US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2900

On December 18 2020 09:29 JimmiC wrote:

Seams entirely unlikely that all of these countries that brand themselves as communism end up with similar problems due to happenstance. Especially given the vast differences between the countries peoples, histories, location and so on.

Discussing and exploring the differences would be interesting, you just can't do it from the fanciful position of "its the capitalists fault", it is far more likely that the reason they fail similarly (in delivering equality and fairness) is a flaw within moving from the philosophy to practice.

Given that social democracy is much closer to what marx wanted it would probably be better to name what we call "communism" authoritarian socialism or something. Which is what "communists" who wear Castro, Mao and so on shirts are supporting.

This gets to Kwark's point that you can't say you support Trump but not Fascism.

On December 18 2020 09:19 Gorsameth wrote:
I'm not talking about the cold-war. I'm more talking about France, UK, Germany ect not going to war with eachother. And yes 'to costly' is a part of that, and part of why the (eventual) European union was created in the first place. To economically bind Europe together.

But the point is that the peace among capitalist countries is a recent phenomenon in history.

On December 18 2020 09:29 JimmiC wrote:

Seams entirely unlikely that all of these countries that brand themselves as communism end up with similar problems due to happenstance. Especially given the vast differences between the countries peoples, histories, location and so on.

Discussing and exploring the differences would be interesting, you just can't do it from the fanciful position of "its the capitalists fault", it is far more likely that the reason they fail similarly (in delivering equality and fairness) is a flaw within moving from the philosophy to practice.

Given that social democracy is much closer to what marx wanted it would probably be better to name what we call "communism" authoritarian socialism or something. Which is what "communists" who wear Castro, Mao and so on shirts are supporting.

This gets to Kwark's point that you can't say you support Trump but not Fascism.

On December 18 2020 10:26 Wegandi wrote:

There's also the socialist calculation critique by Mises which has never been answered by communists. The USSR had to rely on black markets and US pricing to allocate resources and they did so badly. Communism because of its inherent traits will always fail. It will always cause misery, poverty, and death no matter how 'noble' its intentions are. The worst thing that ever happened in the world was for Marx to be born. Even after 100+ million deaths people still defend it.

On December 17 2020 16:55 Wegandi wrote:




Its funny you think Im a conservative, support trump, or the Iraq war. Maybe you should look up Albert Jay Nock, Howard Buffett, Moorefield Storey, Rose Wilder, etc. for where I am politically.

Its also funny you think recent leftist drift (I'd argue thats not what actually happened..look around the world - after the USSR fell specifically) is the same as deterministic certainty. For the record my side has been losing since the 1930s / Calvin Coolidge & Grover Cleveland.

If you want to play death toll olympics, the market system of resource allocation that exists in capitalism kills 20 million people

On December 18 2020 14:31 JimmiC wrote:

You missed my point. It is not that the numbers are propaganda it is that they are taught to read so they can take in the propaganda. I assume you are bringing up littercy rate as some sort of gauge of quality of life, which is why I was saying it is a red herring and clearly NK have terrible quality of life and no human rights.

Litteracy rate as measure of success of a governemnt is piss poor because there is not even positive correlation let alone causation.

Rep. Kathleen Rice has captured a prized seat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee after a contentious showdown with fellow New Yorker, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Rice and Ocasio-Cortez have been battling behind the scenes for weeks to secure one of the few open seats on the exclusive committee, which oversees everything from health care policy to climate issues. Tensions spilled into the open Thursday in a private meeting of the Steering and Policy Committee, where Democrats were forced to choose between the two members in a tense — and awkward — secret ballot vote.

Rice ultimately won in a lopsided vote of 46-13, though it wasn’t without some drama after some moderate Democrats openly criticized Ocasio-Cortez.


Just before the Steering Committee moved to vote on the Energy and Commerce slots, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team presented a slate of their preferred candidates for four out of the five seats.

But notably, top Democrats did not choose a nominee for the final seat, which is essentially reserved for a New York member — forcing Rice and Ocasio-Cortez into a head-to-head matchup.

The panel launched into an intense round of speeches on each candidate, with several Democrats speaking up to lobby against Ocasio-Cortez, a freshman member and social media star who is seen as a political threat by many of the caucus’s moderates for her far-left policies. On the video call, several Democrats called out Ocasio-Cortez’s efforts to help liberal challengers take out their own incumbents, as well as her refusal to pay party campaign dues.

"I'm taking into account who works against other members in primaries and who doesn't,” Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) said on the call, according to multiple sources. Cuellar successfully fended off a primary challenge from Jessica Cisneros, who Ocasio-Cortez supported.

Most senior Democrats have been reluctant from the start to wade into the contest between the two firebrand New Yorkers. That includes members of the New York delegation, who signed letters of support for both of them, rather than risk ruffling feathers by endorsing one candidate.

Ocasio-Cortez did secure some support from senior Democrats, including Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the Judiciary Committee chair who serves as the dean of the state’s delegation and signed her letter of support but not Rice’s. (That in itself was a point of contention between the two contenders, with Ocasio-Cortez citing Nadler’s signature to argue that she alone had the support from the delegation.)

Rice was ultimately among five Democrats to win a hard-fought slot on the exclusive committee, alongside Reps. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), Kim Schrier (D-Wash.), Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas) and Lori Trahan (D-Mass.).

Ten Democrats had been initially vying for spots on the panel, though several withdrew their names in the final minutes, just before the Steering Committee announced Pelosi’s slate. Democrats had expected to fill just two or three seats, though the committee was ultimately expanded to add five amid intense interest from the caucus.

Not everyone was happy with their leadership’s decision to put only the New York seat up for a head-to-head vote. Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) argued that the Steering Committee should vote on each individual seat, saying she wouldn’t vote on a “partial slate.”

Pelosi, though, stepped in and convinced the panel to adopt the leadership picks, while taking a separate vote on the seat Rice and Ocasio-Cortez sought.

The jockeying between the two New Yorkers has been the most closely watched contest within the Democratic caucus in recent weeks, carrying big implications for both policy and power in the next Congress.

Rice, who had been expected to get the seat, attempted to block Pelosi from leading House Democrats in the 116th Congress and is now seen as a crucial vote for the speaker this time around since Democrats have a slimmer majority. It’s a big turnaround for the Long Island Democrat and former prosecutor: after she spoke out against Pelosi’s speakership, Rice was denied a seat on her preferred committee — Judiciary — just two years ago.

But Ocasio-Cortez also made a hard push, and was the first member to ask the New York delegation for its backing. Multiple New Yorkers, including Rep.-elect Mondaire Jones, spoke up in her favor during the Steering meeting.

Progressives both inside and outside of the Capitol said it would be critical to have Ocasio-Cortez on the Energy and Commerce Committee to help influence critical policies in the early days of the Biden administration.

But some senior Democrats, including on the Energy and Commerce panel, had privately voiced concerns about Ocasio-Cortez landing the seat. Some feared that the firebrand Democrat, who backs progressive priorities like the "Green New Deal" and "Medicare for All," could cause issues as Congress attempts to draft bipartisan health and climate policies next year.

The New York delegation wasn’t the only one with issues: The Texas delegation, too, ultimately decided to back two members rather than choose one. Both Reps. Sylvia Garcia and Lizzie Fletcher were vying for a spot, and Fletcher was later picked as part of Pelosi’s slate.

On December 18 2020 10:15 Liquid`Drone wrote:


It's not weird at all. Every single country that turned communist shared one common trait: They were really bad places to live before that. For a population to undertake a revolution, there needs to be a whole lot of desperation going around. There's no question the USSR was a worse place to live than western europe during the cold war. But there's no question that Russia was also a worse place to live than the UK in 1910. (Russia literally had the lowest life expectancy in Europe back then. If you compare Norway in 1910 with Russia in 1910, Norway had a life expectancy of 57.9 while Russia was at 31. ) And then you add world war 1 and 2 into the mix - two conflicts that hurt Russia / the soviet union more than any western european country. Then add the marshall aid into the mix (granted, you can obviously blame USSR for eastern european countries not getting said aid, but that's really not on 'communism, the theoretical framework'.) None of this is 'defense' of Stalin or whatever, the USSR was nothing like what communism aims to be, but it's not given that a country with the prior living standard of a western european country would have fallen into a similar abyss had they turned communist.

Alternatively you can look at China pre-Mao. Recovering from a devastating WW2, not industrialized - life expectancy of 40 (and that's 4 years after the war - the US is at 68 by now.) Then many terrible decisions are made, absolutely, but hardly ones where you can say that they were guided by marxism or whatever. Cuba isn't really doing great pre-communism either.

The best real attempt I've seen, that gives an indication of how communist countries compare to capitalist, is from a book by Paul Nugent called Africa Since Independence. It compares three pairs of 'twin countries', countries that looked quite similar at the point of achieving independence, but who then choose different pathways going forward - one country choosing a capitalist route (backed by the US) and one country going 'communist' (and honestly, my understanding is that this was actually a more pure form than what we saw in the USSR or China). It's been a decade or so since I read it, but a simplified finding is that the communist countries did a better job improving literacy rates and providing health care for all, while the capitalist ones did a better job generating wealth. No shocker there. but then while the capitalist countries eventually caught up with the communist ones in literacy rates (hard to go beyond 100~ish anyway), the communist ones did not catch up economically. However, there, again, you can't ignore that the communist ones all ended up in a lot trouble during the 80s because support from the USSR dwindled as it started falling apart. I thought that book was a fairly honest effort, and if I'm being honest, it overall gave a small win for the countries that decided to go the capitalist route - but unbeknownst to what degree that was caused by 'capitalism', or the US being a more reliable partner (or in some cases more dangerous enemy) than the USSR was.

Anyway. You should just accept that when people who describe themselves as communists today, they're not talking about wanting to turn society into the USSR. That's never what they are talking about. What brands people use for themselves isn't necessarily the best indicator of what they are - especially not when looking at autocratic regimes. I can think of two current-day countries with democratic in the name - Democratic republic of Congo, and Democratic Republic of Korea - that is, North. Neither really qualifies.

Edit: Let's look at it in starcraft terms. We're trying to evaluate whether terran vs zerg is imbalanced. But we're basing our analysis on a game where terran started with three fairly saturated bases while zerg was on 8 drones. Terran winning isn't really much of an indicator of anything.