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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets. Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread | ||
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brian
United States9633 Posts
take that with the understanding that i’m generally extremely uninformed on all of this, so perhaps the nuance, or perceived lack thereof, is lost on me or is easier for you to digest so it feels trite. either could definitely be the case. regardless, another interesting read for me. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23515 Posts
On January 08 2020 07:07 JimmiC wrote: You do you buddy, but just so you are aware you can save yourself a post by doing the action instead of writing the words. It is a double bonus it saves you time and you look like less of jerk. lol I'm pretty sure everyone knows Neb is freakishly patient and polite. | ||
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Belisarius
Australia6233 Posts
Capitalism misallocates resources by allowing them to aggregate to a small group, which then allocates them to itself. Socialism misallocates resources via bureaucratic inefficiency, or by simply reducing incentive to pursue opportunities. It's pretty clear that the first is a large source of loss in most western societies, and needs to be addressed. The question is how to best minimise that without creating a corresponding loss from the other half. The basic mechanism of capitalism - that private individuals have their own resources and can allocate them - is quite efficient, even if it causes problems due to peoples' self-bias. If I want or need something, or see an opportunity, I can choose to get it or do it right away. If I do not have my own resources but instead have to apply to and wait for some authority to allocate my share of society's resources to the thing I want, I will often miss the opportunity and may repeatedly fail to have my need met. This, to me, is the core defense of "capitalism". That mechanism is extremely costly to remove from society. Personally, I think it's best to harness it as much as possible instead of attempting to remove it. This is why wealth taxes, carbon taxes and the like are a very efficient means of achieving an outcome. Those hundred million selfish capitalistic decisions continue to occur just as before, but the equilibrium is shifted. | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15725 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States23515 Posts
On January 08 2020 08:19 Mohdoo wrote: This whole "There was an imminent attack, so we killed Sol" thing seems really silly. It's not like Sol himself was gonna be the one launching an attack personally. And what, him being killed is supposed to make everyone else involved think "never mind, lets not attack the US now"? If it was about to happen, I wonder why taking out Sol would cancel it. No attack has happened and I'd have thought they'd make extra extra sure his plan still went through under the direction of under general or something. Even Netanyahu doesn't want to get pulled into this. Netanyahu praised Trump for "acting swiftly, forcefully, and decisively," and said "Israel stands with the United States in its just struggle for peace, security, and self-defense." But that's as far as Netanyahu was willing to go, or let his Cabinet go, and in private, he pointedly washed his hands of Soleimani's death, Barak Ravid reports at Axios, citing two ministers who attended a Security Cabinet meeting Monday. "Netanyahu told ministers that the only thing they can say to the media if they are asked about the Soleimani killing is that Israel supports the U.S. and its right to defend itself," and the prime minister himself said Israel should not get "dragged into" what's exclusively a U.S. operation. theweek.com EDIT: The "imminent attack" language is to try to give it some semblance of legality. Basically anyone that studies this stuff will tell you it was an obviously illegal assassination otherwise. | ||
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Stratos_speAr
United States6959 Posts
@Stratos_speAr Yes, every socialist society eventually ends up like the USSR. That is the endgame of socialism, I'll address it more later in this post. Capitalism ends up with monopolies without government interference, which is why I advocate for restrained capitalism. "3) You assume that the ownership class got their money and resources from hard work. This is very rarely true. The majority got it through crimes, exploitation, inheritance, and favors given due to their race, sex, or nepotism." That's a very jaded view that does not mesh with my reality. I vaguely know 2 billionaires. One I mentioned, and another who sold his .com business during the boom. Both came from the middle class. Both had good ideas and then put a ton of work into it (the one I mentioned more so than the other one). Both live good lives and take care of their families. Neither one would be a criminal (unless you want to criminalize using other people's labor like a socialist might). @Stratos_SpeAr "2) You state that people become "slaves to the government's will" in socialism. What is the meaningful difference between being a slave to a socialist government and being a slave to capitalist corporations?" Capitalist corporations have to compete for your labor. Socialist government controls all. Do you guys see why socialism is ridiculous yet? If we start with something that works, like capitalism, then we can tinker with it and create a better society. My first post in this series of posts started from that point, pointed out some pitfalls of capitalism and some simple ways to address them. The Wright Brothers started with Bicycles because they worked. They didn't start from nothing. What I can see from these two replies is that you have an incredibly naive view of the world, and that is one of the biggest flaws in capitalist thinking. 1) No, not every socialist country ends up like the USSR. You are, again, assuming the conclusion to argue your premise. It's horrible logic. 2) Your naivety shows in your answer to #2. What happens in capitalism (America being the best example) is that corporations just buy the government and become the law. Corporations exploit people and government systems with money to eliminate the competition. This happens on both the labor side (many, many people have to work at jobs they hate in order to survive, and many jobs are horrifically underpaid and under-benefited because the entire industry just agrees to treat their workers like trash) and on the supply side (regional monopolies exist in many different industries across the States - this is why internet access is so atrocious in this country). You completely fail to address all of the massive, real-world failures of capitalism. You are arguing for this idealized dreamworld version of capitalism while arguing against the worst possible example of socialism. It's arguing in bad faith and it makes you look terrible. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Simberto
Germany11688 Posts
On January 08 2020 07:55 Nebuchad wrote: It's funny that you coupled those two answers. One of the major ways in which Politics was made more complicated was in introducing more parameters, like different definitions for the same terms, to ensure that people don't immediately know what they're talking about and have different associations for certain words. What you complain about in the first part is what you negate the existence of in the second part. But perhaps we shouldn't bicker about this, I don't know. As someone who will soon be a physics teacher, i can tell you that you don't need bad actors to make people use ill-defined terms, or use well-defined terms incorrectly. That seems in fact to be the natural state that people gravitate towards unless you very actively do something against it, and even then they still do. The amount of students for whom even after multiple years of physics education in school the terms "force", "power", "energy" and "momentum" all mean the same nebulously defined thing vaguely related to how hard something moves is astonishing. Furthermore, a lot of terms originating from physics are not used with the same meaning they have in physics in common everyday parlance. And i can not really think of anyone who would profit from people using these terms incorrectly, and thus i have to assume that this is something that happened by itself instead of through outside influence. My untested hypothesis as to why that is the case is that people like to look smart, and thus use terms that they don't know the exact meaning of, but the use of which they feel is correlated with education. Then other people hear those people use the terms in some context, and use the same word to describe something that roughly fits into the same area of meaning, but even further removed from the original definition. If you use well-defined terms correctly, you can usually argue about things of actual substance. This is something that you can observe in most sciences, but especially in something like maths. Sadly, in the sphere of popular politics, most people prefer to constantly debate about definitions of things OR to not define stuff at all rather than agree on any definition to then discuss actual things. Both don't lead to fruitful discussions. | ||
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ImFromPortugal
Portugal1368 Posts
It begins, the endgame... and they said Trump wouldn't begin a war. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23515 Posts
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Gorsameth
Netherlands22008 Posts
Trump's ego cannot let this go unchallenged. | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15725 Posts
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Sermokala
United States14060 Posts
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12377 Posts
On January 08 2020 08:15 Belisarius wrote: To me, the core problem is that you want a society's resources to be best allocated to that society's needs and desires, but the people in that society systematically overweight their own desires. I don't think any system has proven to be much good at addressing this so far. Capitalism misallocates resources by allowing them to aggregate to a small group, which then allocates them to itself. Socialism misallocates resources via bureaucratic inefficiency, or by simply reducing incentive to pursue opportunities. It's pretty clear that the first is a large source of loss in most western societies, and needs to be addressed. The question is how to best minimise that without creating a corresponding loss from the other half. The basic mechanism of capitalism - that private individuals have their own resources and can allocate them - is quite efficient, even if it causes problems due to peoples' self-bias. If I want or need something, or see an opportunity, I can choose to get it or do it right away. If I do not have my own resources but instead have to apply to and wait for some authority to allocate my share of society's resources to the thing I want, I will often miss the opportunity and may repeatedly fail to have my need met. This, to me, is the core defense of "capitalism". That mechanism is extremely costly to remove from society. Personally, I think it's best to harness it as much as possible instead of attempting to remove it. This is why wealth taxes, carbon taxes and the like are a very efficient means of achieving an outcome. Those hundred million selfish capitalistic decisions continue to occur just as before, but the equilibrium is shifted. I don't necessarily think it's true that socialism reduces incentive to pursue opportunities. I would need to see your argument for that position. I would also point out that some versions of socialism don't significantly increase the level of bureaucracy required. I think the pool of private individuals that can allocate their ressources immediately when they see an opportunity under capitalism is very small, and I would contend that while it could be a little harder to accomplish depending on how we are organized as a workplace and/or as a society, this issue would be counteracted by just the sheer increase in individuals who have access to that possibility. Edit: Oh, cool. War. Fun times. Simberto: I would distinguish between having a vague idea of what force is that is probably not entirely accurate, and thinking that force is a concept of biology instead of physics. Some people talk out of their ass about politics, no question, but you wouldn't have gotten a significant amount of people who think that socialism is big government and capitalism is small government, or that liberals are leftwing, or that populism is rightwing, or that you should think differently about this slave because you're irish and he's black, without active propaganda to obfuscate things. | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15725 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26224 Posts
On January 08 2020 08:15 Belisarius wrote: To me, the core problem is that you want a society's resources to be best allocated to that society's needs and desires, but the people in that society systematically overweight their own desires. I don't think any system has proven to be much good at addressing this so far. Capitalism misallocates resources by allowing them to aggregate to a small group, which then allocates them to itself. Socialism misallocates resources via bureaucratic inefficiency, or by simply reducing incentive to pursue opportunities. It's pretty clear that the first is a large source of loss in most western societies, and needs to be addressed. The question is how to best minimise that without creating a corresponding loss from the other half. The basic mechanism of capitalism - that private individuals have their own resources and can allocate them - is quite efficient, even if it causes problems due to peoples' self-bias. If I want or need something, or see an opportunity, I can choose to get it or do it right away. If I do not have my own resources but instead have to apply to and wait for some authority to allocate my share of society's resources to the thing I want, I will often miss the opportunity and may repeatedly fail to have my need met. This, to me, is the core defense of "capitalism". That mechanism is extremely costly to remove from society. Personally, I think it's best to harness it as much as possible instead of attempting to remove it. This is why wealth taxes, carbon taxes and the like are a very efficient means of achieving an outcome. Those hundred million selfish capitalistic decisions continue to occur just as before, but the equilibrium is shifted. What do people actually want? What makes humans measurably content, not stressed or suffering from mental illnesses. Not specifically replying to your post, but more in general. There’s been a lot of interesting back-and-forth on what systems us humans should best live under, not a huge amount on what fundamentally suits humans. We know a lot more about such things than we used to but rarely is that filtered back and compensated for in any real system wide sense. I think you could absolutely slash a country’s GDP, make a bunch of other changes and still end up with a much happier populace. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26224 Posts
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Gorsameth
Netherlands22008 Posts
On January 08 2020 09:15 JimmiC wrote: The problem with trying to appear to be the good guy in this is that there is no one that will stop the US from shooting the 'good guy' squarely in the face while everyone watches.That does not sound better to me as there would be a lot of innocent civilians in and around those properties. Whether it be guests or staff. I would have rather if Iran had leveraged this situation and tried to show that they were good and Trump was evil not just try to out do him. But I think this shows that it was wrong for Trump to do because of the consequences not because Soleimani was an innocent. Iran is far from the good guys and I guess now they are going to try to prove it to the world. (When I say not the good guys I am talking about all their human rights abuses within their boarders, discrimination based on Gender, religion and so on, proxy wars, and various other nefarious acts). I guess this shows when it comes to war's there is rarely a "good guy". | ||
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Mohdoo
United States15725 Posts
On January 08 2020 09:17 Wombat_NI wrote: Really not terribly smart from the Iranians if they have indeed done this. Cannot see this ending at all well... Iran military confirmed they shot 10s of missiles based on what I am reading. Multiple US bases hit and deaths already confirmed. And now 6 F35s have left Al-Dhafra Air Base to strike Iran. And Iran already said if we retaliate, they will go even harder. So this is just straight up happening, isn't it? We are going to fucking war. fuck I hate this so much | ||
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