Comment by mindslight

Comment by mindslight 2 days ago

It's mostly the same party, politicians, and cheerleaders who have been dismantling those safety nets, while supporting offshoring and massive handouts to the rich (via the asset bubble). The economic issues driving the destructionist anger are themselves the results of primarily Republican policies becoming un-ignoreable. But rather than any sort of self reflection they're just turning the blame to new scapegoats.

This has effectively been a death spiral for the past several decades - blame the government for incompetence while preventing it from doing anything. For example a major reason that so much power accrued to executive agencies in the first place is the trend of Congressional gridlock kicked off by Newt Gingrich.

As a libertarian I have plenty of criticism of the Democratic party as well, but they're not the ones currently wholesale destroying our Constitution.

throwawayqqq11 2 days ago

As a leftist, i can tell you that any kind of unchecked capitalism or inequality threatens democracies and their constitutions in the long run.

The contradiction of private vs public interests surfaces when growth/ROI demands become harder to achieve. Marx predicted it as diminishing profit rates [0]. The decades of lowering taxes for rich individuals and corporations led to the present budget pressure on institutions, civic decay and agitated uninformed voters. This happens in all capitalistic democracies and we hear the same songs everywhere, about more austerity with a xenophobic background.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit...

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mindslight 2 days ago

> As a leftist, i can tell you that any kind of unchecked capitalism or inequality threatens democracies and their constitutions in the long run.
And as a libertarian I can emphatically agree. A foundation of libertarianism is freedom of individual choice, and when a significant number of are economically disenfranchised such that they face economic coercion while simply trying to exist, it completely undermines that foundation. And looking at the structure from the top, completely ineffective anti-trust enforcement has made it so there aren't even many choices to choose from.
> The decades of lowering taxes for rich individuals and corporations lead to the [pressing] budget pressure on institutions, civic decay and agitated uninformed voters
I agree with your description of this trend, as well. I learned long ago that it's not enough to merely push in one direction and assume any results will be positive by construction. Rather you must look at what actually stands to be achieved, in order to avoid merely being a patsy for entrenched interests.
I do question why diminishing profit rates are relevant though. Even if profits had generally been going up, wouldn't the desire for even more wealth lead to the same lobbying / looting pattern?
I haven't really studied Marx though. A quick reading of your link, and trying to restate what I took away in my own terms: As labor becomes less important to capital, then capital is less inclined to invest in the labor pool? That does basically fit the overall trends.

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- throwawayqqq11 a day ago
  
  > I do question why diminishing profit rates are relevant though. Even if profits had generally been going up, wouldn't the desire for even more wealth lead to the same lobbying / looting pattern?
  Yes, it would, because the expectations of growth/profit/ROI are baked into the system (eg. by interests rates ticking on everything) but in this case, not necessarily to the detriment of society. The profit drive is the root of the problem. Achieving these profits is the point of conflict.
  In early capitalistic societies, economic growth is easier because of untapped resources but once the growth of the economic pie slows down, environmental exploitation becomes societal explotation. Previously the point of conflict was capitalists, externalizing cost onto nature (waste products, side effects), today, it is them externalizing operational cost onto the public. Marxs take is, as i understand it, that this profit margin is physically bound to shrink when the remaining space for cost externalization shrinks too, because free markets eventually propagate the lower product prices.
  
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