David Shemano wrote: > ... You [i.e., yours truly] appear to agree with me that there is qualitative > difference between social sanction and legal sanction, but then imply there > is a qualitative difference between my neighbors shunning me and an employer > firing an employee. So on the spectrum of from throwing me in jail for > criticizing the President, to having a neighbor decide not to invite me to a > barbecue, you think firing an employee is much closer than arresting me as > opposed to shunning me? As professional who relies on neighbors for > referrals, I have a different view.<
Earlier, David wrote that >>As a libertarian/conservative [a contradiction in terms, BTW -- JD] living on the Westside of Los Angeles, my social space consists of many people who disagree with my views and, in typical liberal fashion, often get quite emotionally distraught when they discover someone does not agree with their prejudices. Therefore, to successfully live where I live, I am quite skilled at interacting with these people, which often requires me to be silent when people say truly asinine things. In other words, I recognize that there are very real negative social and economic consequences if I exercise my free speech rights. << Before, I simply couldn't comprehend this, so I really didn't reply. The way that poor, put-upon, "libertarian/conservatives" are treated in liberal West LA is much much better than the way that Marxists, radicals, anarchists, syndicalists, and/or atheists are treated almost every place in the world. David seems to lack what psychologists call "theory of mind" (i.e., the ability to understand that others may have different knowledge or viewpoints than he does): that is, he doesn't seem to understand that he's talking to a discussion list that's packed to the rafters with Marxists, radicals, anarchists, syndicalists, and/or atheists, so he doesn't see that the social sanctions that he experiences are much milder than those suffered by that laundry list of social deviants. He also doesn't seem to realize that almost all of the established politicians and the official media mouth "libertarian/conservative" opinions and assume that this ideology's values apply (whether or not they're being sincere). That gives the poor downtrodden "libertarian/conservatives" tremendous amounts of legitimacy, whether neighbors agree with them or not. (Also, the intelligent "libertarian/conservative" can share his or her disdain for people like Dubya with the West LA liberals. There's a lot more common ground.) Frankly, when it comes to relying on getting referrals from neighbors, David should be more concerned with the popular distaste for (and fear of) lawyers. And he should realize that his neighbors likely care much more about the quality of his legal abilities than they do about his politics. After all, if people are going to shell out big bucks for a lawyer (unless David works on a contingency basis), they're going to be "rational consumers," balancing the expected benefits of his services against their cost. If they aren't that way, then money-libertarian views have a fatal flaw. Why is "libertarian/conservative" an oxymoron? Because "conservative" means preservation of what's left over from the past (often including Nature). In the current era, "libertarians" are radical if not revolutionary, sweeping away traditions and advocating the rape of Nature (in the name of "deregulation," etc.) "Free market" oriented organizations such as the IMF and World Bank use their vast money power to abolish old systems of government and to radically transform societies, forcing them to fit the free-market mold. The only thing from the past that's supposed to be preserved is old wealth and its power, which is represented in such organizations. >... While academic departments are politically and personality driven, and >personnel decisions are made based on affinity of political views, corporate >America is far different. The notion that the Koch bothers have or would fire >anyone in their companies simply because that employee disagreed with the Koch >brothers' politics is preposterous.< We were talking about small businesspeople, not the Koch brothers. In any event, the way corporate bureaucracies work is that supervisors and managers try to please the top bosses without being told exactly what to do.Good servants anticipate their masters' bidding. The Koch brothers push a very specific Party Line (money libertarianism). Thus, the managers and supervisors embrace this Line (whether they do so sincerely or not is another question). Thus, they make it clear to their underlings what the Party Line is and make it uncomfortable for those who don't toe that Line (or accept it hook, Line, and sinker, to mix metaphors). The corporations' own rhetoric and the slogans on the wall help, too. By the way, energy-extraction companies such as those of the Koch brothers reap tremendous "natural resource" rents, i.e., revenues far above the cost of extraction. That means they can waste (or invest, if you will) tremendous amounts of money on propagandizing employees (and the rest of the US) and still have more-than-abundant profits. -- Jim Devine / If you're going to support the lesser of two evils, at the very least you should know the nature of that evil. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
