Wow, you sure are opinionated for a topic you know fuckall about. Marx believed communism wouldn't be viable unless it was part of a democracy. It was later communists who came up with the "state" owning things "on behalf of" the workers - and while they were the ones who took over the Soviet Union and then spread their version world-wide they weren't even the majority until some 20 years AFTER the Russian revolution. The majority of communists were democrats or anarchists - whose version had no state at all, merely the ownership of the means of production vested in the actual workers in the form of coops. Such anarcho-communists ran Andalusia in Spain for 20 years (and it was a successful, industrial city. George Orwell fought on their side in the Spanish civil war and described them as the closest thing to a perfect society he had ever witnessed - and a society where there was no hunger, poverty or suffering). Nor an overbearing state - in fact, no state whatsoever.
Communism, capitalism and socialism are all, really, collective nouns for dozens of different philosophies (each) which contradict each other on many key points. In each situation - only having one thing actually in common. In capitalism the means of production are owned by investors ("capitalists"), and in communism it is owned by the workers. This is the only part that applies to all versions of either. Socialism was originally a synonym for what came to be called communism, then Marx defined it as the end-state communism is supposed to one day achieve, currently it's best thought of as "capitalism but with a rock-solid social safety net", another word for "welfare state" as that's how it's mostly used these days.
So yes, communism is actually quite rife in the US - and government has nothing to do with it. America's largest carpet factory, and largest robotics factory, and LA's largest bakery are all worker-owned coops. A worker-owned coop is the very definition of communism - and everyone of those workers will tell you they are MORE free than they would be in any other company since, in this company, they get an equal share of the profits (it doesn't go to outside investors - it all goes to the people who actually did the productive work that produced the profits), and they all get a vote in management decisions. Does the company need a new slogan ? Should we open a new location in Albuquerque or would it be better to reinvest that capital locally in more staff and higher wages for us all ? Instead of hoping and praying that a bunch of wall street stockholders who have no actual understanding of what they do will direct the CEO to make the best decision (and thus secure their livelihoods) - they can vote on that decision themselves, relying on their actual experience in the business and the wisdom of crowds to guide them. Because it's their business -they own it. And while, of course, every decision has risks - they never have to feel that they are being punished because of somebody else's idiocy in making a terrible business decision. They made that decision, they were part of it - and the decisions that determine whether they can feed their families tomorrow, are decisions they are themselves responsible for. That's more freedom than most anybody else in the world gets. And it's communist to the very heart and soul of it, in fact, I would say it's much MORE communist than what the Soviet Union did - since those workers never truly owned the means of production - the state did, and without democracy, that state couldn't EVEN legitimately claim to be representing the workers.
By the way - more than 80% of companies in Argentina are worker-owned coops now, representing well over 90% of all employment (the remainder being almost exclusively civil service jobs). This came about after a complete economic collapse led to absolute capital flight and every shop, factory and office in the country was shut as the owners fled with their hoards. The workers just showed up and took over the abandoned businesses and ran those bus
Most Chinese people never saw the videos we saw of what actually happened in that square. Show one of those to a Chinese person (one who hasn't been out of the country for very long yet)... look at their face.
The reason they don't care is because all they ever *saw* was a bunch of spoiled, rich kits shouting slogans. And then they were told that a few got injured when the police shut down the illegal protest to restore law and order. They never saw those kids being brutally murdered.
The trouble is that those on the low end INVARIABLY end up with some huge and impossible expense. Because life just throws that shit at people. And when you've never earned enough to cover more than the basics, saving money has never really been an option - and the expenses that dumb luck throws your way are usually bigger than you could ever possibly cover with those savings, so debt becomes the only option - and even those who had spent years or decades being responsible are driven to abject poverty by dumb luck. You mentioned medical expenses but there are so much more - a 45 dollar parking ticket you can't pay, handed over to a private debt collector firm will likely end up being 3000 dollars or more by the time you manage to pay it off. That only ever happens to those who don't have the 45 dollars when the ticket comes of course. This happens with alarming frequency in America.
And of course, crap luck tends to come in bunches. I am a high-earner - and I was nearly destroyed by a series of bad luck events. It started when my daughter needed a life-saving operation -and the insurance refused to pay. Massive bill - and it had to go on a credit card that was only supposed to exist for emergencies (no remember - I was debt-free the month before). That same month my car's engine blew up - and since I have to get to work and have no feasible public transport in my city, that had to be paid on the credit card too. A few more bad things happened -and within 3 months I went from zero debt to owing roughly 5 times my monthly salary in short-term debt - most of it credit card debt.
Suddenly debt repayments was eating up 2/3rds of my monthly income - leaving just barely enough to cover the bills and food. I was actually shifting food money into a seperate account on payday so that, if I fall short, I guarantee my family can eat even if that means missing a bill !
I was lucky though - being a high earner I had made investments, specifically I owned an appartment in a very expensive neighbourhood which I was renting out. In the end - that gave me a way out of this debt trap. I sold the apparthment AND my house, and bought a nicer, bigger house which was, nonetheless, cheaper than the combined value of both properties - sufficiently so that I was able to pay of all the debt. I now only owe my house bond and my car financing. But how many of those 25K a year people do you know who own an upscale appartment to rent out ? And of course, the price I paid for my decision was to lose that valuable investment. That appartment was worth far more in rental income over the long term than it would ever sell for. I had to cash in the smaller value, because that money comes today. That income was supposed to be part of my retirement, now I'll have to make that up with other investments and hope I never again end up with a series of bad luck bills that force me to use up all my savings, go into debt and cash in my investments to survive.
I bet I know some women who can kick your ass. Besides in armed combat a smaller body is arguably an advantage because it's harder to hit a smaller target.
Well firstly you do not need to apply for refugee status. It's perfectly legal to just show up without paperwork. You can then be detained for vetting but you cannot be denied entry. If their intention was refugee status they would be silly to apply for visas. So why are we discussing a hypothetical scenario with no reason whatsoever to think it's even a remote possibility?
If they are refugees then sorry but the law does not say anything of the kind - a refugee by international law needs no VISA, needs not passport, and cannot be legally turned away by any country. America is a signatory to that law, and bound by it.
If they are accepted as immigrants that's another matter - but they will have no hard time proving it, since it's a statistical fact that they will contribute more than they cost. Immigrants ALWAYS do.
Right... that fact that they were all one unified empire for thousands of years is somehow compatible with your belief that they've had a religious war for a thousand years, and it happens to be the SAME thousand years.
How do Americans finish high school knowing literally nothing about the world outside their borders ?
Actually the Hutu and Tutsi one is worse - since no such ethnicities existed prior to colonization. The French literally just went and declared the taller people a different (and less inferior) race and treated them that way so long that it got ingrained in the local culture.
Mind you - that same thing about drawing borders without any consideration for the local population happened in Africa, and a great deal of the problems post-colonial Africa has had have stemmed from the fact that borders cut through ethnic lines and combine together unrelated tribes in other places because the borders were based on the internal competition between European countries, not on the traditional borders between different African cultures.
You're right but you left out a crucial factor - the same one that makes biofuels a bad idea. Using vegetable oils for industrial processes directly competes with using agricultural resources for food. Lets forget that food is just about the only truly unavoidable requirement for life we actually buy (we get water for free in most of the world, and nobody has yet managed to pollute enough of the atmosphere that they can make money selling air - though I'm sure quite a lot of CEOs get wet dreams about one day making the atmosphere unbreathable and cashing in on sales of a product nobody can live without for more than 3 minutes). Any competing use of agricultural output drives up food prices, and ends up killing people - that makes it a politically hard sell to begin with. Secondly it also means that the price at which you can buy it for industrial processes is driven up by the fact that other people are willing to pay good money for that same source - because they'll starve without it. In a world where we do NOT burn crude oil and remove the single biggest competitor for the resource, it's quite likely that the price of crude for plastics will end up significantly lower than vegetable oils - because unlike vegetables, nobody else is clamoring to buy crude oil for dinner.
>Why? Many European countries have private health insurers Who compete with high quality government-funded medical care, so in order to make a profit - they have to actually offer really good value. Even rich people wouldn't be their customers at all if they didn't offer something exceptional.
Except if you read the article you would find they made the 500-mile, extremely dangerous, trip to Kabul several times and did - in fact - apply for their VISAs well in advance.
Yeah, right, and Taliban operatives actually trying to kill girls who go to school (and targetting them specifically) has no role to play in that right.
Actually, the exact opposite, even the most far-left liberals oppose the treatment of women in fundamentalist Islam (though we refuse to discriminate against the entire Muslim population over it) - we want them to have a reformation movement to fix that, in the meantime, offering talented young girls a chance to get educated outside the control of that system is a good thing. If anything, this is a reason to give preferential entry to people (particularly women) from Muslim countries !
That's odd, because statistically immigrants create about four jobs for every one job they take, pay taxes and (if undocumented) get no services from it... I find it odd that you expect these four to somehow completely fail to be like every other immigrant in the history of the world.
Do you have some reason to expect that to be the case ? Because it's a pretty extraordinary claim, which means it needs extraordinary evidence.
Apparently "significantly less than one percent" is now "a sizable fraction" And if it had been more than "significantly less than one percent" we would all be dead already.
You do know that the country of East Germany hasn't existed in 28 years, right - and when the wall came down and they merged it was the freedom loving West Germans who took over, right ? Right ?
If anything, the experience of a large number of their citizens who lived under the KGB and the STASI are a big part of why Germany is so obsessive about privacy rights these days - they've experienced the alternative.
He would disaggree with the idea that government should not regulate or interfere with markets at all. And he would be right. Besides it's the 'classical' economists who keep pointing at Keynes as being their opposite. It's they who think he was a socialist, not those of us who merely think he was right - and proven right every time his policies are tested in the real world.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, you sure are opinionated for a topic you know fuckall about.
Marx believed communism wouldn't be viable unless it was part of a democracy. It was later communists who came up with the "state" owning things "on behalf of" the workers - and while they were the ones who took over the Soviet Union and then spread their version world-wide they weren't even the majority until some 20 years AFTER the Russian revolution. The majority of communists were democrats or anarchists - whose version had no state at all, merely the ownership of the means of production vested in the actual workers in the form of coops.
Such anarcho-communists ran Andalusia in Spain for 20 years (and it was a successful, industrial city. George Orwell fought on their side in the Spanish civil war and described them as the closest thing to a perfect society he had ever witnessed - and a society where there was no hunger, poverty or suffering). Nor an overbearing state - in fact, no state whatsoever.
Communism, capitalism and socialism are all, really, collective nouns for dozens of different philosophies (each) which contradict each other on many key points. In each situation - only having one thing actually in common.
In capitalism the means of production are owned by investors ("capitalists"), and in communism it is owned by the workers. This is the only part that applies to all versions of either. Socialism was originally a synonym for what came to be called communism, then Marx defined it as the end-state communism is supposed to one day achieve, currently it's best thought of as "capitalism but with a rock-solid social safety net", another word for "welfare state" as that's how it's mostly used these days.
So yes, communism is actually quite rife in the US - and government has nothing to do with it. America's largest carpet factory, and largest robotics factory, and LA's largest bakery are all worker-owned coops. A worker-owned coop is the very definition of communism - and everyone of those workers will tell you they are MORE free than they would be in any other company since, in this company, they get an equal share of the profits (it doesn't go to outside investors - it all goes to the people who actually did the productive work that produced the profits), and they all get a vote in management decisions. Does the company need a new slogan ? Should we open a new location in Albuquerque or would it be better to reinvest that capital locally in more staff and higher wages for us all ?
Instead of hoping and praying that a bunch of wall street stockholders who have no actual understanding of what they do will direct the CEO to make the best decision (and thus secure their livelihoods) - they can vote on that decision themselves, relying on their actual experience in the business and the wisdom of crowds to guide them. Because it's their business -they own it. And while, of course, every decision has risks - they never have to feel that they are being punished because of somebody else's idiocy in making a terrible business decision. They made that decision, they were part of it - and the decisions that determine whether they can feed their families tomorrow, are decisions they are themselves responsible for.
That's more freedom than most anybody else in the world gets. And it's communist to the very heart and soul of it, in fact, I would say it's much MORE communist than what the Soviet Union did - since those workers never truly owned the means of production - the state did, and without democracy, that state couldn't EVEN legitimately claim to be representing the workers.
By the way - more than 80% of companies in Argentina are worker-owned coops now, representing well over 90% of all employment (the remainder being almost exclusively civil service jobs). This came about after a complete economic collapse led to absolute capital flight and every shop, factory and office in the country was shut as the owners fled with their hoards. The workers just showed up and took over the abandoned businesses and ran those bus
Most Chinese people never saw the videos we saw of what actually happened in that square. Show one of those to a Chinese person (one who hasn't been out of the country for very long yet)... look at their face.
The reason they don't care is because all they ever *saw* was a bunch of spoiled, rich kits shouting slogans. And then they were told that a few got injured when the police shut down the illegal protest to restore law and order. They never saw those kids being brutally murdered.
The trouble is that those on the low end INVARIABLY end up with some huge and impossible expense. Because life just throws that shit at people. And when you've never earned enough to cover more than the basics, saving money has never really been an option - and the expenses that dumb luck throws your way are usually bigger than you could ever possibly cover with those savings, so debt becomes the only option - and even those who had spent years or decades being responsible are driven to abject poverty by dumb luck.
You mentioned medical expenses but there are so much more - a 45 dollar parking ticket you can't pay, handed over to a private debt collector firm will likely end up being 3000 dollars or more by the time you manage to pay it off. That only ever happens to those who don't have the 45 dollars when the ticket comes of course. This happens with alarming frequency in America.
And of course, crap luck tends to come in bunches. I am a high-earner - and I was nearly destroyed by a series of bad luck events. It started when my daughter needed a life-saving operation -and the insurance refused to pay. Massive bill - and it had to go on a credit card that was only supposed to exist for emergencies (no remember - I was debt-free the month before). That same month my car's engine blew up - and since I have to get to work and have no feasible public transport in my city, that had to be paid on the credit card too. A few more bad things happened -and within 3 months I went from zero debt to owing roughly 5 times my monthly salary in short-term debt - most of it credit card debt.
Suddenly debt repayments was eating up 2/3rds of my monthly income - leaving just barely enough to cover the bills and food. I was actually shifting food money into a seperate account on payday so that, if I fall short, I guarantee my family can eat even if that means missing a bill !
I was lucky though - being a high earner I had made investments, specifically I owned an appartment in a very expensive neighbourhood which I was renting out. In the end - that gave me a way out of this debt trap. I sold the apparthment AND my house, and bought a nicer, bigger house which was, nonetheless, cheaper than the combined value of both properties - sufficiently so that I was able to pay of all the debt. I now only owe my house bond and my car financing. But how many of those 25K a year people do you know who own an upscale appartment to rent out ?
And of course, the price I paid for my decision was to lose that valuable investment. That appartment was worth far more in rental income over the long term than it would ever sell for. I had to cash in the smaller value, because that money comes today.
That income was supposed to be part of my retirement, now I'll have to make that up with other investments and hope I never again end up with a series of bad luck bills that force me to use up all my savings, go into debt and cash in my investments to survive.
Much like your assumption about combat prowess your assumption about my nationality and ethnicity is way off the mark.
So you believe we should just blindly trust that the government always follows and enforces the law correctly and even handedly?
Because I do not.
When there is obvious reason for their action and explanation offered we have every right to question those actions.
I have no issues with those laws. Now please point out which one these girls do not meet. I cannot see it.
And who are you listening to? Alex Jones? Me? I am giving credence to first hand reports rather than whatever makes me feel good.
I bet I know some women who can kick your ass. Besides in armed combat a smaller body is arguably an advantage because it's harder to hit a smaller target.
But not (yet) an actual requirement for survival.
Well firstly you do not need to apply for refugee status. It's perfectly legal to just show up without paperwork. You can then be detained for vetting but you cannot be denied entry.
If their intention was refugee status they would be silly to apply for visas.
So why are we discussing a hypothetical scenario with no reason whatsoever to think it's even a remote possibility?
If they are refugees then sorry but the law does not say anything of the kind - a refugee by international law needs no VISA, needs not passport, and cannot be legally turned away by any country. America is a signatory to that law, and bound by it.
If they are accepted as immigrants that's another matter - but they will have no hard time proving it, since it's a statistical fact that they will contribute more than they cost. Immigrants ALWAYS do.
Right... that fact that they were all one unified empire for thousands of years is somehow compatible with your belief that they've had a religious war for a thousand years, and it happens to be the SAME thousand years.
How do Americans finish high school knowing literally nothing about the world outside their borders ?
Actually the Hutu and Tutsi one is worse - since no such ethnicities existed prior to colonization. The French literally just went and declared the taller people a different (and less inferior) race and treated them that way so long that it got ingrained in the local culture.
Mind you - that same thing about drawing borders without any consideration for the local population happened in Africa, and a great deal of the problems post-colonial Africa has had have stemmed from the fact that borders cut through ethnic lines and combine together unrelated tribes in other places because the borders were based on the internal competition between European countries, not on the traditional borders between different African cultures.
You're right but you left out a crucial factor - the same one that makes biofuels a bad idea. Using vegetable oils for industrial processes directly competes with using agricultural resources for food. Lets forget that food is just about the only truly unavoidable requirement for life we actually buy (we get water for free in most of the world, and nobody has yet managed to pollute enough of the atmosphere that they can make money selling air - though I'm sure quite a lot of CEOs get wet dreams about one day making the atmosphere unbreathable and cashing in on sales of a product nobody can live without for more than 3 minutes).
Any competing use of agricultural output drives up food prices, and ends up killing people - that makes it a politically hard sell to begin with. Secondly it also means that the price at which you can buy it for industrial processes is driven up by the fact that other people are willing to pay good money for that same source - because they'll starve without it.
In a world where we do NOT burn crude oil and remove the single biggest competitor for the resource, it's quite likely that the price of crude for plastics will end up significantly lower than vegetable oils - because unlike vegetables, nobody else is clamoring to buy crude oil for dinner.
Somebody needs to find a partner so you can experience the glory of road head.
>Why? Many European countries have private health insurers
Who compete with high quality government-funded medical care, so in order to make a profit - they have to actually offer really good value. Even rich people wouldn't be their customers at all if they didn't offer something exceptional.
Except if you read the article you would find they made the 500-mile, extremely dangerous, trip to Kabul several times and did - in fact - apply for their VISAs well in advance.
*citation needed*
Good luck finding one, as in a good peer-reviewed scientific citation - not something Alex Jones pulled out of his colon.
Yeah, right, and Taliban operatives actually trying to kill girls who go to school (and targetting them specifically) has no role to play in that right.
Actually, the exact opposite, even the most far-left liberals oppose the treatment of women in fundamentalist Islam (though we refuse to discriminate against the entire Muslim population over it) - we want them to have a reformation movement to fix that, in the meantime, offering talented young girls a chance to get educated outside the control of that system is a good thing.
If anything, this is a reason to give preferential entry to people (particularly women) from Muslim countries !
That's odd, because statistically immigrants create about four jobs for every one job they take, pay taxes and (if undocumented) get no services from it... I find it odd that you expect these four to somehow completely fail to be like every other immigrant in the history of the world.
Do you have some reason to expect that to be the case ? Because it's a pretty extraordinary claim, which means it needs extraordinary evidence.
Apparently "significantly less than one percent" is now "a sizable fraction"
And if it had been more than "significantly less than one percent" we would all be dead already.
I've heard language like yours before... where was it... where was it.. aah right, I remember.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt01...
You do know that the country of East Germany hasn't existed in 28 years, right - and when the wall came down and they merged it was the freedom loving West Germans who took over, right ? Right ?
If anything, the experience of a large number of their citizens who lived under the KGB and the STASI are a big part of why Germany is so obsessive about privacy rights these days - they've experienced the alternative.
He would disaggree with the idea that government should not regulate or interfere with markets at all. And he would be right. Besides it's the 'classical' economists who keep pointing at Keynes as being their opposite. It's they who think he was a socialist, not those of us who merely think he was right - and proven right every time his policies are tested in the real world.