So - do you trust Germany? I do.
2025 is 80 years after 1945. And I think we've mostly trusted them not to repeat the ugliness for most of that, because they took steps internally to regain that trust.
The real question is, does the US have what it takes as a nation to disavow and prevent this once cured in the same way Germany did? And I don't know the answer to that.
@tbortels @Remittancegirl Germany fucked up 1991-21 by not taking redevelopment of East Germany seriously enough. The East never fully de-Nazified—they shot obvious Nazis, but then set up an authoritarian state where rank-and-file authoritarian types simply switched slogans and slotted right in, then they left the East to rot. This created the swamp in which the AfD emerged: a large region in which far-right reactionary politics is mainstream.
(Here in the UK I'm in no place to throw stones …)
@cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl
It fucked it up because it was never a "reunification". It was an annexation and privatisation of public assets from the East.
That was the goal of the Treuhand.
The West capitalist industrialists were never interested in improving the conditions of life for people in the East. They wanted new consumers to expand their markets and above all, fresh cheap industrial assets at bargain prices (the Treuhand was a fire sale of public goods, just like in 1990's Russia; they literally stole public funded and public built property and gave it to oligarchs) and cheap, flexible and downtrodden labour to outcompete and crush unions in the west. Furthermore, they could use the east Germans as "examples" to prevent western Germans from ever considering any temptations of "socialism", by conflating socialist policies and labour rights with autocracy ("socialism = bad").
There was never other outcome to be expected.
@cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl
When you remove the option for left-wing policies off the table (as neoliberals, their institutions and their media have been doing for 40 years, "there is no alternative") fascism is the only road open for discontent. When you crush Corbyn, you leave a vacuum for Farage to occupy.
@per_sonne @tbortels @Remittancegirl There's one other avenue, as happened in the Levant and Asia: by backing the Ba'ath (initially pan-Arabists, decaying into fascist dictatorships) and the Shah of Iran against the communists, all left-wing opposition was smashed … leaving the only avenue for dissent via the Islamic clergy.
Hence Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, etc etc.
Neofascism is just the west's equivalent of islamism, in this frame.
@per_sonne @cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl Which is why, if polling is correct, Starmer is the UK’s Biden and the next PM will be Farage (or Andrew Tate, if xAI buys Reform UK LLC and installs him). Meanwhile, Germany is staring down the barrel of a Moscow-aligned AfD Fourth Reich.
Yes, and I can tell you that many of us Germans are not thrilled that the established parties are using the success of this neo-fascist party for their own political goals instead of clearly distancing themselves from it.
@per_sonne @cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl capitalism is an effective tool, when wielded with skill in the appropriate circumstance.
Somehow, the rentier class has erased the second half of that sentence...
/∞
∫ @petealexharris@mastodon.scot@StompyRobot @per_sonne @cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl
A *free market within careful constraints* is an effective tool, but let's not confuse that with capitalism: using ownership of assets to exert power to extract rents and acquire more assets. It's not a political system, it's a failure mode of poor market regulation.
@petealexharris @per_sonne @cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl
You are right: Free markets are something totally different from capitalism, but they usually "combo."
Capitalism (private ownership of scarce resources) can solve the problem "how do we most effectively utilize these scarce resources?" (*)
Free markets can solve the problem "how do people actually value things in relation to each other?" (*)
The surplus generated through these efficiencies should be shared (split) with society.
@petealexharris @per_sonne @cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl
The asterisks are there because of all the caveats; free markets don't work for natural monopolies, nor where there are externalities, nor when buyers don't have sufficient information. Hence, why regulation is necessary.
Capitalism doesn't work when the capital stewards turn into generational rentier nobility instead of effective stewards. Hence, why passive income taxes, and (especially!) estate taxes, are necessary.
/∞∫ @petealexharris@mastodon.scot@StompyRobot @per_sonne @cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl
I think that first asterisk is a whole asterism, because I can't think of any way that private rather than collective ownership of a resource creates any economic motive to equitable stewardship of it, and the scarcer the resource the more inevitably it turns into an abusive monopoly.
But yes to the second part and its provisos.
@petealexharris @per_sonne @cstross @tbortels @Remittancegirl
The tragedy of the commons, and the prisoners dilemma, sre real.
Private ownership is one way to break those mis-incentives that has worked better than the other things we've tried.
E g, communes don't work as well, familial inheritance doesn't work as well, and so on.
There is a tension between free markets abhoring a monopoly, and capital being essentially a localized mini-monopoly, to be sure!
Public services are one option.
@StompyRobot @petealexharris @per_sonne @tbortels @Remittancegirl The "tragedy of the commons" was invented out of whole cloth by a conservative economist to justify enclosures (confiscation of public lands). It's bullshit propaganda.
The prisoner's dilemma is a theorem in Game Theory, an area of mathematics pioneered by John Von Neumann—the mathematical study of strategic interactions, with applications in statistics and computer science (as well as voodoo science, aka economics).
@cstross @StompyRobot @petealexharris @per_sonne @tbortels @Remittancegirl
Love this
Also voodoo science, maligns science stilllll, since economics is so much just faith-based Cerberus Parabolas!
@Maxfieldripken @StompyRobot @petealexharris @per_sonne @tbortels @Remittancegirl Economics isn't *quite* that bad, but it's 100% non-repeatable (even worse as a science than archaeology in that respect) and the subjects of experimental economics try to game the economists right back. Add that much of it attempts to ape the determinism of 19th century classical physics and it's largely bankrolled by the hyper-rich to justify their own position …
@cstross @Maxfieldripken @StompyRobot @petealexharris @tbortels @Remittancegirl
I want to thank everyone for this very interesting, lively and respectful discussion.
Long live the Fediverse and its communities!
@per_sonne @cstross @StompyRobot @petealexharris @tbortels @Remittancegirl
Economics dorkery truly is a peak human experience!
#penguins #ai #tld #ReciprocalTariffs #balanceoftrade #morepenguins #cusma #reciprocity #BigHands
@cstross @petealexharris @per_sonne @tbortels @Remittancegirl
From what I understand, the idea that tragedy of the commons was invented, was in fact invented. Similar stories have been documented way back before the nineteenth century. (Various people have of course tried to jam it into their own particular world view -- nothing new there.)
Because many people do, in fact, make self-serving decisions that cannibalize the public good. This is not uncommon, unfortunately.