Friday, April 10, 2009

the sociopathic and antidemocratic nature of capitalist-fundamentalism

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Noam rules
:

The sociopathic bit:
"Say, when I go home tonight, I have a choice on the market. I can choose to go home in a Ford or a Toyoto. But I can't choose to go home on a public transportation system because that's not one of the options that a market provides. I can choose this doctor or that doctor, but I can't choose a national health system. That's not an option on the market. These are options for societies that are reasonable, world democratic societies, more reasonable societies where everything is under popular control (socialist societies, anarchist societies,) but markets don't allow any of that.

So they're heavily biased in favor of certain kinds of outcomes, which are in many ways anti-social outcomes. With regards to public transportation, one of the outcomes may be the destruction of the species. There's nothing in markets that gives any incentive to care whether your grandchildren survive. The choices aren't there. So even human survival isn't very likely under market societies. "
Tha antidemocratic bit:
"Suppose there's a television ad for a drug, or a car, or something. In a market society, what you would have is a description of the properties of the commodity because then you get what are called Ôinformed consumers making rational choices.' But that's not what you get. What you get is forms of delusion because the business wants to create uninformed consumers, who make irrational choices. That is, they want to undermine markets. Which is very much like the political system. You want an electorate, which is uninformed and makes irrational choices under modern democracy, so the whole kind of ideology is so remote from reality that it's almost impossible to discuss."

Finally, on a positive note:

"there's plenty of problems, but no reason to lose hope"
I need that tattooed on my eyelids.

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