Losing respect for Rand Paul

[Pat Mustard]

Instead of reading Rand in school, I read More and Plato).

 on Plato. What do you think Plato would think of capitalism? .... (We already know how he would feel about Trump.)

He probably wouldn't like it all that much (though some bits likre fucking over poor people would go well with him), I always got the impression that something akin to feudalism was his preferred government, from reading the Republic.

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Study the Danish economy and how it got to be there. You're doing an economics degree over there, any academic worth his salt will show you just how much socialist and social democratic policies have shaped the country into pretty much the closest thing we've got to Utopia on this planet right now (and yes I am aware of the provenance of that name. Instead of reading Rand in school, I read More and Plato).

This is actually the whole reason I'm studying in Denmark - because I studied their society in a transportation geography class and thought it was brilliant. I'm not doing an econ degree, I'm majoring in Business and Environment because I've made it my goal in life to practically implement sustainability. So I study socialism and these systems extensively - it's the other half of my degree. I just don't have faith in NGOs and democracy because I've seen them fail at accomplishing these things that I value so much, and I don't want to be powerless, so I'm learning business too.

You've got to remember, lad that you're young yet.

*lass 

When you've seen what happens when you're not the perfect drone (and even when you) are, you'll hopefully lose your childish infatuation with Randian libertarianism.

If you actually disagree with my arguments, then address those, but calling me out for being young and stereotyping me is not something I can comment on.

You're studying an economics degree lad, don't kid yourself. Anything with business in it is in the economics field.

You see NGOs fail because they're part of the capitalist system. Their job isn't really to help the poor, but salve the consciences of the rich by giving an appearance of helping the poor*. And democracy has failed because it has been corrupted by the one rule of capitalism "money is the only thing allowed to talk", and the forms which give a veneer of popular rule are viciously anti democratic today.

What you are seeing is not the failures of the systems you decry but the triumph of the systems you acclaim.


*Yes I know the people and organisations making up the NGO sector are mostly good, idealistic people looking to improve the world, but lok what happens when the rich and famous get involved, when imperialistc first world goverments interfere and worst of all compare the mountains of money and resources stolen out of the tgird world and compare it to the molehill of aid given (for example for every dollar spent in aid to Africa [including the US selling guns to the Egyptian dictatorship] ten dollars at least are lost to western corporations offshoring their African profits and not paying taxes they are legally obliged to).