Election 2020

constant escape

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Part of the reason I'm as fanatically compelled as I am to develop ultra-complex control mechanisms, in the interest of exiting this blast chamber and perhaps exerting some will on the decisions made by those whose authority isn't granted by virtue of their intelligence, but by virtue of something as arbitrary as inherited material wealth.

And I sense plenty of headroom to grow, and am receiving no significant indication that the growth is decelerating.
 
constant escape

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Develop better models of control, in the interest of convincing the current powers to adopt them. I really don't get the sense that these people know what they're doing, and Varoufakis claims to be under a similar impression.
 
john eden

john eden

male pale and stale
constant escape said:
That isn't to say that democratically determinations are inconsequential, just that these consequences are, to some extent, limited to some blast chamber that many of the major players are protected from, viewing from behind some glass.
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I think that’s quite a good way of looking at it. Others have said we have (limited) political democracy but we don’t have economic democracy.
 
constant escape

constant escape

winter withered, warm
As far as I can tell that adds up. If you effectively own a significant portion of a market, arguably many others who are dependent on that market, and on much smaller scales, will cater to you in some way - and that is before you even engage in coercive strategy and propaganda. Thats a pretty speculative and reductive argument, sure, but the basic principle seems apt.
 
constant escape

constant escape

winter withered, warm
So then we shouldn't be all that shocked by claims that more or less invalidate the notion that our democratic decisions are the decisions that ultimately determine our economic fate.

But as @Leo points out in that other thread, what to do when hope for democracy, virtually the last stand of political hope for many, gets snuffed. I say we take our psychosis vaccinations and buckle down.
 
constant escape

constant escape

winter withered, warm
Two feet always planted on the ground is overkill, at least in many humans' cases. The kind of operations I have in mind seem to require superhuman willpower, but that is something that can be cultivated, as far as I can tell.

The pessimistic ultimatum would be either A) succumb to de facto political powerlessness, or B) manually rewire your psychic ontology, which is a necessarily turbulent enterprise, in the interest of readjusting the foundations, updating the terms, on which our power games are played.

I'm in a bit of a rhetorical trance right now, but these words will stand.
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
s it really that absurd to argue that democracy is, itself, contained within some parameters determined by forces that transcend and indirectly administer democracy?
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that's the liberalism in liberal democracy
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
liberal institutions are not democratic - they're the break on democracy, the thing that prevents democratic outcomes from being illiberal
 
Leo

Leo

Well-known member
Georgia finally called for biden.

in 2020, biden got 5 million more votes than his opponent and won the presidency with 306 electoral votes.
in 2016, trump got 2 million fewer votes than his opponent and won the presidency with 306 electoral votes.

that's some fucked up system we have here.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Leo said:
Georgia finally called for biden.

in 2020, biden got 5 million more votes than his opponent and won the presidency with 306 electoral votes.
in 2016, trump got 2 million fewer votes than his opponent and won the presidency with 306 electoral votes.

that's some fucked up system we have here.
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Crazy, isn't it? Clinton's margin in the popular vote was actually nearly three million.
 
padraig (u.s.)

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Leo said:
this whole "biden is no different from trump" argument is such horseshit. I think innocent immigrant children in cages who might now be reunited with their parents, or dreamers who will now be allowed to remain in the country where they were born, or the millions of people with pre-existing conditions who now won't lose their healthcare coverage see a pretty fucking huge difference between the two. get real.
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omg dude you and this fucking strawman

let me tell you what's really holier-than-thou, it's exactly this kind of nonsense

"how dare you sanctimonious leftists discount the real differences between Biden and Trump? don't you care about the poor immigrant children in cages?"

I mean listen to yourself ffs, you're literally yelling "won't somebody please think of the children" at us

of course we care about those children, and people with preexisting conditions, and etc

John quoting Greenspan is obv tongue-in-cheek, and says more about Greenspan's totally unsurprising contempt for democracy than anything else

turning that, and qualified Biden critiques - even harsh ones - into "Biden is no different from Trump" is, to use your word, horseshit

you have to make some kind "obv yes Biden is still less bad" qualification every single time lest some dude jump out of the woodwork and start accusing you of not caring about children in cages, tho clearly not even that will prevent it, since here you are haranguing us about children in cages
 
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