"yes or no"

This topic has 4 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 7 months ago by Billy_T.

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March 24, 2019 at 5:31 pm #99263

wv
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March 26, 2019 at 3:57 pm #99302

Zooey
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I think Seth missed the point on the “Yes or No.” He tries to transition away from that with “You don’t know which one they are saying Yes to.”

I think she was saying people were saying “Yes” to the question, “Are you a capitalist or socialist.” She was (badly) making the point that we live in a blended economy.

This is the worst I’ve seen her look, btw. Her story-telling skills are not her strong suit. This made her look a bit ditzy, and Meyers didn’t help.

The second half – when she talks policy rather than celebrity – she came across much better.

She’s grown on me, I have to say. Her questioning of Cohen, her questioning to the panel exposing legal bribery, and…what was the other one?…about a week before Cohen…she just looks very smart, and well-prepared.

Pity she has to work with Nancy “Green Dream, or whatever-they-call-it” Pelosi.

March 26, 2019 at 4:10 pm #99303

Billy_T
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I took it like this:

It makes no sense to ask yes or no to two different positions at the same time. They need to be asked separately to make any sense.

Are you a capitalist, yes or no?
Are you a socialist, yes or no?

But not together. That’s like asking are you left or right handed, yes or no.

The second level of dumb is asking people if they’re a capitalist or not. So few Americans are, it’s always going to be misleading and erroneous when a majority answers yes. What they really mean to say is that they support the capitalist system, not that they qualify as being a capitalist.

You aren’t a capitalist if you don’t have capital, and very few people have it. You then have to invest that capital in a business venture, purchasing labor power to produce commodities for sale, the surplus value of which you appropriate for yourself, as if you did all the work.

Roughly speaking, less than 3% of the country can accurately claim to be “capitalists.”

March 26, 2019 at 4:14 pm #99304

Billy_T
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“Capital” is money above and beyond debts and cost of living — to the point where the owner of that capital doesn’t have to sell their labor power to others in order to live.

It’s not just accumulated cash. It’s enough cash to make it possible to be financially independent, basically.

Again, how many Americans will ever have that kind of cash? Much less invest it to produce commodities, etc?

In short, the vast majority of people who say they’re capitalists, aren’t. Elizabeth Warren is a recent example of someone who shouldn’t have answered yes to that question.

March 26, 2019 at 4:23 pm #99305

Billy_T
Participant

Our economic system is obscenely elitist and exclusionary for that reason alone. It’s a club whose membership is limited in the extreme, but gets to call all the shots for everyone else.

The vast majority of the citizenry will never, ever be members. But the citizenry have to obey the folks in the club, regardless. We’re not allowed inside, but we have to obey the dictates of those merry few who are.

Which reminds me of that Dutch guy who made headlines at Davos for saying no one was talking about the most important thing, taxes.

Yeah, higher taxes on the rich are definitely needed. But that is in no way the most important thing. We shouldn’t allow billionaires to exist in the first place. If we were sane, we’d have an economy that functioned fairly, justly, upfront, with as close to equal compensation as possible . . . so “the state” wouldn’t have to come in afterwards and offset massive inequalities on the back-end. A just economy wouldn’t need that kind of redress in the first place.
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