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khwarezm posted:Oh we're doing this particular hair splitting. Hair splitting? The literal difference between social democracy and democratic socialism is the difference between capitalism and socialism.
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# ? May 29, 2016 04:14 |
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# ? May 14, 2024 19:12 |
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Triglav posted:Hair splitting? The literal difference between social democracy and democratic socialism is the difference between capitalism and socialism. Social Democracy is still meant to aim for an explicitly Socialist end point without Capitalism, its just that it works within the democratic systems of many Capitalist countries and involves less lighting dynamite.
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# ? May 29, 2016 04:25 |
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Triglav posted:What are the things we've approached post-scarcity on? Last I checked, this world of ours is a closed ecosystem, the only additional material being provided by meteorite. You can already make a surprising amount of items with a 3D printer, and you can pick up a relatively poor one for as little as US$350. In a theoretical near-future where a flexible 3D printer is at least as ubiquitous in the home as a computer, that removes many everyday items from the marketplace, along with the stores that were built to sell them to you and the overseas factories that produce them. Physical media is also rapidly falling out of favor. I know that in the video game industry, game sales that involve an actual disc plateaued around 2012 and have been slowly sinking ever since. There's a reason why GameStop is rapidly growing to resemble some kind of vaguely media-themed pawn shop more than an actual games store.
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# ? May 29, 2016 04:36 |
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khwarezm posted:Social Democracy is still meant to aim for an explicitly Socialist end point without Capitalism No, it explicitly doesn't because it doesn't give the means of production to the workers. That's the definition of Socialism. You seem to be using the Tea Party definition of Socialism which is "the government doesn't explicitly gently caress its non-wealthy citizens".
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# ? May 29, 2016 04:41 |
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Triglav posted:How can you say that? Do you believe people are powerless to demand change? They did demand change. Not through the market or their purchasing power. Because they had next to none. They fought and many died for that change. You're dense as hell if you think that changes and regulations were enacted by Market demand rather than deliberate criminal acts that necessitated such changes to prevent such heinous abuse. Triglav posted:Hair splitting? The literal difference between social democracy and democratic socialism is the difference between capitalism and socialism. Dad? Get off the internet. The Reds are not invading, and all Socialism is not communism
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# ? May 29, 2016 04:42 |
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computer parts posted:No, it explicitly doesn't because it doesn't give the means of production to the workers. That's the definition of Socialism. No, it does, or ostensibly its meant to, just without resorting to dramatic revolution and instead fostering change within a democratic framework that ultimately erases class differences, the originators of the ideology like Bernstein and Jaures were very up front about this. Many Social Democratic parties called themselves Socialist straight up.
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# ? May 29, 2016 04:55 |
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Wanderer posted:You can already make a surprising amount of items with a 3D printer, and you can pick up a relatively poor one for as little as US$350. In a theoretical near-future where a flexible 3D printer is at least as ubiquitous in the home as a computer, that removes many everyday items from the marketplace, along with the stores that were built to sell them to you and the overseas factories that produce them. So your examples of us approaching post-scarcity are plastic toy printers and digital media? Plastic is even a petroleum byproduct. Do you have any examples of post-scarcity commodities? CommieGIR posted:They did demand change. Not through the market or their purchasing power. Because they had next to none. They fought and many died for that change. Who is this eponymous "they?" Every day people, but not the ones at the top of your illuminati pyramid? It's a shame you think power only comes from a tip of a bayonet blade, that people are only able to affect change through violence. I'm well aware of the different shades of socialism, but it seems you know nothing about it, or capitalism. khwarezm posted:No, it does, or ostensibly its meant to, just without resorting to dramatic revolution and instead fostering change within a democratic framework that ultimately erases class differences, the originators of the ideology like Bernstein and Jaures were very up front about this. Many Social Democratic parties called themselves Socialist straight up. Right, and many anarchists call themselves socialists too.
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# ? May 29, 2016 05:30 |
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Triglav posted:Who is this eponymous "they?" Every day people, but not the ones at the top of your illuminati pyramid? No, I think it's far safer to say that you have some sort of fantasy about what capitalism is. Best advice I can give you is out down the Ayn Rand novel and stop pretending capitalism can do no wrong.
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# ? May 29, 2016 05:32 |
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CommieGIR posted:No, I think it's far safer to say that you have some sort of fantasy about what capitalism is. Best advice I can give you is out down the Ayn Rand novel and stop pretending capitalism can do no wrong. I think you might be projecting your own misunderstandings of capitalism now. You seem to derive your understanding from A Christmas Carol.
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# ? May 29, 2016 06:09 |
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Triglav posted:So your examples of us approaching post-scarcity are plastic toy printers and digital media? Plastic is even a petroleum byproduct. Do you have any examples of post-scarcity commodities? They're a couple of examples of what's basically post-scarcity manufacturing. A lot of our economy's built around the idea that we need other people to make certain goods for us. When just about anyone can make certain goods, it cuts off part of the market at the knees. I've seen a couple of people talking about the notion as part and parcel of the imminent automation crash.
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# ? May 29, 2016 06:15 |
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Wanderer posted:They're a couple of examples of what's basically post-scarcity manufacturing. A lot of our economy's built around the idea that we need other people to make certain goods for us. When just about anyone can make certain goods, it cuts off part of the market at the knees. I have a hard time believing plastic printers will do much beyond to adding to pollution. The items produced would not be durable, only easily replaced. I can't imagine building much of anything of consequence with them, can you? What about plastic's biodegradability issues and source as a petroleum byproduct? Can the printers be made by other printers? The closest thing I can think of to post-scarcity is permaculture subsistence farming, which seems rather self-defeating and still subject to circumstantial scarcity. Yeah, today food's less scarce thanks to farming technology and agricultural futures. We can grow seasonal crops all year now… in the desert, destroying the ground table that took millennia to form, exacerbating droughts, making the mountains rise and earth quake as untold cubic yards of water weight is removed from the ground. That doesn't sound sustainable.
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# ? May 29, 2016 07:03 |
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Triglav posted:I have a hard time believing plastic printers will do much beyond to adding to pollution. People are currently using 3D printers to make solar cells that generate power at 20% efficiency. You can also use them to make things like composite blades for wind turbines, titanium medical implants, and parts for a some-assembly-required house. Hell, even the lousy off-the-shelf Best Buy 3D printer could probably make you a zip gun.
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# ? May 29, 2016 07:18 |
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Triglav posted:How can you say that? Do you believe people are powerless to demand change? What history has shown is that sometimes change mustn't just be demanded it must be forced into being at gunpoint. Hence bringing up the Gilded Age. People fought and loving died for your right to take five minutes out to poo poo at work. A lot of the labor protections that people take for granted now were literally bought with blood. Capitalism in the west is trying to take them away and workers are rightly loving pissed, especially with western capitalism's response to climate change. It won't affect the rich much but the rest of us are absolutely hosed. It might already be too late to change and that's another part of the problem. ToxicSlurpee fucked around with this message at 07:27 on May 29, 2016 |
# ? May 29, 2016 07:24 |
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Listen, if you want to get children out of the mines you'll have to overturn capitalism to do it! What do the captains of industry have to gain? ~ this thread on the labor movement. (And unlike labor, capitalist actually are being harmed by climate change directly.)
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# ? May 29, 2016 07:25 |
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The past few pages are a fantastic and salient example of why we're all going to die rather than fix this gigantic clusterfuck.
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# ? May 29, 2016 07:43 |
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I wish I could think of a more intelligent-sounding way to ask this, but are we all gonna die?
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# ? May 29, 2016 08:50 |
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Tree Bucket posted:I wish I could think of a more intelligent-sounding way to ask this, but are we all gonna die? There is no peer reviewed scientific modeling that I know of that indicates the death of all humanity under a business as usual scenario. Some posters consider this mearly a failure of vision.
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# ? May 29, 2016 08:55 |
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ToxicSlurpee posted:What history has shown is that sometimes change mustn't just be demanded it must be forced into being at gunpoint. Hence bringing up the Gilded Age. People fought and loving died for your right to take five minutes out to poo poo at work. The threat of murder seems like demand to me, albeit one more emotional than the typical market irrationalities of hope and fear. But I must admit I can't relate to getting so worked up over a job that I'd murder my employer. Maybe that's what I'm missing, a bloodlust for murder? Maybe then I'd be down for a good kulak killing? If someone reduces your benefits, organize or quit. Reduce your bid until they meet you with their offer. If that fails, you could always go back to picking berries. But I have unfortunate news: All of the work into commercializing and commodifying solar panels, wind turbines, and other renewable technologies, came from capitalists trying to turn a profit, some of them even employed at companies predominately invested in fossil fuels. Further, national parks, the EPA, and cap and trade all came from capitalist minds. Arguably it's in a capitalist's best interest to preserve the market place, not destroy it. Likewise, it's in a capitalist's best interest to keep their workers happy, loyal, productive, etc, otherwise they gotta get and educate and train new supply. There are just as many terrible capitalists as there are terrible socialists, and that is because their politics weren't what made them terrible. But don't let me get in the way of your kicking and screaming about evil capitalist factories while a paranoid socialist destroys Venezuela. Tree Bucket posted:I wish I could think of a more intelligent-sounding way to ask this, but are we all gonna die? Yes, capitalist and socialist alike.
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# ? May 29, 2016 09:00 |
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Triglav posted:The threat of murder seems like demand to me, albeit one more emotional than the typical market irrationalities of hope and fear. But I must admit I can't relate to getting so worked up over a job that I'd murder my employer. Maybe that's what I'm missing, a bloodlust for murder? Maybe then I'd be down for a good kulak killing? Maybe you're missing having to crawl around in a lovely-rear end mine shaft for twelve hours a day under constant risk of death from gas leaks or the mine collapsing or the National Guard rolling in and shooting you if you dare demand better working conditions?
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# ? May 29, 2016 09:18 |
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Triglav posted:The threat of murder seems like demand to me, albeit one more emotional than the typical market irrationalities of hope and fear. But I must admit I can't relate to getting so worked up over a job that I'd murder my employer. Maybe that's what I'm missing, a bloodlust for murder? Maybe then I'd be down for a good kulak killing? Arguably it'd be best for capital to treat slaves well so they're happy and productive. Look how that turned out. Oh wait, slaves were treated so brutally they had a nasty habit of violent rebellion or escape at every possibility. Once again people have fought and died (and continue to given that slavery still exists in the world) to end slavery. And, once again, some very rich people resisted it tooth and nail simply because the end of slavery meant they might make less money. Oh, the horror. Then the Gilded Age happened and it was the same thing; capital was paying in fake money, brutally exploiting the labor, and often having help from the militia when strikes happened. The same thing happened again; capitalists didn't want to pay workers in real money and quite liked being able to wring people for every shred of productivity they could in 80 hours a week at the mill while exploiting them brutally. They just loved the fact that you could start working people to death before they had two digits in their age and cared little for the health of their workers. When one dies of black lung at 19 you just hire another gently caress it who cares humans are basically cockroaches anyway. Same thing there; workers had a tendency to become violent and unruly but rather than pay more the rich just kept loving them hard as they could until they were forced to actually pay people. Capital has a tendency to actively resist change rather than embrace it. They also don't give a drat what the long-term consequences are if there is money to be made now. Capital must be drug kicking and screaming into the future. Only in this case they have to be drug kicking and screaming into not destroying the future. Seriously, read up on the industrial revolution and quit being so dense. Some of the things you said were used in defense of literal loving slavery. Well hey we'd just love to pay the workers more than starvation wages but wouldn't you know it, the price of Congressmen went up this year. Better luck next time.
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# ? May 29, 2016 09:20 |
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Instead of this D&D chat on terms that are being clearly misunderstood with enough frequency to drag out an unimportant debate on precisely labeling a government, can we agree that the US can be labeled with simple words like "puppet" or phrases like "rigged by lobbies and money for the rich" and move on? Close enough is good enough in the context of global warming when the discussion was originally about taking a government that is rigged by election money to benefit the rich and turn it into a government that is a little more responsive to public health and environmental hazards that don't necessarily have the weight of a corporate lobby and political network advocating for it. Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 12:45 on May 29, 2016 |
# ? May 29, 2016 12:42 |
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The government and our elected officials are largely hard of hearing as a result of moneyed interests screaming in their ears from candidacy to office and beyond. You have to have a lot of money to be truly heard. There is not as much cash behind climate change goalposts as there is behind moneyed industrial interests. I argue that it would actually not take all that much change to restore hearing to the government's ears.
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# ? May 29, 2016 12:53 |
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This is a triple post and I apologize ahead of time (phone posting), but to focus the governmental identity debate, can we first write down what a government needs to accomplish to ~~SAVE THE PLANET~~ or at least pull its own weight in saving the planet? Purely on a policy level. Then talk about whether your concept of a social democratic or capitalist or anarchosyndicalist commune is capable of implementing these things at suitable pace. There's a lot of arguments here on government "how" without a clear picture of the "what" any government needs to accomplish, and I think that lack of focus is contributing to the last two pages of posting -- cart before horse. Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 13:07 on May 29, 2016 |
# ? May 29, 2016 13:04 |
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Triglav posted:I think you might be projecting your own misunderstandings of capitalism now. You seem to derive your understanding from A Christmas Carol. Libertarian thread is that way, bud. You don't have a clue about capitalism other than worshipping it as the perfect system. Amazingly, everyone is calling you out on it and you still can't be bothered to admit your mistakes.
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# ? May 29, 2016 15:22 |
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Tree Bucket posted:I wish I could think of a more intelligent-sounding way to ask this, but are we all gonna die?
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# ? May 29, 2016 16:16 |
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Tree Bucket posted:I wish I could think of a more intelligent-sounding way to ask this, but are we all gonna die? Nope, worst case is that Europe gets a lot browner but that was kind of inevitable anyway.
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# ? May 29, 2016 17:24 |
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Cerebral Bore posted:Maybe you're missing having to crawl around in a lovely-rear end mine shaft for twelve hours a day under constant risk of death from gas leaks or the mine collapsing or the National Guard rolling in and shooting you if you dare demand better working conditions? You might be right. Like most people, I've never experienced a communist forced-labor camp. ToxicSlurpee posted:Capital has a tendency to actively resist change rather than embrace it. They also don't give a drat what the long-term consequences are if there is money to be made now. Capital must be drug kicking and screaming into the future. Organize then. It's in the government's best interest to lift its citizens out of squalor. They'll pay you to live until you can get another tax-paying job. The vast majority of lobbying is over taxes, Boeing wanting to build a plane cheaper to sell it to the developing world so they don't go with Airbus. I know you probably have X, Y, and Z example of lobbing from idiots like the Kochs so don't bother, I'll just imagine them. If you don't want to work, quit. Go pick berries, live in a monastery, be a hobo. Everything is optional. Capitalism will stop destroying the world the moment humans stop destroying the world. The problem isn't capitalism, it's people. It's not like socialist countries haven't done heinous things to people and the environment. There's no return to the land possible anymore, not without massive death. A person requires some acre or two of land to subsistence farm, and there aren't enough arable acres on Earth. CommieGIR posted:Libertarian thread is that way, bud. You don't have a clue about capitalism other than worshipping it as the perfect system. Amazingly, everyone is calling you out on it and you still can't be bothered to admit your mistakes. So what's your alternative? How will it ration and allocate resources if not by currency, trade, and taxes? How will it promote efficiency? How will it incentivize people?
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# ? May 29, 2016 17:51 |
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Tree Bucket posted:I wish I could think of a more intelligent-sounding way to ask this, but are we all gonna die? If you live in a wealthy nation and aren't personally wealthy then the most likely worst case outcome for you and your children and is just a lot of ugly and painful economic and political effects. If you don't live in a wealthy nation then maybe. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 19:49 on May 29, 2016 |
# ? May 29, 2016 19:01 |
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computer parts posted:Nope, worst case is that Europe gets a lot browner but that was kind of inevitable anyway. Mass displacement, no biggy.
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# ? May 29, 2016 19:31 |
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Triglav posted:You might be right. Like most people, I've never experienced a communist forced-labor camp. So your response to people calling you out on your historical revisionism and blatant whitewashing of your preferred ideology's atrocities and is to yell loudly about Those People and hope nobody notices? That's a pretty loving scummy way of trying to justify your lovely opinions. Just saying.
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# ? May 29, 2016 19:51 |
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khwarezm posted:Mass displacement, no biggy. Maybe bad for whites in Europe.
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# ? May 29, 2016 19:54 |
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I'm positive that to stop the possible future migration, Europe would somehow find an amount of money, will and resources that would have been able to mitigate the effects of climate change to a significant degree to begin with. Not to mention the inevitable ultra fascism.
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# ? May 29, 2016 19:55 |
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computer parts posted:Maybe bad for whites in Europe. So being a refugee is awesome? I mean, the fact that it might be okay for them at some point in the future or for their children is great at all, but most people don't care about long-term trend lines when they're living in the bumpy part of the curve. Like, I don't know what you're trying to say here. There's no realistic climate change outcome that's a net positive. You don't have to be all doom and gloom about the end of the human race to acknowledge reality.
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# ? May 29, 2016 20:01 |
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Paradoxish posted:So being a refugee is awesome? I mean, the fact that it might be okay for them at some point in the future or for their children is great at all, but most people don't care about long-term trend lines when they're living in the bumpy part of the curve. If we're concerned about the happiness of people right now, we should give up on trying to leave fossil fuels because that is going to upset a lot of people.
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# ? May 29, 2016 20:03 |
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computer parts posted:If we're concerned about the happiness of people right now, we should give up on trying to leave fossil fuels because that is going to upset a lot of people. I don't even understand how this is a response to my post. You were implying that mass migration is primarily bad for "white people" in Europe. If mass migration happens, it's going to be bad for everyone involved in the short and probably medium term. It's also going to mean that previously inhabited parts of our planet are becoming uninhabitable, or that governments are collapsing because they're too poor to cope with climate driven changes. None of this is a good thing for anyone in any sense over any reasonable time scale.
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# ? May 29, 2016 20:11 |
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Paradoxish posted:I don't even understand how this is a response to my post. You conceded that down the line, people would be fine, and the issue is people in the present day. Down the line, the people that depend on fossil fuels (eg, coal miner families) will be fine/better if we moved off of them. The problem is the people today.
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# ? May 29, 2016 20:18 |
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Cerebral Bore posted:So your response to people calling you out on your historical revisionism and blatant whitewashing of your preferred ideology's atrocities and is to yell loudly about Those People and hope nobody notices? That's a pretty loving scummy way of trying to justify your lovely opinions. Just saying. My preferred ideology is not authoritarianism, be it capitalist or socialist authoritarianism. I've yet to hear a compelling reason why replacing capitalism with socialism will improve the world's standard of living while keeping humanity from over-consuming the world's resources. Capitalism has prices to deal with over-consumption. It is simply too expensive to consume everything. Would the socialist answer be to only issue people one barrel of crude oil a month, so that no one could consume too much too fast? Feel free to answer the questions I posed CommieGIR a few posts back. It seems everyone here likes capitalism's stability, they just want an expanded welfare state. Last I checked, the GDP of the United States divided across all documented persons is something like $50K. Take 25% off for taxes and everyone can have $37K left over for housing and food. Obviously that simple math includes toddlers and kids, but still, it definitely is possible for everyone to live a modest life. Then everyone could pool their saved resources for a common project and... wait, whoops, gotta slow down, wouldn't want to start a common-stock corporation or anything, that might be too capitalist. But the United States is the wealthiest country on Earth. Things are not the same in the developing world. It's simple arithmetic. Coal production may be falling off a cliff in the United States thanks to natural gas, but the U.S. has enough wealth to choose its energy sources.
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# ? May 29, 2016 22:01 |
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Triglav posted:My preferred ideology is not authoritarianism, be it capitalist or socialist authoritarianism. Jesus gently caress you are dense. Nobody is arguing replacing capitalism as a MARKET FORCE with Socialism. They are arguing for the same Socialist Democracy that we've had since 1940. Just stop. You are arguing against something no one is saying.
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# ? May 30, 2016 03:23 |
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Okay. We all agree: Capitalism is good.
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# ? May 30, 2016 03:27 |
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# ? May 14, 2024 19:12 |
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This is a mirror of an article on Forbes. The guy who was engineering artificial leaves has now come up with a bacterium that eats hydrogen and atmospheric CO2 and turns them into alcohols, providing a carbon-neutral fuel source. http://i.imgur.com/Eh5yzAJ.jpg
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# ? May 30, 2016 03:56 |