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Suppose communism is bad (if you think it's good this isn't addressed to you but sure feel free to chime in). How do you teach normies this?
I mean the kind of normie who lives in a world where powers far beyond them do incomprehensible things like set the prices of stuff in the store, so that some of the stuff they really want is too expensive for them, but look, the store is full of that stuff, so somebody has all this stuff but they're not letting them have it except for way too high a price, those greedy assholes.
And then you try to explain to them how markets work and how prices come to be and it all just comes across to them as some weird bootlicking apologism because they're simply not on that level.
Is there a more "down to earth" approach that is needed? Normies who have deeply internalized rules of decency and ideas of "thou shalt not steal" (often normies with religious backgrounds) seem to naturally be anti-communist.
Now I'm sure some of y'all here (you know who you are) will say these people basically just need to be oppressed because if they have their way civilization is destroyed and everything is shitty for everybody, but if you oppress them then they complain but otherwise you have a civilization that hums along. But I hate this, I feel like there has to be a way to make society work that doesn't require telling a huge segment of the population "stfu and get in line or we're putting you in a cage". And I mean obviously violent (as needed) enforcement of civilized norms is necessary, but I notice there are a lot more people who are sympathetic to communist ideas than are actual active criminals. My point is more about these people, not the active criminals (who I support putting in cages)
Is there really no way to get through to people other than to just tell them shut up and take it because we're trying to run a civilization here
I'd approach this from a different perspective. To the extent that economic leftist thought finds support in the US, how much of that is driven by
?
None at all. 1 and 3 are downstream of leftist thought in the US.
I'm sure one can make the argument that inner city urban decay and the student debt bubble are the consequence of leftist policies from decades ago, fair enough. But I'm referring to the present. Again, to the extent that young people in the US are radicalized by leftist ideology, how much of that is explained by the current conditions of the student debt bubble and the healthcare system, for example?
Essentially none. Young people are radicalized by leftist ideology today because they're being propagandized into it, same as before. It's hard to overstate how much the message from the media and institutions is "leftism is good, rightism is bad". Healthcare is not much an issue for young people, because young people are generally healthy (and the modern cost of health "insurance" is... well, thanks Obamacare). And if it was about the student debt bubble, we wouldn't see so many radicalized FAANG employees for whom the debt can be paid off in a couple of years.
The issues are just excuses to hang the ideology off of.
So you think that explains all of it? "Media and institutions"?
It explains the vast majority of it. There's also the point that leftist ideologies are inherently attractive to those who figure they'll be on the receiving end of transfers, which would apply to a lot of young people (because they're just starting out), though that obviously fails to explain the FAANG people.
A lot of them probably expect to be on the receiving end of transfers of social status rather than economic status.
Yeah, they'll be sadly disappointed in that too. Social status goes to those who can play the social game, always.
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