https://www.reddit.com/r/ezraklein/comments/1jzozuw/why_trump_could_lose_his_trade_war_with_china/
The podcast itself is quite interesting if you can handle moments of extreme liberalism, both hosts admit that china is living in the future and that America has failed on a structural level
china positive comments upvoted in a ezra klein subreddit and the xinjiang social credit propaganda slop was downvoted?i think what’s most interesting is that these guys look at china, they recognize that amerikkka is fundamentally failing on structural levels, that they’re in the future and we’re in the past, and yet for some reason insist that they’ve managed to devise this mystical, entirely theoretical way to catch back up and get to where china is THAT IS INEXPLICABLY NOT JUST COPYING CHINA??? it boggles the mind, the hubris, the stupidity. they literally insist on reinventing a wheel for the sake of ideological purity and insist that this is the only way to be free.
What is their solution? I’m not watching an hour long Ezra Klein video lol.
EDIT: Saw someone mention abundance liberalism in a comment below so I’m guessing it’s that.
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What are we, a bunch of Asians?
The anti-communism brain worms are too strong
It’s hard to overstate how bloodthirsty Thomas Friedman was after 9/11. There were never consequences for that in the liberal cliques for anyone.
What a sublime thinker Friedman is: “We hit Iraq because we could.” I made an edit for clarity. Rose got his wars confused.
Thomas Friedman — Charlie Rose
Friday 05/30/2003
Pulitzer Prize Winner Thomas Friedman shares his opinion on whether it was worth invading Iraq and and what it means to have won the war.01:13
Charlie Rose: Let me start with an overview of [the Gulf War]. We won the war. People had criticisms about going in. Now that the war is over and there’s some difficulty with the peace, what is was it worth doing?
Thomas Friedman: Oh, I think it was unquestionably worth doing, Charlie. I think that looking back I now certainly feel I understand more what the war was about. It’s interesting to talk about it here in Silicon Valley because I think looking back at the 1990’s, I can identify – there are actually three bubbles of the 1990s, there was the NASDAQ bubble, the corporate governance bubble, and lastly there was what I call the terrorism bubble.
And the first two were based on creative accounting, the last was based on moral creative accounting. The terrorism bubble that basically built up over the 1990’s said flying airplanes into the World Trade Center, that’s okay. Wrapping yourself with dynamite and blowing up Israelis in a pizza parlor, that’s okay. Because we’re weak and they’re strong and the weak have a different morality.
Having your preachers say that’s okay, that’s okay. Having your charities raise money for people who do these kinds of things, that’s okay. And having your press call people who do these kinds of things martyrs, that’s okay. And that built up as a bubble, Charlie, and 9/11 to me was the peak of that bubble. What we learned on 9/11 in a gut way was that that bubble was a fundamental threat to our open society.
Because there is no wall high enough, no INS agent smart enough, no metal detector efficient enough to protect an open society from people motivated by that bubble. What we needed to do was go over to that part of the world, I’m afraid, and burst that bubble. We needed to go over there basically and take out a very big stick right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble.
There was only one way to do it because part of that bubble said, “we’ve got you.” This bubble is actually going to level the balance of power between us and you because we don’t care about life. We’re ready to sacrifice. All you care about are your stock options and your hummers. What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house from Basra to Baghdad and basically saying: “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand?”
“You don’t think, you know, we care about our open society? You think this bubble fantasy, we’re just going to let it grow. Well, suck on this.” That, Charlie, was what this war was about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia. It was part ever that bubble. Could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could. That’s the real truth.
Friedman really loved the Charlie Rose show. There are 132 results for him at the site.
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Rant
I really hate sites that refuse to make what should be txt - into actual txt. I had to grab an annoying glob of HTML and make it txt myself.
Wtf? They don’t even try to understand how other people think and their motivations.
I never googled abundance liberalism. The definition is even worse than I expected.
What is ‘abundance’ liberalism, and why are people arguing about it?
Klein and Thompson make their case in a new book simply called, with no subtitle, Abundance. The authors put forward a positive pitch for “abundance liberalism”: a vision of the US where policymakers spend less time fighting over how to apportion scarce resources and more time making sure there’s no scarcity to start with.
Abundance has received a mostly positive reception so far, but also sparked debate, with critics arguing that the book ignores the effect of corporate power, downplays Republicans’ role in the crises that the US faces or overstates the effectiveness of its policy prescriptions. A writer in the left-leaning magazine American Prospect accused the “abundance agenda” of being “neoliberalism repackaged for a post-neoliberal world”.
Haven’t we already proved that doesn’t work with things like food, where we already have more than enough but people still go hungry? I’m sure there’s tons of other examples, too, that show that capitalism encourages artificial scarcity.
I always find it so hilarious that neoliberals will simultaneously build their lives and world views around hypothetical technological solutions that will resolve resource/logistical realities like magic and then turn around and say that the problem with Communism is that its too utopian or idealistic.
Even Ayn Rand had to invent a magical power source for her book.
Yes let’s build an ideology around that.
A concept so genius it can be debunked by thinking about hunger for 5 seconds
Me: “Hey, Ezra! I bet you’ve already heard lots of ‘better than Ezra’ jokes so I won’t poke fun at you in that way. But I really want to know how ‘abundance liberalism’ deals with crises like the dire shortage of affordable housing.”
Ezra Klein: “I will ignore the ‘better than Ezra’ joke. And I’ll jump right in and answer your question about housing. But first I have a lot - a lot(!) - to explain!” And he speaks for about five minutes. Impressively he entirely ignores all issues related to housing other than to very vaguely say “A focused-goal target of abundance liberalism is the structural implementation of foundations to improve access to affordable housing.”
NGL, I do like abundance libs. Their hearts are in the right place and they’re a few good conversations away from being left-wing.
Now it’s a matter of making it clear that the woes of scarcity are systemic. Porky doesn’t want to see an abundance of anything under his watchful eye. More for you means less for him. Although it’s satire, one simple meme that helped radicalize me is called ‘a bicycle is a disaster for the economy.’
EDIT: While I still think its worthwhile to reach out to disaffected libs. I take back my endorsement of the abundance agenda. I refuse to “hand it to” fascists of any flavor, including Strasserites with rainbow flags.
I absolutely disagree that they are a few good conversations from being left-wing. Especially for the libs that are pushing the abundance agenda, the abundance agenda is specifically a way to off ramp liberal voters who are radicalizing from listening to left-wing analysis. It is a limp response to the question “Why isn’t M4A even on the agenda anymore? What happened to the GND or Bidenomics?”
nope they are possibly the furthest from communism of anyone. They have woven intricate fantasies to insulate themselves from having to be leftwing. They are specifically anti-left and their ideology is handmade to innoculate peole against the left.
Just like the radlibs were the most fervent warmongers, and in fact the most dangerous imperialists in the USA, these are the most dangerous reactionaries.
The problem is that the difference between an abundance lib and a socialist is chauvinism. And chauvinism runs impossibly deep.
The deregulate industries libs and let the markets handle it clinton libs? they are centrists wriggling their way into getting lobby money while being dem-acceptable, not dems wriggling their way into equality. The “why do we have regulations on air filtration systems libs?” parse out their logic, it’s literally libertarian 90s bits about “government regulations”
leaving aside ezra, the rest of them are genocidal maniacs as well
They at least understand that they need to promise a better future to win. The problem is they’re just repackaging neoliberalism which isn’t going to cut it.
Abundance is an interesting phenomenon. Its the first time since the Great Society libs propose a grand vision of the world instead of their usual
nothing will fundamentally change other than welfare tweaksI agree that a lot of them are ripe for moving left as their vision runs into the brick wall of capital
Their “grand vision” is just “produce more” which is literally just capitalism. There is nothing new about it and I fail to see how it’s an interesting phenomenon to you.
I cannot handle the liberalism. Stinky poo poo opinions.
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