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There is no 'right' vs. 'left': it is the oligarchs against the rest

theguardian.com

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Re: There is no 'right' vs. 'left': it is the oligarchs against the rest

#41

Post by PaulAJ »

nightwing wrote: post #28

Rich vs poor is even less meaningful divide than right vs left. For instance i am not rich but my goals are much better aligned with goals of rich people like Elon Musk and Aubrey de Grey, than with any of poor people. The solution is not to take money from the rich, but to make the government more transparent and more inclusive. Now we only can vote for unknown bundles of policies in the form of people, and rich peo…

Elon Musk's goal is to persuade you to give as much money as possible to him while paying as little as possible in taxes. If your goals are aligned then I expect you to be writing a cheque to him now.

Thought not.

On your second paragraph, the fundamental problem with democracy is that voters cannot have informed opinions about everything: there are simply not enough hours in the day. Without informed voters any vote is little better than a coin toss. Read https://medium.com/civic-tech-thoughts-from-joshdata/so-you-... and then think again.

Re: There is no 'right' vs. 'left': it is the oligarchs against the rest

#42

Post by Sharlin »

nightwing wrote: post #28

Rich vs poor is even less meaningful divide than right vs left. For instance i am not rich but my goals are much better aligned with goals of rich people like Elon Musk and Aubrey de Grey, than with any of poor people. The solution is not to take money from the rich, but to make the government more transparent and more inclusive. Now we only can vote for unknown bundles of policies in the form of people, and rich peo…

> Rich vs poor is even less meaningful divide than right vs left.

Which is why the author is careful to not use those words to describe the situation. Someone like Aubrey de Grey (who isn't even "rich" in this context) is as far from the oligarchy as can be.

Re: There is no 'right' vs. 'left': it is the oligarchs against the rest

#43

Post by surak »

nightwing wrote: post #28

Rich vs poor is even less meaningful divide than right vs left. For instance i am not rich but my goals are much better aligned with goals of rich people like Elon Musk and Aubrey de Grey, than with any of poor people. The solution is not to take money from the rich, but to make the government more transparent and more inclusive. Now we only can vote for unknown bundles of policies in the form of people, and rich peo…

In principal e-voting to increase transparency is a nice ideology, but how would you engage the people over time? I'm afraid this would rather cause an increase in fake news and the likes. The obvious case is the Brexit vote, that gave the people two options: a remain (no change) and leave (open ended in terms of how).

Re: There is no 'right' vs. 'left': it is the oligarchs against the rest

#44

Post by HissingMachine »

JohnStrangeII wrote: post #29
HissingMachine wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Populism is by definition an ideologue of regular people against the elites. Or do you have your own definition of populism? Can I hear it?

Your definition is wrong. Populism is a political strategy based on the oversimplification of issues, inventing scapegoats, and generally appealing to popular "bar talk" as offering solutions to problems that are in reality way more complex. Other symptoms of it are an unwillingness to make compromises, not listening to experts, alluding to conspiration theories, an alleged fighting against the elites and for the "co…

Part of populism is also claiming to be neither left or right on the political spectrum because it can be both or neither, a good example of this is Five Star Movement from Italy. But what is mostly common with populist movements is the appeal to the common man and blaming elites. So how the author of this article isn't advocating for populism is something someone needs to explain to me.

Re: There is no 'right' vs. 'left': it is the oligarchs against the rest

#46

Post by Sharlin »

mc32 wrote: post #15
HissingMachine wrote: post #13

There have been numerous articles and columns written about the dangers of rising populism in Europe, yet here is a respectable voice advocating populism as the solution for US. So which is it, the solution or a danger?

Obviously populism is the solution, but only if it’s on your side, otherwise it’s this nefarious out of control thing that perverts political systems and threatens democracy. This author makes erroneous assertions along the way in support of their thesis. So I don’t think it holds much water. Soros and the Kochs are some of the biggest political donors and influencers and while they donate massive amounts to progress…

> Soros and the Kochs are some of the biggest political donors and influencers and while they donate massive amounts to progressive causes and libertarian values, they have very little interest in helping working class Americans.

I think this reinforces the author's point more than opposes it. Who in their right mind thinks the Koch brothers are anything but pro-oligarchy?

Re: There is no 'right' vs. 'left': it is the oligarchs against the rest

#47

Post by PaulAJ »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #5
colordrops wrote: post #2

And it is the job of the oligarchs to use their resources (e.g. think tanks, regulatory capture, political parties, media empires, etc) to convince the rest that it's "right vs left".

This Chomsky quote comes to mind “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”. The sad part is that a lot of people seem to be addicted to the right vs left thinking. A while ago I listened to a radio interview with an author whose thesis was that modern philanthropists allow change only in a way that…

The Chomsky quote is something you hear from the Left from time to time: a political theory which implies some kind of deliberate coordination between capitalists as a class. Is there a Protocols of the Elders of Capitalism which includes this as a principle, or some Omniscient Council of Capitalist Vagueness who are defining the spectrum of currently acceptable opinion?

(Not that the Left has a monopoly on conspiracy theories of course, but it should be called out whenever it appears).

Re: There is no 'right' vs. 'left': it is the oligarchs against the rest

#48

Post by nightwing »

traderjane wrote: post #37
nightwing wrote: post #28

Rich vs poor is even less meaningful divide than right vs left. For instance i am not rich but my goals are much better aligned with goals of rich people like Elon Musk and Aubrey de Grey, than with any of poor people. The solution is not to take money from the rich, but to make the government more transparent and more inclusive. Now we only can vote for unknown bundles of policies in the form of people, and rich peo…

I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I feel you’re talking about rich individuals and not rich people when you talk about Elon Musk.

There are other rich people that are pretty cool and whose goals align with mine: Gates finances target malaria, Bezos works on Blue Origin, Thiel founded seasteading institute, etc. My point is not that all rich people are good, but that there is no poor people team vs rich people team. We can't team up with class of people, only with individuals.

Re: There is no 'right' vs. 'left': it is the oligarchs against the rest

#49

Post by luckylion »

nightwing wrote: post #28

Rich vs poor is even less meaningful divide than right vs left. For instance i am not rich but my goals are much better aligned with goals of rich people like Elon Musk and Aubrey de Grey, than with any of poor people. The solution is not to take money from the rich, but to make the government more transparent and more inclusive. Now we only can vote for unknown bundles of policies in the form of people, and rich peo…

> For instance i am not rich but my goals are much better aligned with goals of rich people like Elon Musk and Aubrey de Grey, than with any of poor people.

I wonder what those goals are, or whether you just have a morphed idea of what goals poor people have.

Re: There is no 'right' vs. 'left': it is the oligarchs against the rest

#50

Post by quickthrower2 »

tome wrote: post #34

Ugh. What's this doing on Hacker News? Flagged.

“On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.”

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https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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