Matt Taibbi Dissects The Minds Of The One Percent

By on November 1, 2012 in News 43

Matt Taibbi and Chrystia Freelan appeared on Moyers & Company a week ago for an illuminating discussion on the “literal and psychological takeover by the one percent of our society and government”:

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  • Roark

    A bullshitter, bullshitting.

    • Matt Staggs

      Which of his books did you find most objectionable, Roark?

      • Roark

        Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else

        • Matt Staggs

          Oh, sorry – I thought you were talking about Taibbi’s stuff. Haven’t read her’s.

          • Roark

            I haven’t read any of his work, though I have watched him on youtube. he’s the type of guy that has power in a collectivist government. HE decides what is best for you, HE decides if you will live or die, HE decides how much freedom you can have. The inherent problem with leftist ideologies is that they perceive and treat humans like cogs in a wheel and not as individuals with their own values, wants, and goals.

          • razzlebathbone

            As opposed to the mega-rich deciding those things for you.

          • Anarchy Pony

            No see people can just quit those jobs and get better ones. And magically that makes it all A-Okay.

          • Matt Staggs

            Not so sure about that. I personally see him as a rabble rouser and muckraker, like journalists used to do. “Griftocracy” was great, and I thought “The Great American Derangement” was a really fun read.

          • Zulu22@yahoo.com

            There’s different types of socialism like there is different types of capitalism. Lumping all socialists into the category of Stalin makes about as much sense as saying all capitalists are like Pinochet. If you’re really serious about being accurate rather than just repeating lines from Ayn Rand, do some basic research about the different types of socialism.

          • Anarchy Pony

            “HE decides what is best for you, HE decides if you will live or die, HE decides how much freedom you can have. The inherent problem with leftist ideologies is that they perceive and treat humans like cogs in a wheel and not as individuals with their own values, wants, and goals.” You more or less just described every corporate CEO ever.

          • David Howe

            hmmm….so this is all in response to the fact that you can no longer call your co-worker a nigger or a faggot? this is what you’re clinging to?

        • marvin nubwaxer

          why isn’t a society of corporate drones some type of collectivism? like serfs you all work for your benign lord who takes the harvest then redistributes a small share to his subjects without which they could not live.

          • Anarchy Pony

            Boom, you just saw the end game for Roark’s brand of “libertarianism”.

        • Guest

          Um, that one was written by the Freelan lady. Tiabbi wrote Griftopia and a few others.

    • http://twitter.com/bigstupidsmile adam

      Which? I enjoy Matt for the first part, but Freelan is doing some serious bad faith arguing by refusing to see that “honest capitalism” isn’t a thing that has ever or will ever exist. Too steeped in ideology to represent a really full toothed argument.

      • Roark

        @adam, which economic structure do you support?

        • http://twitter.com/bigstupidsmile adam

          Not relevant to this argument falling very short and intentionally ignoring the systemic issue of global capitalism. But sure, I’ll bite. I identify as a pinko-commie rat.

          • Roark

            How did that work out for the former USSR and now for North Korea?

          • Zulu22@yahoo.com

            I
            guess right now would be a bad time to tell you that the Soviet Union was state
            capitalist society and North Korea is in no way “communist” unless you
            completely disregard every tenant of communism.

          • Roark

            @Zulu22, the only correct thing in your above sentence is the period at the end of it.

          • Andrew

            That’s wrong.

          • Zulu22@yahoo.com

            Care to explain how it’s wrong?

          • David Howe

            Classic Troll

    • David Howe

      is that really all you’ve got?

  • Roark

    Taibbi is a silver spooned liberal brat who will be amongst the proletariat who are in charge of your lives if they ever get a chance to establish a socialist utopia.

    • LanceHardpound

      In a socialist utopia, would there be many proletariat? Would proletariat leaders have more in common with most people than so many of our leaders today? If so, that doesn’t sound too bad…. it at least seems like something of an improvement, no?
      I guess it depends on how “improvement” is defined. I’ll say it’s a simple definition: less suffering, greater equality, increased democracy.
      If a socialist utopia would bring those three things then I’d take it in a heartbeat

      • Roark

        “Socialism is the doctrine that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that
        his life and his work do not belong to him, but belong to society, that the
        only justification of his existence is his service to society, and that society
        may dispose of him in any way it pleases for the sake of whatever it deems to
        be its own tribal, collective good.”—Ayn Rand

        • Jin The Ninja

          oooo, ayn rand, you really found an intellectual icon, didn’t you?

        • Samuel77

          Why can’t we have a society that both honors man’s right to individualism and the right to live without fear of his survival? Neither capitalism or socialism have provided this thus far. There are plenty of critiques of both systems available online for all to see and it is clear that both have had their day. We need something completely new that takes into account the strengths and weaknesses of human nature and accommodates them. What is clear is that power corrupts and this has been a big failing throughout the history of man.

          • Jin The Ninja

            that ‘system’ does have a name, as it were.

        • razzlebathbone

          Oh, you take your marching orders from Ayn Rand! It all makes sense now!
          Could you do us a favour and smoke yourself to death please? It worked wonders for her.

          • Roark

            That’s the thing; when the state says “jump” you say “how high?”. I prefer to make my own decisions and live my life as I see fit.

          • razzlebathbone

            The depth of your idiocy would be amazing to me if I didn’t know you were a randroid.

            A quick primer: governments can (at least under some circumstances) be answerable to the governed. Corporations never, ever answer to nothing but the hunger for more power. A mixed economy where these two forces balance one another out can allow for social mobility and reward hard work and innovation. Both state communism and so-called “libertarianism” are just two forms of totalitarianism. It doesn’t matter if the jackboot belongs to state or capital.

            If you want to see your perfect randian utopia, where the state doesn’t interfere with private capital, go visit Somalia.

          • Andrew

            Yeah, your opinions are quite original.

          • Jin The Ninja

            many people on this site are non statist, we just happen to be literate non statists who don’t subscribe to the rand paul newsletter.

          • Calypso_1

            Oh come on jin, i eagerly await each & every one of Randy’s letters.

          • Jin The Ninja

            comedic value and toilet paper aside:P

          • Anarchy Pony

            That is some naive fucking bullshit right there little boy. What’re you? Some 17 year old high schooler anti-social turd, that thinks he is an intellectual giant among a sea of Dwarves trying to drag him down, that just read Atlas Shrugs and it hit all those little buttons on your persecution complex, and loves it because it rationalizes your desire to step on the necks of all you deem inferior, and take as much as you can for yourself?

        • marvin nubwaxer

          your ignorance is overwhelming. socialism seeks to provide society’s benefits by working together, not individual screw the other guy before he screws you. i don’t see a mass migration from sweden.

    • David Howe

      You are an idiot

  • SimoneB

    Canadian govt. did bail out banks but using different terms.

  • SimoneB
  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Bruce-Miller/100000952005408 Bruce Miller

    Lots of very American “Black or White” logic here – A poison used by the Great Corporate American Propaganda Whores in their mesmerizations of their Sheeple.

    “It also gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware the people around us are of what is really happening to them.” -Adolph Hitler

    “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. “- Joseph Goebbels

    “The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.” – Leo Tolstoy

    “. . . in America, we have achieved the Orwellian prediction – enslaved, the people have been programmed to love their bondage and are left to clutch only mirage-like images of freedom, its fables and fictions. The new slaves are linked together by vast electronic chains of television that imprison not their bodies but their
    minds. Their desires are programmed, their tastes manipulated, their values set for them. ” – Gerry Spence, From Freedom to Slavery.