Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Bill Maher vs Noam Chomsky On Political Nihilism | The Kyle Kulinski Show" video.

You are absolutely right except you missed the difference. Here's how I'd put it. NEITHER the Democrats and Republicans support the interests of the bottom 90%, its just that the Republicans are better at selling the myth that its the other guy's fault.
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@sushanth262 Your argument would work in any country that has compulsory voting but America doesn't have compulsory voting. Among developed nations it has incredibly low voter turnouts. So that argument that the majority of Americans voted in the Dems and GOP is just wrong. There's also the way that BOTH parties operate, which is to say they'll promise ANYTHING to get elected and do ANYTHING to stay elected. They'll tell ANY LIE they can to scare people, which in America is incredibly effective. Add that to the fact that a staggering number of Americans who do actually vote make their choice based on an incredibly small number of subjects its not that hard to get elected and then do whatever you like. In many parts of America you only need the right stance on abortion, guns and oil/coal and you can elect a dog. That's what Trump tapped into, the GOP are incredibly good at exploiting and the DEMs are hopeless at.
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@sushanth262 Where's there's the piece of reality you've half ignored. There are people who do care about their integrity and those who don't. Its there in politics, sport, business and even college where you get people who BELIEVE that cheating and getting away with it on exams only proves they deserve to be granted superior lives. All those people share some common traits. - They love enforcing the rules onto others and scream injustice whenever they are caught. - They squeal about and demand their rights as they trample on the rights of others. Its called hypocrisy and if you couple it with narcissism in the administration of a state or nation's affairs its incredibly destructive. And you have sounded out one of the stupidest arguments of all "admiring their success" irrespective of how they got it. That's pure Machiavellian thinking. I bet you don't even realise that Machiavelli NEVER advocated that the ends justify the means he just pointed out that it as a way others operated.
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Your right and this is one of Kyles best takes on anything he's spoken about recently. When I first started watching this I expected Maher to be his usual self indulgent worst and instead he seemed thoughtful. When Kyle started I first thought WTF is he on about. The after the Chomsky interview it was an Ah Ha moment and I got what he was pointing out. Maher is quietly pushing the idea these people are irredeemable while Chomsky is pointing out that they are people with legitimate grievances and if you don't listen to them they'll turn to someone who does. This isn't the first time I have heard this argument either. Prof. Richard Wolff (one of David Pakman's old professors) had a similar explanation of Democratic failure. It was during one of the tributes to Michael Brooks. Take note Prof. Wolff teaches Marxism as an economic subject. There's a lot he says I don't agree with but his explanation of West Virginia is priceless and it totally highlights why Bill Maher is an idiot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g1aMsDYJCc&t=3165s Take note that Mark Blyth calls it "the politics of recognition." That's the point Bill Maher is totally idiotic about. Chomsky is saying you need to listen to these people and give them something to be hopeful about. Bill Maher is saying they're terrible people that we can't talk to and there is no hope for them.
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@danrl9710 A few months back Prof. Wolff claimed profit is theft and that's just stupid if its left unclarified as to HOW the profit is made which he didn't do. He put it all in terms of exploitation of workers and their effort and implied that owners did NOT put do any work at all to justify their profit. Without doubt profit from exploitation is certainly theft but profit from a persons efforts to run a business isn't. He claimed profit isn't made through work and that's fundamentally not true. If he'd have clarified the different ways profit is made and classified those types that were theft (by exploitation) versus those that were by effort he'd have made a lot more sense. Other than that he's usually very good. He did a whole series on Marx and who Marx was and what Marx was really on about. I watched it for the exercise of not being ignorant and was incredibly surprised to hear that Marx wrote first and foremost an economist. He was far less a political theorist. Its almost like his name was hijacked into the West vs East political discussion as the opposite to democracy and capitalism. If you like Mark Blyth you'll love this. I just found it a few hours ago and its one of the best panel discussions on angrynomics I've seen. One of the really interesting things is what Martin Wolf says about capitalism and democracy. It makes Prof. Wolff's stuff on Marx very interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-aC2_aIeS8
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@danrl9710 Have a look at what you gave as an example. The implication that Prof Wolff mad is that capitalist who made that 1$ of that other persons labor did NOTHING to earn that $1 and that's a false assumption at every level. Even the most ruthless, heartless mongrel did some work to earn that $1. The issue Prof Wolf should have pressed is about FAIRNESS. I'm an engineer and the implication is that if I hire people to make something I have designed, I am a thief if I profit from selling what those people make. My objection is that Prof Wolff has totally devalued my work, totally devalued my effort to get my qualifications and totally devalued my investment in time to design that "something." However if I don't pay those people a FAIR WAGE for their time, effort and skills then I am a thief because I in that case I have devalued their time, effort and skills. And that's the point where I think he failed in that discussion. He never distinguished between what is fair and what isn't. Because there was one thing in that video which is one of the greatest thoughts I have seen anyone make against capitalist ideology. Capitalists always talk about THEIR RISK of their money, time and effort, but they never talk about the risk employees take. He pointed out that most capitalists have a range of investments particularly the wealthier capitalists. So their risks are spread across a range of businesses. However most wage earning employees have a single 100% risk that their employer will keep providing a job. Even if wage earners do spread some of their risk with savings or other investments they still have this one massive risk in their lives. If they lose that main job they are in serious trouble. I think he also failed a bit on that discussion because he didn't distinguish between small businesses owners and the plutocratic class. Because small business owners with only a few employees also have a singular major risk. To just group them in with the plutocrats is madness and I think he'd agree. So I really do like Prof. Wolff because he gives such a great take from a totally different perspective and his discussion on risk was brilliant, but he's not perfect either.
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@danrl9710 I'm not an economic theorist mate I'm an engineer. We don't operate on theory and conjecture we operate on sound proven principles because when we don't things like the Boeing Max-8 happen. I find it amusing when economists refer to economics as a science. By the basic principles of the real STEM community economics is no more a science than basket weaving. I did economics 101 in college as one of my options. After a few lectures and seeing yet another version of supply-demand graphs I asked the professor about formulas. He asked me what I was and I said I'm doing aerospace engineering. He told me "This is economics not engineering, we don't use formulas." That was over 30 years ago and I am even less impressed with the field of economics these days. In 2018 they gave the Nobel to the first economist to include climate change in the mix. He said we can live with 4C because he's considering whatever except at about 2.5C China loses half its agriculture which is already stressed. I wonder if he considered how 700million hungry Chinese will react? Or a few 100million Indians or the few other billion or so who are starving long before we get to 4C. It might not be wise to claim you're a science when the top of you profession is ignoring science.
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@danrl9710 Well you sort of started into the whole economics theory side and that to me is a whole field of blah blah blah. I have been looking into it for the simple reason I am tired of hearing these people tell us all they know what they are doing. I truly believe Marx has been mis-portrayed at just the most basic premise. Marxism is promoted endlessly as political dogma when the truth is Marx wasn't a political scientist or theorist or agitator. The actual theories he pushed are of less interest to me right now than the fact we have been collectively LIED to for decades. Weirdly that lie was pushed by both sides. The eastern communists and socialists pushed it to excuse what they did and the Western capitalists pushed it to justify what they did. If it wasn't so deadly serious it would be a Monty Python Sketch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b6-oE55vdM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2c-X8HiBng
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@danrl9710 I did aerospace engineering and a significant part of that discipline is what we call systems engineering. Early in the space age they realised you cannot solve problems in isolation when you have complex systems where the sub-systems are all tightly interlinked. In most engineering disciplines the systems are linked but nowhere near as tightly as they are in aerospace. The easiest way I describe it is like this. Imagine we are sending a rover to Mars and somebody wants to change the camera to a new one because it has better resolution, but it weighs 115 grams (1/4lb) more. So first you have to fly and land that extra 115g on Mars and that changes the amount of fuel needed to get it there which changes the weight of the rocket and that changes the fuel the rocket needs just to get of the launch pad. Then there's that camera with higher resolution. That's more data that requires more onboard storage that needs more power to store and then transmit back. That means a bigger solar panel and that's more weight and that needs more fuel to get that bigger solar panel to get to and land on Mars. It just goes round and round in circles, which is why it takes 10 years to design test and then fly them. Over in Economics they are dealing with an insanely complex system called humanity. So things like profit, labor, financial investment and regulations are not a simple components with a single simple definition and certainly how they interact isn't simple. That's my fault with that video Prof. Wolff did. He tried to simplify a very complex component of an insanely complex system and that almost never works. That's why I said he needed to clarify things better. I have just been watching some stuff on the COVID lab leak and the journalism that's going on in that subject is horrendous. Then you get to the management of COVID and that's even worse. Back in engineering and science I see people doing the same sort of thing with all sorts of things. Its why there is no coherent solution to climate. 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️
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