We had a lunch lecture where this environmental scientist gave a talk about critical materials and how big of a problem our reliance on these are. He links the whole thing up with politics pretty well, explaining how various political actors are involved and benefit from this or that.
At some point, he even mentions how in the netherlands, policy doesn’t get passed without a buy-in from industry. It means quite a lot, cause this guy is government hired in recommending policies.
Then he contradicts himself in the next paragraph by saying that this is the curse of democracy that people make stupid decisions.
I ask this guy about the contradiction. How you simultaneously harp about profits over needs, the evils of consultancy firms, and the inability of the Dutch government to do anything but pursue corporate interests, while also talking about the problems of “democracy”?
He just tells me “we are a democracy that’s why the Dutch government listens to industry”. Well not exactly that, but at least that’s the message I get when he talks about all the corporate controlled parties winning the elections and how that’s what the people chose.
Dude is this close to realising that the definition of liberal democracy is “legitimised rule by corporations” .
Of course, the lecture ends with a book recommendation for a book about the collapse of human civilisation. And a recommendation to go vote and participate in political parties.
Unlimited death upon elections.
Um achkstully it’s only democracy if corporations are never told what, who, or when to do anything. Otherwise it’s authoritarian. Oh put the people in said authoritarian country generally like what their government does and approve of it? That’s just populist authoritarianism. The most evil of all. Now let Exxon in
He literally called industry control of the country “populism”. So the lib non-understanding has evolved beyond what we expected.
Corporations are people so rule by companies is just populism. Truth nuke
Mitt Romney I didnt know you were on hexbear!
People can be corporations too though!
I don’t understand why “populism” is such a dirty word to these people. Maybe there’s a part of the definition I’m missing, but the alternative to populism brought us trump, soooo…
That word is a little trick of theirs. They only ever use it to describe reactionaries as a way to get you to think leftist ideas arent popular.
Because it’s just a buzzword that means “literally everything that isn’t a very narrow band of elite managerial technocracy”. Like they call Trump, the elitest and fanciest of all lads whose base of power is aggrieved landowners, small business tyrants, and the enforcers of the ruling class, a “populist” despite entirely representing the ruling elite, simply because he’s also a boorish lout who’s rude to them personally. They can’t attack him on his crimes or his policies, because they’re all elite fancy lad crimes and the same policies they themselves support, so they froth about him being rude and dumb and vulgar like the poors and call him a “populist” because he’s what they imagine the public to be (when he’s the physical manifestation of the American ruling class without the flimsy mask of humanity it tries to hide itself behind).
https://www.mintpressnews.com/usaid-disinformation-primer-global-censorship-name-of-democracy/287075/
Because they can’t imagine truth being on a spectrum, where there* are various points where truth becomes lie. Absolutes, splitting is very comforting, but very misleading. What’s really weird is trumpeting about nuance, where the outer limits of that nuance begins looking like a pale blue dot against an infinite expanse, where there is nothing beyond the gravitational pull of that dot.
I saw a quote on here the other day about how “science advanced one funeral at a time”. The same is true of liberal politics.
People have a religious fanaticism about “the truth”. Like the scientific method doesn’t exist. We are supposed to “follow science” but if something comes out that contradicts the established science, it’s dismissed out of hand for 50 years and then they quietly try to retcon what has been “the truth” all along. There’s a concept called The half life of knowledge (apologies for a Wikipedia link) that states that over time, some “facts” either become untrue due to more information or sometimes due to cultural shifts. Liberals hate this one simple trick
I’ll go farther and assert the same is true of politics, or anything else, really. Otherwise, I agree.
Oh absolutely. I’m pushing 40 and I’m still not in the running for having any power to steer my family in decision making. The “queen bee” is my last grandma and we just do what she wants because she’s fucking impossible. Not to be morbid, but things are gonna get a lot more chill once she passes. I love her and I don’t want her to die on one hand but we have a very strained relationship from decades of her mental abuse.
Anyway, yeah. Some things get better as generations age out and lose power, but some people pick up the mantle and come kicking and screaming
They’re advancing so quickly I can’t keep up yet they’re not going anywhere