Laura. great show!!! I want to invite you to Venezuela. if we manage to avoid civil war we may help US in finding credible alternative to the current model.
One of the great unresolved issues facing the world's people is seldom discussed. This is the issue of property rights in nature. The operating principle of just law, law that secures and protects both liberty and equality of opportunity, requires a recognition that access to the earth's surface and natural resources is the birthright of all persons, equally. For reasons I have not been able to understand, even very thoughtful persons such as Gar Alperovitz do not seem to recognize this problem. The solution to "the land question" has been understood by many clear thinkers in the past (and a few in the present). The discussion is found in the writings of all of the major and minor political economists, beginning with Richard Cantillon in the early 17th century. Henry George took their analyses to a higher level, arguing the case for the elimination of all taxation in favor of the public collection of land rent. George's campaign for change failed in the face of determined opposition from those who benefited by land monopoly. Yet, George's analysis was embraced by public figures such as Leo Tolstoy, Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Louis F. Post, Frederick Howe and Sun Yat-Sen. Edward J. Dodson, Director School of Cooperative Individualism www.cooperative-individualism.org
I have heard of new concepts being discussed in Britain and Europe ( NOT In North or South America interestingly)" Positive Money" Would love to know more about that.
I haven't yet read the book so I shouldn't be commenting, but I cannot resist one question after listening to you talk to Laura Flanders. Bottom-up efforts at the city level have been countered by State governments passing laws to remove sovereignty from the local level and thereby destroy those local efforts for system change. Without local sovereignty, aren't we just on a treadmill?.
Although, I agree a lot with this video, I think they put too much of the blame on corporations, which is a mistake that is a lot of left-wing populists make. This anti-corporate narrative simply isn't supported by the facts. As Jonathan Rothwell, an economist from the Foreign Policy website put it "The problem isn’t trade or corporations-it’s the monopolization by professional groups of high-profit services". However, I do agree that we need a decentralized alternative to keep income inequality at bay, so that whole communities can have access to markets such as housing, financial, professional services.
What's wrong about it? Anti-government sentiment may be a major propaganda tool of the Right. But Reaganite capitalism requires bigger government than even the New Deal. Small wonder then that big business, despite paying lip service to the "free market", tends to oppose it in practice. The effectiveness of this ideological smokescreen depends heavily on critics of corporate capitalism buying in to the neoliberals’ professed “anti-government” pose.
@@jd8808 That still doesn't justify state socialism as the only alternative for progress. The reality is that there is a limit to what the government can solve, as there should be. There is a reason why women and minorities are usually more skeptical of more government intervention then their white counterparts. What some leftist need to understand is socialism is NOT a synonym for anti-racism, nor it is a synonym for feminism. IF progressives are going to win over voters there platform has to go beyond socialism.
@@neosoontoretro >That still doesn't justify state socialism as the only alternative for progress. Who was saying that? The video is about _Pluralism_ not State Socialism. >There is a reason why women and minorities are usually more skeptical of more government intervention then their white counterparts. I would need to see a source on that. In any case, not sure what identity politics is supposed to achieve here. It is a classic divide and conquer strategy. The Democrats love identity politics because it allows them to conceal the fact that they are bought and paid for by these ruling classes, which, in our day and age, means corporations. >socialism is NOT a synonym for anti-racism, nor it is a synonym for feminism Indeed not. Intersectional “leftism” is not authentic leftism. It is a bourgeois ideology that must be rejected. I believe there are issues faced by men that are neglected by feminists and should not be ignored, but we resolve them through universalist praxis, which requires the transcendence of identity politics from all genders.
@@jd8808 "Who was saying that? The video is about Pluralism not State Socialism." Yeah, but you're the one who brought the government and anti-government sentiment when my original response made no to reference to that. "I would need to see a source on that. In any case, not sure what identity politics is supposed to achieve here. It is a classic divide and conquer strategy. The Democrats love identity politics because it allows them to conceal the fact that they are bought and paid for by these ruling classes, which, in our day and age, means corporations" So you think there aren't women and minorities who are skeptical of government intervention? Well, I do think Bernie struggled with women and minorities during his campaign? Also, even though I'm not a fan of identity politics, class-first progressivism would only inflate social issues that stem from identity politics. "Indeed not. Intersectional “leftism” is not authentic leftism. It is a bourgeois ideology that must be rejected. I believe there are issues faced by men that are neglected by feminists and should not be ignored, but we resolve them through universalist praxis, which requires the transcendence of identity politics from all genders." Actually, I think intersectionality is the antidote to identity politics as opposed to the other way around. I think what a lot of people get wrong about intersectionality (including the left) is that it's NOT a theory of identity. Rather intersectionality is about how an intricate system overlaps and impacts those who are of marginalized identities. I'm all for universalism but I think universalism in order to be effective has to include particularism of the different experiences of marginalized identity groups. Maybe what we need is supra-identity politics, a theory that includes AND transcends identity politics.
@@neosoontoretro >Yeah, but you're the one who brought the government and anti-government sentiment I said "anti-government sentiment" has become a tool of those in power. Neoliberals like Reagan and Thatcher don’t really dislike big government - it is central to the model of capitalism that they promoted. Unfortunately the public takes them at face value under the misconception that they’re genuinely fighting to defend the “free market” and “get the government off our backs". >intersectionality is about how an intricate system overlaps and impacts those who are of marginalized identities So what is so new about "intersectionality"? That sort of coalition building has existed consistently for hundreds of years. I see no new insight there. Instead, the way it functions is just to make race and gender as important as, or more important than, class. In addition, the theory has a clear influence from post-modernism which likes to play around with notions of identity. The end result seems to be, the-same-old-capitalism, but with more women CEOs, and "inclusive" of androgynous people and non-whites. So it's a sort of Benetton poster capitalism, a United Colours of Capitalism. That direction is preferable to the ruling class - culture being the new political battleground as opposed to economics. The fact is that anyone of any race or gender can be bourgeois. The real engine is class.
Gar needs to get his story straight: All the examples given in this talk (and in the book itself) are alternative *economic* systems, not decisionmaking (governance) systems. Indeed this confusion permeates most of the material on the thenextsystem.org/ site, an organization he's also managing. It's all so reminiscent of the misconceptions people had about the Cold War (i.e., people usually described it as a contest between democracy and communism, when in fact it was mostly about democracy vs. totalitarianism with a just a hint of capitalism vs. communism). The source of his confusion seems to be that money only equals power when the decisionmaking system is broken/corrupt, which it can be even if the entire economy was based on coops or other common-ownership economic models (he even admits this in this talk!) The trivial solution to this problem is for The People to insist on a direct democracy where this kind of corruption is much more difficult to maintain. True Direct Democracy being an impossible-to-implement decisionmaking system in a large-scale society, what we need is a system that has the egalitarian and anti-corruption benefits of Direct Democracy combined with the efficiency and decision-quality benefits of Representative Democracy. One such system is www.proxyfor.me/
