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[smjjames]

Except that when you say 'socialism' to most conservatives, they'll just scream 'COMMUNISM!'. Though the Republicans constantly calling Obama socialist/communist has dumbed down the meaning to the point where a self proclaimed socialist was resonating even in the young conservative crowd.

Although Sanders still did have to explain the difference between communism and socialism from time to time.

[Reelya]

The problem is that Obama didn't actually implement really anything that's specifically a socialist idea, let alone a communist idea.

Creating transparent health insurance marketplaces to put a cap on costs is not a socialist concept, it's a free market concept.

The ban on inefficient light bulbs isn't really "socialist" in any way either. It's just regulating a commercial product so that the worst hidden costs are eliminated. People aren't good at factoring in the true costs, and inefficient products end up costing consumers much more in the long run than they "save" initially. The Efficient Market Hypothesis is the basis of free market ideology, and it is posited on economic agents having perfect information on which they base financial decisions. Hidden costs actually break free market theory, so it is perfectly valid under free-market theory for the state to regulate classes of products so that they conform to specific standards. That means the buyer can make better decisions about the relative costs of each product.

[Max™]

I think he was saying that the reconciliation involves the 2017 budget, moving to pass the 2018 one for the tax stuff will mean they can't use reconciliation to kill the ACA?

[smjjames]

I know, it's the Republicans that were calling something socialist which actually wasn't, which completely obsfucated the meaning and effectively destroyed the use of it as a political attack among those that didn't grow up during the Cold War.

[smjjames]

I think he was saying that the reconciliation involves the 2017 budget, moving to pass the 2018 one for the tax stuff will mean they can't use reconciliation to kill the ACA?

They were going to try and dismantle parts of it with reconcillation, but they can't move forward if they have no plan, and ACA is already suffering from it's own problems. However, letting it die on its own would be just as disruptive as repealing and having no plan at all. So, the Republicans are really in a bind, plus they have a bunch of must-pass stuff coming up that they need to do.

[wierd]

And what the soviet union had was not actually socialism either, any more than the DPRK is "democratic."

People like to resort to buzzword type answers, and it happens on both sides. (oh, for a nickel every time I heard the word "Patriarchy" used as a bugaboo. It's about as useful as saying that Jews were responsible for the banking crisis.)  Failure to understand what the word actually means, or how you might be misusing it, leads to nonsensical statements, like asserting  "Bernie is a communist."

Short of finding some way to forcibly delete all the incorrect, incoherent, absurd programming people have been pummeled with (a thing I hope never gets created, because it would most certainly be misused!) I dont see a way to get passed that-- but jeeze. I get really uptight when people mislabel things, then resort to absurd rhetorical arguments regurgitated 3rd and 4th hand from idiotic talking heads.

[Reelya]

The way I describe the issue is "top down vs bottom up control". Most of the formative theories of socialism are about collective decision making, i.e. they're basically about dealing with the same issues that democracy was invented to deal with: how do you give more people a say. The "decision making" part is the part that "state socialists" stripped out: "We've collectivized you, now I'm in charge and will make all decisions for your own good".

Basically statists want you to focus on the argument between state-ownership and corporate ownership, because in both cases, the same people are in charge: which is the class of corporate management, who just happened to be the people who fund, consume and dictate the range of opinions in the corporate media.

But the real conflict is and always has been between the small number of powerful people in any society and the masses who lack power and a voice.

[wierd]

I dunno.  There *IS* something to be said about wanting to keep a larger proportion of control in the hands of actual subject experts.

Letting the general public decide national spending budgets, vs actual actuary specialists, is silly-- despite being "bottom up".


On the other hand, tyranical despots are totally a thing, and are totally "Top down".

I feel that the best is somewhere in the middle, where the top cannot fully dictate to the bottom, and the bottom cannot fully overpower the top.

[Reelya]

However, one thing that happens when you decentralize is that those assumptions of how big your 'national budget' is and what types of things it's spent on actually change when you do that. So saying individuals shouldn't get a say in the "national budget" might not even make sense in an alternate arrangement. 

Let me give an example: Imagine a central planning advocate in the USSR saying "the populace just aren't expert enough to decide which '5 year plan' should be accepted so we can't have Democracy and a free market". Basically that's the same argument as the one that a more decentralized decision-making system can't work because individuals can't fathom the federal national budget. In a decentralized system it might not even make sense that there is a single monolithic "national budget" as you see now, because that is fundamentally a structure that arose because of the specific form of centralization of power that exists in USA, the same as the '5 year plans' of USSR were a specific manifestation of their political and economic system.

[misko27]

woah woah woah. hold it there Comrade Koba. That sounds like commie talk. We don't want no damn commies 'round these parts. Get along now then son, for you mess with stuff you ought not to be messin' with.

Here's a scenario for y'all: Trump's bluster about his health was just that, bluster. It turns out he's a 70-year old man with the most stressful job on earth and, shockingly, it gets to him. What happens if Trump's health begins to decline?

[martinuzz]

What happens if Trump's health begins to decline?

If he's lucky, Obamacare happens.

[Max™]

I think you meant "'fore you mess with" or even "afore ye dinnae ken na wee oot" up there, misko.

[wierd]

Naow Naow Max-- We dunt knaow about any of dem dere fancy words and what not.

He just means that dere's just some things that younguns just aught not be messin with, and that dere COM-YUNE-IZUM be one o' em.

[Dorsidwarf]

woah woah woah. hold it there Comrade Koba. That sounds like commie talk. We don't want no damn commies 'round these parts. Get along now then son, for you mess with stuff you ought not to be messin' with.

Here's a scenario for y'all: Trump's bluster about his health was just that, bluster. It turns out he's a 70-year old man with the most stressful job on earth and, shockingly, it gets to him. What happens if Trump's health begins to decline?

Clintonian laughter from pacific island volcano base

[Folly]

I saw a headline today that read "Source: White House top officials engaged in 'Game of Thrones'".
It honestly took me about a minute to realize that they were not all distracted by the book/show, but in fact engaged in political drama that is figuratively comparable to Game of Thrones.