You have this exactly backwards.

Sanders's main problem is that he identifies wealth and income inequality as the root cause of most social problems. Under capitalism, the people who have the most are automatically able to achieve the most. That means (certain) white males have more potential for success than anybody else does. That means, for example, there are much fewer successful and influential black women than there should be, because they originally started with less. Socialists (some more than others) believe fixing the economic issues will eventually shake out the social ones; by offering equality of opportunity, people from disparate backgrounds will act upon those opportunities, gather wealth, influence, and respect, and eventually (if nothing else) make it extremely inconvenient to be racist or sexist.

This perspective is not popular among people who believe capitalism (read: extreme inequality) could work for them "if only". If only there weren't racism. Or if only there were better jobs. Or if only someone would give me a chance. They believe their success is being obstructed by specific people who are discriminating against them, rather than it being rooted in a structural economic flaw that gives them a much lower likelihood of success in the first place.

Social democrats like Sanders don't blame specific people for their problems, they blame a broken economic system that needs to be managed better, recognizing that poor behaviours are mostly rational and cannot be corrected without active intervention. It's the latter types who blame specific people - the bankers, the racists, the job creators - and expect them to magically "behave better" and fix their problems, while never giving them any incentive for doing so.

My point was that Sanders failed to directly resonate with the self-narrative of minority groups. Pointing out that you think that minority groups should have a different narrative is neither here nor there.

So I have it exactly forwards.

That's fine as a statement of the aspirations of social democracy. But there was also a populist component to Bernie's candidacy that involved demonizing the financial industry. He definitely did "blame specific people." Bernie often said the system is rigged, and he undoubtedly attributed the rigging to the people who made it that way. "Greed" motivated the financial elites to rig the system to serve their own interests at the expense of the little guy.

There's a moralistic dimension to Bernie's message, for sure.

Well I guess that's where you gotta come back and point out that white people invented capitalism.

Now I don't want to misrepresent people who talk about "structural racism" in an intelligent way, but with a certain number of people, the temptation to make things personal by cheaply anthropomorphizing and hastily generalizing (especially after things in life get bad enough for them individually, or they consume too much (social) media) comes naturally in the wake of a failured educational system that leaves them without recourse in the realm of rational discussion that at least uses the same vocabulary as Western establishment outside of identity politics coming out of universities.

Perhaps economics is the unified neutral language for this, but such a small chunk of it in the academic world would identity financiers as the root of our problems.

Well, maybe, but white people didn't invent capitalism to persecute minorities. We invented it to amplify the advantages of incumbent wealth. There's nothing essentially racist about capitalism, which is also why you can't improve racial inequality within capitalism.

Yet if one looks at wages, the market is clearly, on aggregate, willing to pay more for white labor than black labor. That's racist.

And who's to say what's "essential" to capitalism?

This idea that the true purpose or the "essence" of capitalism is whatever it's inventors thought it is is completely bogus. It smacks of the constitutional originalism that Jon was complaining about in another thread.

Are you suggesting that racism is essential to capitalism, then?

you can't improve racial inequality within capitalism

Economists, I guess? Probably not you though.

If you really want to put your brain in a knot, check out that Nazi propaganda demonizing the United States for greed and barbarism toward blacks.

One fine night, they leave the pool hall,
Headin' for the dance at the Arm'ry!
Libertine men and Scarlet women!
And Rag-time, shameless music
That'll grab your son and your daughter
With the arms of a jungle animal instinct!
Mass-steria!

Nope. But depending on how loosely or how strictly you're using the term "capitalism", I may be skeptical of this claim that you made above:

If, according to a narrower definition of capitalism, capitalism is distinguished from government intervention, then what you said makes sense and I wouldn't push back against it too much. However, if you're going with a broader definition of capitalism, such that the term is inclusive of government intervention (because, for example, in a capitalist society, the ruling economic class has disproportionate influence on government and is able to use it to institute rents that serve its specific interests, and this system prevents government from addressing social problems), then I'd likely disagree.

Heh. Woah, there! I'm not claiming to define capitalism. You are, and I'm posing questions in good faith. (But, still, nice ad hominem. It's always good to know that I've tickled you enough to make you lash out.)

Capitalism returns a surplus to the owners of capital. Capitalists use that surplus to buy or build more capital, and this cycle repeats ad infinitum. Capital ownership or formation is the only way to become rich under capitalism. If you do not have existing capital it is almost impossible to acquire capital. Thus, the rich become richer, and the poor become poorer. This is very much an essential property of capitalism, stemming purely from the private ownership of capital and the commoditization of capital, and does not require government corruption.

The reason you think capitalism maybe works is because your parents grew up during highly unusual circumstances, in the wake of massive destruction and expropriation of capital following decolonization and WW2. The last century had historically low wealth inequality, so it was possible for average people to acquire small amounts of capital and live decently. Under those conditions it is possible for a poor person to acquire capital and gain ground.

The reason things kinda suck right now and keep seeming suckier is just because things are getting back to normal.

So, basically, you built a straw man and knocked it down. Nice job.

I was asking a "good faith" question.

I wonder what Reid thinks about this: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/887290791793655809

Well I have, I've learned on it at least a couple different times in this thread many pages back in order to bolster some point I was trying to invent I'm lieu of actually knowing something about history.

The parts about the origin of suicide bombing were interesting to me for this purpose, and I linked to some timestamped locations back when we were talking about American foreign policy, and again to show Eversor the montage of disaster scenes that "predicted" 9/11 in some philosophical way.

WASHINGTON — President Trump had a second, previously undisclosed, private conversation with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia this month, the White House acknowledged on Tuesday, raising new questions about their relationship as the cloud of Russia investigations continues to shadow the Trump administration.

The hourlong conversation in Hamburg, Germany, took place at a private dinner among world leaders at a concert hall on the banks of the Elbe River during the Group of 20 economic summit meeting, with only a Kremlin interpreter present to listen to the exchange. It followed a formal meeting between the two presidents that lasted more than two hours earlier in the day, and included their foreign ministers for a fraught discussion about Moscow’s attempts to interfere in the 2016 American elections.

In the earlier meeting, Mr. Trump questioned the Russian president about his role in the American vote. Mr. Putin denied his involvement, and the two men agreed to move beyond the dispute in the interest of finding common ground on other matters, including a limited cease-fire in Syria.

But the intimate dinner conversation, of which there is no official United States government record, because no American official other than the president was involved, is the latest to raise eyebrows. Foreign leaders who witnessed it later commented privately on the oddity of an American president flaunting such a close rapport with his Russian counterpart.

“Pretty much everyone at the dinner thought this was really weird, that here is the president of the United States, who clearly wants to display that he has a better relationship personally with President Putin than any of us, or simply doesn’t care,” said Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, a New York-based research and consulting firm, who said he heard directly from attendees. “They were flummoxed, they were confused and they were startled.”

The encounter occurred more than midway through the lengthy dinner, when Mr. Trump left his seat and approached Mr. Putin, who had been seated next to his wife, first lady Melania Trump.

In a statement, a White House official on Tuesday described the meeting as routine and brief, and explained the lack of an American translator by noting that the president was accompanied by a Japanese interpreter who did not speak Russian. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that any insinuation that the White House has tried to hide the encounter was false.

A second White House official confirmed that the meeting had occurred but did not offer any details, and insisted on anonymity because the discussion was private.


Russia specialists said such an encounter — even on an informal basis at a social event — raised red flags because of its length, which suggests a substantive exchange, and the fact that there was no American interpreter, note taker or national security or foreign policy aide present.

“We’re all going to be wondering what was said, and that’s where it’s unfortunate that there was no U.S. interpreter, because there is no independent American account of what happened,” Stephen Pifer, a former ambassador to Ukraine who also specializes Russia and nuclear arms control.

“If I was in the Kremlin, my recommendation to Putin would be, ‘See if you can get this guy alone,’ and that’s what it sounds like he was able to do,” added Mr. Pifer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

[...]

The reason capitalism isn't essentially racist is because you can imagine a capitalist society bootstrapped with an equitable distribution of capital (including human capital) across all people, regardless of other factors. In the long term, capital will be concentrated among a few people, but we would generally expect those few capitalists to be representative of the original group of capital owners (whether your ideal capitalism includes regulatory capture or not).

The only way you won't have the same representation in the end that you had in the beginning is if you allege there are meaningful differences between the races that genetically predispose some of them to capital concentration. This would mean capitalism is "essentially" racist, i.e. thst capitalism as a system is designed to amplify the advantage of being white specifically, but I do not think this is the case, and I don't think you are racist enough to think this, either.

So no, I do not think capitalism is essentially racist.

The parts about the origin of suicide bombing were interesting to me for this purpose, and I linked to some timestamped locations back when we were talking about American foreign policy, and again to show Eversor the montage of disaster scenes that "predicted" 9/11 in some philosophical way.

The market is willing to pay more for educated, articulate, bullish people with clean records, good credit, and leadership experience. White males are more often able to develop these traits because of early childhood exposure, parents who have more free time, and superior educational opportunities (even 'white' public schools tend to be better funded). In turn, all of these things come from parental socioeconomic status.

exaggerated expectation of racism

And then another thing. You said: "you can't improve racial inequality within capitalism". But what if tomorrow a new technology is invented that is potentially a massive engine of economic growth, and it becomes an imperative within the private sector for all Americans to become highly educated so that they can work for companies that develop this technology. It's also high-paying, because demand for workers so far exceeds supply. Simultaneously, there's also a war going on, so we're suspicious of immigrants, and we can only get highly trained workers by training them ourselves. Now, the capitalist class is lobbying the government to improve the socioeconomic of all Americans, so that the American economy will be competitive globally. As a byproduct, the welfare and social economic status of racial minorities increases, and some sort of parity is reached.

Would that not be an instance of capitalism improving racial inequality?

In addition to this, past racism, and exaggerated expectation of racism leads a lot of blacks to be very suspicious toward many of the social mechanisms for advancement.

That clip threw me into a spell of depression for two or three days and made me freak out about my own personal teenage trauma with 9/11. It was worth it? (not sarcasm)

And then another thing. You said: "you can't improve racial inequality within capitalism". But what if tomorrow a new technology is invented that is potentially a massive engine of economic growth, and it becomes an imperative within the private sector for all Americans to become highly educated so that they can work for companies that develop this technology. It's also high-paying, because demand for workers so far exceeds supply. Simultaneously, there's also a war going on, so we're suspicious of immigrants, and we can only get highly trained workers by training them ourselves. Now, the capitalist class is lobbying the government to improve the socioeconomic of all Americans, so that the American economy will be competitive globally. As a byproduct, the welfare and social economic status of racial minorities increases, and some sort of parity is reached.

Would that not be an instance of capitalism improving racial inequality?