MemesAreTheory [he/him, any]

Stupid tankies asking for sources. That’s basically thought police - aren’t you bozos supposed to hate the police? Hahahaha gottem.

What no theory does to a mf.

No, this isn’t trickle down economics. It’s called superprofit/super exploitation, a marxist concept. The West™ in general, but a few powers specifically (subject of our discussion here, the USA in particular) have enforced extremely brutal oppression in the global South. This has kept the global South from developing competitive or even self-sufficient industry and reliant on imports. This gives American firms a massively unfair advantage, one which is used to placate the American working class so they don’t develop solidarity with the global South. Throw in some bog standard racism and you’ve got a stable empire of misery. It’s classic divide and conquer tactics, same used to pit managers/white collar workers and more blue collar or service workers against each other. Let some people feel superior to others, and they’ll be so busy looking down they won’t mind the boot on their back standing above them.

There’s a rich body of theory here (which you are plainly ignorant of) but I would recommend reading about the phenomenon of unequal exchange by Jason Hickel

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802200005X

It’s a good starting place for understanding how wealth is extracted from the south for the north.

Unfortunately for all of us, Capitalism has a long-term rate of profit problem. Even with super exploitation profit falls in the long run. To maintain their power and the rate of profit the capitalists begin ripping out and further oppressing the once (relatively) privileged working class of the north too. That’s why social safety nets are being torn to shreds and constantly under attack, and gains in quality of life/life expectancy have either stalled or regressed in so called “rich” countries.

We say “workers of the world unite” for a reason. It’s a global struggle.

Oh, nice whattaboutism. Didn’t say shit about Russia dumbass. What the fuck does that have to do with a conversation about the US engaging in direct imperialism during the 20th century? You sick fucks are obsessed with Russia, it’s kind of cute. Like you’ve got a crush or something.

My guy I’m just talking about well recorded history here. Go Google operation Condor, or if you’re really feeling adventurous, literally any history book about Latin America. US violence and meddling is a core part of what gave the country a deeply unfair advantage. There was only dramatic reduction in poverty and a “growing middle class” because we were actively preventing that from developing abroad. Pretending foreign policy and domestic issues are separate realms is completely juvenile. Look at OPEC for the easiest example in the world.

It also coincided with the US propagating violent dictatorships and committing unparalleled war crimes abroad. The Korean War, Vietnam War, Indonesian Mass Killings, rise of the House of Saud, Shah in Iran, and incredible meddling and history of coups/death squads in Latin America.

That middle class wasn’t made by just engaging in good business, unless you consider the violence of imperialism good business… In which case absolutely go fuck yourself… But only if you stand by all that foreign aggression and murder and downstream oppression.

you would be surprised

Well, at least you’re learning something today, despite your best efforts not to.

I want to keep on insulting the man good cop bad cop style, but now I’m learning, and I’m content to let him keep saying vapid bullshit if it means you keep posting bangers.

Thanks for your contributions.

You see, the Political Scientist major brainpan is maladapted to reflection, and quite simply incapable of grasping such remarkable and sophisticated concepts like “Hegemony.”

He’s got a MINOR in economics! And he’s here to tell us all about how beautiful and elegant the math is. You can’t really appreciate it unless you step into the rarified air surrounding an econometrics professor, you would understand if you ever tried it.

He’s pretty clearly misunderstood entirely or at least the point of 80% of what I said alone. This man is a weenie and the absolute epitome of someone who took Econ 101 and now thinks they know the secrets of the universe. It’s incredible how much air economics departments blow up their students ass. That just can’t be safe for the human body.

I STILL WANT MY MAN’S THOUGHTS ON THE CAMBRIDGE CAPITAL DEBATE.

"It is important, for the record, to recognize that key participants in the debate openly admitted their mistakes. Samuelson’s seventh edition of Economics was purged of errors. Levhari and Samuelson published a paper which began, ‘We wish to make it clear for the record that the nonreswitching theorem associated with us is definitely false. We are grateful to Dr. Pasinetti…’ (Levhari and Samuelson 1966). Leland Yeager and I jointly published a note acknowledging his earlier error and attempting to resolve the conflict between our theoretical perspectives. (Burmeister and Yeager, 1978).

However, the damage had been done, and Cambridge, UK, ‘declared victory’: Levhari was wrong, Samuelson was wrong, Solow was wrong, MIT was wrong and therefore neoclassical economics was wrong. As a result there are some groups of economists who have abandoned neoclassical economics for their own refinements of classical economics. In the United States, on the other hand, mainstream economics goes on as if the controversy had never occurred. Macroeconomics textbooks discuss ‘capital’ as if it were a well-defined concept — which it is not, except in a very special one-capital-good world (or under other unrealistically restrictive conditions). The problems of heterogeneous capital goods have also been ignored in the ‘rational expectations revolution’ and in virtually all econometric work."

(Burmeister 2000)

Awh gee, I wonder where our Poli-sci wonderboy got his degree

Goddamn. You both treated him with more respect and time/attention than he deserved AND savaged him. I love Hexbear users. I was running out of patience and felt my fingers itching for a ppb soon.

Hear that @Civility@hexbear.net? I’ve been a bad boy! Come frown at me for hurting the widdle wiberals feelings. He was just using elitism to disparage his interlocutors and maintain a worldview that harms people every day! Why did I have to go and be so uncivil! Whoa is me.

Classic liberal. When confronted with arguments you don’t understand or have a retort to, you pearl clutch and complain about tone.

You’re still not getting it lol. Neoclassical economics is theoretically standing out way over a cliff and simply refusing to look down like Wiley coyote. Your appeal to mathematics is unintentionally hilarious, because it was physics envy and the chasing of mathematical models over real life evidence/coherent theory that led the field astray to begin with lmao. You can come up with all kinds of fancy models and as much mathematics as you like, but none of it matters if you’re basing it on incorrect axioms.

“Functioning in the real world” - oh yeah for sure. Burning the environment down and cooking the biosphere while forever chemicals and microplastics permanently saturate the ecosystem. Liberal societies are “Functioning” in so far as they’re not actively failed states this very moment, but that is accomplished on the back of neo-imperialism, unequal exchange with the global south, and unresolvable contradictions inherent to neo-liberalism/capitalism. A car driving 80 mph towards a cliff is working, sure, but is that a desirable state of affairs?

Also take a quick look around my guy. We’re not in a laboratory. I’m calling you an idiot on the internet. Not every conversation is the platonic ideal of scientific pursuit you nerd.

I’m not talking about the inherent limitations of social science, I’m responding to your absurd attitude that somehow formal education makes your ideas inherently superior/above critique, and I named a specific example of theoretical failure of orthodox economics as an example of the entire project being basically woo. Lots of aristotelean scholastics wrote the dumbest shit imaginable about physics for a thousand years, and their thought was funded, reproduced, and taught as authoritative by formal education the entire time; progress was only made when criticism came from outside the academy and overcame it. Much like then, our contemporary “Political Science” and “Economics” departments are nearly completely captured by a dead-end ideology/research project, but still have the support of the ruling class so they keep cranking along misinforming more and more students every year. You claiming advanced understanding of the matter is the equivalent of an Aristotelean physicist or Lamarkian biologist sticking their nose up and saying learning outside of the academy is somehow less than their own. That’s worse than just being wrong, it’s wrong and using elitism to refuse to recognize it. The Black Panthers went into the poorest and least educated communities in America, and they taught people Marxist theory while they taught them to read. What do you think well to do Nixon Republicans had to say about their education? That’s where you stand right now looking down on folks engaging in education outside of the academy itself.

Also, lots of Marxists are tired of dumb liberals reciting the same garbage authoritatively while never questioning basic undercurrents of their own ideological world view. So sorry they have reached a conclusion and don’t want to rehash baby’s first socialism with every shmuck who thinks their poli-sci degree makes them an expert.

I mean, I should have known you’d regurgitate the propaganda, but it’s always a disappointment anyway. Such a stupid response, too. That’s basically a non-sequitur. For one, there being two evils does not necessitate siding with the lesser. You can acknowledge there are no good guys, and instead pick the position most likely to lead to the least amount of suffering over all. That is and will always be peace, but you blood thirsty natoids just can’t imagine that. Your response is also dumb as hell given that modern Russia is a capitalist state, not the USSR lmao. Bringing up Gulags is a bit like bringing up slave plantations in the USA… except the USSR is actually completely dissolved so its even less relevant. For the record, the US still legally permits slavery in the instance of criminal conviction. Say, sure would be wild if the US disproportionately policed and convicted black and brown people, wouldn’t it? That’d seem like a loophole legitimizing slavery over time! But that’s just whatabouttism so feel free to ignore it like a good little natoid. You’re grossly ignorant regarding tiananmen square as well, but I won’t bother citing anything since you’ll just dismiss it out of hand.

Instead, I’ll ask what are your thoughts on the repression of Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, Ireland Independence, French Yellow Vests/Public Benefits/Police Racism, and so on and so forth in “Free” and “Democratic” countries? What about the United States having the highest incarceration rate in the world, largely filled with black and brown people subjected to forced labor while in prison? What would happen if your “protest” did more than carry signs in publicly designated and permitted areas? Wouldn’t you be beaten, arrested, and convicted under the fullest extent of the law? So sorry that you’re so cucked you can’t imagine doing more than asking your leaders nicely for change and politely going home when they say no, but real protest is certainly illegal in “Free” Western countries, and if you ever actually engaged in it you’d see exactly how brutal those governments can be.

Principled communists aren’t unapologetic supporters of every single thing socialist countries do/have done, but we take issue with the nakedly hypocritical framing from Western powers. The atomic unit of propaganda is emphasis. You ignorantly reduce entire foreign countries to a single word/event while myopically ignoring the conditions before and after, but hem and haw and whine about nuance and procedure and the necessity of the barbarity around us every day… When you’re not ignoring it outright that is. That’s what makes you a useful idiot to our own system of oppression. It’s an embarrassment.

Post shit get hit. We welcome informed folks, well meaning curious questions, and fellow travelers with open arms. Sanctimonious liberals get the hog.

Nah you just pearl clutched when we called Western Powers bad names.

I’m loosely in favor of restricting the use of the word genocide to when it’s definitionally appropriate myself, but that’s in the context of effective communication and clarity. So long as “genocide” is going to be used exclusively to refer to US State Department desginated enemies only, then it’s perfectly reasonable to liken the US/France/UK’s horrific foreign interventions genocide as well. Western interventions, both formal and clandestine, have killed many more than anyone else those imperialist fucks have accused of the word, so in the interest of showing just how absurd their usage is yes, we should and can call Western powers genocidal too.

Bro I’m completing a dissertation in political economy and I hate myself for it. The world is an easy place if you assume the gospel drivel spewed in orthodox econ departments is all there is. How about you go read up on the Cambridge Capital debate and then tell me how robust a “science” economics is. While you’re at it eat a crayon, maybe you’ll shit out a more intelligent comment next time.

Says the natoid lmao

Two things can actually be bad at once you know. Understanding geo politics doesn’t mean support. The world isn’t a marvel movie.