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Originally Posted by roachboy
it is the entire ideology for which they stand.
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I doubt you could find a consensus on the Bush "ideology". In fact I believe his actions on fiscal issues in particular has been very inconsistent with his stated ideology regarding fiscal policy. And in the past few months it seems Bush has taken the "lame duck" role to heart and his willing to support even the most extreme bailout schemes coming from Congress.
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i see this as a massive, wholesale implosion of neoliberalism, of cowboy capitalism, of the washington consensus, and of the lunatic "globalization" that neoliberalism has enabled. so this is obviously much bigger than the bush administration---neoliberalism runs back into the early 1970s. it's conditions of possibility include the various transnationalizations of transactions put into place by the nixon administration, whose importance in setting all this in motion is still underestimated. ideologically, neoliberalism took shape across the thatcher-reagan period. the political modus operandus domestically, the screen discourse, took shape during the reagan period....but i digress, moving from the ideology of contemporary capitalist incoherence--neoliberalism---which is intimately associated with american political and economic domination--and the earlier claim that the current economic crisis is a political crisis and a political crisis directly brought on my the staggering incompetence of the bush administration.
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Speaking as an individual who happens to be conservative - none of the above comes into play when I formulate my views. My view of capitalism has been mainly formed from by being a consumer and a provider of goods and services in the market. Since I have never gotten much help from government and large domestic/international institutions and in-fact believe they have mis-used power my core belief is with the individual and the independent regardless of boarders. I am very libertarian in that regard. And what you call "neoliberalism" perhaps I consider libertarianism.
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you want to eliminate complexity when you think about this, it seems.
i think that if you eliminate complexity, you eliminate thinking, so i don't see the point of heading down that route.
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Like Einstein's theory of relativity, the most complex concepts are often the simplest. The paradox of complexity is simplification. I believe I recall that many of Einstein's peers did not see the point of heading down the route he was on when he came to his conclusions. Truth is not a popularity contest.
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despite the fact that this is a messageboard, we can still maintain a certain minimal relation to what is happening in the world by refusing to boil it down to small-business level bromides.
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What is happening is a company like Toyota can make a profit for every car is sells and GM can not. That is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Profit is the cornerstone of the issue. It is unfortunate that the term or concept is considered something bad in the liberal mind.
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4. this milton friedman horseshit is a significant element of the washington consensus that got us into this trainwreck. you cannot possibly expect me to take it seriously now. i have always argued that this position made no sense, even when it had some credibility. now it doesn't have that. time to retool your mind, ace. you can do it.
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I don't control what you take seriously, but at the most basic level any progress requires excess (or profit in the economic context). We can ignore this truism at our own risk.