Why can't you just look this up? The impeachment manager even withdrew the evidence "on that grounds that it is not true".
Yes, and they are elected. Very democratic. So whats the problem? Too much consensus is required? You want there to be less? Again, it's the same rules both ways. Fair.
or that the result indicates the evidence was "fabricated"
I didn't say that the result meant that the evidence was fabricated. I said that the evidence was fabricated. My source is an impeachment manager, they literally admitted it.
Yes, but it takes more than 51% to impeach. They needed 17 Republicans to vote impeach. It must be extra-democratic. It's the same rule whether a democrat or a republican is being impeached.
Implying that people should be punished for their own biological needs is as absurd as it gets.
Well, you're going to have to take that up with nature. I'm sorry you disagree with biological reality, I do too. But it makes more sense to live with it than it does killing people to pretend it it isn't.
I'l repeat.
If 51% of people believe corona virus is a hoax, that doesn't mean corona virus is a hoax, yes?
And yet that is the compromise one must accept when living in a democracy.
Imply having unprotected sex is a crime.
I didn't. But if you do have sex, you should be prepared to suffer the consequences of raising a child. If you evade your responsibility by killing that which you have been made responsible for, then you have comitted a crime, a crime called murder.
Demand only the woman should be held accountable.
I specifically said both should be held accountable. But, that said, men are already held accountable. There's even a case where the man had to pay child support even after a dna test proving the child isn't his.
Unless of course she doesn't want to.
I explicitly accounted for this scenario as an exception, and that's why I refer to my position as the middle position; I'm against abortion, but you can do it if you aren't responsible.
Argumentum ad populum, a fallacy. Democracy is where you guage opinion. Democracy is not where you create reality. If 51% of people believe corona virus is a hoax, that doesn't mean corona virus is a hoax, yes?
Calling something fabricated when you have no evidence that it is
There were forged dates and verification badges of tweets, as well as selectively presented video where, as I said, the defence used the same video but unedited in response.
I can't even make sense of this.
Which part of the argument can't you understand?
Yes, contraception isn't 100�fective, and all involved parties know this, that's part of their informed consent.
There is no "mid-way position"
Only an extremist doesn't believe in compromise.
Shouldn't my first hand account of my thoughts be above your second hand projection of my thoughts? I'm willing to have my mind changed.
Does reality become whatever the majority dictates? You can't convict people on fabricated evidence and selectively edited footage. As soon as Trumps defence retorted, there was no case to be made. Some of their defence is literally the same videos, just without the edits. Legally what Trump did cannot be called incitement. Whether you believe that they believed something else and there was some subtextual conversation going on where Trump told his supporters to ruin his own hearing for election objections at the capitol is not evidence.
You guys? I'm in the middle. I think a woman should be held responsible for having unprotected sex only if she chooses to, the same way a man should and already is, because the two did so knowing full well the risks and what it means, and consented to it. I think in cases where there was no consent then it may be immoral (as in a two wrongs don't make a right), but fair, to have an abortion. This is literally the mid-way position, the consensus that we're supposed to be sitting in.
However I do think the left's argument for unrestricted abortion is insane. It is quite literally a position where it is acceptable to kill another person for ideological reasons. The same standard does not apply anywhere else. Even killing someone else to survive is morally ambiguous, so why would killing someone for convenience, and to avoid the consequences of your own actions no less, be at all reasonable?
Yeah incidentally I do think the social security system should be dismantled, or rather, limited, it creates an issue of depandance. For example, in the US, black families have been falling apart for 60 years because mothers will kick out the men for a welfare check, and the child suffers overall. So yeah, get rid of it. Not because I want people to suffer and die after they turn 18, but because if it was dismantled, then those people would still survive, but by other more productive means that can go on to save others as well, whether that's towards raising their own kids well, or towards strangers through the economy. But as things are, what do you think people will choose between welfare and a job that pays at or a little above welfare?
And yet I'm willing to listen. Must we drop dialogue without even so much as an attempt first? If you truly believe what you're saying, surely it's your moral duty to correct my misinterpretation?
Absolutely. None of that "inherent value in a life" garbage or "the fetus has the potential to become a human". That life only has value once it votes democrat and pledges allegiance to the anti-racist cause. Moreover, the convenience of the woman is more important. And so is the climate. We need to kill people to save the planet. May as well kill the most innocent and those with the longest to live first. After all, in my pathetic zero sum game view of the world, that baby could take my place! Unthinkable!
You know what, what about those post-birth fetuses? Can we abort those too? They'll probably live crappy lives anyway, it's a mercy really.
Actually, why not abort the babies that contribute less to society? Like those babies that come from those rich capitalists that steal from all the workers, just abort them before they can continue stealing as part of their oppression dynasty. Then we can just have more productive welfare babies instead.
A lot of it wasn't subliminal, and regardless shouldn't be understated. For example Biden's China scandal was suppressed, 10% of polled Biden voters said they wouldn't have voted for him had they known about it. Already that's potentially enough to sway the result. And yet that's just one of many instances of interference.
Perhaps it was the "Shadow campaign", described in the Time magazine as such:
"The participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream — a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information"
Would you grant me your enlightened perspective of his acquittal?
They've hyped up 'orange man bad' so much that it's no longer based in reality. Now that democrats leave their bubble and have to actually justify this in a trial, they have nothing.
What would you characterise as the environment 'adapting' to life?
Take: O2 concentrations in the atmosphere rise as a result of the introduction of plant life, which in turn starve plants but also give rise to animals that lower the levels down again to a new equilibrium. It's obviously a feedback loop, the environment changes to life and vice versa.
So what added nuance does 'adapt' have over 'alter', or more fundamentally, 'change', that fills in the gap here? It seems to be doing the heavy lifting in your argument.
And in the case of humans which have literally manufactured their own environment, all of physical, social, and ideological, that you espouse as opressive, how can you claim that humans are merely a product of their environment and unable to create their environment? The conclusion seems to disagree with its premise.
I would consider the differences between nations a positive aspect. When nations persecute their own, or more mundanely if you just disagree with your nations ideas, people can flee to other countries and seek better lives as according to their beliefs and principles.
You identify here that these differences are the source, the very reason why it's so difficult to create a unified globalist state. So, it would follow that the creation and maintainence of such a state may require enforced homogeneity. What do you do with those that reject it? Where do those people go to escape their opression? The current global system allows for this in part, either by revolution of escape. A unified state gives more power to the state with which to opress, and nowhere for the oppressed to go.
I would guess it's thought that an amalgamised identity with centralised resources and power leads to less to fight over. The government is the government and nothing can challenge them, holds a monopoly of force with which it polices violence between members at all scales, and either assigns resources or plays the game of capitalism. I suppose it is expected that there are then no aliens as everyone becomes 'Earthling', and more co-operation given that the interest of the state becomes synonymous with the interest of 'humanity'.
Back to what you said at the beginning though, doesn't the visage of unity serve well enough for nations, cities, towns, etc.? Nationalism has at times and places been cohesive and compelling for example. Every military defense I would think proves that, where some will sacrifice their life to defend their country rather than live under foreign rule. Moreso in offense, where one risks ones life just to expand ones nation. There are less riskier ways to earn a living that they might have otherwise chosen, for those that choose.
I don't. I'm trying to encourage discussion and engagement with the idea. Frankly I don't support it, but I want to know why people do (and don't) from them directly.
Furthermore, what is the benefit to this "next step"? Is a greater collection of people an inherent benefit?
You may not believe in such symbols and ideals, but regardless, others do. Is that not enough for it to work?
What do we lose from the current system by going to 'the next step'?
Fair point.
Yes.
Yes.
Should, but unlikely, rhetoric has ramped up massively. Wouldn't be surprised to see new patriot act tier legislation and witch hunts for Trump, Trump supporters, and 'Trumpism'.
Well, if their idea of unity is to purge their opposition, then yeah maybe they do.
I think the wounds are self-inflicted. And I'm generally not too worried about it, the best recruiters for Republicans (or whatever 3rd party if they want to take this opportunity) are Democrats. And frankly vice versa, it's why there's a two party equilibrium; it's more who you don't agree with than who you do. I expect a countershock, and the counter to a restrained Obama/Biden presidency was already massive.
May I refer you to Keri Smith, someone with 20 years of experience on the matter.
You got an example?
Though I'd argue they are one and the same.
They weren't related, or referred to the a particular person; I wasn't insulting you.
But anyway:
Wouldn't the main ideal of communism be the abolition of property? Granting its ownership to the people of a nation (and thereby to the nation, or more specifically to those that control its meaningful decisions, hence the consistent evolution to totalitarian communist states).
What you're describing is captured better by the term anarchy.
Continuing on your quote:
fully realized communism—a society without class divisions or government, in which the production and distribution of goods would be based upon the principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
Who decides ones ability? Who decides ones needs? Who decides what ability is needed at a particular time? - How many houses? How many teachers? How many to train in the military? How many to grow food? And answers to this literally unlimited stream of questions change with every moment. The system described necessitates a centralised power to answer such questions - and even then its efficiency is relatively poor.
What makes capitalism work is price and profit. Price rations out the scarce resources and puts them to their generally most valuable use. Profit determines when activity should increase or decrease. This information and incentive is communicated to every single person such that they aggregate to choose the structure of the nation; an inherent democracy, people vote with their wallet (though admittedly some votes are worth more than others depending on your service). And the structure is run from the bottom up; product and service are largely determined by the consumer.
For some 'Americans' perhaps. More censorship. More government. More communism.
Your question is entirely dependant on who determines what is wrong.
there is nevertheless always a sense of that settling
I think I understand on the surface, but not the depth of it; I can't say I empathise. I've yet to meet someone that can fulfill everything at once, but it's yet to become a source of dread, and I've yet to really try. I'm a loner, still content to drown myself in material entertainment for now.
I doubt you expected anything anyway, but sorry friend.
people get their perception of inequity from their personal experiences of actual inequity which are produced by extremely well-documented human cognitive biases. those are facts and im not gonna debate them like they're mere conjectures based on exaggerated victim complexes and statistical gaming
On the former part, yeah, that's what I said. For the Latter, I didn't say anything about victim complexes or statistical gaming. The charitable interpretation of changing statistics would be making a positive change in a group, not literally faking the statisics.
your notion that we can end inequity just by getting face to face is so naive and ignorant that i genuinely cannot fathom your perspective at all.
Well I assumed by "intimate interpersonal relationships" you meant somone you were close with but struggled with conflict, and not someone stalking you down the street. I also thought you were talking about wealth, which perhaps explains what must have seemed a very strange example otherwise, though I suspect you already knew.
those whom i would form intimate relationships with are all positioned uniquely and inequitably within the social contexts which we share. from that there is a barrier in experiential understanding which cannot be surmounted
I don't believe you when you say it cannot be surmounted. Even if it couldn't, there are undoubtedly others with the same experiential understanding, even if not wholly, partially in each person. And so what if there isn't an identical clone of you that you can perfectly communicate with, is there no value in the exchange of ideas and experiences without demand of full experiential understanding? Is that not why you're here, where we're all anonymous?
From that report:
The remaining households (10.5 percent, down from 11.1 percent in 2018) were food insecure at least
some time during the year, including 4.1 percent with very low food security (not significantly different from 4.3 percent in 2018). Very low food security is the more severe range
of food insecurity where one or more household members experienced reduced food
intake and disrupted eating patterns at times during the year because of limited money
and other resources for obtaining food. Among children, changes from 2018 in food insecurity and very low food security were not statistically significant. Children and adults
were food insecure in 6.5 percent of U.S. households with children in 2019; very low food
security among children was 0.6 percent. In 2019, the typical food-secure household spent
24 percent more on food than the typical food-insecure household of the same size and
household composition
So, the average American spends 24% more on food that these supposed malnourished, so presumably they get around 80% of the food the others do.
Now, you see, more than 2 in 3 Americans are overweight or obese. They (and much of the west) have an obesity crisis. So maybe you can see why I don't find it very alarming that people are eating 80% of what makes them overweight and obese.
Furthermore, by the standards it states in its methodology someone could qualify as one of those 35 million for any reason between them deciding to eat less food to save money, or if they forgot their wallet at home one day and missed a meal.
How many Americans starve to death each year?
Buddy, I can spot an American from 3,000 miles away just by their political views.
Well, you're literally 4,000 miles off the target. Again, I'm British.
Your response to Communism was to dismiss it on the grounds that it is idealist
Yes.
Well, good intentions are a good start. A better start than abandoning the good intentions because you believe doing good is idealist.
I maintan my good intentions, they merely have nothing to do wth communism.
leading us to believe that the universe is somehow naturally bad and so we'd better just go along with it.
Not at all. Just that you need to apply some thought to the incentives you create when you do make changes, even with those good intentions.
Game theory doesn't have anything to do with Communism.
Indeed it doesn't, it's a model involved in social science. It deals well with emergent systems produced by indepenadent actors with simple motivations, which is a good start as a model to understand how people and the economy react.
It doesn't sound smart at all, its name isn't especially indicative of its meaning.
Any country where...
Ok, more specific. What ideology, market system, or principles of governance would you consider to be a centrist position.
Under Communism -- true Communism -- there is no hierarchical leadership, no dictator, no class and no government.
Yes, yes, and under capitalism there's no state either. No true communism exists, no true capitalism exists. They're all mixed economies.
But it just so turns out that whenever people attempt communism it ends in poverty and often democide, and whenever people attempt capitalism it ends in people leading lives with a relatively higher standard of living.
Despite the perhaps inexcusable violence the Russian revolution started with the very best intentions.
Yes, kill the bourgeoisie, very good intentions. The entire premise is built on class warfare and revenge. Oh but I'm sure they had it coming right?
same myths and half-truths you have been indoctrinated with
Tell me, point by point, exactly what you're talking about. If you are to 'un-indoctrinate' me, you must be very very specific, and tell me where to go that I can verify what you say.
your entire country has a right wing bias. The centre is not where it should be, or indeed where it is in any other developed nation
Despite me directly telling you before, you still have no idea what my country is.
If doing good is hard, the solution is not to give up (or even do the opposite). You seem to think it is
No, I don't. As I already said, Intentions alone are insufficient. I think planning out incentives are how you get anywhere, as in game theory, towards improvement. And evidence based policy helps too where even that fails. But that's for the material. For the rest, good is achieved by a shared principled and consistent morality.
What would you even consider to be centrist anyway?
Well, people get their perception of inequity from personal experience of unfairness and reporting of statistics. You want that at a level where it isn't a cause of confict between you and others, yes?
If so, honestly I don't see why you find that so important, I would imagine such differences between people are typically resolvable, face to face at least - perhaps your case is exceptional, or I just lack experience, or I don't understand x)
not sure why it would.
Some have told me it has helped them. In taking ownership of their situation and putting in the work to better it, they respect their position within inequity, having themselves to blame for it, good or bad. Essentially no more than the assumtion of internal ability over external influences. A belief.
i find myself subject to particular ontological limitations - bounded consciousness and social inequity
Do you consider technology to be able to help with either? The former depending on your meaning - extra-human senses, computational assistance, digital consciousness, virtual reailty. The latter owing to a potential partial post-scarcity future where perhaps inequity might be less important.
You didn't pick up a raging far right bias from any pursuit which was intellectual
Well it's either that or I don't have a far right bias .
I've already traced my path through ideology to you. You can see exactly what I've seen that is right and what is left from that.
Ah, the old: good is too hard, so let's try bad.
No. I'm talking about game theory. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I'll be ignoring the rest.
I expect no more from you.
All of those I've talked to or heard from that came from communism tell me it's a horrible idea, they survived it and want nothing to do with it. I've spoken with someone dear to me from east Germany from before the Berlin wall fell, and often listen to a Romanian guy describe his country during communist rule. That enough 'rest of the world' for you?
The United States government spent the better part of a century harassing Marxists out of American politics and banned the Communist Party entirely in 1954, criminalising membership.
Yeah I'm not surprised. There's plenty of evidence of the USSR attempting to subvert the US, so a reaction isn't unexpected.
Well, even in the worst case that you start with nothing, one can work one of those safe jobs or take loands, to the point of earning the capital necessary to offer other people to give them what they need to start their business.
You work 'a third of your life' in order to encourage others to work to provide for your needs and desires. Why else should they grow you food, teach you, entertain you, etc. unless you produce for them in kind?
So your far right anti-Marxist views are just a gift from God?
They were a gift from talking with friends in university, talking with people here years ago, listening to independants online that read more than I, and from recoiling at the sight of how low some progressives, devoid of principles or common standards, will stoop to attain their goals.
I began to understand that good intentions are not enough. Incentives are important and can be predicted to govern much human behaviour. That lead me to pursue ideas pertaining to morality, the corruption of power, and then to ideology that strives to limit the exercise of power such as individualism, personal liberty, and capitalism. How much of that do you consider far right? I am currently trying to learn about ancaps to attempt to find a line where the pursuit of freedom can lead back to tyranny and reconcile with the idea of the state as a self-imposed tyrannical body.
I didn't say you were my ideological opposition
You didn't, I did.
The people you are calling progressive Marxists are predominantly laissez-faire capitalists
Are they? I can give some descriptions that might convince you. Some of them call for violent revolution against the 1%. Some believe in a cabal of white supremecist 'bourgeoise' that oppress the poor working minority races and they rely on the use of activism and social pressure to purge them from their power. Some advocate for peaceful revolution by infiltrating businesses and directing them as they please, firing undesirables as they go. And I'd bet most are ignorant of a lot of this, content receiving praise as they follow ever-shifting narratives.
All of these are ideas that are easily considered to be derived from marxism in the form of class struggle, socialism as a form of implementation of communism, and of class struggle applied to other collective identities. They all tend to push for equity in all outcomes, and use any inequity as evidence of the burden that drives their cause. They also tend to believe government social programs provide the solutions to all their problems (for some permanently, for others as a means to an end). They don't sound like laissez-faire capitalists to me. They are beyond principles of market co-operation, they want social or state enforced equity of both outcome and treatment; an impossible result.
What about my example? Requisitioning a table from a solo carpenter?
Working for someone richer is but one option. It is the safe and risk free option and thus the most popular. But theoretically everyone can also be entrepreneurs under capitalism, or even own co-ops, or be voluntary socialists. And those that end up being 'someone richer' tend to be those that take the path of entrepreneur ship and provide for generations of their children, as well as providing those safe and risk free jobs to those that desire them. This is why your precious proletariat don't say 'No'. It is consensual. Free. You can go live on the woods if you don't want to work for money, or heck, you can even live off the taxpayer these days.
Or at least in theory anyway, in practice of course there can be many issues, for which we rely on the government to attempt to resolve. I would say it's one of the least worst systems out there.
I've never even watched fox news. It would serve you far better not to assume all your ideological opposition to be a monolith strawman.
What I know is from personal first hand accounts of hearing progressives speak, and that it's similar to the typical marxist revolutionary identitarian rhetoric that I understand generally at a surface level as a brief former advocate for communism.
Do you have nothing better to do than follow me around and take everything I say in bad faith?
I'm sorry I called your point BS, but could you address any more than those two letters of my arguments?
reducing everything i say and do to progressive marxism
I'm sorry. Those were the only sources of which I've seen, of what you're talking about, that I could relate it to.
I understand what you mean now. You want the statistics and anecdotes to not incite tension in your life.
In that case there are solutions outside of equity. I think there is a kind of tolerance to inequity that can be brought about through belief in self-responsibility and self betterment. I think there is a natural proclivity for people that have undergone such constructive effort to reflexively believe in that principle from earlier, 'the means justify the ends' (incoherence, as you put it, is also part of the human experience).
that is instrumental to my hedonism... i resign myself to it as best i can and resent existence for the suffering that it generates
Huh. Why hedonism? Only rational remaining option? And why tolerate suffering as a hedonist? I'm butting my nose in, but I hear only denunciations of hedonism in the wild. But I've also thought that hedonism is most free, owing to ones desires being able to form virtually any purpose at all. In fulfilling hedonistic desires one might wish to learn, create, destroy, etc. Why do you think it gets such a critical review in public?
National Socialism preserved private property
As far as I can tell, they maintained private property the same way the Chinese communist party currently maintains private property; in that you'll find out it is very much not private and very much not your property when deemed convenient by the state.
included the conquest and murderous subjugation of other peoples
Well, there we have another similarity. The identitarian narrative of oppressed vs oppressors (German workers vs the Jews) is a mirror image of that found in the class struggle of the soviet communist uprising (proletariot vs the bougeouis... and then the kulaks).
When I looked into it further today, the Nazis also had a social welfare program (people's welfare, NSV) while banning private charities, which also served as a sort of national workers union. They had publically funded youth programs, public service work for the unemployed on roads and railways such that if you did not have a job, you were assigned one. Basically, they had a massive emphasis on typically socialist policies.
I think this is all part of that oppression narrative combined with that it established itself as a workers party; they strived for safety nets for the poor workers funded by those that they deemed oppressed them; the wealthy Jews. Their persecution and genocide of Jews was internally justified as justice, revenge at their oppressors.
I'd like to add that the reasons they're censoring people are ideological and partisan in nature, many many people are celebrating this. A free market is not free under such influences. But then if a free market cannot be free in reality, then the ancap utopia is as unattainable as the communist utopia.
So ultimately I totally agree with you on the necessity of some regulation, even if it requires a state monopoly of force to do it. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.
The Nazis could not win power without attracting a large portion of that voting base and they knew it.
Ah, so all their socialist elements was just them pretending to be socialists. And they kept up the ruse right to the point of identitarian policy and democide. Remind me whatever happened to those Kulaks?
"Socialists" and "National Socialists are two different things!
Yes. And the man in the video claims they share the same base school of thought in communism, just that the fascists is a bit more honest in that they require the state to achieve their utopia. The National Socialists were indeed facists and indeed evolved from facism, and the facists were apparently once socialists, according to this man's account.
Hitler had every "socialist" rounded up, along with the Jews, and sent to the "camps" to be "dealt with"
So? They are political rivals that would detract from his power. He killed and silenced them to achieve unity. That could be because they were direct opposition, but could also be because they were similar and siphoned support from his party.
Then he invented his own kind of "National Socialists"
BS. They were called National Socialists (NSDAP) from the start, since 1920. Before any of the 'rounding up the other Socialists' stuff started - that happened around when they got in power.
If you want to argue that capitalism, democracy, and other freedom based systems are often a nursery for facism (and communism) without requiring revolution, then I'd agree.
But the man in the video isn't saying that socialism is a nursery for facism, it's saying that the ideological principles, perspectives, and thought are an evolution of those found in socialism. That the socialists of the time fractured into socialists and facists.
You think I'm Bronto? I see a whole bunch of accounts named Bronto, but all of them were made after mine. So either Bronto is Nomoturtle, or you're constructing yet another strawman.
And he makes these absurd claims while meanwhile, thanks to Donald Trump, members of his own party now feel bold enough to openly sympathise with Hitler!!!
Not everything is about Trump. And "his own party"? I'm an independant Brit.
Address the arguments instead of berating the source, eh? Some of what he's talking about are direct quotes from the doctrine of facism.
May I recommend to you the social credit system in China? It sounds like a perfect fit for your needs.
equity is not the exclusive purview of progressives... i think there is some basis to doubt whether the value of improved interpersonal relationships outweighs the material loss of privilege
True on the former, and no normal progressive would admit the latter. But it wasn't just equity, it was your marxist inspired viewpoint of society as a pit of oppressors and oppressed. Your wilful neglect of capitalisation. Certain words you tend to use.
to the extent that i value material equity it is because it tends to be more conducive to (better) interpersonal relationships
I can't tell the difference between the material reality of equity and its ideal here. Valuing the exclusive benefits (the relationship stuff) of equity (aside from the ignorance of inequity, whch you obviously can't attain) as a desirable goal doesn't appear to me any different from valuing the ideal. Furthermore your refutation of equity as an ideal in its inability to create it with its holding or enforcement requires that you value the results of equity in the first place.
Otherwise, I don't understand what you mean. If so, please use an example or metaphors or something.
i increasingly question equity (and equality) as an ideal because...
So this sounds very much like the world view of a progresive. I thought that for a progressive one of the stated goals was equity. Even your reason for dropping equity seems to be because the result that supporting it ends up with is inequitable. Perhaps there's no inconsistency here, but I can't see past it.
That was very informative, thanks. Crenshaw had a very grounded view here.
A lot of what I've seen and from what I've just heard makes me think that many of the democrats and republicans are working for the same team.
property tax contributes to a broken educational system
What does education have to do with property tax? Could you explain?
Commercial interactions, more than any other kind, owe their flourishing to state structures and institutions.
Forgive me for the tedium, but I'll need examples/more explanation to understand where you're coming from. If I buy a chair from a company, where are the supportive state structures involved?
As such it is more of a trade in kind to pay tax on transactions rather than on the fruit of ones labor
Is one's labour not also a commercial exchange? How is it different to hire a plumber than it is to rent a truck?
9. I think it means that in order to judge another, one should be certain that their judgement is infallible, not corrupted with sin. aka A hypocrite makes for a poor judge.
14. It just means that societies require censorship to be considered civilised. Like how one might require law to be civilised, or require art to be civilised, or require an absence of slavery to be civilised etc. It would be a subjective standard.
though increasingly I question that.
Care to explain?
Nothing justifies anything
This I find interesting, not sure if you mean it when you've said so little and implied so much, so maybe an example?
If someone is being raped, are they justified in resisting? Hitting their aggressor in an attempt to knock them out and escape?
Or is it the notion of linking means, intent, and outcome that you disagree with? The wilful neglect of cause and effect?
In general I think there is a 'spirit of the law', the will of the authors, which tends to issue certain principles or outcomes. The rules are constructed in a manner so as to enforce a just means, or with limited foresight attempt to achieve a just ends. So generally I'd think when a particularly nasty end is imminent, people tend to allow a typically nasty means to advert it. And vice versa. Admittedly they are arbitary laws, but also tend to follow consensus, often even across cultures.
They weren't armed, no guns in DC. You're betraying that you didn't watch any of the videos.
From what I saw it doesn't look like a coup. It's a bunch of Trump supporters protesting what they believe was a stolen election. In some places it turned into a riot and that's not ok, like there was clearly some fist fghts with the cops. But seriously, most of them are walking around with police supervising them and blocking them from certain areas inside the buillding, taking pictures like tourists and gathering content for their streams. It's a bunch of morons. I find it laughable that these are the terrorists that I'm supposed to fear, because I've seen far worse than this. Actually I find it scary that the perspective of the events have been so drastically warped on twitter and in the media.
Look, just go find some unedited footage and watch it through.
How can you say I've not made the point before if you don't know what point I'm referring to?
Didn't refer to or quote the point? - I'm talking about the point in your last paragraph that I in part quoted in enquiry, that money, (or more importantly the power that it is traded for), is used to manipulate views over the internet.
And I guess I'm not surprised that you think this is about Trump somehow; it makes me think that without him you would be lost - Where will your compass be? I look forward to that now that he's gone.
But anyway, can you just give me examples? I don't doubt that you're right, or that they exist. I just don't know the context of your argument earlier.
The internet is a tool. By that alone it's value is determined by how it is used. It can get worse. It can be better.
In this way the internet is a phenomenal source of good for the market. Content can be shared at lower cost to more poeple than ever before. Virtually every company has a website to gather attention from the larger market and benefit from economies of scale. And technology developed upon the internet has enabled a rise in productivity, such as in manufacturing, with the 4th industrial revolution, whereupon using an 'internet of things', workshops can be automated at lower cost with real time feedback and diagnostics allowing for precise and reliable work at massive scale from an often remote engineer. Orders can be made quickly, and suppliers and retailers are easily perused via online services. Ultimately, the internet enables the mass availability of products and services both directly and through cost reduction. The economic growth and the raised quality of life we hold is in part due to the internet.
Then there's culture. Never has communication been more accessible on both the side of producers and consumers. We've seen individuals just pick up cameras and make a living off sharing ideas, events, and commentary on platforms such as youtube where it would be otherwise impossible to gather such an audience in a local distribution of DVDs at enough of a scale so as to make it profitable. The same principle is found with films, games, tv shows, comics, art, memes, etc. The internet has lead to an explosion in cultural development.
Some internet communication services have also been used to gather funding for charity, or for relief from various conflicts and natural disasters.
That said, there are intrinsic properties of basic commnication via the internet that probably bias it towards negative outcomes. A large degree of empathy is derived from recognition of people. And this is largely based on our senses, not just abstract text; seeing someones' face, their body language, hearing their tone of voice, repeated continuous interaction, physical action, joint activities, and ultimately interpreting their emotions from all this information. While the internet connects us more broadly than ever before, the sensory bandwidth is as deep as a puddle, and so the empathy people derive from that is often impaired. People frequently do not treat others as human online. Actions and words that would be unthinkable in the flesh become all too easy on a keyboard, as though the subject were a thing, or as though you were talking about someone and not directly to them.
This is especially bad in that internet communication has partially supplanted old forms of communication and interaction; people are not interacting with each other in reality as much as before. While being technically more connected to others than ever, people are paradoxically self reportedly more lonely than ever, presumably as the quality and meaningfulness of interaction degrades. And it's not that people can't, it's that they seemingly won't. Though perhaps the quality and fidelity of online communication and interaction may improve and approach what can be found in reality in time.
Also the personal control of information, while an obviously good principle to hold, has lead to many blocking and censoring information, and exclusively chasing information they find enjoyable, typically confirmational, depriving themselves of what would normally be necessary for a healthy balanced perspective. This leads to echo chambers where the pace of exchange of information leads to the rapid evolution of caricatures within a group. Where previously a totem pole could only be built by the information (and misinformation) available within the immediate people around you, now vast networks of angry people can collaborate to form a massive narrative that would be alien to any outsider. Like removing the control rods from a nuclear reactor the result is far worse and more common than one might find before the internet.
And our dependance on the internet leaves us vulnerable to new vectors of attack that will always remain impossible to defend from, in an eternal arms race between security measures and those that break them. Or even just the infrastructure; network cables can be cut intentionally or by natural disaster, servers can be withheld, DNS hosting can be used to gatekeep. At this point, much of society and business would collapse without the internet, on all scales. Then on another front, as the wild west of the early internet days fade, the internet is being overtaken by a new norm as bad actors and authoritarian ideology take advantage of the latest land of opportunity and use its power over people, business, and society at large to erase, censor, deplatform, cancel, and effectively kill small businesses and individual. It is used as a new domain of battle, of which many are unaware and unguarded.
But ultimately it would be spoiled of me to say anything other than that to live today is to live in the greatest comfort that has ever been available to the most people in history, and this is in part due to the internet. And so despite all the hot topic issues associated with the internet and as much as I hate to deal with the results of them, I cannot deny that the good vastly outweighs the bad. I am grateful not to have been born as a slave after the conquest of an ancient city, or living in streets covered in waste without sewage systems nor hygiene, or in nature at the mercy of wildlife and the elements. I see the internet as yet one more technologically productive and culturally important advancement. I just hope the next decade of its direction as a tool will be guided by the same principles that have lead to the prosperity we hold today.
Amazing. When I made this point, you called me delusional. Anyway, I'm curious that you've reached a similar conclusion, but your post is very abstract. Could you please give some examples of what you mean by "push this view".
Tells us that the real power lies in silicon valley.
It seems like it's not just the president either. Lots of people losing follwers en masse. It seems it's a purge.
I guess it's a good thing we've got the internet nowadays, because in the old days when someone wanted to silence you, you were killed.
Mass paranoia from people that have been instigated by msm, coupled with a growing feedback loop of a caricature of reality. It's the same way competing ideas among groups build enemies of each other with strawmans, both losing root from the original argument or event. See CGP Grey's video on this subject .
We're now at the point where "go home in peace and love" is apparently part of a call to violence, being a censorable and bannable offense.
Fair enough. Though I'm sad to be lumped in that category by you.
Fair enough. Though I'm sad to be lumped in that category by you.
Sometimes stones must be thrown and they will never be thrown by saints.
Yeah. I'd even go further to say that one without sin will often not understand the guilty nor the desire or use of punishment. Pacifism is often the greatest enabler of violence. It is also why one must be capable of defense even when one has no direct desire to acquire or use its means.
Taxation as such is not theft. No more than living under the security provided by military and police is a theft of their services.
True. I don't know where I stand on this one, but I've heard some talk about it, so: Is the absence of consent not relevant here? It is as though ones existence within a country is enough to consent to whatever the state and presumably its populace decides to do with you. It is essentially forcing each person to spend a portion of their life in service of welfare, or of healthcare, or of some government contract, to pakistani gender studies, or to the poor, etc. Often these are hopefully agreeable causes and may even benefit all equally, but regardless it is action enforced under penlty of imprisonment and with consent only of those that impose the particular cause in law. In what other circumstance outside of the state is it acceptable to be forced to buy something?
If by this you mean that a person should pay their own way
Sounds like you might mean cash, credit, etc. I meant the statement to mean that the individual should be allowed to buy what they want 'determine their own needs'. Even if it contributes to climate change, or to sweatshops in India, etc.
The forms of expression that are morally punishable by law are few and defined.
I agree, though the list grows.
"The means justifies the ends"
It just means that if you follow a just process, then the result is just. Essentially the justification of equal process and good intent, even if it leads to negative results.
"Our election was hijacked. There is no question. Congress has a duty to #ProtectOurDemocracy & #FollowTheFacts." - Nancy Pelosi
What your pretence clearly is here, is simply to take focus away from your own violence and redirect it to your political opposition. Classic terrorist tactics, my friend
My violence? Certainly not. I think it's obvious you have my position misconstrued, so I'll go on a short rant to give you an idea. I'm not a conservative, neither did I vote for Trump. But the more distortion I see from the media, the more double standards I see applied, the more I wish I did. I feel like I've been slapped in the face by reality after a long sleep. And perhaps conservatives or Trump supporters would be just as bad as you suggest if given total power, but from what I'm seeing they've been consistent, and the left (of which I had considered myself a part of) has not. This is untenable. I'm starting to see exactly why the seperation of powers was deemed necessary, and it's very alarming to see big tech, democrats, some republicans, and the progressives within them all co-operating towards fascist ideals of centralisation of power and control of the populace.
On your general message regarding deflection, you couldn't be more disingenuous, I've previously condemned the right wing violence to your face.
there were rioters fighting really hard against police and police shooting people.
Yeah, there were.
Before it was white cops going easy on white supremacists.
Come again?
It's worse because of hypotheticals?
"Just think what could have happened to the man"
"The could have possibly taken hostages, and might have wanted to harm people"
These are mind-reading charges. Kangaroo court.
"When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say" - George R. R. Martin
So your argument is that the support of BLM violence and the condemnation of the retaliation of the capital is justified because there's a skew in who commits the violence?
Even were that true, that's not a counter, that's an agreement that there's a double standard. You're literally defending that there should be a double standard to balance the scales.
It shouldn't matter if it's violence is on the left or the right, none of this shit is acceptable.
Yet continuously it's the left supporting their violence while the right is on the defensive. Do you think any of those on the right will escape prosecution? Have their bail paid for? Have a pre-prepared legal defense? A lot of the rioters at the capitol will be going to prison, but most of those arrested at the blm riots were let loose.
I don't blame the left for causing the violence necessarily, because violence happens on both sdes. I do blame them for supporting it. I want to point out that an ideology that accepts the ends justify the means is unhealthy. So that when something bad does happen you don't end up supporting it. Because otherwise you literally end up defining the event by which social category was involved, which political leaning they had, such that the same action is both virtuous and evil depending on who commits it. This is absurd.
What the hell Jace? Used to have a lot of respect for your detailed arguments and calm demeanour, I had never seen you dismiss someones argument or insult anyone, or heck, even the contractions are new. I only left for a few years, what happened to you?
It's to protect bad ideas from their own failings. "The future is known. It's the past that keeps changing."
Take focus off the right wing violence? Your hyper-focus on right wing violence is exactly why you can't see the double standard in the bigger picture.
But hey, even if you don't believe there is such a thing as a non-peaceful blm protest, did you know that the capitol building was stormed by protestors 2 years ago? Or should I call them terrorists too?
When it came to blm, people weren't complaining about the protests, they were complaining about the riots. Hence people mocking the media with the burning buildings in the background claiming it was mostly peaceful. No, that was a riot.
But made less aware to the public, their leaders are self-proclaimed marxists and I want nothing to do with it. "By any means necessary. And you know exactly what that means". I'm not surprised some of their protests turn to riots. All the non-normies there are agitators and they eat that shit up. Their belief in their cause justifies any action.
And I'd argue the cause is moot in the first place. Bill Barr quoted 11 unarmed whites killed compared to 9 blacks. That's skewed by population, but it certainly isn't by police encounters. But it's not just lives they fight for, it's the empowerment of blacks economically and socially. But. All the data they use as evidence of racism has no investigation whatsoever, it's an assumptive witch hunt where any disparity is immediately construed as racism, as though the default position were equity. It's ludicrous. Look at any country in the world, any leaf of any branch of society and you will see inequity. Is that all racism too?
The Jews are a great counter example, they bear real racism and religious persecution seemingly wherever they go, and despite that they rise to success past the majority ethicity in their countries. Because regardless of what individuals think, the emergent nature of capitalism is that their skills are more valuable than their race.
Didn't protestors do this exact thing 2 years ago during the Kavanaugh debacle? No backlash then, that was supported by media.
Optimistically, I'd say it's evidence of people (minorities especially) rejecting the msm narrative that props up progressive positions and divides democrats and republicans by racial lines.
On a deeper level, many of these minorities are no strangers to collectivist ideology, many having fled from failed socialist and communist countries to seek a better life in the US, and perhaps don't want to relive that.
They still are, race grifter. Or are you gonna tell me that the black people in there 'ain't black'
I don't like what happened, I condemn it. But I also don't see what choice these people have anymore. Whether you think there was election fraud or not; these people believe it, and they've been silenced and gaslit by msm and ignored by the courts.
They should have had their day in court. The irregularities (voting populations, spikes in votes) should have been explained, perhaps there were good reasons for them that could have de-escalated and dispelled all of this.
But after being ignored by the system, what options do they have now? I fear this will only get worse.
And no, this isn't a race issue, and frankly it might not even be a left-right issue. Republicans will denouce and prevent this from ever happening again just as democrats will. I expect to see some patriot-act tier legislation aimed at hunting down Trump and his supporters, and the uniparty getting back to business.
Address the chronology honestly instead of posting early research
So because they are from last decade they are wrong and you refuse to even read them?
Were it a new technology or had something changed you might be on to something, but cloth masks have been commonly used in Asia since at least th 1950s, and they have not changed. Don't you find it strange that the research suddenly changes to support their use only AFTER their adoption in the west? As if the right decision is whatever decision is made at the time.
when presented with scientific evidence (published in a highly accredited scientific journal) that you are wrong, your first reaction is that you cannot possibly be wrong.
I addressed them with sources of my own. My sources are also published in scientific journals. And they contradict those that you presented. I don't know which of them are wrong.
The reason I presented for why I think the conclusion is erroneous was that viral particle transmission is being conflated with transmission and case rates. A case is still a case whether their initial load is 100 virus particles or 200. I think all of this is a bit of a red herring.
You're saying that because the scale and impact of the pandemic were initially underestimated I'm absolutely not saying that, what does the scale of the pandemic have to do with the effectiveness of masks?
Why would any health organisation, especially the WHO, advise against wearing a face mask?
Perhaps you should ask them. I don't know why, just that they did.
https://edition.cnn.
"There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly"
And this is corroborated by what I found in the research I looked through today.
Your studies conflict with those I found. And yes I presented a reason (twice) as to why I think the conclusions of the ones you cite might be wrong.
On the contrary, are you saying the research is wrong? You've yet to make any remark whatsoever on the studies I presented.
As for the one you just cited, most people aren't using surgical masks or respirators.
I provided you two pertinent pieces of research to illustrate that it isn't true.
I addressed them. If you refuse to address my counters then I can only assume it's because you can't.
I don't have stock investments. I'm one of the students that will be working my whole life to undo the damage done this year, and not done by the virus but by our own authoritarian government's overblown response. But this is exactly the problem; your cure is worse than the disease. You have no idea how many people you are condeming to death and poverty by crippling the economy, and you seemingly don't care how many of the poor are sacrificed to protect your ass from a virus you're more than likely to survive, again, 99.98% aged 0-49 CDC. As I said before, it's cutting off your arm to treat a paper cut.
