One thing I've noticed is that many people have become disenfranchised with the mainstream politics of the US and have an idea that voting for either the Democratic or Republican party is just voting for two sides of the same coin. Now hopefully the events of the last 4 years would tell you that isn't the case but it does seem that this perspective has been reinforced in some. Furthermore, many people say their fed up with politicians and think the government should have less power in general. This is an attitude Noam Chomsky has dubbed "anti-politics" and it had lead many people to turn to the Libertarian candidate Jo Jorgensen as their long sought after alternative. Her platform is to put the power to make decisions back into the hands of the people but this perspective is flawed for many reasons that I'll cover in this take.
Lets dissect her vitriol.
@3:45 No, you take the worst aspects of the Republican party to the extreme (expanding corporate control) while throwing out meager scraps of individual liberty that the Democrats give.
@4:15 Actually, what you're all about is letting corporate assholes take advantage of the fact that since the industrial revolution our society has become incredibly complex while our brain capacity hasn't increased to handle all of that information making it easier to bamboozle people without regulations. And we'll see plenty of examples of this throughout the video.
@4:50 You understand it because you're appealing to the same kind of anti-politic rhetoric that you are and you both are playing off the same fear of big government as a cover to transfer power from the public sphere to the corporate. The key difference is that he put big businessmen in positions of power in the government while you aim to cut out any semblance of public control and give government power directly to corporations.
@7:00 Follow the lead of Washington (the one institution that people can affect via active participation) versus unaccountable private tyrannies.
@7:20 If there's a shred of truth to that it's because "libertarians" appeal to common sense but making sense and being fact aren't always the same thing. Our perception of common sense came from evolving in small group societies while we live in much larger ones. If we evolved from a colonial species our perception of "common sense" would be very different. In this sense 'libertarianism' is just an evolutionary atavism; a throwback to the literal stone age.
@8:30 If our tests weren't accurate, instead of having no information, we'd have misleading information from test results which would have lead to counter productive public measures or more irresponsible decisions by private citizens. "The enemy of knowledge isn't ignorance; it's the illusion of knowledge" -Stephen Hawking.
@9:30 No one knew that half the people who were infected had no symptoms in the early stage of the pandemic. That's why Fauci changed his position on masks; data came in and showed that pre-symptomatic spread was a problem.
@10:00 Shut down the economy versus what? Let the virus spread because it doesn't just kill people, it incapacitates them. And for how long? Well to get a rough idea, ~33% of the people infected with coronavirus still have it so if we let the virus spread, we'd be looking at half the work force incapacitated for weeks and a quarter for months on end. And unlike the lockdown the virus doesn't discriminate between essential and non-essential workers (food production, power generation, water sanitation, you know, all the good stuff).
@10:20 Swedens' strategy wouldn't work in the US and that's largely because of the benefits people enjoy because of Swedens' strong welfare programs.
@ 10:45 We could have been sustained through the lockdown way better than we were if Trump hadn't gutted government run social services.
@12:00 What a strawman. No one's saying that many (if not most) people will wear a mask voluntarily. The problem is that while there is a negative correlation between the amount of people who engage in practices that restrict the spread of the virus, the pattern isn't linear. Rather it has an upturned arc to it so even if most people do engage in practices like wearing a mask, it only takes a small portion of the population to act irresponsibly to undo most of the benefits brought about by most of the population acting responsibly. This is why expecting most people to engage in safe practices won't cut it (@ 14:00 in the video).
@14:00 Yes, the money is coming from our tax dollars because it's how we act together to combat the crisis.
@15:00 The larger an entity is, the more resilient it will be to stochastic variables (like pandemics) and this isn't because of the government propping them up, it's because of the central limit theorem. The only way to mitigate this impact is by government intervention.
@16:30 Asking people to live on a minimum wage indefinitely is pretty ridiculous but the problem is that they can't for even a duration of time long enough to get to a better paying position.
@17:15 The lockdowns got less restrictive because we learned more about how the virus spread and were able to fine tune our policies so we could have less restrictive but more effective measures at preventing the spread. Ever heard of a LEARNING CURVE???
@17:30 A lase-faire approach will allow corporate entities to exploit the economic vacuum, increasing their stranglehold on the population.
@19:00 Were it not for the stimulus package there would be a lot less people who could afford to eat at the restaurant in the first place. And that's not taking into account the fact that if they couldn't count on the federal government, they have to save up their money when the pandemic is at a lull in case they get put out of work again should the pandemic resurge (which it did; TWICE).
@19:10 Staying home during a pandemic is the "wrong thing"? Seriously?? This is even more ridiculous than Trump talking shit to Biden about how big his rallies are.
@19:45 Without a certain set of regulations known as "Anti-Trust Laws" the little guys would have been crushed by the corporate giants long ago.
@20:00 & @אביר1:06:00 What a blatant contortion of facts. The federal government doesn't hand out jobs; they "hand out" financial security so instead of having to hoard large sums of money to keep themselves afloat should a future crisis occur, people can afford to take risks when it comes to investing or buying goods from start up companies and fuel job growth. And we have actual data that shows that demand side economics work way better than supply side (notice she didn't give any citations).
@21:40 Federal government programs (schools, research, roads, social security etc...) are a big part of how you were able to earn that 10,000 dollars in the first place.
@22:20 Not that I'd expect totalitarians like her who see everything in black and white to understand this, but there's an optimal balance of private versus public influence in the economy. So she's right when she says that Libertarians are fundamentally different than Republicans and Democrats. Both parties understand the principal of optimization even though they disagree on where the optimum balance of private versus public control of the economy lies. Libertarians go completely off the rails and want to privatize everything and allow for rampant exploitation by corporate interests without a public option to turn to.
@23:10 If that business has control over an essential service than you do on pain of death. You know how theft is theft whether it's done via trickery or at the point of the knife? Well coercion can take many forms including extortion; it's not limited to force. And if there's a public sector, that forces companies to keep prices lower while maintaining higher quality of services than competition alone could. This is the fundamental hypocrisy of "libertarianism" in the US; they're so fearful of government due to its' susceptibility to manipulation by special interests groups but are more than happy to hand over control to corporate entities who's sole purpose from their inception is to expand their profit margin; take as much from while giving as little back to the rest of society as possible.
@26:50 Funny how she doesn't underlying factor driving the mass incarceration epidemic: the privatization of prisons (i.e. bringing the profit motive into it). Pretty much everything she listed is an effect of mass incarceration; not the underlying cause.
@33:30 Every law is an induced fit; no single rule will apply perfectly to any situation at any level of government but you still need legal codes to maintain order. This is a throwaway statement on her part.
@34:00 You need government support and protection to be able to make these choices in the first place.
@38:50 We can also vote for candidates who donate tax dollars to other countries (which we did).
@ゆたか40:30 The problem is that not all communities see education as important and will put appropriate amounts of money into their school system or have as much to spend in the first place and thus certain students are disadvantaged because they're born in a specific place. But why should anyone be surprised that libertarians extend their principals of self sufficiency to school children.
@41:15 "We make every decision through the government" Are you serious (because if there was any validity to that statement you wouldn't need to knit pick examples)? Having a federal government means we have a federal system that allocates powers to provincial and municipal governments.
@43:50 Healthcare payments are going up because as time progressed, quality of care increased but wages didn't keep up with economic growth so people couldn't afford payments out of pocket. Thus we had to rely on insurance companies who expanded their profit margin without contributing to the increase in healthcare quality. Because health care is a necessity, they could price gouge people and thus the federal government had to step in to prevent it. Now there are better approaches like universal health care which would cut out the need for insurance companies entirely.
@44:00 Government officials are accountable to the public who elects them; corporations are accountable to their profit margin.
@44:30 & @撒石灰55:00 Most people aren't medical professionals and you'd need at least a degree in biology to be able to make an informed decision on which doctor is the best one. And no the free market can't sort it out because harmful side effects of sneaky cost saving practices can take years to manifest and odds are the patient wouldn't associate it with the medical treatment that they received either. A very similar principal applies with construction regulations:
@46:30 Singapore's government is involved in their healthcare system and the other developed countries have similar or greater qualities of care while spending 2/3rds of the amount we do on healthcare relative to their GDP. Seriously, even Trump couldn't pack in this many lies.
@47:00 Given the aforementioned disparity in medical knowledge between doctors and the general public they'd be competing to see who could trick people into giving the lowest quality care for the highest possible price.
@48:00 Lasik and cosmetic surgeries are electives so health care providers can't price gouge. You're comparing apples to yack meat FFS.
@49:10 Democrats aren't advocating the abolition of the federal system (with allocations of power to local governments) while corporations are accountable to how much they can exploit the public which is exactly why you wouldn't want such an institution in control of a life or death situation; they could (and would) coerce by extortion.
@52:00 OK this is getting ridiculous; there isn't as much demand for healthcare before a pandemic hits as there is during and something Jo doesn't seem to understand is that markets are very by even the narrowest definitions and results in a lot of excess production. Now you might think wouldn't a surplus of medical supplies being produced be a good thing? No because the free market encourages people to discard excess goods to keep the available supply low and the price high (this is a simplified version; if you want to learn more read into "overproduction" and overstocking). So if a lot of medical supplies was wasted we'd be in an even worse situation in terms of getting the necessary equipment.
@53:00 The number of residency slots limits how many new doctors there are.
@54:15 Because (again) markets are riddled with inefficiencies that you need a governing body to correct for the maximize the benefits and minimize the downsides of the market. I swear these "libertarians" have a completely over idealized dogmatic view of the market as something that magically autocorrects itself; it doesn't.
@56:00 Then you'd be opening it up to people suffering from harmful side effects of the drugs. Now you might argue that the free market would take care of it but (ignoring the fact that there's no evidence for that) even if it was true, then the companies would still have to put in the same startup R&D costs to be competitive. It's just that now it's the market instead of the FDA enforcing it.
@אביר1:07:00 When people signed an employment agreement, in that agreement it says that a certain percentage of the money in that paycheck will be taxed; "against their will" my ass. Who is the government to take money out of an agreement between two individuals? I don't know who enforces that agreement? #Duh
And this highlights another problem with the garbage rhetoric that "libertarians" spit when they try to portray employment regulations as the government butting into an agreement when the moment you say to the government "enforce this contract", you have invited government involvement in that relationship (and how dare a third party ask for a fee for enforcing an agreement between two other parties). If the government just enforces an agreement with no questions asked it allows the party with a power (the owning class) to use the government as a cudgel to enforce their position of power over others. But at least the government cycles that money back into society versus sticking it in some corporate fat cats' profit margin.
@אביר1:07:30 Translation: I'm going to hand public resources to private institutions so they no longer have to pay to support the rest of society to profit from them. And next to that revenue the social security money people would get back would be pocket change.
@אביר1:09:30 OK Jo really exposed her hypocrisy regarding all of her anti war rhetoric around the 1 hour mark. Part of the reason that we put restrictions (she calls them tariffs but they were actually trade sanctions) was because Imperial Japan was committing excess human rights abuses during the second Sino-Japanese war and the American people didn't want to fund these atrocities. Yeah, they could have voted with their dollars but they also voted on policy with their ballots. And the rhetoric "libertarians" use when talking about the military makes you think that states are the only entities that can wage war. This is blatantly false; during most of the Iraq war there were more private contractors (i.e. "mercenaries") in Iraq than regular soldiers. And she talks about downsizing our military so these weapons contractors can't grow a military industrial complex in this country. But when she gives all of these corporations who operate internationally exploit more from the public what do you think they'll do with that money? I don't know maybe invest it to expand their profit margin even more and how will they do that? Well one way is to invest in new technology while another is to support factions abroad looking for foreign investment by hiring private paramilitary forces to crush all opposition and keep the cash flowing. So now weapons contractors wouldn't have to weasel through government and create a bogus narrative to sell to the public as to why the US needs such an OP'd military. They could just make a deal with a resource extraction company (who would have way more money to spare from milking the US public for all their worth versus us being taxed if Jos' policies were implemented) looking to exploit resources in an unstable country and provide weapons to their client faction. And if you look at the history of war crimes, the worst abuses tend to be committed by paramilitary irregulars because they don't have as much to worry about in terms of bad PR and when it comes to employees in a mercenary company, often times the bulk of them won't have come from a single country in the first place so there's even less accountability. So "libertarians" aren't 'anti-war'; they're against it being committed by a state military. When it comes to private paramilitaries who can get away with the worst human rights abuses without the fear of public backlash. And if you're going to say people wouldn't be willing to do business who engage in such practices, give me a break. There are so many backdoor avenues the parties involved could use to hide their involvement from the public. Yes, people can vote with their dollars but when that's not enough they can vote with their ballot and put these assholes in their place.
@אביר1:13:10 Fascism is the merger of state and corporate power but what she intends to do is hand state power over to corporations so she's way closer to a "fascist" than Trump. Fascism and "libertarianism" are but two sides of the same corporatist coin. The former expands corporate power at the expense of individual liberty via the abolition of negative rights while the latter does so via the abolition of positive rights.
@אביר1:15:15 She's forgetting about how anti-trust laws limit how much leveraging of the market against startup companies corporations can engage in by locally decreasing product prices to put nascent competitors out of business.
@אביר1:17:45 Most people support lockdowns (especially the underdogs she cries crocodile tears for) and socialism is way more popular now. Why? I don't know maybe because they can see that in Europe with its' strong social safety net, the impact was less severe and the main reason our response was so hampered is because we've gutted the social programs that she wants to dismantle completely. FFS we'd probably be looking a +1M dead right now and banks would have used this opportunity to engage in predatory lending so they could hold us by the ball sack for the next few decades is Gary Johnson was president. You know what, people do give Trump too much flak for his response; it could have been WAY worse.
So in summary, "libertarianism" doesn't seek to take power from the government and give it back to the people, it takes it from the public and gives it to private unaccountable entities who's purpose from the inception was to exploit the public as much as they could (why I say '"libertarianism' is rotten to the core"). They may not use force to control like the government but just as theft is theft whether it's done by a tick or theft, coercion can be accomplished by force or the extortion of essential services (which is why positive rights are just as important for protecting individual liberty as negative rights). And you know how "libertarians" talk about the risk of giving the government too much power, well rest assured that these organizations driven by how much they can take will use all the leveraging they can to prevent anything from going back to the public sphere. Churchill said "the fascists of the future will claim to be anti-fascist" and there is no more clear example of that than the "libertarian" party of the US.
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Dammmmmm you put some serious work into this post!!
I do think it’s a key issue & i am happy to see others thinking about it and pretty cool that you’re doing it from 🇦🇺 .. tho it does often seem people from other countries take more Interest in and more about u s politics than u s citizens 😆
it’s also super late where I am so I’m going to read it tomorrow but— respect 🫡
Actually I'm an American living in Australia (and I was living in the USA when I wrote this) ;)
Ohh ok i gotcha.. still, I wouldn’t have been surprised. The political literacy is bizarre here. 👀
I’m from France but I’ve been here quite a while, I’m still in shock.