Comments by "Harry Stoddard" (@HarryS77) on "Rebel HQ"
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Yul Bahbo Free markets in capitalism tend to be disastrous to all except the extremely rich. One example I'm currently fond of is the control/deregulation of price controls for grain in the 2 decades leading up to the French Revolution.
The problem I see with arguments like yours is that "pure capitalism" is defined in such a way that all unsuccessful implementations can be dismissed as crony capitalism and the like, making "capitalism" an abstraction that cannot inhere in the real world. Maybe that's okay for a philosophical discussion, but it's not very useful regarding implementation.
Now, your definition is kind of aberrant. I doubt a Chicago School economist would recognize a system with regulations as "capitalism," because regulations are considered distortions. But let's assume that that's not a problem.
Real existing capitalism creates a symbiotic relationship with big government. Business needs a strong government to safeguard its property rights and to arbitrate disputes among business interests. If a strong government doesn't exist, business will create one. As a result, real existing capitalism tends to consolidate wealth and power. I can't stress this enough, because it's a point that's often neglected. It's assumed that business and government are inherently separate and antagonistic entities. Big business without a big government is called Fascism, and in that case big business IS the government.
Moreover, capitalism in its more successful permutations has historically arisen thanks to protectionist (anti-capitalist) measures, as in Great Britain where the king protected against things like imported wool and corn, and in the US. In places where strict free market policies are imposed, particularly in the modern world, the economy has floundered. Ha-Joon Chang has a good book on this called Kicking Away the Ladder.
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Nationalization of the railways is a popular policy in the UK (⅔ support). Privatization of that industry has led to less efficient schedules and routes, resulting in artificially higher costs for riders. Industries that rely heavily on ownership of infrastructure and/or serving the public good tend to perform better under nationalization or some kind of natural monopoly with government oversight.
Bernie is right to recover the word "socialist" from right-wing demonization, and he does so by touting successful, wide-spread social democratic policies and historical American figures, like Eugene Debs.
Where I personally disagree with him is that I wish he had a capital 'S' Socialist position, i.e. not state socialism but worker control. In the end, Sanders is a capitalist who supports private property. Doesn't matter much whether the state functions as a capitalist or private entities do. It's sort of like the difference between feudalism where land was owned by barons versus feudalism (sometimes called absolutism) where ownership and control primarily resided with the state monarchy.
I think in some ways Sanders's "socialist" identification, while reawakening some people to forgotten aspects of political history, entrenches the misunderstanding, by now a century old, over what Socialism, the political theory of a democratic economy through worker self-management and federation, means, a misunderstanding that the right used to demonize socialism in the first place. His brand of socialism is a concession that keeps the powerful in power, much like FDR's "socialist" policies that "saved capitalism."
Corbyn is certainly more left than Sanders, but I don't think he qualifies as a Socialist-Socialist, as shown by his commitment to increasing funding for police and surveillance. Moreover, unlike the US, Europe has a long history of Socialist and Communist parties. Calling yourself a socialist there is not at all uncommon.
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First, take your hand off Shift+1. Global warming is a part of climate change. They are different. What you're doing is like calling a staircase a building. One is only a part of the whole.
Climate change is a broader term that encompasses not just global warming, but also the side effects, like increased rains, hurricanes, etc., things we don't normally think of as "warm."
You shouldn't ask a geologist about "global warming," you should ask a climatologist. Would you ask a particle physicist his opinion on bee populations?
There are two polar ice caps, the Arctic and Antarctic. The latter has increased substantially—however, not enough to offset the loss of ice in the Arctic. According to satellite imagery, the Arctic has lost much of its old ice, that is, the ice that does not need to be replenished every winter. The less old ice there is, the less new ice can be formed to make up for it, which leads to an overall loss of ice in the Arctic. The flow of frigid water not only raises global sea levels, but also disrupts the Gulf Stream.
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Let's see what NASA has to say:
Headline: Antarctic Sea Ice Reaches New Record Maximum
Editor’s note: Antarctica and the Arctic are two very different environments: the former is a continent surrounded by ocean, the latter is ocean enclosed by land. As a result, sea ice behaves very differently in the two regions. While the Antarctic sea ice yearly wintertime maximum extent hit record highs from 2012 to 2014 before returning to average levels in 2015, both the Arctic wintertime maximum and its summer minimum extent have been in a sharp decline for the past decades. Studies show that globally, the decreases in Arctic sea ice far exceed the increases in Antarctic sea ice.
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/antarctic-sea-ice-reaches-new-record-maximum
As for "global cooling," you can read about how that term came to be in this Scientific American article:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-global-cooling-story-came-to-be/
In that article, Mark McCaffrey draws a distinction between what scientists think would happen in a natural world absent human industrial intervention and the world as it is, in which humans are a "force of nature":
"Even today, "there is some degree of uncertainty about natural variability," acknowledged Mark McCaffrey, programs and policy director of the National Center for Science Education based in Oakland, Calif. "If it weren't for the fact that humans had become a force of nature, we would be slipping back into an ice age, according to orbital cycles."
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+sinistar99 What false stories? The emails that emerged from the alleged hack have never been falsified, and the few attempts by Democratic leadership to discredit the authenticity of the emails have been refuted, as in the case of Dona Brazille first denying then apologizing for leaking questions to Clinton during the primary debates.
One could argue that it is wrong for those emails to've become public, but that doesn't change the fact that the content of the emails, as far as anyone can tell, is authentic and damaging, which is tantamount to saying that the conduct, beliefs, and attitudes of the Clinton campaign were damaging: they just didn't expect anyone to know about that stuff.
For instance, if I recall, several people close to Clinton or the Democratic leadership questioned her decision to take hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from Wall Street firms in light of her plans to run for president. She didn't heed those admonitions, and, predictably, people recoiled at her coziness to the financial elite who nearly destroyed the world economy with impunity.
There's also the anti-Sanders comments of several DNC staff that lead to their firing and a public apology. That was real; that happened; it wasn't "fake news."
There's also suggestions in the email that the Clinton camp coordinated with Super PACs, something that I wish journalists would follow up on.
This list could keep going, but one final thing that emerged in part from the emails is the dubious structure of Clinton's fundraising apparatus, a nationwide scheme to funnel money ostensibly for down-ballot races into the Clinton coffers, which to experts resembled a troubling if legal system of money laundering that could be exploited by future campaigns, Democratic and Republican, thereby undermining the democratic process.
So I ask again, what false stories based on the hacks? One can be concerned about possible foreign intrusion into our election process (though that's nothing new from the US's end) while still welcoming the emergence of important information on a candidate. You don't have to pick one or the other.
The KGB hasn't existed since 1991 fyi.
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