Jim Halpert Explains

Not bureaucracy, capitalistic plutocracy bound by its own systemic flaws rather than any cabal of evil people. There isn’t an evil group, only an evil system perpetuated by ignorant people who either do things for their self interest, or legitimately think they’re helping.

Sure... when people do bad things in the name of religion it's evil... but this isn't in the name of religion... so it isn't evil... what you haven't recognized is their "self-interest" or whatever you want to call it is their "religion"

Bureaucracy isn’t the religion here, it’s capitalism, that’s not the core of your problem, nor is it even probable enough to claim that bureaucracy itself is the religion. They don’t say it’s in the name of capital, but it’s so shockingly obvious, and people do that stuff not because they’re inherently evil in intent, but because they have their own personal agenda at heart, or because they’re so caught up in the system that they ignore what it does. Hence the mess we have today across government, economy, and political influences.

Nah, bro. We stopped being capitalist when they started controlling the market. This is cronyism totally different.

Cronyism is a product of capitalism. “Free markets” didn exist to begin with, one can mimic it by using austerity measures, but only protectionist policies have ever truly brought quality of life growth. Cronyism comes from the side of capital, not from the government, as the government originally has few reasons to do anything but work alongside these businesses in a marketized fashion. If we reverted the system back to a supposedly less government-interventionist time, no matter what you’d do, we’d fall back into the cronyism, because that’s essential to the preservation of capitalism. It can’t live without government, and so it steals the reins of power right out from underneath us. Capitalism perpetuated this, it’s a stage towards fascism, which is the decay of capitalism (not the deletion, it’s still capitalism) and the inward movement of imperialism. If the “free market” is suddenly imperializing its own economy by attacking the lower class (more than they already are regardless, of course), then it’s a sign of a slide towards capitalist fascism, not the deletion of capitalism and a move towards socialism, as socialism requires the abandonment and destruction of capitalist exploitation and control of the government by a workers front.

No sorry, history is very clear. As long as governments can't be bought and free markets exist the more prosperous a nation is. We had this happen with very few controls before 1970 and the government was resistant to the rampant corruption we see today. Anytime a market is controlled we see corruption and poverty. Study some history bro.

Ah, this’ll be fun. The government was never NOT bought, the 70s were when it started to get far worse, especially thanks to Reaganomics and neoliberal policies of that time period. Historically, the more Keynesian policies have had a higher rate of prosperity, and markets themselves are built with control in their very nature. Markets are upheld by the iron fist of the state, and as such, a non-controlled market is literally impossible, and massively lacking in beneficial outcomes when left completely unregulated.

What you’re asking for is limited levels of control, which usually ends up with the continuation of the status quo, allowing the corporate sector to keep its massive exploitation campaigns going. Your personal life will backslide no matter how much the market is unregulated, because at no point has that led to a higher standard of living without government regulation and control. The government was the force by which workers rights were secured, and the only real catalyst for maintaining unionization rights, although very grudgingly in that regard. We can control the government, which functions off of a much more robust system of individual assistance than a company, as a company almost never allows the individual the ability to choose what happens, nor affect the policies of the company.

The government is the tool, and someone is always using it. In a system where capital power is stronger than the government, and undermanaged, the government will be the tool of capital and the upper class. That’s empirically true today, we all know it, and we all see it. The separation of the two does nothing because the individual’s lifestyle will always backslide, not to mention that government will still regardless make decisions that work in the interest of the upper class, as it’s systemically built to be, so no matter what barriers you put up, it’ll fail.

The obsession with the infantile ideals of separation of government and economy are both ludicrously misunderstanding of the innate characteristics of markets, and the sheer size of its power over a government. As long as private property and markets exist, they will grow, they will become massively powerful in economic and political sectors, and the government will bend to its will, indirectly or not. Even if you managed to revert to these supposed “better times”, it’s inevitable that the government and corporate sector will later enable one another, and before then, material wealth of the individual will shrink as economic imperialism both inside and outside the nation increase. It will revert inevitably in the face of market failure, forcing the government to intervene yet again, and continue the unholy merger of corporate and state power.

This issue is both historically and empirically inevitable, because the market has and always will be a creature of the state which, ironically enough, controls its own maker. The only solution of every possible scenario is a shift towards the destruction of private property (not personal property, but anything that produces value), and the democratization of the economy to bring the power back into the people’s and worker’s hands. The sheer immorality and suffering caused by the maintenance and continuous exploitation of a capitalist system already makes it the most evil economic system in mankind’s history. Death directly and indirectly caused by capitalism’s economic failure and maintenance has reached over 1 billion, while that of socialism is 20 million over the course of 90 years. That alone shows there really isn’t a comparison, capitalism is robustly and extremely horrible as a system, something we should’ve recognized a long time ago.

Separation of government and economy is easy. A constitutional amendment that limits lobbying to $1 and if you ever worked in a private sector you can never run for an office that deals even remotely with that sector. If you join something you regulated before after you are out, Instant jail time. Make corporations limited to accomplishing a single well defined goal or 10 years, whichever comes first. Common sense things like that.

The 2nd half of your argument fails once you separate the two. Large companies are not agile and will fail to be replaced by smaller more agile companies. Competition would be a thing again. Market manipulation would be punished again.

Those amendments are extremely unlikely to pass in the United States and it doesn’t even begin to fix the issues of capitalism itself. Austerity measures will still be prevalent, jobs will still be exported to poorer nations in a situation where everyone loses, and the regulation of these companies with the goal of revitalizing an economy will inevitably turn out to sacrifice all social services people would hope to gain due to the structure of the economy and its incompatibility with government policy in a “free market” environment. The social policies will shred themselves, and privatization will not even begin to save you.

Deregulating the private sector while separating it from government is also just generally impossible due to indirect coercion being committed by the private sector into the government. The two are intertwined, separating the two fully is impossible, and believe me, it doesn’t fix anything. Social democracy looks appealing to the average person, but you dramatically increase suffering and poor wages elsewhere since the cost of labor for a citizen of a social democracy increases, motivating companies to make more profit by using cheap labor from outside.

In which case, that will ruin all development of cheap-labor nations due to companies breaching laws (regardless of governments doing anything about it, it’ll happen all the same, don’t even try to deny that fact) to politically pressure those nations to reinforce higher austerity measures. You’ll cost the world trillions for a lifestyle made to keep the workers of richer nations under capitalism’s thumb, and in the process, suffering will only ramp up further. Europe knows this, america knows this, and yet the money for the rich keeps rising as is in the very nature of capitalism itself.

Smaller companies won’t even begin to save you, and at no point in history has enforcing anti-monopoly measures fixed the problem in a permanent manner. The larger companies will simply become more elusive, break laws in easier ways, and reattach themselves to the government. There’s not a solution for capitalism’s problems using government to co-opt the problem away. It’s institutional, it’s inherent, and it can’t be killed. You can make it better, but you’ll be more likely to slide to fascism than to actually fix the problem, since regardless, the state and corporate sectors will merge more the more you try and separate them.

If he posted any more than he already has, it would be an actual grad school textbook.

Why are Marxists so damn tedious and boring? They spend so much effort defending Marxism, but all you have to do is say one magic word to destroy all their arguments. "History"

Ah yes, because we’ve never even MENTIONED history in our entire existence? The Soviet Union’s foundation sparked the most widespread pro-labor movement in history, and fueled the fire that made the privileges you see today possible. The Soviets had over 70% approval rate by their people, and that same number believes Stalin had a positive effect on Russia. The gulags were short, and Stalin’s reign was the only time one could truly consider dark and cruel since the Tsars, while their industry, literacy, and education skyrocketed faster than the Tsars could ever provide. They became the worlds second largest industrial power decades after the U.S. started its own Industrial Revolution, while being a previously semi-feudal nation. Most Russians agree the Great Purge was necessary, as the early Soviet bureaucracy was riddled with corruption that outside capitalist nations used to their advantage. From day one the Soviet Union was under attack, they took over seven nations at once, lost the most people in WW2, and did everything possible with the extremely poor conditions the outside world forced upon them.

They were shockingly impressive, and no, the supposed Holodomor was not targeted, it was an accident caused by a famine combined with a failure of their bureaucracy in the aftermath of the Great Purge, which they promptly filled, then solved almost every starvation problem for the rest of their existence. The 100 million death toll to communism was also dramatically inflated, and the writers of that source have almost unanimously discredited that claim and now believe the number was 20 million over 90 years, far less than what capitalism has caused by massive degree. There is no bs or misconstrued history excuses you can pull here to explain your way into the “Marxism inherently bad” mentality, and I’ve heard just about every common argument from human nature to the economic calculation problem. I’m tedious because analysis is tedious, that’s one thing we can all agree on: you don’t become a Marxist by brain dead takes and lack of study.

The soviets had an almost 70% approval rate… the other 30% were either dead or in the gulags.

Surprise the approval rate wasn't %100 or greater.

…not really, you were allowed to be a capitalist in the post-Stalin era, Stalin was legitimately their darkest point because the times were already dark. The gulags ended after his time in office, and the Soviets became much more freedom-adjacent than you’d expect.

Gulags didn't close until 1960.

History (Stalin purges--not targeted--just terrorizing the population, gulags, genocide of peoples like Crimean Tatars, Holodomor--targeting Kulaks--not an accident, ecological disasters like Cernobal, Lake Karachay, and the Aral Sea) Hope I'm not getting too tedious.

Holodomor wasn’t targeted, purges were, most of the population was completely unaffected by internal violence unless they lived in rural areas, the Crimean Tatars were largely attacked because of Stalin while the majority of the people showed strong backlash against it that led to Crimean self determination in its later years. Holodomor was not targeted, and largely came from a combination of famine perpetuated by economic isolation and attempts to feed the city populations in the USSR, and was later fixed by the exact same bureaucratic system that made it worse initially. The ecological disasters happened largely due to extremely outdated technology tbat the Soviets were unable to effectively manage due to lack of resources, bureaucratic hurdles that could’ve been solved had they been able to access trade routes outside of Russia. I’m not saying they’re perfect, I’m saying that they were overall not the enemy we paint them as, and that we need to understand why things happened how they did.

Holodomor was targeted to destroy the Kulaks. There are propaganda posters. There was an entire smear campaign. It's easy to find.

power... fame... fortune... whatever they worship

yet another reason to fix the system so career bureaucrats can be removed from their positions for running their own agendas

Nobody believes that bro. Not even the most backwards Christian.

All they do is project

Who is that? Random internet troll?
Most Christians either believe in evolution or in the young earth theory where the flood wiping out the dinosaurs. I saw a documentary where atheists admitted that there were tidal waves that washed across the entire American continent. At least they are getting closer to the truth. They aren't denying the giant flood plains that span multiple continents. Progress.

“Most Christians either believe in evolution or in the young earth theory where the flood wiping out the dinosaurs.”

Dude, you literally just proved my argument. 💀

Try facts, reason, and science. You might learn something. Young earth creationism is about the dinosaurs being rapidly buried by a global flood in the time of Noah. Please at least try not to lie about your opposition.

I’ll wait for you to show me even one person with a dong who has given birth, or one person born without who can produce sperm. Basic science.

Ever heard of intersex people?

It so happens that they either become pregnant or they impregnate. Still can’t do both.

I’ve actually known several friends who lean more physically male by appearance (nonetheless intersex) who have been able to be self impregnated by lab-assisted processes.