> In a Yarvinist world, there are no nation states, there is no liberalism, no conservatism, no democracy, no representative forms of government, only corporate fiefdoms.
Isn't that what we already have now? One could argue that it's structurally the case since neoliberalism got going in the 80s, but it seems much more obviously and viscerally true the last couple of decades (2008 financial crash, Obama saves banks, Trump 1.0, generalised trade wars, COVID, Ukraine, Gaza, Trump 2.0, climate chaos, nuclear treaties being revoked, etc).
I mean, if there's a revolving open door between these three entities:
1. government
2. business
3. media
Then what we get seems to amount to corporate fiefdom, at least in its effects. In the words of Walter in The Big Lebowski: "Am I wrong?"
Put differently: if you look at the larger threats we face as a species, and then if you look at the larger trends of how nation states ("democracies") actually act, the actions don't seem to track whatsoever with the desires of populations, and they do seem to track very accurately with the desires of big business. At what point do we say - hold on a minute, are we living in a corporate fiefdom of some kind?
I'm unsure what you think it's a list of. It fits in because populations don't like wars, and have to be lied into them. War is very good for business, so we get wars. Bigger ones like Ukraine and Gaza, and small multi-decade ones like in various parts of the Middle East and Africa.
Worrying now about how my comment reads to U.S. readers, so I'll say explicitly - there was not meant to be a partisan slant towards either of the two absolutely terrible mainstream U.S. parties.
It's confusing because the Ukraine war was obviously not started for any reason like this. The Ukraine war wasn't started for the USA to profit and nobody on the western side (including Ukraine itself) was lied to to allow it to happen.
The USA was keeping Ukraine in a perpetual state of not quite winning for reasons like this (the longer the war goes on the more money defense contractors make) but it's got nothing to do with the reason the war happened.
Isn't that what we already have now? One could argue that it's structurally the case since neoliberalism got going in the 80s, but it seems much more obviously and viscerally true the last couple of decades (2008 financial crash, Obama saves banks, Trump 1.0, generalised trade wars, COVID, Ukraine, Gaza, Trump 2.0, climate chaos, nuclear treaties being revoked, etc).
I mean, if there's a revolving open door between these three entities:
Then what we get seems to amount to corporate fiefdom, at least in its effects. In the words of Walter in The Big Lebowski: "Am I wrong?"Put differently: if you look at the larger threats we face as a species, and then if you look at the larger trends of how nation states ("democracies") actually act, the actions don't seem to track whatsoever with the desires of populations, and they do seem to track very accurately with the desires of big business. At what point do we say - hold on a minute, are we living in a corporate fiefdom of some kind?