|
AndreTheGiantBoned posted:A question about marxism. Marx himself believed that democracy will win during that inevitable collapse, leading (eventually) to a non-capitalist democratic society. Modern history has indeed shown that a non-democratic capitalist society is actually more likely then Marx assumed. But that is far from a fundamental argument in Marxism. And unless you consider fascism a reasonable goal refuting it won't point me towards your own political goals. I don't actually know enough theory to argue for the LtV. But you can look at places where a simple application of LtV strongly disagrees with the current economic consensus. And you often find the LtV being closer to correct. Most blatant example is when in 2000-2008 the Market theorists predicted that everything is fine, while the LtV predicted that all those profits which are unconnected to labor are evidence for the existence of a bubble which will collapse soon.
|
#
¿
Aug 2, 2019 10:41
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 3, 2024 12:13 |
|
|
Owling Howl posted:Farming is by definition ecologically destructive and harmful so your choice is whatever you personally feel is less bad. There's no good way to wipe out a forrest with thousands of species of plants and trees and the vast variety of insects and animals that live there in order to plant one type of grass. Ok so the grass is not genetically identical and you're not using pesticides. Fine but that forrest with all its variety is still gone. The idea that it's better is like saying a forrest fire is less bad because you didn't use chemicals to limit its spread. Sure more forrest was destroyed but it was destroyed in the right way! A lot of those fields haven't been forests for so long that species have evolved that rely on them. Especially with the older field/hegerow pattern. And stopping all forest fires is obviously harmful for the species that rely on forest fires. I can't even imagine why anybody would think otherwise.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 6, 2019 10:50
|
|
|
Farmers vote for policies that favor "Farmers", by which they mean the people who own the debt/stocks of the farms/agribusinesses. Same as with artists, and probably all fields where independent workers/small businesses are perceived as being the norm.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 6, 2019 18:30
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 6, 2020 12:26
|
|
|
V. Illych L. posted:e. the point being, the EU is manifestly and actively anti-left and it's bizarre to me that (some) left-wingers see being in favour of the EU as a natural left-wing position to have Have you ever heard what the far right says about the EU? I am trying to imply that all pro EU leftists are taking the opposite position to the fascists and then neglecting to examine the resulting position.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 15, 2021 00:41
|
|
|
Omon Ra posted:What do you want to discuss about those news? Why should Europe enable the propaganda of a hostile state that just invaded a country, and why would Europe want Putin to stay in power? A lot of people in Europe want Putin to stay in power. It is one of the reasons he thinks he could get away with invading Ukraine. Because the demonstrations against him are headed by the communist and other groups far left of him, which means any plausible replacement would be a communist. That is why they are generally missing in most news reports about the invasion. I personally do think him being deposed in a liberal or communist revolution or even election would be the best possible outcome.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 1, 2022 13:06
|
|
|
morothar posted:How do you get “life satisfaction” if you’re sick? From what I understand it generally comes from not speaking English and having the translation you are given imply different things then in English.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 28, 2022 13:35
|
|
|
punk rebel ecks posted:I'm actually surprised that she actually has legit good things in her platform. Many right wing parties in Europe promise a lot of help to poor people. And not only the radical right, but surprisingly far into the centre. Delivering on those promises is another question entirely. But, from what I understand wasn't that also Trump's platform? Or was I misunderstanding that? I didn't follow American politics that closely when he originally ran.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 24, 2022 23:57
|
|
|
Everything I have heard about the subject suggests that unplugging standby devices became unpopular because of a law that demanded that manufacturers reduce their the standby power consumption to insignificant levels.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 27, 2022 20:16
|
|
|
It will "create jobs" what more can you demand of politics?Tesseraction posted:Don't worry, he has a plan to pacify the furious: https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1585210243042185217 Do you have more on this? They massively waffling and unclear between them wanting legalizing or decriminalizing last I heard. VictualSquid fucked around with this message at 12:28 on Oct 26, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Oct 26, 2022 12:26
|
|
|
Blut posted:What? German energy policy has been very much driven by the left wing. The Greens have been a huge influence in pushing anti-nuclear sentiment and anti-fracking policies in Germany over the last 50 years. And Schröder's SPD was the most influential driving force behind the reliance on Russian gas. All of those are completely accepted facts, and all of those have been hugely damaging, terrible policies. Which German parties would you consider not "left wing" in either 2008 or 2014? And do you think they would have implemented the policies you propose if they had been elected, instead of the "left wing" CDU?
|
|
#
¿
Dec 24, 2022 15:09
|
|
|
stephenthinkpad posted:Markel was going to extend the lives of the nuclear power plants, and then decided against it. That was a big moment in Germany energy history, as big as Nordstream blowing up. No, she actually extended the lives of the nuclear plants. Then she hopped on the post Fukushima hype and reduced the lives again. But, she did it in a pro-nuclear way. By which I mean she also assigned massive amounts of bailout money to the nuclear industry. And that absolutely changed German energy history. Specifically by making sure that everybody who argues pro-nuclear (or anti-Green) in the German context is actually arguing that we should pay more money to the nuclear industry in exchange for them doing absolutely nothing.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 24, 2022 16:49
|
|
|
stephenthinkpad posted:Do Germans actually believe pro nuclear is "anti green"? Within electoral politics, absolutely. Name a party that is pro-nuclear and not anti-green. And that is with us only considering the current situation. And this discussion got to Germany with someone arguing that the CDU is "left wing". And implying that to be pro-nuclear you need to be more right wing. I literally consider convincing the green party to be pro-nuclear more realistic then convincing the CDU or AFD to be anti-grift or pro-nationalisation.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 24, 2022 17:44
|
|
|
DeadlyMuffin posted:Plenty of vocal opposition to nuclear power comes from hippie tree-hugging lefties. It seems to be something of a generational thing: I know several older hippy types who are completely irrational about all things nuclear. It wasn’t enlightened centrists protesting against building new nuclear power plants, or transporting waste. So you believe that protests have more responsibility for government policy decisions then the actual government? That implies that the best way to more nuclear power is to elect the green party into majority coalition partner status. Because then they will lose all their power and the resulting pro-nuclear protests will force the construction of more nuclear power plants.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 24, 2022 19:25
|
|
|
DeadlyMuffin posted:I genuinely can’t tell what you’re trying to say here about pro-nuclear protests. Can you clarify? Well you are saying that the Greens somehow dominate energy policy, while not part of the government. So if the pro-nuclear movement wants to dominate energy policy, they should obviously use the same tactics. Which starts with electing the Greens into power, and then staging minor but impressive looking protests. My actual believe is that the centrist "pro-nuclear" parties' power plant shutdown is primarily motivated by people like you. They know you will blame any of their decision on the protestors, and thus feel free to grift away, and do things like pay their donors to money to not run plants..
|
|
#
¿
Dec 24, 2022 19:53
|
|
|
Badger of Basra posted:so what is you guys theory for why angela merkel made an anti-nuclear turn, if popular anti-nuclear sentiment isn't the reason DeadlyMuffin posted:This is not what I am saying though. The Merkel government wanted to jump on the anti-nuclear bandwagon after the Fukushima disaster made it temporarily big. e: I think because they wanted to distract from their other climate related inaction, but it might have been some other scandal. Now if there actually was a pro-nuclear base within the CDU electorate you would expect those people to decide that turning off NPPs is anti-nuclear and stop re-electing the Merkel government. Which is why the CDU didn't seriously go anti-nuclear before. But what happened what that the actually pro-nuclear voters followed the exact same arguments as presented by DeadlyMuffin and conclude that the most pro-nuclear action possible is to re-elect the government that is currently turning of the nuclear plants faster then ever demanded by the greens. Of course, without even attempting any protests, despite allegedly acquiring unprecedented proof of their effectiveness. When I said "people like you" I meant people who use the same arguments as you are currently using. I suppose in this forum it is not expected that you have similar opinions to other people who use the exact same arguments as you do. I suppose that the old cold war era anti nuclear protests did help with starting the anti-nuclear agenda. But primarily by cementing the anti-nuclear attitudes within the green parties. Then once the greens won elections on other issues they also demanded NPP shutdowns. But the fact is that nuclear power was the first compromise the other coalition partners offered to the Greens. And then the shutdown was cemented by alleged pro-nuclear parties. In part because of the moral hazard where those other parties could blame all negative outcomes on the greens. And in other parts because gas plant shutdowns or gay rights are just much worse then nuclear shutdown to the average voter of a anti-nuclear party.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 24, 2022 20:53
|
|
|
DeadlyMuffin posted:Most of your post reads like "yes the Greens were anti-nuclear but the real villains are those who conceded to them". Yes, the real villains where the governments who made the bad decisions. Even if that decision was to compromise with the greens on nuclear shutdown instead of coal plant shutdowns or gay rights. Do you believe that the governments who shut down the plants have more or less responsibility for those shutdowns then the old hippies? And should they also apologise? Do you believe that the people opposing those hippies in the 70s and 80s should apologise for declaring that climate change is not real? And if you let this refusal to apologize influence your political decisions, which of those group's refusal is most important to you? I am probably reading too much into your posts, but you seem to imply that that you consider the green movement as a whole more of a villain, then the climate change deniers that were in power during the 80s. Also, the green parties have consistently demand a slow shutdown of nuclear and coal plants. Slow enough that all shortfalls can be absorbed by improved renewable power without any increases in fossil energy production. The "replace nuclear with coal and gas" was the policy of the centrists who considered that their compromise with the green movement. I do feel like they have much more to apologise even on nuclear issues. But, yes if I met someone who came to the green party for primarily anti-nuclear reasons they should admit that they were wrong about that specific issue. Though the ones that actually know that they were wrong are ready to apologise in my experience. The ones that don't apologise decide such because they still believe that they were right.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 24, 2022 22:01
|
|
|
Owling Howl posted:The reason I brought up GMOs is that it suffered much the same fate in public perception. In fact more so in that it was more or less banned at the EU level. Yet there are no corporate interests that stand to benefit from a ban. Yes, GMOs were chosen as a sacrifice by the centre the same way as Nuclear was. The green protests demanded a stop of polluting energy sources (including nuclear, which was kinda dumb). And the centre compromised by shutting down Nuclear, but not coal or gas. The green protests demanded a more sustainable/less corporate agriculture in general. And the centre compromised by passing harsh gmo regulations, but allowing nitrite abuse and factory farming.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2022 13:45
|
|
|
mobby_6kl posted:I think we'll have a hard time untangling how much influence exactly which group had because each country has a bunch of them and different circumstances. But if you advocate kicking puppies for 50 years and someone finally does it... I am not sure if hydro was on the list att. The green demands involved a process lasting 30-50 years, or even longer during which clean power generation methods would have been developed by well funded research. If that process had started in the 70s it would be done by now. Or alternatively that well funded research could have led to actual studies showing that nuclear is cleaner then expected, or that running without nuclear was impossible. The pro-nuclear merkel government (and their counterparts in other countries) stopped all of that. Except some flashy renewable generation that is primarily intended as an export industry, and didn't include funding for storage and transmission to make it reliable. I am not implying that the defunding of that research by pro-nuclear governments happened because they were pro-nuclear. It was because everybody who identified as a pro-nuclear politician att was an austerity worshipper. Which is also one of the reasons why they never actually built new NPPs.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2022 15:49
|
|
|
stephenthinkpad posted:Does the green know thorium based reactor is being developed. It's safer than the uranium reactors and its byproduct can not used for nuclear weapon? Yes, the pro-nuclear wing of most green parties tends to focus on next generation reactors in our arguments with the rest of the greens.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2022 16:07
|
|
|
Blut posted:I've no idea how you got from my post that I think the CDU are left-wing. The CDU, CSU, FDP and AfD are the major not left-wing parties by any standard definition. The Greens even in opposition managed to move the overton window on nuclear power enough that some elements of their disastrous anti-nuclear policies were going to get enacted as long as any mainstream centrist government was in power. And would be enacted even more directly if/when they were in power as a coalition partner, as they were from 1998-2005. Maybe from your complaints about the "left wing" government decision when talking about 2008 and 2014. I can only conclude that you consider the government at the time to be "left wing". I agree that that is not the standard definition which is why I put it in quotes. And yes if the greens where closer to power, more of their anti-nuclear policies would have been enacted. For example we would have sufficient long term investment in infrastructure and storage to absorb the nuclear shutdown without relying on gas or coal too much. You seem to consider that a bad thing, I consider it a good thing.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2022 22:20
|
|
|
So you consider the nuclear shutdown under Merkel to be more representative of the European green position then the nuclear shutdown under Schröder. I believe the opposite. To me the left wing anti nuclear position acknowledges the danger of fossil fuels. And thus it takes 30 years during which alternatives can be found. This was passed while the greens were in power. The right wing anti-nuclear position assumes that the only danger of nuclear shutdown is to the operators shareholder profits. And thus they decide on large bailouts and quick shutdown. This was passed while the greens were not in power.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 26, 2022 12:33
|
|
|
So as you believe that the nuclear policies changes that didn't come from the greens are good. Austerity politics in the Merkel years stopped all investments into energy infrastructure. You think that was good. So you believe that the government should not build new power plants of any kind, but keep all currently existing ones running.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 26, 2022 13:35
|
|
|
Doctor Malaver posted:Why doesn't Euro have €1 and €2 bills, like dollar has? The 5€ bill is the smallest and a bunch of everyday stuff costs less. 5€ is 38 kn and we had 10 kn and 20 kn bills which served the purpose well. Now I have a choice of either paying every small expense by card (not always possible), or carrying around a pouch of coins. It actually feels like a step back -- now that we've joined the European future etc, my wallet is bursting at the seams and my pockets are full of coins. Germany had 5DM coins before the Euro. There should have been a 2.5€ coin or even a 5€ if you want to think ahead inflationproof. Anyways, the 5DM coin bought a pack of cigarettes at a vending machine. Vending machines accepting bills is still rare in Germany, and afaik the rest of the EU too, we skipped directly from coins to cashless. I do think that that is at least half the reason.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2023 16:39
|
|
|
Lord Stimperor posted:My mums side of the family used to pay almost everything by cash. I remember her buying a new car, worth just a bit less than I took home in a year, in euro bills. Went to the bank with a stealthy grocery bag, and then to the dealer with the bag under her arm, head on a swivel. Totally not suspicious. My grandmother was the same, but she was old enough to actually see her government collapse which is probably the biggest predictor for distrusting electronic money.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2023 13:09
|
|
|
YF-23 posted:Russia sadly holds a lot of institutional influence on the European left, leftovers of connections made during Soviet times. The good thing about that is that those people are slowly but surely aging themselves out of political relevance, and I don't know if the anti-Americanism of younger tankies is enough to sustain them in actual politics. All statistics that I have seen show that the pro-Putin position has very little support on the left as a whole, even the far left. With pro-Putin positions being overrepresented among politicians specifically. I actually do not know if there is even anybody who has been elected as a leftist after openly expressing support for Putin's current invasion. As opposed to expressing such support only after being elected. Specifically the German "Die Linke" professed a neutral position on Nato/the EU in their election program, pre-invasion, and promised to support Nato in the hypothetical case where they get into a war on the morally superior side. And now they are destroying their chance of re-election by supporting Putin.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 4, 2023 15:47
|
|
|
Antigravitas posted:There is no credible nuclear deterrent without a credible conventional deterrent. Yeah, and the Ukrainians spend most of 2014 to 2022 begging to be let into NATO. They did that because they believe that Putin would not attack NATO that directly and they believed that Putin absolutely would invade them further if they aren't in NATO. They were obviously correct on the second part despite NATO disagreeing with them, and I do think they are also correct about the first part. Just like the Finnish post 2022 position.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2023 14:59
|
|
|
So, I just heard someone talking again about how in the US it is known that mail voters tend left and have for a long time. In Germany it is known that mail voters tend right, though that might change recently. I did find stats for 2021 and mail voter went more to Greens and CSU; less to the Afd and different trends depending on erst vs. zweitstimme with the other parties. Baffling, and almost certainly some rona influence there. Anybody know how those statistics go for other countries? And the rumours about the statistics, I am almost more interested in them. https://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/dam/jcr/8ad0ca1f-a037-48f8-b9f4-b599dd380f02/btw21_heft4.pdf  e: I did check the 2017 for comparison. And there are more votes for right of centre parties per mail and fewer for left. With the nazis and greens flipped around from the other parties and having the largest changes. Looks like (open) nazis hated mail voting even before the rona, surprising. VictualSquid fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Apr 13, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Apr 13, 2023 21:25
|
|
|
Libluini posted:Something about this image seems wrong. I know Munich, because people in the Germany-thread keep talking about it and because it and its insanely high rents keep showing up in German media. How exactly is this "relative"-income calculated that Munich is put so far above the other German cities if your average income in Munich basically only gets you a closet nowadays? Is your living space not part of someone's "quality of life"? I think it is just GDP per capita. So Munich blips as ultra-rich because people who live there earn enough to pay those ludicrous rents. While the people who live cheaper outside and commute into the city are in one of those barely above average income blips, presumably. e: lol it uses some sort of dumb parity, yeah. Those all underestimate rent costs, and outside of rents Munich isn't actually that terrible. The bigger problem with that graph is that the gap seems to be primarily defined by the size of the richest city. Munich and Seattle are relatively small, while London and Paris are relatively big. Leading to Germany and US having low geographic inequality by this measure despite having massive inequalities by reasonable measures. VictualSquid fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Aug 12, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2023 20:23
|
|
|
Tesseraction posted:NGL it's pretty embarrassing that we (the UK), France, Italy and Spain are below loving Alabama even with our outlier regions factored in. To say nothing of being below Mississippi, the worst united state, without. Maybe their "purchasing power compensation" assumes you spend 90% of your income on gasoline.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 12, 2023 20:42
|
|
|
Blut posted:Yes, but again, my point is that AfD have surged from under 1.9% ten years ago, and being regarded as extremists nutjobs, to now polling at 21% and being the second largest party in Germany - and still growing. Which is almost entirely down to the migration policies of the other major parties. Yes, all radical parties are getting massively boosted in recent years no matter the direction. Almost entirely because life in general is getting worse which favours radical politics over centrist politics.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 27, 2023 19:03
|
|
|
Blut posted:My thesis isn't that its the fault of just one fear, or that every fear applies equally to all AfD supporters, I've absolutely no idea how you could take that from my post. I listed a whole host of causes for fear of migration, and it wasn't even a full definitive list as implied by the 'etc'. I quote directly: All experiments I have heard of suggest the opposite. Whenever a left wing party joins the right in pretending that killing immigrants would solve the housing/welfare/schooling crisis they lose votes. If they join in on pretending that crime commited by non-rich people is rising they lose votes. That is because the people who share those assumptions have already found parties that support those "solutions". While the party loses the voters who actually want to solve those problems.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2023 00:18
|
|
|
Blut posted:I've no idea what "experiments" you're referring to but we have real world examples of left-wing parties adopting more popular immigration policies and recovering support very well. Denmark is the most obvious EU example recently, where the far right was very successfully defanged as a result. What is your proposed compromise position? You refuse to state it. You can declare that all of societies problems are caused by immigration, or you can refuse to believe that. Are you specifically arguing that left wing parties should start pretending that there is a mystical solution that can not be actually explained, but that should take center stage in all propaganda?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 28, 2023 20:46
|
|
|
Blut posted:I'm not refusing to state anything, I would have thought I've been very clear in my stance that the modern left-wing parties need to have policy platforms that actually reflect the fears/desires of working class voters. Or else stop being surprised when working class voters decide not to vote for them. "We pretend that stopping immigration will help people" is already the centrist platform. Those voters are happy there. "We will stop immigration because we hate Also is that questionary from Ireland one that defines working class as earning between "100k and 200k yearly", like the last graph you posted?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 29, 2023 14:01
|
|
|
So you want left wing parties to choose definitions of "working class" that lead to graphs that support their policies. And to keep those definitions secret, I suppose. I honestly can't believe that you can't find a party in your region that does exactly that. Here there are dozens, each with subtly different definitions and policies. Though the ones that end up hating immigrants generally identify as right wing. And the most successful left wing ones are the ones that acknowledge that the working class contains more immigrants and other minorities then the bourgeois. But, I would also say that it is becoming increasingly clear that your region is some strange place where everything is different from the rest of the EU, and you should take your advice to a regional thread. VictualSquid fucked around with this message at 13:21 on Nov 30, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Nov 30, 2023 13:14
|
|
|
Angry Lobster posted:Can a party be strongly nationalist and leftist at the same time? I think left vs. right in electoral politics is mostly about self identification. So, theoretically there could exist one, but I have never heard of one. The ones that might consider the statement tend to identify as rational centrist or some mysterious third thing.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 30, 2023 13:36
|
|
|
I am still utterly baffled at the idea that your region has no party with the policy goals you demand. I am fairly certain that it is the only region in Europe where that is the case. They generally do only get single digit votes because there is almost nobody who actually dislikes immigration and likes social services. Create one and find out if there is really none in your region. Anyways, the German SPD recently became even more anti-immigrant, following their trend of the last 30 years, once again showing that your complaints are purely local or made up.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 1, 2023 15:08
|
|
|
Blut posted:I don't know if you're trolling or are you just completely and utterly unaware of the realities of European political systems? I have never met a person that hates immigrants and likes extending other social services. There are parties trying to follow your argumentation, but almost nobody votes for them. The SPD has been in favour of more restrictive migration policy for some time now. Where exactly do you draw the line between "more restrictive migration policy" and "much more restrictive migration policy". I am asking for the exact amount of hating immigrants that would convince you to vote for more social services.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 1, 2023 16:47
|
|
|
Blut posted:Which exact traditional major European left-wing political parties are on the record advocating for heavily limiting/ending migration? The SPD has supported the brutalising of migrants at the EU borders whenever it comes to an actual voting decision, since the Schröder years. I hadn't noticed that they are pretending otherwise in that announcement, but anyway the election you are referring to was one of the SPD's best results in years. The more obvious anti-immigrant push came more recently as reaction to the intensified Gaza conflict. I suppose "traditional left wing" can be defined as excluding the SPD here. After all seeing anti-immigrant rhetoric as a bourgeois trap predates the communist manifesto and most "non-traditional left" attempts were more nationalist. Anyways, you are saying you would vote for the SPD if they stated that they enjoy drowning migrants, but you would not vote for them if they continue to pretend that drowning migrants is a necessary evil. Correct? And that is more important to you then any other social policies, including weather if those people are actually drowned.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 1, 2023 17:14
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 3, 2024 12:13 |
|
|
Blut posted:A deeply conservative, heavily religious, culture that impedes integration, promotes awful behaviour towards women, is often heavily anti-semetic, and is regularly violently incompatible with our hard won secular societies. I have never been to ireland, so I will just grant you that those statement are actually true there. I just don't see how declaring that the irish are
|
|
#
¿
Dec 21, 2023 14:17
|
|