Doodle number 2 in my little series of vent art/political cartoons. I try to get to the heart of some basic principles with these things. This one is about how we judge the efficacy of political philosophies. We rightly judge western capitalist democracies by their observable results. When there are problems, which there are are (loads), we note that problem and we don't try to make the system completely innocent of it. When you talk to a socialist, for example, about capitalism they will rightly point out the problems with it. But they will not apply the same standards to their own favourite ideology. Oh no, you will get only excuses. Don't get me wrong, these excuses are very creative. It wasn't attempted properly, evil people stood in its way, the west prevented it from working, technology wasn't good enough at the time, etc etc. No. If the system was superior to the western model, it would have overtaken it, succeeded against the odds, not been open to easy overtaking by despots and all the rest. Making excuses for systems that don't work is just a way of playing a rigged game so the player can stay in it, despite having no chips to bet. Double standards are for chumps.
A man like Stalin will always happen. Political systems slowly evolve until they point where they make a dictator inevitable. That is the Iron Law of Oligarchy. In order to keep your nation relatively free as long as possible you have to kill your entire government every so many generations once the rot starts to set in.
A man like Stalin will always happen. Political systems slowly evolve until they point where they ma
Men like Stalin are always around, yes, but there are systems which prevent those types from becoming dictators. Western capitalist, individualist democracies and republics, like the USA, have political power sufficiently divided and spread across multiple bodies as to prevent Stalin-types taking over.
Men like Stalin are always around, yes, but there are systems which prevent those types from becomin
In the beginning, yes. But they will always evolve into a form that puts more and more power into fewer and fewer hands. Look at the evolution of Congress in America. In the beginning it was just a trade regulatory body. Then, though the exploitation of a loophole (The necessary and proper clause) they became the most powerful branch of government. Now they've shifted their law making power onto the judicial branch because they're elected for life and the congressmen don't want to have to deal with voters getting pissed at them. Now that the judicial branch makes, interprets, and enforces laws it will be a matter of decades at most before they assume complete control by altering the laws to make it so.
In the beginning, yes. But they will always evolve into a form that puts more and more power into fe
Nothing can stand without defence. Instead of stating that totalitarianism is an inevitability, which is effectively what you have done, try sticking to principles. The fact that the individualist liberal project has made it thus far to begin with is already a feat of incredible magnitude. It can and does work. We live and breathe it. If we, however, sit back and allow it to collapse, then it will. There is NOTHING inevitable about this.
Nothing can stand without defence. Instead of stating that totalitarianism is an inevitability, whic
That's the opposite of what one does. From one generation to the next we try to take what was best and keep it, look at what was worst and change it. Civilisation is a progression, not a forest fire. With no roots there is no foundation upon which to build, which is why total revolutions result in systems that collapse under the pull of the vacuum where the past should be. Burning down our inheritances, the endeavours of our ancestors, is the worst possible thing one can do. What right have you to declare that all which came before you is yours to burn, judging it so unworthy? It is the height of foolishness to be so dismissive and destructive.
That's the opposite of what one does. From one generation to the next we try to take what was best a
Because you have the power to do it. The power to destroy a thing is the power to control a thing. But beyond that, you cannot salvage a system once a critical level of corruption is achieved. And humanity breeds corruption. That's not me being cynical, it's just entropy in action. BTW, have you ever watched CCP Grey's Rules for Rulers? It explains why all human governments melt into the same basic shapes over and over. Though he believes revolution is inherently pointless and there are parts of that I agree to, however I cannot accept it completely. You HAVE To have a way to essentially slash and burn the previous system. You do not kill the IDEAS, however. You basically go in, kill all the living people of a government, then replace them with fresh ones who haven't had enough time to develop corruption.
Because you have the power to do it. The power to destroy a thing is the power to control a thing.
Corruption is a human universal, yes, and the best systems are those which mitigate corruption to the best extent. Western democracies are best at this. I agree that a society can become so corrupted that the power centre needs to be slashed down, but that doesn't mean every system must become that corrupt eventually. It is a statement without evidence.
Corruption is a human universal, yes, and the best systems are those which mitigate corruption to th
It is a belief. And it is mine. I am honestly glad this has been so civil... I know I'm trailing off but it's so mind meltingly shocking to have a CIVILIZED political debate on the internet now. Particularly among furries.
It is a belief. And it is mine. I am honestly glad this has been so civil... I know I'm trailing off
I find flame wars on them hilarious. Plus the have REALLY good porn. Even furry porn if you go to the containment boards for us. I haunt /hgg, Hentai Games General to keep up to date on all my pronz.
I find flame wars on them hilarious. Plus the have REALLY good porn. Even furry porn if you go to th
To go back on topic... We mostly agree. I too want a system that keeps the rot and collapse away as long as possible. However, I do not believe it can be avoided forever. Like all things, a government is going to die sooner or later and the time before it finally gives in and keels over is a miserable slog of pain for the common people.
To go back on topic... We mostly agree. I too want a system that keeps the rot and collapse away as
Naturally, the government will be replaced, but the system in which the government operates needs to be maintained. I'm all for fighting corrupt people in corrupt governments. My perspective is that governments are awful in proportion to how far they deviate from individualist, liberty-centred principles and the degree to which they aren't transparent. The more people who advocate for principles that actually, demonstrably lead to the best outcomes, the better life will be for all of us. I think the west has done very well indeed, when one compares it to everything else that is and has been, it is almost miraculous.
Naturally, the government will be replaced, but the system in which the government operates needs to
This is all true, but I don't think people as a whole are smart enough to maintain the system. And without vigilance and intelligence the system dies a death of a thousand cuts.
This is all true, but I don't think people as a whole are smart enough to maintain the system. And w
I think there are very many intelligent people out there right now who are fighting to maintain the integrity of the system, and millions of honest, hardworking people who keep our societies functioning. I'd say the best thing to do is cheer those folks on or speak ones own mind about which principles are best, wherever we can.
I think there are very many intelligent people out there right now who are fighting to maintain the
The Weimar Republic would like to have a few words with you about how republican forms of government are inherently incapable of changing into a dictatorial form of government. I believe the Congolese would also like to have a discussion about how capitalism can't create genocide. Oh, and please take a moment to discuss with the native Americans how the United States has never, and will never, have a tyrannical president who runs rough-shod over the desires of both Congress and the Supreme Court, all to thunderous applause. It's almost like literally any method of organizing people on a large (or even small) scale is inherently dangerous once you get enough people to all do the same thing without oversight or restraints in place, with layered defenses, constant civic participation, and a ruling class that cannot generate a power differential (either with force of arms, or through wealth) that it simply ignores the consequences of its actions.
Maybe the world isn't as simplistic as "capitalism good, communism bad." Maybe the world is actually really complicated, and the old adage that one man's hero is another man's villain holds true; excepting of course Leopold of Belgium. Genocide is loathsome. Genocide for no goal higher than "getting paid" is pretty much the worst thing anyone could do. It's so pointlessly evil that it might as well be a cartoon villain, except surprise, he was very real.
The Weimar Republic would like to have a few words with you about how republican forms of government
I think this is created through laziness and bias..
The main principle here is "Hey, Stalin was a socialist..so of course it make sense that socialism is bad. We should judge socialism for not stopping Stalin" But this isn't simply about socialism, this is also about a _dictatorship_. Lenin took over and became the big cheese.. then got replaced by Stalin.
The failures of capitalism in Russia led to Leninism.. But you're not going to care about that fact. You're too busy pointing at Stalin and treating him as the poster child for everything socialism, while ignoring the difference between communism and socialism. You're even ignoring that democracy _IS_ the core belief of socialism (socialism is the notion of social ownership.. who owns your government.. your society). If they had a system where everyone had some form of voice, like in a democracy, there wouldn't have been a Stalin.
If the people in charge gave their own citizen a bone, maybe they wouldn't have started a revolution and allow a dictator to take control? But from what I see, capitalistic system that have no concern over their own citizens are the ones that have these revolutions.. Maybe communism is the result of unfetter capitalism and the public despair... just a thought.
TLDR: Dictatorship is a bad thing, even if that dictator wants to say he's a socialist.
I think this is created through laziness and bias.. The main principle here is "Hey, Stalin was a
This isn't exclusive to communism. Stalin is just a dictator everyone knows. It is a principle which applies universally, so it isn't biased. This is about observing the efficacy of political systems honestly instead of applying one standard to one and another to others. I don't care what failed in Russia or didn't, the western model hasn't and its the best, which is why migrants flock to Western nations in their millions every year. End of story, done and dusted, communism/socialism is a failure and a joke. Don't ignore the point of the cartoon by focusing on it mentioning Stalin. It's a cartoon with limited space for a message, swap his name for any other despot and the point is the same.
This isn't exclusive to communism. Stalin is just a dictator everyone knows. It is a principle which
My point was the western model failed in Russia and created communism. But, I guess you're not going to consider that result because you're too busy trying to make snappy and suggestive comments on socialism.
You said you don't care how Russia happened.. which is the opposite of observation. You just want to observe a small part to talk about socialist. Claiming that socialist have a double standard while showing that exact same standard yourself.
I don't think you can be honest when you talk about socialism or capitalism.. you literally live in a state that have a mixed capitalist and socialist economy... and instead of understanding the various types of systems, you're polarizing the two even though they both have their benefits and failures.
There's a lack of nuance when you talk about these things.. which led to you judging dictatorial socialism where you focus more on the socialism part than the dictatorship.
My point was the western model failed in Russia and created communism. But, I guess you're not going
Haha no capitalism in Russia didn't create communism. Intellectual shitheads who desired power created it. They lied, cheated and assassinated their way to power. Naturally, conditions for workers and peasants in that period were miserable, absolutely. Far more so than for anyone working today. To be a socialist now is to be a complete pillock. It doesn't produce better societies than capitalist countries with individualist legal principles. Don't give me shit about nuance, this is black and white obvious, so obvious a little child can comprehend it. Socialism results in rubble, the western world is in another class entirely. That's the simple truth of it. Keep hiding behind bollocks for all the good it does you.
Haha no capitalism in Russia didn't create communism. Intellectual shitheads who desired power creat
Oh and the core belief of socialism isn't democracy, it is public ownership of the means of production. Which can't happen, which we know because it never has happened. All attempts at socialism have led to either complete catastrophe or societies vastly inferior to individualist, capitalist countries. I don't care what the intentions of socialism are, it doesn't achieve them, ever. So it's shit.
Oh and the core belief of socialism isn't democracy, it is public ownership of the means of producti
How do we avoid the ends justify the means if results are all that matter?
How do we avoid might makes right?
How can a representative democratic system actually be functional when 50 percent of its people choice not to vote?
The system is made of people.
Flawed people.
Deeply flawed.
And so we got the result we're suffer currently.
It's a national failure.
Not one party or the other, but the people themselves to lazy to observe their leaders actions and too apathetic to vote according to what they do in their name.
How do we avoid the ends justify the means if results are all that matter? How do we avoid might ma
We avoid those things by having principles. Like we have in western societies. Where individuals come first, not the collective; where people can work for and own the produce of their labours. Is it perfect? Nope. But we can and have been improving it over time. There is no better alternative in terms of political systems. All the others out there right now are garbage in comparison.
BTW, the more people advocate broken shit that doesn't work, the less we can actually find solutions to our problems.
We avoid those things by having principles. Like we have in western societies. Where individuals com
Don't pretend the left does either, because socialists sure as fuck don't. None of this alters the fact that when people do stick to western democratic principles, it produces the best societies. When people do away with them or subvert them, things get worse in proportion to the extent those principles are deviated from. Are you arguing for these values to be dispensed with or aren't you?
Don't pretend the left does either, because socialists sure as fuck don't. None of this alters the f
I'm asking why would I hold myself to principles my opposition refuses to honor. Am I not disadvantaged by doing so? Am I not conceding the fight and my principles by not doing whatever I must to stop their violations?
I see many enemies to my nations intrests and the constitution I swore to up hold sitting in seats of power.
What should I do?
My one vote isn't enough to change matters.
Why prop up a system no one else seem to care enough about to defend.
Its already dead in any regard, now down to your corporate masters cause money is god.
I'm asking why would I hold myself to principles my opposition refuses to honor. Am I not disadvant
Your perception that nobody else cares to defend the system is a mistaken one. If you throw away your principles on account of others not having them then you don't care about having principles. I don't consider raping people just because there are shitloads of rapists out there. We know what principles make the best societies, so advocating them is paramount. If you don't then you're one less person who gives a shit and one more person who is making everything worse.
The main flaw of your worldview is it lacks comparison. You observe the problems in your country but you don't compare those problems to the alternatives, to the past, to other regions which don't have what you have. If the west is a bad thing, bad compared to what? All the better societies? Oh wait.
Your perception that nobody else cares to defend the system is a mistaken one. If you throw away you
Yeah it would be nice for communities to work together more, for more problems to be addressed. It would be easier to do so if we weren't in an environment dominated by censorious socialist fuckwits who smear and deplatform dissenters. As long as our political discourse contains so much advocacy for insane collectivist bollocks, sensible discussions are going to remain very difficult to have. None of these ideologies have solutions to our problems, yet they dominate discussion everywhere. That's why I spend my time repudiating them.
Yeah it would be nice for communities to work together more, for more problems to be addressed. It w
Freedom of speech is the foundation of everything, it is the most important thing. And evangelicals are assaulting the right to employment? Nonsense. Your healthcare system in the USA isn't something I support, since I prefer national insurance. It does more good for more people. Can't have good social programs outside of capitalist economies though, there's never enough funds otherwise. One could talk all day about improvements to make in Western nations but this cartoon isn't about that, it's about overall political systems, foundational principles. Our societies can, have and do make improvements as time goes by, it is something that needs to be continually worked on. Fact remains, all other systems are inferior. When someone can drop the ideological fantasies they can then begin to find solutions to social ills.
Freedom of speech is the foundation of everything, it is the most important thing. And evangelicals
Nonsense, doing what one can to push back against idiotic ideologies that threaten everybody is always worth doing. Society is always moving and changing, I don't want it to move towards collectivism.
Nonsense, doing what one can to push back against idiotic ideologies that threaten everybody is alwa
Your condition of refusing to explore solutions to the short comings of capitalism unless your proponents surrender whole sale to unrestricted free market is all to telling.
Democracy is western cultural not capitalism.
And certainly not the oligarchy we are currently under that pretends we have free trade and open markets.
Your condition of refusing to explore solutions to the short comings of capitalism unless your propo
What? I don't believe in an unrestricted free market. I'm just not a fucking socialist. I say over and over, individualist, capitalist democracy. In order to have a society in which the individual is paramount before the law, there needs to be regulations and restrictions on corporate entities. I don't trust companies to behave unregulated any more than I'd trust a government.
You seem incapable of admitting that socialism is a failure, so you tiptoe around saying what you believe outright. This is not and never has been a complicated thing to sort out. Look at the nations of the world, take note of how many socialist countries are in it that are more successful than capitalist countries. There aren't any. So if you are a socialist it's like you have a PC that you want to upgrade because there are some parts that are shitty, but instead of buying better parts you go and spend your entire life savings on a computer that is worse in every single respect than your old one. And after a few weeks it explodes. Nobody would do that, nobody is that stupid. But because socialism is a religious dream, people are complete idiots about it.
What? I don't believe in an unrestricted free market. I'm just not a fucking socialist. I say over a
It hasn't destroyed opportunity for the majority of the USA at all, why the fuck do you think so many people try to immigrate there? The biggest source of misery for jobs is immigration, especially illegal, wherein companies undercut American citizens in order to hire on super cheap labour. Socialism fixes this? Christ, dude. You envy Venezuela or something?
It hasn't destroyed opportunity for the majority of the USA at all, why the fuck do you think so man
Glad to see you finally are open about viewing all immigrants as the sole problem to labor.
Where's the enforcement and punishment on the companies that bring them in? Are they not just as guilty as the desperate people they exploit to under cut their prices?
Why does the law only fall on the immigrant and not the employer?
Double standard in enforcement should be rectified yes?
You want me to trust capitalism?
Then the wealthy that exploit it and enjoy double standards to the law need to be dealt with.
Until that happens, no one is going to trust a corrupt system.
Glad to see you finally are open about viewing all immigrants as the sole problem to labor. Where's
Yeah I think companies should be penalised for hiring illegal migrants, they should be prosecuted harshly for it. It's not about blaming migrants for seeking an opportunity, it's a basic bitch fact that in any economy the more people you have in it, the more mouths there are to feed. So if in addition to people having babies you also have a few hundred thousand people per yer waltzing over your fucking border, each one of those people is competition for everyone else already in the USA, including immigrants. Legitimate migrants who worked their asses off to legally enter the country are more pissed off than anyone. You have it better in America because your country is so huge, but the UK gets 300,000 plus new bloody migrants per year and we live on a little sodding island that's smaller than some of your individual states. It's a joke, a disgrace, a betrayal of the taxpaying citizens. You have a president who actually loves his country and is proud to say so. I have a government that is so contemptuous of its own country it won't even honor the Brexit vote, despite it being the biggest turnout vote in British fucking history.
Yes, the system is corrupt. We all know. Its obvious. But here's the thing you eternally dodge:
SOCIALISM IS BLOODY WORSE
Yeah I think companies should be penalised for hiring illegal migrants, they should be prosecuted ha
You live in the most powerful and prosperous country the world has ever seen and you think it doesn't function? What are you comparing it to? Venezuela is what a country looks like when it doesn't function. I think you're focusing far too much on the negatives to the point that the positives have ceased to exist. No matter what criticisms you rightly have of the USA, and you do have valid criticisms, it will never make sense to replace what exists with something worse. A broken toe isn't dealt with by amputating the foot. Whatever dissatisfaction you feel toward the way things currently are, making the situation even worse is genocidal. Do you really harbour that much spite?
You live in the most powerful and prosperous country the world has ever seen and you think it doesn'
When the situation continues to steadly get worse, and more and more people fall into poverty yet the fixes that need and can be made are ignored, yes I am that spiteful.
Prosperity needs to be achievable, not granted but an honest possiblity with hard work and perosnal growth.
But the opportunities are being denied.
I don't care what happens hundred years ago, I don't care what happens in a fluid and changing future.
Here and now changes need to be made.
Or else in the near future we will be like Venezuela.
The current system is built on lies and speculation.
We don't build and export any more, we buy and sell virtual things and services.
Housing, stocks, and even basic goods and nessesities are over valued.
Theres are multiple credit bubbles from student loans to corporate bonds that are not secure.
We got into trade wars that are rolling the markets and highenting instability.
We don't compensate workers for the decades of increase productivity destroying the middle class.
We ijnore the education system to the point no one is capable of doing the skilled trades that would actually pay good money resulting in companies having to go over seas to fill those jobs.
Our infrastructure is decaying to a dangerous level, and we refuse to pay for the needed repairs because taxes are bad.
We still have states that refuse to treat people equitably when it comes to employment.
And were picking unnecessary fights with Iran and Venezuela.
Oh and a corrupt ignorant inheritor sits in the oval backed by a Republican Senate that abandons it's over sight responsibilities and undermines congresses constitutional authority while staking the judiciary with activists judges.
Why should I be optimistic?
When the situation continues to steadly get worse, and more and more people fall into poverty yet th
You want to replace it with something worse. Worse. Do you know what that word means? Every complaint you have is irrelevant when what you advocate is a system that is even worse. I also don't grant that what you've said here is correct. Why? Because you have no sense of balance whatsoever, or proportion. You are personifying irrationality.
You want to replace it with something worse. Worse. Do you know what that word means? Every complain
It's all well and good to sit back and judge your country, to note how it has let you down, disappointed your expectations of it. Nothing wrong with doing that at all. However, it is seriously breaching upon irony when you aren't responsible enough to even advocate something sensible in discussions on the Internet. Where is your accountability, or does that only apply to other people? You're a socialist in 2019, despite all the hell on earth that has happened as a result of it, your contempt not being directed at that evil shit but at a country people risk death, literally, just to get into. Can't you see how unhinged that is? Like, seriously, if you actually had power you would destroy your country and millions would die in it.
It's all well and good to sit back and judge your country, to note how it has let you down, disappoi
If I had power I'd most likely leave this failed creation behind.
I've suggested numerous ideas on multiply degrees of scope with a variety of people here and elsewhere. I've engaged with conservatives and Christian's on Twitter with a majority of them respectable exchanges. Despite contentious topics most people on Twitter that are willing to bother replying happen to want conversation.
Reforming education locally and post secondary generally to address skilled labor short comings happens to be the most agreed upon topic.
The issue of employment discrimination is acknowledge most of the time, but its difficult to convince those on the right that firing anyone for non job related issues is total bullshit. The right wants to discriminate on superficial qualities, but gets pissed if they get discriminated against themselves. It's a frequent axe I grind on them.
Most acknowledge the danger of a society that doesn't participate in our election process. But again the right leaning folks refuse to actual franchise legitimate voters and help them get registered, informed or to the polls. It's an axe I grind frequently.
I promote dialogue, not free speech cause we already have that here. Denial of service isn't denial of speech. But the danger of refusing to engage with others is your own ideas can't be heard or advanced with someone outside your group. We have to be willing to listen to each other and reply, despite disagreements or prejudices or free speech is meaningless and impotent.
I've suggest rewarding companies that actually creating good paying jobs, advance employee training so they have careers and not temporary work. That generally receives general agreement.
Problem I have is that most people I get into on politics happen to be outside the U.S. Too many here are not intrested or engaged.
That hampers advancement of any useful agenda greatly.
If I had power I'd most likely leave this failed creation behind. I've suggested numerous ideas on
You're a socialist. Thing is mate, I'm not being funny but you are never direct with your own beliefs, you hedge and dogde and duck. Like every time you've responded to one of my cartoons that repudiate collectivism and socialism, you take issue with it but never outright state your own position clearly. It's shifty and disingenuous. I'll tell anyone who talks to me what I stand for and I find in ALL my talks with socialists, the far left generally and the far right, they approach me like sly little shits hoping to catch me out without engaging on a level playing field. That means their ideas are awful, they know they can't openly defend them, yet are hoping to make others look full of shit or like callous bigots while remaining snug and protected from uncomfortable things like being questioned. I'm sick of it. Truly.
It is an insult to me, contempt and disrespect, to not be forthright in response to someone else's forthrightness. You've just tried to sell me a palatable spiel like a TV shopping network. You said you want to encourage dialogue, well there's only one way of really doing that: cut the bullshit, be open and to the point. Tiptoeing about, making linguistic maneuvers is a waste of everybody's fucking time.
You're a socialist. Thing is mate, I'm not being funny but you are never direct with your own belief
No I'd rather you just say what you actually think instead of dancing around it. If you're confident in the veracity of your own convictions you won't need to hide them like a hardon on public transport.
No I'd rather you just say what you actually think instead of dancing around it. If you're confident
You can't have a system where everybody thinks the same way, or wants to participate and vote etc. Socialism can't do any of it, certainly doesn't aid liberty or freedom of speech. Hierarchies are natural, necessary and fine, they just need to be merit-based and individualistic. Collectivism prioritises the rights of the group over the individual, which obliterates the concept of the individual. It has never had any results anywhere in the world that come anywhere close to capitalist, individualist democracies. Therefore it's shit. It is that simple, black and white, over and done with.
The way forward is to reform and continue to improve upon the existing Western model. Just as our societies have with regard to universal suffrage, gay rights, expanding human rights etc. That's sustainable, it works and it's realistic. Flipping the table over for a do-over is genocidally stupid, especially when the replacement is something that has worked nowhere ever. Despite hundreds of millions of people around the globe for more than a century dedicating themselves to making it work. This was over before even the ussr fell. How many other societies need to collapse, I wonder, before people living in the far superior West stop supporting something that crushes the hopes, dreams and lives of everybody outside the elites in government.
The irony is you characterise the west as being just like that, a tyranny of callousness on the poor. Mental.
You can't have a system where everybody thinks the same way, or wants to participate and vote etc. S
That's a matter of perspective isn't it. I'd say the claim that nothing meaningful (subjective) has changed in the USA since the 1970s is not something I can comprehend.
That's a matter of perspective isn't it. I'd say the claim that nothing meaningful (subjective) has
Last majority acts of Congress passed bi partisan during the civil rights era.
There was mutral agreement between the parties to improve the working, educational, and voting rights of black Americans being discriminated against in the south as well as certain cities in the north.
There hasn't been any bipartisan effort in any regard scince then. Republicans (conservatives and libertarian lap dogs) have done everything on thier power to cripple the rights of workers on general and non evenaglicals.
Gay marriage should not have be a court decision, it should have been legislation to cement the right.
It can be over turned by a partisan court which Trump straight up promised to do and nominated judges onto the bench for that goal.
We can't even get a two year budget passed because of partisan gridlock with Republicans refusing to do anything but cut taxes and raid the social safety net of Medicare and Medicaid.
We are going backward my freind and people are and will continue to get poorer the longer trickle down supply side conservative policy runs our nation.
Last majority acts of Congress passed bi partisan during the civil rights era. There was mutral agr
I think you're mixing up your own dissatisfaction with a lack of meaningful change. You haven't been seeing what you want, but who says what you want would be a good thing, or achievable? You live in a nation of over 300,000,000 people, so perspectives are unfathomable in their range and diversity. Most of em likely consider your outlook full of shit.
I think you're mixing up your own dissatisfaction with a lack of meaningful change. You haven't been
I make enough not to have to rely on anyone for anything. Despite personal failures here and there I'm not in crippling debt like most other Americans I work with. Thankfully I'm gay and an introvert so no children to worry about. I care not for accumulating material goods, nor need the adulation of a crowd of followers. I'm improving my health back to near army standards after coming off 13 years of driving cross country truck and gaining a lot a weight from the constraint sitting. My needs are met.
Too many of my fellow Americans are not having those needs met.
And Republicans (conservatives and their libertarian lap dogs) love complaining about how entitled and unworthy the poor are. They never make any effort to help educate or improve the lives of the disadvantaged so they may become contributing members of society.
And I take great umbrage with that bullshit.
I make enough not to have to rely on anyone for anything. Despite personal failures here and there
How many poor people are poor through no fault of their own, do you reckon? Nowhere is the concept that if you live like a complete twat, your life will suck. And this is an argument for what, exactly? The end of capitalism because poor people are poor? When has there been any place, any time, where poverty wasn't a part of life? Its also relative. Your perspective is as such that you don't recognise any time that things have improved, it's just shit all round and that's it. As if there's no difference between being poor in America and poor in the 3rd world.
How many poor people are poor through no fault of their own, do you reckon? Nowhere is the concept t
I just pointed out the last time things improved on a national scale back during the civil right era. Through bipartisan legislation and agreement that the change was needed. Because a majority of people believed blacks should be able to vote, work, and ride public transportation without discrimination based off race.
That was a time of improvement and it happened because their was mutual agreement and consensus from the people.
That shared voice of communal agreement is a case of collectivism working to better the nation.
It's even harder when an amendment is proposed and passed. Need the president, two thirds of both house and Senate along with two thirds of the state legislature to pass. A collective effort of 66% if not more of the people.
We are at our best when we work togther in common goals.
I just pointed out the last time things improved on a national scale back during the civil right era
Poverty has gone down since the 70s, so has crime, consistently. Hell, worldwide poverty has been slashed in half in just the past 10 years, never mind just the USA doing better. Black unemployment is the lowest its ever been under your current president. You are determined to not see any positives.
Poverty has gone down since the 70s, so has crime, consistently. Hell, worldwide poverty has been sl
It's all about wage stagnation, and a lack of compensation rising any where near productivity rendered by labor.
With inflation accounted for wages have not risen from 1970s while prices have nearly double for necessary goods.
So a handful of shareholders that gamble on the market down turns every ten years or so are making out like fiends doesn't translate into jobs that can rebuild the middle class.
Median averages isn't accurate to where the majority are actually living. A majority of Americans can't afford a surprise 400 dollar car repair bill or medical fee.
The system as put into effect by Regan forces wealth out of the lower class and into the wealthy. And the wealthy don't spend that money making good paying jobs.
It's all about wage stagnation, and a lack of compensation rising any where near productivity render
Yeah, and nowhere in any of this is a single reason to get rid of capitalism. I am too weary to keep going, ever further as it always does from the simple point made in the cartoon. The simple point that remains uncontradicted. Im making these new cartoons simple and basic precisely to avoid this endless load of shit that buries the principles people believe in. What is this other than a list of grievances you have with current affairs? Nowhere is there even the beginnings of a point against the cartoon or in favour of replacing the whole western system with something new like socialism. It doesn't matter, none of it, if the principles you start from are not fit for purpose.
Yeah, and nowhere in any of this is a single reason to get rid of capitalism. I am too weary to keep
Are our promoted principles not the foundational on which we expand our arguments and reasoning when confronted with new personal and communal probelms?
My grievances are not vaild?
Does wanting everyone to be invovled in a society, having a say in its course of governance, and benefiting from being part of it truelly serve no purpose?
Its seems a responsible way to interact to me.
We may never get to that point of complete engagement and communal coorporation, but doesn't it seem worth trying if it give meaning and worth to everyone that particapates?
Are our promoted principles not the foundational on which we expand our arguments and reasoning when
If you want to replace a current system with one that is worse in every single way, then yes, your grievances with the current system are irrelevant. Certainly don't have value to me. As in, I'm chiefly concerned with repudiating the most dangerous principles and systems that are being popularly advocated. I don't have the energy for most conversations in general, so I sure as hell can't have massive conversations with anybody who wants to have one, that do nothing productive at all. I mean what the fuck does this have to do with the cartoon I drew, at this point? Bugger all I can see.
If you want to replace a current system with one that is worse in every single way, then yes, your g
I'm unsatisfied with a conversation that never ends and has strayed completely from the point this submission makes. Socialism is worse than all the problems one can point out in the west. Worse. So if we want to improve life we can't do it with socialism. It doesn't work.
I'm unsatisfied with a conversation that never ends and has strayed completely from the point this s
"I'm asking why would I hold myself to principles my opposition refuses to honor. Am I not disadvantaged by doing so? Am I not conceding the fight and my principles by not doing whatever I must to stop their violations?"
Because the instant you use the argument that "this principle can be discarded if that's what it takes to win," you lose all right to criticize the opposition's use of the same argument, or their dismissal of the same principle.
How can you claim it is an unacceptable violation when someone else does it if you are offering justifications for it to be acceptable if you make the same violation?
This is, to me, one of the biggest and most critical points in ALL the ultra-divisive us-vs-them political hot-button topics; when BOTH sides of any argument are declaring the other to be "BAD PEOPLE WHO MUST BE STOPPED AT ANY COST," citing specific acts, attitudes, beliefs, etc, as what MAKES them "BAD PEOPLE WHO MUST BE STOPPED AT ANY COST," while also engaging in the same specific acts, attitudes, beliefs etc, themselves - both sides are equal. They're either equally bad or equally not.
To be able to claim to be "the good guys," any individual or group HAS to specify exactly what the "bad guys" are DOING that MAKES them "the bad guys" - AND THEN NOT DO THAT.
Fascism is bad. Why? Because it's wrong to force any individual to adhere to prescribed ways of speech, thought, action, etc, through threat of force, violence, intimidation, or other severely damaging or handicapping consequence. Telling someone what they HAVE to say, do, or think OR ELSE you get punished (whether by a mob or by official authority structures) is bad to do. That's why anyone SAYING they're opposed to fascism while ENGAGING in precisely that kind of shit is a hypocrite and their justification of their tactics only serves to WEAKEN the positions and arguments against the whole mess - enabling the people they're opposing to be able to use the same tactics more freely themselves with the defense of "well, even the guys saying this is bad are doing it, so it can't be THAT bad, right?"
I am opposed to fascism. So I am opposed to anyone DOING/PROMOTING WHAT THAT WORD MEANS - even if they label themselves as opposed to what they're primarily engaged in.
The big problem is then, that anyone opposed to the tactic when used by people declaring some other group an enemy gets declared a supporter of their enemy - even when that individual is opposed to BOTH SIDES and BOTH GROUPS >BECAUSE< of their use of the specific Bad Thing that makes the obvious Villain a villain - but also makes the supposed self-proclaimed good guys no better.
TL;DR - People CANNOT proclaim any act or tactic or approach as inexcusable WHILE MAKING EXCUSES for themselves and their own agendas.
"I'm asking why would I hold myself to principles my opposition refuses to honor. Am I not disadvan
The unfortunate truth I'm finding all to often is words and reason do not bridge the gap between opposing sides much these days. Even among those I have always considered good men, there seem more and more irreconcilable differences. I'll promote my ideas and beliefs only up to a certain point. Once the exchange become more disruptive to constructive dialogue then I'll withdraw. It's not my intent to impose on anyone, as I greatly despise being imposed on myself.
Worse then that the amount of people not speaking up at all and refusing to vote or participate in our democracy has lead to a dangerous staff of affairs. We are not holding our government or the partisan parties to any account when 50% can not bother to vote on a presidential election. Almost all of my local ballot had unopposed positions including state representatives and elsewhere federal representatives.
We are failing ourselves as a nation by leaving the decisions in the hands of clearly corruptible and incompetent officials.
So when no one cares to even play the game of politics, letting the corporate donors hand pick who gets to set the regulations that effect their own intrests and responsibilities, is it wrong for me to say I have no faith in the current system meant to protect us from corporate over reach and abusive legislation inequitable applied?
I can support the democratic process all I want, but if no one else particapates it's a wasted effort.
I feel very justified in my disgust with my people in general, and no faith at all in the markets delivering a solution beyond the bottom line of the wealthy.
So I urge others to think beyond their own self interest. Not to sacrifice themselves but to help others that are weak uneducated or poor to become strong wise and self sufficient. When we help others within our communities become contributing members that have a say in affairs then we validate their existence and our shared purpose to grow our community.
That's how was expand our ideals and culture in a lasting way that invites others to improve themselves as well.
I don't see how that collective goal and effort would endanger anyone that believes we all matter and have the same rights as others.
But I do struggle with clarity at times.
The unfortunate truth I'm finding all to often is words and reason do not bridge the gap between op
The problem is that all we CAN do is to try and encourage people to better themselves and to participate in the existing system - including to the reform, repair, or replacement of it with better ones.
Outside of that leaves nothing but violent destruction of the system itself and nothing better will come from that.
I also feel that the things you say in this specific comment are NOT being served by the current predominant left-leaning ideologies. I said elsewhere, and I say again, I consider myself liberal more than conservative, but personal responsibility, accountability, and agency have all become things left to the conservative side of things. Merely arguing that people SHOULD be more responsible for their own well-being, and put less emphasis on demanding what others must do to make them happy has become all it takes for someone to be declared alt-right these days.
It's become insane.
I don't disagree with a word of this. <:3 The problem is that all we CAN do is to try and encourage
The democratic party takes half measures at best to address the countires problems. They are as craven politically as Republicans but they at least offer some small benifit.
Conservatives and Republicans refuse to act in any manner at all beyond tax cuts and token bigotry measures that they know can't make it passed the courts to hold the evangelical voters. They are of no use what so ever.
If there was another option, one that enough people would back and show up for I'd consider it. But it would have to break wholesale from the Republican's poisonous platform.
But that just my stance on the broken two party system.
The democratic party takes half measures at best to address the countires problems. They are as cra
We're one of, if not the, only modern developed democratic nation with first-past-the-post voting.
Almost every other democracy operates on runoff voting. Basically, you pick your top three choices, in order of preference. If there's enough votes for your top pick to win - that's where your vote goes. If not, then it checks your second choice. Then your third.
Doing it the way we do it mathematically ensures there will ALWAYS only be two parties, and those two parties will be effectively meaningless in what they actually DO - all the differences will be superficial in stances they take on matters that will always be a stalemate.
Getting to a runoff voting system is the most important change we could make - but it ensure destruction of the current fucked up power system, so neither party will even mention it. Instead, they talk about stupid shit like the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. So several almost-always Blue states pledge their electoral votes to the popular vote. If the popular vote is won by the Blue candidate - the candidate these states' votes will already have gone to - then it's all meaningless posturing that only serves to misinform people about what the electoral college really is meant to be. The only way this compact - that will never be enacted by critical red states - would actually be brought into play would be if a Red candidate happens to win the popular vote, but WOULD have been defeated by the electoral college, but now they get the electoral votes of these blue states that didn't want them - then the idiots who thought this was a good idea would scream about their vote being taken from them and applied to a candidate they didn't want - which is THE EXACT PURPOSE of this compact. 9_9
The inherent problem with democracy is that in almost all things, barely more than half the people will get what they want. But it's still the best system we've come up with. And it's still better than even a small majority being disregarded in favor of a smaller number of people. But we can't have sensible conversations about maximizing what most people want, and minimizing imposition on the voters who lose when people are divided into classes based on race and sex and gender and all this other shit, and then told these factors mean they're more or less important than the next person with a different spread of those superficial and meaningless labels.
We're one of, if not the, only modern developed democratic nation with first-past-the-post voting.
Yeah, that's exactly what you don't do. As individual people we should stick to our principles, not break them for convenience, and to advocate in speech the things we believe in. The way the west does things has worked amazingly so far, which is why our generation in the western world has a level of prosperity never before seen. The world we've inherited is a damn sight better place than it has been for our ancestors. It's not just a case of being able to see injustice and suffering but also a matter of comparison. Judging any civilisation against an ideal that only exists in fantasy doesn't make for a balanced perspective on the state of anything real. Of course, the desire to see better things is always worth having, but thinking of the present day as basically just shit isn't helpful at all.
Yeah, that's exactly what you don't do. As individual people we should stick to our principles, not
The USSR wasn't communist. It's still dumb to push for a communist government, but not because it's bad but because its a pipe dream. In the absence of a post scarcity production system that's still many decades away, any attempt at communism will inevitably collapse and leave the nation be hijacked by whoever has the means to sieze power. The communist government collapsed before the revolution was even over and was replaced by a rehash of their old government just with a different title and line of succession for the czar. When the USSR folded, it was in turn replaced by a clone again.
It's like the end of Animal Farm. The issue wasn't that the revolution took them to a terrible new place, it's that it left them in exactly the same terrible place where they started (because, remember, most of these places were already really shitty to begin with. Stalin replaced a decadent king and Castro replaced a different totalitarian didtator)
"Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
The USSR wasn't communist. It's still dumb to push for a communist government, but not because it's
The early USSR was the closest any nation has ever gotten to true, Marxist-vision communism. The thing is, it failed - workers were absolutely dropping in production, which was dealt with for several years. Thousands of people who attempted to create bartering mediums (common items becoming currency) were imprisoned or executed for attempting to "subvert the communist cause".
The failing of the communist system to address human nature in both the value of their labor and in the tendency to attempt to barter for things they want, led to it being replaced with the limited-capital economic system the USSR became under Stalin, with those of the workforce who went above and beyond getting commendations and increased rations, and limited currency for trade in luxury and handmade goods being permitted.
The early USSR was the closest any nation has ever gotten to true, Marxist-vision communism. The th
Know what does make it so? The tens of millions of people who dedicated their entire fucking lives to it. Died for it, worked ceaselessly for it, sacrificed everything for it. True believers, that's what the Soviet Russians were. It didn't make a damn bit of difference. If a system can't prevent dictators, you get dictators. Communism can't protect anything, so it doesn't ever and will never go as planned on paper. Hence every single attempt being a failure.
Know what does make it so? The tens of millions of people who dedicated their entire fucking lives t
There is nothing in this world that I hate more than communism. I even hate it more than I hate fascism. At least fascism gets rightly condemned (for the most part. It would help if the left could properly identify it instead of accusing libertarians and conservatives of being fascists). Communism should be condemned for the same fucking reason. A history of genocide.
There is nothing in this world that I hate more than communism. I even hate it more than I hate fasc
Agreed, aye. If only it had been identified for the evil it is sooner, might have saved millions of lives. To see people living in the west today supporting it makes me sick.
Agreed, aye. If only it had been identified for the evil it is sooner, might have saved millions of
So, you agree we need socialist reform, heavy regulation and efforts to combat far right anti-intellectualism, then? Because those are the things that have the most positive observable benefits in a society.
So, you agree we need socialist reform, heavy regulation and efforts to combat far right anti-intell
Not... really. Especially not the 'far right' part.
Unregulated markets and attempts at 'free market' capitalism have led to countless nations being conquered and turned into slave states. Private corporations ranging from the East India comapny to Dole overthrowing rightful regimes and turning indigenous people into second class citizens in their own homes. Not to mention the growing economic disparity here in the US that has a growing portion of the nation living like third world citizens as more and more people fall below the poverty line. Education standards falling like a rock. People like DeVos setting up demonstrably broken systems for the sake of personal gain.
Markets are a fine tool, but capitalism without regulation and without safeguards just causes the bulk of people within that system to suffer. It inevitably crashes and burns, and in the same ways each time. Hence why the far right in the US and UK especially loo so much like the idiots who caused the gilded age.
As for 'far right'. That tends to be nothing but irrational xenophobia, nationalism and sexism. People willing and eager to see the 'other' suffer or die for the sake of personal catharsis. Socially speaking that kind of mentality can only devour itself as the people who inhabit it need an 'other' to fear. Hence why so many people here in the US are terrified of the refugees fleeing here from cartels and dictators we had a hand in setting up. Because poor battered, starving people fleeing from drug runners re-enforced by the Reagan administration and mercenaries hired by the likes of Chiquita and the various US oil concerns are inevitably hired for underpaying jobs that already hurt the economy by offering less than a living wage.
I could go into all of these point and more in far greater detail, but the simple reality is that the 'far right' cannot survive without anti-intellectualism and exploitation. Just as Capitalism (that is, 'pure' capitalism and markets for the sake of markets regardless of the impact on the population) has a staggering body count just like communism, even if lingering cold war era indoctrination causes people to ignore the imperialism, xenophobia, and constant slip into Neo-dickensien wage slave status.
Not... really. Especially not the 'far right' part. Unregulated markets and attempts at 'free marke
Regulation is a good idea, that's why our western nations do it. I mean there's plenty to improve, but the exploitation of people in the 3rd world is a far cry from how people are treated in the developed west. To protect citizens in a nation you need the robust laws and governments with obligations to individualism and regulated capitalism that the west has, so I'd love to see such systems be implemented around the world. As for whether or not they are, that can only really depend on the people who make up each nation, rather than it being emposed by a foreign power. There's much in western foreign policy that I abhor, but our own people are treated better than any people ever have been. It's a positive trend that I am very keen to see continued.
One must be very cautious when it comes to socialism, because it is always being used as a term to describe a multitude of things, when in reality it has a very clear definition. It is an economic system that does away with private ownership of production, tries to make it communal. I'm weary of it being a term employed to describe any charitable and welfare policies, with socialists trying to make out that socialism has a monopoly on altruism. Socialism didn't invent giving a crap about one's fellow man and in practice it destroys ones fellow man by destroying the economy on which we all depend. Venezuela only being the most recent example.
I advocate sensible welfare policies, national insurance healthcare like the UK, fair tax laws and regulations on corporate entities to prevent abuse. If we want more prosperity in our countries then government needs to prioritise its own constituents over other people from other nations. Don't let mass immigration expand the population, undercut legal labour, which drives down wages and drives up rent, services and mortgage prices. When one looks around the world, the worst places in it are in direct proportion to how far away they are from following the western model of running a society. That tells me all I need to know.
Too much hysteria has been made of the far right, who rely on the far left to treat them like shit for their support, which is meagre as hell now and would be nonexistent without Antifa and the mass censorship happening in far left silicon Valley social media companies. The vast majority of everything I've seen called racist for several years now hasn't been racist at all, meanwhile actual racism has been given a free pass so long as it isn't white people doing it. Racism is the practice of dealing with people and judging them based on their racial group, rather than on who they are as individuals. Doesn't matter if you descriminate against whites or any other race, or descriminate in favour of whites or any other race, it is racism. Its a simple, universal principle that is not followed by the mainstream left or the far right.
Regulation is a good idea, that's why our western nations do it. I mean there's plenty to improve, b
Here's the thing about socilism being used as part of a specrtum though, Capitalism is the same.
pure, unregulated capitalism is ultimately a system in which a market is created (or in the minds of those who most adhere to it, 'happens', as they presume it to be a quasi natural force) and is adhered to above all. Like socialism it is an irrational and illogical 'ism' point on a spectrum rather than any sort of stable notion or even rational ideology.
This is why every functional society is a hybrid, and why ultimately concepts like nationalism are doomed. Because nationalism depends on creating a stable identity or 'baseline' in order to define what an otherwise irrational and vague concept is in concrete terms.
This is why I am ultimately a technocrat, or a Technocratic Socialist to be specific, and why I feel the concept of nations is going to die one way or another in our lifetimes, if climate change or nuclear war don't do away with us first.
The problem is that many nations, especially in the 'west', still have the DNA of Rome in them, and Rome would be the most pants on head empire to ever exist if it weren't for the fact that they considered pants the garments of barbarians. Nationalism, Kleptocracy, unwarranted self esteem and pride, a policy built around re-attributing the works of others to themselves and enforcing false narratives via dogma. Which is all ultimately the agenda of the far right in many nations.
That's why I brought up anti-intellecutalism, and why I talk about the need for hybridization. Thanks to european colonialism the seeds of Romes very specific brand of xenophobia are tied up in many nations right now, and really need to be exponged. The problem is that such systems are based heavily on anti-intellectualism and catharsis-seeking. Hence why so many people here in the US live in third-world-comparable conditions yet blame 'the liberals' or 'brown people' for their position rather than broken systems.
The far left overall has its problems, though the current far left in the 'west' is largely and in many places more middle-left of where humanity needs to be due to the near cyberpunk levels of corporatist pushback. but the biggest issue with the far right in the 'western' world right now is that it's still fixated on catharsis, and on making reality fit comfortable preconceptions rahter than the other way around. Not a problem exclusive to that point on the map, but one heavily re-enforced by cold war era misinformation and the DNA of imperialism
Which is why it's so anathema to things like human rights, as such mentality depends on xenophobia to function. And why you can't really divorce human rights advocacy or such from being more on the 'socialist' end of the spectrum. Just as you can't fully divorce markets (which are a useful tool) From the capitalist side of the spectrum. Obviously you can push the obliteration of 'self' too far. But by that same token you can push the damnation of social structure too far as well. And even then authoritarianism and anarchism are two different bullet points on the map, and not the only ones we graph to.
Here's the thing about socilism being used as part of a specrtum though, Capitalism is the same. pu
Nations are required to have a government, for governments are funded by and represent a taxpaying public. Government administration is necessary to have a law that is enforceable and law is needed so we have a framework around which we conduct business and relate to eachother, knowing what the rules are. Globalism is not an inevitability, but rather a concept of an all-encompassing empire with one government. Nations must be protected as a concept and a reality if we want representative government to be a possibility, if we want to have laws the public can influence, if we want any kind of legal accountability. Technocratic socialism lol, the brands of this stuff are bloody limitless, it seems.
Economies evolve, so with technology pushing us towards more and more jobs being lost to automation, it doesnt actually hail the end of labour. Take the Internet as an innovation, it has led to many older jobs being lost but it has also created uncountable new enterprises and niches in which one can specialise/occupy. It is simply mistaken to say that one particular road is the future and no others. We need nations, nationalism is a good thing. In moderation.
You are correct that we live in hybrid societies, but socialism isn't part of it. Public ownership of the means of production is not part of our Western nations. Unbridled capitalism is obviously undesirable. It is the best foundation for an economy, but a society isn't just an economy, it is people, so we have ethical and social concerns. Collectivist systems of ethics and social planning are vastly inferior to individualist ones, a fact observed when surveying the nations of the world and the conditions within them.
So the optimal foundation upon which we continue to make improvements to societies is a capitalist economy with enlightenment, individualist values. Rooting for a different system, flipping the table to restructure society along the lines of another ideology, is the most idiotic and harmful thing one can do.
Nations are required to have a government, for governments are funded by and represent a taxpaying p
But see that's the problem. "Capitalism' despite the meaning having been blurred is an absolute point on a spectrum. One wherein the market takes priority over all and the presumption is that the markets 'naturally' sustain themselves.
If we are going to be absolutist about socialism as one specific thing (which is its own debate) Then we likewise have to do the same about capitalism.
Unions, public works and services, all of that falls into the socialist area of the spectrum. And as you have said, such protections are vital for a stable society.
But see that's the problem. "Capitalism' despite the meaning having been blurred is an absolute poin
An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
That's what we have in the west. There's a lot of nuance built on top of this, but capitalism is still the kinds of economies the western nations have. They don't have socialist economies. Capitalism with regulation is capitalism with regulation, not capitalism with some socialism. The two economic philosophies are completely opposed. The government performing public works, responsible for a negotiable degree of public responsibility is something that predates socialism, it isn't socialist in itself.
Nah, not true. Capitalism: An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry
Saying it's 'what we have in the west' is a bit disingenuous, simply because 'the west' covers a good deal of ground and many nations have drastically different takes. Nor is the 'west' the only section of humanity to do so.
After all, Turkey, many slavic nations and many nordic nations are all considered 'western'. Each of these nations have a very different established point on the socio-economic grid in terms of perspective and behavior. The only link to 'capitalism' in any that has a common point being that they have markets, but communist russia also had markets to a point. yet they were not capitalist.
A market economy can absolutely exist along side socialism, and vise versa. In fact they must. A standing military, for example, is a socialist institution by nature. The state holding a monopoly or key point on military power. Same with police, with standardized/single payer health care, and so on.
That's why it's vital to differentiate a 'market' economy from a 'capitalist' economy. Because all nations, 'western' or otherwise, use some form of market. Even communist China which in many ways has long since abandoned communism in most forms and uses the term only to hold up an authoritarian shell.
Saying it's 'what we have in the west' is a bit disingenuous, simply because 'the west' covers a goo
Standing militaries, police etc aren't socialist in nature, they predate socialism. Anyway, this is all going far beyond the point being made in the cartoon. The point of it is to repudiate people promoting ideological overhauls of the most successful nations on the planet. Whether its socialism, communism, some variety of anarchism, fascism or theocracy, they're all complete shit.
Standing militaries, police etc aren't socialist in nature, they predate socialism. Anyway, this is
Well in temrs of socialism as a unified concept, yeah. but then markets predate capitalism as such a concept as well.
As for the point, well, all I can really say is that I oppose anti-intellectualism. I think the goal of a society is to keep people safe and ensure that the barriers are in place to allow a large amount of latitude with regards to personal freedom without people easily stumbling in to the worst possible fates or scenarios. I also feel our concepts and metrics for 'success' need a random overhaul since many nations rotting at their cores are still seen as 'successful'. My own very much being exhibit A.
Well in temrs of socialism as a unified concept, yeah. but then markets predate capitalism as such a
Empirical data should guide all policy, indeed. There is much to be said for the cultural decay of successful countries, since we are in a cultural crisis. That's something I intend to do a lot more cartoons about XP. I think one of the consequences of this cultural upheaval is the seeking of radical alternatives in political philosophy, so this cartoon is about that specifically. When people feel lost, disaffected and purposeless one can certainly empathise, but it is also a point at which people can be extremely dangerous by way of extreme vulnerability to terrible ideas. The political philosophies that turned the early and mid 20th century into a typhoon of destruction and death are things being courted today like a twisted love affair.
Empirical data should guide all policy, indeed. There is much to be said for the cultural decay of s
The thing is, I can agree, in particular because the 80s were a redux of the gilded age, as were the 90s to an extent. An attempt at ravenous unregulated capitalism and disregard for cause and effect be it social or enviornmental leaving countless people broke, poisoned, hopeless, and seeking some alternative. Because the late 19th and early 20th century were in their own rights nightmares for all but the very wealthy.
So now you have a ton of below 40 people who are watching the world literally die out from under them, who see massive wage inequity, crumbling regulations, attempts to chip away at hard won civil rights and other horrors while feeling ultimately powerless to do anything about it. They thus hop on a larger 'communist' bandwagon or pick up the flag of socialism without understanding any deeper political theory. Which is problematic because both the early Russian Communists and the Nazis co-opted those terms and to a point those ideas before the USSR filtered them out and fell to stalanism while Hitler... just kinda said gotcha and killed any of his socialist supporters. Including his top enforcer who happened to be gay.
And it's all born from the same things. Hopelessness, a lack of agency, or a lack of feeling agency, death anxiety. People act irrationally for the sake of acting quickly because many of these problems feel so huge and overwhelming it's almost impossible to see how they could be fixed. People in my nation, for example, either lean ever more heavily to the right and at times fall into the trap of demonizing those who demonize them, or they end up on the side of the GOP and promoting people like Turmp because they think that it will fix economic problems to just carry out simple, if ineffective, solutions.
But appeasement to the wealhty does not euate to paying the poor and middle class a living wage. Cutting enviornmental regulations to draw in buisness doens't help any if the regulations cut see places like Flint poisoned. I'm a Michigander, and it kills me to see so many of my loved ones who voted republican thinking that the auto plants would open up again and hte jobs would come back... and they just won't. Automation killed flint. It killed Bay City. It killed Benton Harbor and half the suburbs of detroit and all sorts of places all over the mitten.
They were great jobs, but they were great jobs in large part due to the auto union, and places like GM have realized they can ship things off to Mexico or anit-union states, exploit workers, and make things cheaper meaning those jobs are no longer waht they once were anyways. Not to mention that automation just cuts down on jobs, and will continue to do so as we advance.
But people want hope They want a clear enemy they can fight and they want a situation they can 'win'. It's why, for example, so much vitriol hits those fleeing up here from Centeral and South America but almost none of it goes to the people who hire such people for ridiculously low wages. these are not people seeking to leech our crumbling social programs. These are people fleeing because the Chiuita banana people have hired troops to go around Columbia and treat the locals like shit so that they can get fruit on the cheap. Pushing people off their land and kneecapping resource access.
Don't even get me started on Nestle.
(continued)
The thing is, I can agree, in particular because the 80s were a redux of the gilded age, as were the
But people don't see that, because it's easier to see them as a different 'tribe'. To simply assume some sort of harmful or malicious intent. Because it puts a face on things. Because 'if this other person is responsible for the bad things happening, then I can stop them'. Be it fear of migrants or the LGBT community being blamed for Aids rather than the Reagan admin who refused to do their job and even tried to silence Coolage when he did what he was appointed to do, or even just petty gang or inter-town spats.
We could all die at any minute. A gamma burst. Yellowstone could go up. some Anti-vaxxer could end up having a kid who causes a superbug the likes of which you'd see in 'the stand'. Not to mention the number of ways each one of us could die from just simple biological malfunction. It's something people generally don't think about. You have no control over life and everyone/everything can be lost in an instant. Having a tangible foe or even an ideological one helps distract from that. Hence why people are so eager to jump on it. Many failing to realize that once said foe is gone, you've still got the death anxiety hanging around and will need to assign the fears to a new face. There is always another 'other' out there, one ignored in the heat of the moment because there was a 'bigger' common foe. Even if it's some harmless, helpless latino family running from rapist drug pushers.
But people don't see that, because it's easier to see them as a different 'tribe'. To simply assume
Much of what you said there is overblown and goes counter to the data. Particularly the world dying from under people. This vision of the developed world being so bad is unhinged because it isn't balanced by viewing the rest of the world and the past. People who think life is hell now would be thought affluent, rich, compared to our ancestors. I don't buy the bleak picture of a poisoned, corrupted, crumbling world. That's not what I see around me or what the data suggests. We have problems out the arse, there's no doubting that, but holy shit look at the abject wretchedness of life in generations gone by, with humanity still soldiering through it, wading hip-deep in shit and violence. Human beings have never lived in a more peaceful world than the one we live in today. Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature is a hefty tome which goes to great length to illustrate this.
I reject nihilism, for it repudiates the sheer magnitude of man's fortitude and achievement, of his love, passion and strife. I reject the mentality which seeks impending cataclysm as a defining feature of life. Of course, it does pay to be mindful of potential catastrophe, to attempt to mitigate or prevent it, but living under its constant shadow is wretched and base. I am writing heavily in rhetoric here, sure, but to see the world as dying and our civilisations crumbling is hyperbole.
Much of what you said there is overblown and goes counter to the data. Particularly the world dying
Well it depends on what data you're referring to. Mass extinction of many species, the risks of continued ice cap loss and many other enviornmental hazards due to lax regulation and over consumption are very much backed by scientific research. Islands, especially the British Isles, stand a particular risk of massive, drastic weather shifts due to coral reef erosion shifting or obliterating the gulf stream.
This is all documented fact, and I'd be happy to give you some sources if you'd like. But sufficed to say the scientific consensus is that it may already be too late. But even if not, we have to take massive shifts and will need to make massive adjustments in the coming years to adapt.
I mean if you wish to reject a nhilistic or fatalistic view, then that's absolutely your prerogative. But the reality stands that we are facing massive long term issues based on the evidence at hand. A genuine climate shift could see us lose large swaths of farmable land, heavy ecosystem disruption could deal devastating blows to farming and ranching, possibly wiping out a heavy amount of access to meat, dairy and fresh vegetables. From a pure logistical standpoint food production could become very strained in the very near future and in many places we have no plan B to adapt for it. never mind the infrastructure damage and other risks that could arise from extreme weather phenomena.
If you wish to take pride in mans accomplishments then that is, naturally, your choice to make. I genuinely mean that. While obviously fatalistic myself I don't wish to drag anyone into that world any farther than I think they must to try and fix things. But even ignoring other socio-political problems the raw science at hand and the larger consensus is that we're on the cusp of having a very bad time as a species.
I hate to say it, but you might want to look into moving to the continent in the coming years. Preferably rather far inland.
Well it depends on what data you're referring to. Mass extinction of many species, the risks of cont
I'm well aware of the climate change issues, I'm just not very worried by them. Accelerated changes that have happened again and again throughout our planet's ecological history. Of course, ideally, we be wise to do what we can to slow it down, but most of the biggest polluters are developing countries and I don't see them becoming green energy worshippers any time soon. It isn't the end of the world, it's a big shift in nature, one nature, and ourselves, must adapt to. Lack of awareness of what's going to happen isn't my problem, I've found potholer54 to be amazing on youtube for showing all the data in the research papers. I agree with those findings. I just don't worry about it.
I'm well aware of the climate change issues, I'm just not very worried by them. Accelerated changes
The pollution aspect has... many more problems than that, and much of the issue with development causing large amounts of pollution is due to a lack of international support and scientific refinement in our systems due to it not being as 'cost effective'
But regardless, what we are seeing now is not naturally paced. Not at all. It's hard to put an exact amount on how much it has shifted but the factors at play here could see an extinction level event for most species on this planet. Something which if we survive it could take centuries or more for us to properly adapt to accommodate.
To be frank, it very well could be the end of our species. We have a better chance than most, but the resultant food and fresh water shortages that would likely come early from such a drastic shift may well also lead us into wars due to the fact that we haven't gotten over this silly tribalism kick of ours.
And that's just one of the many things that put so many people on edge and leave them feeling justifiably hopeless.
The pollution aspect has... many more problems than that, and much of the issue with development cau
Nah, it isn't going to cause that much damage, I haven't seen anything that would indicate such catastrophic changes. It wont be a picnic but we aren't talking the end of humanity.
Nah, it isn't going to cause that much damage, I haven't seen anything that would indicate such cata
Well, I hope you're right. Still woudln't rule out making your way to Spain or Italy though in the near future. I'd say Greece but I don't know that the Islands will be around too long and that could make it far more complicated once sea levels start shifting.
The point is, though, that things like poverty, a lack of market regulation, people constantly seeking to strip rights from them, the impending heavy impact of climate change and many other factors have people understandably on edge. They see a society which has genuinely fucked them over and are thus very receptive to hearing out alternatives.
The only way to fix these kinds of issues in people is to honestly examine the root causes of such major dissent and anxiety, then come up with systemic and technical solutions. Until you do most people ware more than willing to pick what looks like the optimal solution in the moment rather than sitting down and taking a long term view.
Well, I hope you're right. Still woudln't rule out making your way to Spain or Italy though in the n
"If we are going to be absolutist about socialism as one specific thing (which is its own debate) Then we likewise have to do the same about capitalism."
Yeah, but... you're arguing that socialism being JUST this one bad thing is a debate... while calling for declaring capitalism as JUST one bad thing.
Pick one. If any political ideology or system can be declared a singular point on a spectrum, then you can't dismiss someone else doing the same to one you think isn't. The point has to be argued both ways. You can't declare one to be a singular bad thing while dismissing someone else doing the same about yours JUST for their declaration that it's a point on a spectrum when that's what you're doing, too.
My personal opinion is that NONE of these systems works as a sole, unimpeded approach. ANY form of government whatsoever invariably involves taking some amount of wealth from the people, to fund public works and programs that benefit the society as a whole. So, arguably, there's no escaping at least some amount of some form of socialism. At the same time though, just because UNREGULATED capitalism and the completely unchecked pursuit of nothing but money by the people who already have all of it is undeniably not acceptable - that doesn't mean that an efficiently and sensibly regulated but MOSTLY free market form of capitalism is worth throwing out as well.
In a world full of different ideas of how this shit can work - you look at what has been the primary core of what has worked better than anything else - and you get the capitalist model of the Western World. It's not the foundation of capitalism that is an inescapable flawed idea - it's that recent generations have gutted the requisite regulations and principles that were formerly in place that made it the successful model it was.
The present-day argument of capitalism vs socialism is an argument between a flawed system that has been implemented to great success (but still has PLENTY of room for improvement) that has become less successful because of removal of regulations necessary for it to work right - versus a system that SOUNDS nice but HAS NOT EVER been implemented in any way with anything less than disastrous results.
The present-day primarily scandinavian countries that get lauded as examples of socialism working ARE NOT SOCIALIST. They're still capitalism-based systems, that just haven't allowed the bad deregulation that America has suffered AND they have more fully embraced socially-conscious programs that still are not simply "socialism." They don't work better than America in the ways people declare them better because they've gotten rid of capitalism. They work better because they've PRESERVED the most functional forms of capitalism in ways that America has failed to do so - which is also the only reason why they can AFFORD to also have the more socialism-ish programs that proponents of socialism somehow think America can implement WITHOUT capitalism to feed the programs money.
"If we are going to be absolutist about socialism as one specific thing (which is its own debate) Th
That's ultimately kind of my point. Socialism and capitalism are at best points on a graph, and really a more utilitarian view is vital to building better systems. treating it as a matter of engineering rather than anything based around ideology.
As far as I can see, however, a big part of the problem boils down to a combination of cold war ideology we can't seem to kill and the fact that people refuse to see society building based around components. Likewise they attach to ideals to the point where they may ignore the inhernet problems and refuse to take parts from the 'opposite side' to fix them.
I classify myself as a 'Technocratic socialist' because I feel things like a living minimum wage, a specific set of essential public works and services, unions or otehr worker-protection sytsems and so on are all vital to a functional normal society. And due to the nature of socialism as an ideology forming into what it is now during the gilded age, that puts me into such a camp. But I can agree that divorcing these ideas from the ideologies would be a good thing. However that also means divorcing markets from capitalism, as the idea of relying heavily on man made markets as if they are a force of nature moves to the point of being irrational. Since all are tools operating on human rules and easily manipulated.
That's ultimately kind of my point. Socialism and capitalism are at best points on a graph, and real
No system yet enacted by humans has NOT been a combination of various components associated with conflicting ideologies. No form of civilization where contributions from the populace fund works beneficial to the whole has existed that wasn't some part socialist. No form of civilization where people exchange goods, currency, services, etc, has ever existed that wasn't some part capitalist. Step 1 is people getting over the idea that any system has ever failed to be some combination of these ideologies
That doesn't mean that any system has ever been an even split balance between ideologies, or that we can ignore the results depending on which ideology is enacted as the primary focus over others.
REGULATED Capitalism as the primary component is what resulted in the system responsible for the most growth and advancement seen in human history, and the very advent of modern industry and technology, AS WELL AS the forefront of advancements in social and civil rights reforms.
Socialism has not been put in practice as the primary component EVER without immediately becoming the kind of civil rights and personal liberties disasters like Russia and China. "Well, they're not doing it right" is a common non-argument because the arguments AGAINST socialism are mainly based on the inescapable reality that the inherent flaws with socialism inevitably lead to the corruption and misuse that then winds up looking like Russia and China. "Nobody has done socialism right yet" is because it CAN'T be done and NOT turn out that way.
People point to Scandinavian countries as shining examples of socialism - but they aren't. They're still primarily capitalist-based economic systems, but those countries have enforced significantly more socialist programs than most western nations - to mixed results. Meaning, SOME social programs have been demonstrably beneficial and good, while others have caused more problems than they solved. It would be nice if we could dispassionately examine them and filter the good ones from the bad, and convince advocates of capitalism to put in place programs that may appear to be socialism, but when properly controlled are functional and beneficial - but to do so would require advocates for socialism to ALSO be able to acknowledge and let go of programs that SOUND nice and fluffy and good and rainbowhappysunshineclouds to the poor poor peoples - but observably cannot be implemented in sustainable and functional ways that don't do more harm than good.
Without either extreme generally being able to budge on the flaws of their preferred system, the end result remains that capitalism - even in its current far-too-deregulated state, where it's NOT as optimized as it had been in previous generations - is still churning out a society and standards that are far above ANY known implementation of Socialism as the primary objective. So while the reality definitely IS that a more ideal system is a more regulated form of capitalism with more implementation of generally socialist programs - with neither side willing to settle for a compromise, and we can only have one extreme or the other - socialism is still the worst fucking option of the two.
However people want to shit on America right now, the reality is that until very recently, this country was at the forefront in advancements in science, medicine, technology, AND social reform and advancements in civil rights and all valid forms of equality. The fact that we still have a long way to go, or that we haven't had a complete monopoly on being first on everything every time does not mean we haven't still been the pioneers of the entire planet in most of these arenas, more than a whole lot of other countries out there.
Capitalism has caused less direct harm than socialism. In any either/or discussion; capitalism wins. Period.
So the best thing proponents of socialism could do is accept that it's best as a secondary component, and stop trying to denounce capitalism entirely.
No system yet enacted by humans has NOT been a combination of various components associated with con
A market economy is not the same as 'capitalism' even if the two are constantly confused. A regulated market economy can be a very useful tool. Provided it's properly regulated. That's not what the US has. At all.
I want to put aside talk about the past of the US, because even if it was anywhere near what the claims of our former glories really were, the systems that supposedly built those glories broke down long ago. Assuming it ever worked to begin with. Which, in truth, it really didn't. The best economic times for the US involved capitalizing on boom tech fro a post war rush along with heavy wealth regulation to ensure a fair wage for everyone as the tail end of the new deal kept people afloat. it wasn't until the 60s and 70s with the panic over automation and steady erosion of worker rights, union busting and the like that we saw the US starting to backslide. Something that the 80s and 90s kind of covered with paper games but in reality did nothing to fix. Hence why we're in the dirt now.
By contrast, netiher china nor Russia is/was a socialist economy any more than the US. Not really, at any rate. There were small jabs at it, but the truth is that it was largely oligarchal. Much like the US. Hence why it collapsed in on itself, much as we are about to do.
One of the greatest constants in history is that if you screw the people over long enough, your society is going to collapse. The worse you do it and the longer you do it the worse the inevitable collapse will be. Pre-revolution Russia is actually a prime example of this, and the extremist ideoogies which ended up taking hold in the wake of that revolution are present and growing in the US now specifically because so many people are damned to poverty and see their lives getting worse for the sake of profits. the system as it stands now has maybe ten more years in it if we are being generous. it does not work. Unregulated or lightly regulated capitalism does not work. Corporatism does not work. Sending our army in to secure oil for us does not work. Letting companies like Chiquita send mercs in to Columbia to harass the locals then treating them like shit when they inevitably flee here does not work.
I play Shadowrun. one of my fave pen and paper games. We live in a nation and a world which is now outdoing just about every parody that a cyberpunk setting can come up with of corp-based overreach. Why? Because 'capitalism'. because people take a man made on paper system for storing the concept of wealth and turn it into a religion. Then refuse to fix it when people abuse that system and damn others to death or suffering because of a cult like worship of it.
it's arguable if our nation was ever great. But it's not now. At all. It's about to die. The question is how to stop it, or if we can't what happens after. But one thing is for sure, if you want to stem other extreme ideologies the only way is to admit and fix the heavy flaws in what we have now. Because right now the idea of everyone owning everything and trying for a utopian ideal looks really good to the massive hunk of the population who can't even go in to get checked out for possibly fatal illnesses because they'd end up starving
A standing military is socialism. public works are socialism. Regulation is socialism. A market e
Pick a point in history more than a hundred years back.
Tell me which nation on the planet was less hostile to ethnicities, religions, and general systems of beliefs or ideologies different from the most prominent majority of its population than the US was at that time.
Which nation had a more diverse population - diverse in race, religion, beliefs, values - than America at any point in history since this country was a thing.
There's no arguing that America has ever been perfect, or has ever been absent a large amount of suck. The argument is that MOST of the world has generally - up until fairly recently - managed to exceed even america in terms of suck.
There were certainly ethnically homogenous nations of the world that at one point or another was less suck for their own people than america may have been - but name for me one of those nations that was more welcoming (with less forced assimilation) immigration from other races, ethnicities, religions, cultures, etc.
I am legitimately asking, because as far as I am aware, that's a difficult question to answer - but I very much want to be educated if answers exist that I have yet to be made aware of.
I am against corporatism, I'm against unregulated or only lightly regulated capitalism, but no, you're wrong, what america had when it WAS working most ideally WAS a very strongly regulated capitalism.
"Everyone owning everything" is a fucking fairy tale. A pleasant lie sold to children like santa claus.
Here's why "the people own the means of production" can never work without grave injustice. It's really simple.
I'm an artist. I own the means of production of my own product. Let's imagine a world where I am significantly more talented than I am, and I grow my personal product and business to a point where I can hire people to help me in making what I produce. Now, in our real world, I own my company, and people I pay to work for me do not control what my company can or can't do. So I have the freedom to choose what my company does, what I produce, and what direction the company founded on my product goes in. People I offer employment to have the freedom to choose to help me in my aims - or decline the offer of employment. I am not entitled to their labor, they are not entitled to being employed by me. My company can succeed or fail depending on the good or bad decisions I make for it. Employees can choose to stick with me or bail out at any point. The company can grow to produce things far beyond what I or any of my employees could ever do without the joint efforts of however many people the company grows to employ.
In a world where "the people own the means of production," the moment I seek to hire others to help me grow MY product - it becomes equally theirs. They own it. Every person owns an equal share of controlling interest in the company that only exists because I started it. Every new employee is one new voice at the table with an equal vote on every decision to be made.
You HAVE to be painfully naive or outright stupid to think there's any real possibility of growth or forward movement whatsoever when every new individual employee is one more equal voice in every decision to be made. It also means why in the FUCK would I even want to try to make a company at all when it immediately takes away from me my ownership of MY product and creation. In that scenario, I am better served by simply doing the most that I can do for myself by myself, and making do with that.
And so would be everyone else.
The store can't have a sale on X product because the employees don't agree that they should.
The movie can't cast ANY actor because some number of camera crew have one objection or another to every possible choice.
NOTHING WORKS without having decisions made by a small enough number of people that decisions are even possible.
So what does "everyone owns everything" even MEAN if every individual's "ownership" does not grant them an equal say in decisions?
Pick a point in history more than a hundred years back. Tell me which nation on the planet was les
Well I have PLENTY to choose from, but I think I'mma go with the Celts, because they are one of my faves. In fact MOST cultures before Rome were pretty damn cool with that sort of thing and even Rome was pretty ok with race and was more xenophobic with regards to anyone who couldn't pay to be a citizen. Which is sad since Rome screwed people over so heavily.
As I said I have plenty of other options to choose from. Everything from more ancient ones like Egypt to more modern ones like 19th century france (the small jab in Django unchianed about Dumas was particularly chuckle worthy to me). The US is still doing horribly when it comes to minorities of all sorts and stripe.
As for the discussion of creativity? Well if you make eveyrone equal on everything, yeah that might kneecap it. But you know what is kneecaping it now? What we have. We have a system where the Steve Jobs' of the world are lauded and the Steve Wozniak's of the world almost forgotten.You are addressing one extreme, but we are living another.
Unregulated markets, I.E. Capitalism, leads to corporatism. When you give society as a whole over to a very fucked up and very boring game of D&D, the people who can manpiulate the rules of the game will always win and they will always exploit the creatives. Not allow said creatives to join them. And the thing is, a creative will always create. I don't do commissions for my writing. Mainly because I suck too much. But I still write, and when I have writers block as I do now I still suffer. If you gave me enough money that I NEVER had to worry about it again. I could get my mom set for life, had reliable medical care, ALL of that... I'd still create.and the idea that money 'drives' it is just absurd to me. But even if it does for some people it does not matter. Because unless a system has unions or other protections for workers, then the creatives will just be exploited. Perhaps better treated than others but exploited all the same.
Again, capitalism and a market economy are not inherently the same thing. so if you want to keep one, that's more than doable. It is a useful tool. But having a society driven by profit does not work. making it so the only metric of a society 'moving forwards' are corp profit margins does not work. And to be frank, if a society cannot properly care for the least among its members, it has no real right to exist. And our society is failing horribly at that. Massive swaths of our nation are third world equivalent both urban and rural. Health care is so bad I've heard youtubers from Serbia cracking joeks about it because theirs is generally better. The cost of living VS minimum wage increase has become the kind of parody where I'm almost afraid to write far future cyberpunk because in a setting where citizens are literally legally less human if htey are poor, being a class 3 citizen of a major corp in my setting still sometimes ends up being better than being poor in real life. And that isn't me bragging, that's me being horrified.
The US is not moving forward. It's falling, and it's falling in the same way teh Roman empire fell. We have the means to stop it, but to do so we have to kill off alot of things people consider 'core' to the American ideal. The 'American dream', the idea of feeding this grass is always greener bullshit? It has to go. teach people how to be content with hbeing stable. That hoarding more and better won't bring you joy or peace. End the pointless social competition and help people come ot terms with what matters in life. Likewise anything close to exceptionalism or Ayn Rand's bullshit needs to go out a window. The idea that poverty is a 'choice' or somehow makes a person inherently 'lesser' is a particularly horrific joke. As is the inverse where people claim that one makes money though skill and effort. They almost never do. It's done though exploitation and connections.
More than a hundred years back? Well I have PLENTY to choose from, but I think I'mma go with the Ce
We need to get over the idea of what America supposedly was and stop resting on our laurels if we want to survive. Plain and simple. We don't have a choice in that regard. Part of that means that we stop deifying and fetishizing the wealthy and instead hold them to the fire. Take them to task for what they have done and accept that while some inequity is inevitable the goal of society should be to prop up even the least among them to some kind of livable standard.Not feed the social Darwinism fetish of people who are just barely scraping by and want to have a baseline of suffering people to compare themselves to.
We need to get over the idea of what America supposedly was and stop resting on our laurels if we wa
That vision of what society is, which you lay out here, isn't true. It is a partial truth. The poor today live better lives than what was poor a few decades ago. Poverty isn't simply a fixed state but something that is comparative, relative. When one looks at household income data, the top 20% of incomes mostly consist of people over 50. They have worked hard, built and saved, for a few decades, which is why they are wealthy. One can criticise, rightly, deficiencies in social mobility. If ones goal is to push for equal opportunities I'm right behind you, but not equal outcomes. One must always account for the effort people make in their lives, what they want and what they do to achieve it. Some people stay in remedial, simple jobs because that's actually what they want; the pay is lukewarm or crappy, but you also don't have any serious responsibilities. You just show up to work, do what you're used to doing and get paid. My father is one such person, he still has a low-income job despite being 57 because that's what he wants to do.
It has never been the case that people are comfortable in their 20s, because they've barely been working and only just started building themselves up, yet this is the age where there is so much disappointment with where they are in life. Can we improve? Of course, which is why that has been happening decade by decade, and may the trend continue I say. Socialism, collectivism in general, will not improve things at all. It will make them worse, because it always has. There are certain circumstances that are exceptions, where a person can't make their way in the world, like being disabled; for such circumstances we certainly need safety nets, so people aren't left to starve or have lives of abject deprivation. Life gains its meaning from what we work for, what we make, not what we are given. I'm disabled and I've had to be on the UK equivalent of welfare for many years, it sucks ass. Don't get me wrong, it'd be a lot worse without it, but it brings ones soul no solace or contentment to be the recipient of handouts. If I hadn't learned to draw and gain a skill I'd have very little to be proud of, but because I have done that and am now rather decent at it, I can be proud of something and it lifts me out of the darkest places.
Hope, love, aiming at happiness, these things aren't given but built, so one must beware of the double edge that is giving gifts. If you always do things for a friend, for example, always give but never let them give to you, it fosters resentment rather than respect and gratitude. Our relationships have to be reciprocal to be sustainable and pleasant, so it is also for living life. We appreciate far more the things we give to the world than the things we gain from it, because it feels so wonderful to be of use.
That vision of what society is, which you lay out here, isn't true. It is a partial truth. The poor
I'm sorry but 'the poor today live better' isn't really a valid argument. Because in some ways they do, and in some ways they don't. But the fact that they live worse relative to everyone else is also a major problem.
"King Richard never had a microwave' is not valid justification for permitting rampant poverty. Or worse, the continued decay of rights and freedoms of the lower classes. It's just shallow whataboutism. The reality is that society needs to keep some level of stability for even the poorest among them. Ideally such a society has a living wage (as many nations do) In order to actually help ensure such people are contributing members OF that society. Because if a person is able to do more than simply subsist on their pay check it in fact helps any market economy. But there are in fact no real benefits to keeping the common man, or even a segment of the common man if you wish to argue that way, mired in abject poverty.
Hell that was the very idea behind the new deal. To eliminate such things after they had brought about the great depression. And it worked. It worked very well, and continued to work with only the greed of wealthy people eroding at the edges of said deal hampering it. Now that's not me defending the US in the 50s. But that seems to be the gold standard for most people advocating corporate power or keeping this 'status quo.' And despite the propaganda being fed to the masses the actual landscape looked far more like what I'm describing than what people pretend it was.
Nothing is stopping a society aligned with what I am describing save the greed of a few who sadly have power due to broken systems, and the inexplicable defense they get by a few people who seem to favor the broken systems we see now. No it's not perfect. Nothing is. But there is no reason to treat suffering in abject poverty as a given. Nor does it have any beneficial outcome save that it gives some people a chance to look down on others and lets the already obscenely wealthy hoard even more wealth they don't need.
So really the only 'cost' to what I'm advocating is a few lower-to-mid middle class people having to grow the fuck up a bit and Bezos having to buy a slightly smaller yacht to park in his bigger yacht. that's pretty damn doable.
I'm sorry but 'the poor today live better' isn't really a valid argument. Because in some ways they
The problem there is that if you took all of the money, just hypothetically, all of the money of the very richest people, it would be a drop in the bucket. There's also the fact that the richest people aren't given that money, they have to earn it. You can't just sit on your ass as a greedy person and get rich, you have to be really, really fucking driven. If someone manages to offer something so valued that people purchase their services, decides to invest in them or buy their products, they will prosper from that. It isn't some asshole greedy filth lording it over a giant mountain of gold like Scrooge McDuck in Ducktales. If someone is earning, say, a billion dollars a year and you take half of that as taxes to redistribute, how much does that benefit society? 500 million dollars in a population of over 300 million people? It's fuck all mate. If you DO take that money from the billionaire, you've stolen what he earned and he fucks off to do business somewhere else where he can actually keep more of what he worked for, meaning he takes all those jobs with him. You're acting like the rich are drains on society but they aren't a monarchy or an aristocracy, they don't get paid as lords of distinction. Don't get me wrong, there is still such a thing as abuse, so I'm in favour of regulating large companies so they can't take the piss, but this view of the rich as resembling the pigs in Animal Farm is seriously a grotesque and unfair caricature.
The problem there is that if you took all of the money, just hypothetically, all of the money of the
Uh, it'd be WAY more than a drop in the bucket. A very small number of people hold the vast bulk of the wealth... and they absolutely did not 'earn' it. Scammed it, sure. Wrung it out of a broken system? Yes. Earned? I'm sorry but nothing you can do 'earns' you billions. To get that you have to fuck with the systems in place and if you can do that the systems are broken. you are presupposing that they deserve this wealth. They do not. If they have workers and those workers do not make enough to live on, then any money these wealthy people have is theft. Plain and simple.
A person needs at least enough to live on. Functionally it would be better for them to have more than that because it would help the economy but at least they should be able to make some kind of life. A job is worth that at least. Period. If a job does not cover the basic biological needs of a human worker, then retool the job so it's 'worth' that or accept that it's 'worth' more than what is being offered.
In reality it's all manipulation. There is no real objective ground point for these jobs. Hell by saying a job should cover the basic cost of living I'm doing what the system fails to do inherently and setting a ground point. However, presupposing that the wealthy have 'earned' their wealth and working backwards from that is just absurd. Not to mention baseless.
Even then, the point of a society should be first and foremost to ensure those who inhabit it have a stable baseline of living. not to perpetuate this petty exploitation. Which is ironic since we see any society which tries to push that kind of elitism to that degree inevitably sees revolution.
Something, I may add, we're close to seeing at least in the US, with a very large and growing number of discontented people ready to throw their lot in with things up to and including communism. Because it genuinely looks far better than what they have to live with.
Really, that's the funny part What i'm proposing would help the wealthy as well, because like it or not the peasants are about to revolt.
Uh, it'd be WAY more than a drop in the bucket. A very small number of people hold the vast bulk of
No, it wouldn't be more than a drop in the bucket. The economic inequality is a very large gap between rich and poor, there's no denying that of course, but it is crucial to be aware of what that gap represents. It isn't like having x amount of food for a village with one house having 90% of it with 10% being shared among the rest, which naturally means 90% of villagers are going to be really hungry. The fact is, in modern economies the majority of people aren't really hungry, or desperate. The income differences are very widely spread. Around 9.15% of people in the USA have an income exceeding $100,000 annually, so lets call them the rich; well the rest of the country's population, the money they have, is immensely higher in total value than all the rich added together. And that's counting way more people as rich than we would if we only cared about millionaires and upwards. If you took all the money from the rich and divvied it up among everyone else, everyone else would get like a few dollars each. It's basically nothing.
Aside from all that, it is not morally defensible to take what people earn because you feel they don't deserve what they've made, with you or someone else deciding a threshold according to your own whims as to what they "deserve". That is a line in the sand I will not move from. One doesn't make money in our societies by doing nothing to earn it, unless one outright robs others, so there is a reason some people are extremely rich. They've added something to society that is extremely valuable. That value isn't just sitting around doing nothing, it's being invested, people are being employed, consumers are receiving a service or good that they want and choose to pay for. Just giving that money away to people who haven't worked for it is unjust, it is not ours to confiscate because we've decided we don't like how the world looks. That's evil and I cannot support it.
I, of course, empathise with you completely about companies taking the piss. Some companies do abuse their workers because they are so disposable, like Amazon being a particularly flagrant example. Public shame via media and online talk makes waves in corporate culture, so that combined with the other things I said in another reply to you (mass migration etc) is an ethically sensible avenue to combat the issue.
So in short, confiscating more wealth from the rich will only give everybody else a few useless dollars and it's morally indefensible from the outset.
No, it wouldn't be more than a drop in the bucket. The economic inequality is a very large gap betwe
I'd still argue that it's far more than a drop in the bucket. But let's say for a moment that it's not.
If the money stolen from workers by refusing to pay them a living wage is more than what the executives are vacuuming up for themselves, then the business is fundamentally broken and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.
I refuse the idea that someone who has a ton of money and who has managed to get it in a way that conforms with the current law of hte land has 'earned' that money. They have acquired it. But that does not mean they SHOULD posess it or that the systems allowing them to gain it shold exist. Or even that what they did to gain it improves society in any way.
The only objective point I see here, the only baseline which is not mired in opinion and philosophy, is that humans have specific baseline biological needs to properly operate. So that is where I start.
They need specific caloric intake. They need specific raw materials. They need sleep. They need medical upkeep. They need shelter from the elements... and while people brush it off they do need some form of even basic psychological stimulation to keep from having serious mental issues that require more repair.
And the thing is you can fairly easily list these needs and plug them in for any given region. Be it state, or county, or whatever. It's painfully simple plug and chug.
A worker needs these things to function, and at present we have a standard 40 hour work week as earned by unions. So hourly net income should at least be the end result of that formula divided by 40. and if a business does not ensure the net income of a worker is at least that, then it is theft. Because they are not providing the baseline resources needed for proper function.
So as far as I am concenred, if that isn't paid, then nothing is 'earned'. And if a company cannot pay that and still exist, then its model is inherently flawed and it needs to end. And if SOCIETY can't sustain based on that ground point, then it needs to be re-engineered.
I don't accept that society does not work in a more reasonably engineered manner simply because it would not provide for the abuses already accepted as normal. Naturally the idea of total and pure equity just won't happen. that's not how humans work. But I am not looking at this trying to make the gear-grinding clusterfuck of what we have now somehow keep on with its same flawed designs while maybe making things a bit better for people. I am saying that our society has an obligation to ensure the stability of people first before they see how far past that ground point they can push. That our society demonstrably does better when that ground point is observed, and that unions are vital to keep abuses of power in check.
I'd still argue that it's far more than a drop in the bucket. But let's say for a moment that it's n
When employers don't pay their employees what you consider to be what they should be paid, they haven't stolen anything. Fuck sake. And if you earn something then yes, you bloody should possess it, because you earned it. People don't work hard to earn things for other people to possess, which I'm sure is how you'd characterise a great deal of employment prospects. When we work for a company, that company isn't stealing our labour, that's what slavery is. If someone doesn't think they're being paid what their work is worth, they can quit, but it's not for anyone to dictate what any particular form of labour is worth, it's a constant negotiation from market forces like supply and demand and negotiations between employers and employees. Unions are one such form of negotiation, in which either side, or both, can be unreasonable in ways too numerous to count. It depends on what the skills of the worker and the role they play bring to the business, how much responsibility their position bestows upon them, how qualified one has to be to do the job and how profitable and useful the job is. One might like to be paid a handsome salary for washing dishes but it's a job almost anybody with basic health can do, so it's not going to be worth much at all. Getting around this isn't possible in some environments, like areas with high populations.
Nothing in this conversation, at the end of the day, is an argument in favour of socialism. Whatever ones prognosis on the state of a western capitalist democracy, socialism always makes countries worse.
When employers don't pay their employees what you consider to be what they should be paid, they have
Except it does not. Standardized health care is a socialist institution. A standing army is a socialist institution. Public roads, schools, creation and enforcement of regulations which save lives and improve society. All falls under the 'socailist' tab just as much as a market economy falls under the 'capitalist' tab. ANd all improve society.
As for underpaying being theft? Of course it is. In fact it's worse. It's extortion as well. Not only is it demanding the use of a persons physical and mental capabilities for personal gain while refusing to give them at least the needed resources (or equivalent) to sustain mind and body, it's doing so under the guise of the person somehow being 'disposable' because they can be fired and replaced. It's playing less than the inescapable minimum needed for functionality and then trying to rationalize it.
By that same token putting a gun to a persons head and demanding they sign their money over to you would be a binding and fair contract, since at that point they have the OPTION to say no.
Except it does not. Standardized health care is a socialist institution. A standing army is a social
There's also the basic fact that in western democracies people aren't starving to death, in fact there are serious health problems due to bloody obesity instead. You're talking about modern western nations like they're comparable to Stalinist Russia. It's 2019 not the Irish potato famine.
There's also the basic fact that in western democracies people aren't starving to death, in fact the
Actually, many people are starving to death. And dying due to easily treatable medical issues. Quite often, in fact. the US is the worst offender seeing people die because they can't afford easily produced meds marked up hundreds of times over. But even just starvation you see people either outright starving or having to skip meals for long periods of time and operate on an unhealthy defect of nutrition just to function. Hell in the US specifically it's estimated almost 12% of households suffer a food defect. With access to food being infrequent and considerable periods without much or any real nutrition.
that's one in ten people, and that's if we ignore the fact that they probably aren't counting homeless. which only around .2% so it's not like we can say 'oh they are all homeless.
I'm sorry but the raw facts are that poverty and starvation are and have been on the rise in the 'west' for quite some time. Especially with the Reagan/Thatcher era kneecapping unions.
Actually, many people are starving to death. And dying due to easily treatable medical issues. Quite
"The people" aren't screwed over in the west simply because your point of comparison is between what exists and what you wish existed in fantasy land. So much has improved with the passage of time and it is never appreciated by people like you because you are fixed on what you wish the world was, a vision that reality has never any chance of measuring up to. It is letting go of these childish visions that is the beginning of the path to adulthood, of being able to actually appreciate things in life. In all my years around socialists there is a constant refrain of a phrase, the status-quo. What is it in real terms? It is dissatisfaction with the present, with a hope for the future, that pretends there is an oppressive state of affairs in which the disenfranchised are perpetually crushed beneath the boot of a ruling elite. In dictatorships, one has a point, but not so in western democracies. Wolfblade above illustrated perfectly why your view of the world is so naive, selfish and inhuman. Seeing achievement, prosperity, property as greed is but a fragment of reality; people build, achieve, nurture and sustain things out of love far more than they do out of greed. The world around us, that we have inherited from the sheer will and effort of our ancestors, is not a thing to be seized and redistributed without earning any of it. That is true selfishness, a theft of others labour is when you collectivise the fruits of it. You don't have a fucking right to it.
"The people" aren't screwed over in the west simply because your point of comparison is between what
If by 'fantasy land' you mean what other nations have demonstrably shown to be doable?
I'm not asking for anything unrealistic here. Hell most of what I'm asking for is proven. A living minimum wage? Well that was the norm when the US was at the height of its economic strength and is a boon to many nations which still have it. Standardized health care? I'm hard pressed to think of any nation beyond the US which lacks it. Proper regulations in both work and environmental policy? Very much doable and the only thing it would really hurt in most cases would be runaway profit margins. An end to companies sending mercs into third world or even just 'weaker' nations to take what they want? Oh no I have to pay an extra buck for bananas. Perish the thought.
You keep framing what I advocate as unrealistic. It's not. It's hard to get since people with a ton of cash are unwilling to let it happen. Hence why you see one of the jokes running on the Democratic presidential ticket shilling for the insurance industry. But from a systemic standpoint most of it is not only reasonable but more logical. It just hurts the sensibilities of people who think Ayn Rand somehow makes for good bedtime stories. And sadly our fucked up systems allowed such people to gain undue wealth and power. usually though means which should be illicit due to their harmful nature.
Ok, I think this is working this time. If by 'fantasy land' you mean what other nations have demons
Wages mean nothing. It is the cost of everything else that we buy that matters. Increasing wages increases the cost of labour, which leads to layoffs, which means higher unemployment, which means fewer people earn a wage to begin with. So demand decreases, which increases the cost of supply, which makes products more expensive, coupled with the cost of the labour to produce it. Which means it becomes harder to afford to live, and inflation of the currency also occurs. So the minimum wage has to go up again. And again. Repeat and rinse.
Looking at this from a purely wages angle is simply shallow and ineffective.
Oh and one question, what makes you say certain people who are huge, wealthy earners, have "undue" wealth and power? What is undue about it?
Try this: Wages mean nothing. It is the cost of everything else that we buy that matters. Increasin
This is presuming the jobs can 'do without' those workers. It may be attempted initially as a bluff, but teh truth is that workers are needed. Vital, in fact. That same mentality you outline was used during many different miner strikes, and in the end the workers won. Because that system relies on us thinking we need the people at the top. We don't. They are as easily replaced, if not more easily replaced, than the common worker and they need the rest of us to make their money.
The threat of layoffs is just a blunt stick to get people working. In scattershot, disorganized, it's nasty because people need to eat. Remove the fear of death, and people quickly stand up to it because they are able to assert how much THEY are needed for the whole scheme to work.
That's why the long work of union busting was so brutal to the rights of workers. Rights that in many cases were won by unions in the first place. And why unions are so vital.
This is presuming the jobs can 'do without' those workers. It may be attempted initially as a bluff,
Sure, labour is needed, but companies push for the bare minimum of labour when the cost of it increases, so people find themselves working harder to make up for the slack when people are laid off. And you have to keep increasing the wages because the moment you create that happy minimum, everything else gets more expensive so you need a new, higher, minimum. It's a whirlpool.
Sure, labour is needed, but companies push for the bare minimum of labour when the cost of it increa
Easy solution, minimum work week, ensure the company HAS to hire more laborers instead of exploiting the ones they have.
There ware options beyond exploitation. companies simply pick exploitation if we allow them. So we don't allow them. This is exactly why unions were created and why they are so vital. Labor is vital, and those who produce it should have advocates. The response to that scenario you described should be "Well no, if you try to pull that crap ALL your labor will walk out and you'll lose money. You need us, treat us with respect."
It works. It's proven to work. And there is no reason it won't work now.
Easy solution, minimum work week, ensure the company HAS to hire more laborers instead of exploiting
Woah, fuck no, can't get behind forcing companies to hire people according to whatever government of the day artificially demands, that's way too far over the line. What is more, that will only lead to making up losses in other areas, such as raising the prices of goods and services. Nobody is in a position, nobody, to start dictating what things ought to be worth, which is a de-facto planned economy. Having governments with that kind of power is a road to hell.
Workers can have power over companies only when the competition for jobs is at a state which permits it. The more people looking for employment, the more replaceable each worker is, which means they are in a losing situation should they be aggrieved by their work conditions and wages. Better conditions for workers is best achieved by reducing that competition. Stops to mass immigration, seriously punishing companies who hire illegal migrants, lower taxes and red tape for small businesses to allow more people to set up shop and have more places people can find work. I'd say that's a better approach, instead of just "well these companies are inconvenient, currently, to my particular goals, so it's time to wield some force". If force is to be used, it should be in the interest of the liberty of citizens and securing their property.
Woah, fuck no, can't get behind forcing companies to hire people according to whatever government of
Sorry, but no. Workers need to have power by default. It's their labor which sees the company work, it's their lives. permitting a state of abuse simply because 'there are not enough jobs to go around' is NOT acceptable. Especially since underpaying and overworking people is a big part of what cases and worsens stagnation in the first place. If those people can't afford to be customers or to buy from people who would be customers then the economy will eventually devour itself.
Workers rights are vital and they are not a point of compromise.
'Reducing competition' is not going to have any impact on that. Mainly because the 'competition' is actually either exploited workers in other nations, or exploited people fleeing to a nation as refugees. In the case of the former, well that's a big and convoluted sea of issues nobody has full answers to beyond encouraging workers in those nations to do likewise and setting international standards for human rights.
But the 'illegals'? Putting aside taht they are a small and shrinking part of the population, at least in the US, the problem is that even if you 'fixed' that you still wouldn't have enough arbitrarily 'worthy' jobs to go around. Even if people prosecuted those who hire illegal immigrants for exploitation wages (and I agree, they should be in prison), that's just a drop in the bucket.
One fifth of the US population is under the poverty line, and growing. Most of those individuals are working poor, I.E. they have jobs but said jobs don't make ends meet. the 'competition' created by freeing up what are probably a few thousand more exploitation wage jobs won't change the dynamic.
To put it simply, we need to figure out the rote necessities for cost of living in an area, add a percentage for tolerance (because that's what you do in Engineering since no system is exact) and slap it in to various areas Make a formula and make that the mandated minimum wage. Then if corps want to pay more, they can, But they can't pull this stupid 'I have a proverbial gun to your head in the form of starvation so suffer and overwork yourself for me while I tell you it's your own fault' bullshit causing our economic decay.
Not only can workers have a say in what happens to them though using their power as a collective, it is the only proven way to get fair and equitable treatment by the owners and managers of a business with any reliable results.
Unions are the reason we no longer see the nightmares of things like child labor and people forced to continue working after injury, and it's something we need to bring back in force
Sorry, but no. Workers need to have power by default. It's their labor which sees the company work,
Workers already have rights and their power is only ever going to be relative to the competition. If you try to force a value of labour in addition to how many workers business owners have to hire, you will wreck the economy.
Workers already have rights and their power is only ever going to be relative to the competition. If
Workers have rights because unions earned them. Those rights are decaying because unions got busted.
And the Economy is already wrecking. We just stupidly measure a few data points that only check how the super wealthy are doing. If an economy or set of economies can't handle paying the workers a fair wage, then it needs to crash and be rebuilt to handle it. Just like with the new deal. Only we still have time to ensure that such a change doesn't cause the same death and suffering it did then by planning ahead and transitioning to what we know works ahead of time rather than suffering for years waiting for someone to point out that workers rights and protections are the key component missing from a functional economy.
Workers have rights because unions earned them. Those rights are decaying because unions got busted.
Unions are composed of human beings the same as corporate boards are, which means they too can be so unreasonable as to jeopardise the futures of businesses and their employees. That isn't an argument against the existence of unions or saying they aren't a good thing, but don't make them the good guys versus the evil business owners, because it never has been like that.
Unions are composed of human beings the same as corporate boards are, which means they too can be so
This is true. The big flaw with society is that right now we don't have an AI to oversee everything and eliminate human stupidity.
But to be frank, I'd lather have one set of scumbags fighting another set of scumbags than just have one of the two sets act as tyrants. No system is perfect, but one is demonstrably more functional.
This is true. The big flaw with society is that right now we don't have an AI to oversee everything
No, that you think conflict is human stupidity. Conflict of interest, values, perspective, responsibility, passion and priorities aren't "stupidity" they're the wellspring of civilisation, ideas, creativity, expression and progress. The ideal world isn't being one of the pointless fat fucks on the starship in Wall-E. An AI running everything, jesus. We aren't ants, you sociopathic twat.
No, that you think conflict is human stupidity. Conflict of interest, values, perspective, responsib
Nah, it's stupidity. I do think that you need it all the same. Humans are wired that way. But when designing a system the best thing you can do is either smooth out the conflict or work around it. at least in areas where it matters.
Keep in mind that while I want to see humans functional, happy and able to move forward... I'm not really a fan. I don't buy that the conflict is vital for creativity or 'civilization' but I get that people want it. So you have to design things to allow for it anyways. But that doesn't mean I see it as a good thing. really for me it's a matter of making a system wihtin which people are kept mostly funcitonal and are offered as much freedom as is reasonably possible without fucking up the system to the point where someone is directly or indirectly harmed. But it's not from any utopianism or the sort. Gene Roddenberry and Marx were both fools for presuming humans know what the fuck they are doing even with a roadmap and directions. We don't. Our species sucks. But we can do better.
Nah, it's stupidity. I do think that you need it all the same. Humans are wired that way. But when d
I'd say I understand them very well. Hence my dislike. I understand people may not agree, but then it can be hard for people who don't hate themselves to consider that perhaps our species sucks
But if you don't accept you suck, you can't really improve, can you?
I'd say I understand them very well. Hence my dislike. I understand people may not agree, but then i
Actually, that's... exactly not what that article says.
"when researchers looked at citizens’ political beliefs, greater liberalism corresponded with poorer life satisfaction"
The article plainly shows that while liberal policies and systems increase general happiness - liberal political views decrease personal happiness.
Conservative views result in higher personal happiness regardless of the society one lives in. Liberal societies make things better for people, overall. If anything, that article indicates that conservative values (in this context, they seem to primarily mean focus on personal agency and responsibility for one's own circumstances outweighing expectation of aid from society at large) directly lead to more individual happiness, while liberal political views make people less satisfied even when they're better off.
Conservatives are generally happier no matter where they are because conservatives put more emphasis on their own agency in their lives, and their own responsibility for their triumphs and failures. When people feel more directly responsible and in control of their own circumstances, they tend to be happier - regardless of whether their circumstances are good or bad to an outside observer. This is important!
The more a society tells its people that it is the job of >everyone else< to make sure they are cared for and happy - the more it displaces responsibility for anything they are unhappy about. It REMOVES agency from the individual. It gives them some external force to blame beyond their personal control - and this makes them less happy than they otherwise could be.
It changes "I am exactly where my efforts have gotten me - if I want more, I must increase my efforts, but if this is all the effort I want to do, then I suppose this is sufficient for me" to "I want to have more than I have, but the effort I have put forth is all I wish to do - yet I still want more, so that means society must help me further my own interests beyond what I can do for myself because that's what society is obligated to do for anyone who has reached their own limits but still isn't satisfied."
To be clear, I overall count myself far more liberal than conservative. Yet when it comes to PERSONAL AGENCY and responsibility, I'm kinda saddened that this seems increasingly categorized as a conservative concept. There are absolutely people for whom society MUST carry a portion of their burden because they objectively cannot care for themselves in even a minimal sufficient degree. But, frankly, that's a SMALL number of people and the vast majority of those calling for external assistance do not actually need it. There's work to be found and jobs to be had and places to live where those struggling could struggle less - they just don't want to make any of those hard choices to improve their own circumstances, so they act like they can't and call for aid they don't need - which is TAKING that aid from those who actually do.
If you can't afford to live in a big city, then you move to a rural area. If you can't find work in the field you wish to work in, even if you do relocate, then the reality is your personal qualifications for that field don't beat a sufficient number of other candidates to place. So you look in a different field.
Too many people simply want things beyond their means and scapegoat all these different things as injustices denying them what they feel entitled to. The reality is simply that not everyone gets to be a rock star, not everyone gets to do their dream job, not everyone is GOOD ENOUGH at the thing they WANT to do to be worth paying what they want to be paid to do it. None of that means society is unfair and owes anyone shit. It means children need to be faced with the unpleasant realities they're mainly in denial about, and they need to grow up and accept that you do what you CAN do and work your hardest at whatever you're best at, and the best that you can achieve is all that you have earned.
Actually, that's... exactly not what that article says. "when researchers looked at citizens’ polit
Access to the training and education a person needs to build the skills and experience to get any work beyond lowest level service industry is not free. Nor is it equitably distributed amongst locations. If a person can not afford the training and certification that the good paying jobs provide let alone personal prefence of employment tasks, then have they earned the right to subsistence living and nothing more?
Do communities not have some responsibility to improve the quality of life through public education they have been entrusted with because top down federal government involvement in school is some sort of horrible liberal plot?
How can people afford to move out of bad communities if they can barely make rent where they live now?
Food share and heating assistance keeps you alive, but it doesn't improve ones condition.
I want more then just surviving, I want people taught and equipped to improve themselves and their communities. But that costs money and time and people willing and able to train.
I don't see any effort public legislative or private companies doing such initiatives in any amount that would make a difference in broken communities.
But if you have seen some examples of benefits meant to enable people beyond a meal, please do share so that they maybe promoted and pushed as the proper way to fight poverty.
I do hope you're feeling better. Access to the training and education a person needs to build the s
Education reform SHOULDN'T be a partisan issue. Cut the gross over-spending to the military-industrial complex, and divert those already-collected funds to education systems without having to raise any taxes. But neither left nor right is seriously pushing for this.
Stop the idea that people need a degree to have a good job. All it does is send people who don't have any more skill than to be a retail drone into a lifetime of debt slavery, they struggle and waste a few years to get a useless or meaningless degree, then end up working at wal-mart. The more people with degrees are applying at wal-mart, the more wal-mart has no reason to look at people who don't even have degrees as viable employees.
It's not as simple as lack of access to education. Plenty of people who are getting their degrees are simply not GOOD ENOUGH at it to be competitive amongst the numbers of others with the same degree - but more actual skill and talent.
Higher education is simply NOT the route for the vast majority of the populace. Entry-level service jobs, and simple labor and maintenance positions are the most common need-for-bodies across the country. TRADES. Government-funded public education needs to extend into teaching people universally-needed valuable TRADE skills - but even then, you will simply have a large population of people who are not mechanically or technologically inclined enough to do even the most basic of useful trades.
There's a VAST spectrum of human intelligence and competency. There are jobs very few people can possibly perform, no matter how much free education you throw at them. There are people who genuinely try and still cannot pass the bulk of the most basic and minimal public education. Giving more education isn't the whole answer.
A very difficult reality is that we have reached the point where the bulk of people - people of "average" intelligence - have less and less they can offer in the form of useful tasks to perform that can't be done better and more efficiently by machines. Put simply, we have more people than there is any need for them to fulfill - and this is only going to get worse.
There is no way forward without moving to SOME model of universal basic income - but that CANNOT and will not happen without society as a whole accepting the reality that if I need to stick my hand out and ask that someone who DOES have something to offer humanity hand me my living wage because I do not have anything to offer humanity - I DON'T GET TO BE FULL OF MYSELF.
HUMILITY is what people will have to figure out for there to be any hope of civilization transitioning to the tiny few who have capabilities still worth paying for just giving their excess to take care of the rest. This will never happen so long as the ones who can do are demonized and the people who NEED a living provided for them still somehow think they're so fucking awesome and special and amazing.
There are people who go out, get their degree, then because they're just outmatched by other more talented people, cannot find work and settle for some job they see as beneath them. If the best job you can get is working a cash register then that ISN'T beneath you, it is, until you prove otherwise, the most you have to offer this world. But people thinking they're too good for their lowly job don't even do their pitiful shitty job half-decently.
Masses failing to do half-decent at a drone job DEMANDING that top-earners just GIVE them a living, while still flaunting an attitude of high self-regard - it's just not gonna happen.
The ugly reality is that technology has become smarter than most humans, and the most ideal future for the whole of humanity is for a bulk of the population to basically be the cared-for pets of the few who can still do things machines can't. But if people demand to be treated as equals, they'll be expected to figure out and earn their own way - even when it's an objective impossibility.
There are no easy solutions to those. Education reform SHOULDN'T be a partisan issue. Cut the gross
There seems to be an argument for population control in that reply.
I'm recalling stories of over crowded slave ships were the elderly captives bit off there own tounges and bleed to death so they didn't waste what little resources were allocated to the human cargo that the young and fit might survive.
The idea one must grovel for the meager wages being offered for the low end service jobs of which we seem to only really have left as manual labor has pushed out by immigrants, outsourcing to third world countries, and automation seems to be a sell out to those that inherited the standing finical empires.
You forget the other end of the economic equation. Without labor there is no consumer. Without consumers there is no demand. Without demand there is no means to create wealth.
If those on top of the human condition pyramid of exploitation want to remain there they need people to be able to do some task worth paying to keep money flowing amongst the population and into their coffeers.
If they don't pay in some manner and allow the economy to collapse as its want to do when the fundamentals are broken, well then they have the furthest to fall.
I have no sympathy to give a system of exploitation let alone the greedy fools on top that can't manage to keep it sustainable. Nor will I promote others to debase themselves to a ruling class of any kind religious, political, or economical.
There seems to be an argument for population control in that reply. I'm recalling stories of over c
"There seems to be an argument for population control in that reply."
Not by me. I don't think any system for population control can exist without immediate corruption and great evil done through it.
Even if we imagine a future where resource limitation ceases to be a thing - there's still just no NEED for people who can't perform functions that machines can't do better. It's a reality we as a species have to figure out how to transition to.
I'm not talking about groveling for the wages you earn by doing a job. I'm talking about once there AREN'T EVEN those jobs available to earn even those meager wages - we're less than a decade away from self-driving cars and kiosks replacing the two most common no-skill jobs; transportation and working a cash register. I'm talking about when there simply IS NOTHING for the lowest-skilled, lowest-capable people to BE ABLE to do for any kind of wage - when massive numbers of people could only survive by society accepting that we just have to have a basic living wage given to people because otherwise they'll starve and die on the streets - at THAT point, it's not about groveling, but it WILL need to involve SOME degree of accepting the reality that there's just not anything that most people will have the capacity to do to earn ANYTHING. We're approaching a point where machines will perform all the low-level tasks, just as assembly-line jobs aren't the norm anymore, and people will have to be simply GIVEN their living wage. There's no escaping that.
Wealth must circulate. The more the workers are paid, the more they have to spend. It's a stupid circular flow, but so long as it's flowing, everything keeps moving. When it ends up in one direction or the other and then sits there - the whole machine runs down. At some point, people will need to just be given money to live off of, but the more they're given, the more they pay right back into producers, which then gets taken in taxes, or spent by the producers for their own stuff, and etc, etc, round and round forever.
But the people who COULD just accumulate more and more need to be given reasons to not feel like they have to fight against letting it circulate instead. Having people go "fuck you for being born rich, give me your money even though I have no useful skill to offer in trade" instead of acknowledging the reality that they're no more to blame for being born rich than you're to blame for being born poor, and let's just not be assholes about the fact that they have something you need, I mean, it's just not constructive, and activates the bad parts of our nature that makes rich people more likely to glom onto more and be less inclined to share.
We DO need to restore many systems the country began with; Taxes on wages is unconstitutional. All taxes were initially on land, investments earnings, all the ways rich people earned money. Inheritances were taxed enormously BECAUSE they didn't want de facto dynasties. We need to restore these things, yes. But you still end up with an ever smaller number of people who can do things machines can't, who are worth paying, who then need to be taxed to have the funds to pay living wages to people with no skills to offer.
"There seems to be an argument for population control in that reply." Not by me. I don't think any
"If those on top of the human condition pyramid of exploitation want to remain there they need people to be able to do some task worth paying to keep money flowing amongst the population and into their coffeers."
And I'm saying those tasks are running out. Soon as a federal $15 minimum wage gets passed - you will see rapid loss of burger-flipping and cash register jobs because at THAT point, it's cheaper for the businesses to upgrade to kiosks and automated machines and just drop those jobs entirely. If people CAN'T do anything worth paying for - they'll need to accept that they're no longer demanding a fair wage for services provided, they'll have to be asking for livable income just because there's nothing else for them.
"I have no sympathy to give a system of exploitation let alone the greedy fools on top that can't manage to keep it sustainable. Nor will I promote others to debase themselves to a ruling class of any kind religious, political, or economical."
There's never been a society that wasn't divided into workers and rulers. There never will be. There will ALWAYS be humans whose capabilities and contributions to society move things forward more than any individual in the masses - and there will increasingly be masses who can't even offer the most simple of menial services that can't be better accomplished by machines. We've always been a species of workers and rulers, good or ill, but the more the "workers" positions are filled by technology, the more humans will just be... there. Needing to be cared for. EVENTUALLY technology will exceed even the most intelligent and capable of humans, and we'll ALL just be tended to be our machines and systems - but in the interim time where the minority of the most capable are running things and the masses have nothing to offer the machines can't do better - there's going to need to be an acceptance of that dynamic for it to not just be the rich and capable letting the entitled masses die off and just letting the robots fill the worker void.
"If those on top of the human condition pyramid of exploitation want to remain there they need peop
One amusing thing regarding the links. One of them shows that most of the poorest states are GOP, another link shows the GOP states being the biggest recipients of welfare money. Welfare isn't socialism. Poor states get more help, because they're poor. Why are those states poorer? They're rural, not developed like the big cities are, so there's been a fuck of a lot less business investment in them. Make an actual point instead of leaving it for me to assume what your position is, for fuck sake. Lazy arse.
One amusing thing regarding the links. One of them shows that most of the poorest states are GOP, an
My point is this: republican states are poorer and democrat states are richer. Republican states have a multitude of other problems, like much higher rates of teen pregnancy and higher crime rates.
I'm judging these systems by their results, like you asked me to.
My point is this: republican states are poorer and democrat states are richer. Republican states hav
What has that to do with this cartoon? The USA is one country, the states within it operate under the same system, the same structure. All the nuances of running cities and states within that system are there to be discussed and tweaked to get the most out of them. The world isn't America. Many nations around the world have awful systems that make the one in the USA look like heavenly paradise, so advocating that such a system as in the USA is broken, not fit for purpose, to be replaced by something else entirely is genocidally stupid. Even more so if one advocates said replacement be a system that has destroyed every country it is attempted in.
What has that to do with this cartoon? The USA is one country, the states within it operate under th
The highest crime rates are always in the densest populations, which means large cities, which almost uniformly means democratic majority.
You HEAR MORE about crimes that happen in less-populated areas because it's more of a news event, it's less of an everyday accepted occurrence. Rural, less-populated areas tend to be republican.
You never hear about the crime rates in big democratic densely-populated areas because it's just accepted as a given.
Just as we hear about every instance of a police officer killing a minority - but rarely hear when police murder anyone white, and never hear about the DAILY murders of civilians of the same races killing each other in the biggest democratic-controlled cities.
Higher rates of teen pregnancy is more about the religious anti-sex-ed approaches, because Republicans use religion as the controlling and manipulating factor to brainwash their voters, where Democrats have capitalized on Identity politics to fulfill that role for their voters who are less susceptible to the control of religion.
Republican states do not have higher crime rates. The highest crime rates are always in the denses
Did you even read these? What am I supposed to deny?
The first article claims that the disparity in police violence against minorities is fully explainable by factors other than bias in police decision-making on whether to shoot based on race. As that article puts it, the total number of deaths by assault is unaffected by police action; whether people were arrested more aggressively or shown lenience, the number of people dead by assault doesn't change. Black people died by assault at a rate of SIX TIMES as much as white people. The article you linked argues that when you account for the fact that death by police is almost always during police encounter where a violent crime is being committed - and black communities have six times the violent wrongful death rate as whites - then that would account for the apparent disparity in the national average.
This isn't me voicing my position or argument; that's what the article YOU linked says. You want me to deny the facts they present? If their data is valid, then the arguments are also sound. I don't know what out of those facts you want me to deny.
The second link talks about needing to do something about white supremacists in law enforcement. I agree with that. If someone is involved in a self-proclaimed white supremacist or neo-nazi group, I agree they should not be allowed in law enforcement. I don't see what I'm supposed to deny there, either.
Did you even read these? What am I supposed to deny? The first article claims that the disparity in
Police are killing unarmed black people because they are letting themselves be infiltrated by fascists. And police by and large get away with murdering unarmed black people.
Not interested in whataboutism. Capitalism as an economic system does not kill people as part of its principles, since trade and private ownership is practiced peacefully all over the world. Whether or not a government goes to war, butchers people or private military contractors kill people for pay is not some inevitable consequence of capitalism. The oppression and mass poverty, crippled infrastructure of socialist countries is a universal, however. Their own citizens are the victims. To be against war and exploitation in foreign policy one does not need to be a socialist, because socialism isn't some bloody alternate term for kindness. It is an economic system like capitalism is, only you can't have public ownership of the means of production without a vast administrative structure which plans said production on behalf of the public. Which means a relatively small number of people administrate, therefore own, everyone's shit. Tyranny is inevitable. That's why it always happens. Not so with capitalist countries. Don't get me wrong, there are and have been capitalist nations that have done terrible things, but there are also capitalist nations that haven't engaged in brutal conquest for a very long time. Like Nordic countries for example. Advocating a system which always fails over a system which has been incredibly successful is a moral evil.
In short, advocate the improvement of human rights worldwide, for less shitty foreign policy, and conditions will continue to improve throughout the world. Don't need socialism for that.
Not interested in whataboutism. Capitalism as an economic system does not kill people as part of its
Can't run a country along the principles of Marx, because the beginning of even attempting it leaves a nation without a means of defence from dictators, so dictators is what all nations attempting to goosestep to Marx actually get. Of course capitalism must be mediated, I'd never argue otherwise.You always have a go at me whenever I post anything critical of collectivism, so don't pretend you're some reasonable, rational person with something sensible to say about the dangers of rampant, unrestricted capitalism. No shit, we need laws and regulations in place. Collectivism is still the worst crap out there, whether it be left or right.
Can't run a country along the principles of Marx, because the beginning of even attempting it leaves
People don't like to be informed, they like to be told what to think and surround themselves with people who support their views so they can ignore everything else. Think anti-vaxxers, same concept and just as lethal :p
People don't like to be informed, they like to be told what to think and surround themselves with pe
This fact is quite true. Sadly the best you can do is try to combat the anti-intellectualism and find the people who will do the most 'right' for the obvious wrong reasons. It's far easier to go off of a party line than studying raw data or extensive study. Sometimes the best you can do is make sure the people trying to pull the strings are at least inadvertently altruistic.
This fact is quite true. Sadly the best you can do is try to combat the anti-intellectualism and fin
I think it's a good thing when people can discuss things that matter. That's what politics is, issues that really matter to human life and how to address them. I'm far more serious than most people, in that I am serious more often than I am goofing around, so I like to draw serious cartoons. It isn't a virtue to be serious all the time or non-serious all the time. Considering the vast majority of everything on all furry sites is for fun and sex, it doesn't hurt to also have some more serious stuff here and there.
I think it's a good thing when people can discuss things that matter. That's what politics is, issue
To clarify, I have 0 issue with the cartoon, people have been drawing political cartoons since the dawn of politics itself. The part I find amusing is the comments that devolve into back and forth insult hurling with no real point behind them besides "you're wrong and I'm right". That's what politics in an online space always boils down to, two opposing view points entrenched against each other not budging a muscle, convinced the other side is both wrong for their beliefs and woefully misinformed.
Also the argument that everything will change when party X and candidate Y get in power, even though they're literally all out for themselves and their chums.
Just funny to see after all the years I've seen these conversations they still go the same way. :p
To clarify, I have 0 issue with the cartoon, people have been drawing political cartoons since the d
Read through a lot of these comments, and I noted something interesting. The difference in our education.
You see, what you are describing and calling socialism, we are thought are communism. As a Swede, I was thought I lived in a socialistic country. So what are socialism, that was thought to me? Keeping it simply, a hybrid between capitalism and communism, trying take take the very best from both worlds. (Perhaps a bit to simplified, but will do.)
In fact, from a Swedes viewpoint, socialism built this country, and made it the modern country it is. It is in fact that we with time (especially the last 30 years or so) that we turned more and more capitalist, is a big part of the reason that we have gained the political instability over here. (The other big part being the large immigration and the "humanism" that followed)
At least, that's how I have interpreted things over here.
Oh, and I should mention that I speak about Sweden and not Europe in general, as there is always someone missing that point...
Read through a lot of these comments, and I noted something interesting. The difference in our educa
