Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[Josquius]

Yeah, right wing talking points dominate the narrative. And that's just on social issues where the left at least gets a word in.
 In terms of economics the world has been in rightwards free fall for a few decades.

As to universities et al being left wing.... That's where the actual truth of the populist right projection shows itself. Academics aren't overwhelming left wing... The world is just so right dominated that balanced views look far left. Though even the relative left wing nature of universities is over rated. Right wing orthodoxy still dominates in many areas.

[viper37]

How anyone could seriously think the world is very left wing these days..

The left has shifted left, but the right has also shifted right.

[Jacob]

I think it's more that the current most prevalent strain of rightwing politics (the US flavour at least, which is fairly global) is intensely anti-intellectual, and therefore rather than bothering countering leftist arguments in academia with rightist arguments, they simply attack academia as a whole.

[Sheilbh]

Although I think a really influential strand in the American right (see Vance's background) is the Silicon Valley/Peter Thiel right. I don't think it's anti-intellectual per se - but I think it's very anti-humanities and also very, very elitist so it thinks there's a message for the plebs and a message for the insiders/elites. There's a side of "esoteric" knowledge to them that if you're on the inside and you're smart enough you can talk without the code.

I also think that explains the trend in conservative focuses on "great books" and the "Western canon" - or all of those social media accounts that are "about" beautiful architecture or art but, within three posts will be talking straight up race science.

They're always really good - but the Know Your Enemy podcast is particularly good on this.

FWIW I think it's fine to say that universities are pretty left-wing. And I think one of the problems the left has is almost the opposite. There are too many people who've done degrees like mine ( ) or have gone to grad school. Part of that could just be negative polarisation from right anti-intellectualism.

[Admiral Yi]

For the record, when I talk about universities I'm not thinking of academic disputes per se but rather the treatment of identity politics by administrators.

[Josquius]

How anyone could seriously think the world is very left wing these days..

The left has shifted left, but the right has also shifted right.

Both have shifted rightwards. For a while in the noughties it seemed there was a bit of a fight for a Liberal centre but the right have abandoned this now.

[Valmy]

The reason they think the left has shifted left is because of gays and trans issues and racial tolerance and all that. Not doing a socialism or any of that stuff. The leftists 100 years ago were more to the left than the left today on that front.

[viper37]

The reason they think the left has shifted left is because of gays and trans issues and racial tolerance and all that. Not doing a socialism or any of that stuff. The leftists 100 years ago were more to the left than the left today on that front.

Exactly.

They no longer talk openly of the communist revolution, there is no one to fund that shit.

[Sophie Scholl]

Elon is apparently absolutely losing his mind on Twitter (the only time I think deadnaming is ok) over the Biden stepdown and the Harris step-up. That *has* to be a sign it was a good move.   

[Josquius]

The reason they think the left has shifted left is because of gays and trans issues and racial tolerance and all that. Not doing a socialism or any of that stuff. The leftists 100 years ago were more to the left than the left today on that front.

Exactly.

They no longer talk openly of the communist revolution, there is no one to fund that shit.

You don't even need to go that far.
Even non Marxist strains of socialism are pushed to the fringe these days. Governments are very opposed to ideas of doing "stuff" and nationalised industries even where it clearly makes logical sense.

[viper37]

You don't even need to go that far.
Even non Marxist strains of socialism are pushed to the fringe these days. Governments are very opposed to ideas of doing "stuff" and nationalised industries even where it clearly makes logical sense.

That's because nationalised industries have been tried in the past and they mostly all failed.  They racked enormous deficit and combined with other inflationist government policies led governments to privatize them.   Now, to re-privatize them would cost a ton of money to buy them back from the private sector - again.  And keep them performing while the private keep the talent pool, unlimited by union rules about seniority.

[The Minsky Moment]

Although I think a really influential strand in the American right (see Vance's background) is the Silicon Valley/Peter Thiel right. I don't think it's anti-intellectual per se - but I think it's very anti-humanities and also very, very elitist so it thinks there's a message for the plebs and a message for the insiders/elites. There's a side of "esoteric" knowledge to them that if you're on the inside and you're smart enough you can talk without the code.

It's tempting to view the Valley people as a monolithic bloc, and in some ways they are similar, but there are different roads to Trump for them. Thiel is an anarcho-capitalist who wants to replace nation-states with privately run governments; you can guess why someone like him wants to see Trump back in with his protege JD Vance. Andreesen and Horowitz over-invested in crypto and are desperate to see the SEC gutted, even if it takes a lot of the rest of America along with it.  The VCs want to see Biden's tax proposals off. Elon has his own personal crazy going on.  And so on.

[Josquius]

You don't even need to go that far.
Even non Marxist strains of socialism are pushed to the fringe these days. Governments are very opposed to ideas of doing "stuff" and nationalised industries even where it clearly makes logical sense.

That's because nationalised industries have been tried in the past and they mostly all failed.  They racked enormous deficit and combined with other inflationist government policies led governments to privatize them.   Now, to re-privatize them would cost a ton of money to buy them back from the private sector - again.  And keep them performing while the private keep the talent pool, unlimited by union rules about seniority.

This is untrue.
Privatised railways in many countries have been a failure, privatised utilities are just a disaster, then you come onto stuff like military manufacturing where the current private system really isn't working, privatised post is a joke, and so on.
The sweeping ideologically motivated idea that privatisation is always the best option has caused a lot of damage. The best tool should be chosen for the task.

[HVC]

Public train lines suck too. It's almost like trains themselves are the problem


Sorry Sav, friendly fire

[Josquius]

Public train lines suck too. It's almost like trains themselves are the problem


Sorry Sav, friendly fire

Look at the countries that do things best and they're largely nationalised.
The only key stand out exception is Japan where... things are weird. Very incestuous and highly variable by location on quality with the reasons why the true private lines work being largely down to their long established history and not replicable in 2024.
Hell, even neo-liberal Switzerland knows better than to privatise its railways.