21–30 of 185 posts
As a UofA grad I can tell you the hippies down there are going to go absolutely apeshit. The university is half Rob Gronkowski and half Cesar Chavez. The Gronks all leave after school but the Cesar's all stick around the university and think, act, and look like Noam. He'll fit right in.
So they are low-key, patient, and make thorough, very detailed responses when debating?
Chomsky is a great critic of social issues like imperialism, manufactured consent, and state capitalism. However he has been proved devastatingly wrong about Venezuela and as of today won't admit the problems with state socialism. I hope his new students realize this.
Chomsky is a linguistics professor. His students won't presumably have that much reason to care about whether he was right about Venezuela or not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there some crucial factor in Venezuela's woes which clearly arises from socialism? It seems likely that the US will soon become the latest demonstration that corruption can damage a country with any form of government. Chomsky identifies that as the problem in Venezuela, which I find plausible. https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/5/chomsky_leftist_latin_...
-Redistribution and price controls, which have brought production, and therefore consumption, to a halt. -Preventing markets and prices from working and substituting with centralized economic planning. https://fee.org/articles/you-cant-deny-that-venezuela-is-a-s...
Instead, we see there is still wage labour. Thrre is still money, which as Engels reminds us contains the law of value in embryo, there is still private property, both state owned and private (as we saw in the USSR and Cuba and more obviously in China).
The very fact we are discussing prices shows the proof is in the pudding - there is no Socialism, there is a government attempting to control a capitalist (fitting all of Marx's conditions for a capitalist mode of production as outlined in Capital) economy, the fact that the free market has been limited, or that the state owns private property rather than McDonald's or Microsoft is frankly irrelevant.
He's 88, still mentally very sharp and probably moved there for the weather(aside from the great department filled with old students). His work ethic is incredible, he spends 5 hours a day responding to emails from the public- I've received a detailed response every time I've sent one. The amount of time he spends engaging with even terribly misinformed(but well meaning) people is truly astounding, and unparalleled a…
>he spends 5 hours a day responding to emails from the public
Since I read Deep Work, I think these phrases contradict each other. You don't do original, interesting work when replying emails.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure what you're referencing, but Chomsky has typically not been aligned with state socialism. I think typically it's viewed as another structure which uses it's position to maintain power.
https://youtu.be/HHTe2Pn7ACg He praises the Venezuela's state socialist policies, but manages to blame the problems on private capital.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's why whenever I speak to someone and they have a strong opinion I like to ask them how many books they've read on that subject. It's almost always zero. You can pretty much instantly discard anyone like that as it's a decent baseline litmus test. If you really cared about something, you would read at least one if not multiple books on the subject. Anything less is just laziness and someone who wants to get an e…
I've made my mind about Nazism, because it strikes me as an abominable philosophy. I haven't read any books about it though. Would you dismiss anything I said about it until I read Mein Kampf? Most people have only read a handful of books. If they were limited to expressing their views on those topics, there wouldn't be very much said about anything in society. I'm not sure society would benefit from that.
I think that you're using the theme of nazism as a way to make an opinion from a protected standpoint -- it's difficult to refute what you say without sounding sympathetic to nazis.
But i'll say it anyway : I think you, and anyone else in the same boat, hold less authority on a topic without being well-versed on said topic.
It's really that simple for me.
Don't stop speaking to or throw out the opinions of folks uneducated on a topic, just weigh them appropriately along with the expert opinions.
"Making up your mind" without educating yourself on the topic is dangerous, no matter which side you start leaning towards.
I'm not telling you to go pick up 'Mein Kampf' -- not by a long shot -- but to condemn all books on the topic is frighteningly naive as a societal habit. It propagates a certain kind of sneaky "head-in-the-sand" behavior that may lead to even more strife in our world, and prevents the great historic feedback-loop of the knowledge of our past preventing historical repetitions of our worst atrocities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
-Redistribution and price controls, which have brought production, and therefore consumption, to a halt. -Preventing markets and prices from working and substituting with centralized economic planning. https://fee.org/articles/you-cant-deny-that-venezuela-is-a-s...
Interestingly enough, redistribution isn't a Socialist policy; if the workers (proletariat) control and own the social means of production, i.e not a state which is clearly not under control of the workers (i.e not a dictatorship of the proletariat ) then redistribition would not be necessary unless agreed to on a voluntary basis by the community. Instead, we see there is still wage labour. Thrre is still money, whic…
"State socialism is a classification for any socialist political and economic perspective advocating state ownership of the means of production either as a temporary measure in the transition from capitalism to socialism, or as characteristic of socialism itself..."
and: "State socialism was traditionally advocated as a means for achieving public ownership of the means of production through nationalization of industry. This was intended to be a transitional phase in the process of building a socialist economy. The goals of nationalization were to dispossess large capitalists and consolidate industry so that profit would go toward public finance rather than private fortune. Nationalization would be the first step in a long-term process of socializing production..."
So there still may be private capital, prices, money, and other things like redistribution in a state socialist country. Even if they eventually want to transition to pure socialism.
He's 88, still mentally very sharp and probably moved there for the weather(aside from the great department filled with old students). His work ethic is incredible, he spends 5 hours a day responding to emails from the public- I've received a detailed response every time I've sent one. The amount of time he spends engaging with even terribly misinformed(but well meaning) people is truly astounding, and unparalleled a…
>His work ethic is incredible >he spends 5 hours a day responding to emails from the public Since I read Deep Work, I think these phrases contradict each other. You don't do original, interesting work when replying emails.
(I didn't down vote you)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://youtu.be/HHTe2Pn7ACg He praises the Venezuela's state socialist policies, but manages to blame the problems on private capital.
So, you want to point to Chomsky opinions about Venezuela and this is the best link you can find?
Chomsky is a great critic of social issues like imperialism, manufactured consent, and state capitalism. However he has been proved devastatingly wrong about Venezuela and as of today won't admit the problems with state socialism. I hope his new students realize this.
a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy