Hey Brian, found this article from the AirAlumni slack channel! I'm James over there.
I don’t know anything about the stock market, so I’m just commenting on the politics half of this article. I just want to call out a few premises in this post that I have issues with:
1. Distrust in institutions is a bad thing
I’d argue that many institutions don’t deserve the American people’s trust, and it’s encouraging to see people wake up to that. Policing, neoliberalism, media, large corporations are a few that come to mind.
2. “A well-functioning stock market and a well-functioning political system could be described with a single term: efficiency.”
Efficiency should be one goal of a political system, but I wouldn’t put it above terms like “democratic”, “supportive”, or “fair”. Remember: fascism is incredibly efficient.
3. Moderate politics are better or somehow more reasonable than “extremist” politics
First, “moderate” isn’t a universal thing. Moderate in the US is far right in Europe, for example. It also changes over time, and starts with viewpoints that sound extreme. Dennis Kucinich was called crazy in 2004 for supporting LGBT rights, single payer healthcare, and for bashing the iraq war. All of which are now mainstream opinions (rightfully, imo).
Second, there’s nothing that suggests the centrist viewpoint is the most objectively desirable. There are real world cases where the centrist option is actually worse for more people than either the far left or far right (ex: instead of free market economics or social democracy we have neoliberalism, or state-sponsored capitalism.).
Third, the centrist position is often set by the powerful, not by the people. Did you know that 70% of people in the US think favorably about medicare for all? You wouldn't know that by watching fox news (or MSNBC, or by reading the NYT) because they are all deferential to power, and those in power do _not_ want to see a single payer healthcare system.
It's important to remember that it's not only extremists that have an ideology, centrism is an ideology as well. Paraphrasing this, but Boots Riley once said that "everything is ideological, you just don't notice when it's in lock step with the status quo."
Overall I think this post is well written, and it got me thinking which is always good!
Hey Brian, found this article from the AirAlumni slack channel! I'm James over there.
I don’t know anything about the stock market, so I’m just commenting on the politics half of this article. I just want to call out a few premises in this post that I have issues with:
1. Distrust in institutions is a bad thing
I’d argue that many institutions don’t deserve the American people’s trust, and it’s encouraging to see people wake up to that. Policing, neoliberalism, media, large corporations are a few that come to mind.
2. “A well-functioning stock market and a well-functioning political system could be described with a single term: efficiency.”
Efficiency should be one goal of a political system, but I wouldn’t put it above terms like “democratic”, “supportive”, or “fair”. Remember: fascism is incredibly efficient.
3. Moderate politics are better or somehow more reasonable than “extremist” politics
First, “moderate” isn’t a universal thing. Moderate in the US is far right in Europe, for example. It also changes over time, and starts with viewpoints that sound extreme. Dennis Kucinich was called crazy in 2004 for supporting LGBT rights, single payer healthcare, and for bashing the iraq war. All of which are now mainstream opinions (rightfully, imo).
Second, there’s nothing that suggests the centrist viewpoint is the most objectively desirable. There are real world cases where the centrist option is actually worse for more people than either the far left or far right (ex: instead of free market economics or social democracy we have neoliberalism, or state-sponsored capitalism.).
Third, the centrist position is often set by the powerful, not by the people. Did you know that 70% of people in the US think favorably about medicare for all? You wouldn't know that by watching fox news (or MSNBC, or by reading the NYT) because they are all deferential to power, and those in power do _not_ want to see a single payer healthcare system.
It's important to remember that it's not only extremists that have an ideology, centrism is an ideology as well. Paraphrasing this, but Boots Riley once said that "everything is ideological, you just don't notice when it's in lock step with the status quo."
Overall I think this post is well written, and it got me thinking which is always good!