Your weekly excerpt from one of my books. This week: "The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Gutted America and How to Restore Its Greatness"
There are two kinds of researchers: those who do studies to find out, and those who do studies to prove. I was groomed in grad school to view the latter group as not scientific. Friedman was clearly one of the latter types. They become so certain that their theories are correct that they spend their careers trying to prove they are right. Results from colleagues whose data call their notions into question are accused of not fully understanding the genius of their theory. Their theories become academic dogma when they prove useful to powerful political groups.
My experience while a deep state Navy officer, and later as an NIH official, is that the vast majority of politicians are not deep thinkers and sometimes even useful idiots. They are readily persuaded by lobbyists and other powerful influencers. On more than one occasion, I was able to get congressmen to amend proposed legislation by pointing out the unintended consequences of their bills. I recommended changes that would avoid unforeseen negative impact on donors, voters, and DOD, and later in my career, on public health.
Clearly, Friedman’s notions overlook the unintended consequences of his dogma. We might point to emerging trillionaires as one big unintended negative consequence – at least in the minds of most Americans.
1. Friedman's practicum was Chile. Didn't exactly work out. At one point they were using the priviization of the Chilean Social Security sysem as a model. It completeley failed.
That didn't stop GWB from pretending he had a mandate to privitize SSA in the 1990's. He was rebuffed, but Trump has brought many of the same ideoplogues who wanted privitization into his # 47 administration.
Eventually, my office was a consultant to the Chilean government after they reinstated democracy.
As I said yesterday, anyone interesrted in preserving SSA should watch Ed Weir. I don't have any connection to him. It doesn't cost anything. https://www.youtube.com/@MyGovExpert
2. Studies in Neoliberalism. Trump and China. War with Venezuela? Headlines Trump Administration Live Updates: U.S. and Chinese Officials Reach Framework of a Trade Deal
NYT. 10 am.
"Venezuela today sells the bulk of its oil to China, gets paid in crypto and then funnels some of those revenues back into the national economy through the designated crypto exchanges. These moves have in a matter of months turned Venezuela into arguably the first nation to manage a large share of its public finances in crypto.
"At the same time, Maduro’s vice president and economic czarina, Delcy Rodríguez, is privatizing Venezuela’s natural resources to bolster export revenues, including handing over dozens of small languishing oil fields to private investors."
So....since the election, the Trump family has made billions in cryptocurrency, which means that we taxpayers are funding this scam. AI: Reports estimate that the Trump family has made over $1 billion in cryptocurrency profits since the November 2024 election through several ventures, including the World Liberty Financial firm, affiliated meme coins, and Trump Media's bitcoin acquisitions. This figure fluctuates with the highly volatile crypto market.
Here's just a sample, courtesy of Olga Lautman.
Trump approved the transfer of advanced U.S. AI chips to G42, an Emirati firm controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, despite its links to Chinese tech networks. The decision comes amid scrutiny of Steve Witkoff’s financial ties to Trump-linked ventures like World Liberty Financial, which could profit from G42 partnerships.
Why It Matters: The deal raises major ethical and national security concerns as Trump allies stand to gain from sensitive tech exports. By enabling AI cooperation with a UAE firm tied to China, Trump continues eroding U.S. safeguards and fusing state policy with private profiteering.
I have close ties in Chile. China bought their presence in Chile long ago. The economy in Chile would not exist were it not for the deal by the government to allow nearly all natural resources to China and thousands of Chileans got rich while the masses are still way behind the curve. Santiago buys all its electric vehicles from China. If an economic "war" ever breaks out between US and China, we do not stand a chance.
They have "democracy" but every 6 years they elect a conservative president who does the deals, tries to roll back environmental laws and policies created by the last liberal president.
As with many true believers, reality needs to bend to suit the belief. From reading about Friedman's dismissiveness towards others, it appears to have been the case with him.
One of the papers I prepared in an economics class compared the rise of the social market model in Germany from about 1870 to 1910 with the development of the more "free market" approach in the U.K. The U.K. tool well over 200 years to develop the same change in levels of wealth that Germany did in just a couple of generations.
The German model was copied into the U.S. gradually from the early 1900s to the 1940s with similar results. The developments from 1980 onwards have represented a backsliding to the historic "free market" model with results to match.
Thus Bismarck, North Dakota's state capitol, Deustchland west. Ironically, many of the reforms have been overridden, mostly in the name of religion, but also in the name of Big Oil.
It's confusing. Whereas the Dakotas are the "Saudi Arabia of wind," the current Secrtary of Energy and the president oppose wind energy. The Secretary of Energy is a former governor of the state.
Two things come to mind. One is that no matter what type of system of governance we have, if too many of the leaders of government, and too many very wealthy individuals have psychological personality disorders, the systems will be at great risk. Greed, deception, lying, cheating, and other forms of corruption, like in the justice system, and legislation will happen. Since the people won't know what to believe, they will be easy "marks" for the influencers to have power and control over, and make unfair profits from. The other thing is that these so called neo-liberals may be using a more animal type psychology to come up with this BS. Stimulus response, using reward and punishment based control, without more enlightened understanding of very complex critical thinking, mature moral reasoning, and emotional intelligence of us humans leaves us to be looked at as animal like survival of the fittest, and rugged individualism mentality. This destroys the reality of the need for cooperation, compromise, community, and getting on the path toward a more enlightened society.
Democrats are taking Freidman's advice in using the crisis of the shutdown to push Republicans and their orange god into a corner. In this instance, it appears to be a good idea, however late they are in recognizing a crisis and using it to their (our) advantage. Our ideas have not just been lying around, of course. They have been buried under massive piles of lies and deception or misinformation. But they can get us back on track in some small way as a very minor beginning toward reversing the magical thinking of the reactionaries. There are multiple crises currently, and one can only hope the party leaders and the public as well will move swiftly and decisively to turn many things around in the next twenty years. Now, if only the shock doctrine could be applied to schooling. I wonder when people who should have already acknowledged true major crises will wake up and react with significant action to use the ideas which have been tried, tested, and proven far superior and effective (i.e., free school, as in school without coercion or undue pressure and conservative influence) to effectuate a revolution instead of a series of reforms which reinvent the wheel while the vehicle is up on blocks and cannot be moved (because of the inertia of "the tyranny of the status quo", along with the power allocated erroneously via attendance laws. I am not holding my breath.
On this we agree. Quoting: "“There is an enormous inertia – the tyranny of the status quo – in private and especially government arrangements. Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. "
Falling back to Naomi's shock doctrine. It is a concept, a strategy, a tactic that anyone can use. So far it has been the Financiers, the Capitalist that have used it.
Now it is time for us to use it against them.
Alas, I hold no hope that the moribund, feckless, complicit, cowardly or corrupt party leaders can or will seize the moment and use it to our advantage. I hold no hope, Hakeem Jeffries has finally come aboard the progressive train, but tepidly, Schumer and the DNC and DCCC, DSCC haven't.
And thus have ceded the field to the right wing populists.
Those of us who want real progress or to at least stop our rapid regression have to apply constant pressure and not stand for appeasement or thumb-twiddling. Success may breed success, despite the fearful and the too comfortable. We may yet see some extreme action from frustrated and desperate people who feel they have nothing to lose.
I totally agree, and that has been the gist of my comments on Reich's as well.
The ever feckless DNC has been supporting Republican lights, establishment types, and squashing left wing populist, thus ceding the battle to the Right Wing populists like Trump
For ages. since FDR, the only difference between a Clinton and a Bush was the D and the R
We are thrown a crumb like beggars and are expected to grovel, thank you, great one,oh thank you
The last time I voted was in 1968, until 2016, and I didn't vote for Hillary, I don't trust her, don't like her and consider her a self aggrandizing phoney, but I had to, I just had to vote against Trumpm and again 2020.
And I haven't seen any change in attitude, or performance with the DNC,DCCC or DSCC .
They are apparently too old, to set in their ways and too dependent on donor cash, to pay attention to the people.
Until Jeffries endorsed Mamdani, the leadershp of the party appeared to spend as much energy on putting down the progressives as beating Republicans.
That is a level of cynicism which worries me. I am highly skeptical and fed up with the foot (or knuckle) dragging, too. But I try to give some people some credit for sincerity even if they are too timid, cowardly, or naive to swim against the current or too anxious to "work within the system" and to compromise when they are being portrayed as the enemy and treated as doormats. The kind of progressive values I want to see require a major shift in public perceptions and fundamental beliefs about the universe and it just is not realistic to ask for that level of change while children still spend 12 years being trained to follow the leader, obey authority blindly, and remain passive and ignorant about the enlightenment that demands abandoning tradition, convention, and mythology with true daring.
There you go again Robert. I wish I knew your hostility to education, that I could understand where you are coming from.
How are we to learn to read and write, to think if not educate. Since being uneducated puts one at a disadvantage, especially if your parents could afford to tutor you, What then.
While i agree that the problem is who is doing the educating.
Christians and Muslims just love to have a monopoly over education, look what the madrassas turnout, look at what Christian schools turnout, what is left, what about the poor kid in a project, with a single mother who works at minimum wage to support her kids. What about those kids, are they doomed to illiteracy because of your system or rather lack of a system?
Yep High School was a bore. I was force fed pablum and bullshit, it was so bad that I absented myself so much that I was banished (spent three years in 9th grade, 90 days attendance in three years.
Yet here I sit with a bachelors with a 3.74 GPA and a masters with 3.47 GPA.
Never would have happened had my ability to learn to read,write and learn had depended on my mothers income, she struggled to house, feed and clothe us.
You will obviously never understand because you prefer to glory in your own personal experience and ostensible success, and you just do not care about what happens to students. It is that simple. If you wanted to understand you would have read what I wrote innumerable times. You believe you have superior knowledge; therefore, why should you give any credence to what I say? I do not have time or the desire to re-educate you. You make misstatement after misstatement and correcting you is futile. I have no hostility against school or education. You naively believe those are synonymous terms. I could care less what your GPA was in any school. They certainly didn't teach you anything about logic or humility. The harm schools do is conspicuous and well-documented. If they actually did give students valid literacy skills on any meaningful scale and a significant appreciation for intellectual or even mere academic things as they exist today or as they existed a century ago, a theoretical argument might be made for the authoritarian structure which is endemic to compulsory attendance. They do not. I have ample evidence of that. You have ignored the many references I have provided for many months. I'm afraid your head is stuck up somewhere I do not wish to think about. I only take time responding to you in case someone else is paying attention.
What the fuck does that have to do with the subject.
I know that you are stuck in the Israel HAMAS track.
First twice you misspelled intifada, then go off on a rampage about suicide bombers. You are either self willed stupid or blinded by ideology,.
Intifada is simply an Arabic word that means uprising. Do you get that Daniel an Arabic word that means uprising, and from that you take a leap into suicide bombers.
Amor is a Spanish word that means love, or to love. If I wish amor does that mean I want to fuck them.
Step outside yourself, step outside of your identity Daniel.
Would it make you happy if I said I want to see a national uprising, instead of intifada, the two words mean the same thing, but apparently not in your mind.
Edit added: Robert Reich's name. Does that mean that he is a NAZI, or since reich means rich, does that make him rich. How about a person named Carpenter or Weaver. How about a Solomon.
The language is full of loan words, the thesaurus is full of different ways to say the same thing.
The brand of capitalism that neoliberals promote and for the most part espouse, seems to be anything that prevents interference with the bottom line in the businesses, industries and investments they control.
We are staying stagnant in most areas of progress in this country except for the narrow parameters of technological advancement. Only that which advances their corporate profits, returns, output and, at the same time, decreases overhead, regulation, and taxes. All of this while our society is quickly becoming used to their bankrupt ethics.
In other words they want unfettered control in all of their life decisions and have complete control and use of all of their vast fortune that they have amassed and are hoarding without giving anything back to those who are really responsible for their fortune.
They want it all, power, control and absolute authority over their country and fellow countrymen. This is why they are dangerous.
So true Mr. Baltimore. Here is a recent example of the distortion of our economy which has been brought about by the insatiable quest for profits: Tesla Motors.
There is no question the earth needs an alternative to gas powered autos. Tesla could be said to have initiated a change in the correct direction. But look closely at the true condition of the Tesla Motor Company and you see a dangerous economic condition, on a national scale.
The capitalization of Tesla Motors constitutes about 40%+ of the total capitalization of ALL the auto companies in the world, combined. Yet it produces fewer actual autos than any of them. Many auto companies outproduce Tesla; and do so with a tiny capitalization.
In other words, Tesla is part of the dangerous Tech bubble which is about to burst. It need not be. But it is.
The one's driving the neo liberal train, have no need for what they call "socialized medicine)" and are never in economic need, they enjoy wealth and comfort that we can only dream of.
The fools that they jerk around like puppets on a string, are easily manipulated by making them resent the libs that fight for economic equity and universal medical care.
They are convinced that we are the enemy and there is no higher satisfaction than owning the libs, those filthy socialist communist libs.
Don't you know that the biggest threat to civilization (male dominance) are transfolk, immigrants and women who don't want to be trad wives.? Negate that threat and then they will worry about the price of eggs and gas, so long as they can buy eggs and gas.
Here is a fact, so long as these people can pay for an ISP, a cell phone, a TV provider, they are content, they mumble about prices, but so long as they have there physical needs met, they are only really concerned about their dominance needs.
Driving to work, they listen to Joe Rogan, but when out of a job and the belly is empty, the wife and children are hungry, they could care less about Joe Rogan, trans, immigrants or libs.
Milton Friedman sold greed as freedom and called it salvation. He baptized markets, canonized profit, and convinced a generation that selfishness was sacred. Reagan built the altar, Thatcher lit the candles, and the rest of us paid tithes to the invisible hand. Blessed be the ones who stopped worshiping the spreadsheet and started feeding the hungry instead.
Excellent job Mr. Hartmann. It is a shame nobody encouraged Friedman to study cultural anthropology. If he had done so; he would have discovered one of the single most important contributions of that discipline. The contribution is this: the only reason the human species has survived is because, by their very nature, they are SOCIAL beings. That is to say human beings live in groups of like-animals which interact with one another.
In this regard we are not phylogenetically alone. There are a number of other creatures from bugs to large animals which are SOCIAL beings.
An important addition must be included here. We humans use language to engage in social behavior. In fact according to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis our very reality is created by our language. In this regard we are unique among all animals. Chomsky famously called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis into question. But, for me, I agree with Sapir and Whorf on this one.
The claim by Friedman and Thatcher that there is no such thing as society, only individuals; is illogical, anti-empirical, nonsensical and almost insane on its face. I have always been amazed that such an absurd theorist as Friedman could teach at one of the best universities in this country for such a long time. It does not surprise me much that so many people have been followers of Friedman's nonsense, however. After all: millions still believe in the BIG DADDY up in the sky, and reject science as a legitimate epistemology.
On a different note. It has always seemed to me that academic economists have strived for years to make their discipline more respectable and legitimate by borrowing some of the intellectual habits of the physical sciences and mathematics. The attempt has failed to legitimize the discipline because they have stretched the effort too far.
Furthermore, the tendency for economists to treat the"market" as though it were something analogous to a celestial body; and subject to incontrovertible "laws" as is the case in physics and astronomy; is ludicrous.
BINGO! "We" didn't get to 8 billion or send the Voyagers to interstellar space by NOT being SOCIAL. Those who love to teach, learn, and do the work together are the secret sauce.
If I want to understand economics, I look to Scandinavia these days. Not at the theory stage, they are democratically succeeding for the most part, even though they have their own conservatives to deal with.
Wait, is that the long manly shadow of John Galt, rising Sun at his back, cast upon the rubbled wasteland that is the failed Socialist experiment, leading us to that Bright Promised Land where the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor?
'That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”
That state requires some thought in the fix we find ourselves.
Well, Captain my Captain. The words of Kennedy really mean so much now. We, need our government to help the citizens that live in it. You really do have to believe in democracy, though. Ask not what you can do for your country, indeed. Governance! Thanks, Captain. Learning history from you is really, fun! We, need truth.
Friedman’s philosophy has caused most people a tremendous amount of economic damage. They won’t understand until it implodes upon them.
In Chile, cost lives.
Absolutely he did.
There are two kinds of researchers: those who do studies to find out, and those who do studies to prove. I was groomed in grad school to view the latter group as not scientific. Friedman was clearly one of the latter types. They become so certain that their theories are correct that they spend their careers trying to prove they are right. Results from colleagues whose data call their notions into question are accused of not fully understanding the genius of their theory. Their theories become academic dogma when they prove useful to powerful political groups.
My experience while a deep state Navy officer, and later as an NIH official, is that the vast majority of politicians are not deep thinkers and sometimes even useful idiots. They are readily persuaded by lobbyists and other powerful influencers. On more than one occasion, I was able to get congressmen to amend proposed legislation by pointing out the unintended consequences of their bills. I recommended changes that would avoid unforeseen negative impact on donors, voters, and DOD, and later in my career, on public health.
Clearly, Friedman’s notions overlook the unintended consequences of his dogma. We might point to emerging trillionaires as one big unintended negative consequence – at least in the minds of most Americans.
Tomonthebeach. Another way to say it might be: Science seeks empirical knowledge, not truth.
1. Friedman's practicum was Chile. Didn't exactly work out. At one point they were using the priviization of the Chilean Social Security sysem as a model. It completeley failed.
Once upon a time, I was a reader at the National Security library. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/project/chile-documentation-project
That didn't stop GWB from pretending he had a mandate to privitize SSA in the 1990's. He was rebuffed, but Trump has brought many of the same ideoplogues who wanted privitization into his # 47 administration.
Eventually, my office was a consultant to the Chilean government after they reinstated democracy.
As I said yesterday, anyone interesrted in preserving SSA should watch Ed Weir. I don't have any connection to him. It doesn't cost anything. https://www.youtube.com/@MyGovExpert
2. Studies in Neoliberalism. Trump and China. War with Venezuela? Headlines Trump Administration Live Updates: U.S. and Chinese Officials Reach Framework of a Trade Deal
NYT. 10 am.
"Venezuela today sells the bulk of its oil to China, gets paid in crypto and then funnels some of those revenues back into the national economy through the designated crypto exchanges. These moves have in a matter of months turned Venezuela into arguably the first nation to manage a large share of its public finances in crypto.
"At the same time, Maduro’s vice president and economic czarina, Delcy Rodríguez, is privatizing Venezuela’s natural resources to bolster export revenues, including handing over dozens of small languishing oil fields to private investors."
So....since the election, the Trump family has made billions in cryptocurrency, which means that we taxpayers are funding this scam. AI: Reports estimate that the Trump family has made over $1 billion in cryptocurrency profits since the November 2024 election through several ventures, including the World Liberty Financial firm, affiliated meme coins, and Trump Media's bitcoin acquisitions. This figure fluctuates with the highly volatile crypto market.
Here's just a sample, courtesy of Olga Lautman.
Trump approved the transfer of advanced U.S. AI chips to G42, an Emirati firm controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed, despite its links to Chinese tech networks. The decision comes amid scrutiny of Steve Witkoff’s financial ties to Trump-linked ventures like World Liberty Financial, which could profit from G42 partnerships.
Why It Matters: The deal raises major ethical and national security concerns as Trump allies stand to gain from sensitive tech exports. By enabling AI cooperation with a UAE firm tied to China, Trump continues eroding U.S. safeguards and fusing state policy with private profiteering.
Source: The Hill
I have close ties in Chile. China bought their presence in Chile long ago. The economy in Chile would not exist were it not for the deal by the government to allow nearly all natural resources to China and thousands of Chileans got rich while the masses are still way behind the curve. Santiago buys all its electric vehicles from China. If an economic "war" ever breaks out between US and China, we do not stand a chance.
They have "democracy" but every 6 years they elect a conservative president who does the deals, tries to roll back environmental laws and policies created by the last liberal president.
Nothing is ever as simple as it seems....
They'd be suprised to find Michelle Bachelet was/is a conservative.
As with many true believers, reality needs to bend to suit the belief. From reading about Friedman's dismissiveness towards others, it appears to have been the case with him.
One of the papers I prepared in an economics class compared the rise of the social market model in Germany from about 1870 to 1910 with the development of the more "free market" approach in the U.K. The U.K. tool well over 200 years to develop the same change in levels of wealth that Germany did in just a couple of generations.
The German model was copied into the U.S. gradually from the early 1900s to the 1940s with similar results. The developments from 1980 onwards have represented a backsliding to the historic "free market" model with results to match.
Thus Bismarck, North Dakota's state capitol, Deustchland west. Ironically, many of the reforms have been overridden, mostly in the name of religion, but also in the name of Big Oil.
It's confusing. Whereas the Dakotas are the "Saudi Arabia of wind," the current Secrtary of Energy and the president oppose wind energy. The Secretary of Energy is a former governor of the state.
Two things come to mind. One is that no matter what type of system of governance we have, if too many of the leaders of government, and too many very wealthy individuals have psychological personality disorders, the systems will be at great risk. Greed, deception, lying, cheating, and other forms of corruption, like in the justice system, and legislation will happen. Since the people won't know what to believe, they will be easy "marks" for the influencers to have power and control over, and make unfair profits from. The other thing is that these so called neo-liberals may be using a more animal type psychology to come up with this BS. Stimulus response, using reward and punishment based control, without more enlightened understanding of very complex critical thinking, mature moral reasoning, and emotional intelligence of us humans leaves us to be looked at as animal like survival of the fittest, and rugged individualism mentality. This destroys the reality of the need for cooperation, compromise, community, and getting on the path toward a more enlightened society.
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".
Democrats are taking Freidman's advice in using the crisis of the shutdown to push Republicans and their orange god into a corner. In this instance, it appears to be a good idea, however late they are in recognizing a crisis and using it to their (our) advantage. Our ideas have not just been lying around, of course. They have been buried under massive piles of lies and deception or misinformation. But they can get us back on track in some small way as a very minor beginning toward reversing the magical thinking of the reactionaries. There are multiple crises currently, and one can only hope the party leaders and the public as well will move swiftly and decisively to turn many things around in the next twenty years. Now, if only the shock doctrine could be applied to schooling. I wonder when people who should have already acknowledged true major crises will wake up and react with significant action to use the ideas which have been tried, tested, and proven far superior and effective (i.e., free school, as in school without coercion or undue pressure and conservative influence) to effectuate a revolution instead of a series of reforms which reinvent the wheel while the vehicle is up on blocks and cannot be moved (because of the inertia of "the tyranny of the status quo", along with the power allocated erroneously via attendance laws. I am not holding my breath.
On this we agree. Quoting: "“There is an enormous inertia – the tyranny of the status quo – in private and especially government arrangements. Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. "
Falling back to Naomi's shock doctrine. It is a concept, a strategy, a tactic that anyone can use. So far it has been the Financiers, the Capitalist that have used it.
Now it is time for us to use it against them.
Alas, I hold no hope that the moribund, feckless, complicit, cowardly or corrupt party leaders can or will seize the moment and use it to our advantage. I hold no hope, Hakeem Jeffries has finally come aboard the progressive train, but tepidly, Schumer and the DNC and DCCC, DSCC haven't.
And thus have ceded the field to the right wing populists.
Those of us who want real progress or to at least stop our rapid regression have to apply constant pressure and not stand for appeasement or thumb-twiddling. Success may breed success, despite the fearful and the too comfortable. We may yet see some extreme action from frustrated and desperate people who feel they have nothing to lose.
I totally agree, and that has been the gist of my comments on Reich's as well.
The ever feckless DNC has been supporting Republican lights, establishment types, and squashing left wing populist, thus ceding the battle to the Right Wing populists like Trump
For ages. since FDR, the only difference between a Clinton and a Bush was the D and the R
We are thrown a crumb like beggars and are expected to grovel, thank you, great one,oh thank you
The last time I voted was in 1968, until 2016, and I didn't vote for Hillary, I don't trust her, don't like her and consider her a self aggrandizing phoney, but I had to, I just had to vote against Trumpm and again 2020.
And I haven't seen any change in attitude, or performance with the DNC,DCCC or DSCC .
They are apparently too old, to set in their ways and too dependent on donor cash, to pay attention to the people.
Until Jeffries endorsed Mamdani, the leadershp of the party appeared to spend as much energy on putting down the progressives as beating Republicans.
That is a level of cynicism which worries me. I am highly skeptical and fed up with the foot (or knuckle) dragging, too. But I try to give some people some credit for sincerity even if they are too timid, cowardly, or naive to swim against the current or too anxious to "work within the system" and to compromise when they are being portrayed as the enemy and treated as doormats. The kind of progressive values I want to see require a major shift in public perceptions and fundamental beliefs about the universe and it just is not realistic to ask for that level of change while children still spend 12 years being trained to follow the leader, obey authority blindly, and remain passive and ignorant about the enlightenment that demands abandoning tradition, convention, and mythology with true daring.
There you go again Robert. I wish I knew your hostility to education, that I could understand where you are coming from.
How are we to learn to read and write, to think if not educate. Since being uneducated puts one at a disadvantage, especially if your parents could afford to tutor you, What then.
While i agree that the problem is who is doing the educating.
Christians and Muslims just love to have a monopoly over education, look what the madrassas turnout, look at what Christian schools turnout, what is left, what about the poor kid in a project, with a single mother who works at minimum wage to support her kids. What about those kids, are they doomed to illiteracy because of your system or rather lack of a system?
Yep High School was a bore. I was force fed pablum and bullshit, it was so bad that I absented myself so much that I was banished (spent three years in 9th grade, 90 days attendance in three years.
Yet here I sit with a bachelors with a 3.74 GPA and a masters with 3.47 GPA.
Never would have happened had my ability to learn to read,write and learn had depended on my mothers income, she struggled to house, feed and clothe us.
Your solution to this problem is, what?
You will obviously never understand because you prefer to glory in your own personal experience and ostensible success, and you just do not care about what happens to students. It is that simple. If you wanted to understand you would have read what I wrote innumerable times. You believe you have superior knowledge; therefore, why should you give any credence to what I say? I do not have time or the desire to re-educate you. You make misstatement after misstatement and correcting you is futile. I have no hostility against school or education. You naively believe those are synonymous terms. I could care less what your GPA was in any school. They certainly didn't teach you anything about logic or humility. The harm schools do is conspicuous and well-documented. If they actually did give students valid literacy skills on any meaningful scale and a significant appreciation for intellectual or even mere academic things as they exist today or as they existed a century ago, a theoretical argument might be made for the authoritarian structure which is endemic to compulsory attendance. They do not. I have ample evidence of that. You have ignored the many references I have provided for many months. I'm afraid your head is stuck up somewhere I do not wish to think about. I only take time responding to you in case someone else is paying attention.
Jeffries and Schumer are all we have....unless there's another election, which may never occur.
Still waiting for the first suicide bomber?
If Jeffries and Schumer are all we have, then we are fucking doomed, unless they quickly grow some balls.
What's with you and suicide bombers? A repressed longing?
That's what they did. Their kids, infants, were expendible. Some were suicide bombers. The family got a bonus from Qatar, Saudi.
Waiting for you to lead the way. Make an example.
What the fuck does that have to do with the subject.
I know that you are stuck in the Israel HAMAS track.
First twice you misspelled intifada, then go off on a rampage about suicide bombers. You are either self willed stupid or blinded by ideology,.
Intifada is simply an Arabic word that means uprising. Do you get that Daniel an Arabic word that means uprising, and from that you take a leap into suicide bombers.
Amor is a Spanish word that means love, or to love. If I wish amor does that mean I want to fuck them.
Step outside yourself, step outside of your identity Daniel.
Would it make you happy if I said I want to see a national uprising, instead of intifada, the two words mean the same thing, but apparently not in your mind.
Edit added: Robert Reich's name. Does that mean that he is a NAZI, or since reich means rich, does that make him rich. How about a person named Carpenter or Weaver. How about a Solomon.
The language is full of loan words, the thesaurus is full of different ways to say the same thing.
Geeze.
You are the advocate for it. Said is several times.
In your hatred for all people who you oppose, there won't be anyone left, because you won't have any allies.
The brand of capitalism that neoliberals promote and for the most part espouse, seems to be anything that prevents interference with the bottom line in the businesses, industries and investments they control.
We are staying stagnant in most areas of progress in this country except for the narrow parameters of technological advancement. Only that which advances their corporate profits, returns, output and, at the same time, decreases overhead, regulation, and taxes. All of this while our society is quickly becoming used to their bankrupt ethics.
In other words they want unfettered control in all of their life decisions and have complete control and use of all of their vast fortune that they have amassed and are hoarding without giving anything back to those who are really responsible for their fortune.
They want it all, power, control and absolute authority over their country and fellow countrymen. This is why they are dangerous.
So true Mr. Baltimore. Here is a recent example of the distortion of our economy which has been brought about by the insatiable quest for profits: Tesla Motors.
There is no question the earth needs an alternative to gas powered autos. Tesla could be said to have initiated a change in the correct direction. But look closely at the true condition of the Tesla Motor Company and you see a dangerous economic condition, on a national scale.
The capitalization of Tesla Motors constitutes about 40%+ of the total capitalization of ALL the auto companies in the world, combined. Yet it produces fewer actual autos than any of them. Many auto companies outproduce Tesla; and do so with a tiny capitalization.
In other words, Tesla is part of the dangerous Tech bubble which is about to burst. It need not be. But it is.
I wonder if the Neoliberalists ever considered that they (or their families) could be in medical or economic need.
The one's driving the neo liberal train, have no need for what they call "socialized medicine)" and are never in economic need, they enjoy wealth and comfort that we can only dream of.
The fools that they jerk around like puppets on a string, are easily manipulated by making them resent the libs that fight for economic equity and universal medical care.
They are convinced that we are the enemy and there is no higher satisfaction than owning the libs, those filthy socialist communist libs.
Don't you know that the biggest threat to civilization (male dominance) are transfolk, immigrants and women who don't want to be trad wives.? Negate that threat and then they will worry about the price of eggs and gas, so long as they can buy eggs and gas.
Here is a fact, so long as these people can pay for an ISP, a cell phone, a TV provider, they are content, they mumble about prices, but so long as they have there physical needs met, they are only really concerned about their dominance needs.
Driving to work, they listen to Joe Rogan, but when out of a job and the belly is empty, the wife and children are hungry, they could care less about Joe Rogan, trans, immigrants or libs.
This is a plan for getting rid of POS and his minions: https://substack.com/home/post/p-176311889
Will it happen? Of course not, but at least, someone's actually thought about it.
She needs to read the Jerry Weiss scenario.
Milton Friedman sold greed as freedom and called it salvation. He baptized markets, canonized profit, and convinced a generation that selfishness was sacred. Reagan built the altar, Thatcher lit the candles, and the rest of us paid tithes to the invisible hand. Blessed be the ones who stopped worshiping the spreadsheet and started feeding the hungry instead.
Excellent job Mr. Hartmann. It is a shame nobody encouraged Friedman to study cultural anthropology. If he had done so; he would have discovered one of the single most important contributions of that discipline. The contribution is this: the only reason the human species has survived is because, by their very nature, they are SOCIAL beings. That is to say human beings live in groups of like-animals which interact with one another.
In this regard we are not phylogenetically alone. There are a number of other creatures from bugs to large animals which are SOCIAL beings.
An important addition must be included here. We humans use language to engage in social behavior. In fact according to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis our very reality is created by our language. In this regard we are unique among all animals. Chomsky famously called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis into question. But, for me, I agree with Sapir and Whorf on this one.
The claim by Friedman and Thatcher that there is no such thing as society, only individuals; is illogical, anti-empirical, nonsensical and almost insane on its face. I have always been amazed that such an absurd theorist as Friedman could teach at one of the best universities in this country for such a long time. It does not surprise me much that so many people have been followers of Friedman's nonsense, however. After all: millions still believe in the BIG DADDY up in the sky, and reject science as a legitimate epistemology.
On a different note. It has always seemed to me that academic economists have strived for years to make their discipline more respectable and legitimate by borrowing some of the intellectual habits of the physical sciences and mathematics. The attempt has failed to legitimize the discipline because they have stretched the effort too far.
Furthermore, the tendency for economists to treat the"market" as though it were something analogous to a celestial body; and subject to incontrovertible "laws" as is the case in physics and astronomy; is ludicrous.
BINGO! "We" didn't get to 8 billion or send the Voyagers to interstellar space by NOT being SOCIAL. Those who love to teach, learn, and do the work together are the secret sauce.
If I want to understand economics, I look to Scandinavia these days. Not at the theory stage, they are democratically succeeding for the most part, even though they have their own conservatives to deal with.
Wait, is that the long manly shadow of John Galt, rising Sun at his back, cast upon the rubbled wasteland that is the failed Socialist experiment, leading us to that Bright Promised Land where the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor?
Ayn Rand must be so happy.
The greatest cost to the greatest number of people is the measure of success for that "philosophy."
'That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”
That state requires some thought in the fix we find ourselves.
Well, Captain my Captain. The words of Kennedy really mean so much now. We, need our government to help the citizens that live in it. You really do have to believe in democracy, though. Ask not what you can do for your country, indeed. Governance! Thanks, Captain. Learning history from you is really, fun! We, need truth.
I submitted a piece called "How We Got Here" to the Atlantic that mirrored this almost to a "T".
I guess I do not have the cred that you do Sir