I used to think Noam was a pretty cool guy, but now I'm super disappointed when I listen to him.
It's all doom and gloom. He rarely talks about practical solutions.
It's easy to get people upset about what other people are doing wrong but it's so much harder to be constructive with respect to the current situation.
Invariably the solutions that actually make things better are not polarized against one enemy. These solutions aren't sexy because maybe they only solve things half way or they respect other perspectives.
Still, thinking in terms of imperfect solutions is the only way forward.
It's difficult to propose a neutral-all-win solution when what is perceived as a problem is actually advantageous to certain groups of people. E.g. how can you find such a solution to the troubles brought upon most of West States finances when they decided to finance the failed banks with tax payers' money. Similar situation with climate change, arms commerce, etc.
Also, proposing solutions, is a step you take after a critical percentage of public understanding has grasped the problem as such in the first place. Being there is highly disputed - see the part with what dominates the current electoral debates.
Why does it need to be an all-win? I think a maintain-current-levels-of-arable-land-and-minimize-genocide solution is intrinsically good. Sure, some in the oil and defense industries won't like it, but there are always losers. We don't need to kill them, so in that sense they're doing quite a lot better than losers in previous cultural shifts.
So do you have any specific criticism of what he says? Noam Chomsky is an activist and intellectual, he has made many suggestions as to how to move forward in various situations and has been arrested several times for his his views and actions.
It's all doom and gloom. He rarely talks about practical solutions.
It's easy to get people upset about what other people are doing wrong but it's so much harder to be constructive with respect to the current situation.
Invariably the solutions that actually make things better are not polarized against one enemy. These solutions aren't sexy because maybe they only solve things half way or they respect other perspectives.
Still, thinking in terms of imperfect solutions is the only way forward.