Little Bobby Tables

What went wrong with the Soviet Union?

So accurate. Attention span issues.

I don’t agree that company towns were authoritarian. Can you find a real example that wasn’t just a newspaper political cartoon or a song? What did it mean to live in those towns? Think about it rationally. Let’s argue that a company was able to completely set up a new town with no previously existing infrastructure. Perhaps a mining company in remote Alaska. How do they get workers? They offer low rent or free housing, good schools, and reasonably priced shops, in addition to attractive salaries. This creates a real-life “company town” we’ve all heard of. What would happen if the company ever slacked off or attempted to exploit its “monopoly”? Of course, workers would begin to leave and look for work elsewhere! Who could possibly stop them from doing so, other than the state?

That’s the major difference between a state authority and a private “authority”. Private organizations are subject to market forces and competition. They can’t just simply be elected and do as they will for 2,4, 10 years, or life, without concern. The worse job private institutions do, the more unfair their pricing, the more attractive it becomes for competitive forces to come in and take their place. All the examples you can find of how terrible privatization is (e.g. healthcare) is actually because they are completely backed by the full might of the state, creating true monopolies and anti-competitive environment. These often come about as corruption and authoritarianism, private companies give money to key stakeholders in the state, who then use their power to craft regulation to protect their friends at the private companies, in return for more money. This will always happen, regardless of how many rules or safeguards you craft. If you don’t like that happening, the only solution is to stop giving the state the power to do that.

Thanks for the long and thoughtful response, but I think there is some misunderstandings about how Eco’s framework applies here. Ur-Fascism identifies things that may tend to lead to fascist thinking, rather than giving a definitive checklist of all actions that are fascist. Traits alone are not fascism; fascism arises when the state pushes to unify under a regime that enforces conformity, suppresses opposition, and uses centralized power to control people’s lives.

Remember, we’re discussing cutting government programs here, which is an economic decision, not inherently an authoritarian one. Fascism means expanding government power into private lives, enforcing a singular national identity, and controlling all discourse and industries. Cutting state programs, even if you personally disagree with the decision, limits government reach, which contradicts the key central tendency of fascism.

I think Eco’s framework is important for recognizing creeping authoritarianism, but when you carelessly apply it too broadly, you risk watering down the concept of fascism. Mislabeling every policy decision you disagree with as “fascist” can make it harder to identify actual authoritarian threats when they arise, and is inherently divisive, attempting to shut down meaningful discussion rather than welcome it. Instead of carelessly jumping straight to labels, I think it’s important to have more nuanced discussions about the reasons and implications of government policy.

Cutting agencies isn’t a fascist policy. It’s a move toward decentralization. Rather than expanding the government and corporate power, cuts to state agencies seek to limit their control over individual lives. It’s a move toward necessary fiscal responsibility. The US federal government’s current level of spending is not sustainable, and will inevitably lead to the shutdown of all of these agencies and more, crippling taxes (of course always on the middle and lower class), hyperinflation, or an unpleasant mixture of all three.

In fact, I will argue that excessive debt is a powerful driver of authoritarian policies, as the state is forced to prioritize revenue collection, even it it means infringing on the well-being of the people. Fiscal restraint, in contrast, reduces the risk state power will expand through financial necessity, making it anti-authoritarian. I think that’s a good thing.

You’re the one who brought up fascism. I said I can’t think of an example of fascism working. Cutting government scope is the opposite of fascism. Fascism is characterized by a strong centralized authority, which cutting is the opposite of.

Fascism? No. Argentina seems to rapidly be improving with thier ultra-extreme cuts.

I expect deep cuts will need to be made across the board

He didn’t create the nearly 2 trillion dollar deficit. The government is broke, cuts must be made.

Air pollution is about protecting an individuals property, not the air itself: lungs, orchards, fields, etc. Air is simply how the property damage was delivered. So, no one owns the air, but property damage dealt through the air should be pursued in court, like any other property damage.

And let’s not kid ourselves that the government has real incentive to reduce pollution. Overnight, someone like Trump gets put in charge and happily encourages the poisoning of the environment and individuals can’t sue in court, because the government said it was ok to pollute.

Pollution is a property rights issue, don’t need anything beyond private property rights and a court system to cover that. Price fixing is caused by government created barriers to entry, artificially restricting competition. In other words, price fixing is a problem caused by government overreach, so obviously government isn’t the solution.

I don’t disagree, I just hope people of different views can come together and see that decentralizing the power structure might be worth considering if you don’t like the amount of power we handed one man. That means cutting the federal government and moving those programs to local government, private charities, or the bin.

Open your eyes. Corporations already heavily influence policy. Stop making that possible by decentralizing the power!

Thanks! Almost 1000 pages… I’ll need some time…

Read the comments and note the downvotes, sir. I’m definitely in the minority here. Therefore I would dare suggest it is in fact you who are the thoughtless parrot here. Governments are corrupt and incompetant organizations, and the bigger they become, the more corrupt and incompetant they are. If you truly are concerned that a single man can wreck such damage, you need to understand that is only possible because people like you have built up an organization that holds far too much power. The obvious solution is to shrink the scope of that organization so that a single maniac can’t do so much damage.

Big government is to blame for Trump having so much power. Learn, or be doomed to see history repeat itself.

This is why executive orders are dumb.

Where can we read the actual agenda?

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