lmfao this is hilarious

The above comment is made of glyphs arranged to convey meaning. The Code of Hammurabi is made of glyphs arranged to convey meaning.

So the comment will very well be likely a significant contribution to human culture.

Gimble vice and a fleshlight?

People’s brains fall out of their heads on this one hey? Like wtf, you’re actually responsible for what you say seems pretty basic. Nobody is arguing for prosecuting anyone who expresses opinions, or what they earnestly believe to be true and communicate in good faith. Just, if you make shit up and people get hurt well then, you did that hey.

Hmmm lets examine this statement.

Isolated weird place, scary Russians, Russian stereotypes of intellectual game + tremendous violence.

Gee, it almost sounds like this is a too convenient racist lie. Any proof? The oldest reference just says ‘it totally happened’ and cites something I can’t access on Google books. It’s 20 years after the fact and not a primary source.

Look ultimately words mean what they mean in the context that they’re spoken but broadly neoliberalism is highly socially permissive. Provided, that is, one does this as a responsible member of the capitalist economy and doesn’t disrupt the market.

Like you can have neoliberals that love trans kids, celebrate pride, want more black female drone pilots etc. It is, however, not a neoliberal position say compare the number of vacant properties to the number of homeless people and suggest that perhaps we should just take the unused houses and give them to homeless people? That would violate the principles of private property and free markets. After all: what freedom does one have if you can’t watch someone freeze to death on the doorstep of your vacant investment?

If your friends think that freedom to do that is utterly absurd and a society which defends that is fundamentally rotten then they are not liberals in the academic sense, however their substantially more leftist stance may be called liberalism in the political context you find yourselves in.

To clarify my question. What do you mean ‘actually liberal’ ideologies?

Like what are their thoughts on monetarism?private property? free association? private entities in markets? Debt and paying it, both private and state held?

If they think that the state should provide the means of subsistence of the entire populus, that property should in general be held in common and private property is not sacred, that government entities in a market are often more effective than private and/or that business should be heavily regulated to serve common good, that debts should be cancelled when it is not realistic or fair to pay them etc. Or perhaps even further afield positions like questioning nation States, police, militaries and boarders… well, then they are not in fact liberals haha.

What do they see as different between neoliberalism and classical liberalism. Neoliberalism is mostly a post-Keynesian revitalisation of classical liberal economic positions updated with modern banking practices and globalisation.

… everyone? hence my use of broadly? It has complete and utter ideological hegemony since like the 70s. If you study economics you study neoliberal economics and they don’t even bother specifying. All major political parties in the anglosphere and most of western Europe follow neoliberal ideology, even the green-left is largely neoliberal. There are basically no classical liberals left.

She makes a handful of digital toys free. Slurs hurt real people. Keep this in context

I think I misunderstood you.

See my other comment for why I think freedom is sort of a useless thing to frame anything around. At least without further clarification.

Reactionary ideologies are incoherent.

I think it’s tempting to try and be pithy but freedom is complicated. For some people freedom is an absolute, do what you want when you want. For some it is about theoretical possibilities, for example if you ask if people are free to quit there job the answer heavily depends on how someone balances theory vs practice. Others take a practical lens, freedom only counts if it’s plausible to do.

Sometimes freedom is about ideals. you are free to read all the political theory you like, you umm wont because it’s boring but if someone threatened that would you be upset? At other junctures freedom because pragmatic, “what use is freedom to read if I don’t have freedom to eat? I’ll trade one for the other” someone might say.

Some people rate permissions more than restrictions, some the opposite.

I don’t think it’s a concept we can really pin down. Everyone has their own interpretation and it’s not universally values: much as dominant ideologies often insist it is, the rise of fascism should hint that others care much less about it.

Sigh, I’ll wade into this river of shit.

Liberalism is broadly understood as neoliberalism, which is an ideological descendant from classical liberalism. This ideology positions itself as being broadly in favour of individual freedom within a rather tight definition of freedom. Namely liberals are concerned with the ability of people to read what they like, own what they like, marry whomever they like and so on provided they do this inside of a system of capitalist free market exchange.

Modern liberalism tends to frown on heavy government intervention in market affairs, which they see as representing the free (and thus good) exchange of goods between individuals. They also tend to be broadly in favour of the militaristic western global hegemony.

Criticism of this attitude comes from 2 places.

1. too much freedom.

2. not enough freedom.

(1) is people that want women bound up in the kitchen and walk around with an odd gait that makes you remember Indiana Jones films

(2) are people (I’m in this camp) who see liberalism as a weak ideological position that favours stability over justice and, in so doing, ignores the suffering of billions.

You should probably know that historically societies collapsing has typically resulted in improved health of the lower classes as judged by skeletons in the archeological record.

We should not really understand societies collapsing as a violent or spectacular thing. It’s usually just growth slowing, people move away, the ability of states to enforce taxes and provide services weakens and people work out their own stuff.

I’m not saying society is collapsing, just that if it does it’ll probably look more like declining birthrates and movement away from cities and advanced manufacturing to more agrarian lifestyle. Also that for the poor and downtrodden this will probably, on average, be an improvement.

Yep, everyone that disagrees with you is a Russian psyop. That’s why I’m opposed to nation states and empire, and want a rules based international order with common heritage of humankind treaties. Exactly what they want in the Kremlin or wherever.

Someone not from the usa defending them is even more baffling. Grow up in a house with lead painted walls?

If you were less ignorant of global politics it would actually be trivial for you to work out where I live from what I’ve said.

I’m really sorry about what passes for an education in the usa. Like seriously I am. You’ve been very heavily indoctrinated and so any criticism of your homeland feels like it’s an irrational attack. You don’t need to feel this way, it’s like those old fools who think that learning about past national wrongs means they need to live in shame or react by teaching so called ‘white pride’.

You are not responsible for the evil done by the elites that claim dominion over you, you don’t need to identify with them or defend their actions. Many were done by people no longer alive anyway.

… Um ok? And the usa doesn’t? Isn’t it like number 1 for imprisoned population on the planet? Ultimately though I can’t judge countries by their domestic situation, because that’s not something I can do anything about.

What I can judge countries by is how they destabilise the world and the ideology they export. The USA enforced, often extremely violently, a deeply exploitative world order which has effects locally for everyone. If Putin executes some dissidents then that is tragic, it is not however a globally significant issue. Something like the usa starting the war on drugs, strong arming nations into imprisoning or executing significant portions of disadvantaged populations is.

Or the usa couping governments left, right, and centre to maintain an exploitative resource extraction international order. Which destabilised the globe and oppresses millions is.

You might say “Iran would do that too!” but a) they haven’t and b) you’re guessing. Very few nations have ever behaved as badly as the usa/britain/france/spain. The others have chilled out, the usa hasn’t.

Iran has never hurt me, China has never hurt me, never roped the country into an illegal war that left half my highschool mates broken meth addicts, Russia has never hurt me. Idk what to tell you. Empires are evil, necessarily. The usa is the inheritor of the British legacy, they export war and exploitation. I’m sure if Putin led such an empire it would also be ugly, I’d prefer a more balanced world.

Tbh China seems like a sort of bad neighbour (are there states which are good neighbours?) but they seem to generally be in favour of institutions like UN and they don’t militarise the shit out of the world. They’re a better trade partner than the usa.