this post was submitted on 15 May 2024
181 points (95.9% liked)
Political Humor
3305 readers
1 users here now
Post politically charged comedy here, but be respectful!
Rules
- Keep this a humor community
- No NSFW content
- No bigotry, hate speech, advocacy or incitement of violence or crime, etc
- No harassment
- Extreme or offensive content are subject to removal at the mods' discretion
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Things don't just happen randomly, systems evolve according to the rules society agrees on. In order for things to change, an iconoclasm has to happen first. Then a new set of rules will be created, and that will no longer be liberalism because that's the ideology that will be cast aside in the process.
You keep saying Liberalism as if its only one thing. I've already mentioned three economic philosophies, each creating their own new set of rules. I'm honestly not sure we're talking about the same thing.
The context of discussion was whether the current stage of neoliberalism can revert back to some other form. And my point is that there is no path back within the liberal framework. A different economic philosophy that will succeed neoliberalism will not be based on the idea of private ownership.
Now I understand. And I just don't see that as inevitable.
Private ownership is too important to people individually. Without it, we don't even have any reason to expect any anything from our labor, since we can't be said to own even that. There isn't much room left for personal autonomy, if we don't have defacto ownership of our bodies, minds, and effort.
It would require some post-scarcity Star Trek technology to make our labor obsolete. Functionally infinite energy and matter replicators. The technological components would have to be in place, before the social changes become feasible.
There's a difference between private ownership and personal ownership. For example, in Marxism, personal property is very much respected. Nobody is coming after your toothbrush or your house. What's meant by private property is owning enterprises that employ other people to work for you. This is replaced by cooperative ownership where workers own the business collectively.
That may be an option then.
Still not convinced it's only way from here, or even the best way. It would depend entirely on the details.
There may be other ways forward, but it's the one way that's known to work in practice.