I think we actually have law in Sweden that you editorial need to answer to separate agency and if you don't fulfill the criteria you are not listed as a legitimate news source
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To Anti-Socialists/Communists/Anarchists: It's either that, or extinction
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I think we actually have law in Sweden that you editorial need to answer to separate agency and if you don't fulfill the criteria you are not listed as a legitimate news source
International climate change policy is a big game of prisoner's dilemma
if America retreats from it's Sphere of Influence ("imperialism") and just lets other countries pollute, it really won't matter if the US becomes carbon neutral. We'll face extinction anyway.
if America retreats from it's Sphere of Influence ("imperialism") and just lets other countries pollute, it really won't matter if the US becomes carbon neutral. We'll face extinction anyway.
Ah, the Blairite platform, the one that crashed and burned because people were shitty about it.
Why are the only examples so far News Corp? There are hundreds of news organizations in the country with far more legitimacy. Including ones that are not for profit like the Texas Tribune.
The sad thing is that overpopulation isn't even the problem. There's enough resources to go around for everyone; it's just that 1% of the population have far more wealth than they will ever need.
It will if it shares its carbon neutral technology freely. I should not need to explain that I'm not confident in neoliberalism's ability to share technology.
Iterated prisoner's dilemma gridlock is broken by cooperation, which is anti-thetical to market capitalism but not democratic/authoritarian socialism.
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As someone who works in management for an independently owned media outlet, organizations like us are not the norm. Conglomerates control vast swaths of the media in the US; especially local news which may as well be a conservative propaganda apparatus.
Here's Cuba cracking down on gay pride parades. This was last year. Are pride parades a subversive CIA plot?
You westerners are fucking nuts.
They must be otherwise Cuba wouldnot have to crack down on them. This shit writes itself.
I don't think communism or even socialism are the solutions.
Market economics allow for tremendous individual expression and development and should be retained.
The trick is to have a market economy that is not dependent on growth.
Markets with industries divided between subsistence industries(providing necessities) and expanding industries (innovating, growing).
We need to create a market economy that is based on requirements like sustainability and funding basic services for free for everyone(education, healthcare, unemployment, retirement, parental leave, etc.), if these things are met and private business can still create a successful business case, then they have a largely free market to grow into.
Secondly, we need to seriously think about value chains and how we distribute the value they create.
Currently, people happen to own value chains and become obscene rich without much or any work of their own.*
Wages are intentionally decoupled from the value chain in order for exploitation to take place. Work/wages have never been an adequate means to distribute the wealth a society creates.
Stopping obscene amounts of money to bunch up in very few hands is an integral part of protecting democracy. Money corrupts. Not only people but also institutions and systems.
In the past 40 years, ever since Neoliberal capitalism was introduced to the world, western power structures have shifted to become, in some cases(like the US) as top-heavy as they had been during times of Monarchy in Europe.
Lastly, we need to redefine prosperity around non-economic metrics. A "good life" isn't marked by owning a lot of stuff, amassing a lot of financial assets or being able to buy all the latest products.
This reductionist view of life through economic lenses is terrible.
*
Economic exploitation is a tricky thing, but I think it can be made relatively simply by putting it into numbers.
Generally speaking, you can just look at the value (profit) generated by any value chain and divide it by the employees taking part in that value chain. That gives you the degree of exploitation.
This leads you to some counterintuitive results:
For example, software developers are usually much more exploited than any other group of employees.
Software companies like EA or Activision reach similar profits as car companies like BMW, yet the employ only fraction of the people.
So while the average software employee generates 10-20 times as much profit as the average car-manufacturer employee, they only make 2-3 times as much in wages.
So the degree of exploitation is higher. Yet we don't usually see it as a problem because software developers aren't exactly poor people.
If you ask me this exposes how fundamentally irrational and unjust the way we distribute the wealth we create is.
Instead of considering value chains that operate within society, through the work of people and through the consumption by people, as the property of private owners, we should consider them societal value chains and distribute the value they create accordingly.
We are currently building up a new financial monarchy.
the solution to that isn't communism or socialism, but simply a free, individualistic society based on the values of justice and equality.
Communism works concepts of collective identity revolving around class. That is inherently toxic, like any ideology revolving around concepts of collective identity.
If you had some knowledge of economic history, you'd know we have 150+ years behind us of technological advances that created fears of automations eating away at work, and each and every time new jobs have emerged that substituted the old ones. Labor and capital have accounted for about 2/3rds and 1/3rd of total output or slightly more for labor for pretty much the last 150 years.
There has always been a cyclical component to this and in the last few decades there has been a bias toward greater weight of capital in output, but what the people who know about these things would tell you (To drop a name, someone like Branco Milanovic) is that the real problem is that there is a huge inequality in realized access to the financial markets, with a Gini index of capital income of about 0.95 in developed countries, and that this is what should be addressed.
No, Cuba's treatment of its LGBT community is one of the worst parts of its government.
No, I'm not sure how it does. You brought up a failed experiment as support for your stance. Even if we're pretending that past socialist states were failed experiments and should be discarded for their flaws, why should we not also apply the same standards to failed neoliberal experiments? Third Wayism failed spectacularly in both the 00s and again in 2016. You cannot demand that the socialists acknowledge the past failures of socialist states without also acknowledging the past failures of Third Way politics. Is this a question of sample size? Do we need a few more failures before we accept Third Way doesn't work? Well hopefully it works for 2020 but I'm skeptical it'll work in 2024. 3/4 is pretty bad but we'll see, maybe I'll be surprised.
There are still multiple examples better representative than News Corp. Obviously the US media isn't perfect but fundamentally a free society cannot exist without a free press. Therefore Cuba is not a free society and should not be seen as an example of successful communism or as being on the path to achieving it. That was my point.
Well idk if I agree with your point because the US is far from having a free press beyond the surface level.
But it's justified, because the country has to protect itself from foreign meddling, no? You can easily see how CIA could recruit amongst the dissatisfied members of sexual minorities and bring about some sort of gay contra revolution. We must be vigilant, comrades!
In the UK alone you have the following (unfortunately can't give US examples as I dont live there):
- The Telegraph and The Spectator - The Barclay Brothers
- News Corp (The Sun, The Times and Times Radio) - Murdoch
- The Independent and The Evening Standard - Lebedev
- The Mail and The Metro - Viscount Rothermere (also owns 20% of ITN which does the news for ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5)
- BBC - Directors are appointed by the government and funding is also under government control.
Anarchists? Unfortunately you have these "right-wing" anarchists too that are growing in number. The libertarian type ones. The ones I have met tend to be nice people but think taxes are theft and all humanity's problems will be resolved if there is no government.
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Free press is defined as freedom from state restrictions, which the US absolutely has. You sound like the people who cry "free speech" when their favorite reactionary gets banned from Twitter.
Not for profit and editorial independent press exist in the US and are successful. The success of outlets like News Corp are unfortunate and a problem but again do not make the US press unfree.
First I'm all in favor of state funded research and giving away patents. The reality is most tech innovation in the United States has taken place thanks to private sector or the department of defense or NASA. The last two are government, but they're imperialist. They didn't exist out of cooperation but competition with foreign adversaries.
Second is the US iterations of these programs are more effective than the USSR's counterparts. Institutional rot can bring down any regime, capitalist or socialist, and at no point do I ever hear folks on this forum acknowledging it. You can't handwaved your way to socialist utopia, and if you do I'll stick with the status quo, thanks, as you're wasting my time.
So yeah, fund the hell out of public research, give away the patents, but if you tell me "hey America! Give up your power and markets or we're going to die" I'm not following you.
The British aristocracy cleared the Scottish highlands for sheep (profit!) and indigenous people continue to be forced off fertile land across the entire globe. The title of the thread might be too broad, but systematic genocide of cultures over resources has and is already happening.
If shit really hits the wall, the powerful aren't even going to blink if the continuation of their way of life means the extermination of the impoverished -- which is to say, the extinction of the very poor is a disturbingly more plausible outcome of this thread's title.
something i never see discussed is that there are viable forms of capitalism that are able to approach climate change - one way is by the "triple bottom line" way of accounting, in which companies are incentivized to treat fiscal capital (money), human capital (the treatment of people) and environmental capital (the planet) at the same level of importance, it's not really necessary to literally end capitalism just to fix those types of problems
So you're just resorting to trolling now? It is a demonstrable fact that the CIA has currents such as the press to sew discontent with the Cuban, Bolivian, Chilean, Venezuelan etc governments. There's no evidence to support whatever dumb ass, disingenuous gotcha you're trying to pull with LGBT people. Which is frankly disrespectful to them, by the way. Using their suffering to troll, that is.
User banned (1 month): Hostility and trolling over multiple posts, ableist insults
I'm just saying you're silly for at least implying that historically the reason socialism failed in these countries was US promoted democratic movements and not violent military coups, like in Guatemala, Venezuela and Iran. Many socialists argue *precisely that* if we want to change things in other countries we should do so through peaceful democratic movements, but as an objective historical fact this has not been the method the US has employed. But if you're caught up in smoothbrained world of socialism=less freedom and democracy and capitalism=yay then ig this isn't obvious?
Your Cuba point has nothing to do with socialism? Cracking down on pride parades is horrible and authoritarian, not socialist. But again it's pretty common for smoothbrains to conflate socialism with big brother so it's not that surprising ig
It's not a choice between Socialism and Extinction
It's a choice between Socialism and the rising tide of techno-facism which will keep the predominantly white rich elites above the water while the less lucky metaphorically (and literally) drown. The ruling class will claim they didn't have a free enough market while blaming increasing difficulties on migrants. The latter option still excites some mainly white, mainly male people who are either exorbitantly wealthy or "temporarily poor"
It's a choice between Socialism and the rising tide of techno-facism which will keep the predominantly white rich elites above the water while the less lucky metaphorically (and literally) drown. The ruling class will claim they didn't have a free enough market while blaming increasing difficulties on migrants. The latter option still excites some mainly white, mainly male people who are either exorbitantly wealthy or "temporarily poor"
Past results are not guaranters of future results. And I should mention that the disruption to labor relations led to widespread revolutionary politics so the OP's projections still hold. When labor relations get disrupted, revolutions tend to happen.
It is a good thing my ideology is aggressively redistributory. I'm confident giving people ownership over the means of production would bring down the Gini coefficient in much the same way giving everyone in a group an equal slice of pizza equalizes the distribution of pizza among that group.
Yes because X country was doing a fine job of treating LGBT people like humans historically.
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LOL, ok.
It's the CIA is ok in one case but absolutely not in another. Btw what reasons do you think totalitarian regimes use when justifying clamping on LGBT rights? Hint: you've used it already. But ofc then it was correct and in this case it's a lie and you're 100% consistent and not just caping for your communist utopia.
good example, and 100% agreed. i don't think its hyperbolic either,given our history & the times
whenever lefitsrs try to imagine the factors needed for the revolution - even just a general strike - i can't help but feel scenarios like this striking more folks as inevitable will do just that
Because we have fucking evidence that the CIA did this, from their own fucking mouths. I've already posted government documents from the US government itself in this thread. What reasons do ostensibly democratic countries like the US have for repressing and enforcing state sanctioned murder of trans people? You sound absolutely ridiculous.
Well, I'll wait for the non totalitarian socialist country to exist to see how they would deal with things.
Any day now.
And I'll have you know that my takes are always galaxy brain.
Sure, if you can't read.
To not be a complete snide motherfucker:
My point is that Cuba is a totalitarian hellhole and the political ideology their authoritarian leadership uses to justify their human rights abuse is absolutely irrelevant. And that to defend them just because their chosen excuse is the proletariat is dumb.
I just think it's amusing how socialists point to Cuba's successes in literacy rates and healthcare as successes of socialism, but then disown any perceived failings as having nothing to do with socialism. Maybe we just need to take the good with the bad--for either system.
Also, if literacy rates and healthcare in Cuba make for a socialist success story, then by the same token countries like South Korea, Singapore, and other Asian tigers are capitalist success stories.
I think we can all agree that the best solution going forward is for the US to turn to communism and leave the rest of the world alone so that we can continue on with our social democracies.
And then if communism is as wonderful as it's made out to be, we'll all eventually adopt it now that the CIA is no longer there to sabotage the true will of the people.
Deal?
And then if communism is as wonderful as it's made out to be, we'll all eventually adopt it now that the CIA is no longer there to sabotage the true will of the people.
Deal?
I'm having difficulty parsing this as anti-imperialist or pro-imperialist. If United States innovation is, as you say, driven by competition with foreign adversaries, then the corollary is the United States is incapable of innovating without imperialism, leaving the door open for a non-imperialist system of innovation incentivization.
The USSR has collapsed. Why do I need to spend time talking about it when the relevant issue right now is American neoliberalism? I don't get this fixation on going over that history over and over again, the only thing that matters to tomorrow are the conditions that exist today. I don't have a time machine. Even if we figure out, once and for all, definitively, where the USSR went wrong, we can't exactly go back in time to save it. It reminds me of the tendency for this board to re-litigate the 2016 primaries. Can we focus on the present and the future and things we can actually change instead of the fixed past which is beyond changing?
Okay this is where we fundamentally disagree. "Give away patents" is synonymous with "give up your markets" to me. Clearly, you feel otherwise. I do not think I can convince you that our markets are built on our patents, and I'm not going to waste time trying to.
I said people are shit and therefore just replacing the system doesn't fix the issues.
NEOLIBERAL is irrelevant. It too has failed.
Capitalism won't survive because the global population is tapering off. You can't have infinite growth if you don't have infinite population growth.
in spite of cuba's glaring issues, look at it this way.
extreme poverty is in and of itself a human rights abuse. the wealth gap in america has led to millions and millions of americans to suffer from these abuses. more than cuba % wise, as cuba has better health outcomes than america.
your concept of 'authoritarianism' excludes poverty and the outcomes of poverty as relevant.
This is one reason why we're seeing so many industries move away from selling products to selling services with recurrent spending.
There is not an "american capaitalism". There is just capitalism with american characteristics. This is the fundemental divide where people without a background in economic history or ipe need to check themselves and realize they don't actually have that strong of a conceptual understanding of this topic
Yeah and the offsets were piss weak and didn't move the needle. There's no award for effort when it comes to the climate.
Moreover on inequality The Obama admin reconstiuted the banks and kicked the can down the road on tax increases or an ft tax regime. Now we're here. That's the problem you can't overcome with intentions and hypotheticals. Liberalism and managed capitalism failed, full stop. If their plan is to just taking another at-bat and try to dial back in how out of control markets are... I'm sorry we're fucked.
And other capitalist countries not named America have better healthcare outcomes than Cuba. So clearly socialism isn't the differentiating factor here.
And we're back to "but the US." I don't care? They can both be hellholes. With different means of government too.
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