Comments video part 1 - neoliberalism book review

[@chrstopherblighton-sande2981]

Two good points in this video. One about how the United States haven't always been as neoliberal as they are now - indeed America used to have a thriving and very active socialist movement and produced many important socialist theorists. I think the cold-war was a major reason for the phobia of socialism in the US - and the very cleaver, though disgusting, way that the super wealthy were able to associate any restrictions on their ability to make as much money as they wanted, as being un-American in the eyes of a lot of the public. Your point on relative poverty was also really important. I think wealth and poverty have a structural dimension. Societies like ours have been constructed around the fiction of money, and so without money it is very difficult to meet material and social needs. It's true that there are societies (especially indigenous tribal societies that live very remotely from other societies) who live truly happily without money and without almost all of the things we see as necessities in our society, but those cultures tend to be egalitarian so there are no significant disparities in wealth or status, and they have access to all their basic needs. Their society is structured very differently and they have been socialised into that life. I'd love to have a society in which money did not exist, but sadly for now in ours, it does.

[@SOak145]

I like your fox shirt