It is clear he meant by that term and if your only defense is that it can be applied too broadly (which no one does) then you are already admitting you are on weak ground.
If it is so clear what was meant, why don't you enlighten me by giving the definition of what was meant and by proving that a majority of the people on earth adhere to that definition?
Also: fuck 'you know what I meant'. Say it right, be prepared to fix it or don't say it at all.
You establish a similar defense of bad food additives and chemicals with the inane "every compound is a chemical".
Sneaking in the adjective 'bad' makes for this fantastic tautology: bad food additives are bad. Duh. And yes, every compound is a chemical. Do you want to narrow it down to man-made chemicals? It is still stupid to say '(eating) man-made chemicals (is/)are bad for you'. Maybe you can tell me which types of food I should avoid because they contain 'chemicals'?
Next you are going to say that organic food is bad since organic means compounds with carbon such as butane.
WTF, man. You stole my line.
Seriously dude, in your world that counts like an argument?
1. If the trans fats are the problem, then why not say 'things that contain significant amounts of trans fats' instead of 'processed food'? That is my main gripe with the generic nutritional advice. Instead of educating people on the actual compounds that potentially have negative health effects, we end up with a plethora of bullshit advice like 'processed food is bad', 'things in cans are bad', 'eat a different color of vegetable every day' or 'brown bread is healthy' (which has lead producers to add dye to their whitebread).
2. Even trans fat research is mostly hard to control epidemiological research. What evidence there is still doesn't warrant saying things like "trans fats are deleterious to health", simply because that is such a broad statement. The risks for a lot of things can differ greatly varying with age, genetics, total diet composition, the average amount ingested over a longer period etc. It is very probable that there is little to no added risk in eating on average small amounts of trans fat, simply because small can mean as little as one molecule per day. The risks also probably become particularly significant for older people or younger people with certain genetic predispositions.
This is why it is so important to understand the mechanisms that cause the problems. If half of the time and text spent on nutritional advice was spent on actually discussing the mechanisms that cause the problems, we'd all live happier and healthier.
My definition of 'a socialist country' is based on what effectively happens there. According to your definition, a country can switch state completely on election day which renders the definition far less useful than mine when it comes to evaluation of economic designs.
I'll readily agree that a lot of governments in South America currently further 'left-wing' socialist ideals, but if the effective (maximum) tax rates are low, it is hard to argue that the country actually implements socialism. Of course, I've already stated that tacking labels of economic design on countries isn't something I like to do, due to the complexity of it.
This is one example from your list (and probably the worst one), but my point is that for effective discussion on the merits of certain economic designs, looking at the party name or political stance of the current government of a country isn't useful.
Also remember that even though countries differ greatly, we still tend to lob all the conservative and progressive (or left/right or whatever) together. Most Europeans deem all the political parties in the USA to be right-wing and most inhabitants of the US would deem many European 'right-wing' parties to be socialist. I'm betting that European countries which by your definition are currently right-wing, would be deemed the most socialist places on earth by aforementioned inhabitants. High (progressive) tax rates, socialized health care, expensive and lots of public infrastructure, high social security benefits etc. These are implemented socialist policies, the things that actually influence people's lives and the economy.
Finally:
By your definition style, there are no existing capitalist countries and no existing socialist countries, in large part because of public-choice economics reasons. By my definition style, most countries can be classified along a spectrum of public sentiment for socialist or free market style policies, said spectrum evidenced by the policies they appear to support. I'd classify any country that primarily supports socialist ideals in their stated public policy as socialist, while you'd only allow that classification for successfully implementing your ideals.
So first you introduce a false dichotomy as being important (which I've vehemently denounced from the start) and then go on to show that in your definition it does not exist unless an obviously arbitrary and thus for the purpose at hand redundant line is drawn?
If you want an arbitrary line, let's do it. Countries for which government spending is more than 40% of GDP are socialist. I can draw lines all day.
Do you want to change your initial statement to 'most of the countries in Africa, South America, Asia, Eastern Europe, etc... lean more to the socialist side of the socialist-free market spectrum'? It would still be false, but at least more accurate.
Yeah, I heard that drinking water helps, so now I'm drinking 12 liters a day to flush all that DHMO out of my body.
My holistic food therapist/spiritual counselor measures my blood DHMO-levels for me every month (for only $60!) and he said I should continue the treatment because I'm still at very high levels! Damn government is poisoning us all!
additives and chemicals are bad for you if they are the wrong ones
So you agree with me that saying that all additives and chemicals are bad for you is a stupid thing to do? As is saying that all processed food is bad for you?
I'm educated far above average when it comes to nutrition, and if there is one thing I have learned is that all broad statements or general pieces of advice in nutrition are instantly false and counterproductive. There are tons of variables that can influence whether a certain diet has negative long term health effects and the amount of conclusive research on individual food stuffs you can legally ingest is extremely small.
The best way to approach nutrition is to look into the research on the digestive system (which consist of more than just epidemiological studies) and understand what is going on and going to go on in your body when you consume things (it is beneficial to eat sugar when your blood sugar levels are low, I repeat: beneficial). It's not easy (but doable), but it sure beats running around blurting out appeals to nature or evangelizing the Word of some food guru you like, which 99% of the people seem to do.
Ah, so your response to my implied criticism that 'processed foods' is a ridiculously broad term that could be applied to the majority of food you buy in the supermarket is condescendingly linking to another term referring to the specific set of tertiary processed food, which is still ridiculously broad enough to render any claim on nutritional value or health effects of the class as a whole instantly false.
Next you're going to say that 'additives' and 'chemicals' are 'bad for you'.
Ah, you are being ironic. Or trolling. Or both.
No. Don't be an idiot. Show me the research that proves that 'additives' or 'chemicals' are 'bad for you'. Go ahead. Apparently it is extremely obvious, so you should have no problems whatsoever in finding mountains of evidence. You can start here for the 'chemicals' part of it: http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html
Also: reread the first five paragraphs of Cute Fuzzy Bunny's OP or TFS.
What IS bad for you are la mayoría de pills, supplements, things in cans, fake 'diet' brownies and cookies, sugar, processed foods, vegetable oils except for olive, processed starches, and alta energy/low nutrition foods que conforman the bulk of the 'western diet'. Eat meat, quality fats, las frutas enteras and veg and steer clear of the alta rentabilidad, easy to produce artículos hechos de grains and processed starches.
You're kidding, right? Five very insightful paragraphs showing how hard research into nutrition is and how most 'nutritional facts' have no proper basis in science followed by a ridiculous list of different largely unsupported nutritional claims?
'[Processed foods are bad]'? Really?? What the fuck is 'processed food' even? Next you're going to say that 'additives' and 'chemicals' are 'bad for you'.
but for the purposes of a comment, it's not exactly required for something so uncontroversial.
For one, equating something like 'water is wet' - which almost everybody experiences almost every day - to something like 'most of the countries in [most of the world] are socialist' - which swaths of people not even come close to knowing or being confronted with in their entire life - is ridiculous. Secondly, it would be an argumentum ad populum, which is a fallacy in everything but the most trivial cases. Combined with the above: even if the entire world thought that most of the countries in most of the world are socialist, we could say with high certainty that a very large fraction of the people would have no or a very lacking basis for that thought. Finally, one need only look at the GP comment of your initial comment to see that what you state is disagreed upon by at least two individuals (who can be assumed to be knowledgeable above average due to being on Slashdot).
Even if it was uncontroversial, which it isn't, you aren't making your case stronger by saying it is.
The point wasn't to accuse you of hypocrisy (although now that you bring it up, I suppose it does that as well), but to point out the logical inconsistency of your arguments.
You have no idea what a fallacy is, do you? You didn't have a point.
Either "broad sweeping statements" are meaningless and/or pointless without additional specific substantiation, or they aren't. You yourself demonstrate that you find them useful in making your arguments, invalidating your broad, sweeping claim that they aren't.
Straw man. I never said the latter. Quote me or agree.
Broad sweeping statements require a lot of evidence. You are free to request evidence for or challenge any broad sweeping statement I have made. If I can't support it properly, I will readily admit that it was overly broad or lacking in any other way. I'm generally not an arrogant asshole when it comes to being prepared to do that.
Again, the 'evidence' you provided for your statement (the map), instantly proved your statement to be false. You are free to retract or discount that 'evidence', but doing so would just leave you with "It's true, because I know so. I could write a paper on it", which is a sad state of affairs for trying to defend a point of view.
So while totalitarian, or kleptocracy, or mob rule might describe some of them, those descriptions don't exclude a socialist government and might even be argued to indicate one. You'll need to find something that excludes high levels of government power "socializing" the nation's resources.
According to some very dubitable or terribly misleading definition of socialism. If a totalitarian state where the majority of the collective has nothing and a tiny subset of it has everything, it is not socialism, as the resources aren't truly collectively owned or controlled. I.e. government controlled doesn't equate to collectively controlled if in practice the collective does not have significant power over that government. The collective cannot choose what to do with the resources and therefore doesn't truly own them. Unsurprisingly, in such circumstances the majority of the collective hardly benefits, if at all, from those resources, which flies straight in the face of socialism.
One could say that the common presence of large scale corruption almost precludes a state from being called socialist. Of course you can argue against this and try to further some narrow definition of socialism based on government power, party names or marketed ideology, but it would fail to capture the spirit of socialism and thus be a useless definition. Your use of quotes around the word 'socializing' in your last sentence illustrates the latter quite effectively.
So let me ask, how would you describe the majority (or largest plurality, if that's too much for you) of the governments of the regions in question?
Considering the utter lack of effort you have made to provide support for your initial statement, I feel far from obliged to answer your question. To be honest, though, I consider properly answering it far too complex and I believe any short and simple answer to be debatable up to a point where it becomes thoroughly irrelevant.
I doubt you had to go put together an economic and political analysis of Venezuela before making your comment about they way they do things. Your premise there is false. I'm happy to have you present your contradictory evidence to my conclusions, though. If I'm wrong, I'll readily admit it if you show me.
I wasn't the one making broad sweeping statements. Also, your little map, the evidence that you have provided clearly showed your initial statement to be false for at least some definitions of socialism. The tables of tax burden and resources, the evidence I provided, showed it to be false for other definitions of socialism. You've already admitted that your definition of socialism makes it terribly hard to call a country socialist without doing a detailed analysis of it, which ups the requirement for making the sweeping statement that you made to an extent where the statement becomes untenable for all people other than those devoting years of their life to researching its support.
Just take the high road and admit that your initial statement was false, or terribly misleading and unproductive at best.
Socialism is more about the means to the goal, rather than the goal itself.
Yes, I wasn't defining what socialism is. I was defining what, to me, it isn't by implying that an implementation where all industry is under government regulation (scroll back) isn't sufficient to be called socialism as it does not ensure services for the collective.
If you're familiar with history, you know that the National Socialists were competing with the Soviet Socialists for world power. Sure, they hated each other as part of that competition, but if you look back at newspaper and historical accounts of the time, you'll see that socialism was widely considered to be the modern, scientific way of governing for the future and the Germans were considered just as socialist.
The point was that a party having 'socialist' in its name does not prevent that party from being non-socialist. It's pretty useless to try and argue against that.
Typically, they are better roads than public roads, so it's interesting that you seem to conflate "proper" roads with public roads
That is not what I said. I added 'proper' to prevent the statement from implying that all roads are important to an economy.
Privately owned and managed roads are starting to be seen by governments as a solution to those issues.
This shows that you really do not understand how the world works, are in love with a certain way of economic design, or have an antipathy towards another way of economic design. Even the most hard-core free market supporters would admit that some things cannot work well in a free market. The issues you'd introduce by moving towards a fully privately owned and developed road system dwarf the issues that arise in a publicly owned and developed road system. It may surprise you, but some countries have very little issues with their public road system.
To quote a famous economist, "Markets are flawed, use markets." There is definitely an issue when a central planner believes they have the knowledge (socialist calculation problem) to design what works for an industry, or even knows what the "right" goal is for companies in that industry to pursue. Back to the original corruption level discussion, per public choice economics, that also leads to conflicts of interest related to possessing that power that end well for the politicians, bureaucrats and their cronies, but not for the rest of us.
There you go again. "One economic design to rule them all!" Do you really believe that the terms 'cronies' and 'corruption' do not apply to companies? Please.
For any economic design you have to look at how a market/industry will evolve because of that design. We're talking selection pressure here. Completely free markets have only o
This is already too long, but the only way you'd establish a real, provable answer, would be to analyze in depth the political and economic situation of each country in question, which is a bit much for a/. argument.:)
And I take it that is what you did before you made the statement I was initially slamming you for? Or did it indeed come from some other sunlight-bereft place?;-)
Percent of GDP spent on government and tax rates aren't socialism per se, but they're highly correlated with socialism because of the causal relationship between a socialist desire for those conditions and those conditions becoming law. If you focus only on monetary measurements, you miss the affect of socialist attitudes on laws and regulations transferring effective control of non-government resources from private individuals to government agents.
As an illustrative example, if a particular government bureaucracy can tell a particular private industry what decisions to make 80% of the time (arbitrary number), the government isn't spending much money on that and the regulations don't show up in the tax rates, but they've effectively socialized that industry to a great extent as a result of their control over it.
This is true, with the exception that the industry is technically still in private hands and thus presents no liquidity to a country. Also, it can still generally evaporate overnight or potentially abuse its importance for the country, with banks being the new stereotypical example. I generally oppose such worst of both worlds-solutions. It is again a matter of definitions, but to me the goal of socialism isn't necessarily to have things as a collective, but to provide (and ensure) things for the collective.
In a less established nation, without much in the way of real property rights, where most transactions are in a "grey" market system, you're going to have more direct control by government agents and (while "official" tax rates can be high) less formal taxation and spending structures. The transaction level, control and wealth just isn't there to support that style of system without resorting to direct control.
I think it's fairly safe to say that pretty much all non-formal (=unchecked) taxation will do little good for the collective, apart from maybe slightly increasing the money velocity (although the 'unofficially' taxed generally spend their money much faster and more local than those in a position to levy the tax).
In France, if the government wants to get more resources from an industry, they raise taxes on it. In Venezuela, the government declares they own part of the company and have the right to jointly make decisions about where the company spends it's resources. I think it's difficult to argue that one method of resource control is inherently more socialist then the other.
Actually, the Venezuelan way is clearly more socialist (also a pretty dickish way of doing things, by the way). The reasoning for this is that you can't really just raise taxes on an industry. Businesses can just pack up and leave altogether, leaving the country with jack shit when it comes to control and/or value (natural resources are a different story of course). Taxation on corporations is far less guaranteed to lead to value for the collective than taxation on civilians or collectively held enterprises.
Do they refer to themselves as socialist/worker's party/whatever standard euphemism for socialism
I wouldn't put too much trust in party names. There are still some Germans around that would need to talk to you.;-)
Are they clinging to their socialist ideals, yeah, they mostly still are, although a few places are starting to turn around their actual policies as the reality of of failing economie
You missed the "at some point in their history" part.
Quoting you: "most of the countries in Africa, South America, Asia, Eastern Europe, etc... are socialist"
Notice where they are mostly located? Ah yes, Africa, South America, Asia, Eastern Europe...
Notice how most of the countries in Africa and South America are colored grey?
If you're going to argue against that, you're going to have to provide your own special definition of what a socialist country is
This is a more reasonable statement. I'd like to note that you haven't provided a definition either, but let's disregard that for a moment. Socialism generally refers to collectively held resources and the amount of collective spending.
Of course there are many, many, foot notes to be added to the above, but that only supports how wrong it is to make such a sweeping statement like you did. Unless you can come up with a usable definition of socialist and the numbers to classify countries as such.
Most of the things mentioned there are relatively small. - Albania: "More than 200 clerics of various faiths were imprisoned, others were forced to seek work in either industry or agriculture, and some were executed or starved to death. The cloister of the Franciscan order in Shkodër was set on fire, which resulted in the death of four elderly monks." - Mexico: "Calles, however, did not abide by the terms of the truce – in violation of its terms, he had approximately 500 Cristero leaders and 5,000 other Cristeros shot, frequently in their homes in front of their spouses and children" - Cuba and China: no deaths are even mentioned. - France: Technically, here, the larger part of the violence was sparked by a rebellion against anti-religious repression. - The Soviet Union: Sure, people were killed because of anti-religious sentiments, but most of them were killed for being deserters, dissenters or just for looking funny.
When atheism is associatable, it's not really the fault of atheism at all, it's really the fault of politics or money or land".
You're attacking a straw man. I already validated the example of the League of Militant Atheists and I'll gladly accept any examples of killing out of explicit atheist motives (like the above, where applicable).
Wrong. The case you are being presented with is one of an explicitly-atheist political system, pursuing explicitly-atheist policies, and people dying specifically because of that, by the millions.
Single example? There was a list of multiple regimes. I stopped reading your message at that point. You never bothered to follow the links so why should any more bother to read what you say?
I did follow the links, and the key thing to understand is the role of the word 'atheist'. If the killing does not take place because of the atheist nature of the regime, the addition is meaningless. Recall that the statement I was replying to was trying to refute this: 'The major cause of war/unrest in the world isn't skin color, it's religion.'
The League of Militant Atheists did actually persecute religious people and thus was a (single) valid example of people murdering because they were atheists. For the other regimes linked, the atheist nature was largely irrelevant, i.e. they would very probably have been as (or more) menacing were they of some religious denomination.
Nobody in their right mind would try to defend the position that if somebody is an atheist, that he/she is incapable of murder or other horrible things. The key point is that explicitly religious motives have on their own caused much more death and suffering than explicitly atheist motives in our history.
I'll add this, though: I believe the main cause for war is the greed for power or resources. Religious 'reasons' are just very effective in mobilizing the people for that end.
The fact of the matter is that atheist killer regimes need to base their killing in reason. Of course even atheists can be assholes and say 'kill em all because they are enemies', but they cannot resort to 'they must die because it is the will of [deity] and we must obey if we want to go to [good afterlife]'.
Notice how even your Wikipedia-link says this: "it led a concerted effort telling Soviet citizens that religious beliefs and practices were "wrong" and "harmful", and that "good" citizens ought to embrace a scientific, atheistic worldview" (my emphasis)
Religion can make a plethora of irrational 'reasons' for wishing other people dead perfectly valid to its followers. It also has pretty effective fear-mongering strategies: eternal burning and suffering sounds pretty uncomfortable. If you can avoid that by torching a few heretics, why even think twice? Atheists can only make you fear things that could actually exist and even then, they have to work to make you believe that those things have a non-negligible chance of happening.
You do realize that the UN was created due to what is probably the single most unifying cause for international cooperation? You know, an utterly nationalistic and imperialistic war-mongering country? So, thanks for strengthening my point. It was also, obviously, not my intention to single out the citizens of the US. Hence the inclusion of EU citizens. A lot of them have also started hating the IMF.
Concerning your second point: (globalized) profit-seeking and cooperation are not the same. You should look into the Prisoner's dilemma and the Tragedy of the commons to understand why.
Continuing: governments are exactly the place to look for cooperation that benefits the interest of its citizens in the long run. Which is what cooperation should lead to. If it doesn't, it is clearly irrational to 'cooperate'. I will agree with you that selling attractiveness has become easier than selling quality nowadays. It seems that our increased understanding of the human psyche and a free market have evolved very effective ways of exploiting that human psyche.
Intel may also be betting on an inability of TSMC to provide satisfactory products for Apple. If that happens, then Apple may be forced into choosing between going back to arch rival Samsung for ARM chips or moving to x86 based SoCs then reliably produced by Intel.
But if you have a spreadsheet that needs this much of cpu time to recompute, you should probably be using a full fledged data base with multiple precomputed indexing.
I agree, by that point, you should have definitely moved to MS Access.
If you don't like it, move to a planet where there are no countries.
Considering moving to another planet is not a fucking option, it's probably best to point out nationalism (or 'patriotism' as some people like to call it) and recognize that it does far more harm than good in well-developed civilized countries as it flies straight in the face of international cooperation.
Cases in point: - the irrational unfettered hatred of US citizens towards the UN, the WTO and pretty much every institution that operates in a more than bilateral way, although one could argue that 'well-developed' and 'civilized' don't really apply to the US (anymore). - the almost equally ridiculous hatred of EU citizens towards the institutions of the EU.
International cooperation is hard and won't become easier if everybody thinks they're on the best patch of grass and the way to go is to dig a big fucking moat around their patch.
The above does assume caring about international cooperation. If you're an imperialist, then nationalism is the best thing since sliced bread.
I also agree, but you do realize that standardized media buttons have been around for a while, don't you?
There is no reason why car makers cannot include such buttons physically and still allow them to work with pretty much every modern consumer computing device and the software on it.
There's a good chance this 'cure' will kill the patent. It works, but it's dangerous. The choice is between a treatment that may kill you now, or a disease that will kill you eventually
It's a bit more complex than that, according to the article:
1. "The finding is very important for people with HIV who also need blood-cell transplants, but the treatment is unlikely to be used more generally because the risks from [allogeneic] transplants are high." 2. "Their doctors think that an immune response called graft-versus-host disease — a post-transplant reaction in which donated cells kill off a patient’s own cells — may have then wiped out the patients’ HIV reservoirs, potentially curing the men."
For everybody with HIV and some other medical condition that requires allogeneic stem cell transplants, this should be a pure win-situation as there is no added risk.
It does sound kind of weird. I consider cutting somebody's body/head off to classify as 'traumatic spinal cord injury'
I guess the intended message is that spinal cord injuries differ in where the injury is and that the new techniques do not necessarily enable fixing all spinal cord injuries.
If the injury is below the neck, replacing the entire body should work (as it obviously would for any other ailment below the neck), but this is far more radical (on several levels) than just fixing the spinal cord injury in the existing body.
Slashdot Mirror
It is clear he meant by that term and if your only defense is that it can be applied too broadly (which no one does) then you are already admitting you are on weak ground.
If it is so clear what was meant, why don't you enlighten me by giving the definition of what was meant and by proving that a majority of the people on earth adhere to that definition?
Also: fuck 'you know what I meant'. Say it right, be prepared to fix it or don't say it at all.
You establish a similar defense of bad food additives and chemicals with the inane "every compound is a chemical".
Sneaking in the adjective 'bad' makes for this fantastic tautology: bad food additives are bad. Duh.
And yes, every compound is a chemical. Do you want to narrow it down to man-made chemicals? It is still stupid to say '(eating) man-made chemicals (is/)are bad for you'.
Maybe you can tell me which types of food I should avoid because they contain 'chemicals'?
Next you are going to say that organic food is bad since organic means compounds with carbon such as butane.
WTF, man. You stole my line.
Seriously dude, in your world that counts like an argument?
And stole my point!
I should have patented it.
(If you don't get it, reread my initial comment)
1. If the trans fats are the problem, then why not say 'things that contain significant amounts of trans fats' instead of 'processed food'? That is my main gripe with the generic nutritional advice. Instead of educating people on the actual compounds that potentially have negative health effects, we end up with a plethora of bullshit advice like 'processed food is bad', 'things in cans are bad', 'eat a different color of vegetable every day' or 'brown bread is healthy' (which has lead producers to add dye to their whitebread).
2. Even trans fat research is mostly hard to control epidemiological research. What evidence there is still doesn't warrant saying things like "trans fats are deleterious to health", simply because that is such a broad statement. The risks for a lot of things can differ greatly varying with age, genetics, total diet composition, the average amount ingested over a longer period etc. It is very probable that there is little to no added risk in eating on average small amounts of trans fat, simply because small can mean as little as one molecule per day. The risks also probably become particularly significant for older people or younger people with certain genetic predispositions.
This is why it is so important to understand the mechanisms that cause the problems. If half of the time and text spent on nutritional advice was spent on actually discussing the mechanisms that cause the problems, we'd all live happier and healthier.
My definition of 'a socialist country' is based on what effectively happens there. According to your definition, a country can switch state completely on election day which renders the definition far less useful than mine when it comes to evaluation of economic designs.
I'll readily agree that a lot of governments in South America currently further 'left-wing' socialist ideals, but if the effective (maximum) tax rates are low, it is hard to argue that the country actually implements socialism. Of course, I've already stated that tacking labels of economic design on countries isn't something I like to do, due to the complexity of it.
Looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates , Paraguay is the worst example, with only 12% of the economy driven by the government. If you look at its turbulent political history, socialism is really not the first thing to come to mind, which explains why the tax rates and/or government spending are/is so low.
Glibly asking them "So, how's that socialism thing working for you?" is disingenuous, as it hasn't really had a chance to work yet.
This is one example from your list (and probably the worst one), but my point is that for effective discussion on the merits of certain economic designs, looking at the party name or political stance of the current government of a country isn't useful.
Also remember that even though countries differ greatly, we still tend to lob all the conservative and progressive (or left/right or whatever) together. Most Europeans deem all the political parties in the USA to be right-wing and most inhabitants of the US would deem many European 'right-wing' parties to be socialist.
I'm betting that European countries which by your definition are currently right-wing, would be deemed the most socialist places on earth by aforementioned inhabitants.
High (progressive) tax rates, socialized health care, expensive and lots of public infrastructure, high social security benefits etc. These are implemented socialist policies, the things that actually influence people's lives and the economy.
Finally:
By your definition style, there are no existing capitalist countries and no existing socialist countries, in large part because of public-choice economics reasons. By my definition style, most countries can be classified along a spectrum of public sentiment for socialist or free market style policies, said spectrum evidenced by the policies they appear to support. I'd classify any country that primarily supports socialist ideals in their stated public policy as socialist, while you'd only allow that classification for successfully implementing your ideals.
So first you introduce a false dichotomy as being important (which I've vehemently denounced from the start) and then go on to show that in your definition it does not exist unless an obviously arbitrary and thus for the purpose at hand redundant line is drawn?
If you want an arbitrary line, let's do it. Countries for which government spending is more than 40% of GDP are socialist. I can draw lines all day.
Do you want to change your initial statement to 'most of the countries in Africa, South America, Asia, Eastern Europe, etc... lean more to the socialist side of the socialist-free market spectrum'?
It would still be false, but at least more accurate.
Yeah, I heard that drinking water helps, so now I'm drinking 12 liters a day to flush all that DHMO out of my body.
My holistic food therapist/spiritual counselor measures my blood DHMO-levels for me every month (for only $60!) and he said I should continue the treatment because I'm still at very high levels! Damn government is poisoning us all!
additives and chemicals are bad for you if they are the wrong ones
So you agree with me that saying that all additives and chemicals are bad for you is a stupid thing to do?
As is saying that all processed food is bad for you?
I'm educated far above average when it comes to nutrition, and if there is one thing I have learned is that all broad statements or general pieces of advice in nutrition are instantly false and counterproductive. There are tons of variables that can influence whether a certain diet has negative long term health effects and the amount of conclusive research on individual food stuffs you can legally ingest is extremely small.
The best way to approach nutrition is to look into the research on the digestive system (which consist of more than just epidemiological studies) and understand what is going on and going to go on in your body when you consume things (it is beneficial to eat sugar when your blood sugar levels are low, I repeat: beneficial). It's not easy (but doable), but it sure beats running around blurting out appeals to nature or evangelizing the Word of some food guru you like, which 99% of the people seem to do.
Ah, so your response to my implied criticism that 'processed foods' is a ridiculously broad term that could be applied to the majority of food you buy in the supermarket is condescendingly linking to another term referring to the specific set of tertiary processed food, which is still ridiculously broad enough to render any claim on nutritional value or health effects of the class as a whole instantly false.
Next you're going to say that 'additives' and 'chemicals' are 'bad for you'.
Ah, you are being ironic. Or trolling. Or both.
No. Don't be an idiot. Show me the research that proves that 'additives' or 'chemicals' are 'bad for you'.
Go ahead. Apparently it is extremely obvious, so you should have no problems whatsoever in finding mountains of evidence.
You can start here for the 'chemicals' part of it: http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html
Also: reread the first five paragraphs of Cute Fuzzy Bunny's OP or TFS.
What IS bad for you are la mayoría de pills, supplements, things in cans, fake 'diet' brownies and cookies, sugar, processed foods, vegetable oils except for olive, processed starches, and alta energy/low nutrition foods que conforman the bulk of the 'western diet'. Eat meat, quality fats, las frutas enteras and veg and steer clear of the alta rentabilidad, easy to produce artículos hechos de grains and processed starches.
You're kidding, right? Five very insightful paragraphs showing how hard research into nutrition is and how most 'nutritional facts' have no proper basis in science followed by a ridiculous list of different largely unsupported nutritional claims?
'[Processed foods are bad]'? Really?? What the fuck is 'processed food' even?
Next you're going to say that 'additives' and 'chemicals' are 'bad for you'.
I forgot to reply to this part:
but for the purposes of a comment, it's not exactly required for something so uncontroversial.
For one, equating something like 'water is wet' - which almost everybody experiences almost every day - to something like 'most of the countries in [most of the world] are socialist' - which swaths of people not even come close to knowing or being confronted with in their entire life - is ridiculous.
Secondly, it would be an argumentum ad populum, which is a fallacy in everything but the most trivial cases. Combined with the above: even if the entire world thought that most of the countries in most of the world are socialist, we could say with high certainty that a very large fraction of the people would have no or a very lacking basis for that thought.
Finally, one need only look at the GP comment of your initial comment to see that what you state is disagreed upon by at least two individuals (who can be assumed to be knowledgeable above average due to being on Slashdot).
Even if it was uncontroversial, which it isn't, you aren't making your case stronger by saying it is.
The point wasn't to accuse you of hypocrisy (although now that you bring it up, I suppose it does that as well), but to point out the logical inconsistency of your arguments.
You have no idea what a fallacy is, do you? You didn't have a point.
Either "broad sweeping statements" are meaningless and/or pointless without additional specific substantiation, or they aren't. You yourself demonstrate that you find them useful in making your arguments, invalidating your broad, sweeping claim that they aren't.
Straw man. I never said the latter. Quote me or agree.
Broad sweeping statements require a lot of evidence. You are free to request evidence for or challenge any broad sweeping statement I have made. If I can't support it properly, I will readily admit that it was overly broad or lacking in any other way. I'm generally not an arrogant asshole when it comes to being prepared to do that.
Again, the 'evidence' you provided for your statement (the map), instantly proved your statement to be false. You are free to retract or discount that 'evidence', but doing so would just leave you with "It's true, because I know so. I could write a paper on it", which is a sad state of affairs for trying to defend a point of view.
So while totalitarian, or kleptocracy, or mob rule might describe some of them, those descriptions don't exclude a socialist government and might even be argued to indicate one. You'll need to find something that excludes high levels of government power "socializing" the nation's resources.
According to some very dubitable or terribly misleading definition of socialism. If a totalitarian state where the majority of the collective has nothing and a tiny subset of it has everything, it is not socialism, as the resources aren't truly collectively owned or controlled. I.e. government controlled doesn't equate to collectively controlled if in practice the collective does not have significant power over that government. The collective cannot choose what to do with the resources and therefore doesn't truly own them. Unsurprisingly, in such circumstances the majority of the collective hardly benefits, if at all, from those resources, which flies straight in the face of socialism.
One could say that the common presence of large scale corruption almost precludes a state from being called socialist. Of course you can argue against this and try to further some narrow definition of socialism based on government power, party names or marketed ideology, but it would fail to capture the spirit of socialism and thus be a useless definition. Your use of quotes around the word 'socializing' in your last sentence illustrates the latter quite effectively.
So let me ask, how would you describe the majority (or largest plurality, if that's too much for you) of the governments of the regions in question?
Considering the utter lack of effort you have made to provide support for your initial statement, I feel far from obliged to answer your question. To be honest, though, I consider properly answering it far too complex and I believe any short and simple answer to be debatable up to a point where it becomes thoroughly irrelevant.
Really, a 'tu quoque'?
I'm starting to regret spending time on you.
I doubt you had to go put together an economic and political analysis of Venezuela before making your comment about they way they do things. Your premise there is false. I'm happy to have you present your contradictory evidence to my conclusions, though. If I'm wrong, I'll readily admit it if you show me.
I wasn't the one making broad sweeping statements. Also, your little map, the evidence that you have provided clearly showed your initial statement to be false for at least some definitions of socialism. The tables of tax burden and resources, the evidence I provided, showed it to be false for other definitions of socialism. You've already admitted that your definition of socialism makes it terribly hard to call a country socialist without doing a detailed analysis of it, which ups the requirement for making the sweeping statement that you made to an extent where the statement becomes untenable for all people other than those devoting years of their life to researching its support.
Just take the high road and admit that your initial statement was false, or terribly misleading and unproductive at best.
Socialism is more about the means to the goal, rather than the goal itself.
Yes, I wasn't defining what socialism is. I was defining what, to me, it isn't by implying that an implementation where all industry is under government regulation (scroll back) isn't sufficient to be called socialism as it does not ensure services for the collective.
If you're familiar with history, you know that the National Socialists were competing with the Soviet Socialists for world power. Sure, they hated each other as part of that competition, but if you look back at newspaper and historical accounts of the time, you'll see that socialism was widely considered to be the modern, scientific way of governing for the future and the Germans were considered just as socialist.
The point was that a party having 'socialist' in its name does not prevent that party from being non-socialist. It's pretty useless to try and argue against that.
Typically, they are better roads than public roads, so it's interesting that you seem to conflate "proper" roads with public roads
That is not what I said. I added 'proper' to prevent the statement from implying that all roads are important to an economy.
Privately owned and managed roads are starting to be seen by governments as a solution to those issues.
This shows that you really do not understand how the world works, are in love with a certain way of economic design, or have an antipathy towards another way of economic design. Even the most hard-core free market supporters would admit that some things cannot work well in a free market. The issues you'd introduce by moving towards a fully privately owned and developed road system dwarf the issues that arise in a publicly owned and developed road system. It may surprise you, but some countries have very little issues with their public road system.
To quote a famous economist, "Markets are flawed, use markets." There is definitely an issue when a central planner believes they have the knowledge (socialist calculation problem) to design what works for an industry, or even knows what the "right" goal is for companies in that industry to pursue. Back to the original corruption level discussion, per public choice economics, that also leads to conflicts of interest related to possessing that power that end well for the politicians, bureaucrats and their cronies, but not for the rest of us.
There you go again. "One economic design to rule them all!"
Do you really believe that the terms 'cronies' and 'corruption' do not apply to companies? Please.
For any economic design you have to look at how a market/industry will evolve because of that design. We're talking selection pressure here. Completely free markets have only o
I'm going to make my main point first:
This is already too long, but the only way you'd establish a real, provable answer, would be to analyze in depth the political and economic situation of each country in question, which is a bit much for a /. argument. :)
And I take it that is what you did before you made the statement I was initially slamming you for? Or did it indeed come from some other sunlight-bereft place? ;-)
Percent of GDP spent on government and tax rates aren't socialism per se, but they're highly correlated with socialism because of the causal relationship between a socialist desire for those conditions and those conditions becoming law. If you focus only on monetary measurements, you miss the affect of socialist attitudes on laws and regulations transferring effective control of non-government resources from private individuals to government agents.
As an illustrative example, if a particular government bureaucracy can tell a particular private industry what decisions to make 80% of the time (arbitrary number), the government isn't spending much money on that and the regulations don't show up in the tax rates, but they've effectively socialized that industry to a great extent as a result of their control over it.
This is true, with the exception that the industry is technically still in private hands and thus presents no liquidity to a country. Also, it can still generally evaporate overnight or potentially abuse its importance for the country, with banks being the new stereotypical example. I generally oppose such worst of both worlds-solutions.
It is again a matter of definitions, but to me the goal of socialism isn't necessarily to have things as a collective, but to provide (and ensure) things for the collective.
In a less established nation, without much in the way of real property rights, where most transactions are in a "grey" market system, you're going to have more direct control by government agents and (while "official" tax rates can be high) less formal taxation and spending structures. The transaction level, control and wealth just isn't there to support that style of system without resorting to direct control.
I think it's fairly safe to say that pretty much all non-formal (=unchecked) taxation will do little good for the collective, apart from maybe slightly increasing the money velocity (although the 'unofficially' taxed generally spend their money much faster and more local than those in a position to levy the tax).
In France, if the government wants to get more resources from an industry, they raise taxes on it. In Venezuela, the government declares they own part of the company and have the right to jointly make decisions about where the company spends it's resources. I think it's difficult to argue that one method of resource control is inherently more socialist then the other.
Actually, the Venezuelan way is clearly more socialist (also a pretty dickish way of doing things, by the way). The reasoning for this is that you can't really just raise taxes on an industry. Businesses can just pack up and leave altogether, leaving the country with jack shit when it comes to control and/or value (natural resources are a different story of course). Taxation on corporations is far less guaranteed to lead to value for the collective than taxation on civilians or collectively held enterprises.
Do they refer to themselves as socialist/worker's party/whatever standard euphemism for socialism
I wouldn't put too much trust in party names. There are still some Germans around that would need to talk to you. ;-)
Are they clinging to their socialist ideals, yeah, they mostly still are, although a few places are starting to turn around their actual policies as the reality of of failing economie
Here, try starting with wikipedia's pretty map of socialist countries by duration.
You missed the "at some point in their history" part.
Quoting you: "most of the countries in Africa, South America, Asia, Eastern Europe, etc... are socialist"
Notice where they are mostly located? Ah yes, Africa, South America, Asia, Eastern Europe...
Notice how most of the countries in Africa and South America are colored grey?
If you're going to argue against that, you're going to have to provide your own special definition of what a socialist country is
This is a more reasonable statement. I'd like to note that you haven't provided a definition either, but let's disregard that for a moment.
Socialism generally refers to collectively held resources and the amount of collective spending.
The latter is still not easy to determine, but the following tables give an indication:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending#As_a_percentage_of_GDP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates
The former is also tricky, but again, an indication can be found here (first graph):
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2013/res050813a.htm
Of course there are many, many, foot notes to be added to the above, but that only supports how wrong it is to make such a sweeping statement like you did. Unless you can come up with a usable definition of socialist and the numbers to classify countries as such.
Here you go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism
Most of the things mentioned there are relatively small.
- Albania: "More than 200 clerics of various faiths were imprisoned, others were forced to seek work in either industry or agriculture, and some were executed or starved to death. The cloister of the Franciscan order in Shkodër was set on fire, which resulted in the death of four elderly monks."
- Mexico: "Calles, however, did not abide by the terms of the truce – in violation of its terms, he had approximately 500 Cristero leaders and 5,000 other Cristeros shot, frequently in their homes in front of their spouses and children"
- Cuba and China: no deaths are even mentioned.
- France: Technically, here, the larger part of the violence was sparked by a rebellion against anti-religious repression.
- The Soviet Union: Sure, people were killed because of anti-religious sentiments, but most of them were killed for being deserters, dissenters or just for looking funny.
Governments violently repressing religion in their countries is a terrible thing, obviously, but it is markedly different from the imperialism of religious wars:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_conquests
When atheism is associatable, it's not really the fault of atheism at all, it's really the fault of politics or money or land".
You're attacking a straw man. I already validated the example of the League of Militant Atheists and I'll gladly accept any examples of killing out of explicit atheist motives (like the above, where applicable).
Wrong. The case you are being presented with is one of an explicitly-atheist political system, pursuing explicitly-atheist policies, and people dying specifically because of that, by the millions.
You're exaggerating wildly. See above.
Single example? There was a list of multiple regimes. I stopped reading your message at that point. You never bothered to follow the links so why should any more bother to read what you say?
I did follow the links, and the key thing to understand is the role of the word 'atheist'. If the killing does not take place because of the atheist nature of the regime, the addition is meaningless. Recall that the statement I was replying to was trying to refute this: 'The major cause of war/unrest in the world isn't skin color, it's religion.'
The League of Militant Atheists did actually persecute religious people and thus was a (single) valid example of people murdering because they were atheists. For the other regimes linked, the atheist nature was largely irrelevant, i.e. they would very probably have been as (or more) menacing were they of some religious denomination.
Nobody in their right mind would try to defend the position that if somebody is an atheist, that he/she is incapable of murder or other horrible things. The key point is that explicitly religious motives have on their own caused much more death and suffering than explicitly atheist motives in our history.
I'll add this, though: I believe the main cause for war is the greed for power or resources. Religious 'reasons' are just very effective in mobilizing the people for that end.
Your single example isn't proving much.
The fact of the matter is that atheist killer regimes need to base their killing in reason. Of course even atheists can be assholes and say 'kill em all because they are enemies', but they cannot resort to 'they must die because it is the will of [deity] and we must obey if we want to go to [good afterlife]'.
Notice how even your Wikipedia-link says this: "it led a concerted effort telling Soviet citizens that religious beliefs and practices were "wrong" and "harmful", and that "good" citizens ought to embrace a scientific, atheistic worldview" (my emphasis)
Religion can make a plethora of irrational 'reasons' for wishing other people dead perfectly valid to its followers. It also has pretty effective fear-mongering strategies: eternal burning and suffering sounds pretty uncomfortable. If you can avoid that by torching a few heretics, why even think twice?
Atheists can only make you fear things that could actually exist and even then, they have to work to make you believe that those things have a non-negligible chance of happening.
The irony here is that my argument was exactly as well-reasoned as yours when it comes to whether countries are 'socialist' or not.
most of the countries in Africa, South America, Asia, Eastern Europe, etc... are socialist
Idiot. Stop talking out of your ass.
You do realize that the UN was created due to what is probably the single most unifying cause for international cooperation? You know, an utterly nationalistic and imperialistic war-mongering country? So, thanks for strengthening my point.
It was also, obviously, not my intention to single out the citizens of the US. Hence the inclusion of EU citizens. A lot of them have also started hating the IMF.
Concerning your second point: (globalized) profit-seeking and cooperation are not the same. You should look into the Prisoner's dilemma and the Tragedy of the commons to understand why.
Continuing: governments are exactly the place to look for cooperation that benefits the interest of its citizens in the long run. Which is what cooperation should lead to. If it doesn't, it is clearly irrational to 'cooperate'.
I will agree with you that selling attractiveness has become easier than selling quality nowadays. It seems that our increased understanding of the human psyche and a free market have evolved very effective ways of exploiting that human psyche.
Actually, I'm betting that Intel wants to marginalize ARM as fast as possible and sell x86-based hardware to Apple.
[it's an URL, not an 'awful long string of letters', 90's comment spam filter]
Intel may also be betting on an inability of TSMC to provide satisfactory products for Apple. If that happens, then Apple may be forced into choosing between going back to arch rival Samsung for ARM chips or moving to x86 based SoCs then reliably produced by Intel.
But if you have a spreadsheet that needs this much of cpu time to recompute, you should probably be using a full fledged data base with multiple precomputed indexing.
I agree, by that point, you should have definitely moved to MS Access.
If you don't like it, move to a planet where there are no countries.
Considering moving to another planet is not a fucking option, it's probably best to point out nationalism (or 'patriotism' as some people like to call it) and recognize that it does far more harm than good in well-developed civilized countries as it flies straight in the face of international cooperation.
Cases in point:
- the irrational unfettered hatred of US citizens towards the UN, the WTO and pretty much every institution that operates in a more than bilateral way, although one could argue that 'well-developed' and 'civilized' don't really apply to the US (anymore).
- the almost equally ridiculous hatred of EU citizens towards the institutions of the EU.
International cooperation is hard and won't become easier if everybody thinks they're on the best patch of grass and the way to go is to dig a big fucking moat around their patch.
The above does assume caring about international cooperation. If you're an imperialist, then nationalism is the best thing since sliced bread.
I also agree, but you do realize that standardized media buttons have been around for a while, don't you?
There is no reason why car makers cannot include such buttons physically and still allow them to work with pretty much every modern consumer computing device and the software on it.
There's a good chance this 'cure' will kill the patent. It works, but it's dangerous. The choice is between a treatment that may kill you now, or a disease that will kill you eventually
It's a bit more complex than that, according to the article:
1. "The finding is very important for people with HIV who also need blood-cell transplants, but the treatment is unlikely to be used more generally because the risks from [allogeneic] transplants are high."
2. "Their doctors think that an immune response called graft-versus-host disease — a post-transplant reaction in which donated cells kill off a patient’s own cells — may have then wiped out the patients’ HIV reservoirs, potentially curing the men."
For everybody with HIV and some other medical condition that requires allogeneic stem cell transplants, this should be a pure win-situation as there is no added risk.
It does sound kind of weird. I consider cutting somebody's body/head off to classify as 'traumatic spinal cord injury'
I guess the intended message is that spinal cord injuries differ in where the injury is and that the new techniques do not necessarily enable fixing all spinal cord injuries.
If the injury is below the neck, replacing the entire body should work (as it obviously would for any other ailment below the neck), but this is far more radical (on several levels) than just fixing the spinal cord injury in the existing body.