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Socialist Exceptionalism
"In the minds of the statists, "Government Works Better" and 'things' work at the surface; but at the core, it's a disaster... The Americans that look to the government to 'save' them - and even gleefully thank the government for helping bail them out - fail to realize that it was the government that f##ked them in the first place..."
Simply put, "debt-financed socialism and corporatism isn't working" and a day of reckoning is coming...
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"The Americans that look to the government to 'save' them - and even gleefully thank the government for helping bail them out - fail to realize that it was the government that f##ked them in the first place...""
I heard angels sing when I read that. Amen.
The banksters need to repay us.
Turning to governmnet to save you, is like asking the rapist that has you bent over the fence, and is takking you from behind, for a reach-around.
Zero Hedge claims to decry statism, and yet it embraces Russia's Putin unreservedly. How exactly does that work?
It is Putin, after all, who is an ardent believer in price controls (witness the recent ceiling on vodka prices), Putin who decides which businesses will be owned outright or controlled by the state (e.g., Rosneft and Gazprom in energy, Sberbank in banking, and Channel One Russia and RT in "news").
Why exactly does Vlad get a pass?
Because he loathes America, just like Zero Hedge and many of its readers.
It isn't that simple. The west wants The Ukraine in the EU and NATO. That's what our news won't report. If that happens, they'll put NATO nukes pointing at Russia from their backyard. Would you want nukes pointing into the U.S. from Tiajuana?
At least Putin looks out for the people he represents. Our government just sells us down the road everyday. And no one says or does anything for fear of being branded a racist.....
"At least Putin looks out for the people...."
See, there you go again making exceptions for an avowed statist. You say Vlad looks out for ordinary Russians, but I've yet to hear someone answer this posed (and re-posed question):
Russia’s Vladimir Putin refers to himself as “Russia’s humble public servant.” This humble public servant’s net worth is:
a) Negligible – after all, he’s merely a humble public servant;
b) On a par with that of Russia’s oligarchs, who often are required to get clearance for important transactions from Mr. Putin himself;
c) Greater than that of most oligarchs, since approval by Mr. Putin for large transactions is a given, and naturally, “palms will need to be greased”; or
d) Quite modest, Mr. Putin preferring to be paid in bottles of Baltika No. 3.
For those that answered (b) or (c), a follow-up question:
Mr. Putin’s extraordinary wealth is the result of:
a) Blatant corruption and quid pro quo deal-making;
b) Skimming from the Russian treasury;
c) A night job working on the KaMAZ truck assembly line; or
d) Generous donations via Western Union from loyal Zero Hedgers.
If Vlad is truly 'looking out for the people', I assume you believe his net worth is neglible, yes? After all, someone who's looking out for the people wouldn't dare squirrel away public funds somewhere, right?
I understand your perspective and there are a lot of "hate America first" people here. Its just America's continued meddling in other countries affairs is just too damned much and needs to stop. The hard part is our own media covering it up. The danger for us is to give too much credit to Putin simply as part of our criticism of our own government. We can respect Putin for his style and character but that does not make him a good man......just maybe better than our own "man".
You sit in Putins chair and protect your family while being a "good man". Only God gets to judge who is a good man, the rest of us will just have to make do with opinions.
"God may forgive me, but that's not enough. 'Cause I have to live with myself until I am dust." - Dan Auerbach
I agree with most of what you said. However, keep in mind that while we may have a media that gives Obama a pass much of the time, even MSNBC, CNN, Huffington Post, etc., occasionally carry pieces critical of Obama and his policies. Try finding that on RT.com.
He doesn't get a pass.
Nobody is rootin for Putin.
Everybody should be hoping for freedom and justice for all sides. If an old adversary can show Our shortcommings we should take the opportunity to look inwards and learn from our mistakes and make a better world for everyone
It's time we let the old biases and steryotypes go. Forget the right and left, its time the people took back their freedom starting with ending cronyism and taking back control of their money supply.
Only then will we be able to move forward and hopefully leave a better future for our children.
As for the vodka....WTF?
Oh, he most certainly does get a pass here, Bob. Either you're a knave or simply new to Zero Hedge. Read the comments section of FSU oriented posts and you'll see a vast proliferation of Putin envy. It's nauseating.
If you've got your head in the sand and didn't realize that Russia has a ceiling on vodka prices, well, do I need to spot you a loaner calorie so you can work up enough energy to search it yourself?
http://www.businessinsider.com/putin-vodka-price-cap-2014-12
http://money.cnn.com/2014/12/31/news/economy/russia-vodka-putin/
@ 5e (.Gov Troll )
You are what's known in the building trade as 2 by 4 ; a fucking PLANK!
Judging by your comments since you were tasked by some low-life .Gov supervisor as one of your rotating duties it is quite obvious that you have a huge inferiority complex and very low self esteem.
Just like your bosses up the chain of command who are themselves delusional you are so far out of your depth in attempting to make any impression here , it's pitiful.
As you suck the dick of the equally brain dead moron who up voted you in the adjoining cubicle remember who's paying your fucking wages, you parasitic cunt.
Bob, I've got facts and analysis (okay, I've got your goat, too).
You've just got repetitive ad hominem attacks, desperately hoping to avoid the issues.
You silly goose!
The only time I like socialists is when they tell the crony capitalists to fuck off.....as in Greece and Spain right now. The rest of the time......hmmmm not so much.
I will give them a limited-time thumbs up for upsetting the status quo for a while but they will revert to being predatory, confiscatory police statists within five years. They have already promised that.
I would call our governance socialism only in that it is for the sole benefit corporations, but hey, that's just me.
We've ended up in a situation analogous to having a parent "befitting" a child by giving them cookies, until they die of diabetes at age 7.
Another one that does not 'get it'.
The government allowed the people to be screwed by selling out to the special interests.
It (once again) has nothing to do with left versus right, but up versus down.
Something that is diligently kept out of the light.
Governments eventually ALWAYS sell out to special interests, no matter how many checks and balances you stick in there. Once people allow government to do something they create systemic risks for their own freedoms. Government, very little of it, is necessary, and non of it redistributive.
Wow, Zerohedge, an anti-government article instead of one praising socialists. Back to old form or just a glitch?
Chris I dont think ZH is so much pro socialism as it is against Crony capitalism. I think it has been this way for a long time, would you not agree?
By the way I do respect your opinions although I disagree with most.
Zeorhedge praises socialist parties and panders to the moronic class warfare crowd. They're more anti-capitalist than anti-fascist as of recent times.
Does Bruce Jenner read ZH?
I hear Lady GaGa does...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss_BmTGv43M
Should he?
Probably.
He has enough of his own money to pay for his sex-change.
I don't blame the government.
Look , to me it's simple. .... If you happened to be a fucking jungle bunny monkey straight from Kenya, a promiscuous faggot, with a penchant for bath houses and sticking your cock in shitholes, a cocaine habit, an IQ less than your shoe size, and then, for some unfathomable reason, countless tens of millions of gullible, brain dead, half witted, slack jawed slavering poncing morons, decided you we2re the salvation, what the fuck would you do.
If anyone expected it to grow a pair of balls , renounce its faggotry and acquire intelligence beyond a capacity to read a teleprompter, then who are the real fucking morons.
Especially considering they did and voted not once, but fucking twice,after getting ass raped for 4 years the first time.
Personally, I would treat every fucking one of them with the utmost contempt they deserve, every single fucking clueless fat dumb American Moron who gets off his fucking couch long enough to waddle down to the polling station to vote these cunts back again time after time.
Greece has shown the way. When the fuck are the great American Morons going to get enough brains to do the same. When they are starving too?
Dude have some respect for others even if you have no respect for yourself. you sound like a damn fool.
The languge is excusable because Obama is beyond the pale and need not be considered human. I like that video because I agree with its premise that anyone who supports goverment enabled forced redistribution suffers fron the Stockholm Syndrome. Its also short, accurate and hard hitting.
When its too late, just as Greece has.
What has Greece done besides vote for the party that promised them more free shit? How is that different from America exactly? Can Greece afford thiis new (old) lifestyle? And where pray tell are they going to get the money? They're not telling the "bankers" to fuck off, they're just negotiating better terms on their credit card payments.
So far, The Greek Fin. Min. has said that you can't solve a debt problem with more debt and this is the avenue he will take.
This alone proves he is smarter than 98% of the people in the EC. (that other 2% might be Nigel Farage)
How he's going to repair Greece's broken financial/Gov. morass is going to be another Greek Epic tale like Odysseus navigating between the giant sucking whirlpool of creditor debt that is Charybdis and the rocky shoals of Greek reform's Scylla. Like Odysseus he is heading closer to Scylla. Lose a few to save the many.
I'm hoping he can find some solutions, but I sincerely doubt many of them will be considered very 'socialistic'.
From your tone I can sense that you are not fond of President Obama. As for Tsipras he is socialist so the best he will be able to achieve is out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Some people blame Governments, some Central Banks and some investment bankers.
They spend their time arguing with each other as who is to blame.
The divide and rule strategy at work.
It is obvious they are working together in an unholy trinity:
Investment bankers, central bankers and politicians
They take in turns to bail each other out, impose austerity on the people and load taxpayers up with all the bankers losses.
Both socialism and un-regulated free markets are utopian fantasises.
Bankers have demonstrated why un-regulated free markets are a utopian fantasy.
We de-regulated banks and trusted bankers and they rigged every market they could.
We removed the 1930s legislation designed to prevent another 1929 and they did it again in 2008.
We can thank the bankers for reminding us of the necessity of legislation and why it was enacted in the first place.
There is lots of financial regulation because bankers are incompetent, unscrupulous and entirely without morals.
Even Elizabeth Warren admitted that the financial crisis would likely still have occurred even if Glass Steagall was still in effect.
Righhhhht ... Who you gonaa belive that fake 1/2 breed apologist or your own gut.
Wow.....now Elizabeth is a 1/2 breed?
Don't you know she claims she is half injun (Indian)?
Wrong
The "corporation" is itself a .gov creation which removes personal responsibility, so why should a CEO or other company officer show responsibility, they won't, especially if it gets in the way of profits
And in the case of banking, with fractional reserve lending (legal counterfeiting), .gov literally creates the illegitimate business model, then tries to regulate it to compensate for its gross abuses
.gov creates the original problem, always
Haha! Thanks for summing the Zh echochambermaiden ethos:
You can't make this shit up!
The people who made this video have either never been abroad, or are unaware of the existence of other countries, where social security works just fine, and on a surplus. The problem with US social security is that the US government is corrupt and the oligarchy determines the price for everything, so of course you'll run a deficit, even if everything is privatized. And then you end up with the wrong conclusions that actually support the oligarchy - "everything's bankrupt, let's do a fire sale and give it away to the oligarchs. Also, deregulate everything, so oligarchs can do whatever the hell they want."
If this isn't sarcasm then I think you haven't done your due diligence. The reason the US government/Fed-Reserve can treat the EURO area as their slut is because the Petrodollar system allowed the welfare states to be financed by borrowing. Times up. Bills do. Everyone will be disappointed.
NOT UNTIL EVERY VICHY- DC FOREIGN MILITARY ( WAR ) BASE IS BULLDOZED SHALL WE WITNESS SOME SEMBLANCE OF HOPE AND CHANGE.
"Simply put, "debt-financed socialism and corporatism isn't working" and a day of reckoning is coming..."
I couldn't have put it better myself.
But never ignore that when socialism fails - as it always always does - many people demand moar.
EXACTLY, and there-in lies the true danger of the coming collapse.
What will be on the other side of it has the potential to be FAR worse than what we have today, with the sheeple begging for moar of what ails them.
How about surplus fueled socialism then?
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/may/27/debt-deficit-oecd-c...
"No! That's not true! That's impossible! Waaaaaaah!"-Luke Skywalker
http://www.finfacts.ie/artman/uploads/3/Norway-sovereign-fund-Oct202010.jpg
Transitory!
Temporary!
Impermanent!
Momentary!
Ephemeral!
"Fleeting"-echochambermaiden extraordinaire
Decades pass like nothing for the Fiscally Fugacious Phreaque Sisters!
'when it fails as it always always does'
Well you just keep holding your breath on that one and let us know how that works out for you.
Video: "It's time to Obama-proof your finances"
Right on.
I got malt liquor, grape flavored cigarillos, and cable TV.
Keep 'em coming, or else.
Merca has no more a government in the real sense of what government and state was supposed to mean than does China or North Korea. The bastard child of Mercan "democracy" was strangled from day one in the land built on genocide and slavery by rich bigotted old white farts. Merca is a corpofascist militarist murder machine that makes and breaks all rules as its ruling class sees fit. To decry the institutions of governance as "the problem", rather than clean up the sewer that Washing town has always been, is as simplisitic as blaming Ebola virus for killing people and not the policies of those that cause such conditions which not only allow Ebola to thrive but in fact actively spread the pestilence as direct policy.
That Merca is a collapsing, ruined, post industrialist, bankrupt nation where its banksters live off Federal Ex Pre$$ money printing and its unemployable brain dead masses live off Wall Mart foodstamps are simply two sides of the same plugged nickel.
The view from the Harvard faculty longe.
Eh,
Closer to the first semester dropout with the Che' t shirt.
The faculty write better.
Next: https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1422579428&v=fNz3aZ3Ez7I&x-yt-cl=85114404&feature=player_embedded
Wow. This comment section is beyond depressing. I expected better of ZH readers. Do any of you really think there's a way out? The problems are systemic, and no amount of capitalism or socialism or any other ism is going to fix it.
Think really hard; can you imagine any way to have a technological society without some form of slavery? Which is what we have; they just replaced chattel slavery with a wage slavery system in which you have absolutely no other way to survive but to pay money to others. It can't be any other way, because industrialism can't survive unless a small handful of people control the means of production and the remainder are somewhat dispossessed. You know this to be true: a technological society is utterly dependant on millions of jobs that nobody would do if there was a choice.
Blaming government is asinine. We aren't ruled by governments, we are ruled by a powerful international oligarchy that controls governments. Anyone who has witnessed the events of the past eight years and doesn't think financial interests are running the show is eitehr living in a dream world or not paying attention. I'm seeing small business owners pop up in here talking about being crucified by government... of course you are. You are the competition of those the government serves. The government is not anti-business, it is anti-small business. Wal Mart is doing just fine, thank you very much.
All of these problems are coming to a head today not becaue the government fucked everything up, or even due to greed/corruption/mistakes on the parts of the monied interests that control them. America circa 1948-1970 or so is living proof; the oligarchy is delighted to give the working /middle classes sufficient compensation to keep them quietly working if the resources exist. It's a worthwhile tradeoff for a stable workforce. But things are different now; the raw materials needed to keep the party going are more difficult and expensive to get than ever before (a situation that will only get worse), and the population has reached a point at which we have far more people than we can possibly keep busy.
The answer? I don't have it. We're in a deep fucking hole, and only a catastrophe or a miracle is going to get us out. What's going to happen is the bulk of the population is going to get poorer and poorer, and to keep them in check the ruling powers are going to stop pretending to be benevolent. But don't sit there and tell me that America can magically return to the 1950s by limiting government or going back to real money or any of the other idiotic methodologies proposed. There's no way back. Frankly, the solution most of you seem to favor is to let people starve. Because tae away the safety nets and that is what's going to happen; willingness to work won't make a damn bit of difference because there are nowhere near enough jobs you can actually live on. Once again, I don't have an answer, but I can tell you that no nation that can afford otherwise will let the population starve. That way lies riots.
Yet to design defective technology in the name of everlasting jobs for humans does nothing execpt provide the chains and shackles in which to in prison him with misery. Where as if items were designed to last a life time, the human might find the time to escape the chains which tie him down and pass the secret down to others. Complex I know, but so are humans.
2hand, you gave up it's hopeless nothing can help..well let me set you to ease..you are wrong, but what works is what reptile elites cannot have. we are on a doorstep of many futures, choose wisely.
" Do any of you really think there's a way out? " Red Wineism works for me
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society - Krishnamurti
2handband Wow. This comment section is beyond depressing. I expected better of ZH readers. Do any of you really think there's a way out? The problems are systemic, and no amount of capitalism or socialism or any other ism is going to fix it.
---
So you are depressed and expect more of ZH readers. Then you tell us the problems are systemic and no amount of capitalism or socialism is going to fix it. Kind of contradictory aren't you? You want ZH readers to do better and then you do just the same as the ZH readers you ecpect better of?
Gaaaahhh. Slavery...
It's always slavery.
Go try some of that subsistence 2 acre farming then. The freedom of dawn to dusk unrelenting hard labor for a bowl of boiled beans before you collapse in bed. I hope you have the capital for a mule otherwise your wife will be really hating life.
You don't need technological 'slavery'.
You choose it because the alternative is far worse because of the effort it needs to fill the belly.
Sessinpo covered the ZH whining nicely so I'll not bother pointing out the glaring hypocrisy.
I'd love to be a socialist lotus-eater too.
Anyone got any money to fulfill my dreams?
Here's where I wind up waving my anthropology degree under somebody's nose. First off, the 14 hr struggle was a uniquely American phenomenon... it was symptomatic of stubborn indivualists building homesteads without the established community and supporting infrastructure that Europe had developed over a period of centuries. Even then, so long as there was the land to go back to the early industrialists found it very difficult to keep people in the factories, and had to resort to either violent or underhanded behavior to accomplish it. The industrial workforce didn't stabilize until there was no longer a choice.
I don't know what to point you to online... the best sources are still books for this sort of thing. But medieval peasants worked, in general, far fewer hours than modern industrialized humans. Hunter gatherer tribes worked even less; if you want to know a dirty little secret about American settlement look into colonists and early Americans running off to live with the indians. It was enough of a problem that it was a capital crime in many areas, and continued to be an issue right up until the west was finally conquered in the late 19th century. Truth is, modern industrialized humans work more than just about any other humans in known history, with the exception of some specific examples of chattel slavery.
In ancient Rome, if you weren't happy with mainstream society you could take your family and go live in a monastery. These weren't religious institutions, they were communal enclaves built away from population centers where people went to live apart from the mainstream of Roman life. So long as they caused no trouble they were left alone. They didn't even have to pay taxes! Try that today; you'll be labeled a cult. They'll set fire to your building and shoot you as you run out of the flames. What you're putting your seal of endorsement on is a totalitarian society that extracts your labor for the benefit of capital and denies you participation in power (unless you're really dumb enough to think you're not voting for one of two preselected candidates who both work for the same people). And it permits no alternatives to itself. Take a place in the morning eyes economy, or die.
I'm not advocating socialism necessarily; didn't I say I don't have any answers? But I do say this: dealing ethically with a population that cannot possibly be kept employed in a system in which there is no means of survival other than employment is going to be the single greatest ethical dilemma of the next couple of decades. I don't know what the answer is, but I do know we're not getting a say. The decision will be made by people who don't have our best interests at heart. They're the ones that the system is made for, and contrary to popular belief the system works. Magnificently. We're just in denial about its purpose.
duplicate
An interesting book that might show similarities with our own future is Kingdom by the Sea by Paul Theroux. It is about his travels through England in 1982 - not to castles and museums - but by public transportation, boarding houses, and foot. England was a shell of its former Empire, not yet recovered from the recessions of the late 1970's, and before the Great money-printing and debt began. At the time of the book, the Pound had been greatly devalued (like where the dollar is going?)
Unable to afford much (like where the US is heading), the English people would spend their 'holiday' vacation in small 'holiday camps' or simply sit in their cars and stare out at the sea. He also observes the general breakdown of public services like transportation (trains), and the run down condition of the boarding houses.
Of course, a few years after the book, England started their own giant housing bubble and combined with adding a huge amount of debt, England has since 'prospered'???
I see a problem here.
The pound was devalued but the money-printing only started after that?
How does a currency lose it's value?
It may have use as a political screed but it certainly won't pass a logic test.
Whoa, this is heady fare for an early Sunday morning. Would just like to offer to Rad MJ that if he could find a different adjective than bull shit he might make his arguement more effective. As far as the rest of the conversation; I think we all agree government by default is the biggest bully around and it kind of has to be as someone has to be in charge, and whomever is in charge must have powers to enforce order. However where it gets lost is the power must derive from the peoples consent. And when you have ( I'll be kind here) 65% morons for a base, it becomes too easy for the more sinister of the holders of the levers of power to use their more malevolent impulses to control and divert the simple minded to do their bidding.
If I had read some of the concepts I see here on ZH twenty years ago I would have sworn I had run across a wacko site full of doomsaying maniacs, but after seeing some of the things coming down the pike in the last two decades, a lot of it foretold right here, I'm of a different mind set.
When I see these morons not only elect, but RE elect this incompetent joke of a leader president we have now, then I see the all but coronation of the blood soaked leftist shrew they have lined up for next, I shake my head and wonder what can possibly be wrong with these people.
They are lemmings and they will do what lemmings do, all we (or more directly, I) can do is whatever is neccesary to take care of me and mine.
The rest of these fools will be left to their fate. Any communication with any of you guys out there who, like me see this charade for what it is, well it's always nice to have company and a decent conversation.
The great libertarian Harry Browne, author of "How I Found Freedom In a Unfree World" said it best.....:"First the government breaks your leg, then hands you a crutch and says 'see, if it were' not for us you wouldn't be able to walk!'.
Read him and be awakened.
A government of the people, by the people, and for the people can't exist if the people rely on the government because the government they are relying on is them. I've said it before but the kinds of people that make good capitalist democracy citizens are the same kinds of people that make good communist citizens because they aren't looking for a free ride. Unfortunately 60% to 80% of the population is looking to get more than they give which is why all of these systems break down over time.
fascism is just another flavor of socialism.
Your ignorance is your bliss; breeds hubris.
socialism seeks to empower labour.
fascism strives to entrench a plutocracy.
Noticeable differences there, I'd say.
Does it all come crashing down one the FED raises rates to 5%, or can the FED simply by 100% of all new debt?