Myopia: The Existential Threat to Liberalism in the USA

[Tinker]

[crashtech]

...

[Simple Minded]

[Tinker]

If it weren't for the social conservatives trying to push an authoritarian agenda while calling it liberty, I'd probably be a Tea Partier.

But ultimately what we call Liberalism isn't actually LIberalism, what we call Conservatism is actually Liberalism. The modern Progressivism which has made a Faustian bargain with the state, viewing the government as the primary agent by which social change may be achieved is not actually Liberalism. But for the purposes of speaking to Americans that don't actually know what the word liberal means we should stick with the colloquial definition. Though I know that the people reading this know what I mean.

But that Progressivism isn't going away. As was seen in the last election, the Tea Partiers did not unseat one single Progressive. They unseated a bunch of Blue Dogs. So in essence they traded Conservative Democrats for Conservative Republicans.

[crashtech]

Faustian is as Faustian does.

[Tinker]

[skyhook77sfg]

may one say out loud all isms are proving suspect...

no matter of what stripe or shade...

not just poltical ideologies

modernity is freedom's child

and only the freedom to adapt

to constantly accelerating delta

will allow us to improvise practical

solutions that work across the

broad band of human needs...

ideologies are increasingly

the bailiwick of idiocies.

[Tinker]

Agreed skyhook.

[Simple Minded]

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

Spending time here has pushed me towards a view that this whole liberal enlightenment project is one messed up pony. Liberalism, Progressivism, Socialism- none of them are particularly attractive choices. Better than pre-modernity? Perhaps, that world no longer exists to make any sense- not to mention those who do advocate it....well, they don't paint a rosy picture either.

The existential threat that revolutions have brought us, the one that is making liberalism unsustainable, is the elimination of association and identity. All identities and associations cannot withstand liberalizations. We form corporations to artificially create identities that can navigate through the formless (and all powerful) states we reside. And even that hasn't helped because somewhere along the line, corporations and workers (the smart ones at least) have learned that these identities are as transient and unstable as the old pretend fiefdom ones we threw away- in other words, not worth investing in.

[noddy]

my childhood lessons in liberalism where that freedom was a hard and stressful thing with constant pressure to learn and grow and take on more responsibility... it was full of risk and you had to really pay attention to things if you didnt want a bad outcome.

it knew that stuff always fails, it knew that their are no garuntees .. just open eyes. it knew that waiting for someone else to fix your world was waiting for death and that an empowered adult who participated in the community around them could always indentify and fix things better than some remote power monger.

all the comfort rules that allow us to sue for bad outcomes are the reason free market small business is dead and cant come back.

in my childhood a motivated person could buy a loaf of bread and some sausages and sell hotdogs at a profit with very little resources at their disposal.

in modern australia they would need to do a food preparation course at personal cost then buy all the licensed and approved machines and then put down a big commitment on a rental contract for a building that was approved for food sales and had the appropriate amount of toilets and fire extinguishers and ramps with wheelchair access and then provide health care and clothes to all their staff and then hope like hell that no one tripped over or got a bad sausage and sued them because they dont have the big legal teams and resources to deal with that.

moderns DEMAND corporates do everything because anything without those massive pooled resources is an unacceptable risk.

[noddy]

[Simple Minded]

[Tinker]

Your hot dog vendor example is perfect. It is sad. Regulations as barrier to entry.

[noddy]

maybe, but this is the dissonance of the modern partisanship - in the other thread you where calling the nasty right wing loon who wanted tort reform an authentic devil.

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now, if somewhere along the line we can work out how to punish the big boys for gross exploitation without crippling the little boys out of fear of risk.....

[Tinker]

[NapLajoieonSteroids]

You got it right with the frankfurter

But the "comfort rules" are a problem but, not a cause.

When everyone is their own sovereign and the state holds a monopoly on governance- every state's sole priority becomes security and protection of their sovereigns.

The good achieved, less bigotry in all forms, leaves us a bureaucratic wasteland- it's not a wiener problem, it's a nuclear waste problem.

[noddy]

[noddy]

[Tinker]

Noddy, usually I agree with you, but what you said here is nonsense. Being the center of the economy doesn't matter, if we go down it impacts one of the largest market networks in existence. We may not be the center but we are still mammoth. And the stories of the decline of American manufacturing are greatly exaggerated.

[noddy]

[crashtech]

[noddy]

i spose my worldview is too old school when it comes to money - but i know enough chinese to know theirs is even more so.

i was being a bit blase to your "fast crash versus slow crash" but really... how much can you hit the credit card when you dont have the income to cover it and is the crash getting bigger or smaller when you do.

just exactly how are you not going to crash and when are you going to restructure your society around the fact you dont have post colonial, post ww2 spoils to play with anymore.

more debt now means more pain later.

[Tinker]

[noddy]

no argument about that.