Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[birdy51]

Some of the social ideas presented by the left are honestly, pretty good. Over the last two years or so I've come to think more that a government needs to ah, govern. But it takes steps. Speaking in the broadest sense possible, change does not go over well with people. Big changes cause people to freak out in big ways. So I can kind of get why people are a bit sketchy about Bernie Sanders. But it's also hard to get elected without screaming in one way or another, so I suppose it's a pick and choose your  battles sort of thing.

[smjjames]

It doesn't help that the Republicans scream 'SOCIALIST!' at almost everything* that the Democrats say and take the easy way out since it's still a trigger word (because Cold War) rather than giving their own ideas and talking about them.

At this point, the Democrats would be pretty justified in dragging the Republicans kicking and screaming on some things. I'm mostly thinking Global Warming here, but both sides are undergoing a populist evolution with each side trying to do the same to each other anyway.

*okay, yea, that's hyperbole as it's not quite almost everything, but still.

[birdy51]

It's almost not a hyperbole at this point, let's be honest. The Republican Party that I grew up identifying with is rotting from the inside out. It was hard for me to see the rot with guys like McCain around, but after he died it put a magnifying glass on the shit pit that they've become. Occasionally, rare occasions, I'll hear one on NPR who sounds like they have their head screwed on straight, but by and large they've got their head up their asses.

Democrats are wholly justified dragging them to the table. They ought to whip their butts clean until hopefully the Republicans look in the mirror and realize how badly they've screwed things up over these last two decades or so.

For context, I used to consider myself a Republican. Now I'm just kind of an independent centrist I guess.

[McTraveller]

Some of the social ideas presented by the left are honestly, pretty good. Over the last two years or so I've come to think more that a government needs to ah, govern. But it takes steps. Speaking in the broadest sense possible, change does not go over well with people. Big changes cause people to freak out in big ways. So I can kind of get why people are a bit sketchy about Bernie Sanders. But it's also hard to get elected without screaming in one way or another, so I suppose it's a pick and choose your  battles sort of thing.

The popular social programs do sound good - the problem is they are impractical.  The DNC seems to think that you can solve problems just by spending money on them.  Trouble is - most of the "high cost" problems in society are only "high cost" in the USA because there is available money, but not enough systematic supply.  So for things like education and health care, you end up with high prices and low service, because the government seems to think that just throwing money at the problem will make prices go down - without having any kind of government program to increase services.  I guess it's because you can't conscript someone into being an EMT, but you can easily tax people.

I think there is an implicit assumption that "if there's enough money, it will entice more people to provide services" but it doesn't work for industries like medicine and education that have massive barriers to entry.

So unless part of the social programs for "free" education and healthcare include massive trust-busting and reduction in barriers to entry, simply making things "free" is just going to have a painfully short-term appearance of being "good" when it really just causes trouble.

To really improve things, we need to address the systematic issues, not just the symptom of "high prices."

I mean seriously - where have all the benefits of increased productivity gone in the past few years? Those industries with low barriers to entry:  personal electronics are disgustingly cheap.  Clothes are historically pretty cheap as well.  But housing, transportation, food, education, and medicine - the necessities - are all increasing in price in real terms.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

This is intentional, or at least structurally unavoidable under capitalism. No different now than growing endless fields of tobacco while the people starve.

[smjjames]

Except that other countries who are also capitalist and would otherwise have the same problems have better healthcare, education, and cheaper medication than we do. So, that argument kind of falls apart there MSH.

Sure, one would argue that since we have a larger population it'd be more expensive, but even when you adjust for population differences, we're still an outlier.

Also, the Democrats problem is more that they aren't really paying attention to how to pay for them. Yes, I know that the details generally come later, but without the details it's basically Trump saying 'MEXICO WILL PAY FOR THE WALL!'. Plus they're going to have to deal with the structural problems which contribute to the issues which simply giving money to won't fix.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Except that other countries who are also capitalist and would otherwise have the same problems have better healthcare, education, and cheaper medication than we do. So, that argument kind of falls apart there MSH.

I believe you mean that a small number of other rich dominant capitalist countries have slightly better neoliberal-defined metrics of healthcare and education than the United States for a couple of decades while most of the human species continues to be horribly exploited and struggle against a constantly sharpening edge of maximization while even the most exploitative countries in the world gradually fall to far-right influence and slash their own social programs more and more each year thus ending even this aspect of support.

[McTraveller]

This is intentional, or at least structurally unavoidable under capitalism. No different now than growing endless fields of tobacco while the people starve.

Only "unregulated" capitalism - which is subtle but important.  I think ideally you have to have a combination of both capitalist and socialist policies; generally I think most others agree as well.  The economic argument is mostly about what the relative "amount" of each is optimal.

(I'm leaving out the many other types of argument...)

[hector13]

Orange McOrangeFace appears to have fired Kirstjen Nielsen.

Evidently publicly loyal yes-men are no good for him.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Who decides what the regulations are in a capitalist society? Capitalists. Food safety is red tape wasting YOUR tax dollars, lib status = owned as fuck.

Stop trying to compromise between horrible and non-horrible. Just be non-horrible god damn it.

[smjjames]

Orange McOrangeFace appears to have fired Kirstjen Nielsen.

Evidently publicly loyal yes-men are no good for him.

Sounded more like she resigned in protest (since she wasn't planning on resigning), and that it was the culmination of being massively undercut recently.

[Folly]

As I'm hearing it, she heard Trump grumbling in her direction and decided to resign before the inevitable firing.

[LordBaal]

It would be infinitely funny if he fired people from his cabinet like in the old show on national tv.

You are fired!

Capitalist, free market with a government that only regulate against monopolies and... the word in Spanish is "usura"*  and spend the state income on free** education, basic healthcare and social help.

* basically the concept is that I make and sell bikes, and making them cost me, say, 100$ (material, transport, workers, services like water and electricity, all included) and I sell them at 10.000 just because I feel like it. Then I would pay 9.890 in taxes for each sale and only have a net 10 earnings. While if I sell them at 180 bucks I get to pay only 10 in taxes and get to earn 70 for me. In a sense not having monopolies help with this too because of the competition, then if I sell them at 10.000 surely other people will sell them at 200 and sell a shitton more than me anyway.

** Nothing is really free in life, but heavily subsided by the government. Here it used to work regularish well before the revolution, from the wages you were discounted a 1% for public health and 2% or so for housing. In turn when reaching a certain threshold you could buy a house with a mortgage loan on fixed interest and 30 years to pay with part of the money down put by the state, while public hospitals didn't required anything from you beyond the national ID, or that was the plan, it was inefficient from before the revolution but it worked allrigth, compared to how it is now anyway.

And social help should be able to discriminate well between people in real need and those that are just lazy, and have the able people that are simply down on luck to keep finding ways to get out of the help.

[bloop_bleep]

Who decides what the regulations are in a capitalist society? Capitalists. Food safety is red tape wasting YOUR tax dollars, lib status = owned as fuck.

Stop trying to compromise between horrible and non-horrible. Just be non-horrible god damn it.

So... communism? Hate to be cliche, but we do indeed know how that turned out.

Usually when someone yells "communism" the problem is they're conflating "any regulation at all" with "complete and total control," but in this case you're very explicitly stating all regulation is useless unless it's total.

And if capitalists always decide what regulations there are in a capitalist society, why don't they just decree there not to be regulations at all? Regulations are actually things that exist, if you've noticed.

[wierd]

I think the cognate for that word is "usury."

More frequently used in English is "Interest."

(because "usury" has religious prohibition type implications, and interest sounds wholesome and good. Despite being the exact same thing.)