this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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so... why didn't the left stop fascism? I hear a lot of talk about killing people, but it's been three months and nothing has happened.
Are we all just yappers?
You can bitch all you want, but the right won, and they won exactly what they wanted. So bitching about it on the left isn't going to make us anymore likely to win, is it?
We have no leftwing party in the United States
I phone banked for Sanders on 2 campaigns.
I don't see Neoliberals or Fascists as winning, just different degrees of losing.
I no longer have the slightest hope of ever "winning" a prosocial government here. We're too oligarch captured.
I talk and comment to maintain my sanity in an insane capitalist hellscape I lack the power to change.
probably because the left is so dysfunctional they cant form a cohesive group that people want to vote for.
perhaps join the liberal fight, and fight against things like oligarchy, which liberals are not for, because it's obviously bad for institutions. The better the institution is at helping the people, the better the people are.
Liberalism is basically the only option you have here, realistically. Anything you can do to change the political tide and get people to care about the importance of good governance, is a good thing.
You could plot a coup and overthrow the government, but we're not delusional, and that's obviously not happening anytime soon so, might as well explore other routes.
Liberals are for oligarchy. How can you be anti-oligarchy if you are pro-capitalism and pro-markets?
Weird how the left is crushed and weak when the entirety of the US 20th and 21st century is crushing anti-oligarchy (a.k.a left) forces. Maybe it isn't a failure of the goal, but that willing yourself into power isn't going to magically make it happen.
Liberalism is not inconsistent with regulation. Oligarchy introduces inefficiencies to the market. Liberal Democrats have been generally open to and supportive of regulations which oppose oligarchic monopolies, and mitigate externalities. They certainly have their flaws, too many to enumerate here, but they generally want the market to run as "purely" as possible, without the confounding effects of oligarchy. Oligarchy and monopolies upset the mechanisms of the market, and the liberals are the ones passing regulations to try to prevent that. This much is obvious by the existence of regulations, and the near absence of legislators to the left of liberals.
Liberalism is not fully mutually exclusive with regulation, but liberal regulation is to try to maintain capitalist markets against their own failures. Yes, they can be willing to engage in some regulation to try to maximize future markets and capitalism. But they are pro-oligarch and pro-inequality, liberals are trying to maintain it long-term even if the most extreme excesses of oligarchs must be reigned in for the short term.
But most importantly, Oligarchy and monopolies aren't an "upset" or disruption of markets, but the obvious and natural outcome. Profits are optimized by consolidation and removing competition. And even if competition is maintained, once one company wins the competition there is monopoly, and the fact that most capital intensive industries have a natural barrier to entry (it would take billions of dollars of venture capital to enter and be a very weak competitor with the incumbent) means that markets have oligarchy and monopoly as their natural and necessary outcome.
A homeless guy can't just immediately become a billionaire by saying that there should be a competitor of genetic testing with 23andMe.
The liberal approach is stretching that short term out forever. They will always reign in outliers and apply bandaids to keep the charade going, directly targeting oligarchy and inequality to keep up appearances that liberal capitalism works. The other guys wanna get to the end already, where they own everything forever. Oligarchies stagnate markets, and liberals don't want the music to stop.
The eligible voting population is about 30% for oligarchy, 30% for the liberal charade, 5% for some other opinion, and 35% totally politically apathetic. The point was that if you want to actually accomplish something in a democracy, you need demographics. You've gotta find 30% to challenge the actual pro-oligarchy demographic somewhere.
wow you discovered why governments exist! Good job, do you want a gold star sticker? If the markets and economies didn't fail, you wouldn't need government, ever, for anything. The entire point of the government is to fix problems like this.
no, but if he's a good public speaker, he might be able to get large investment rounds for a competitor to them, and then if the engineers and experts at that company, do a good job, he technically could become a billionaire, though that's unlikely from just one success.
Who said Margaret Thatcher was a great person? That's a wild straw man.
wow look another facetious argument.
I'm not pro "oligarchy" i'm pro liberal governance, oligarchy is by definition, not liberal. It gives excised power to people with money, that is by definition not liberal.
I'm pro capitalism because i think capitalism as a decentralized method of controlling the markets and businesses (i also think that regulation is important, because i don't have brain damage like libertarians seem to, but for some reason anytime someone on the left hears that someone is a capitalist, they assume they must be anti-regulation also), is the best way to go about it. State controlled markets simply cannot work, unless someone proposes a white paper disproving me, i will maintain that point. But if you can deterministically create an economy, that supports the needs of everyone in that economy, feel free to disprove me. The problem is that you can't because it's such an incredibly complex problem.
pro market economy isn't really a bad thing? I like people being able to buy and sell things, it's good. It's problematic sometimes, and rough other times, but that's just how it is. The market will generally bring itself to a normalized position over time.
i am literally against elon musk being in the government, people in the government having and owning investments, i think it's corruption plain and simple, i'm against corruption because it obviously leads to a negative outcome for the people the system is supposed to work for, again, liberalism does not like that.
it certainly won't be the left doesn't even have a plan of what to do when they get into power, the liberals don't really either, but we at least know what we want governance to look like, and that's a great start.
The left hates the current form of US government, and the things they want that they can clearly spell out, are not forms of governance, merely policy, so i'm not sure how they plan to get from step 2, to step 5 without falling in a hole somewhere.
Capitalism is pay for play. Literally, if you have enough money to invest in capital, you don't have to work and should continue getting wealthier by already having money. Capitalism and markets are not synonymous.
Liberalism and capitalism is pro-oligarchy. By having money and capital, you get to decide how labor is allocated, what society produces, and the ability to discipline the populace through capital strikes, if not much more direct methods like lobbying.
Liberalism is not anti-oligarch, they would just prefer the paperwork is filled out properly, so it is technically lobbying and not bribery. Elon Musk was an oligarch LONG BEFORE DOGE, and liberals loved him before he was vocally pro-Trump. Liberals loved him because he became the wealthiest man on earth by his "innovation", and only hated him, not because of his weird unhinged bullshit which existed long before, but only after that unhinged weirdness was pro-Trump.
You should read about what happened to domestic left parties and people after WWII. Also what the US did to left elements abroad. The state of the left in the US today didn't evolve naturally to its current status quo.
you mean like the communists? And japanese internment camps?
There's definitely bad things in there, don't get me wrong. But my original statement is still true.
Well said.