Ahh the "libertarian" shows his true colors.

For someone accusing me of a strawman, you seem to make some pretty good strawmen yourself.

Never claimed to live in a democratic utopia. Actually working pretty good as 200 years of history is showing. Sure we have problems, no one ever claimed we didn't. Far better than your utopia of a corporate totalitarian meritocracy where morality is apparently found in profit motive. Sorry, but the jury is has been out on the whole democracy vs plutocracy for some time. Sorry that you didn't get the memo.

You really have a problem with Obama personally? Then join the birther nutters and work towards convincing your congress people to impeach him. There are multitude of ways to effect change. The problem...and the beauty of that is that it requires somewhat of a consensus. not outliers filled with paranoia and hate.

hows making stupid one-note charlie submissions to VS working out for you as an agent of change eh?

Don't like your options? then you have yet ANOTHER option, there are plenty of other countries to choose from, pick one of them.

Lead, follow, or get the fuck out of the way. I got no time for armchair quarterbacks who would probably wet themselves if they actually had to make any tough decisions.

I assume it's exactly the fact that such a "special" relationship with politicians and regulators exists that's the problem and moreover that these are exactly the sort of thing market controls are needed to prevent (even if the existing ones have largely been co-opted to serve the Plutocrats).

If you want to define "free-market"as completely free and unregulated then yes this is not a free market, however what regulation we do have is by this stage so ineffectual and corrupt that basically all the problems with a true "free-market" have already very much manifested.
That said I think I'm actually agreeing with you here, we might even say we have the worst of both worlds where the colossally rich have the market "freedom" do do what they like but can also co-opt socialist regulation to both defend themselves and aggressively suppress and exploit potential threats from the lower end of the economy.

The argument I guess is because SevenFingers is using the term "free-market" in a much more pejorative sense here than yourself. To him I'm guessing it simply means largely unopposed Plutocracy i.e. the misused existing regulation etc. is a product of an unregulated market running amok and corrupting every institution it can get its hands on.

If this is indeed the case then you only have a problem with incompatible semantics (meaning is use).
The real argument you guy's should be having is whether moving towards a Randian "true free-market" would make this situation any better or worse. Personally I can't see how this would make things anything other than worse for the vast majority of us.
In my head a true free market would basically be akin to just giving up and putting Weyland Yutani in charge, because sooner or later that's what you'd get. Atlas Shrugged made me sick to my stomach!

I propose the solution lies in replacing our existing systems of government and regulation with something both stronger and more importantly 100% transparent. In the age of the internet we could make political corruption virtually impossible and the old capitalist vs collectivist paradigm is becoming old, tired & increasingly irrelevant.

Time for a higher synthesis and a new dialectic cycle.
The thesis was anarcho-capitalism,
The antithesis was Totalitarian socialism
The synthesis is Meritocratic socio-capitalism!

(M) for the Movement
(M) for Meritocracy
(M) for Mindlessly repeated slogans!

HA! miss you ya goober.

i dont subscribe to everything this video pontificates on.i thought it was an interesting point of view from a christian perspective.

ya know what i find even MORE interesting?
that during the bush years all my liberal/progressive friends needed medication for the rage and offense they took to the :illegal wars,wiretapping,torture etc etc.

even here on the sift the politics channel was busting with video after video of the malfeasance and outright destruction of civil liberties perpetrated by the bush administration.

and rightly so i might add.

go look at the politics channel now.
notice anything?
its dead jim.
empty and devoid of any real substantive discussion concerning obama.(or anything for that matter,its a ghost town)
who..lets be honest..is on his way to surpassing bush jr on:destruction of civil liberties,assasinations,expansion of more illegal wars.

now why is that?
when bush did it everybodies panties got knotted up but when obama not only expands executive powers but starts killing amreican citizens abroad.no trial.no jury..executes them.
and not a peep.
not even a slight foot note.(i may have just made that up but i havent seen much,and thats the truth)

so here we have a former constitutional lawyer.smart and photogenic pushing through some of the most heinous legislation and my liberal friends are silent.

so lets be clear here.obama is a product.
just like the pilsbury dough boy or the MGM lion.
and he has OWNERS.
they tell him what to do and what is in THEIR best interest.

our government has been purchased and is now a owned subsidiary of the multi-nationals and the financial industry.
and obama is the face of that subsidiary.

do i think a "new world order" is the goal?
well..naw....i think it is a select few who wish to perpetuate their own dominance and the rest of the world be damned.
they are only interested in governments in order to get what they want and what they want is to commodify everything.
they want to own it and sell it as they see fit.
water,air,food,energy...the whole kaboodle.

so if they have to purchase a government to make stealing legal or pay off a commitee in order to be able to sell poison as medicine or make GMO foods secret and non-litigious.
thats what they will do.

some right wing folks call it oligarchy.
i find that to be inaccurate.

the correct term is plutocracy.

so if you think the government under obama has become some benevolent uncle who just wishes to pass out smiles and hugs.
well....i dont think you have been paying attention.

obama is smarter and his administration far more clever but this government has EXPANDED on what bush did years ago.

so where the FUCK are my liberal friends????
has our society become so polemic that we root for "our" team like slacked jawed zombies?
look at how those teams are voting!
they are practically indistinguishable from each other!
republican..democrat..pffft..same fucking cookie.

are we so enamored with the IDEA of american politics that we cant see the reality?
its broken kids.
busted and banged up and rotten to its core.

i just dont get the silence..i really dont...
because i think thats what bothers me the most.
the silence.

/rant off

^ What Mr. Chomsky neglected to mention here was scale & production cost vs payoff.

Yes anyone can grow their own strawberries but how many could you ever hope to produce in the average back garden/greenhouse? Probably not enough to let you eat Strawberries everyday I'd bet, and you certainly would'nt pull much of a profit selling them to people at a domestic scale (the key issue here).

Pot however....... even a modest indoor backroom grow can easily net between 30-90oz when dried (alot!). And this can easily be repeated up to 3-4 times a year.

Tobbacco by comparison yields very little for the space and time taken. There's a reason basically no-one home grows tobbaco, you need a huge farm and large scale processing to produce a profitable quantity. Hence it being the preserve of big business and thus legal (plutocrats sure know how to lobby!).


For what its worth though, I do think the Hemp fiber thing was probably the bigger factor in legislation, but what Chomsky is alluding to here is also pretty valid I think.
Pot is a massive cash crop that is seemingly always in demand and relatively easy for a consumer to produce in their own garden/backroom.

There would be a profit in industrial production (always going to be plenty lazy people), but combined with the hemp industry and the effect it tends to have on people (makes you think!) I can totally see why the establishment fears it so much.
It'd be slow, but legal Pot would start eroding the very foundations of the elites power as it's much more profitable for the lower and middle class of society than the Plutocrats at the top and the scale is huge.

A more equal distribution of wealth/economic power is bad for Plutocracy!

It could possibly be a state specific requirement I have not bought firearms in another state. NJ has VERY heavily regulated gun laws.

If they wanted to implement some of the laws we have in NJ in other states, again, I'm fine with that. Just not citizen to citizen. They should have to own a Firearms ID card before you can sell it.

I want to believe there are ways to defeat it democratically but the only way to get enough power in the system in my opinion is to already be wealthy. Perfect Timing is this video: http://videosift.com/video/Wall-Street-Deregulation-Coming-Soon-TYT

Democratically elected democrats voting AGAINST banking regulation? What the what?

Also about the "war" that's exactly the point I'm making. There wouldnt' be any "army" for America to defeat. It would just be it's citizens. There doesn't have to be a "military victory" for the insurgents. My point was that insurgents on their own preventing people from going to work, causing problems with the nations banking systems, whatever, would be enough to make all the wealthy people who run things much worse off. Then that would make the government much worse off because those wealthy people would simply relocate their businesses to more stable environments.

I don't think the US will become a dictatorship. It's going to be a plutocracy. That's all it is now and unfortunately the way it looks all it will be going forward for a very long time.

I hope I'm proven wrong I just don't see any hope anymore personally. I'm not going to rise up or whatever against the government because my life is pretty okay. But I also won't be fed garbage from the the world and told it's ice cream and be forced to look back at the world and say "GREAT ICE CREAM!"

The banks ARE the government. We are not ruled by the the current 4 year term-ers, it is and always has been the 400 year term-ers and their constant legion of wannabee vampire lords (who end up with a few million in nickels and dimes and carry the can when it goes tits-up).

You cant EARN enough money to compete in the plutocracy in one lifetime. And when you take elected office you find out pretty fast who your real boss is.
http://youtu.be/40K7p3kZO9c

The parties are not similar enough that I would vote for BHO, nor you for Romney.

As civilizations go the choice is between a dictatorship or a semi-plutocracy. There's more freedom under the latter and an improved standard of living, even if it's not spread equally.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^quantumushroom:
There's very real difference between the two parties, otherwise "increased polarization" would not be an issue.
When you don't vote, you vote for someone else's vote to be made stronger. Hope you agree with them.

"Increased Polarization" is an issue because it's played up by the PR industry. It's not a reality, the two parties are incredibly similar when you look at the actual policies. They're both for the wealthy of America and they're both for the constant control of the worlds resources with our military.

>> ^Sagemind:

In the political jargon and propaganda of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and the Communist International, western democratic states were referred to as "plutocracies", with the implication being that a small number of extremely wealthy individuals were controlling the countries and holding them in ransom. "Plutocracy" replaced "democracy" and "capitalism" as the principal fascist term for the United States and Great Britain during the Second World War. For the Nazis, the term was often a code word for "the Jews".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy


Are you seriously suggesting that someone who thinks this video demonstrates plutocratic tendencies are themselves antisemitic, totalitarian and/or fascist?

In the political jargon and propaganda of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and the Communist International, western democratic states were referred to as "plutocracies", with the implication being that a small number of extremely wealthy individuals were controlling the countries and holding them in ransom. "Plutocracy" replaced "democracy" and "capitalism" as the principal fascist term for the United States and Great Britain during the Second World War. For the Nazis, the term was often a code word for "the Jews".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy

"The Gilded Age is back. Welcome to the plutocracy."

>> ^bobknight33:

I believe in a government as small and limited as possible. The corruption over the years have lead us to what we have. I would gather that more that 90% of elected official receive gains from groups for policies that don't serve the public. AS such such we can't trust our politicians to be honest I just assume a small government to limit the corruption and damage to the American people.
>> ^jimnms:
>> ^bobknight33:
I have not problem with the supreme court. They call it a tax and as such is constitutional.

I do have a big disagreement with the bill being government control as such hope for complete repeal next election.

Are you in favor of repealing other taxes that force us to pay for service you don't want?


I think 90% is conservative, however, I think down-sizing a large corrupt government just leaves you with a small corrupt government. I'd rather fix the system (simplistic, but consider it more of an idealogical disagreement with your solution), which seems more and more impossible to do as the plutocracy gains more and more power through the senators, congressmen, and judges who serve them. If Citizens United hasn't triggered SHTF (yet), I don't know what will. It's as if BigMacs, American Idol, and Twitter render people daft, pacified, and indifferent to reality.

>> ^kymbos:

I think the US is changing, but it's not changing for the better. More fundamentalist, more corporate driven, more entrenched, more divided... That's change.


I think you're right. the fundies are surging, corporate influence is rising. These things aren't very sustainable though. We know this because it's happened before. Theocracies don't work and are in opposition to freedom. Plutocracy doesn't work and is in opposition to freedom. Just because we seem to have forgotten history doesn't make it any less true.

America does really have the whole sleeping giant thing about it. We're lazy, we ignore stuff, we let stuff slide. We see this stuff coming but do little to stop it. But eventually the fundies and the plutocrats will cross a line and that's when people will finally push back...and push back hard.

When that will happen though..who knows. So yeah, things are going to get worse before they get better. But that's how it usually works. I tend to consider it a given that there is going to be a 2nd American Civil War before I die.

Yeah, the only reason you can label it a "partisan issue" is due to the Republicans taking the stance (as said above) of, "We are for the rich, if you try to raise taxes on them we'll fuck you in the ass!", so yes it's a partisan issue ONLY because the Republicans have by default made it their unified decision on the matter.

This is again why the Republicans are very quickly becoming a force of extreme evil, and I really do mean that. They already bankrupted a perfectly functioning institution that has been the LONGEST running branch of the U.S. Government without issues: the Post Office, and now it is DEAD. It will be dead sooner or later (they are already closing down main facilities if you haven't paid attention, wake up and smell the burning cinder, it's already here) and the Republicans passed the bill that they FULL WELL knew would destroy them.

They are trying to do it elsewhere, anything they can get the mitts ALL the way on, either to make this president look so bad that he can't be elected or to watch it burn so they can put up whatever corporation plutocracy bullshit they want. THEY are gone. They have left the reservation.

And, I mean that in the most kindest and sincere way possible, just as they would say it to me...

and thanks!

In reply to this comment by enoch:
*promote informing the slaves that they are actually slaves.

Thanks for the quality. Yeah. This thing knocked my socks off.

In reply to this comment by hpqp:
*quality *talk. The US (and the rest of the "western" world as well) is moving dangerously away from democracy and straight for plutocracy.