Permanently Deleted
thinking about the time when he sprayed whipped cream into the mouth of a kneeling supporter
The funniest part of his campaign to me was when his team failed to complete their paperwork in Ohio on time, and were legally prevented from being a choice on the ballot ... now that's 🧢 MATH! 🧢
:michael-laugh:
Also in case you missed his radical centrist home tweet <-
I remember when he was asked about protecting legal abortion and he just talked about how 1k a month would help women control their bodily autonomy or whatever
I swear the reason so many leftists have anti-UBI brainworms is because it's this obnoxious techbro who brought it into the US political mainstream.
Like, it's not enough, but it would definitely be a huge improvement over most people's lives.
I want to like it, but need a guarantee (lol) public assistance programs won't be on the chopping block to make it happen.
And the problem is, that's the only reason that any of the ruling class is anything but vehemently against the concept. It would finally let them entirely eliminate all other remaining public assistance programs.
Most leftists are anti-UBI because they intuit that it is just a new incarnation of social fascism, they don't necessarily have the vocabulary to express this (or want to be honest about it) but they understand precisely what social democracy did to the material conditions of Europe and how it prevented communism from spreading there and do not want to see that replicated again.
It would improve people's lives but, like social democracy in Europe, it would kill communism.
The idea that social welfare blunts popular desire for moving further left is overplayed.
The number one reason social democracies didn't move further left was the richest, most powerful country in the world running a full court press on leftist movements in those social democracies. Either this would involve the cooperation of friendly local governments, or the local government would be leaned on with everything up to and including coups. The fact that so much anticommunist effort was needed is itself evidence that welfare programs weren't seriously putting the brakes on leftward movement.
Then there's the fact that opposing social welfare programs is a dead end. You can't build a mass leftist movement by opposing programs that help people right now, only to further tell them that things need to get much worse to serve the abstract goal of growing the movement. I can't think of a single successful leftist movement that's done that, but I can think of multiple leftist movements that went out of their way early on (even during revolutions) to address people's basic needs.
Strongly disagree. The conditions in those countries were changed such that people were living in conditions they found comfortable within capitalism. Desire to radically change something evaporates when people are comfortable with the way it is.
The material conditions are vastly more important. There is a reason revolution does not occur in the imperial core and yet it occurs frequently in the periphery and it is not simply "propaganda is better there", the propaganda only works because the people are in vastly superior material conditions.
Then there’s the fact that opposing social welfare programs is a dead end.
I do not, and I agree that we can not.
This does not however change the material reality of the situation. If you make people feel relatively comfortable, they will not feel like changing the thing that makes them feel relatively comfortable. You certainly will not ever get someone in those conditions to die for the cause of revolution.
I agree that better conditions can lessen the urgency to improve, but there were significant leftist movements even in the relative comfort of social democracies. Clearly, the programs those countries had/have do not create that much of barrier to moving further left.
There is a reason revolution does not occur in the imperial core and yet it occurs frequently in the periphery
The number one reason for this is that the repressive apparatus of the state is more effective in the imperial core. It's easier for the U.S. to assassinate Fred Hampton in a Chicago apartment than it is to assassinate leftist leaders halfway across the world. It's easier to monitor movements in your own backyard, that speak your native language and operate in your neighborhoods, than it is to go to some other country, learn their language, learn their neighborhoods, and conduct the same surveillance. Imperial countries can still pull off repression across the globe -- it's just harder, so you see more leftist success in the periphery.
I agree that worse economic conditions in the periphery prime more people for leftist organization, but that's a smaller factor than how easy it is for a movement to be strangled in the crib.
I do not, and I agree that we can not... If you make people feel relatively comfortable, they will not feel like changing the thing that makes them feel relatively comfortable.
Can you square this circle for me? What does it look like in practice to not oppose social welfare programs, but at the same time believe that making people more comfortable will prevent further improvement?
It's also worth considering that comfortable people have the time and energy for big, long-term political projects. They don't always use that time and energy to that end, but many do. Plenty of theorists and revolutionaries had comfortable backgrounds.
Can you square this circle for me? What does it look like in practice to not oppose social welfare programs, but at the same time believe that making people more comfortable will prevent further improvement?
It looks like the western left. Stuck in a place where it can see and analyse correctly that the only path to communism is the complete destruction of "western society" but that advocating for such would be political suicide as it would ruin the lives of everyone in those societies. Revolution in the west requires collapse of it, particularly the US, and yet collapse of it is very obviously going to be a step backwards for everyone. It would take so many decades to play out that it would not bring any immediate benefits to the people there, only pain.
The western left is such a mess because to achieve what we want at an international scale the lives of western people will get considerably worse. It can not square this circle. It is torn between its ideal of "make people's lives better" and the moral dilemma that western lives will be harmed by it for decades before they ever get better. 30-50 years of a reduction in life might be justifiable in the sense that it's better than another 200 years of capitalist violence but the people would not support harming their own lives unless they became incredibly ideological.
This is why the western left consistently ends up in a Bernstein loop. Because western leftists at their core do not want to harm the lives of their people and when wrestling with this problem end up choosing "making working lives better"(under capitalism) over "make socialism".
So it's a dead end, and we're not even going to explore alternate paths? That's not a good plan. It's fatalistic.
Why not at least try other paths? Things aren't set in stone, and maybe writing off everything besides the complete collapse of society is a mistake.
Which other paths?
You subscribe to one of two possibilities. Either socialism electorally (I do not), or socialism through revolution. The only way socialism through revolution will occur is through a western collapse that massively changes the conditions of the people enough that they are literally willing to risk their lives for a better future.
I am willing to die to achieve socialism. But I know for a fact that's extremely niche and I'm not going to blind myself to the reality that it's not possible to get that willingness out of the masses if they are comfortable. They have videogames they would much rather be playing than getting shot. We have to live in reality here.
The realistic way socialism will occur is with the collapse of the western world occurring leading to the ability for socialist uprisings in the periphery countries and socialist leadership of the world. Then eventually the now backwards and behind beleaguered former "west" would eventually follow.
It would improve people’s lives but, like social democracy in Europe, it would kill communism.
So they're accelerationist and don't want to admit it.
People like Nick Srnicek have clear visions of how it could be a tool to rob capitalists of their power over people (see: Inventing the Future), but there are several conditions that need to be met for that to happen. Fail to get all the pieces into place, and you end up just funding landlords.
even simple policy ideas can be mutilated by technocrats and neolibs
I think the guy is a nerd idealist who is in way over his head. What the fuck does "forward" even mean? Is he going to address the inherently undemocratic institutions of the USA senate and supreme court?
It was nice that he used his national platform to speak out about the wave of anti-Asian violence that's been going on, I will give him credit for that move.
Andrew Yang is promising a bargain bin utopia where issues like poverty are solved forever with policies like a UBI situated well below the poverty line.
It would be like saying all housing problems can be solved by giving people the materials to construct a yurt, while giving them no land.
Yang is not a deep thinker.
Even a shitty and insufficient UBI would radically alter the shape lf our democrqcy for the better. Or whatever dumb phrase they used. Which of couse is why even if he got voted in, it wouldn't have happened
the current shape of our democracy is 10 inches long with a slight curve to the right
We have a farce of a democracy though, I don’t think changing the shape of a farce is something to celebrate
Didn't he want to cut welfare, food stamps, and section 8 vouchers and replace it with UBI?
Jay Inslee was supposedly the "climate change candidate" and spent less time on it than that billionaire fuck.
