Vilageidiotx

question for the british folk

<Snipped quote by Dinh AaronMk>

You sound like a boring person.

@Taaj

i bet he eats hot dogs and likes them

How *I* See Communism: A Discussion of Spamtastic Proportions

NOTABLY: cities run by leftists are also the ones falling apart and/or literally shooting themselves and/or burning themselves down while packed into a warehouse because they can't afford their own inflated rent and/or rioting about the damage in the city while damaging their city. Texas, Salt Lake City, Colorado Springs.... they're doing just fine. Which of course begs the (admittedly pretty partisan) question, why the fuck would we listen to the other guy here? Ya know? I mean that's harsh, yeah, but.... come on now. The world's orange-est capitalist took power 100 days ago and the industry in these old manufacturing towns has been on a non-stop skyrocket ever since, slowing only when rumors began to swirl that he was't going to deregulate quite as much as people thought he might. Who left who behind again? The Rust Belt made their opinions on the matter quite clear, much to the chagrin of -- well, basically everybody else in the world. My own stated perspective aside, I'm taking their word for it.

mdk

Iiiiii think there is a bit of selection bias going on here. I mean, for Salt Lake City and Colorado springs there are the obvious confounding factors; those cities are are tiny as fuck. My city had a troubled government under a conservative regime, and has started growing under a liberal one. I suspect any conversation of this sort is going to become a matter of throwing examples out.

Also, short term growth in the market isn't really the problem. Republicans have always been great sprinters, they just can't run a long race to save their asses. Through deregulation, we are sowing the next recession, and if it is as bad as the last one, god help us all.

It just so happens that Capitalism is taking us there, and for the life of me I can't think of a reason we should stop. Shit man that's gonna be awesome.

Industrialism certainly is. I'm of the opinion that any global economic system that was thoroughly industrialized would have achieved the same results. I base this on the fact that, rather than crumpling in the twenties as the conservative theory would require, the Soviet Union continued to grow and had to be outmaneuvered politically in order to collapse. If the Communists had politically outmaneuvered the US, we'd be talking (in Russian I suppose) about how capitalism didn't work.

The main fear now is that the capitalists, like the Senators of Rome or the Aristocrats of France, have so monopolized the economic structure of society that it is slowing us down. The greatest innovation of western civilization is civil participation, especially symbolized by democratic values. My fear is that democracy is being slowly stifled by the needs of capitalism, and the inevitable result will be stagnation.

Dysfunctional is a strong word. For all we know, American politics is just boring (preposterous suggestion after last year, I know). Nonparticipation is only an issue if it's compulsory, and in the US it's only compulsory in the case of convicted felons. I'd hardly call that a crisis. In short: let's not spend too much effort trying to straighten the horns on a bull here. Maybe they SHOULD be curved.

Is it corrupt or is it not corrupt? You are waffling, sir.

I'm jumbled a bit. Sounds like what you're saying is essentially that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots. My meme-level response is that Communism doesn't equal liberty and AntiFa ain't patriots -- flesh that out in your mind, what I'm driving at is Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, et al agonized over the decision to go to war with England -- not out of cowardice or their inability to be effective, but out of wisdom. More frequently than the proponents of glorious revolution would care to admit, the goons running around cracking skulls are just that -- goons.

AntiFa would be patriotic if they saw themselves as fighting for their countries freedoms or some shit like that. I think that their plan to go around popping tweakers at Trump rallies is politically useless, and they are largely puffing up their own importance and being melodramatic, but Samuel Adams was a puffed up fucker too. The American Revolution wasn't a matter of the wise old gods coming down to bless the country with their own perfection. That conflict had its brawlers, it's self-important nerds, its skull cracking goons, and all that fun shit.

The Boston Tea Party is a good example. There was some blow back to that. I couldn't find it on the internet, but I recall reading a letter written by a loyalist during the Boston Tea Party to the effect of (paraphrasing from memory here) "We couldn't get a loyalist militia together last month, but after the Boston Tea Party, we can't find enough guns to arm all the people who want to join up." After all, the Boston Tea Party was a bunch of people disguising themselves (cowards) and vandalizing a privately owned ship which they had held at dock the last few days (or weeks) through terrorizing the captain and the port officials. The Tea Party was a galvanizing event, arguably one that was harmful to the American cause in the short term, but one that ended up becoming a positive in the long term only because Parliament overplayed their hand as a result and occupied Boston.

I suppose I can summarize my opinions on this thread in a statement; one of the dumbest things Marxists argue is that their philosophy will "End history", that they have the key to fixing every problem forever and always. I think the most alarming things coming from the capitalist apologist crowd nowadays is exactly that same thing. Capitalism has ended history. This is it. All of our current problems are not problems at all, but instead are the way things are supposed to be.

question for the british folk

<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx>

your empire is run by a cheeto-faced baby

@Grimhildr

but until he loses it, we still have it.

question for the british folk

<Snipped quote by Taaj>

no, it's a short a, because we speak english properly. you yank fucks.

@Grimhildr

You lost your empire, we still have ours, so we get to determine proper diction.

How *I* See Communism: A Discussion of Spamtastic Proportions

<Snipped quote by canaryrose>

Honestly, I expected more Shitposting replies.

@DepressedSoviet

Oi, politidorks, hit me up with some nuanced articles you've been reading lately.

The source seems biased but I thought this article was interesting and they made a fair effort to provide the evidence for their claims. Still, I'd like to see it confirmed by another source.

ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/2017/02/09/..

@Kratesis

The biggest problems with this are...

A: Paying for clicks isn't a viable business model. It would be a financial loss. If this was not the case, the internet would be a financial perpetual motion machine and none of us would ever have to work again.

B: It doesn't do anything for them but allow them to boast. Fake traffic doesn't mean real traffic, so their narrative wouldn't actually be spreading at a greater rate here.

C: Alexa may be a flawed source. Tracing website traffic is a very hairy thing. I recall a forum IP tracker that always had be in the pacific ocean for some weird fucking reason, when I live some 2000 miles+ from the pacific ocean.

question for the british folk

<Snipped quote by Dinh AaronMk>

That's the second-saddest goddamn thing I ever heard.

@mdk

I once heard that there is a "Mexican" restaurant in London that puts peas on their burritos.

How *I* See Communism: A Discussion of Spamtastic Proportions

jesus shit this thread became a mess. im not going to read it all because i'm not made out of spare time

Actually, it kind of does. When you remove a figure head like that via revolution, to replace it with a new government, you are taking the previous society apart and rebuilding it with the recycled bricks. This has been going on for ages, and is the reason we DON'T have kings right now. But you're comparing kings and business owners in the wrong way. Some kings did just live a privileged life, letting the church or advisers rule their country while they relaxed. Other kings made laws, managed the economy, discussed military strategy during times of war, etc.

@BrobyDDark

And there were Kings who were actually quite good, and did a decent job, and society was better for them. And there are members of the capitalist elite that don't contribute anything but prior privilege. Remember that many people within the elite are not active managers, but simply investors, who's only contribution is that they have money to invest. I have a hard time swallowing the idea that privileged gambling is the ideal format for a civilization.

Someone will always step up and take charge, because there's no way everyone can control the economy at once. Everyone needs a representative, who will look like the leader and, like it or not, that person will have more power over the economy at that point onward. That's how I view it, anyways.

When I say democratic, I don't mean that literally everything is voted on all the time. I mean that power within a civilization is invested in the people directly, even if that means they appoint managers. The system we have now invests the people in a parallel way, but holds them at arm's length. It is better that the strict nature of feudalism, but it still wastes human energy through the corruption and class-defensive nature of the rich.

This is a gripe I have with talking about the current state of things, and talking about politics and the economy. A lot of people seem to think that the US is currently undergoing its demise- we're on our deathbed, even though we have been chugging along fine for years. Our death won't happen because of our current economic system, and it wouldn't happen if we were communist, or socialist, or lived in a dictatorship. Our death would happen when we tried to change all of that, because switching our economic ideology will make us very weak, as we're suddenly getting rid of people that make a lot of money they use to fund the government.

We're not on our deathbed, but we are ticking off some uncomfortable boxes when it comes to the development of civilization. We've got stagnation in the working classes, a gap between rich and poor that is rising rapidly, political upheaval, and an upcoming automation revolution that will likely mirror the economic uncertainty of the industrial revolution. That's a lot of shit on our plate. Considering how many civilizations have stories of turmoil that start with "...and then the rich took all the wealth and the poor got mad", I am very concerned.

Now let me clear one thing up though - I don't think it's Fallout time. That's possible, since global turmoil can do that sort of thing, but I don't think it's automatically to be expected. An American Caesar is just as plausible though (That was my main concern with Trump, but he's turned out to be more of an America child king, so Trump is no longer on my danger radar tbh). What I'm saying is we are heading for a civilization defining moment, and that moment will most likely be a negative one.

I think everything's going to be fine, for at least another 100 years.

I really really hope so. Like, seriously, I'm not in this shit for Neetbux, I'm willing to put in my forty hours at the salt mines. But I want to know that the salt mines will be there all my life, and that my forty hours there will pay my way. And I just don't have faith in any of that. This is not an unusual feeling amongst people of my social class in my experience, regardless of age or political persuasion. It's that angst, I think, that got Trump elected. Also that angst that made Bernie popular. Extremism isn't rising in America because of the media, or something in the water. Extremism is on the rise because of this growing economic angst. And economic angst, historically speaking, is a major powder keg.

If you don't support Marine Le Pen you're a sexist

#makefranceREICHagain

@Elgappa

They gonna give the northern part of the country to Germany as lebensraum?

How *I* See Communism: A Discussion of Spamtastic Proportions

Are you truly under the impression that everyone in the upper management of every company on Earth spends the work day diddling their asshole?

@The Nexerus

Yes. Kings have job descriptions too, but when you get rid of them society doesn't fall apart.

My views on Communism are rather basic, I suppose. I see Communism as a method of purging unnecessary people and bureaucracy in the means of production of all goods. Basically, Communism to me means abolishing anyone who is not necessary for the production of whatever the company produces, or abolishing businesses or organizations that are not necessary to the industry they are involved in.

@DepressedSoviet

That's Utopian. The purpose is to take all of the thing Nexerus says we need a landed aristocracy for and democratizing it. Which is to say the Bureaucracy doesn't disappear, since it is part of the production process.

I like looking at people who talk about Communism, because they always present the """""true""""" form of Communism that is always different from how Communism really is.

Communism in itself is not something that can work on its own. It always has to be shifted to be something else for it to work in every Communists' eyes. It's come to the point that everyone who is a """""Communist""""" is actually just someone who follows a different ideology loosely based on communism.

@BrobyDDark

Marxism/Leninism doesn't work because it is predicated on the belief that democracy doesn't work, and once you've made that decision than you have decided that the people cannot rule themselves, which defeats the purpose of trying to put the people in charge of the economy.

I personally believe that aristocrats throughout history have been frauds. I think the historical pattern where aristocrats continue to leach power from their civilization until they take too much and their civilization stagnates and either goes through revolution, collapses, or becomes undefendable, is telling. I think the United States is currently entering that stagnation process.

My main beef with the far left is the sectarian nature of it. I think most of those beliefs are endangered because they are always too worried about the rules, like someone holding up the game to read the rulebook until everyone gets annoyed.

I also think the far left throughout history usually fails. Aristocrats are frauds, but they are really good frauds. So if I had to put money on it, I wouldn't bet that the left will win and we'll enter some Star Trek future, rather I'd bet that our civilization is going to stagnate and fall apart. What that'll look like in the modern world is hard to tell. I'm just reaaallly hoping that it waits until I die before any of the really hairy shit happens. Let me be the last generation of the waning civilization, not the first generation of the First Intermediate Period of the Anglo-Saxon civilization.