Dem Debates

[sOurDieSel]

Originally Posted by iruinedyourday [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

QQ I love the government and worship the alter of political correctness stop disagreeing with the liberal narrative and shattering my fantasy world

Governments are not benevolent.

[sOurDieSel]

Originally Posted by Lune [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

TL;DR Stop saying Democratic-Socialism doesn't work. You don't get to just ignore the many places where it works wonderfully, while the USA continues to spiral into neo-Feudalism.

rofl

"Democratic-Socialism" worked great, just as the NSDAP....

[iruinedyourday]

Originally Posted by Orruar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

He specifically said that this might happen in the next couple generations. Even the most insanely pessimistic estimates I could find only say that something like half the Earth would be uninhabitable by the year 2300. And all these estimates are pretty batshit insane in themselves, considering Earth has gone through periods with something like 10-20x the current CO2 and life still flourished.

Incidentally, runaway greenhouse ala Venus will take 1.5 billion years, even if man continued pumping out the same CO2 he is now, and he'd run out of oil/coal long before then. There simply isn't enough carbon on earth to produce enough CO2 to lead to a runaway greenhouse effect.

Either Bernie is incredibly optimistic about the increase in lifespan over the next couple generations and he thinks his grandchildren will live to see the year 2300, or he's a crackpot.

You're different opinions on how damaging climate change can be is without a doubt the worst reason to criticize the man.

The truth is, based off the information that the scientific community provides, if we don't do anything as he stated in the debates, we likely will make the world inhabitable in a few generations.

You can deny it all you want but its one elf sim nerd arguing against nearly all of the scientific community.

[iruinedyourday]

http://www.project1999.com/forums/pr...=ignore&u=3374

[sOurDieSel]

rofl, why are you sending me PMs crying about how you don't like me....wait...did iruinyourday?

feels good keeping the online world safe from liberal degenerates who worship cultural marxism

[Lune]

You guys know how efficient nature is, and that efficiency is what made market capitalism such a magnificent system to carry humanity through industrialization.

Also consider how fucking disgusting and depraved nature is. Consider the Coot, which is a duck-like waterbird. Coots will lay far more eggs than they could ever possibly feed, under the assumption that predators will eat some of them. Oftentimes, that doesn't happen, and 10-12 little coots will hatch that the parents can't feed. Over the next few weeks, when some of the coots ask for food, the parents will peck them. The weakest coots get pecked with increasing aggression until their parents either peck them to death, or they stop asking for food and slowly starve to death. This will occur until only enough young coots remain for the parents to feed, sometimes as little as 2-3.

This sickening brutality is universal in nature. Primates will team up and murder social outcasts and the weak. Baby birds will push their weaker siblings out of the nest. Starving bears will eat their extra cubs. Male ruminants will spar for a mate to the point of exhaustion or injury. The winner mates, the vulnerable loser is eaten by a predator.

This system facilitated biological evolution, which is ultimately an efficient and necessary process. But when you start applying human morality and utilitarianism to this, it begins to unravel a little. Humans have the capacity and the impetus to minimize harm at the cost of some of nature's depravity, and also some of its efficiency. Consider this:

The free market approach to the case of coots is business as usual; the natural, efficient order of things. Lay a surplus of eggs to hedge against predation, and cull the weak in order to survive. Sacrifice no growth or competitiveness for the sake of "humanity".

But the miracle of humanity is the capacity for abstract thought, and therefore abstract policy, providing a new approach, government. It brings the ability to make a rule: Coots may now only incubate as many eggs as they have the capacity to feed. Now, yes, you have a higher chance of any given coot losing all of their eggs to predators. Evolution and growth are now moderately less efficient. However, you no longer commit wanton murder and savagery at the opening of every new generation.

I would contend that while capitalism was a necessary and beneficial medium for the conveyance of civilization from primitive civilization to industrialization, its usefulness has diminished. As technology makes society exponentially more productive, and scarcity of resources becomes less an issue, we have the luxury of protecting human life from being ground to pulp by the economic machine. I think many places have already realized this (Denmark, Germany, Australia, etc), as their functional and highly effective governments create policy that make human life safer and more enjoyable, sometimes at the cost of efficiency.

And guess what? Does their entire society implode? Does everybody stop working and stay home and live off neetbux? No. They continue to pull ahead of places like the USA that are stuck in the industrial age with an industrial mindset. In many ways, the United States is, therefore, still a developing nation. Consider a world where we've managed to automate resource production and the vast majority of our services. Do you still think every human still needs to work 40 hours a week to drive consumption, profits, and capitalist machinery? What happens when artificial intelligence exists, and scarcity is no longer a thing? Is the free market still relevant? If so, how can you say that it's just as relevant now, as it was 100 years ago, with how productive we are? Can you even consider that maybe it's time to begin the transition and rethink the way we do things?

Of course, all of this depends on a sophisticated culture with respect for the rule of law, hard work, etc etc, and culture goes a long way toward explaining differences between denmark / USA / nigeria etc, but that's another discussion.

[iruinedyourday]

Excellent post lune! What do you do for a living? You probably deserve a raise.

[Raev]

Originally Posted by Lune [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Meanwhile, in the United States, our country is being systematically looted by the elite and their politician minions. We can't reform our healthcare system, we can't reform our election system, we can't rebuild our infrastructure, revolutionize our energy production, control the scam that is our higher education, or reign in the military industrial complex. Our peers are doing these things, or never had these problems in the first place, because at a very fundamental level, their politicians aren't owned solely by the elite, and as a result, their political systems work (they also don't have the fiscal conservative political legacy of temporarily-embarrassed millionaires like we do but that's another discussion).

So first off, I don't think there is much evidence that this is true. If you check https://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results the USA comes in at 74. That's behind some of the European countries (Denmark: 92, Iceland: 79, Germany: 79) but ahead of many others (Austria: 72, France: 69, Spain: 60). The reality is that people of all shapes, colors, religions, and nationalities like money and power . . . and politicians more than most.

But even if we grant your assumption, we live in the United States. How is the expansion of government likely to fix our elite/politician problems?

Originally Posted by Lune

Japan

I nearly stopped reading when you quoted Japan as a Social/Democratic success story. Japan is embroiled in a 25 year depression exacerbated by failed Keynesian policies and corporatism that are currently screwing us here in the USA, and just suffered the worst nuclear disaster since . . . that other socialist country, Russia. I'm sure the citizens of Fukushima are thrilled by your assertion that their strong government protects them from capitalist waste.

Originally Posted by Lune

TL;DR Stop saying Democratic-Socialism doesn't work. You don't get to just ignore the many places where it works wonderfully, while the USA continues to spiral into neo-Feudalism.

I am not going to restrict my list of Democractic Socialist countries to those populated by Northern Europeans. That would be racist.

[Lune]

Originally Posted by iruinedyourday [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Excellent post lune! What do you do for a living? You probably deserve a raise.

I'm a physical therapy student, tutor, admissions ghostwriter, and pt tech. I also live in my moms basement and play elf sims

[Lune]

Originally Posted by Raev [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

So first off, I don't think there is much evidence that this is true. If you check https://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results the USA comes in at 74. That's behind some of the European countries (Denmark: 92, Iceland: 79, Germany: 79) but ahead of many others (Austria: 72, France: 69, Spain: 60). The reality is that people of all shapes, colors, religions, and nationalities like money and power . . . and politicians more than most.

But even if we grant your assumption, we live in the United States. How is the expansion of government likely to fix our elite/politician problems?

I'm not claiming our government needs to be expanded to fix this issue, but that corruption needs to be fixed through campaign finance reform and cultural awareness of the issue. Bernie is the only candidate dedicated to this. And that corruption permeates most of our systems including our healthcare. And again, it's not sufficient to look just at the corruption, but also the extent to which it is fucking us over. And here in the USA, it's fucking us over very hard. People in Austria and France still have good access to healthcare, higher education, etc.

Originally Posted by Raev [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I nearly stopped reading when you quoted Japan as a Social/Democratic success story. Japan is embroiled in a 25 year depression exacerbated by failed Keynesian policies and corporatism that are currently screwing us here in the USA, and just suffered the worst nuclear disaster since . . . that other socialist country, Russia. I'm sure the citizens of Fukushima are thrilled by your assertion that their strong government protects them from capitalist waste.

You're judging them based on a single aspect, economic depression, which is merely the observation that their economy is not growing. It ignores the fact that your average Japanese person is doing very well, lives in a very wealthy society, and has minuscule unemployment. I'm not sure how having a nuclear plant hit by an immense natural disaster is the fault of socialism. Oh, maybe it's that their system is smart enough to still use nuclear power instead of bending over to the petroleum and coal industries? Economic growth isn't the end-all be-all metric for success of a society. That's something humanity is going to learn real soon.