AlexRogansBeta @ AlexRogansBeta @kbin.social

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2

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15

Joined

2 yr. ago

This is the most brain-dead monument I have ever heard of. On so, so many levels. Wtf I going on? What committee made this decision?

I think you might be missing the point of what I am saying. I'm not suggesting that "further left" is what we need. The right-left dichotomy is just two sides of the same thing, and it's that thing that is fundamentally broken. Moving right or left does nothing to change anything. I don't think we need to move left. I think we need to throw out the whole thing. It isn't the conservatives that are the source of these bad things you're naming (white-supremacy, neofacismz intolerance, and hate). That stuffs baked into the whole colonial liberal capitalist "democracy" we have inherited. Any party that supports the continuation of that system is white supremacist, racist, fascist, etc. Our whole economic and political system IS those things. Not any single party. Some just own up to it better (like the conservatives). But liberals and the NDP, too, fundamentally support our democratic and economic systems. But those systems are foundationally to be blamed. We can't tweak them to be better. We can't fix the foundationally exploitative nature of capitalism. It's a feature, not a bug. And we can't tweak the Westminster style of parliamentary government to be less racists or discriminatory. That's in-built. It's what indigenous groups have been saying for decades (centuries?).

Back to my original point, lots of voices in here saying don't support the conservatives. And, I mean, I agree. They suck. But they all suck. They all wanna perpetuate the nonsense. Sure, some wanna perpetuate it in "nicer" or "more inclusive" ways. But no one actually wants to CHANGE anything. They just wanna tweak and adjust and manage the foundational problems of our systems. So, conservative or not, they're all perpetuating hate and discrimination and poverty and authoritarianism. My point wasn't "don't vote NDP" or "vote conservative". My point was anyone who actually wants change doesn't have a voice. There is no party advocating for change.

I hear you. But I think both are equally damaging, ultimately. One party might accelerate the process, and the other may drag the damage out over decades. But we end up in the same place.

And, just spitballin' here, maybe an accelerated view of how destructive liberal capitalism is may be exactly what Canadians need to jolt us out of our world-renowned complacency. I dunno what it'll take to get Canadians fired up enough to seek actual change. Clearly raging forest fires, a housing crisis, a health care crisis, drug addition crisis, rampant depression and anxiety, rampant inflation, ballooning cost of living, and political corruption (both domestic and foreign) isn't enough. So, maybe shit needs to get even worse before it gets better. Aka. Vote in the conservatives?

Lots of chatter in here about not supporting the conservatives. But, there's no options for Canadians. Liberals are outta gas and haven't done anything praiseworthy in a while. Conservatives suck and PP would just be a lamer Harper who wants to eat the poor. The NDP need a new leader as J.S. hasn't made headway in years.

More importantly, theyre all just arguing about how to tweak the broken, oppressive system we live with. No one is advocating for change. It's just a debate over who thinks they can keep liberal capitalism afloat. But liberal capitalism is the root of the problems. We have no advocates for change.

I vote we all go pull a 1919 Winnipeg and have a Canada-wide general strike in support of truly radical change. Change that pulls us away from rampant neoliberalization and rejects the basic assumptions of liberal capitalism.

I wish I had your sunny optimism about voters driving the boat.

I believe the phenomenon of people buying houses "as an investment" is relatively new. People historically bought houses as places to live and have stability. They also happened to be a good investments but that wasn't their purpose. The change in primacy of purpose is pretty much a direct result of neoliberalization, which has been underway for decades since the post-WW2 era, but became much more normalized in the 70s/80s.

What I mean to say is that it's a current cultural trend, but hardly a law of the housing market. More problematically, if we make policy based on the assumption that people view houses as investments, it serves to reify that, rather than combat it.

I'd also be shocked if the market prices were primarily driven by your cited 65%. It's been a long time since our markets and policy-making machines have been primarily driven by the majority of the population. We are a democracy composed of powerful, minority (not speaking about racial groups but class groups) interests. Anyone blaming the 65% for our woes isn't paying enough attention to the absurd weight and influence exterted by only a handful of people and institutions.

I am someone with a life-long attachment to the island, and who is surrounded by homeowners both on and off of Cortes. They have seen their home prices go up by absurd percentages in the last 5 years, they all recognize it isn't right, they would not begrudge a market correction. Most people in my experience want everyone to live well and no one well-adjusted takes the "I got mine" attitude when it comes to housing. Meaning, a 20% drop in prices wouldn't cause them to lose their shit. Heck, they may even welcome it if it meant a thriving community. Money stuck in inflated property prices can't be invested in community, after all.

Explain. I've heard short term owners being the problem, and uber rich investment owners being the problem. Explain how long-term home owners who live in their houses year round are the problem.

And they can't wait until we push our govt to build more homes ... So they can buy them up.

Everyone saying we need more supply is a loon. We need a reallocation of existing homes. Building more will just line these assholes' pockets.

Former Telus tech here. A lot of these were union labourer buyouts. Like, maybe as much as half of that 6000. They offered buyouts and lots of people took it. More than anticipated. My local workforce of techs got reduced by 50%.

Came to say Outer Wilds. That end moved me.

The Last Unicorn by Beagle is word candy. Absolutely beautiful prose and imagery. But it is also a quick read, perfect for two days. Can't go wrong.

If we actually wanna support the essence of what we're engaging on, we shouldn't factionalize by user interface and should avoid names attached to Lemmy, Mastadon, or KBin. We should instead be Federates of the Fediverse.

I feel this in my bones as an anthropologist when it comes to semi-structured interviews, which frankly have very little to do with anthropological inquiry but have nonetheless become a rote methodology.

Neoliberalism was created, as a term, to describe something real, pervasive, and problematic. It has been co-opted as an underserving boogyman by the left, and co-opted mistakenly by the right as libertarianism. Neither understand it's original formulation and what it names.

So, while you're 100% correct about neoliberalism not belonging to either the left or the right, your basic description of neoliberalism isn't correct. What you describe (deregulation, positive valuation of wealth generation, free markets, etc) is just liberal capitalism.

Neoliberalism names the extension of market-based rationalities into putatively non-market realms of life. Meaning, neoliberalism is at play when people deploy cost/benefit, investment/return, or other market-based logics when analysing options, making decisions, or trying to understand aspects of life that aren't properly markets, such as politics, morality/ethics, self-care, religion, culture, etc.

A concrete example is when people describe or rationalize self-care as a way to prepare for the workweek. Yoga, in this example, becomes of an embodiment of neoliberalism: taking part in yoga is rationalized as an investment in self that results in greater productivity.

Another example: how it seems that most every public policy decision is evaluated in terms of its economic viability, and if it isn't economically viable (in terms of profit/benefit exceeding cost/investment) then it is deemed a bad policy. This is a market rationality being applied to realms of life that didn't used to be beholden to market rationalities.

Hence the "neo" in "neoliberalism" is about employing the logics of liberalism (liberal capitalism, I should say) into new spheres of life.

A good (re)source for this would be Foucault's Birth of Biopolitics lectures, which trace the shift from Liberalism to Neoliberalism. As well, there's excellent literature coming out of anthropology about neoliberalism at work in new spheres, in particular yoga, which is why I used it as my example here.