Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[Mo_reese]

Oligarchies (like the US has had under the neo-liberal Democratic elite) are inherently unstable. This was stated by Aristotle but should be self-evident by now.
Author Thomas Frank points out that populist movements arise to challenge unstable oligarchies. He warned that while populist movements from the progressive Left aim to support the needs of the People, those from the Right deflect from the economic and social problems of the People and tend toward nationalism, racism and bigotry.
Sen Sanders tried to build a progressive populist movement from the Left to challenge the neo-liberal Democratic establishment and the Right Wing nationalistic populism but was soundly defeated by the billionaires of the oligarchy.
However, the Right Wing populist movement, lead by Trump, has handed the Democratic oligarchy a major defeat and taken control of the US government.
It appears that the Democratic oligarchy and their backers would rather see the extreme Right in power than the progressive Left.

[LuckyR]

Uuummm... I'm not convinced that the Democrats you're referring to "would rather" see the right wing of the Republicans in power than the left wing of the Democratic party. But the nature of the system is everyone battles against their own party in the primary and the other party in the general. Nothing new here...

[Sy Borg]

There is no step towards fascism. The Republicans won this election, that's all. This should be no surprise. Mainstream media and the Democrat campaign have been gaslighting the American people. Anyone not restricting their information to the media/leftist bubble figured that Trump would probably win. If you follow the markets, you find out what people truly believe, not just what they want to believe, and Trump had been ahead in the betting for some time.

Trump will engage in his Trumpenomics, his deliberately unpredictable foreign policy, and he'll attempt to boost productivity and to finally secure the southern border. After four years, either JD Vance or the Democrats will win, depending on how the American people feel about Trump's and Vance's performance.

It seems to me, as an outsider, that the biggest election issues were the economy, border security, overseas wars and freedom of speech (which has been progressively curtailed). The American people have been unhappy with how these things have been progressing and voted for change.

There's a lot of hysteria about this election, partly whipped up by the Democrats' scare tactics and Hitler comparisons (invalid concerns) and concern about Trump's refusal to accept the 2020 election result (valid concerns). I note that, had Kamala been shot at twice, the mainstream media would have nagged endlessly about the issue rather than quickly burying the story, which is typical of their manipulations. It's good that X and other platforms will have a chance to give people free speech and expose the mainstream media when it hides important information to manipulate the people.

Panning out from the minutiae of US politics, increasing populations will guarantee two possibilities - either greater authoritarianism or greater chaos. We are seeing this play out globally. Organising humans is like herding cats. China chooses to control its people as much as possible, while India's more relaxed approach results in greater chaos. Both nations are ostensibly prospering, which shows that each approach works in its own way, while also having significant issues.

A smart western society would reduce immigration to net zero, ie. maintain numbers. They would build robust power grids capable of supporting power-hungry AI, and incentivise AI and robotics investments. That would boost productivity to make up for the loss of people (maintain GDP). This would improve quality of life, encourage freedom, reduces prices, reduce housing costs, reduce homelessness, increase wages, increase opportunity, reduce environmental footprint, preserve natural habitats and habitable land (sacrificed to house extra imported people), and improve societal cohesion and happiness.

[Mo_reese]

Uuummm... I'm not convinced that the Democrats you're referring to "would rather" see the right wing of the Republicans in power than the left wing of the Democratic party. But the nature of the system is everyone battles against their own party in the primary and the other party in the general. Nothing new here...

The Democratic party establishment is run by neo-liberal elites and backed by billionaires (over 100 billionaires supported Biden's 2020 election). Those billionaires don't want universal healthcare for the people, or a decent wage, or affordable housing. Those billionaires that spent a record amount in this election in opposition to the billionaires backing Trump want to have the power and it isn't to save democracy or deal with the climate crisis it's to make more billions at the expense of the people. Sen Sanders and the Left (not the neo-liberals Dem elite) want universal healthcare, protect Medicare and Social Security, an end to the dangerous monopolization of corporations, etc. The billionaires killed that populist movement as it had zero billionaire support. Trump and his billionaires were able to defeat the Dem neo-liberal establishment.

[Mo_reese]

There is no step towards fascism. The Republicans won this election, that's all. This should be no surprise. Mainstream media and the Democrat campaign have been gaslighting the American people. Anyone not restricting their information to the media/leftist bubble figured that Trump would probably win. If you follow the markets, you find out what people truly believe, not just what they want to believe, and Trump had been ahead in the betting for some time.

Trump will engage in his Trumpenomics, his deliberately unpredictable foreign policy, and he'll attempt to boost productivity and to finally secure the southern border. After four years, either JD Vance or the Democrats will win, depending on how the American people feel about Trump's and Vance's performance.

It seems to me, as an outsider, that the biggest election issues were the economy, border security, overseas wars and freedom of speech (which has been progressively curtailed). The American people have been unhappy with how these things have been progressing and voted for change.

There's a lot of hysteria about this election, partly whipped up by the Democrats' scare tactics and Hitler comparisons (invalid concerns) and concern about Trump's refusal to accept the 2020 election result (valid concerns). I note that, had Kamala been shot at twice, the mainstream media would have nagged endlessly about the issue rather than quickly burying the story, which is typical of their manipulations. It's good that X and other platforms will have a chance to give people free speech and expose the mainstream media when it hides important information to manipulate the people.

Panning out from the minutiae of US politics, increasing populations will guarantee two possibilities - either greater authoritarianism or greater chaos. We are seeing this play out globally. Organising humans is like herding cats. China chooses to control its people as much as possible, while India's more relaxed approach results in greater chaos. Both nations are ostensibly prospering, which shows that each approach works in its own way, while also having significant issues.

A smart western society would reduce immigration to net zero, ie. maintain numbers. They would build robust power grids capable of supporting power-hungry AI, and incentivise AI and robotics investments. That would boost productivity to make up for the loss of people (maintain GDP). This would improve quality of life, encourage freedom, reduces prices, reduce housing costs, reduce homelessness, increase wages, increase opportunity, reduce environmental footprint, preserve natural habitats and habitable land (sacrificed to house extra imported people), and improve societal cohesion and happiness.

Wow, I will say that your post provides quite a challenge. Other than the Right Wing most believe fascism is at the door in the US. Do you have sources that think otherwise?

I would hope that we can all agree that putting women in prison for having a miscarriage is not a good sign but it has already been happening in Trump's red states.
Trump has vowed to "fix" the voting system and I am betting not in a good way.
The only way to deport all the immigrants he claims he is going to deport (13,000,000) would take massive authoritarian actions like thousands of agents, massive holding cages, etc.

I will agree with you that the media is under the control of the neo-liberal Dem Elites and they have been gaslighting us for decades. They justified Cheney's murdering half a million Iraqi's by claiming Iraq had WMD which was a lie they repeated over and over and never admitted being wrong.

I will say that the truth is more available from social media and independent journalist than the corporate propaganda media. However, as a leftist that was very active on Twitter, I noticed that immediately after Musk took over it became and extension of his right wing agenda.

The attempt to kill Trump is suspicious and I wouldn't be surprised if the FBI was involved but why don't we know more? Can't Musk use his zillions to find out?

Your suggestion that Western nations eliminate immigration is puzzling. Do you support the isolationism of the Right Wing?

[Sy Borg]

Your suggestion that Western nations eliminate immigration is puzzling. Do you support the isolationism of the Right Wing?

I prefer that immigration not be pumped to the point where wages are kept down, housing prices become unaffordable for regular people, with becoming homeless, and local culture being erased.

I am a pragmatist aka centrist. Some of my ... preferences are left, some are right, it depends on what I think is most reasonable and sustainable, and we do need to be careful about unintended knock-on effects of policies. I have become more of a traditionalist in some ways (ie. become an old fogey) and I miss the way Christianity tempered the behaviour of people.

It's bizarre to me that the belief in something that is not rational (religion) has helped societies prosper over centuries. I think that, when people believe in something, it wards off despair during dark times. No doubt some placebo effect involved there.

Of course, rationalism and church scandals and other abuses of power have put paid to that. Just musing.

[Sculptor1]

To answer this question you are going to have to consult two people.

1. Vald Putin; He obviously has some plan for the USA. And now with his man in the White House come January we can, at the moment only guess what are the future intentions of his bid to control the US election. We can probably expect moves to stop the funding of the Ukraine war, with the continued loss of territory to the Russia Empire.

2. Elon Musk. Though a man of severely limited intelligence he certainly has Trump by the short hairy ones. The very day after Musk annouced his support of Trump and the cash started to flow into Trump's bank account, Trump Immediately changed his mind on Electric cars. Clearly the short term reulst of Musk winning the election is that he will gain preferential treatment for his electric cars in the USA.

Trump himself can barely construct a sentence let alone have a coherent policy for anything that does not involve the outworking of some kind of hate or resentment.
Let's hope that he spends most of the time on the golf course eating burgers, whilst sensible hands steer the course of government policy. There are certainly plenty of Republicans who know what a waste of oxygen Trump is, so lets hope they are not too greedy, and do not pander to the racism and misogyny which was a primary cause of the failure of the Harris/Walz campaign.

[Lagayascienza]

The problem for countries with fertility rates below replacement level is that they need working age immigrants to hold up their tax base - especially when corporations pay little or no tax. Factory fodder and tax payers must be found. But if your fertility rate is at 1.6, you will soon run out of workers, and you will soon run short of taxpayers to support your aging population and pay for defense and other essentials, and to pay for corporate bail-outs.

If tomorrow millions of immigrants were deported from the USA, the economy would fall in a heap. Wages would soar and businesses would become unprofitable. That is the situation in the USA, and it's the same in my own country, Australia, and it is the situation across western Europe and in many of the advances Asian economies.

One day, perhaps in the not so distant future, advanced economies will be paying working aged immigrants to come, and helping them assimilate, instead of treating them as enemies and using them as political pawns. Advanced economies will have to either embrace working age immigrants, or get their fertility rates up above replacement level, or massively and rapidly increase the productivity of the factory fodder still available to them while keeping wages low but still high enough to yield enough tax revenue. Good luck with the latter.

[Sy Borg]

Lagaya, if there were labour shortage issues, wages would be rising and youth unemployment would be low. Graduates would not be serving meals in cafes. If more workers are needed, they can always arrive via official channels. There is no need to open the borders.

Further, it's unwise to have immigration levels so high - legal or illegal - that buying a house becomes unaffordable, that make rents prohibitively high, and that increase homelessness.

Net zero migration (maintaining, rather than increasing, numbers) can theoretically be augmented by plus technology (robotics, AI) to fill in the shortfalls. Societies can use tech to boost productivity without making existing workers work longer hours.

That's what China and Japan are doing. No doubt S Korea will too. As they develop these technologies, they will make returns on their investments by selling them to countries that didn't think ahead. If the US is smart, they'll do the same as east Asia, although their demographics are younger than the other nations mentioned, so the need is less pressing. Trump and Musk may well move in that direction.

It's not as though these east Asian countries can use mass migration to boost GDP and workforces like the west; they are already extremely overcrowded, and their youth unemployment rates are very high. Some people might have aesthetic objections to a more roboticised society, but that's what's coming, starting in e. Asia.

No matter what approach is taken, it will be a rocky ride. Unprecedented extreme human populations guarantee difficult times ahead, no matter what.

[Lagayascienza]

Lagaya, if there were labour shortage issues, wages would be rising and youth unemployment would be low. Graduates would not be serving meals in cafes. If more workers are needed, they can always arrive via official channels. There is no need to open the borders.

Right. There is not a serious labour shortage at present. But there would be if we had not had immigration. Without immigration, economic growth would have flatlined long ago in Australia and in much of the developed world where fertility rates are below replacement level.

Further, it's unwise to have immigration levels so high - legal or illegal - that buying a house becomes unaffordable, that make rents prohibitively high, and that increase homelessness.

Agreed. Immigration, where it is needed, must be targeted. Only immigrants who are needed to address shortages in labour (and whatever humanitarian immigrants we feel able to admit without causing social disruption) should be admitted. Immigration must be regulated and illegal immigrants stopped. But buying homes will be increasingly out of reach for the masses unless the decades old decline in real wages is reversed. Stopping immigration won’t fix that. And corporations will only pay workers what they have to and so increasing wages will require legislative intervention. Governments cannot tax workers if they are only paid starvation wages.

Net zero migration (maintaining, rather than increasing, numbers) can theoretically be augmented by plus technology (robotics, AI) to fill in the shortfalls. Societies can use tech to boost productivity without making existing workers work longer hours.

Yes. As I said, unless we get fertility rates up to replacement level, we are going to either need immigration to provide enough workers and a tax base to support government spending, or we will have to increase productivity of the remaining labour force with automation and make the corporations pay enough tax from their profits to pay for essential services because governemnts can’t tax redundant workers.

That's what China and Japan are doing. No doubt S Korea will too. As they develop these technologies, they will make returns on their investments by selling them to countries that didn't think ahead. If the US is smart, they'll do the same as east Asia, although their demographics are younger than the other nations mentioned, so the need is less pressing. Trump and Musk may well move in that direction.

It's not as though these east Asian countries can use mass migration to boost GDP and workforces like the west; they are already extremely overcrowded, and their youth unemployment rates are very high. Some people might have aesthetic objections to a more roboticised society, but that's what's coming, starting in e. Asia.

Right. If they cannot increase their fertility rates then all countries are going to have to rely on automation to maintain and increase productivity. Automation will continue to happen anyway because it means that corporations need to pay fewer workers. And when automation makes virtually all workers redundant, governments are either going to have to provide a UBI or let people starve. If governments decide on a UBI, then corporations will have to pay a fair level of taxation and so become the new tax base for the UBI. But a UBI will need to be at a level that provides recipients with enough income to buy the stuff that corporations produce or the corporations will go out of business. In any case, the dream of home ownership for the masses will be a thing of the past.

No matter what approach is taken, it will be a rocky ride. Unprecedented extreme human populations guarantee difficult times ahead, no matter what.

I think that’s right. There are too many of us already. Economic growth will eventually need to be decoupled from population growth. We need fertility rates to be no higher than replacement level so that we can halt, and perhaps repair, some of the damage we've caused to earth systems. If we think that’s important. If not, we can just keep trashing the joint for as long as possible and see what happens.

[Sy Borg]

You seem to assume that we can control the future. I'm yet to see any evidence of humans being able to control how the future unfolds throughout history. Basically, every culture bounces from one disaster to another, with relative periods of peace in between.

With 8 billion people and still rapidly increasing due to high fertility rates in Africa and the ME, the natural environment is guaranteed to be largely wiped out. I have come to accept this fact. It's sad as well, but the world does not owe us happiness.

As nature is increasingly wiped out, things will become harder - with more dust storms, landslides, earthquakes, and the breakdown of systems that fertilise "breadbaskets". There is no world government, and the competition drives greater fossil fuel use.

If the Earth was governed by a totalitarian green world government, with 24/7 surveillance of all citizens, then maybe some natural spaces could be saved, for a while. The totalitarian green "utopia" with UBIs above the poverty level appears unlikely - which nation would be boss?

Thus, "trashing the joint for as long as possible and see what happens" appears to be most likely. Tragedy of the commons etc. The world's surface is re-forming, one way or another.

[Lagayascienza]

Indeed. Trashing the joint for as long as possible and seeing what happens appears to be most likely scenario. In which case, the Earth and life will cycle on. The system won't care. It will just do a reset which will probably mean that life will get a lot tougher for the vast majority of our eight billion and counting. There will be no "totalitarian green world government, with 24/7 surveillance of all citizens". For one thing, the one percent won't allow it. They would rather see a mass die off of humans with the few wealthy and powerful remaining in places where human occupation is still viable. If that's what happens, then the Earth system won't care. Eight billion humans are not necessary for life on Earth. We have very limited self-control and, therefore, pretty much zero control over an Earth systems reset. What will be will be.

[Sy Borg]

It doesn't matter who's in power - sheer population ensures that the joint will be trashed. Global greenhouse gases increased significantly in the last four years.

Nor does the 1% have any influence. People with $15 million worth of assets - four or five properties - are not influencing anything major. It's the 0.01% that has influence, but playing the envy/blame game misses the point, despite the emotional satisfaction of finding someone to point the finger at. We could have the most altruistic 0.01% imaginable but the result would be the same. This not a blame situation but sh1t happens situation.

No species is necessary for life n Earth. However, humans are necessary for gentrification, for even the slightest hope of sentience escaping the dog-eat-dog schema of the biosphere.

[Mounce574]

Regarding the immigration part- I know this from my experience in jail, the majority of the jail population consists of ICE people. They are illegals and have broken some law that landed them in jail. The immigration that has flooded into the United States in the past 4 years has caused a multitude of problems. I don't have a problem with immigrants if they came here legally. If I go to their country, would I be given welfare, housing, and money like Biden/Harris are guilty of? No. An American is more than likely to be taken prisoner for a decade or more . His immigration policy is for illegal immigrants- the ones that are causing John Q Publics cost of living to rise and wasting taxpayer money. As for holding cages- those started under Obama and continued into BIden's reign. Harris was supposed to be directly handling the border and she only visited it to see the conditions while campaigning for president.
Zelensky, at the beginning of the Ukraine war, told Nato that 1 % of their weapons or money for weapons would end the war. Since then, the United States has given Ukraine $175 billion since Feb 2022. Yet, the war continues. Trump wants to force Putin and Zelensky to come to reasonable compromise. So far, Putin has agreed to "talk" but Zelensky isn't as willing. Israel is an ally of the United States but has only received a total of $17.6 billion dollars and part of it is to be used to provide aid to Palestine. Fascism wouldn't technically apply in either situation. His economic policy is questionable. The corporate tax cut to 15% seems a bit much but was already part of the TCJA policy from 2017. The elderly living on social security would no longer be taxed, which I think would be beneficial . The taxes not being taken for tips and promoting companies to stay in the United States or pay a tariff would boost the economy without a doubt. Trump has delegated the individual states to regulate abortion policies. You won't go to jail for a miscarriage. You would get a D&C to prevent sepsis. An abortion doesn't require a D&C and the being in the womb (I'll avoid using any type of semantics like baby or fetus) is completely removed and the remaining tissue in the uterus is removed at that time. Sending people to jail for a miscarriage that might not be avoided would be insane. The argument over the Constitutional Right to Abortion is moot- it's not a part of the Constitution.
That's what has been reported so far, factually checked, on what Trump represents.
Can you define what fascism is to you? The following is what Fascism is literally defined as a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation (Merriam Webster.) Groups which are identified as neo-fascist in the United States generally include neo-Nazi organizations and movements such as the Proud Boys, the National Alliance, and the American Nazi Party.
I agree that Sy Borg is right with his statement "There is no step towards fascism. The Republicans won this election, that's all. This should be no surprise. Mainstream media and the Democrat campaign have been gaslighting the American people. Anyone not restricting their information to the media/leftist bubble figured that Trump would probably win. If you follow the markets, you find out what people truly believe, not just what they want to believe, and Trump had been ahead in the betting for some time."

[Pattern-chaser]

"There is no step towards fascism. The Republicans won this election, that's all. This should be no surprise. Mainstream media and the Democrat campaign have been gaslighting the American people. Anyone not restricting their information to the media/leftist bubble figured that Trump would probably win. If you follow the markets, you find out what people truly believe, not just what they want to believe, and Trump had been ahead in the betting for some time."

Capitalists "have been gaslighting the American people". Thus it has always been, and probably always will be, until climate change (caused by Capitalism) sees us off. The USA is a for-profit organisation, nothing more. It has no purpose or function other than to serve shareholders and maximise their profits.