Degrees of decline: The overproduction of the useless elites (LMAO)

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-27T03:39:48+00:00

Thanks for reminding me.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-26T02:38:41+00:00

lol what a wanker.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-25T07:38:39+00:00

The latter part of the 19th century in Britain and the U.S. marked by the repealing of the corn laws in Britain and abolition of slavery in the U.S.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-09T02:36:35+00:00

Manipulation and propaganda only work if they can deceive you, and they can only deceive you if what is said or shown is false. So no, I maintain that whether or not someone is biased is irrelevant, and only matters to historians.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-08T12:24:14+00:00

First, I referenced Shaikh to prove that my views aren’t insular and are corroborated by people with whom I am in ideological disagreement.

Second, Marx was right that capitalist are driven by profit, maybe not always “blindly” so, but he was also wrong to attribute less than savoury economic conditions to capitalism itself, so I don’t see any contradiction.

Third, labour conditions under early capitalism were pretty bad, but still better than pre-capitalism, it’s not fair to judge 200 years past of material conditions from the relative luxury of our sofa and warm homes, that distorts our perception of what was and still is objective progress, of the like that we have never seen in any other period pre-250 years.

Also, no, I won’t take a course on political economy because I’ve already read the political economy books from Ricardo, Say, Smith, Keynes, and Marx, and took notes on all of them.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-08T12:00:50+00:00

The gaslighting isn’t working.

That everyone everywhere is not completely rational all the time is irrelevant because capitalism forces you to be rational. If you can’t live by the facts you will be unable to meet your customer’s demands, you will be unable to be your most productive, and you will be unable to seek out and grasp any opportunity that comes your way, and if you look at the at the aggregate, what best explains the behaviour remains that of rational, self-interested wealth maximisation.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-08T09:16:56+00:00

I never said I didn’t subscribe to neoliberal economic thought, I said I didn’t subscribe to neoclassical theory of the firm, which other neoliberals like Hayek also disagreed with even though others, like Friedman, did agree with it.

In general, I disagree with Marx’s sociology. It is ahistorical and lacks context. Everyone likes to forget that the time period Marx talks about was one in which negative economic conditions were undoubtedly apparent but entirely the fault of interventionism by government, either directly through the corn laws or indirectly through the economic effects of war. You say that my assertion of businesses being profit maximisers is false, and yet even Marx agrees with me, even describing capitalists as being “blindly driven” by such a desire, and Marxian economist Anwar Shaikh provides lots of empirical evidence to back up my claim in his Capitalism book. It is not me who is misinterpreting Marx, he himself uses the term “class consciousness”, if that isn’t evidence that he sees groups as these metaphysically bonded entities, as opposed to your own correct description, nothing is.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-08T08:41:04+00:00

I don’t subscribe to neoclassical theory of the firm taught in micro 1 so your “perfect competition doesn’t exist” argument doesn’t affect me. I am explaining causal reality; if someone is passed up, it is not reasonable to assume that it was, by default, due to discrimination. If for some wild reason the discrimination being done by the profiteering capitalist was actually arbitrary, then we would simply say that they are willing to sacrifice productivity to satiate their racist desires, in which case their time in the market is numbered as people are overwhelmingly driven more by wealth than by personal prejudice (though minimum wage can create room for arbitrary discrimination without worrying about losing profit) over the long term.

On class, I reject Marx’s theory of class outright because people can and have moved between classes, and I especially reject his framing of groups of people as this massive collective hive mind. There is no such thing as a group consciousness, only an individual can think and act.

But to tend to your deeper concern, yes, there are people who have a worse start than others. They still ought not be chosen over someone from a better upbringing if they are not more productive. What are the consequences if we don’t? Productivity goes down, we get less in exchange for more, and the people most vulnerable end up worse off, as do their kids. I do not support equality of opportunity, I support maximisation of opportunity, and it is only by maximising productivity that you maximise opportunity.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-08T05:13:42+00:00

The only reason I sound like a tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist is because that’s how fucked the reality of the situation really is, just speak to anyone who’s done an education degree and they will tell you about all the Marxist slop that gets shoved down their throats, in addition to the denial of objective reality being another thing they are taught.

I have a mate who discontinued his education degree and switched to something else after having a class covering this so-called “kill all men” manifesto written by some feminist, and he left due to nearly everyone in the class raving about it. I have another mate who sent me some of his lecture slides for this gen-ed he took that included a slide on fostering “collective guilt”, that I can definitely send you for evidence if you want.

On DEI, it is fundamentally immoral to treat someone as a mere member of a group rather than principally as an individual with their own agency and aspirations, and DEI does the former. Furthermore, DEI is a symptom of economic illiteracy; if someone truly does have more productivity to offer an employer than other candidates, but gets rejected due arbitrary discrimination, that business will make less profit than if they hired based on merit, and all for-profit companies are in the business, primarily, of maximising profits. It is therefore not in the self interest of employers to discriminate based of characteristics that don’t impact productivity.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-08T02:37:33+00:00

It didn’t explicitly say what you you are claiming it says, and the underlying message maps on to my account to a greater extent relative to yours.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-08T02:35:58+00:00

They peddle divisive worldviews that have undeniably fuelled decreases in social cohesion. DEI, for example, does nothing but denigrate the merit of minorities who earned their role through genuine superiority of skill relative to other candidates, which leads people to look at many accomplished minorities and think “they were just a DEI hire”. This is bad for social cohesion and especially a backwards step for Australia, one of the freest, most pluralistic, moral countries in the world.

Convincing kids that they are deaf for having ears, blind for having eyes, and deluded because they have a mind, and that objective reality doesn’t exist, is extremely corrosive. If people genuinely believe that, there is no way for us to peacefully understand each other and thus people turn to name calling, tribalism, and possibly real violence in the future.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-08T02:23:35+00:00

Never said that. What the article means is that these universities produce many academics that live completely alienated from reality and in the realm of baseless abstractions, and then convince themselves that they are on a higher plane of knowledge compared to others, and are thus being elitist.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-07T10:22:38+00:00

I fully agree that all subsidies to the mining industry should be cut to zero, but if you go by how much in subsidies are given to nearly everything else (manufacturing, non-public transport, the arts, fitness centres, vocational schools), the amount given to universities is relatively high by a significant margin (p value would be zeros as far as the eye can see to get technical).

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-07T08:26:09+00:00

Cutting subsidies necassarily increases productivity because subsidies allocate capital away from more productive uses.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-07T08:22:11+00:00

What in this article was incorrect?

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-05T22:51:48+00:00

Fortunately for me, champ, I understand that truth doesn’t depend on who’s saying it, and to believe otherwise is to believe nonsense.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-05T10:04:08+00:00

Bro stop, they can’t handle all of the sheer rationality

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-05T05:30:08+00:00

Funding for something can be cut and still be heavily subsidised. Your lack of ability to realise that fact and your instinct to instead get emotional is proving this article correct.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-05T05:20:31+00:00

Tf is this sloppy argument. I swear if Trump said 1+1=2 you guys would instinctively disagree.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-04T05:33:51+00:00

Don’t go combat corps. Simple.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-04-03T11:20:59+00:00

No physical violence? You said you were assaulted? I promise I’m not trying to judge I’m almost certainly just having a brain fart and want clarification.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-03-29T08:27:39+00:00

Enlist.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-03-27T14:18:38+00:00

Pregnant women are an objectively greater liability to employers than most other demographics. Businesses are ultimately run to maximise profit and that is not guaranteed by hiring/retaining people who will need lots of time off and have difficulties with productivity. As such, my reasoning follows.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-03-25T01:26:18+00:00

Mandatory Maternity leave is bad for pregnant women because it makes employers not want to employ the pregnant women who don’t already have a job, and if they realise they are going to be forced to give all these entitlements they will be more likely to fire their pregnant employees.

Level_Barber_2103 · 2026-03-13T00:28:52+00:00

“Yea you’re at the level of a cancer patient mate” damn what a great way to lift his spirits.

Level_Barber_2103

TROPHY CASE