191
Rightwing populists will keep winning until we grasp this truth about human nature | George Monbiot
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2025
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He's not wrong.
We're still a bunch of greedy monkeys, and no amount of education or "proper parenting" can fully override the base biology all the time for every person.
As much as it would be great to be better, we aren't even close.
Yeah, he raises a good point.
The question then becomes: how do we make the people who feel excluded (and hence want to burn everything down) feel included?
By stopping austerity. Tax the wealthy and reinstate everything that's been torn down since the new deal. Shift taxes from taxing labour to taxing assets.
Are you a fan?
Yeah, I do follow him. I'm actually surprised he's not mentioned in the column, you'd think Monbiot would be aware of him by now.
I thought facts didn’t care about their feelings.
How about helping the people who are genuinely being excluded?
Offer them universal healthcare, make daycare actually affordable so that peole can afford to uave a family and work. Go after slumlords who are buying uo property to rent out. Breakup monopolies that are price gouging at every step of the supply chain. Require that any factory/firm that is outsourcing give the employees the right to first refusal so that they can keep important businesses in their community.
The problem is that all of this is anti-market, so liberal parties will nevwr accept them. But those are the sort of policies that immediately benefit people. It becomes a lot harder to say minorities are ruining your life if your life has become noticablly better
Id argue that everything you as an improvement would be pro-market but anti-capital since monopolies generally flatten out and suppress competition. There's a reason why the disappearance of butchers, bakers, and small general goods stores coincides with the expansion of companies like Walmart, K-mart, and Albertsons.
Why does everyone want dual-parent working households?
Why not let parents raise their own kids?
You have to pay enough that one full time job funds an entire family's expenses.
So? What's the problem with that being the goal?
All I'm saying is it necessary that capitalists don't want to pay for
Because sometimes shit happens and single parents still need to be able to work. I'm all for forcing minimum wage to be enough to support a family of 4 in your area, but that's a much mor fundamental change than the things i listed.
There are options for letting even single parents raise their own children that do not require that parent to work.
Wasn't it better in the 90's already, and it got worse in the last 20 years?
Better? Define better...
There was still plenty of poverty in the 90s, and the violence situation was actually worse than it is currently.
Lol no. This is beyond pseudo-science. Not even accurate for monkeys much less humans.
Are you saying that Monkeys aren't monkeys? Or that we aren't greedy? Or that Monkeys aren't greedy?
It's absolutely accurate, go walk through a mall, see how many people buying shit they don't need just to show off to their friends.