I was listening to Harry McClintock's "Big Rock Candy Mountain" from the O Brother soundtrack. It's a funny description of what hobo heaven would be like. (Rivers of whisky etc) What would a shit-lib heaven be like? I'm thinking of UK libs heaven having means tested genital inspections. Everyone else here is way funnier than I am, what you got?

  • NomadicWarMachine [any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    A liberal utopia is one where there's still class divide but no REAL poverty, like "poverty" is having to share your childhood bedroom with like one sibling maybe. The middle class is massive and very diverse, and the rich are all super public facing figures who actually do the kind of cool shit Elon Musk claims he's going to do, plus they generally treat their workers well so they're beloved figures in society. Nothing is free but there's lot of ways to make means of social mobility really cheap, like college is never 100% free but if you were one of those kids who had to share a room with your sister you can get scholarships out the ass, but you still gotta pay for your dorm room or whatever, so every smart person in the poor-but-not-really-poor-poor class can filter up into the hip cool diverse middle class can become graphic designers for taco truck chains or whatever.

    They basically want the entire world to be a Euro social democracy but with the culture of an idealized East Coast US City. They want every city to be a NYC in the 90s with a Swedish SuccDem econ policy. And the thing is as an ML I actually don't find this idea aesthetically repulsing, I mean living in a socialist multicultural city were I can rid the super clean subway to my job at the artisanal cabinet workshop before taking lunch at the park where there's like 20 food trucks of various cusines does sound pretty alright. Thing is Libs are delusional about how achievable this would be on a global scale. Achieving anything approaching this kind of lifestyle for the entire planet in a way that would be sustainable long term would require a MASSIVE restructuring of the entire world economy, probably a pretty violent and dramatic one. Commies are just honest about this while liberals think they can pull it off with some policy wonkery over the next 100-200 years or so.

    • Metalorg [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      I remember liberal rag New Statesmen defending Coalition government for tripling university fees because at least it gets forgiven after a decade. I don't think a lib heaven would have university scholarships but progressive loans.

      • NomadicWarMachine [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        This is basically lib heaven, everything still has a cost, but it’s “fairer”. They’re very wedded to the Protestant work ethic, nothing can ever be truly free, you always have to kind of pay for it, but if you have a disadvantage we should maybe tweak the rules a bit to help you out.

        It’s why they twist themselves into pretzels on why free college would be a bad thing actually. Yes poor and minority people have a hard time getting into college but clearly just making it free would violate some profound capitalist ethic, we just need some complex network of public and private funds that disadvantaged people can jerk off to get enough money to go. We’ll help you out but you have to demonstrate your worthiness.

        It’s why their obsessed with means testing even in situations where pro-capitalist economists are actively telling them universal programs would work better.