Chomsky has a great quote about this: In the U.S. there is basically one party - The Business Party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations of the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies, as is most of the population.
I'm not against business, but it shouldn't be our singular goal as a society.
You know, I think I get where you're coming from because I felt the same way until I (1) opened up a business, and (2) spent significant time outside the USA.
Honestly, the business/commerce in the USA is one of the best things about it. As for Chomsky - well, he's completely discredited to me after comparing his writings about Southeast Asia to spending significant amounts of time in SE Asia. Also the ex-Communist countries. He's a relic from a dead age, who played for the wrong team, and hasn't woken up from it. I've gone into depth on this before, but long story short - North Korea is much worse than South Korea, Taiwan drastically outperformed pre-Deng Xiaoping China, West Germany is still much more developed than East Germany... and it's really obvious that South Vietnam is much worse because it was conquered by North Vietnam.
Also, the Khmer Rouge genocide started the same year after American forces withdrew - the Khmer Rouge were emboldened by the American withdrawal. Little known fact - the last recognized battle of the Vietnam War was USA vs. Khmer Rouge, the only military engagement between the two parties before South Asia went from "bad" to "much much worse."
Anyway - I know this kind of not an easy to do overnight, but I'd really suggest comparing Chomsky's writings on SE Asia to what happened in SE Asia firsthand if you get the chance. Also, try to engage with a full-time entrepreneur while he's building the early stage of a company. Guaranteed perspective-changer.
>As for Chomsky - well, he's completely discredited to me after comparing his writings about Southeast Asia to spending significant amounts of time in SE Asia. Also the ex-Communist countries. He's a relic from a dead age.
Ad Hominem circumstantial.
>Guaranteed perspective-changer.
If I was a BP CEO I would have a different perspective on the oil spill, and If I was a Goldman&Sachs CEO I would have a different perspective on the economic crash. Perspectives are not arguments.
Hey, welcome to Hacker News. This is your second comment, your first was, "Meanwhile, red necks scream in anger, teir took uor jobs!!"
So, let me clue you in to the vibe here. First, we aim for a really high level of civility here. Second, standard throwing out of cliche is frowned upon - yeah, we get it. Nobody liked the bailouts and the BP oil spill was bad.
But most importantly - here, we try to engage in thoughtful discussion instead of just throwing out words like "ad hominem" when an argument isn't ad hominem. I wrote a fairly long comment that Chomsky's writings about what the world was like were wrong, with specific examples of comparable Communist/non-Communist countries. And I outlined that I had a personal background in the matter.
Anyways, my above comment said -
1. Chomsky advocated strongly for many communist regimes and against the USA plenty of times.
2. I believe that was a mistake, as evidenced by comparisons between Communism/non-Communism. Also, clearly, his predictions on South Vietnam and Cambodia were mistaken.
Anyways, welcome to Hacker News. Please try to up the discussion level a little bit, this isn't like the rest of the internet.
Ad Hominem? not quite. However you did trot out 3 of the 4 top straw-man attacks on Chomsky, namely he's hard left, supported the Khmer Rouge, and is rabidly Anti-American. You forgot to accuse him of anti-antisemitism.
It's hardly ad hominem when the guy makes a four paragraph argument explaining why he thinks Chomsky is wrong. Feel free to argue the point, if you want.
It sounds like you're saying you have to accept all or none of Chomsky's ideas. Just because I quoted him doesn't mean I believe everything he's written, in fact quite to the contrary.
However... I do feel the quote above accurately reflects the sentiments of your first comment, which is why I posted it. It wasn't meant to reflect the entirety of Chomsky's work.
Chomsky denied the Cambodian Holocaust while it was occurring and has never apologized or really publicly reckoned with this. He also keeps his fortune in tax shelters while inveighing against others who do the same. I would thus take his comments about the manifold evils of business with a wee grain of salt; the regimes he has unapologetically flacked for have killed many more people than Google has.
But trusts can't be all bad. After all, Chomsky, with a net worth north of US$2-million, decided to create one for himself. A few years back he went to Boston's venerable white-shoe law firm, Palmer and Dodge, and, with the help of a tax attorney specializing in "income-tax planning," set up an irrevocable trust to protect his assets from Uncle Sam. He named his tax attorney (every socialist radical needs one!) and a daughter as trustees. To the Diane Chomsky Irrevocable Trust (named for another daughter) he has assigned the copyright of several of his books, including multiple international editions.
Chomsky favours massive income redistribution -- just not the redistribution of his income. No reason to let radical politics get in the way of sound estate planning.
When I challenged Chomsky about his trust, he suddenly started to sound very bourgeois: "I don't apologize for putting aside money for my children and grandchildren," he wrote in one e-mail. Chomsky offered no explanation for why he condemns others who are equally proud of their provision for their children and who try to protect their assets from Uncle Sam. (However, Chomsky did say that his tax shelter is OK because he and his family are "trying to help suffering people.")
Indeed, Chomsky is rich precisely because he has been such an enormously successful capitalist. Despite his anti-profit rhetoric, like any other corporate capitalist Chomsky has turned himself into a brand name. As John Lloyd recently put it in the lefty New Statesman, Chomsky is among those "open to being "commodified" -- that is, to being simply one of the many wares of a capitalist media market place, in a way that the badly paid and overworked writers and journalists for the revolutionary parties could rarely be."
Chomsky's business works something like this. He gives speeches on college campuses around the country at US$12,000 a pop, often dozens of times a year.
This is more of typical "find some way to make everyone who takes any action into a hypocrite". First of all, just because Chomsky believes something doesn't mean he has to practice it if no one else is. What would it benefit the world for him to be poor?
I have some strong Anarchistic beliefs (i.e. the immorality of one man ruling another, not the smash-things-up kind) but I do literally nothing (outside of talking) for it because it's not practical. I could only ruin my own quality of life and who would see that kind of example and say "wow, count me in!". I'm in a capitalist system so I may as well learn it and use it to the best of my abilities. It's almost certain to be the only system I ever live under no matter what actions I take.
Likewise, very few people listen to Chomsky so he may as well use the system he will live his whole life in to the best of his ability.
And finally, the messenger is different than the message. It is perfectly valid for a smoker to preach about the evils of smoking. He can even call people who smoke stupid. Him smoking doesn't make his message invalid.
Look, I'm not saying you're a bad guy or that working within the system for change is illegitimate.
My point is this: smoking while convincing others that smoking is bad makes you worse off but others better off. That's a failure of will.
But piling up millions in a trust while arguing that other rich people should be punitively taxed makes Chomsky better off but others worse off. That's hypocrisy.
It would only be hypocrisy if he said they should be punitively taxed and he shouldn't. So long as those holes exist he would be foolish to not use them.
He's in the same situation as Warren Buffet: both condemn/ridicule the current system and both do what ever is available to them within the current system.
I'm not against business, but it shouldn't be our singular goal as a society.