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On August 11 2018 01:00 ticklishmusic wrote:This Rolling Stone interview with her was kinda interesting. Basically, she doesn't really care about her public perception and isn't interested in spending money to improve it. While I can follow that line of thinking, I don't necessarily agree with it. Allowing herself to be painted as the progressive boogeyman has hurt the party. Her disregard for her brand has also opened her to attacks from the left as well as the right.
Wow. Such arrogance. She feels like other people's opinions don't matter. That's not how you win. She needs to go.
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On August 11 2018 01:00 IyMoon wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2018 00:47 zlefin wrote:On August 11 2018 00:24 Mohdoo wrote:
Opinion: Pelosi is still extremely valuable in terms of her relations with various groups and securing funding. But this benefit is currently outweighed by public opinion of her. Modern elections are determined by public opinion more than the foundational sort of stuff she is good at. plausible. it's a bit more complicated than that; while elections are determined that way; gettin stuff done after the election is another story. You need the backroom focused people like pelosi for that. otherwise you win elections but fail to do anything with those wins. Does it matter if you fail? Voters will just keep voting you in to continue to do nothing
that depends whether your objective is solely to gain office, or if you want to accomplsih something with it.
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At some point we're going to have to sit together and figure out how we want to move forward with all of this, cause what they're doing in Venezuela doesn't seem to be working obviously but what we've been doing has an expiration date and if we're not past it already it's approaching quite fast.
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On August 11 2018 04:18 JimmiC wrote:
I'm not sure that Venezuela is a great example of the failing of socialism. Like how does a government official, and socialist in his early 40' s not born into money have half a billion in personal assets to get seized?
I think Venezuela is an example of what happens when a guy uses socialism as a front to make himself and his associates rich and powerful.
It's also not socialist because the workers haven't really seized the means of production, but this is less about placing blame accurately and more about finding something that's less deserving of blame, quite fast if possible, cause I'm starting to feel we're running out of time.
(edit wrt post below: I meant we're running out of time and we need to find something that works globally, not just in Venezuela)
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when will the world get a communist Cincinnatus? isnt the problem with communism the lack of republican norms, including dictatorial term limits?
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On August 11 2018 04:32 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2018 04:18 JimmiC wrote:
I'm not sure that Venezuela is a great example of the failing of socialism. Like how does a government official, and socialist in his early 40' s not born into money have half a billion in personal assets to get seized?
I think Venezuela is an example of what happens when a guy uses socialism as a front to make himself and his associates rich and powerful. It's also not socialist because the workers haven't really seized the means of production, but this is less about placing blame accurately and more about finding something that's less deserving of blame, quite fast if possible, cause I'm starting to feel we're running out of time. (edit wrt post below: I meant we're running out of time and we need to find something that works globally, not just in Venezuela)
Didn't they sieze the means of production? The oil industry, agriculture, finance sector, telecoms and power grid?
Re: your edit can't we just experiment within sovereign borders? Then just refine what works best? I am not a fan or global experiments.
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On August 11 2018 04:18 JimmiC wrote:
I'm not sure that Venezuela is a great example of the failing of socialism. Like how does a government official, and socialist in his early 40' s not born into money have half a billion in personal assets to get seized?
I think Venezuela is an example of what happens when a guy uses socialism as a front to make himself and his associates rich and powerful.
How is nationalising industries, rent controls, price controls, increasing welfare not socialist? Corruption alone usually does not collapse a country like this. Even a country as corrupt as Ukraine didn't collapse like this.
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On August 11 2018 16:29 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2018 04:18 JimmiC wrote:
I'm not sure that Venezuela is a great example of the failing of socialism. Like how does a government official, and socialist in his early 40' s not born into money have half a billion in personal assets to get seized?
I think Venezuela is an example of what happens when a guy uses socialism as a front to make himself and his associates rich and powerful. How is nationalising industries, rent controls, price controls, increasing welfare not socialist? Corruption alone usually does not collapse a country like this. Even a country as corrupt as Ukraine didn't collapse like this.
Of course the country collapsed due to Chavez and Maduro policies, and of course nationalizing everything in that situation was dumb as f...
That being said, other countries in other contexts, with other cultures and other histories are very successful with socialist policies. Start with Norway or Scandinavian countries in general.
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Right so just already have a fully functional capitalist economy with strong democratic traditions and institutions in place. populate said country with a homogeneous population that hasn't seen war or large civil unrest scar it in a very long time and surround it with stable rich trading partners. After all this then you can start incorporating some socialist policies.
I think nationalizeing the oils fields was the only real play they had in that situation. They weren't making any money from it. The correct choice isn't to try and operate on a level playing field against global oil companies as a third world nation and then never build the economy. The prince of Saudi arabia sees that this is coming to his country and will take the national oil interests public next year. But that would have been a capitalist play.
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On August 11 2018 17:09 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2018 16:29 RvB wrote:On August 11 2018 04:18 JimmiC wrote:
I'm not sure that Venezuela is a great example of the failing of socialism. Like how does a government official, and socialist in his early 40' s not born into money have half a billion in personal assets to get seized?
I think Venezuela is an example of what happens when a guy uses socialism as a front to make himself and his associates rich and powerful. How is nationalising industries, rent controls, price controls, increasing welfare not socialist? Corruption alone usually does not collapse a country like this. Even a country as corrupt as Ukraine didn't collapse like this. Of course the country collapsed due to Chavez and Maduro policies, and of course nationalizing everything in that situation was dumb as f... That being said, other countries in other contexts, with other cultures and other histories are very successful with socialist policies. Start with Norway or Scandinavian countries in general.
Scandinavia in general scores very well on any market freedom index. Scandinavia funds their welfare state with the free market (just like any developed country really). They're not much different than other developed countries with public expenditure as percentage of GDP. In fact Sweden for example largely moved away from its third way policies which they expirimented with in the 20th century where effective tax rates could exceed 100% and moved to a much more market friendly economy.
Anyway my point was the Venezuela did collapse because of their insane economic policy and that it is indeed socialist. Of course there are ways to integrate the welfare state into a well functioning market economy.
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Talking about the Venezuala narrative without factoring in the reasons they turned socialist (brutal venture capitalism stripping the country of its wealth without giving any to said country) and the many years of success the country enjoyed under Chavez is a pretty narrow way of looking at things. There's a reason he ended up near the top of the USA's most dangerous persons list, and it sure wasn't because of all the horrible things he was doing to his people. Because he wasn't doing much of that. He was making socialism look viable and successful for quite a while.
He didn't build for the future, but he at least gave the country a good spell. Maduro was a very poor choice of replacement.
There's a disingenuous note that enters these discussions: the minute a Socialist state erupts, they get ostracised from the international community and sanctioned to hell. Everybody wanted Venezuala to fail, nobody wanted them to succeed.
But if there were a bunch of similar nations there to help each other out - you know, like we do for each other constantly, us capitalists whose economies would fold like a wet paper towel without owing each other tons of money - Venezuala might be alright even today.
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Calling Scandinavian countries socialist makes absolutely zero sense. You'll find more market liberalism there than in southern Europe for instance.
I'm Venezuela corruption and socialism go hand in hand, in that socialism concentrates power and power inevitably corrupts.
EDIT: iamdave the "Chavez good wave" should have fooled no one. He took advantage of skyrocketing oil prices to bribe the country while he destroyed its political institutions to consolidate power around himself. To be fooled by this is to be ignorant of history - this story has repeated itself dozens of times
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A Horizon Air mechanic described as "suicidal" took off in a plane without permission at Seattle-Tacoma (Sea-Tac) Airport in Seattle, Washington, and later crashed near Ketron Island, the airport and law-enforcement officials confirmed Friday night.
The mechanic was killed. There were no other passengers or crew members on board.
Two F-15 fighter jets were scrambled out of Portland, Oregon, within minutes to track the wayward plane, said Ed Troyer, the public information officer for the Pierce County Sheriff.
The ordeal began around 11 p.m. ET. Alaska Airlines, the parent company of Horizon Air, acknowledged the incident in a statement, saying a Horizon Air Q400 plane was involved. The Q400 turboprop plane is manufactured by Bombardier. It's designed for shorter-distance flights and can seat 76 passengers, Alaska Air said.
The US Coast Guard responded to the crash site where a "large smoke plume" was seen, NBC News reported. The plane was allegedly "flying around Puget Sound," before it went down. Rescue boats were on scene.
Broadcast images of the crash site showed burning forest land in an apparently dense, dark area near Ketron Island.
The FBI and NTSB are investigating.
https://www.businessinsider.com/seatac-airport-plane-incident-seattle-tacoma-washington-2018-8
Air traffic control audio is available but i'll let you folks find that on your own. It's quite sad.
User was warned for this post
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We all know how that works, when Venezuela appears like it's working well under a popular Chavez, "Ten Reasons Why Venezuela isn't Really Socialist"; now that it seems to be fucked up under Maduro, "Socialism Has Destroyed Venezuela".
This is really, really unimportant. I think we all agree that if liberalism is about to fail world wide, as I'm more and more convinced is the case, we shouldn't replace it with Chavezism, whatever that is.
On August 11 2018 17:17 Sermokala wrote:
Right so just already have a fully functional capitalist economy with strong democratic traditions and institutions in place. populate said country with a homogeneous population that hasn't seen war or large civil unrest scar it in a very long time and surround it with stable rich trading partners. After all this then you can start incorporating some socialist policies.
I think nationalizeing the oils fields was the only real play they had in that situation. They weren't making any money from it. The correct choice isn't to try and operate on a level playing field against global oil companies as a third world nation and then never build the economy. The prince of Saudi arabia sees that this is coming to his country and will take the national oil interests public next year. But that would have been a capitalist play.
I don't think we get bonus points for starting from scratch. If we could start from a fully functional capitalist economy with strong democratic traditions and institutions in place, that would certainly be a plus.
We should however drop the talking point of homogeneous population. As far as I can tell it appeared with the discussion of police because we needed to say "look the US is different cause we have those pesky black people amirite" without saying it, and now it's being incremented into every discussion. Reminder that the most capitalist system is the US right now, and it never had a homogeneous population. We can safely discard that one.
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Kinda crazy how that could have totally flown straight into the space Needle or something. I imagine a lot of groups will be researching how this was all possible.
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On August 11 2018 22:31 Mohdoo wrote:
Kinda crazy how that could have totally flown straight into the space Needle or something. I imagine a lot of groups will be researching how this was all possible.
I'm not sure how stuff is in correlation to where he was flying, but he had fighter jets on him in minutes. There wouldn't have been a lot of time to fly into anything if he had attempted that.
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EPT
