Noam Chomsky - Anti-politics: Hating Government, Ignoring Private Power

[@ocek2744]

This is possibly the most important video on KZbin, it should be something seen by everyone.

[@dangerousideas5356]

cringe

[@lukethomeret-duran5273]

@@dangerousideas5356 how? In modern neoliberal society this is extremely needed

[@nocucksinkekistan7321]

It's the dumbest video i've ever seen

[@chief8559]

@@dangerousideas5356You’re cringe

[@manifoldtounity]

This used to be me, and Noam Chomsky opened my world simply by nudging me to check what the thinkers I'd so often invoke actually thought.

[@smolboyi]

But how am I supposed to believe with legislation capture and all that goes on that my vote is even counted?

[@shantanusingh5320]

The people in the comment section don't understand the point Noam is trying to make.

[@cjkeller5287]

Or just don’t want to

[@WilliamMcfall-ol3io]

I love listening to this champion of free speech, speaking truth to power. Not the free speech the right like to stomp their feet about.

[@nocucksinkekistan7321]

This isn't free speech, he's repeating establishment talking points

[@Justin-hb9wc]

And I thought I was crazy but now I'm listening to the most respected MIT professor validating everything

[@spaghettiking7312]

This dude slammed basically all of modern politics.

[@Ko-vb9mq]

"Limited government" is a ruse.

[@GeorgWilde]

That's true. Because limited government always grows into a big government. Complete absence of the state is necessary for freedom and and civilized life.

[@Ko-vb9mq]

@@GeorgWilde Assuming it’s even possible, what would you propose should be done with the power vacuum left in the wake of the state? What would stop corporations, foreign powers, criminal organizations, and homegrown fascist militias from replacing a dissolved government?

[@ridicule1313]

@@Ko-vb9mq I think Chomsky would agree that you cannot eliminate the state before reorganizing private power, and bringing some form of representative and participatory democracy to them. That’s something we can do partly through the state and partly outside of government through building/organizing our own institutions that are worker-owned. The problem I always run into, however, is that these attempts to solve the problem through the state (Marxism) often just expand the FUCK out of state power to say “look we gotta get rid of all this private power” and-even if with original good intentions-does not end well. That’s why anarchist philosophy says that you cannot have this “means to an end” promise of a final destination, you have to actively build the world you want to see truly from the ground up and that’s not easy in the slightest. I do think it’s worth looking at economies like Emilia-Romagne province in Italy, where they sort of solve this issue by having somewhere close to a 50/50 balance of free enterprise and worker ownership. I do believe balancing power instead of trying to dismantle power is a better way to look at it.

[@ridicule1313]

Because I think the issue comes down simply to human nature. Humans naturally want to compete with each other individually, but you can’t create an economy that does this AT THE EXPENSE of human’s natural desire to cooperate, live in community, and have solidarity. We’ll eventually become so hyper individualized that as Adam Smith says it’ll turn man into creatures “as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for them to be.” You gotta recognize both of these naturally opposing forces and not try to force one at the extent of the other, in my view.

[@GeorgWilde]

@@Ko-vb9mq I don't propose dissolving the state. I propose to be skeptical about the idea that it solves anything. I propose you, your family and friends stop participating in it. You assume to much in your question to be even meaningful. I have no idea what "power vacuum" is. Indivuduals have unlimited appetite for power and control over other people. Nothing like that is true about the desire to consume and hoard. There is potential to have much less freedom and much more tyranny than it is today. Is it a "power vacuum" to be filled? There certainly is desire in many people to have such power, so why it doesn't happen? I don't think it is because "our democracy" works so well. It is because there is one next person who also attempts to gain power, people who want power don't want other to have it and because power tends to suppress and destroy what it depends on. There are no perfect tyrannies. You assume lack of state, but then assume criminal organizations and foreing powers - those are states. That's unanswerable. Who would stop fascist milities? I thought leftists had more belief in their ability to organize their leftist militias.

[@Valandor_Celestial_Warlock]

In the Corporatocracy, both the corporations AND the government are the enemies. And the people support them both with their money and their involvement in the form of voting and political activism.

[@josephinman3037]

If we can create very effective automation and robots that perform all the mundane tasks and jobs, there won't be any corporations or governments or currency, since everything we need to survive will at least be almost completely free, due to everything being super easy to come by.

[@thenightbladefeeds]

Someone would (successfully or not) attempt to claim ownership over such machines. It wouldn't turn out the way you're thinking.

[@zobo742]

have you seen the movie wallie. yeah this is not what we want need as a society

[@smolboyi]

Idealism is a sweet fantasy

[@nocucksinkekistan7321]

@@zobo742 Sure buddy base your views off a movie

[@hskajdhf5907]

Government and private power are the same people

[@vsalukir7019]

It takes a lot of power to get rid of private power and government power. And it's not a one time kind of power that is created because most people will always be trying to collect private power or government power.

[@tonyballoney5552]

Another Chomsky video down the Pipe

[@maximdemeulemeester]

Are you kidding me? Politicians make promises, and when elected, they do the exact opposite, usually because of "donors" and special interest groups. While companies need to prove themselves every day. People "vote" every day with their wallet. If companies do not behave, consumers can simply buy other products. If you look at the carbon footprint of many fortune 500 companies, most have gone green, not because of politics, but because they lose customers if they don't. Corporations are very democratic. If they don't please their customers, the customers will reject them. If customers reject them, they make less money and the shareholders will replace the CEO / board of directors... The solution is less regulation so that everyone can start up their own company and compete against multi-nationals. Most regulations exist to keep the power with powerful companies, and to reduce the possibility for anyone to enter the market.

[@coryfoster9373]

It still doesn't address the massive power and private tyranny caused by Corporations. Going green is one step but that essentially doesn't mean anything.

[@Peace_Guard]

That's the most naive comment I've seen on the Internet. And I'm saying it as a person educated in marketing.. the whole marketing, okay, not the whole, but the advertisement part of it is for one simple reason - deceiving the consumer, stupefying him, confusing him, enchanting him, stripping him of reason, logic, rationality and scepticism. Make him overpay as much as it's possible relates to the objective value of the product. Good luck competing against 'multi-nationals' in a future cyberpunk dystopia. Cyberpunk 2077 is not a name of a game, it's the date of when Western countries will become the extreme cyberpunk dystopias. We'll have Pinkertons again, all kinds of mercenary private armies, making sure everyone likes their products. You wrote some true things though - "they make less money and the shareholders will replace the CEO / board of directors...", [some - the lobbied ones] "regulations exist to keep the power with powerful companies, and to reduce the possibility for anyone to enter the market"

[@simononeill941]

I was fascinated by the "voting with wallet" concept and have found that would only apply if we consider all consumers to be fully informed and to actually care enough to use their money elsewhere. For example, the cheap labour used in Asia to create our designer goods has not deterred a boycott big enough to make this issue go away.

[@justinbgr]

@c4p0ne Brilliant takedown of his argument. I was in awe of his naivety. Institutions of learning are doing a great job keeping people's understanding of modern capitalism firmly in the 18th century. Neo-classical economics doesn't hold up from its first assumptions. People don't act rationally and there is an absence of perfect information. Hell, this asymmetry of information is the force that creates individual markets in the first place. The fact that anyone could critically study it and take it seriously beggars belief, and its promotion in various forms as a science by useful idiots like Milton Friedman has had disastrous consequences vis-a-vis the concentration of corporate power ever since. I've never seen a "discipline" be so respected for always being wrong. Economic models that don't capture anything useful about reality are being taught in universities all across the country, and nobody cares. They go to the store and are able to buy stuff so markets work. Duh! And as other have said, an elementary understanding of marketing destroys the "vote with the wallet" solution. Markets are created by planting a psychic need in consumers through incessant and predatory advertising that leaves subtle implications that if you don't buy this product, you will suffer distress in some way. Sure, the 20% of people who don't buy into the bullshit could "vote with their wallet," but I don't see how the gesture could check corporate power in any meaningful way.

[@amelian9677]

You literally just admitted that companies are inherently motivated by profit rather than conscience and argued that giving companies more power will lead to a moral utopia in the same comment.

[@CassiaChloe]

yeah and the UN isn't influenced by private power? or a step further from that potential of democracy? not that democracy exists anywhere in the world in a meaningful way....

[@TigerLilyGzzTLRoars]

What a bonehead!! He staunchly defends gov. But he fails to recognize that if you would get rid of gov you'd get rid of what he hates about corporations. Corporations can BEST wreak havoc when they go to bed with gov.

[@hankmoultry8362]

maybe watch it again bimbo and listen and maybe write down the words and look up the definition of those words then you might understand

[@peterorsmond2624]

I'm doubtful you two will understand this, but here it goes...corporations "best wreak havoc when they go to bed with the government" because they are removing potential limitations on their power. Consequently, getting rid of the government would be synonymous with surrendering all right to limitation

[@mathias4851]

And we wonder why the world is going to hell with understanding like yours. Without goverment all power would be private and that my friend is the definition of hell.

[@jd.elie1]

No, he also, like the rest of us, has to live in what is, as opposed to how we’d like it to be!

[@jd.elie1]

@@YvogaAZ that’s telling us! MORON!

[@GeorgWilde]

"You have no future and everything is rotten." - Noam Chomsky Great message. It's completely false, but if you want to stay a loser and spread hatred, you need to believe in it.

[@GeorgWilde]

@@slimyfisher1370 I just summed up his message. He said that corporations are pure tyrannies. And since they are unavoidable, what i said follows. Don't believe corporations are unavoidable? Look at any place at any time where they tried to abolish them. Did they succeed? I am not blaming them, because i know it was impossible to succeed (only possible success would be self-erradication or return to pre-agricultural society). This was an argument. But Chomsky is about playful language which makes precisely the sentimental and snarky to seem errudite. I don't know why you don't agree with him that USA is ruled by terrorist organization, that current trend in global warming will destroy mankind as we know it, that majority of people (employees) are slaves and that democratic concensus is completely manipulated by demagogues. Everything is rotten. Give up.

[@dewok2706]

​@@GeorgWilde Blow me, demoralization shill. Everything IS rotten, but it can be fixed if bezos and gates get decpaitated and their heads are paraded on the street as a message to the other would-be slave masters.

[@skins189lbs4]

Why do you think we are losers to begin with?

[@henryfox6293]

Denialism won’t save you, sorry