upper middle class homes to go to…he was no more right than you. Yes, there will be homelessness that falls in both categories. There is also homelessness among the gay community when their parents throw them out because they are gay. There is the sort of homelessness I almost ended up in, where a medical condition kept me from working for several years, and I nearly lost everything I’d worked for. I was fortunate. My disability ended, and after a long search, I found a job right before I was going to lose my home. I was able to scrape by. But I was not making enough to do more, in spite of having degrees and experience. Coming back from a downturn, even from just a reduction in force, can be difficult to impossible.
It must be nice to think you know literally everything about this topic. You can feel smug and superior to the rest of us, who actually look beyond the nice easy answers that we want to see.
As for which countries are doing the best, it is not those who are capitalist; it is those who mix a healthy dose of socialism in with their capitalism. Even the US does that, though our dose isn’t very healthy right now. The countries that are considered the best to live in are all European countries with a strong, socialistic social safety net. Capitalism cannot make things better; it can only make things better for a few.
Why do we have a strong middle class? Not because of capitalism, but because of unions. Now that those have been so depleted, our middle class is shrinking. Capitalism hates unions; unions are a collective, a more socialistic, a more equitable, solution. Miners work in the most horrid conditions to make mine owners rich; they unionize, and the conditions improve, and so does the pay. Capitalism cannot protect the environment; that hurts the bottom line. Socialistic regulations force all of them to follow, so those who wish to protect the environment are now on a more level playing field, and environmental protection can happen. Same with worker safety. None of these were innovations of capitalism, but they all made the world better. They were all brought about from interference in capitalist activities by governmental entities who for whatever reason believed, for the briefest of periods, that they were actually a government for everyone, not just for the rich.
Sorry for the rant; it’s been one of those days.
Bravo, iknklast!
iknklast:
And yet there is no homelessness problem in other countries with capitalist economies, such as Taiwan or Singapore or indeed Iceland or Norway. Which means that the issue is not intrinsic to capitalism. Yes, seek the root causes, but blaming “capitalism” is not the answer.
No, wrong, that’s not socialism (Americans never understand what socialism actually is). Those are social democracies. That is, they operate with a capitalist economy with redistributive taxation to fund a welfare state and social policies.
And the idea of “unregulated” capitalism with no government regulation at all and no redistributive taxation is a bogeyman made out of straw that is not implemented anywhere and that no-one actually advocates (though obviously there are a wide range of opinions on the *degree* of such things).
Yes, of course, there should be democratically elected governments that regulate society and tax for the common good. No-one disagrees!
But this automatic attribution of anything bad to “capitalism” (or, in other contexts, to “racism”) is just silly. As you’ve accepted, those countries that are the best places to live have capitalist economies.
What tosh! If you look at actual lifestyles of the broad mass of people in the capitalist-economy Western countries, over decades — and look at things like car ownership, spread of consumer goods like refrigerators, A/Cs, heating, cars, smart phones, computers, vacation time, etc etc — the broad masses get way wealthier over time.
What tosh! The companies making a few people mega-rich, companies like Google, Facebook, Tesla, Apple, pay people vast salaries. If you’re a software engineer at Apple or Google in the US you’re looking at a minimum of $200,000 these days. And Tesla doesn’t get to the world’s best-selling electric car with a low-paid workforce!
And that doesn’t happen in Europe or Taiwan or plenty of other capitalist countries. Hence it is not the fault of capitalism! The US really is an outlier on that point. That’s to do with what Americans choose to vote for. Don’t blame “capitalism” for everything you dislike, that’s just silly!
Not at all, capitalist economies generate the prosperity from which everyone then benefits. Read Pinker for example. Life in Western capitalist-economy countries really is way better than in the past and way better than under any other system.
Capitalist liberal democracies can indeed protect the environment because voters vote for it! Actually, the West has a much better record of environmental protection than, say, Mao’s China or Soviet Russia.
Here we go again. Ratchet ratchet ratchet and Coel is writing book-length comments singing the joys of capitalism again. Someone types 50 words and Coel replies with 500 and on we go. I’m going to have to institute a Special Coel Rule or something – replies cannot be 10 or 20 times longer than what they’re replying to, something like that.
What role did capitalism play in the near extinction of the buffalo and wolf populations of North America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? What role does capitalism currently play in the clear cutting of the rain forests? Climate change? And so on.
Here’s the real question though: Is it unimaginable that human flourishing and overall quality of life would have been possible without a massively, environmentally destructive economic system?
One more thing, and I’ve said this before. Musk doesn’t give one little shit about the environment. He simply capitalized on the inevitablity of electric vehicles eventually replacing internal combustion powered vehicles. This wasn’t insight either, the idea was around long before he was born. Any conservation of fossil fuels by overpriced, status symbol vehicles is exponentially offset by the fossil fuels consumed by SpaceX in government subsidized vanity projects. His environmental concern stops at his ability to profit from it.
@Ophelia:
Just for the record, my last comment was 396 words (excluding quotes). The comment by iknklast to which it was a reply was 912 words (again excluding quotes).
@twiliter:
I don’t accept that capitalism is intrinsically more environmentally damaging than other economic systems. As I’ve said, the Soviet Union and Mao’s China were worse, in environmental terms, than the West at that time.
By what measurements? That’s just rubbish. All that says is that you think Socialism and Communism are bad and Capitalism is good (again). Unpersuasive.
Coel, the Soviet Union and Mao’s China were, in fact, bad. The environment was heavily damaged, and may never recover. It is still being damaged in both those countries and every other country. Whether it was worse than the west, however, is arguable. Until the 1970s, there were few environmental regulations. People in London were dying of killer fogs; the same thing happened in the US in the Appalachians. Water was toxic; air was toxic; soil was eroding at enormous rates. (Trust me on this; this is my field, and I suspect I’ve had a lot more experience with it than you have.)
In the 1970s, we put in some regulations, enough to make things cosmetically better and bring back some species on the brink of extinction; we have not been able to do much more because bottom line. For capitalists, the answer was that the smoke was ‘the smell of money’.
And I don’t think the European countries you cite are socialist; they are capitalist democracies with a strong social safety net – in short, exactly as you said – socialist democracies. I think I said they mixed in a strong dose of socialism, not that they were socialist. They are economies where people are propped up by a safety net built on socialist principles, but are still democracies.
And I’ve read Pinker. Yes, there is more material wealth in western democracies, but my point stands: that came about not because of capitalism but because of highly regulated capitalism. If you doubt that, just look to the 1880s.
At this point, I have decided to go back to what I had been doing for some months, and violated my own rule last night. I am no longer going to read your comments, because they do not contain any new information, they contain a great deal of misinformation, and they are, frankly, boring.
@iknklast:
Or, putting things another way, in the past everyone was bad at this. It’s now got a lot better in today’s capitalist liberal democracies. Again, my point here is that poor environmental regulation is not intrinsic to capitalism. Capitalism works just fine in a regime of strong environmental regulation (as in many Western countries today).
Well, rather, they are social democracies, not socialist democracies (as generally used, the term “socialist” is way stronger than the term “social”). They are social democracies with capitalist economies.
If we’re both in favour of that then we’re close to agreement. My argument is with those on the left who want to denigrate and throw out capitalism entirely, treating it as a bogeyman.
Left-wing parties need to embrace capitalism AND appropriate regulation and redistributive taxation to fund welfare programs.
Well yes, agreed! (Have I ever argued against appropriate regulation or redistributive taxation to fund a welfare state?) My basic point is that those did indeed came about “because of highly regulated capitalism”, but not from throwing out capitalism.
There is no prosperous country with a high standard of living for its citizens (and a protected environment and a welfare state and universal health care, etc) that has attained that any other way than via an economy based on capitalism.
Coel @ 55 – just stop. You’ve made this whole thread about you. Stop doing that. I don’t want you to stop commenting, but I do want you to stop the overkill. Argue, but quit trying to convert the heathen.