EPTOn September 25 2025 00:38 Razyda wrote:
What I marked in bold is despicable. This is disgusting attitude.
What I marked in bold is despicable. This is disgusting attitude.
He wasn't advancing it as a personal moral philosophy that he supports.
US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5268
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KwarK
United States43005 Posts
He wasn't advancing it as a personal moral philosophy that he supports. | ||
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maybenexttime
Poland5636 Posts
On September 24 2025 23:56 KwarK wrote: The basic question amounts to how to allocate value created by labour. A man performs work and through his labour transforms something from a low value state, such as seeds, to a high value state, such as grain. Who deserves to benefit from that labour? Collectivist thinks that everyone in the village, assuming that all labour, should benefit. So the farmer and the miller both profit. The farmer with the field that flooded and had no harvest should benefit and in future years when his harvest is good others will benefit from his. The individualist insists that only the farmer should benefit. He performed the labour, he gets the whole of the increase in value. The capitalist points out that the field is owned by a fund and that shareholders in that fund need to eat too. The value belongs to them because without the use of their field none of this would have been possible. Also the farmer should work harder because his harvest this year barely exceeded that of his previous best year. The communist disagrees. Wouldn't the field still be there even if nobody owned it. Honestly, the American Left would be more successful if they tried to sell socialism as "ultracapitalism where everybody is a capitalist" instead of advertising social democracy as "democratic socialism" or whatever. ;p | ||
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Razyda
837 Posts
On September 25 2025 00:40 KwarK wrote: He wasn't advancing it as a personal moral philosophy that he supports. Fair enough. @Gorsameth apologies. | ||
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LightSpectra
United States1788 Posts
On September 25 2025 00:40 maybenexttime wrote: Honestly, the American Left would be more successful if they tried to sell socialism as "ultracapitalism where everybody is a capitalist" instead of advertising social democracy as "democratic socialism" or whatever. ;p I mean, if "Every Man a King" worked, then this possibly could too. Although I'll say a few people have already tried something like this and it wasn't successful. Ben Jealous, Maryland gubernatorial candidate in 2018, was fond of saying "I'm not a socialist, I'm literally a venture capitalist" despite advocating Medicare-for-All and being endorsed by Bernie Sanders, but ended up losing by large margins to Larry Hogan because he couldn't generate much enthusiasm. One of the appeals of self-declared socialism is that people want something that's anti-establishment, so trying to look moderate with radical policies is probably worse than looking radical with moderate policies. | ||
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KwarK
United States43005 Posts
On September 25 2025 00:40 maybenexttime wrote: Honestly, the American Left would be more successful if they tried to sell socialism as "ultracapitalism where everybody is a capitalist" instead of advertising social democracy as "democratic socialism" or whatever. ;p Yep. And if they insisted that dividends were really communism because we all know that communism is when you do the work and someone else gets the money. Walmart pays a dividend of $0.94/share annually. That means the Walton crime family abuse their 4b shares to steal almost $4b in cash money earned by Walmart workers every year. If that's not communism I don't know what is. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18060 Posts
On September 25 2025 00:40 maybenexttime wrote: Honestly, the American Left would be more successful if they tried to sell socialism as "ultracapitalism where everybody is a capitalist" instead of advertising social democracy as "democratic socialism" or whatever. ;p Have Oprah going "you can be an owner, and you can be an owner! Everybody can be an owner!" It might just work given how badly people seem to understand their own socio-political-economic system  | ||
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Simberto
Germany11564 Posts
On September 24 2025 22:48 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Trump is so mad that his censoring of Kimmel didn't work, and Trump continues to attack ABC: "I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back. The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled! Something happened between then and now because his audience is GONE, and his “talent” was never there. Why would they want someone back who does so poorly, who’s not funny, and who puts the Network in jeopardy by playing 99% positive Democrat GARBAGE. He is yet another arm of the DNC and, to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major Illegal Campaign Contribution. I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative. A true bunch of losers! Let Jimmy Kimmel rot in his bad Ratings." https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115256938634035559 More information here: https://www.axios.com/2025/09/24/trump-jimmy-kimmel-return-abc The president of the United States. It is really quite impressive how much they just evaporated standards. Imagine this just 10 years ago. The president of the US threatens a news network in a bunch of different ways if they don't cancel the person he wants cancelled. Also, of course, the constant schoolyard bully level of rhetoric. Once again, this alone should completely kill any kind of political career of the person uttering it. And it is probably not even the worst thing the guy has done today. It is still completely unimaginable to have politicians behave like that, and just get away with it. And yet it is reality for you guys. How can this shit be acceptable for half your population? How do our resident republicans excuse this? Like, just take a step back from the boiling crab pot, and look at this. And imagine what you would have thought about it just 10 years ago. Is this person an acceptable president? (Just try to imagine Obama saying that, or anything like that. I personally can't. Or Bush) | ||
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oBlade
United States5685 Posts
On September 25 2025 00:28 Gorsameth wrote: Your entire post is dogshit but I just wanted to pick out your first sentence. Doubt you got any further buddy. On September 25 2025 00:28 Gorsameth wrote: If the main driving force of humanity was taking care of our descendants, climate change would have been dealt with decades ago because we are actively trying to destroy the ability of our decedents to live. Decedents can't live. If you have a choice between your children eating now, or your children starving now, vs. hypothetical 10-20 generations later that haven't been born going extinct in a cataclysm due to your climate theory, every sane parent chooses children eating now. We will choose tractors that run on oil over violent collapse into subsistence communism justified by climate paranoia every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Your idea is a non sequitur. "If people care so much about their children why is there still cancer? Checkmate natalists." On September 25 2025 00:28 Gorsameth wrote: The driving force is me, myself and I. We have descendants so they can take care of us when we get older and now that pensions take care of us as we get old more and more people stop having descendants. Certainly we could look at reducing or eliminating pensions, your idea has some plausibility. | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium4883 Posts
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Simberto
Germany11564 Posts
On September 25 2025 01:06 Uldridge wrote: I mean, we had Berlusconi like 10 years ago. It was completely insane to me how this person could be in power then. Now we have Orban and Erdogan. It's not all that great in Europe either... Definitively not, we got a lot of problems too. But my main point was: Take a step back and look at that. WTF is going on with politics. We are so desensitized by the daily insanity that it barely registers anymore. But we need to remember and get back to how stuff used to be (Maybe I am the conservative now!). Politics by sane people speaking in an intelligent way, and mostly adhering to democratic norms. Watergate wouldn't even register as a scandal today. | ||
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KwarK
United States43005 Posts
On September 25 2025 01:04 oBlade wrote: Doubt you got any further buddy. Decedents can't live. If you have a choice between your children eating now, or your children starving now, vs. hypothetical 10-20 generations later that haven't been born going extinct in a cataclysm due to your climate theory, every sane parent chooses children eating now. We will choose tractors that run on oil over violent collapse into subsistence communism justified by climate paranoia every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Your idea is a non sequitur. "If people care so much about their children why is there still cancer? Checkmate natalists." Certainly we could look at reducing or eliminating pensions, your idea has some plausibility. Yeah, those are literally the only two choices. Starving our children or subsidizing oil consumption. I am very smart. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23332 Posts
On September 25 2025 00:07 Velr wrote: + Show Spoiler + It's pretty easy to find the people that are arguing for way more socialism/communism than the Nordic model. Not people with actual power but the Twitter/TikTok the Republicans are fighting constantly while acting as if they were mainstream democrats. Republicans made these "idealists" into their very own perfect usefull idiots. I'm not a progressive. I'm a socialist. We tend to spend much less time than progressives arguing with The "Nordic model" is not socialism, it's social democracy. Social democracy would certainly be a significant improvement in the US, but still grossly insufficient to prevent the ongoing rise of fascism. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3192 Posts
Like, let me try to do something similar for a liberal free market democracy: it operates on the assumption that self-interest will drive people to do pro-social things, but it’s also generally acknowledged that it depends on a government to prevent abuses. Even hardcore libertarians generally want a government to prevent “force and fraud” because if there are clear negative externalities to an action, self-interest won’t prevent someone from doing it. But if a core assumption of this system is that everyone is self-interested, what’s making sure the policy-makers are interested in removing those externalities? Rent-seekers likely have a lot more free time and money to spend influencing politics than people earning a living through honest contribution to society, and they’ve got substantially more incentive to do so. If I’m making free money through some weird policy loophole, I’m gonna be willing to spend just about every dollar of it to keep that loophole open if I have to; everybody else in society theoretically would benefit if I stopped leeching off society, but that benefit would be diffused across the entire society so none of them have a meaningful incentive to care. My point is not that it’s theoretically impossible for liberal democracy to work, but that like any other system, it’s going to require a substantial amount of virtue and public-spiritedness from the society to function. Lots of work has to be done by people who have no expectation of an extrinsic reward and, in most cases, will never receive one. Now, I have no idea how to decide on the best societal architecture for maximizing the impact of that public-spiritedness and minimizing the damage from selfish bad actors. But I suspect the answer requires stepping out of these lofty abstractions and getting into concrete specifics. | ||
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Razyda
837 Posts
It is in a way similar to shares - you have shares of some company, so you technically own it with thousands of other people. However if shares price hit certain value you will sell it because ultimately you put your profit ahead of some idea of owning tiny part of something. | ||
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KwarK
United States43005 Posts
On September 25 2025 01:57 Razyda wrote: Citation needed.technically it is not even stealing as he is one of the factory owners On September 25 2025 01:57 Razyda wrote: Citation needed.In capitalism factory would be focused on profit, hence this practice would be cut short. On September 25 2025 01:57 Razyda wrote: Citation needed.In socialism factory focus would be on production - so it would just keep requesting new laptops The problem with your premise is that it's not at all clear whether you've ever actually been outside or met another human being. This idea that the workers who own the factory would bankrupt it as they order ever increasing quantities of laptops only to watch the workers steal them is baffling. But let's set that to one side and assume that that is a real thing that would actually happen. In the capitalist factory that is owned by some hedge fund on the other side of the country, what exactly happens to immediately cut it short? And why is that something that couldn't happen if, instead of being owned by investors in a fund, it was owned by the workers who were present inside of the factory. What you've said essentially comes down to "the more involved the owners are in the operations of the factory the greater the opportunity for theft". It's such a weird argument that you've made that I'm genuinely not sure what to make of it. It's like the perfectly rational perfectly informed consumer argument. At a certain point the rebuttal is just "have you literally never met a human being?" Every person who has ever worked at a private company has witnessed incompetence, misuse of assets, inefficiency etc. and so it's weird that you're choosing to simply disbelieve in them. | ||
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LightSpectra
United States1788 Posts
On September 25 2025 01:57 Razyda wrote: Problem of socialism is that if everyone owns something it effectively belongs to no one. Lets say you have factory in socialist country. It is own by all the workers of this factory. There will always be at least one worker who will take factory laptop sell it and then request new one (technically it is not even stealing as he is one of the factory owners). In capitalism factory would be focused on profit, hence this practice would be cut short. In socialism factory focus would be on production - so it would just keep requesting new laptops, because quite frankly nobody gives a shit. The opposite is true. I work at a privately owned factory and catch someone stealing a laptop: My wage isn't going to change if I catch them, it's not my problem and definitely not worth the risk of being called a snitch. I work at a workers' co-op and catch someone stealing a laptop: Since the profits are directly distributed as my income, it's 100% in both my interest and everyone else's to stop embezzlement. Your criticism is conceivably accurate if you're imagining a massive command economy, where one factory closing down for inefficiency is a rounding error compared to the whole country's industrial output. But the American left isn't advocating for centralism, we're advocating for grassroots democracy in the workplace. | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium4883 Posts
On September 25 2025 02:09 KwarK wrote: Why would socialist workers have any concept of a track and trace or have a semblance of asset bookkeeping. All they're concerned with is ARBEITEN. And looking out for themselves... in a system where the system looks after you... Genuinely loled at the ever increasing orders of laptops. The image is so ridiculous, Monty Python'esque really. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States44719 Posts
On September 25 2025 01:03 Simberto wrote: The president of the United States. It is really quite impressive how much they just evaporated standards. Imagine this just 10 years ago. The president of the US threatens a news network in a bunch of different ways if they don't cancel the person he wants cancelled. Also, of course, the constant schoolyard bully level of rhetoric. Once again, this alone should completely kill any kind of political career of the person uttering it. And it is probably not even the worst thing the guy has done today. It is still completely unimaginable to have politicians behave like that, and just get away with it. And yet it is reality for you guys. How can this shit be acceptable for half your population? How do our resident republicans excuse this? Like, just take a step back from the boiling crab pot, and look at this. And imagine what you would have thought about it just 10 years ago. Is this person an acceptable president? (Just try to imagine Obama saying that, or anything like that. I personally can't. Or Bush) Completely agree. It's no wonder that Donald Trump is consistently ranked as one of the worst U.S. presidents of all time: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States - https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2021/?page=overall - https://www.nwprogressive.org/weblog/2025/02/npis-founder-ranks-the-presidents-2025-edition.html - https://sri.siena.edu/us-presidents-study-historical-rankings/ - https://www.usnews.com/news/special-reports/the-worst-presidents/slideshows/the-10-worst-presidents?slide=9 He's almost always in the bottom 5 presidents, and often in the bottom 3. Definitely the worst during my lifetime - F tier, trash tier, etc. | ||
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KwarK
United States43005 Posts
On September 25 2025 02:27 Uldridge wrote: Why would socialist workers have any concept of a track and trace or have a semblance of asset bookkeeping. All they're concerned with is ARBEITEN. And looking out for themselves... in a system where the system looks after you... Genuinely loled at the ever increasing orders of laptops. The image is so ridiculous, Monty Python'esque really. Sure, it sounds silly. But then you look around and consider the countless real world examples of publicly owned enterprises that were literally crushed beneath the laptops and suddenly nobody is laughing. The simple reality that everyone who has ever worked in any of these businesses has experienced is that publicly owned enterprises are buried beneath laptops and shareholders don't allow inefficiency. One time I tried to use the office printer at a publicly traded company for personal documents and a shareholder came by my office and made me put the ink back. Then I got a job at co-op and took the entire combo scanner/fax/photocopy/printer machine home with me only to find it replaced by two more the following day. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3192 Posts
On September 25 2025 01:57 Razyda wrote: Problem of socialism is that if everyone owns something it effectively belongs to no one. Lets say you have factory in socialist country. It is own by all the workers of this factory. There will always be at least one worker who will take factory laptop sell it and then request new one (technically it is not even stealing as he is one of the factory owners). In capitalism factory would be focused on profit, hence this practice would be cut short. In socialism factory focus would be on production - so it would just keep requesting new laptops, because quite frankly nobody gives a shit. It is in a way similar to shares - you have shares of some company, so you technically own it with thousands of other people. However if shares price hit certain value you will sell it because ultimately you put your profit ahead of some idea of owning tiny part of something. See but this is continuing to make the same assumption that people only act out of self-interest, and even more narrowly, out of pursuit of extrinsic reward. That’s obviously untrue with even a little world experience or even introspection, and as I argued previously, *any* system falls apart under those circumstances. Let me put it another way: even *private* businesses depend on employees acting without an immediate expectation of extrinsic reward. Any management school will tell you this. If everybody only works to get paid, they’ll do the absolute minimum they need to do to get paid. Whatever metric you use to gauge their performance, they’ll work to game that metric because that’s likely to be more reliable and less work. Even something simple like “actually being at work for the amount of time you’re paid for” becomes a nightmare to police: you need a clock-in/clock-out system, you need cameras to check that people aren’t clocking in for each other, you need people spot-checking those cameras against the clock-in/clock-out logs, you need some way to make sure whoever’s job it is to police that isn’t being brought in on the scam. And that’s just to make sure your employees are in the building; after that how do you make sure they’re actually *working*? Maybe you can eventually design some intricate policing apparatus to make sure everybody is too scared to slack, but it’s always going to be leaps and bounds less efficient than a competing company where people just do their jobs to the best of their ability without having to be policed. To achieve that you have to get into nebulous concepts like “motivation” and “morale” and “intrinsic reward.” Without them even a *capitalist* factory fails, so it’s not saying much that a socialist factory fails if all its employees just selfishly seek extrinsic rewards. | ||
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