greg_lw

it's a cliche, but about 10 years for proficiency is right

it's worth learning programming no matter what though just to learn -- you know, in that archaic sense of "learn" where people learned things for their inherent value and not to sell themselves to somebody later

This thing with Hedges is pretty disappointing, because I really do think he's a smart guy with good intentions who just gets repeatedly carried away on his drama-boat. There may even be a point in there somewhere if he just made an honest argument instead.

Hi David,

I'll try to make this short. Though I'm just now poring over it, I really appreciate your original work on busting through some of the fundamental myths of capitalism and the 'government vs free market' neoliberal rhetoric that has permeated the political landscape, by exposing a different story about how money and markets are deeply rooted in systems violence and joined at the hip with the state.

I think that in some ways, capitalism is once again re-emerging as the name of the bad guy. This is just my impression, but I think even among right-leaning 'libertarians' there's lately been a kind of reluctant effort to parse the difference between capitalism and markets -- as in Gary Chartier's 'Markets Not Capitalism.'

My question is, what do you think about 'Markets Not Money' as an answer to that? Specifically, ideas inspired by Proudhon or Bakunin, found in mutualism or collectivist anarchism concerning a non-fungible replacement for currency, or Takis Fotopoulos's ideas on labor vouchers used to create artificial markets for efficient distribution of 'non-essential' commodities without the baggage that comes with real market features in an economy. Do you think this has any promise, with the technology at our disposal, or is it just a red herring?

It's a pretty cynical view, but I think a lot of this can be traced back to a very conscious neoliberal effort to turn words of dissent into contranyms if they can't be outright associated with rape and murder.

'Libertarian' has meant anarchist/anti-capitalist for a century and a half? Okay, well now it means "total, unfettered capitalism." That both subverts the message and alienates people who might be attracted to the idea. Liberty is capitalist markets. Socialism is slavery. Now shut up.

“One gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, ‘our side,’ had captured a crucial word from the enemy . . . ‘Libertarians’ . . . had long been simply a polite word for left-wing [sic!] anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over . . .” (The Betrayal of the American Right, p. 83)

Still have 'anarchist'? Well, we'll take that one too and give it to Mises, who practically creamed himself with glee over fascism rescuing the Europe from popular libertarian movements. Now anarchist means someone who wants to privatize the state and just make it totally unaccountable, as opposed to mostly unaccountable and in the pockets of private interests.

Socialist/communist has something to do with Stalin and Kim Jong Il -- or liberal reformism, pick one.

And then the argument is that 'classical liberalism' was somehow stolen from that camp, which in my opinion couldn't be further from the truth.

Why do you think Watergate -- a minor, trivial and relatively insignificant transgression in internal party politics -- so overshadowed the revelations of COINTELPRO? It seems that it ought to be much more newsworthy when someone uncovers that the state is operating an expansive and burgeoning domestic political police force, waging a war against the population and carrying out actions to thwart and subvert popular movements that went as far as assassination, yet everyone seems to know Watergate and rather few people have ever heard of COINTELPRO.