“Behold the marvels of a so-called ‘service’ economy!!”
Btw this is a tangent but I think that the left, whatever the fuck that is, could do a whole lot better at redirecting that anarcho-capitalist/Reaganomics urge in westerners who blame government graft and arrive at the solution of “getting rid of government”.
It’s not particularly tricky to trace out a little mental network where you have [Big Business/Big Industry of choice], the government, and how they interact in a fairly vulgar way:
Big Business X uses their money to lobby the government for tax breaks, contracts, regulations that benefit their interests, subsidies and bailouts etc.
The government receives this money and provides a whole lot of kickbacks to Big Business X
Big Business X now has more money to spend on lobbying the government to get them to cough up more money
Wash, rinse, repeat.
It’s a little bit more complicated than “Government bad!!” but if you can get one person to walk away from a discussion about this with the message “Business gives money to the government in order to get the government to give them more money so that they can give more money to the government so they will give more money to business…” and they start seeing it in their own lives - maybe it’s Tesla, maybe it’s Boeing, maybe it’s Lehman Brothers - then I think that will help inoculate that person against the lopsided narrative that the problem is just “too much government” or “government corruption” and so therefore the solution is hyper-capitalism.
It’s a little bit more complicated than “Government bad!!” but if you can get one person to walk away from a discussion about this with the message “Business gives money to the government in order to get the government to give them more money so that they can give more money to the government so they will give more money to business…” and they start seeing it in their own lives - maybe it’s Tesla, maybe it’s Boeing, maybe it’s Lehman Brothers - then I think that will help inoculate that person against the lopsided narrative that the problem is just “too much government” or “government corruption” and so therefore the solution is hyper-capitalism.
Sure, you can see it. But there’s nothing you can really do about it at a national level.
At a more local level, we see that kind of graft, but the best any locality can really do is just “Say No!” to everything offered up by the municipal government. That doesn’t get you a healthy economy or a functional government, it just gets people finding elaborate back-doors for funneling money outside democratic institutions. Case in point, the Texas takeover of HISD after over a decade of failing to take it over and privatize it through well-financed conservatives running in local elections. Rather than deal with a bunch of intransigent locals who refuse to see their education system carved up and sold off, the state just seizes the entire school district and staffs it with industry flaks of the Governor’s choosing.
“Behold the marvels of a so-called ‘service’ economy!!”
Btw this is a tangent but I think that the left, whatever the fuck that is, could do a whole lot better at redirecting that anarcho-capitalist/Reaganomics urge in westerners who blame government graft and arrive at the solution of “getting rid of government”.
It’s not particularly tricky to trace out a little mental network where you have [Big Business/Big Industry of choice], the government, and how they interact in a fairly vulgar way:
Big Business X uses their money to lobby the government for tax breaks, contracts, regulations that benefit their interests, subsidies and bailouts etc.
The government receives this money and provides a whole lot of kickbacks to Big Business X
Big Business X now has more money to spend on lobbying the government to get them to cough up more money
Wash, rinse, repeat.
It’s a little bit more complicated than “Government bad!!” but if you can get one person to walk away from a discussion about this with the message “Business gives money to the government in order to get the government to give them more money so that they can give more money to the government so they will give more money to business…” and they start seeing it in their own lives - maybe it’s Tesla, maybe it’s Boeing, maybe it’s Lehman Brothers - then I think that will help inoculate that person against the lopsided narrative that the problem is just “too much government” or “government corruption” and so therefore the solution is hyper-capitalism.
This is a cursed video that was recorded at a cursed conference by a cursed speaker from a cursed lineage with cursed politics but this kind of thought experiment can really shake people up and get them to start thinking about things systemically when it comes to politics and economics, and it fits into the angle for agitation which I’m describing.
Sure, you can see it. But there’s nothing you can really do about it at a national level.
At a more local level, we see that kind of graft, but the best any locality can really do is just “Say No!” to everything offered up by the municipal government. That doesn’t get you a healthy economy or a functional government, it just gets people finding elaborate back-doors for funneling money outside democratic institutions. Case in point, the Texas takeover of HISD after over a decade of failing to take it over and privatize it through well-financed conservatives running in local elections. Rather than deal with a bunch of intransigent locals who refuse to see their education system carved up and sold off, the state just seizes the entire school district and staffs it with industry flaks of the Governor’s choosing.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: