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Cingulate posted:I’m not sure if this paragraph is calling me a genius or an idiot. I do know though it’s not about socialism, but about me! much like your posting
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Sep 6, 2020 11:35
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Cingulate posted:There’s almost 2 billion people around India Because of pollution, people in India have a lowered life expectancy from 2 to 4 years depending on the study you read. Are you suggesting than more capitalism, energy usage and industry is the way to get higher standards of living there?
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Sep 6, 2020 11:40
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Fat Samurai posted:Because of pollution, people in India have a lowered life expectancy from 2 to 4 years depending on the study you read.
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Sep 6, 2020 11:44
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Huh turns out admitting a million refugees was a tremendous boost to Germany:- https://twitter.com/kenroth/status/1302196868009603072?s=21 Lol so much for all those nativist ethnonationalist freaks lol
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Sep 6, 2020 11:45
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V. Illych L. posted:cingulate, the reason i'm not bothering to seriously engage with you here is because you're very obviously not actually interested in an answer. i know this due to the power of inductive reasoning and literacy, because you systematically ignore points contrary to what you want to be the case and glom onto technicalities which demonstrate your virtue and your opponents' vice you could still put in a little bit of effort or at least copy paste a canned answer because cingulate isn't the only person in the world who might read this lovely thread
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Sep 6, 2020 11:48
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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suck my woke dick posted:you could still put in a little bit of effort or at least copy paste a canned answer because cingulate isn't the only person in the world who might read this lovely thread then someone else can ask questions and i'll be happy to interact more constructively cingulate's posting isn't worth more than scorn and pretending otherwise is a mug's game. bad faith needs pointing out
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Sep 6, 2020 11:51
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Cingulate posted:I am still very unclear on how exactly socialism is the answer here. I am not very optimistic the Wikipedia page on sustainability is gonna give me that answer. Okay, let's try this. In the Land of Allegoriah, the Sultan who rules over the people has a harem with one thousand wives in it! Of course every man in Allegoriah wants to live like the Sultan, and have a harem with one thousand wives. Why would they not? Who wouldn't want to the Sultan? It's only "fair" that every man has the same status as the Sultan! Well no. What's fair is to not have a Sultan at all. Like, have you even asked the women what they think of being reduced to a status symbol and stuck in a gilded cage? The capitalist system is built upon consumerism. Consuming is what drives the economy, and growth of the economy requires growth of consumption. The level of consumption is already excessive, depleting the Earth's resources faster than they can replenish themselves. This level of consumption also causes a host of other issues besides resource depletion, such as destruction of the few remaining natural areas, which results in zoonotic pandemies like covid-19 (you might have heard a word of two about it, it was in the news for a bit); the destruction of biodiversity including, for example, all the pollinating insects that our agriculture both relies upon and exterminates with pesticides; the destruction of marine wildlife with all sorts of pollutants including enough plastic to form a new floating continent of garbage; and global warming which results in intensification of extreme weather events such as tropical storms, as well as the ineluctable rise of the sea level which will drown a lot of people -- and a lot of arable land, creating a famine situation if the destruction of pollinators doesn't come up first. All of this is bad. But Capitalism says that Number Must Go Up. So we need a system that will be driven not by Number Must Go Up but by other conditions, such as sustainability. This will likely require Number to Go Down for a while first, because the western standard is not sustainable.
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Sep 6, 2020 11:55
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Cingulate posted:Probably no? Maybe if we exclude the US, now that Corona takes them for a spin, ha ha Anyway, good news! The current projections of population growth predict a hard crash across most of the world for the end of the century, so if all fails, giving all those "non-westerners" the ability to eat so much sugar their bodies explode into candy will not change much, neither for the better, nor the worse.
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Sep 6, 2020 12:06
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Cat Mattress posted:Okay, let's try this.
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Sep 6, 2020 12:11
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Libluini posted:Maybe if we exclude the US, now that Corona takes them for a spin, ha ha
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Sep 6, 2020 12:12
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I think it might be a mistake for socialism to espouse limited consumption in the developing world - it's already hard enough to get people on your side when you promise them their lives will get significantly better, it'd be harder still if it were "actually you can't have nice things under socialism either, but we'll tell it to you straight instead of making empty promises like capitalism". It's something almost all socialist movements that have succeeded politically ultimately acquiesced to. Aside from Pol Pot, but let's not talk about that given the mass murder that was involved. A devastated planet under global socialism would ultimately still be better than devastated planet under capitalism that we are heading towards. Private Speech fucked around with this message at 12:18 on Sep 6, 2020 |
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Sep 6, 2020 12:15
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Al-Saqr posted:Huh turns out admitting a million refugees was a tremendous boost to Germany:- The article only makes passing mention of it and in positive terms at that, but she's also responsible for loving a shitload of future refugees. Private Speech posted:It's something almost all socialist movements that have succeeded politically ultimately acquiesced to. Aside from Pol Pot, but let's not talk about that given the mass murder that was involved. Can we talk about how he received capitalist backing when other socialists intervened, though? SplitSoul fucked around with this message at 12:23 on Sep 6, 2020 |
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Sep 6, 2020 12:20
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SplitSoul posted:Can we talk about how he received capitalist backing when other socialists intervened, though? Of course, it's not as if the west hasn't done plenty of other heinous things which we talk about here all the time. Unless you're being rhetorical, in which case I'd argue that we'd be talking about him, which I just proposed we should not, given the toll involved.
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Sep 6, 2020 12:26
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Private Speech posted:I think it might be a mistake for socialism to espouse limited consumption in the developing world - it's already hard enough to get people on your side when you promise them their lives will get significantly better, it'd be harder still if it were "actually you can't have nice things under socialism either, but we'll tell it to you straight instead of making empty promises like capitalism". Even under more pessimistic assumptions, the poorest 2 billions would likely be better of then now.
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Sep 6, 2020 12:26
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Cingulate posted:Yes, but 1. Africa is still projected to grow by a factor of two or so, 2. The only way to get people to stop reproducing seems to be raising their standard of living, 3. There are already billions of people on this planet with living standards and consumption amounts well below ours. Yes that was what I was getting at, thanks for simply restating my argument using your words, that surely will bring this discussion forward. You also missed my little joke about our own living standards not being that great everyone should emulate them unthinkingly. Are you drunk right now, or why is your reading comprehension dove tailing so badly?
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Sep 6, 2020 12:27
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Libluini posted:Yes that was what I was getting at, thanks for simply restating my argument using your words, that surely will bring this discussion forward. You also missed my little joke about our own living standards not being that great everyone should emulate them unthinkingly. Are you drunk right now, or why is your reading comprehension dove tailing so badly? 
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Sep 6, 2020 12:32
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Cingulate posted:Well if you and I are at least agreeing on a few basic points, even if it takes me a post or two to get it, that seems much more productive than what’s going on with the rest of this debate It really isn't because you seem to be talking around, over and past people instead of engaging with the debate under the premise of 'just asking questions' and 'you're not answering my questions though'.
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Sep 6, 2020 12:38
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Cingulate posted:Well if you and I are at least agreeing on a few basic points, even if it takes me a post or two to get it, that seems much more productive than what’s going on with the rest of this debate Have you stopped beating your wife yet? The only acceptable answer is within my specific framework, so it needs to be yes or it needs to be no. Failure to answer means I will assume you have in fact not stopped beating your wife.
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Sep 6, 2020 12:40
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Me: what will socialism do? Gooncialiats: capitalism capitalism capitalism Me: ok but what about socialism? Gooncialists: capitalism! Why do you hate the planet? Me: well socialism? VL Lenin: here we again see how cingulate is bad Me: ok but socialism? What exactly will it do? And please don’t talk about capitalism, give me a positive vision of socialism. What will socialism do? Repeat
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Sep 6, 2020 12:42
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Cingulate posted:Me: what will socialism do? To be fair to your strawmen, I did make a serious attempt at telling you what my ideal socialist society would be, but apparently you missed my post???
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Sep 6, 2020 13:23
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Cingulate posted:I’m not suggesting anything. I am asking how socialism is going to work out here. What exactly is gonna happen under gooncialism? How is it going to save us? Wrong. You are (repeatedly) suggesting that the status quo is better than alternatives, so I have to assume that you’re ok with the people in India dying of pollution. “Just asking questions” and then demanding 100% surefire answers that have no problems whatsoever, while ignoring the obvious problems with the current situation is a statement of position.
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Sep 6, 2020 13:59
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Libluini posted:To be fair to your strawmen, I did make a serious attempt at telling you what my ideal socialist society would be, but apparently you missed my post??? Just so we're clear, this is what you refer to as a serious attempt at describing a socialist society? Libluini posted:In school I came with this mad plan of some sort of heavily mechanized and automated society, everyone would get income based on energy credits, building crap that destroys the environment would be strictly forbidden, there were heavy limits on the amount of stuff a single person was allowed to own, just basic things I thought would be necessary to get out of our capitalim-induced death spiral.
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Sep 6, 2020 14:04
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We’ve referred to entire books which begin to describe socialism. That’s been ignored cus apparently only posts in the thread count. Can someone just copy paste the Conquest of Bread in its entirety into this thread or something?
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Sep 6, 2020 14:18
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Orange Devil posted:We’ve referred to entire books which begin to describe socialism. That’s been ignored cus apparently only posts in the thread count. Can someone just copy paste the Conquest of Bread in its entirety into this thread or something? A key skill in communication is being able to summarise the key takeaways from a longer source you're referring to. "Educate urself lol", "other people have thought about it more than me" and "let me link to a 500 page document" are examples of poor communication.
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Sep 6, 2020 14:26
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Sep 6, 2020 15:11
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You guys love to talk on and on about capitalism and why it’s bad, but it feels incredibly hard to get you to talk about socialism and why it’s good.
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Sep 6, 2020 15:15
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Cingulate posted:You guys love to talk on and on about capitalism and why it’s bad, but it feels incredibly hard to get you to talk about socialism and why it’s good. because it's not relevant to the conversation we were having, it's relevant to the conversation *you* want to have for reasons of your own gratification like, this is why it's genuinely not worth engaging with you beyond bullying, because what you want to do with the conversation and what we want to do with the conversation are irreconcilably different
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Sep 6, 2020 15:38
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V. Illych L. posted:because it's not relevant to the conversation we were having, it's relevant to the conversation *you* want to have for reasons of your own gratification He has a point though. "Capitalism is extremely poo poo" might be an accurate statement, but it's not particularly meaningful unless you can propose a better alternative and explain how it avoids being poo poo.
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Sep 6, 2020 15:40
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Cingulate posted:You guys love to talk on and on about capitalism and why it’s bad, but it feels incredibly hard to get you to talk about socialism and why it’s good. It might not be good. But given the seriousness of the problems caused by consumerist capitalism and its relentless sabotage of the environment so that long-term survival is sacrificed on the altar of short-term greed, it's not possible for any other system to be worse. Can capitalism be reformed to no longer be about endless economic growth through endless increase in consumption until the world ceases to be livable? That's doubtful.
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Sep 6, 2020 15:41
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suck my woke dick posted:He has a point though. "Capitalism is extremely poo poo" might be an accurate statement, but it's not particularly meaningful unless you can propose a better alternative and explain how it avoids being poo poo. people have been explaining this poo poo for pages on end now lol
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Sep 6, 2020 15:43
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suck my woke dick posted:He has a point though. "Capitalism is extremely poo poo" might be an accurate statement, but it's not particularly meaningful unless you can propose a better alternative and explain how it avoids being poo poo. i've put massively more effort into this discussion than cingulate has lol you're being played by a weirdo liberal who's in it to find some nit to pick so he can keep supporting FPD or whatever
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Sep 6, 2020 15:43
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plus, what he's asking for is a retread of the same themes we've been posting for a long while. the answer is literally in the past couple of pages of posts if one is willing to make the slightest effort to engage constructively with others' posting
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Sep 6, 2020 15:46
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V. Illych L. posted:plus, what he's asking for is a retread of the same themes we've been posting for a long while. the answer is literally in the past couple of pages of posts if one is willing to make the slightest effort to engage constructively with others' posting Please link/quote some posts actually explaining what socialism will do better and how, in case I have missed them in-between pages of shitposting.
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Sep 6, 2020 15:49
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Cingulate posted:So if I pose a question like, “how can the 3rd world reach western living standards without multiplying CO2 emissions“, your answer is “they won’t”? Why are you equating c02 emissions to quality of life?do you think the average citizen of the UAE has a 120% better quality of life than the average german citizen? Do you think the average australian citizen has a 50% bettet quality of life than the average german citizen? Also, why did you use the co2 production per capita values and not the co2 consumption per capita values? Cingulate posted:You guys love to talk on and on about capitalism and why it’s bad, but it feels incredibly hard to get you to talk about socialism and why it’s good. Ok.I think a democratic control of the workplace,and nationalisation of all utilities, transport industries and natural resources are the only tools capable of large scale societal transformation. To center this argument, i would ask the following questions from you: What would you say is the motive behind regulatory capture? What would you say is the motive behind deforestation instead of sustainable policies? What do you think is the motive behind the adoptation of fracking and the continued use of carbon fuel? If legislative efforts are enough, do you think the kyoto protocols are a sucess. Do you think the paris accords are a sucess?
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Sep 6, 2020 15:51
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Antifa Poltergeist posted:Why are you equating c02 emissions to quality of life?do you think the average citizen of the UAE has a 120% better quality of life than the average german citizen? Do you think the average australian citizen has a 50% bettet quality of life than the average german citizen? Antifa Poltergeist posted:Ok.I think a democratic control of the workplace,and nationalisation of all utilities, transport industries and natural resources are the only tools capable of large scale societal transformation.´ I'm ignoring, for hopefully obvious reasons, the parts about Not Socialism.
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Sep 6, 2020 16:47
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NihilCredo posted:Just so we're clear, this is what you refer to as a serious attempt at describing a socialist society?
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Sep 6, 2020 16:52
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Cat Mattress posted:All of this is bad. But Capitalism says that Number Must Go Up. So we need a system that will be driven not by Number Must Go Up but by other conditions, such as sustainability. This will likely require Number to Go Down for a while first, because the western standard is not sustainable. Ok but this is where it would be useful to get more specific. If by socialism you mean market socialism with worker owned corporations and profit sharing then the profit motive remains exactly the same and there's no reason to think the environment won't still be a secondary concern. The different branches of socialism have mostly in common socially owned means of production but there's nothing in that concept as such to say that consumption would or should be limited. In fact, if socialism were to create a society with a more equal wealth distribution we should expect consumption to go up. While some forms of socialism may render the profit motive irrelevant there's always an incentive to do things efficiently and the question of how to distribute limited resources. Socialism under a democracy may simply replace profit with ever increasing, and ultimately runaway, demands for a higher standard of living by popular demand. Socialism in a totalitarian state might simply seek to increase consumption to appease the populace.. At any rate, if the goal is to lower standards of living a profoundly unequal feudal society would be a guaranteed success. Which brand of socialism with what characteristics are likely to achieve this with a higher chance of success?
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Sep 6, 2020 17:01
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Cingulate posted:You guys love to talk on and on about capitalism and why it’s bad, but it feels incredibly hard to get you to talk about socialism and why it’s good. I live in Belgium where healthcare is mostly socialized. My wife has a form of type 1 diabetes and when she goes to the doctor for an issue relating to diabetes it's free of charge. If we lived in a capitalist society such as the USA we'd either be bankrupting ourselves to keep her alive and healthy or we'd be beholden to our employers as they dangle the unspoken threat of removal of employment-sponsored healthcare insurance. In the current covid crisis the state had lowered the bar for temporary furloughs so as to keep the population from killing itself through going to crowded workplaces back in March/April/May. Lots of people weren't fired so they could go back to their still-existing jobs after the first wave was mostly over. Under pressure from the economy and the capitalist system people went back to work and more measures were eased (some with the consent of the advising virologists, some not) which resulted in a second wave that's not really clearing up right now. Under a strictly socialist system more people could've remained at home without the fear of losing their job and starving. Under an authoritarian socialist system we could've violated people's liberties and quashed the virus when it became clear it was a pandemic like China had done. This would have been a terrible thing from a humanitarian viewpoint, but the current situation is imo equally terrible. We can't really tell how a democratic socialist society (ie a democracy divorced from capitalism) would act in the current Western world because there are none and realistically never have been. It's also impossible for me to theorize how such a society would look like as I'm not educated enough to do so. I'm just a dude on the internet, not a political theorist. I do know that under the current system we're letting people be homeless, letting people starve and letting sick people die by the hundreds of thousands.
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Sep 6, 2020 17:09
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Socialist/communist countries don't have a particularly great track record in terms of sustainable development either because ultimately everyone still expects improving living conditions and a comfortable retirement etc. IMO it'd be easier to just reduce environmental impact via regulation and market mechanisms if people actually cared.
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Sep 6, 2020 17:58
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nimby posted:We can't really tell how a democratic socialist society (ie a democracy divorced from capitalism) would act in the current Western world because there are none and realistically never have been. It's also impossible for me to theorize how such a society would look like as I'm not educated enough to do so. I'm just a dude on the internet, not a political theorist. I do know that under the current system we're letting people be homeless, letting people starve and letting sick people die by the hundreds of thousands. Right, but unless you have a 200-page plan, with charts and plenty of equations, you are not answering the question: How will goonialism in any way function better than capitalism, that is currently both figuratively and literally setting the globe on fire? To discuss the flaws of current systems is a diversion, and we should instead steer our conversation towards satisfying the needs of the few, who demand concrete proposals and answers, and when presented with some, scoff and simply repeat the question as if nothing had ever transpired. ___ I do like that it's a conversational blunder in here to recommend books and articles. When we're discussing things over the Internet. Even if we consider that the effort of reading a book or article is too onerous to hoist upon a simple person just asking questions, surely it is not too much to expect someone utilizing a vbulletin-style discussion board in the year of our Lord 2020 to, say, open a new tab and look up the basic gist of whatever reference? In some browsers, one need only highlight the relevant phrase, and right-clicking will give you a button to do just that! But no, it is upon the goonialists to vomit pages upon pages of text, both their own and quoted, which will promptly be ignored only to just ask the same questions again. If we're being charitable, the Cingulate side of the conversation seems to be (edit: I emphasize 'seems' here, since this is my interpretation, not stated by the OP) starting off from the premise that they will be dead by the time technological human society really begins to tear apart at the seams, so this isn't a consideration worthy of having, when contrasted with the burdens one might pre-suppose be implemented to the world of today. The last page or so of the conversation has been about the sanctity of the "western lifestyle", which has not been defined other than to point out that the third world has it worse. A conversational tactic explicitly forbidden when it comes to capitalism! I am enjoying the writing exercise here, but I'm not sure this would qualify as a conversation, and further that it seems impossible to make it one, so long as the axioms the "two sides" hold seem so wildly divergent. If the important part of human society is providing what people want, regardless the impact, then yes, Ayn Rand has you covered completely, and just asking questions about goonialism is a pointless exercise. The larger point, that for-profit motives driving society seem to be unable, and indeed mostly unwilling, to consider things like ecological impact or equitable distribution of basic need resources such as food and medicine, is wholly set aside as "wanting to talk negatives about capitalism without engaging with the question", when arguably the engagement part therein is the assertion that capitalism does not succeed in what the OP is claiming it does! 
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Sep 6, 2020 18:34
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