Just your typical Ammu-Nation.

I suppose the military and police are public sector workers, but doesn’t that imply that he should be focusing on dismantling the defense department and like FBI, DHS, etc?

However, the billionaire’s increasing government influence has aligned with a global decline in Tesla sales, leading some to believe his political moves are damaging the company’s brand.

For me, the Tesla brand is permanently damaged. I will never buy a Tesla. I don’t care if they’re good EVs, I don’t care if they’re the best EVs, I will never buy one.

FDR challenged the establishment at the time, even the academic and technocratic paradigm at the time, which is exactly what I said.

You’d have to ask the experts why they abandoned that paradigm in the 1970s, in favor of neoliberalism.

But ultimately I think you and I agree that the moderates shouldn’t be so adverse to left populism.

You should want them to be against the established paradigm if you want anything to change.

But simply being against the established paradigm isn’t enough to change things. You need to build a new paradigm, and that takes time, and it can’t be accomplished by just ignoring the existing experts and technocrats.

So why are you talking about Democrats doing that like it’s a good thing?

One of the characteristics of populism is being anti-establishment, even against the established academic and technocratic paradigm. So, when a populist candidate moderates once in office, they become less populist and come more inline with the established academic and technocratic paradigm when they seek the advice and guidance of experts. Not all populists moderate once in office, because they don’t all listen to experts. Trump is a great example, and I think right wing politicians who get elected by building a populist movement are less likely to moderate once in office because they are less likely to listen to experts.

Neoliberalism started taking over as the dominant paradigm in the 1970s, and had become firmly entrenched in academia and the political technocratic state by the 1980s. That has changed, and is continuing to change, but there was a time when the majority of experts and technocrats were neoliberals. Many still are, unfortunately, though, I think the influence of neoliberalism is declining, albeit slowly (at least too slow for my preference).

The Democrats need to embrace populism to get into office, like they did with Obama in 2008. Remember, Obama wasn’t the Democratic establishment’s first choice, but as Obama’s movement grew, they recognized that they could ride his wave back into power. Something similar happened in 2016 with Bernie Sanders, but in that case the Democratic establishment turned away from the candidate with the rapidly growing populist movement, because his language was much too explicitly and aggressively left populist for their comfort. This was a mistake. Had the Democratic establishment embraced Bernie’s movement, I don’t think Trump would have been elected in 2016.

I hope by now moderate Democrats realize a Bernie Sanders presidency would have been better than the Trump presidency. Many Democrats, apparently, didn’t think Bernie was a better option than Trump, that they were both equally bad options. Again, I hope moderate Democrats recognize now that that thinking was wrong. Bernie would have become more moderate once in office, just like Obama. Because Bernie, like Obama, would have listened to the experts.

That’s what the Democrats need to do: wait for a populist movement to form around a candidate, ride that populist wave into office, then the experts and technocrats can take over.

That all being said, Democrats also need to ensure that the experts and the technocrats are doing their jobs properly. Part of the reason these populist movements exist is because of the failures of technocrats and experts, failure to recognize the limitations or contradictions within their ideology. The technocrats must ensure that once they are back in power they are managing the country and the economy properly, so that the largest possible number of people can thrive, otherwise they will not be able to hold on to power.

I recently played through New Order, Old Blood, and New Colossus again. God, I love those games.

Like it’ll matter.

That’ll be the day.

The Democrat party is not a democratic party, they are a neoliberal, technocratic party. They don’t want the people to rule, they want neoliberal technocrats to rule. I don’t see that changing, anytime soon.

A workers’ party would have to be a majoritarian, democratic party, because the workers are the vast majority of the population.

I have the original ultimate wireless controller, and it works flawlessly for me on Fedora 41.

Obama won two elections and Biden won one.

Obama never embraced the label, though. Bernie did. Obama was a Democrat and a liberal, Bernie is an independent and a socialist.

If you want to be POTUS you run as an R or a D and Bernie is not an R.

Did you miss the part where I said he ran for the Democrat nomination, twice?

That does not mean there are not R voters who like his policies.

I never said otherwise, but how does that help him win a presidential election?

My whole point is that Bernie could not win a presidential election in the US. How has anything you’ve said disproven that?

There are Republican voters who like Bernie and they have been showing up to his rallies for years.

Then Bernie should have run for the Republican nomination. He tried running for the Democrat nomination twice, and he lost twice.

I’ve felt that Bernie should be president since 2015, but he never stood a chance in the US. You have a 0% chance of being elected president in this country once the label of “socialist” has been applied to you.

It’s true, the range of ideological possibilities has been intentionally limited, here in the US. As Noam Chomsky said:

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.

The paper that coined the term free market specifically referred to them as “well regulated”. From the very beginning it was recognized that a functioning market requires government regulation, if for nothing else at least for contract enforcement and dispute resolution.

Many free market evangelists would agree that some state is likely necessary, to, as you point out, enforce contracts and mediate dispute resolution, as well as enforce private property rights. However, whether they would admit it or not, they only want said state to work for them, but never against them. They want all the protections that a state might offer, but none of the restrictions. They want laws that protect them but never bind them.