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Comment by soulofmischief | Hacker News Reader

These tariffs are a disaster, but this is is quite a neoliberal take. So if we aren't the oxen, who is? Vietnam? And that's morally acceptable?

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Yes. They - or other poor countries - are. And it's their responsibility to grow their citizenry in a neoliberal world. Economics doesn't care about liberal concern tools.

China eliminated poverty through neoliberalism. The rest of the world can, too. This is the benefit of neoliberalism: it lifts the world out of poverty through free trade and self-selected efficiency.

Because we all know there is no amount of factory manual labour going on in China.

Did you even think for a second before writting this?

Oh you prefer China went back to Mao's Cultural Revolution agrarian economy from the 60's before neoliberalism?

Did YOU think for a second about what you wrote?

You said america worked hard to get rid of manual factory jobs and then you gave the example of China as a state that followed their neoliberal example. But China is the Earths factory and they have hundreds of millions doing manual factory work. You contradicted your own arguments. Not sure what you are asking me right now.

I specifically said China eliminated poverty, not factory jobs. Not sure where you got that from.

The neoliberal trajectory is a gradual growth from agrarian economy to a services/IP economy. Factories are a step along that way.

> Americans like our plush corporate office jobs building intellectual property. We aren't oxen doing physical labor.

> So if we aren't the oxen, who is? Vietnam? And that's morally acceptable?

> Yes. They - or other poor countries - are. And it's their responsibility to grow their citizenry in a neoliberal world.

Here you clearly state that the way for vietnam to stop being oxens is by growing in a neoloberal world. Then:

> China eliminated poverty through neoliberalism. The rest of the world can, too. This is the benefit of neoliberalism

You praise China for growing this neoliberal world, but you forgot that Chineese people are still oxens.

Oh I did not know the Chinese economy stopped growing?

This is an example of moving the goalposts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts

It's impossible to engage meaningfully with you if you're going to rely on argumentative fallacies and ignoring everything that is said to you.

Capitalism needs justification. Neoliberalism is an awful policy. Do I need to school you on the history of US foreign intervention?

You think eliminating poverty is an awful policy?

What you just did is called a straw man.

Besides, many countries are not poor by accident.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_U...

So, none of that matters to what I said, since I specifically talked about eliminating poverty. That's what a "straw man" argument actually is, when you decide to argue against something else entirely, like foreign intervention, instead of poverty.

Now you're getting it. Adamantly trying to focus on "eliminating poverty", when my original comment was about the morality of neoliberalism, is a straw man argument. I'm glad that after enough contemplation you have come to understand this.

So, if you'd like to address my original comment, I'm all ears, otherwise this discussion is a complete waste of time. Before you do that, though, it would be prudent to learn about what neoliberalism actually is, and why foreign intervention is directly related to it and your original premise. Once you do that, we'll be able to have a fruitful discussion.

An excerpt from The Divide:

> People commonly think of neoliberalism as an ideology that promotes totally free markets, where the state retreats from the scene and abandons all interventionist policies. But if we step back a bit, it becomes clear that the extension of neoliberalism has entailed powerful new forms of state intervention. The creation of a global 'free market' required not only violent coups and dictatorships backed by Western governments, but also the invention of a totalizing global bureaucracy – the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and bilateral free-trade agreements – with reams of new laws, backed up by the military power of the United States

https://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN9781786090034

You DO believe in eliminating poverty, right?

You are fixated on a straw man, clearly too ignorant of the subject material to have a discussion on this.

I provided resources. Read them and get back to me, otherwise there is no reason to continue, since your aim seems to be controlling the narrative and not actually engaging in substantial discussion.

This doesn’t sound like you want to eliminate poverty?

You complain I brought up the straw man of poverty, but that's the entire point of neoliberalism: to make people wealthy. It's NOT to start wars or bring disease or famine or whatever. It's an economic system designed to bring about wealth, as demonstrated by neoliberal policies that removed poverty from much of the third world.

This is why I don’t trust socialist: I have never heard a socialist say “I want to eliminate poverty”. And in fact, they seem to take pride in being impoverished while being ashamed of any bit of wealth.

It’s Ok to have nice things. You DON’T have to be poor.

We don't care if people are rich. We are if they are poor, and we believe that's a problem.

And our track record of eliminating poverty around the world over the last 50 years through neoliberal free trade should be celebrated, not discouraged.

You're welcome.

Again, I have no interest in engaging with someone who is clearly extremely ignorant about neoliberalism and US foreign policy, and who is fixated on engaging in straw man arguments. Stop embarrassing yourself and let it go.

Instead of congratulating yourself on your sheer brilliance all the time and how you like to declare yourself to be superior, maybe look at why your arguments aren't convincing to others?

I'd recommend you take a point-by-point look at what you're saying vs what I said and see if what you said had any relevance to any of my literal sentences.

Let it go. You're not even discussing the subject matter anymore, and are arguing about the meta. No one is thinking in terms of superiority except yourself. This is a toxic discussion, and it is over. Have your compulsive last word.

Look at what you wrote. Nothing you stated had any relevance to neoliberalism. I talked about neoliberalism eliminating poverty, and you brought up invasion.

Neoliberalism is what I say it is, not what YOU say it is.

Additionally, you have yet to answer why you believe poverty shouldn’t be eliminated.

China didnt eliminate poverty, it merely shifted dirty work to other poor countries (other SE asian countries). Just like the US did. Just like all countries will do until they run out of poor countries and the pyramid scheme of globalization collapses.

Not everyone gets to have a cushy intellectual office job. Somebody has to do the coal mining.

And then coal mining will be highly paid work, as it should be.

I did not know that having most of your industries run in part by government under five years planning was a neoliberal method.

It exactly is. Neoliberalism is a mix of free market policies and government planning and intervention when that fails.

Oh, you didn't think neoliberalism was free-market libertarianism, did you? If it was that, it would be called that already.

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