'Neoliberal capitalism' has contributed to the rise of fascism, says Nobel laureate
'Neoliberal capitalism' has contributed to the rise of fascism, says Nobel laureate
The attacks on democracy and freedom "have never been greater in my lifetime," warns Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19046336
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Fascist regimes generally came into existence in times of crisis
Too bad that modern capitalism produces wealth like no other system - the supposed resurgence of fascism never happened despite EU running capitalism for 79 years since the World War 2.
the supposed resurgence of fascism never happened
hahhahahahhahahahahhahahahhahahahahahhahaha
hahahahah ' hahahahaha
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What a lemmy moment.
hahhahahahhahahahahhahahahhahahahahahhahaha
hahahahah ' hahahahaha
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10/10 argument. You lost
No, you just made a likely bad faith argument he couldn't be bothered to engage with.
There has been a rise in far-right parties in many countries, many of which don't officially label themselves as fascist for plausible deniability, while spouting clearly fascist rhetoric. Their current scapegoats of choice include (but are not limited to) immigrants and lgbtq people.
But if you're not being disingenuous, what do you think fascism is?
There has been a rise in far-right parties
Extremist organizations exist always and everywhere - what both of you fail to understand is that they're very small (although sometimes loud) minorities.
what do you think fascism is?
A totalitarian movement in pre ww2 Italy, that killed a lot of people.
What do you think it is?
Just to be clear, your argument was Checks notes "Too bad that modern capitalism produces wealth like no other system" had the proof "the supposed resurgence of fascism never happened despite EU running capitalism for 79 years since the World War 2." was truly a masterclass.
It's like you had this well thought out idea, and really just made sure everyone understood that yo-
sorry, hahahahhahaha i just cant, every time I read it I laugh again, hahahahah thank you so much this made my day.
Enjoy being ratio'd though, the view is incredible from up here.
You live in your own little world, aren't you?
being ratio'd
By people as misguided as you.
Nah. This is all on you.
the supposed resurgence of fascism never happened despite EU running capitalism for 79 years since the World War 2.
If you took 5 minutes to look into elections in Europe and in US, you'd see that far-right are becoming more dominant in elections, white nationalists and neo-nazis are openly having marches on streets and attacking the "enemy" (like immigrants or muslims), Russia is pretty much an unofficial fascist state right now and so on.
You're right, resurgence of fascism never happened, but it is happening right now.
happening right now
No, you're just one of radicals on the opposite side of political spectrum. Everyone with the wrong opinion is called fascist these days.
Bait used to be believable
This isn't a bait. I tried once explaining the differences between fascism and nazism and guess what? Got acussed of being fascist. The only reason was because others didn't like my argument.
Nazism is a flavour of fascism. They're not "differences", they're technicalities
What, you think Stiglitz is some kind of dangerous tankie now? Jfc, talk about muddying the waters. The forces that motivated the germans to "seek shelter" from markets with the nazis are the same pushing people to vote for Le Pen, AfD today.
Even Orban's little dictatorship is a product of the sovereign debt crisis of the EU in 2014. If neoliberals are so blind that they lose touch with their people, voters will seek shelter from market forces either to the left or to the far-right, depending on how they understand what is happening.
producesextracts wealthextracts wealth
Produces. Wealth comes from efficient allocation of resources - capitalist free markets are really good at it.
Efficiency under capitalism?
We waste tremendous amounts of food but people go hungry.
We produce absurd levels of clothing, much of which is destroyed and sent to landfills without being worn, but there are people who need it.
We have more houses than unhoused by a huge factor.
Capitalism optimizes for profit and profit only. Sometimes that leads to good outcomes, sometimes it leads to bad outcomes.
It's not "efficient" in terms of taking care of people's needs. It's only efficient in terms of producing profits for the owner and investor classes.
We waste tremendous amounts of food but people go hungry.
This waste may look big in absolute numbers, but probably isn't meaningful as percentage of total economy - we're wealthy so many of us can afford to be a little wasteful.
Capitalism optimizes for profit and profit only. Sometimes that leads to good outcomes, sometimes it leads to bad outcomes.
Usually bad outcomes are the corner cases - I'm perfectly aware that they exist (harmful monopolies, CO2, ect.) But it's the role of solid legal framework to deal with these issues.
On the other hand you have at best no idea what sort of pathologies can arise in alternatives to capitalism, and at worst it can be repeat of the of USSR or North Korea.
I'm used to shallow responses that regurgitate the capitalist realism everyone grows up in but this one is exceptionally poor.
We waste food on an industrial scale, it's not just household waste. Grocery stores dump good food all the time, sometimes going so far as to spoil it or otherwise prevent it from being retrieved from the dumpsters they toss it in.
You're also just parroting the notion that socialism means authoritarianism, there are many examples of non-democratic and pseudo-democratic countries with a capitalist economy, this is because the economic system is different from the political system.
The biggest irony with your (poorly thought out but strongly held) belief is that a socialist economy IS more democratic. Workers owning their workplaces and benefiting from their output and participating in decision making is more democratic and free than the petite dictatorships that make up a capitalist economy.
As a worker you are only hired and remain employed insofar as you produce more value for the company than you cost, that's a plain fact. This means that the people who own your company are taking wealth that you produce. This is the "freedom" you're blindly advocating for.
I wonder why you feel like you must be a champion for this exploitative system. You're being so submissive to your owners. What a good little worker.
Grocery stores dump good food all the time
My relative happens to work in the food trade industry. The only cases when they dump food is either when expiration date is passing, or when they suspect that frozen stuff was transported incorrectly - aka cooling/freezing chain was broken somewhere - in that case they just don't accept the transport - it's most likely dumped afterwards by the company delivering it.
Sale of expired food is forbidden by law.
As a worker you are only hired and remain employed insofar as you produce more value for the company than you cost
Of course. Also as a worker I remain hired and employed as long as the employer delivers me more value (aka wage and other benefits) than his competitors. Otherwise I dump him just like he'd dump me.
The "best before" dates aren't expiration dates. They dump them only because they don't sell as well. It's prioritizing profit over feeding people.
You're very uninformed, but very confident.
In EU they ARE expiration dates. It's forbidden to trade expired food
I don't know anything about European regulation but food waste is still a major problem there https://feedbackeurope.org/results-of-eu-food-waste-survey-2024-edition/. In the US and Canada grocery stores throw food out if they think they can't sell it, even "ugly" fruit and vegetables.
Your point seems to be that you think grocery store food waste is a matter of too much regulation. I can't argue with someone who treats capitalism like a deity and works backwards from the axiom that capitalism is perfect therefore something else must be wrong.
You're the biggest capitalism simp I've encountered in quite some time. You come across like a libertarian, and maybe you are, if so I wish you had been forthcoming with that information so I knew not to waste my time trying to have a rational conversation with someone with an oxymoronic political identity. Nobody can rationalize their way out of such doublethink.
Your point seems to be that you think grocery store food waste is a matter of too much regulation
I thought it's a mater of public health and safety.
I can't argue with someone who treats capitalism like a deity
I can't ignore what I see. And I see, computers, airplanes, modern agriculture, and all the wonders of modern civilization.
You come across like a libertarian
I was a libertarian as a teenager, but with time I understood that every extremism is pathological. I'd say I'm a liberal now.
You're the biggest capitalism simp I've encountered in quite some time
It's always gets personal with you people. You can't win the debate and you get angry.
oxymoronic political identity.
Which part of my identity is oxymoronic? You throw accusations but you never give any examples.
Oh my sweet summer child.
Exactly, capitalist markets are really good at extracting resources from the land and labour from the people to make a profit, they just don't know where to stop until it's too late, unless they are regulated.
They're also getting increasingly more efficient at funneling profits to the top, rather to the greatest value producers: labourers. This is wage theft. Get it all the way to 100% and you have slavery.
Though important to note that slavery does not just meant you don't get paid. Though I don't think anyone needs a splainer on that.
extracting resources from the land and labour
You're trying to paint production in a negative way, while in reality competitive markets converge to most fair prices
Law of supply and demand dictates that too low wage will fail to attract workers, while too high wage will result in product that is too expensive and won't attract customers willing to buy.
It's a beautiful, self regulating communication network that pays well for stuff that is in demand and pays little for things nobody wants
No, it is you who are seeing the world as just markets, as if markets is what produces wealth, as if labour were just a pesky cost that you can't get rid of.
As the pandemic showed, it is workers that produce wealth and are essential. Markets have their place, but need to be controlled so they don't kill the people who power them.
Also: markets fail very often when the incentives and structure are not aligned with the socially desired outcomes.
workers that produce wealth and are essential
You got it wrong - workers alone won't produce anything. You need everything: Workers, managers, accountants, capital, financial system, machines, supply chains, logistics, customer acquisition and so on. Each one of these parts is crucial - wealth is only produced if all those elements are correctly allocated.
Half of these things are provided by separate companies, which have their own complex structures, that together create wealth producing market environment.
"I'm a worker so I produce wealth!" Is a harmful simplification. Skilled worker without all that backend isn't worth a jack shit. This is why there're so huge wage disparities between poor and rich countries - workers may be equally skilled, but the backend that supports the work in the poor country simply doesn't exist.
markets fail very often when the incentives and structure are not aligned with the socially desired outcomes.
There're corner cases that cause issues - but this is why we have legal framework to fix them - antitrust laws, regulation of relations between employee-emplyer, consumer protection, green energy incentives and so on
I agree all of that is needed to produce products in a modern economy, but I disagree with the share of profit allocated to managers. The only reason the allocation of profit is so skewed is because the manageriat abuses their power. They are supposed to be enablers of productivity, not little tyrants.
You're missing the part of the picture: There are also workers with specific skill sets who are paid extremely well. You don't hear about them, because they don't complain.
But the question is why? Why workers with certain skills really well paid, while others aren't?
The answer is misalignment between availability of types of work, and availability of workers with appropriate skills.
There's no magic solution that would fix this - core issue is education system that produces surplus of one type of skilled workers and not enough of other types. The end result are huge wages for rare skills, and very low wages for common ones
Fixing that problem requires radical reform of how people pick their career patch and it would take many years for benefits to have impact.
No, I'm saying people need to be paid a living wage to keep the social peace. You may externalize that responsibility from your enterprise, but someone is going to have to address the mismatch between wages and cost of living.
You want an economy that rewards the 10% best, that is good I guess...but the inevitable 90% of "losers" that are still essential for production will get out of your control if you keep punishing them and forcing them into a race they never win (particularly when the social elevator breaks and poverty becomes transgenerational)
someone is going to have to address the mismatch between wages and cost of living.
Everything in "Cost of living" basket is delivered by the same economy that tends towards reduction of prices - assuming it's healthy competitive market. I believe that at least in case of US, housing market and Healthcare are particularly corrupted, which drags prices up.
but the inevitable 90% of "losers"
I don't believe there are 90% of "losers" if you said bottom 10-20% earners in the society, I'd might agree - there's always some percentage of people who can't make the ends meet.
Law of supply and demand dictates
This is the economic version of "assume a spherical cow in a vacuum." An economic "law" is an idealized description of how things work when there are no confounding factors, not a rule the real world is compelled to obey. It turns out the real world is full of confounding factors that make the law too unreliable to predict—or even admit—things the rise of fascism.
It's a beautiful, self regulating communication network
On paper yes, but Jesus Christ, look around you. It's only beautiful if you overlook its fatal flaws.
Too low wage and the government will top up those being underpaid by their employer, effectively passing on part of the burden of pay to the tax payer.
If wages rise too high, the government will always step in to make sure it doesn't continue.
Its highly externally regulated and ultra manipulated by the people who buy labour and own for their money. Sadly, some people still beleive in the "invisible hand" blessed be its name story.
If wages rise too high, the government will always step in to make sure it doesn't continue
What do you mean by that? If you mean progressive taxation then I agree - IMO this is an inevitable result of democracy - in particular one citizen one vote rule.
Progressive taxation of middle class and spending that money on benefits for poor is a way of buying votes. If you can buy multiple votes of poor people at expense of one middle class vote, it's a winning strategy.
Progressive taxation is fair: someone who makes 0 from the way society is structured pays 0, because the system is clearly not working for them. Someone who makes the average wage contributes accordingly, but they are not a winner. People who are doing very well are paying a premium to society for creating the conditions for them to be doing so well.
Too bad that when you go even higher the effective tax goes down again due to all sorts of accounting tricks and outright evasion.
Pesky voting rights! For too long have the ultra wealthy had to suffer under the dictatorship of the majority. Votes should cost money and there should be no limit to how many you can buy.
Yep, nothing inefficient about an intern commuting via plane from South Carolina to New York everyday because it's much cheaper than living in New York. /s 🙄
I would argue that it was not capitalist benevolence that kept social peace for 80 years, it was partly the existence of the USSR that forced capitalist governments to make concessions to the social state to prevent communist influence from expanding westwards, flawed as it was.
capitalist benevolence
Capitalism is neither benevolent nor malevolent - it just happens it has most aligned incentives between egoistic actors
forced capitalist governments to make concessions
Really, really not. People were escaping from socialist USSR republics to western countries. This is why USSR decided to build a wall - their disfunctional system couldn't compete
The New Deal is an example of capitalists understanding that you need to make some concessions to keep the peace, I'd call that sorta benevolent.
About the USSR: yes, people escaped it, but there was a chance that democracies would flip communist if you squeezed the population too much, so there was a political incentive to creating social policies to control capitalist forces. Without fear of the USSR agitators and backing, they had less incentive to compromise a.k.a. TINA.
Fascism was maintained in several European countries way beyond 1940s, such as my homeland Spain. There were also fascist regimes after WW2 outside Europe, such as in Chile or arguably in South Korea and Taiwan.