[Zionist Nationalist]

It's clear. International socialism is the only way forward.

I dont want to give my taxes to some poor idiots in Africa they are not my problem.

[Rancid]

I dont want to give my taxes to some poor idiots in Africa they are not my problem.

Racist.

Send me your money.

Side note, if we found the gates to hell on Mars, and we colonize Mars, do we own the demons in hell taxes?

[Zionist Nationalist]

Send me your money.

You first you are the millionaire here

Side note, if we found the gates to hell on Mars, and we colonize Mars, do we own the demons in hell taxes?

No. its gonna be our property now so we should put on them travel tax

but we are for sure going to hell since we are dirty capitalists

[Code Rood]

I dont want to give my taxes to some poor idiots in Africa they are not my problem.

Are you enjoying the US taxpayer money down there in Tel Aviv, ZN?

[annatar1914]

Are you enjoying that US taxpayer money down there in Tel Aviv, ZN?

US taxpayer funded assistance to Israel is a leash to force compliance on Israel to continue working for Israel's own destruction, with efforts on a ''two-state solution'', Muslim parties in the Knesset, and Israeli aid and security assistance to the Palestinians. The fact that they also give Israel proper a handout is just the carrot with the stick.

It would be better for Israel's self-interest if they didn't take any help from other countries with terms like that.

[Code Rood]

US taxpayer funded assistance to Israel is a leash to force compliance on Israel to continue working for Israel's own destruction, with efforts on a ''two-state solution'', Muslim parties in the Knesset, and Israeli aid and security assistance to the Palestinians. The fact that they also give Israel proper a handout is just the carrot with the stick.

Israel is booming. They are nowhere near destruction. That's just them playing you like a fiddle. Arab countries are a joke, and easily bribed.

Israel can be called a powerhouse in some ways. For example, Bibi boasts about the fact that Israel is now the second eye in the world. They're a technological juggernaut. And we all know that they have nukes. So Israel can easily defend itself, and they don't care about the international law either. If they want to shoot some unarmed handicapped Palestinian kids in the balls, they will. No one's really stopping them. The UN doesn't do shit, it's a clown show. They only really care about killing festive traditions in Europe.

It would be better for Israel's self-interest if they didn't take any help from other countries with terms like that.

Maybe they should tell this to their Zionist buddies infiltrating and filling up high positions in the West. Apparently they love the money (and other goodies) too much. They're living up to the age-old stereotypes again.

[annatar1914]

Israel is booming. They are nowhere near destruction.

Wrong. Israel as presently constituted won't exist to celebrate it's 100th year in 2048 AD, on the demographics alone.

That's just them playing you like a fiddle.

Maybe it's their Jewish mind rays, right?

Arab countries are a joke, and easily bribed.

Arabs can wait a long time too, and take the money (not being stupid after all) and wait the West out...

Israel can be called a powerhouse in some ways.

Superhuman, huh? Sounds like an ironic anti-semitic trope to me; ''Jews rule the world!"...

For example, Bibi boasts about the fact that Israel is now the second eye in the world.

Source quote for context please.

And we all know that they have nukes.

Do they? Sure about that?

So Israel can easily defend itself

Can it? Seems they fight with one hand tied behind their back. Plus their soldiers are the best in their region of the world, maybe.



,

and they don't care about the international law either.

You should decide whether you're going to love the UN and international law, or attack it for violating national sovereignties...

If they want to shoot some unarmed handicapped Palestinian kids in the balls, they will.

All sides in the M.E. play dirty pool, it's like a snake pit. I'm willing to bet you don't mind the historical killing of certain unarmed civilians in wartime much either.

No one's really stopping them.

''their own'' Jewish organizations around the world bind the Israelis to a Two-State solution, etc...

The UN doesn't do shit, it's a clown show.

Again, I get the distinct feeling you don't give a real shit about the UN anyway, so why beat the Israelis over the head about it? Besides, I'm certain you know about the control the OIC has over the General Assembly of the UN.

They only really care about killing festive traditions in Europe.

Israelis or Diaspora Jews? ''They'' implies a monolithic bloc of people all in agreement acting together. Are you a ''Jewish Conspiracy'' guy?

Maybe they should tell this to their Zionist buddies infiltrating and filling up high positions in the West.

Are Jews among the Western Elites necessarily real friends of Israel, real ''Zionists'', or are you implying again that Jews run everything?

Apparently they love the money (and other goodies) too much. They're living up to the age-old stereotypes again.

Or rather, you're promoting those stereotypes. I suspect you've got a case of ''Jew on the brain'', a real pathological monomania to get lost into if you're not careful.

[ckaihatsu]

1) No, completely separate.

*Whew!* Good to hear.

2) No, it will take generations to do that. As the tech evolves, so will our abilities. I would like us to develop towards mining the Belt. But I see that as robotic, we have a long ways to go before we are talking real colonies, even on the Moon.

Okay, yup -- I've posted to the effect that if, somehow, capitalism actually provided general-purpose robots to us, we'd finally be able to make our own stuff that's necessary for life and living, and on a widespread basis this development would erase the class divide. But as things are now, robotic tech is either for industrial purposes, or are toys for the consumer.

3) Yeah, if thorium turns out to be practical, it would be the best option.

Yup.

4) I share your scepticism.

Okay, but I have to point out that you're a self-described 'progressive' -- in my experience progressives tend to gravitate to the existing state politics as a perceived avenue for social improvements, like the purported platform of Bernie Sanders.

Any comment on his campaign?

5) Maybe, not sure there is any way to get the species to grow a brain and stop committing suicide. BTW, I wasn't being entirely figurative there. Been wondering if we should develop a smarter human.

Hmmmmm, this sounds like the death-spiral into conservative reductionism -- blaming the victim, etc., when what society *needs* is a more-enlightened, mass-application provision of what social production can yield. But since I'm skeptical that this can happen at *all* under bourgeois class rule, I'd rather see proletarian revolution as a prerequisite for our leftist shopping list.

6) Never heard of it.

Yeah, it looks promising, but the political side of it, of course, is how it, or anything, is supposed to get implemented, so back to my original statement -- a *society-wide* overhaul is a prerequisite to addressing these inescapably *global* issues, like climate change.

[ckaihatsu]

People's rights are far more important than rights of corporations. Corporations aren't people, they are business entities and should be treated as such.

Okay, good to hear -- that's a start.

I like it, even if it's hard to enforce. There should be an international punishment mechanism for government officials who commit war crimes and other crimes against humanity.

Good, good, I certainly agree, because the 'international community' certainly isn't cutting it, as with what the U.S. did to Iraq, etc.

It did work. It stabilized the banks and the economy and then the economy recovered and GDP and markets went on to reach fantastic new record highs and continually climbed for the next 12 years on a remarkable bull market run (only interrupted by a virus), with the lowest unemployment rates of the last 40 years or so.

Well I'm really not on the same page with you economically, though I'll grudgingly acknowledge the empirical claims. Regarding your economic thought, how do you reconcile a purportedly 'level playing ground' with the social history of racism, sexism, xenophobia, etc.? Isn't capitalism inherently and historically *elitist*?

We're back to another economic contraction because of a virus that is temporarily reducing commerce. It has absolutely nothing to do with capitalism, and concerts, sports leagues, stores, restaurants etc would be temporarily shutting down just the same if everything was nationalized and socialism in place.

I don't think this is all due to the virus, though that's certainly a significant and triggering factor -- there were prognostications leading up to the market crash that said the stock market was a bubble, not to mention the billions being issued by the government to bolster commercial paper, also in the lead-up.

What job losses do you refer? I don't understand any of this statement, explain.

This has to do with how the unemployed are officially counted, in government statistics -- by recollection I think a major change occurred under the Bush administration, but it may have been Clinton. Here's from an old article, that describes it:

The Labor Department’s report listed 8.9 million workers as officially unemployed, while it classified another 1.7 million people as “marginally attached” to the workforce. This latter category includes more than half a million “discouraged workers,” who have stopped looking for nonexistent jobs. According to the department’s estimates, the ranks of these workers have been swelled by 125,000 over the past year, and 10,000 gave up on looking for jobs last month. Though jobless and desiring work, they are not counted in the unemployment rate.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/09/jobs-s06.html

---

Government can create jobs, directed at providing for social needs, in a way that the private sector simply *cannot*, because of the bribe / premium it charges, known as 'profit'. A good example would be Venezuela:

Central planning sucks at allocating resources and jobs on a wide scale. It's terrible. They screw up all the time. They are also prone to corruption. This has been proven over and over. It's led to mass inefficiencies, and when they screw up millions have starved to death. You want bureaucrats to do what private citizens have been doing by themselves. You want to transfer massive power from private citizens to government, which is frightening and damn foolsih, and they don't even do nearly as good a job and historically exploit and cause suffering far, FAR more than corporations have.

The problem with historical 'state socialism' is that it became about as bad as *bourgeois* hegemony, arguably, except for the lack of warfare -- a *good* thing -- of course.

So I don't say that society should *stay* at 'nationalization' (of anything and everything) -- it ultimately has to use that as a stepping-stone to *workers* control over their own production and distribution of goods and services.

Do you acknowledge bourgeois / corporate *imperialism*, as has happened historically, as with the Dutch East India Company, onwards?

The Dutch East India Company, officially the United East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie; VOC) was a megacorporation founded by a government-directed amalgamation of several rival Dutch trading companies (voorcompagnieën) in the early 17th century.[1][2] It was established on 20 March 1602, as a chartered company to trade with Mughal India[3] during the period of proto-industrialization,[4] from which 50% of textiles and 80% of silks were imported, chiefly from its most developed region known as Bengal Subah.[5][6][7][8][9] In addition, the company traded with Indianised Southeast Asian countries when the Dutch government granted it a 21-year monopoly on the Dutch spice trade. It has been often labelled a trading company (i.e. a company of merchants who buy and sell goods produced by other people) or sometimes a shipping company. However, VOC was in fact a proto-conglomerate, diversifying into multiple commercial and industrial activities such as international trade (especially intra-Asian trade),[10][11][12][13][14][15] shipbuilding, and both production and trade of East Indian spices,[16] Formosan sugarcane,[17][18] and South African wine.[19][20][21] The Company was a transcontinental employer and an early pioneer of outward foreign direct investment. In the early 1600s, by widely issuing bonds and shares of stock to the general public,[a] VOC became the world's first formally listed public company.[b][c][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] It was influential in the rise of corporate-led globalisation in the early modern period. It is said to have been worth $7.9 trillion in today's value.[30][31]

Founded in 1602, the Dutch East India Company (VOC), started off as a spice trader. In the same year, the VOC undertook the world's first recorded IPO. "Going public" enabled the company to raise the vast sum of 6.5 million guilders quickly. The VOC's institutional innovations and business practices[32][33][34] laid the foundations for the rise of modern-day global corporations and capital markets that now dominate the world's economic systems.[35]
With its pioneering institutional innovations and powerful roles in global business history, the Company is often considered by many to be the forerunner of modern corporations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company

---

If they as government did as good a job as businesses in economics, countries would already be doing it. If they did, China wouldn't have needed to enact all those capitalist market reforms and blossomed as a result, and the USSR wouldn't have imploded under its own misallocation of resources and corruption.

You use Venezuela as an example, which is a joke. Have you been seeing what's been happening there the last few years? Competition creates efficiencies, because if you aren't efficient you can't compete, and if you can't compete then you go out of business. This is beautiful. Adapt or GTFO. If you're too corrupt, too inefficient, create products people don't want, and/or you waste money on a large scale you go out of business. It's wonderful.

Where we differ is on the *standards* involved -- you keep touting the *market valuation* as the 'gold standard' of societal measurement, whereas I'm far more *dismissive* of exchange values determining social worth, especially as we're seeing with this virus and persistent market crash -- if capitalism is so good, why didn't it prevent the coronavirus pandemic and offer sufficient health care to bring everyone back to their feet immediately?

What do you think of 'market externalities'?


---

As a follow-up, what do you think can be done, and by whom, to prevent this continued plutocratic rule by the rich?

You suggestions: do not let businesses able to make political donations. You limit political donations to an amount per year any average citizen could contribute, like say $500. You tightly regulate and restrict political lobbying, you keep it all on the books and transparent, ie: all lobbying must be registered, and maybe everything said should be put on public record.

You also put tight controls on conflict of interests. ie: politicians recently out of office can't become lobbyists or work for corporations in an industry that would unfairly benefit from their political access or knowledge etc.

Okay, this is classic liberalism. The *problem* is that state *regulation*, such as you're suggesting, and business *profit-making* are two inherently *contradictory* standards and aims. If a politician is paid-off to look the other way regarding certain regulations, that's *good business*, but it's bad for the government as an institution, its reputation, and the public interest in having the tight regulations that you support.

Mainly what many western countries have done (besides the USA). Although I'd probably tax the very wealthy more. You could reduce taxes on the non-wealthy and/or implement social programs.

This includes implementing universal healthcare operated mostly by the private sector, well regulated, but medical claims paid for my the state. You could introduce universal dental and pharmacare too if there was enough tax money from the wealthy. Also have universal grade-school education and highly subsidized post-secondary education to keep costs low like in Canada. Most education organizations would also either be mandated to be non-profit orgs and/or regulated to keep tuition costs reasonable in comparison to operating costs. Healthcare and post-secondary schools would have low user fees, dispensing costs, and tuition fees in order to make them extremely affordable but not quite free in order to distinctive abuse.

This follows on in spirit from the previous segment -- the problem with liberalism, though, is that can't resolve this *contradiction* that we see between public interests / aims, and private ones.

From the far-left, we look at the *material basis* for why society functions they way it does -- capitalism is all about the *commodity production* mode-of-production, and to accomplish this the production process under capitalism requires *labor*. Labor requires *material inputs* like food, shelter, education, health care, etc., so that it can reproduce going-forward and be continuously available decades and centuries into the future.

So, since these material inputs are a *prerequisite* to the very *existence* of labor, these must be *guaranteed*, by the state, with one proposal for this being yours.

I would go *much* further myself, and say that *all* necessities to labor should be *fully funded*, as from government programs, and like those in Venezuela (etc.) that make for far more of a 'true liberalism' than the U.S. and Europe (etc.) these days, with decades of government *austerity* measures / policies.

Making things tougher for labor just cripples the whole economic process, and makes people's lives harder. But tax cuts and warfare spending go to favoring the *rich* people's interests, at the expense of workers, the ones who are making the actual commodities that drive society's economics under capitalism.


---

The well-known professor Richard Wolff has the politics that you describe, basically calling for a *nationalization* of factories / workplaces, for workers to then run, but he doesn't go far enough because he doesn't challenge the status-quo of capitalism *politically*. Any workplaces that are worker-run will *still* be subject to the same economic dynamics of competition in the marketplace, which is a *bad* thing now that society has sufficient productive capacity to just directly supply *everyone* with a decent standard of living. Market competition, and capitalism itself, are outmoded and need to be overthrown by the working class, worldwide.

They've been saying that for almost 200 years since Marx. Market competition ensures efficiency and keeps costs low, naturally eliminates production of goods/services not wanted by people and naturally gives great incentive to produce and invent goods/services people want and to continually improve those goods/services. Competition, as you seem to agree, is a good and necessary thing. Nature is predicated on a "survival of the fittest" model, and economics benefits from following suit. Charity and being "nice" only goes as far as people willing to be charitable and nice, and many times they are but many times they aren't and human nature can't and won't be changed. Humans are often self-interested. Even priests molest altar boys and get drunk on church wine.

There's nothing *wrong* with self-interest, and I readily acknowledge it. The *issue* is how self-interest is to be fulfilled, by society, since we shouldn't expect every single individual to be 100% self-sufficient, for all goods and services, themselves -- that's what an *economy* is for.

Here we are, 150+ years after The Communist Manifesto, and we're *still* exploiting the worker, all for the sake of *private freeloaders*, as John Stossel would say from that video that I linked to.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/w ... manifesto/

Workers are the ones who create *everything* that's tangible and socially and personally meaningful, so it stands to reason that it's the *workers* who should be collectively controlling their own productive labor.


---

I'd be ok with worker-run and worker-owned companies. But you need to test it and you need evidence it works. Co-ops are perfectly legal to run and if there are any practical examples out there on a large or medium scale i'd like to see them, where they can be as productive and efficient as private companies.

We covered this already -- I mentioned that:

Any workplaces that are worker-run will *still* be subject to the same economic dynamics of competition in the marketplace, which is a *bad* thing now that society has sufficient productive capacity to just directly supply *everyone* with a decent standard of living. Market competition, and capitalism itself, are outmoded and need to be overthrown by the working class, worldwide.

---

You are a self-described revolutionary. The problem with revolutionaries is that they have good intentions but have the arrogance to think they can solve all of societies ills with nothing but their naive untested ideas, and it often leads to much suffering when the plans don't quite work out. You are very dangerous because you have all these theories, untested on a large-scale, and you're willing to transform our economy without knowing how it will work out.

Your statement here reveals that you think capitalism should remain as the economic system for a society *after* a proletarian revolution. This is a misnomer, because such a revolution would overthrow *capitalist markets* as well as capitalist politics, and ruling-class interests.

Without a class divide there are no longer moneyed / ruling-class interests to serve -- all workers would be voluntary and the criteria for distribution and consumption would be *human need*, and not exchange-values.

You're oblivious to the history of the Bolshevik Revolution, so, no, this is *not* all untested -- it's been *acheieved*, but attacked and stunted by Western imperialism. You're being blithely disparaging by using facile *stereotypes*.

According to the official historiography of the Soviet Union, the first workers' council (soviet) formed in May 1905 in Ivanovo (north-east of Moscow) during the 1905 Russian Revolution (Ivanovsky Soviet). However, in his memoirs, the Russian Anarchist Volin claims that he witnessed the beginnings of the St Petersburg Soviet in January 1905. The Russian workers were largely organized at the turn of the 20th century, leading to a government-sponsored trade-union leadership.

In 1905, as the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) increased the strain on Russian industrial production, the workers began to strike and rebel. The soviets represented an autonomous workers' movement, one that broke free from the government's oversight of workers' unions. Soviets sprang up throughout the industrial centers of Russia, usually organizing meetings at the factory level. These soviets disappeared after the revolution of 1905, but re-emerged under socialist leadership during the revolutions of 1917.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_(council)#Workers'_councils

It could easily turn out poorly, and if it turns out to be less effective than the current market economy you're talking about destroying jobs, businesses, careers, life-savings, livelihoods etc, as has been the case with communism so many times. So if you're going to implement "revolutionary change" that will have revolutionary consequences, good or bad, you better be DAMN SURE you know what you're doing, you better have rock-solid real-world evidence that the system you propose will work as intended, and it should be tested and retested on a smaller scale until the kinks are worked out. This is one of the many mistakes socialists/communists have made throughout history, and its cost millions of lives.

You're back to your 'petri dish' perspective, when, in reality, millions and billions of workers worldwide are *suffering* through their daily lives due to the improper distribution of life's necessities by the capitalist market system. This isn't *software*, this is *the world* as it is, and it needs to be run by those who are doing the actual production -- the working class.

This isn't a country-by-country thing -- workers are *everywhere*, so this isn't geography-specific. It's the *world* that needs to get rid of capitalism so that the workers can collectively be in charge of what gets done, and what doesn't.

Take a look at the models I've done to get a better sense of how the politics and economics would be a *sea-change* in difference:


Emergent Central Planning

Spoiler: show

labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'

Spoiler: show

https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/20 ... ost2889338


communist supply & demand -- Model of Material Factors

Spoiler: show

https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/20 ... ost2889338


---

Communists just don't understand human nature and free will. Humans are often self-interested. People usually want to make the most money possible for them and their family. When communist revolutions have happened, people with high ability to make much more than the average salary often naturally want to leave the communist country to a capitalist country so they can make more money. In order to prevent continual "brain-drain", communists then have to restrict freedom and free will and ban people from leaving and/or or moving away from the country. Now you have an authoritarian state. People also tend to want freedom, including freedom to vote on government policy. Now you have a dictatorship to control that.

The great thing about democracy is that dangerous ideas that change the system on a large scale like yours can't be implemented without widespread approval of elected officials.

You're confusing my politics with that of *Stalinism*. I don't advocate any nation-centric bureaucratic elitist administration -- it's the workers of the *world* who need to be in control of all social production.

[late]

Okay, but I have to point out that you're a self-described 'progressive' -- in my experience progressives tend to gravitate to the existing state politics as a perceived avenue for social improvements, like the purported platform of Bernie Sanders.

Any comment on his campaign?





Hmmmmm, this sounds like the death-spiral into conservative reductionism -- blaming the victim, etc., when what society *needs* is a more-enlightened, mass-application provision of what social production can yield. But since I'm skeptical that this can happen at *all* under bourgeois class rule, I'd rather see proletarian revolution as a prerequisite for our leftist shopping list.





Yeah, it looks promising, but the political side of it, of course, is how it, or anything, is supposed to get implemented, so back to my original statement -- a *society-wide* overhaul is a prerequisite to addressing these inescapably *global* issues, like climate change.

I wasn't a Bernie supporter, I was a Warren supporter.

But you have a point.

Not really into proletariat anything. When the tech makes larger organisations possible, they tend to happen. We are moving slowly towards a global government. But it apparently won't be a deliberative process. Oh no, we'll blow half the planet up, and some psycho will rule over the ashes.

[ckaihatsu]

I wasn't a Bernie supporter, I was a Warren supporter.

Oh, okay -- same deal. They all function like *employees* of the Democratic Party, and they don't give a shit about the electorate, not that I'm any part of all that.

But you have a point.

Okay, yeah, thanks -- don't be a victim-blaming conservative.

Not really into proletariat anything. When the tech makes larger organisations possible, they tend to happen. We are moving slowly towards a global government. But it apparently won't be a deliberative process. Oh no, we'll blow half the planet up, and some psycho will rule over the ashes.

Yeah, this is just garden-variety pessimism. It's understandable, though, if you limit your hopes to the existing bourgeois ruling-class status-quo framework.

If I may, if you like, here's a 'political spectrum' of sorts that I devised, for your edification:


Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals

Spoiler: show

[late]

Oh, okay -- same deal. They all function like *employees* of the Democratic Party, and they don't give a shit about the electorate, not that I'm any part of all that.

Warren's career puts the lie to that.

An early work by her showed people did not generally wind up in bankruptcy due to moral failure (which has been the assumption). Mostly it was things out of their control like medical bills.

She was also the driving force behind the development of a new consumer protection agency.

All of which may not meet your standards, but also does not comport with your assumptions.

[ckaihatsu]

Warren's career puts the lie to that.

An early work by her showed people did not generally wind up in bankruptcy due to moral failure (which has been the assumption). Mostly it was things out of their control like medical bills.

She was also the driving force behind the development of a new consumer protection agency.

All of which may not meet your standards, but also does not comport with your assumptions.

Sure, reformism is fine and all, but are you really a parliamentarist? Do you think that we can 'reform' our way into socialism, or don't you think that counterrevolutionary forces would always prevail against such efforts, to retain the status quo?

What do you think about the status quo under capitalism, particularly the class divide / 'income inequality'?

[late]

Sure, reformism is fine and all, but are you really a parliamentarist? Do you think that we can 'reform' our way into socialism, or don't you think that counterrevolutionary forces would always prevail against such efforts, to retain the status quo?

What do you think about the status quo under capitalism, particularly the class divide / 'income inequality'?

If you want to know what "I" think, read the Price of Inequality by Stiglitz. Being an intellectual is a team sport.

I live in a crazy country, a country that is thoroughly brainwashed, infested with racists and reactionaries that are supported by crazed billionaires that can't wait to screw their puppets to death.

Best I can hope for is a little sanity. And when I say a little, I mean damn little.

[ckaihatsu]

If you want to know what "I" think, read the Price of Inequality by Stiglitz. Being an intellectual is a team sport.

I live in a crazy country, a country that is thoroughly brainwashed, infested with racists and reactionaries that are supported by crazed billionaires that can't wait to screw their puppets to death.

Best I can hope for is a little sanity. And when I say a little, I mean damn little.

Your frustration is understandable, but you're not really indicating any approach of your own, or even a trajectory out of what currently exists. Are you basically a reformist, and comfortable with capitalist markets?

[late]

Your frustration is understandable, but you're not really indicating any approach of your own, or even a trajectory out of what currently exists. Are you basically a reformist, and comfortable with capitalist markets?

Politics is the art of the possible.

I used to be an activist, but in the 80s, the little guy wound up largely shut out of the process.

We're on the slow train to the empire collapsing. A lot of unpleasant things will happen along the way.

[ckaihatsu]

Politics is the art of the possible.

I used to be an activist, but in the 80s, the little guy wound up largely shut out of the process.

We're on the slow train to the empire collapsing. A lot of unpleasant things will happen along the way.

You really seem resigned to your pessimism.

What should replace the collapsed empire?

[late]

You really seem resigned to your pessimism.

What should replace the collapsed empire?

It's not pessimism.

The corruption of empire lasts a lot long than the empire itself. Brits still spend too much on the military, for example.

[SolarCross]

The corruption of empire lasts a lot long than the empire itself. Brits still spend too much on the military, for example.

No, we are underspending. It's not even 2% of GDP. It should be 3.5% at least (in peacetime) and to help pay it we should be getting some small tithe from all the commonwealth realms we protect with it. Given that includes Australia and Canada two of the wealthiest countries in the world there is a lot of room for an increase.

[Unthinking Majority]

So, since these material inputs are a *prerequisite* to the very *existence* of labor, these must be *guaranteed*, by the state, with one proposal for this being yours.

I would go *much* further myself, and say that *all* necessities to labor should be *fully funded*, as from government programs, and like those in Venezuela (etc.) that make for far more of a 'true liberalism' than the U.S. and Europe (etc.) these days, with decades of government *austerity* measures / policies.

I don't agree with needs being given to people by government. That's what work is for. Work, you eat. Don't work, you don't eat. If you can't work, ie: you have a disability, then the state can provide for your needs. If you're healthy and there's jobs out there, work. I do agree that workers should have more of the wealth created by the system they take part in.

Workers are the ones who create *everything* that's tangible and socially and personally meaningful, so it stands to reason that it's the *workers* who should be collectively controlling their own productive labor.

We live in a free economy with freedom of association and assembly. If workers want to create their own company, owned by all the workers, they're free to do that.

Workers do not "create everything". They provide almost all of the labour, but labour isn't worth anything without the money, raw materials, machines, offices/factories, organization, and business plan etc. necessary to produce goods or provide services. It's a partnership between workers and owners.

Your statement here reveals that you think capitalism should remain as the economic system for a society *after* a proletarian revolution. This is a misnomer, because such a revolution would overthrow *capitalist markets* as well as capitalist politics, and ruling-class interests.

I don't want any economic revolution unless the system that you and other revolutionaries are proposing is backed by evidence that it will be better than the current capitalist system. The last 175 years since the Communist Manifesto has seen the greatest improvements in all of human history in standard of living, education, life expectancy, infant mortality rates, overall health outcomes etc. In the last 30 years hundreds of millions of Chinese have been lifted out of subsistence extreme poverty because of capitalism. Show me a system that will improve on the status quo. Your arrogance assumes someone thing else will be better without evidence, only theory.

You're back to your 'petri dish' perspective, when, in reality, millions and billions of workers worldwide are *suffering* through their daily lives due to the improper distribution of life's necessities by the capitalist market system. This isn't *software*, this is *the world* as it is, and it needs to be run by those who are doing the actual production -- the working class.

This isn't a country-by-country thing -- workers are *everywhere*, so this isn't geography-specific. It's the *world* that needs to get rid of capitalism so that the workers can collectively be in charge of what gets done, and what doesn't.

Only a fool or a madman would suggest replacing the status quo, which hasn't been perfect but has been fairly successful, with another system without testing it on a smaller scale first. You want a worldwide revolution, but you have no data that it would work. Marx was all theory, and so are you. Show me where this has been tried and where it has worked better than capitalism, and then i'll be on board. If it hasn't been tried, then it needs to be. You assume your ideas would be better, but you don't understand that it could turn out worse, and millions or billions could suffer for it.

You're a doctor and you have diagnosed that our current economy has an illness, and you want to prescribe the entire world with a cure to the problem, but the medication you want to prescribe to the world's workers has never been tested in lab trials. You could end up fixing the illness, or you could end up killing the patient. You just don't know. I wouldn't take any medication that's never been tested. It's insane. I also wouldn't ride in a rocket or plane or car or rollercoaster that wasn't tested either. Political science is a social science, and you need data and evidence to back up theories, just like hard science. This is especially true when jobs and livelihoods are on the line.

Take a look at the models I've done to get a better sense of how the politics and economics would be a *sea-change* in difference:

Models don't mean shit unless they are tested in the real world. Go implement them, and if they work, provide the evidence and then i'll be on board.