US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2293

On April 28 2020 09:02 Vindicare605 wrote:


Hey dude, if someone is gonna get rich while doing a lot of good for humanity then that's something I'm ok with. It's the people that enrich themselves benefiting no one or even worse hurting people is who I have a problem with.

You can hate on the rich all you want, but when people actually use their wealth and power to do some good for society that's the shining example of what capitalism actually SHOULD be.

The shining idea of benevolent billionaires though is as unrealistic as the utopia that communism promised. I know I get it. But we should give some credit where it's due to the billionaires who actually do some good with their money, if nothing else maybe we can shame the Jeff Bezos' of the world to do a little good for society too.

On April 28 2020 09:24 Vindicare605 wrote:


There's a massive difference between donating just enough to get a tax write off to a "charity" that doesn't actually do anything and forming your own charity foundation that you oversee personally and manage that has produced actual measurable results.

Mitt Romney for example donates generously to the Mormon Church which is considered a "charitable organization." /barf

There's a MASSIVE difference between the two.

I can see big picture, and I can use a magnifying glass when it's neccessary. Sociology makes a distinction between macro and micro sociology, economics uses a distinction between macro and micro economics. This is just part of being objective.

If we wanna talk mechanics, let's talk mechanics, I'll probably end up agreeing with most of what you have to say. But I won't agree that Bill Gates is the epitome of evil while he's currently doing more to fight epidemics than most world governments are.

I can walk and chew gum at the same time.

On April 28 2020 10:15 Zambrah wrote:


Personally I like to start from a very basic vision, its so easy to bog down in every small thing and forget the core of the thing.

Thats why I'd rather start with really simple questions and build up nuance from that. For instance, if we were to argue the best way to change our society I'd probably want to start with what we want our society to look like. Are billionaires something that should exist? Should everyone have access to quality healthcare? etc. We can move inwards from things like that and say, "okay, billionaires are not okay, how much wealth is it okay to accumulate, is it fine if people have tens of millions?" and maybe thats the point where we say, "yes, its societally fine for people to have tens of millions of dollars." If we establish that tens of millions of dollars are okay then we can go more into thinking of how to solve billionaires existing, be it wealth tax, estate tax, government asset seizure, or whatever solutions run through our head. At least I feel that we'd be in a better argumentative space if we could nail any principles we agree on and then move to solutions from there. We may wind up insulting each other less, or be in a better headspace to reevaluate what we consider to be our principles, anyways.

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

In March, when a former aide to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden accused the candidate of sexually assaulting her in 1993, two people came forward to say that the woman, Tara Reade, had told them of the incident shortly after it allegedly occurred — her brother, Collin Moulton, and a friend who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.

Now two more sources have come forward to corroborate certain details about Reade's claims. One of them — a former neighbor of Reade's — has told Insider for the first time, on the record, that Reade disclosed details about the alleged assault to her in the mid-1990s.

"This happened, and I know it did because I remember talking about it," Lynda LaCasse, who lived next door to Reade in the mid-'90s, told Insider.

The other source, Lorraine Sanchez, who worked with Reade in the office of a California state senator in the mid-'90s, told Insider that she recalls Reade complaining at the time that her former boss in Washington, DC, had sexually harassed her, and that she had been fired after raising concerns.

After seeing how political operatives and news organizations responded to the claim — the Biden camp denied it outright, and critics scoured Reade's social-media accounts for evidence of a purported affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin — LaCasse said she decided to come forward.

"She didn't ask me to," LaCasse said. "I volunteered to do that just recently. If this was me, I would want somebody to stand up for me. It takes a lot of guts to do what she's doing."

On April 28 2020 06:53 GreenHorizons wrote:


This is the same argument Republicans have made (and progressives used to reject) for decades

Amazon employees are only "well compensated" compared to the poverty wages available elsewhere. Working conditions are atrocious (except if you compare them to places like prison labor or these covid infested meat packing plants). The moderately improved wages came recently after a campaign by Bernie Sanders and others shaming and threatening work stoppages if they didn't improve wages.

Since, they've fired people for trying to organize for a safe working environment amid a pandemic.

People like Bezos and Gates aren't benevolent or even decent in my eyes. They are among the most horrific people on the planet to me.

On April 29 2020 04:54 IgnE wrote:


Part of the reason I have been less vocal in this thread recently about (anti-)capitalism is because people like Gates and Bezos present real problems for the possibilities of human life and politics that demand answers to fundamental questions about the finitude of human life and its value. Under what assumptions are Nyx's comments about exponential growth well-founded? What obligation do we have to the past? and to the future? There are assumptions about the present-value of human lives that call into question uncritical assumptions about the value of new human life by those on both the right and the left.

Those assumptions feed back into evaluation of Marxism. Stalinism has been such a disaster that it threatens the referential value of Marxist discourse in general, as is demonstrated by your and JimmiC's ongoing feud, as well as all the repetitive back and forth between Neb and others. This demand a rethinking of politics.

On the other hand, we have entered an era of ecological crisis. This seemingly present an immediate demand for action that would seem to threaten the possibility of taking time for thinking and reflection. The crisis in Marxist thought blocks the efficacy of Marxist action in both rhetorical and real terms. Is Amazon the enemy? In what way? If so, doesn't it also represent an advance in the appropriation of "man's inorganic body" consonant with the writings of early Marx? In a way, isn't your ethical judgment of Bezos and Gates at odds with a Marxist history that saw bourgeois capitalism as a necessary stage that must be traversed before socialism? (See Plekhanov or Bernstein, and those Marxists who opposed a too-early socialism in Russia as threatening the whole socialist project) One doesn't condemn Moses for not being Jesus.

How does the full development of one individual's free unfolding impinge on others? Both those that exist and those that might?