[lbo-talk] Left-neoliberalism: a bold strategy for the year 1999

Maria Gilmore indigo at ymail.com
Fri Aug 5 07:29:44 PDT 2011


On Fri, 05 Aug 2011 09:34:47 -0400, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com> wrote:


> Neoliberals think you can correct the imbalances of capitalism through
> redistribution ALWAYS tied to mechanisms that assume people arecheaters,
> slackers, and brutes and *punish people for this behavior*...
> Capitalism is broken because of the bad people who are capitalists. They
> are bad because they are *naturally so*. You can correct its imbalances,
> but you can't simply redistribute wealth because the dumbass, brutish,
> lazy hoi poloi are, well, dumbass, brutish, and lazy.

But logically, then...why *punish* people for their innate nature? What does that accomplish? What need does that satisfy? Do they believe punishment will change *innate* behavior in any way? If so, why? And if you're going to punish cheaters, slackers and brutes, are you excluding the "successful" ones who make lots of money? Do we start getting into underlying Abrahamic religious beliefs about good people vs bad and punishment when you pursue this? I think what these folks really believe is, "*Most* people are bad, but *not me*, or my friends, because we are *better* than *most people*, (we are smarter, we work harder), and because we are *better*, (possibly innately, like others are innately *bad*), *we* are entitled to take whatever we can out of a society, and most other people are not; in fact, most other people are only fit to lick our boots. And that's the way it should be.

You sure as hell can't believe that human nature is inherently bad and in the value of democracy at the same time. The US Founders were afraid of "the mob", and designed their republic accordingly, but I don't think they really believed human nature was at it's heart corrupt.

Maria



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