“Please name one country, anywhere in the world, any time in the last 7000 years, where libertarianism has succeeded and produced general peace and prosperity?”
The Reagan shift to neoliberalism was hugely successful in enriching the top 1% and in destroying unions and their influence in government. We now have all branches of government controlled by the 1% and the oil companies dictate foreign policy and big pharma and medical industry dictate healthcare and the meat and dairy industries dictate food policy and subsidies. The program has been completely successful in reducing the wealth and influence and power of the working classes in this country which was the objective. When the 25 richest men in Germany backed the Nazi Party and Adolph Hitler the quid pro quo was the party outlawing worker unions. With the Republican takeover of the U.S. Supreme Court under Karl Rove's guidance, their victory was complete with corporations allowed to make unlimited donations to bribe officials and even to kill hundreds of people and pay only a fine with no owner or manager going to jail. But this dates back to 1944 when the Democratic Party bosses had the progressive Vice President Henry A. Wallace replaced by Harry S. Truman and in effect made him the next president.
What was weird, Texans were trying to flee to Mexico, but Mexican border hotels were full! The power was on in Mexico, just to be clear. Maybe Mexico wished it had built The Wall! But there is no breaking the mind-control of plenty of susceptible dupes to comfortably keep Mitch McC. and Joe Manchin cruisin' along. As a retired criminal defense lawyer, I remember hearing an adulatory reading of an Ayn Rand selection at an "investment conference" some years back, and thinking, this Rand hero sounds like one of my clients whining about getting caught! I have a 103-year-old aunt who never worked a day in her life who has her long, long-dead husband's TAX-FREE fireman's retirement and SS. Throw the old lady out in the street? I am the last of the next generation, and I couldn't begin to take care of her. Scary.
Yup, you nailed it, Thom. Also, no one knows how to use the infrastructure like wealthy people driving their big SUVs, flying out of our airports, building MC-mansions that need fire and police protection, hiring the people they don't want to educate, and extracting every public resource they can get a permit for. It never ends, because they think they deserve it. The name Bundy comes to mind.
"Magical thinking, the belief that one's ideas, thoughts, actions, words, or use of symbols can influence the course of events in the material world."-Encyclopedia Britannica
An apt description for Libertarian ideology. They think a free market will magically result in people getting what they deserve. Voodoo doesn't begin to describe it, but that too involves death and destruction.
Mr. Hartman is noting an interesting fact about the type of government that has been so successful in the Nordic Countries of Denmark, Norway and Sweden- along with Finland and Iceland: It's not socialism or a pink for of communism as so many analysts maintain, it's simply a very stable, sophisticated collaborative government with multiple parties for people to spread their votes into - thus guaranteeing that the Hubris of Power that has become such an obstacle to change in the US' 2-party system can't happen in those countries. Citizens have cradle to coffin safety blankets and a 50% income tax and sales tax funding formula, and businesses and corporations pay a fair share and have a large, robust middle class, stable operating environment
"If it had, that country would be on the tip of every Libertarian’s tongue, the way Democratic Socialists talk about Scandinavia where the full-on Social Democracy and regulated capitalism experiment has succeeded for generations.
Doing my show from Copenhagen a few years ago, I had one of that nation’s top conservative politicians on.
“So, you’re one of the nation’s leading conservatives,” I said. “I guess that means you want to privatize Denmark’s national healthcare system?”
He blinked a few times, incredulous, and then said, bluntly, “Are you crazy?”
Students have no forever loans to be paying till they retire.
But, they also appear to use a lot of anti-depression pills (https://www.vox dot com/2015/2/24/8101117/chart-scandinavians-take-a-lot-of-antidepressants-that-might-be-a
I am not sure what American voters really want to do about their type of 'government' now that we have tried 40 years of Reaganomics:
"Americans, increasingly, are figuring out the damage this failed 40-year-long experiment has done to our nation, which is why people are leaving the Republican Party in droves."
I do know that we now have the technology to beat the billionaires at their own game if 200 million commonsense voters are willing to channel $25 per month into https://voteathomedot org/ or https://www.votefromhomeusa dot org/, instead of just blaming the Republicans for a successful power train.
Unfortunately what the average American knows of Reagan is he GOP propaganda that he ended the cold war and was a hero in "fixing' Carters' runaway inflation thus restoring our economy.
How to educate every uninformed person about how so much of the negative state of our country that brought us Trump began with Reagan policies. One thing that makes me crazy is the rise of hate media that began under Reagan so that great areas of our country are a wasteland for knowledge of what's actually going on. Prior to our invasion of Iraq, my husband and I (with our Weimaraner) returned from our Alaska trip to upstate NY via the northern route from Seattle.
We lived in our pickup but it has a good radio. We could get real news in one place (an obscure spot in Wyoming where we could camp). Gas stations played evangelical political hate routinely and finding a NY Times on any newspaper shelf was impossible.
As you often say, this has not improved but thanks to the internet, etc. (brought to these anti science people by physicists) they can get news if they try.
I Just translated a new GOP’s party slogan and it came up with Ego Got Meus (sounds better than the “I Got Mine” party), and I could not confirm whether or not Rand Paul was named after Ayn Rand (some say yes and Ron Paul says no). Regardless, the laws, regulations, and rulings that the morbidly rich designed and had implemented over the last 50 years have set the stage for a libertarian dystopia. I think they could settle this once and for all with this simple amendment to the Preamble:
We, the unacknowledged rulers of America, in order to make more money and take more power over time, establish the justice we want with unrestricted surveillance powers, ensure Tranquility in the safe zones of the morbidly rich, build our empire with the pretense of providing for the common defense, promote our private welfare and ensure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our fortunate offspring in perpetuity, do reestablish this Constitution for the United States of America. And the rest of you can suck it.
Although I suppose you could argue that this is the version of the Preamble that the GOP uses today as their mission statement.
The Reagan shift to neoliberalism was hugely successful in enriching the top 1% and in destroying unions and their influence in government. We now have all branches of government controlled by the 1% and the oil companies dictate foreign policy and big pharma and medical industry dictate healthcare and the meat and dairy industries dictate food policy and subsidies. The program has been completely successful in reducing the wealth and influence and power of the working classes in this country which was the objective. When the 25 richest men in Germany backed the Nazi Party and Adolph Hitler the quid pro quo was the party outlawing worker unions. With the Republican takeover of the U.S. Supreme Court under Karl Rove's guidance, their victory was complete with corporations allowed to make unlimited donations to bribe officials and even to kill hundreds of people and pay only a fine with no owner or manager going to jail. But this dates back to 1944 when the Democratic Party bosses had the progressive Vice President Henry A. Wallace replaced by Harry S. Truman and in effect made him the next president.
What was weird, Texans were trying to flee to Mexico, but Mexican border hotels were full! The power was on in Mexico, just to be clear. Maybe Mexico wished it had built The Wall! But there is no breaking the mind-control of plenty of susceptible dupes to comfortably keep Mitch McC. and Joe Manchin cruisin' along. As a retired criminal defense lawyer, I remember hearing an adulatory reading of an Ayn Rand selection at an "investment conference" some years back, and thinking, this Rand hero sounds like one of my clients whining about getting caught! I have a 103-year-old aunt who never worked a day in her life who has her long, long-dead husband's TAX-FREE fireman's retirement and SS. Throw the old lady out in the street? I am the last of the next generation, and I couldn't begin to take care of her. Scary.
Yup, you nailed it, Thom. Also, no one knows how to use the infrastructure like wealthy people driving their big SUVs, flying out of our airports, building MC-mansions that need fire and police protection, hiring the people they don't want to educate, and extracting every public resource they can get a permit for. It never ends, because they think they deserve it. The name Bundy comes to mind.
"Magical thinking, the belief that one's ideas, thoughts, actions, words, or use of symbols can influence the course of events in the material world."-Encyclopedia Britannica
An apt description for Libertarian ideology. They think a free market will magically result in people getting what they deserve. Voodoo doesn't begin to describe it, but that too involves death and destruction.
Mr. Hartman is noting an interesting fact about the type of government that has been so successful in the Nordic Countries of Denmark, Norway and Sweden- along with Finland and Iceland: It's not socialism or a pink for of communism as so many analysts maintain, it's simply a very stable, sophisticated collaborative government with multiple parties for people to spread their votes into - thus guaranteeing that the Hubris of Power that has become such an obstacle to change in the US' 2-party system can't happen in those countries. Citizens have cradle to coffin safety blankets and a 50% income tax and sales tax funding formula, and businesses and corporations pay a fair share and have a large, robust middle class, stable operating environment
"If it had, that country would be on the tip of every Libertarian’s tongue, the way Democratic Socialists talk about Scandinavia where the full-on Social Democracy and regulated capitalism experiment has succeeded for generations.
Doing my show from Copenhagen a few years ago, I had one of that nation’s top conservative politicians on.
“So, you’re one of the nation’s leading conservatives,” I said. “I guess that means you want to privatize Denmark’s national healthcare system?”
He blinked a few times, incredulous, and then said, bluntly, “Are you crazy?”
Students have no forever loans to be paying till they retire.
But, they also appear to use a lot of anti-depression pills (https://www.vox dot com/2015/2/24/8101117/chart-scandinavians-take-a-lot-of-antidepressants-that-might-be-a
I am not sure what American voters really want to do about their type of 'government' now that we have tried 40 years of Reaganomics:
"Americans, increasingly, are figuring out the damage this failed 40-year-long experiment has done to our nation, which is why people are leaving the Republican Party in droves."
I do know that we now have the technology to beat the billionaires at their own game if 200 million commonsense voters are willing to channel $25 per month into https://voteathomedot org/ or https://www.votefromhomeusa dot org/, instead of just blaming the Republicans for a successful power train.
Unfortunately what the average American knows of Reagan is he GOP propaganda that he ended the cold war and was a hero in "fixing' Carters' runaway inflation thus restoring our economy.
How to educate every uninformed person about how so much of the negative state of our country that brought us Trump began with Reagan policies. One thing that makes me crazy is the rise of hate media that began under Reagan so that great areas of our country are a wasteland for knowledge of what's actually going on. Prior to our invasion of Iraq, my husband and I (with our Weimaraner) returned from our Alaska trip to upstate NY via the northern route from Seattle.
We lived in our pickup but it has a good radio. We could get real news in one place (an obscure spot in Wyoming where we could camp). Gas stations played evangelical political hate routinely and finding a NY Times on any newspaper shelf was impossible.
As you often say, this has not improved but thanks to the internet, etc. (brought to these anti science people by physicists) they can get news if they try.
I Just translated a new GOP’s party slogan and it came up with Ego Got Meus (sounds better than the “I Got Mine” party), and I could not confirm whether or not Rand Paul was named after Ayn Rand (some say yes and Ron Paul says no). Regardless, the laws, regulations, and rulings that the morbidly rich designed and had implemented over the last 50 years have set the stage for a libertarian dystopia. I think they could settle this once and for all with this simple amendment to the Preamble:
We, the unacknowledged rulers of America, in order to make more money and take more power over time, establish the justice we want with unrestricted surveillance powers, ensure Tranquility in the safe zones of the morbidly rich, build our empire with the pretense of providing for the common defense, promote our private welfare and ensure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our fortunate offspring in perpetuity, do reestablish this Constitution for the United States of America. And the rest of you can suck it.
Although I suppose you could argue that this is the version of the Preamble that the GOP uses today as their mission statement.