> What has been created by this half century of massive corporate propaganda is what's called "anti-politics". So that anything that goes wrong, you blame the government. Well okay, there's plenty to blame the government about, but the government is the one institution that people can change... the one institution that you can affect without institutional change. That's exactly why all the anger and fear has been directed at the government. The government has a defect - it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect - they're pure tyrannies. So therefore you want to keep corporations invisible, and focus all anger on the government. So if you don't like something, you know, your wages are going down, you blame the government. Not blame the guys in the Fortune 500, because you don't read the Fortune 500. You just read what they tell you in the newspapers... so you don't read about the dazzling profits and the stupendous dizz, and the wages going down and so on, all you know is that the bad government is doing something, so let's get mad at the government.
No, you're trying to speak for him. Consent to, say, physical assault being illegal, is a whole different ball game than manufactured consent to the Vietnam War, and all that is entailed in this wishy-washy stuff about "consent" in this context. Not to mention "democracy reacting by force to protest" -- as opposed to what, exactly? Non-democracies? Companies? People clicking buttons on HN? Nobody bothers to say, making it all an exercise in throwing shade at the one means of self-defense we have left.
> The neoliberal era of the last generation is dedicated, in principle, to destroying the only means we have to defend ourselves from destruction. It's not called that, what it's called is shifting decision-making from public institutions, which at least in principle are under public influence, to private institutions which are immune from public control, in principle. That's called "shifting to the market", it's under the rhetoric of freedom, but it just means servitude. It means servitude to unaccountable private institutions.
-- Noam Chomsky
> It is possible for both the government and the private sector to be corrupted
Obviously, but the private sector isn't "corrupt" when it's a tyranny, that's the best it can hope to be. The government is responsibility of the citizens in a democracy, not something purely external they get to just complain about.
Get off your high horse. Chomsky speaks for himself. We interpret his words differently.
I still don't see the obvious difference between consenting to "typical" law enforcement (read: "physical assault being illegal") and consenting to imperialistic wars all over the globe. In both cases the government employs its monopoly on legal violence and is empowered to do so by our consent.
Of course the distinction between reasonable law enforcement and horrible wars of aggression is obvious, but when the exact same mechanism used to manufacture consent for the latter is also used to manufacture consent for the systematic oppression of racial minorities through law enforcement, it absolutely is not.
> Obviously, but the private sector isn't "corrupt" when it's a tyranny, that's the best it can hope to be.
Is the officially accepted purpose of a private enterprise specifically and exclusively to create wealth for its owners, or have we just resigned ourselves to that reality? Isn't this supposed to be the most effective mode of production?
Yes, but you don't have to "manufacture" consent to, say, assault being illegal in anyone but sociopaths. That's the differnce. It's like saying "discussing in good faith and bashing our skulls in are actually both chemical and physical processs, I fail to see the obvious difference".
> Is the officially accepted purpose of a private enterprise specifically and exclusively to create wealth for its owners, or have we just resigned ourselves to that reality? Isn't this supposed to be the most effective mode of production?
> There are plenty of people who don't consent on a daily basis. The actions range from peaceful protests to traitorous acts. How does a democracy deal with them? Force.
Let's say for the sake of argument that I am an American citizen and that I do not consent to the tear gassing and pepper spraying of college aged young adults, nor do I consent to Chelsea Manning being jailed and Snowden being in exile. Does that make me a sociopath? I'm only scratching the surface here.
In any case, I recall saying that "much" of the consent was manufactured and not "all" of it.
> What has been created by this half century of massive corporate propaganda is what's called "anti-politics". So that anything that goes wrong, you blame the government. Well okay, there's plenty to blame the government about, but the government is the one institution that people can change... the one institution that you can affect without institutional change. That's exactly why all the anger and fear has been directed at the government. The government has a defect - it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect - they're pure tyrannies. So therefore you want to keep corporations invisible, and focus all anger on the government. So if you don't like something, you know, your wages are going down, you blame the government. Not blame the guys in the Fortune 500, because you don't read the Fortune 500. You just read what they tell you in the newspapers... so you don't read about the dazzling profits and the stupendous dizz, and the wages going down and so on, all you know is that the bad government is doing something, so let's get mad at the government.
-- Noam Chomsky