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Comment by TheCoelacanth | Hacker News Reader

It's telling that these pieces advocating political nihilism always come from the right. Probably because a politically disengaged populace puts more power in the hands of the elites.

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given that the lead democrat, nancy pelosi, represents one of the wealthiest districts in america, this hardly seems believable at face value and rather falls in line with the article.

left vs right rather seems like a shell game to me where the dealer has the piece the whole time.

Because the elites are a bunch of right-wingers, right?

That’s always going to be true. By definition elites are the people who have benefited most from things being the way they are. They may be socially somewhat liberal, if it makes them look good, but economically always conservative. Because being pro gay marriage doesn’t cost them anything. But universal health care would. Hence you people like Nancy pelosi who use socially progressive positions as a cover for deeply regressive and right wing economic and military policy. That’s also why you get the superficial lip service paid to Black Lives Matter, where they will paint a street or kneel in kente cloths while simultaneously doing nothing whatsoever to materially improve black peoples lives. One costs money, specifically costs the elites money, while the other is free.

Economically so, yes. They tend to want to entrench their wealth and not fetter it with taxes on programs that don’t benefit their interests.

What about axes other than economic and foreign policy? There are many government policies in effect that large parts of the right strenuously object to.

In fact, even on foreign policy, I'd be surprised if the forever wars in the middle east enjoy majority support among the right. Isn't isolationism also right-wing? If it's at all helpful to classify policies into 'left' and 'right'..

Social and cultural axes exist, yes. That’s why I specified economically right-wing.

Isolationism could be left wing or right wing.

Yes. To be a wealthy left-winger, you have to condemn yourself. People sometimes get confused because they watch 24 hour news networks that think H. Clinton is a radical communist.

Our entire current wave is based in 90s tea party astroturfing by billionaires that got out of control when it encountered the militia movement.

so-called "left-wing elites" still favor privatization while public ownership is never in the conversation, so yes.

yes, but the "left-wing elites" aren't the ones pushing political nihilism. "Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem" isn't something the left ever claims.

Anyone father left than "slightly more money for foodstamps" may be heard saying exactly that - with the caveat that they're talking about our government, not the idea of government generally.

Marxist here. Just like any libertarian, we acknowledge the capitalist state as a monopoly on violence, but we also acknowledge the capitalist state exists because capital maintains it. When you understand this, you quickly realize that fighting for something like a national universal healthcare program challenges the capitalist state more than anything libertarians want to do.

That's because we've seen where that brand of socialism (and anarchy) leads --> authoritarianism. It has never worked on anything bigger than the village level. You need abstract means of exchange (money) to get people on a large scale to cooperate. People in my village do not care about people two villages over who they only ever barely met let alone someone hundreds of miles away.

We have all heard the horror stories of those notorious authoritarian hellholes like Denmark and Canada and Italy and South Korea and…

Public ownership of certain systems does not imply abolishing money.

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