Has 2020 really been so bad? - Page 9 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15143957
You keep repeating that religion thing and I do not respond. Why? Because it is mere hyperbole. No truth in it at all.

Try harder.
#15143958
Pants-of-dog wrote:In fact, the way you call me a thief supports my point, since this is exactly what communists would be charged with if they tried to create socialism.

Socialism is the state taking people's possessions by threat of violence, and then giving it to other people. That's literally theft.

I consider taxes theft also. I'm not anti-taxes, but it is what it is.

If you worked your butt off to build a successful company over the course of your working life and then the government stole it from you I doubt you'd be very happy about it.
#15143972
Unthinking Majority wrote:If I have a workshop where I make wooden tables, and we agree that I will make you a table in exchange for $200 or a few pieces of gold or whatever, and I defend my workshop with a gun and a cranky dog, the government isn't needed in any of this and yet we just engaged in capitalism.

Perhaps me and my buddies can come up in the middle of the night when you are sleeping, kill your dog and yourself, kidnap your family and keep your workshop for myself and sell your family after a few of my buddies rape them... What you are suggesting has occurred in the past... didn't work so well.
There is nothing that says your workshop is yours, nor that the land where your workshop exists is yours other than the society that you live in.

Julian658 wrote:It would be nearly impossible for anyone with an IQ over 70 to lose 100,000 in the current market. I think you are a POC who is very poor and bitter.

You have this proclivity to put into written words those thoughts that should have been flagged as non-sense by well functioning prefrontal cortex.
This is simply not true.
Where were you when news kept going non-stop about how Billionare Carl Icahn lost 1.5bil on his stake on Hertz? Or when Warren Buffet Lost equally humongous amounts as well? The "markets" is not the S&P 500 and the DOW... those are indexes which are very heavily skewed towards a handful of very large american coorporations, many of which didn't suffer from the pandemic or perhaps even thrived. Amazon is doing great since everything is online... so is microsoft for similar reasons (online services, people having to buy computers for home offices, etc) similar with apple (same reasons), etc.
Successful investment has less to do with IQ and more to do with 1. Patience, 2. Luck and 3. Information. Information is very hard to have, either it cost a fortune of people doing research... or it is borderline illegal (e.i. insider trading, unless you happen to be a senator in which case it is OK :lol: ).

Unthinking Majority wrote:Socialism is the state taking people's possessions by threat of violence, and then giving it to other people. That's literally theft.

I consider taxes theft also. I'm not anti-taxes, but it is what it is.

If you worked your butt off to build a successful company over the course of your working life and then the government stole it from you I doubt you'd be very happy about it.

And I consider your point ridiculous.
The terms of "property" or "taxes" only exists under the paradigm of a society that accepts that you "own something". There is nothing in the universe that dictates that the computer that I am using to write this reply is "mine". It is society that decided that if I worked X amount of hours at X amount of money and I spent a portion of that money on this computer, then this computer is "mine". The same society has ruled that if you "steal" my computer, and you get caught and it is proven... you can suffer penalties (fine, imprisoment, death, etc). Theft only exists within the confines of what this paradigm set up by society... the same society which has agreed upon parameters for tax collection. You might not enjoy taxes but it is not theft.

When you say:
Socialism is the state taking people's possessions by threat of violence, and then giving it to other people.

You demonstrate that you are not familiar with what you are speaking off.
For one... socialism is an economic paradigm, not a governing one. What you are instead proposing in your comment is nothing more than a caricature/propaganda. Despite the fear mongerings of "you gonna become like venezuela" or "this is going to be the same as cuba" the fact of the matter is, that the core tenents of socialism (means of production owned by the community), is not compatible with a dictatorship form of goverment (such as cuba). They might call themselves socialists, communists, or pandas for all I care... but that does not make it so.
#15143979
Unthinking Majority wrote:
That's literally theft.



It's literally not theft.

Since you don't want to pay the fee to have civilisation, try Somalia...
#15143980
XogGyux wrote:Perhaps me and my buddies can come up in the middle of the night when you are sleeping, kill your dog and yourself, kidnap your family and keep your workshop for myself and sell your family after a few of my buddies rape them... What you are suggesting has occurred in the past... didn't work so well.
There is nothing that says your workshop is yours, nor that the land where your workshop exists is yours other than the society that you live in.


One of your better statements. You are describing the social contract and the rule of law.

LEVIATHAN

Written during the English Civil War (1642–1651), it argues for a social contract and rule by an absolute sovereign. Hobbes wrote that civil war and the brute situation of a state of nature ("the war of all against all") could be avoided only by strong, undivided government.



You have this proclivity to put into written words those thoughts that should have been flagged as non-sense by well functioning prefrontal cortex.
This is simply not true.


You are correct, I was just ribbing Godstud.

And I consider your point ridiculous.
The terms of "property" or "taxes" only exists under the paradigm of a society that accepts that you "own something". There is nothing in the universe that dictates that the computer that I am using to write this reply is "mine". It is society that decided that if I worked X amount of hours at X amount of money and I spent a portion of that money on this computer, then this computer is "mine". The same society has ruled that if you "steal" my computer, and you get caught and it is proven... you can suffer penalties (fine, imprisoment, death, etc). Theft only exists within the confines of what this paradigm set up by society... the same society which has agreed upon parameters for tax collection. You might not enjoy taxes but it is not theft.


Read Leviathan


You demonstrate that you are not familiar with what you are speaking off.
For one... socialism is an economic paradigm, not a governing one. What you are instead proposing in your comment is nothing more than a caricature/propaganda. Despite the fear mongerings of "you gonna become like venezuela" or "this is going to be the same as cuba" the fact of the matter is, that the core tenents of socialism (means of production owned by the community), is not compatible with a dictatorship form of goverment (such as cuba). They might call themselves socialists, communists, or pandas for all I care... but that does not make it so.


Marx was 100% correct regarding the flaws of capitalism and how socialism would be a better system. However, Marx misunderstood the nature of MAN.
#15143985
Unthinking Majority wrote:If I have a workshop where I make wooden tables, and we agree that I will make you a table in exchange for $200 or a few pieces of gold or whatever, and I defend my workshop with a gun and a cranky dog, the government isn't needed in any of this and yet we just engaged in capitalism.

Capitalism and the modern world is based upon private property which doesn’t exist as some natural state or even when you defend what you claim to be your property as that in itself doesn’t show itself to be legitimate.
The legitimacy of property is based in laws defended by the state, to even have a concept of private property relies on ones upbringing in such institutionalized conditions and doesn’t emerge from human nature abstracted from modern conditions.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/works/development-concept.htm
If I have never heard of trees, if I am excluded from property rights in this country, if I have never been introduced to this type of domesticated tree, or if such property rights and botanical practices never existed, I could not form the concept of ‘Andy’s Japanese Maple tree’.

Colonialism itself most explicitly presents the fact that capitalism is a product of certain institutionalized relations and can’t be taken as some given except to those who falsely conflate capitalism with market exchange and trade itself but don’t make a qualitative distinction of societies where markets were peripheral and not the dominant characteristic of society due to a ruling capitalist class.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch33.htm
First of all, Wakefield discovered that in the Colonies, property in money, means of subsistence, machines, and other means of production, does not as yet stamp a man as a capitalist if there be wanting the correlative — the wage-worker, the other man who is compelled to sell himself of his own free will. He discovered that capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons, established by the instrumentality of things. [4] Mr. Peel, he moans, took with him from England to Swan River, West Australia, means of subsistence and of production to the amount of £50,000. Mr. Peel had the foresight to bring with him, besides, 300 persons of the working class, men, women, and children. Once arrived at his destination, “Mr. Peel was left without a servant to make his bed or fetch him water from the river.” [5] Unhappy Mr. Peel who provided for everything except the export of English modes of production to Swan River!

To think otherwise would be as naive as considering potatoes a merely natural phenomenon without human intervention/cultivation.

The very existence of the possibility for you to 1. Make wooden tables 2. Sell them and 3. Have to defend your property already asssumes so much to necessarily exist and wouldn’t suffice in a robinson crusoe abstraction.
You need to develop a qualitatively distinct concept of capitalism as the need for such a distinction is incomprehensible in the way you imply its meaning. A new word capitalism wouldn’t arise if it was merely market exchange.
I can notice a swan is white but that doesn’t make it essential to the concept of a swan as a swan.
#15143999
Drlee wrote:
Tell that to Trump. He is just about to get hit with a 400 million dollar payment due and, while claiming he is a billionaire has to borrow money to pay cut rate lawyers. But he is not the stupid one I guess. His racist republican friends are shoveling money at him because....well because.....I mean.....he must need it, right? Or... wow.


It is not honest or factual to say that Trump "lost" 400 million dollars through current investing. The reality is that Trump charitably sacrificed a chunk of his own wealth as president. He gave up some of his own wealth in order to help the nation. That's not incompetent, that's fucking righteous and honorable.
#15144000
Unthinking Majority wrote:That's not true. Workers are given stocks as compensation all the time. There's nothing illegal about giving workers an equal share of the entire company. There's also nothing illegal about forming a worker cooperative, lots of them exist.

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

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


You can't trespass on your own land.


None of this addresses my points.

Again, there is a difference between what individuals do with their own personal and private property, and hiw society does it.

Again, if we tried to create a socialist society or any society with different economic laws, we would be punished by the existing society and laws.

Unthinking Majority wrote:Socialism is the state taking people's possessions by threat of violence, and then giving it to other people. That's literally theft.


Yes and no.

First of all, it is only theft according to capitalism.

And this is what we mean when we talk about how capitalism is imposed by force. If you do not follow capitalist economic policies, the state will use violence against you. In this case, by charging you with theft and putting you in jail.

I consider taxes theft also. I'm not anti-taxes, but it is what it is.


No, taxes are not theft. They are (effectively) the price the state charges individuals for its imposition of capitalism by force. The system would not work without cops and judges and money printers and whatnot, and taxes are the way they were paid before capitalism and it stayed.

If you worked your butt off to build a successful company over the course of your working life and then the government stole it from you I doubt you'd be very happy about it.


Feelings are irrelevant.

———————

@Julian658

I see that you are failing to respond to my points. This is the exact place you gave ip the last two times we had this conversation.

I will now assume that you have no rebuttal for the fact that capitalism is just as coercive as socialism when it comes to enforcing economic policies.
#15144005
Another thing about 2020.

This is a year where logic and truth have been shown to be an enemy of a significant number of people around the world.
#15144010
It is not honest or factual to say that Trump "lost" 400 million dollars through current investing. The reality is that Trump charitably sacrificed a chunk of his own wealth as president. He gave up some of his own wealth in order to help the nation. That's not incompetent, that's fucking righteous and honorable.


:lol: :lol: :lol:

Do not go out without adult supervision.
#15144016
Agent Steel wrote:
It is not honest or factual to say that Trump "lost" 400 million dollars through current investing. The reality is that Trump charitably sacrificed a chunk of his own wealth as president. He gave up some of his own wealth in order to help the nation. That's not incompetent, that's fucking righteous and honorable.



He's a grifter.

Don't take my word on that, once Biden gets in there, the truth will start seeing daylight.
#15144060
XogGyux wrote:The terms of "property" or "taxes" only exists under the paradigm of a society that accepts that you "own something".

Taxes need a governing power. You don't need government to have private property. In the state of nature, a person walking in a forest and picking up a shiny rock can himself proclaim "this is mine" and defend that rock to the death. What government does is protect private property rights through law so people don't have to fight each other to the death, police do it for them.

There is nothing in the universe that dictates that the computer that I am using to write this reply is "mine".

Exactly.

It is society that decided that if I worked X amount of hours at X amount of money and I spent a portion of that money on this computer, then this computer is "mine". The same society has ruled that if you "steal" my computer, and you get caught and it is proven... you can suffer penalties (fine, imprisoment, death, etc). Theft only exists within the confines of what this paradigm set up by society... the same society which has agreed upon parameters for tax collection. You might not enjoy taxes but it is not theft.

Not true. Government did not create the concept of private property or theft, as I explained above. Property is created when somebody proclaims "this is mine, and not yours" and is willing to defend that property to the death.

When you say:

You demonstrate that you are not familiar with what you are speaking off.
For one... socialism is an economic paradigm, not a governing one. What you are instead proposing in your comment is nothing more than a caricature/propaganda. Despite the fear mongerings of "you gonna become like venezuela" or "this is going to be the same as cuba" the fact of the matter is, that the core tenents of socialism (means of production owned by the community), is not compatible with a dictatorship form of goverment (such as cuba). They might call themselves socialists, communists, or pandas for all I care... but that does not make it so.

Everything the government owns is socialism. Socialism is common collective ownership. Roads, hydro lines, the military, schools, all public infrastructure...it's all socialism. Taxes pay for these common goods/services. Taxes are socialism. Socialism is theft.

Again, i'm not anti-taxes. There is room for some socialism for society to function well, like infrastructure and the military and education etc.
#15144071
Unthinking Majority wrote:Taxes need a governing power. You don't need government to have private property. In the state of nature, a person walking in a forest and picking up a shiny rock can himself proclaim "this is mine" and defend that rock to the death. What government does is protect private property rights through law so people don't have to fight each other to the death, police do it for them.


Exactly.


Not true. Government did not create the concept of private property or theft, as I explained above. Property is created when somebody proclaims "this is mine, and not yours" and is willing to defend that property to the death.


Everything the government owns is socialism. Socialism is common collective ownership. Roads, hydro lines, the military, schools, all public infrastructure...it's all socialism. Taxes pay for these common goods/services. Taxes are socialism. Socialism is theft.

Again, i'm not anti-taxes. There is room for some socialism for society to function well, like infrastructure and the military and education etc.


Once again UM is correct!

I will add that this idea is not new and was written down by Hobbs in the 17th century.

Written during the English Civil War (1642–1651), it argues for a social contract and rule by an absolute sovereign. Hobbes wrote that civil war and the brute situation of a state of nature ("the war of all against all") could be avoided only by strong, undivided government.
#15144087
Julian658 wrote:Once again UM is correct!

I will add that this idea is not new and was written down by Hobbs in the 17th century.

Written during the English Civil War (1642–1651), it argues for a social contract and rule by an absolute sovereign. Hobbes wrote that civil war and the brute situation of a state of nature ("the war of all against all") could be avoided only by strong, undivided government.

Yes Hobbes was an early social contract theorist, famously theorized about the "state of nature" etc.

One could argue that taxes aren't theft. As part of a leviathan (government polity), we implicity agree to the social contract of whatever country we choose to remain in. Meaning we agree that we only get one vote among millions and agree to follow the laws decided by the politicians elected by the people within the leviathan. Since we implicitly agree to this social contract, taxes may not technically be "theft".

Of course Hobbes was personally a proponent of retaining the power of the English monarchy for the sake of order, over democratic reform, but his main theories are still applicable.
#15144092
Everything the government owns is socialism.


Ahhh no. Just no.
#15144099
Unthinking Majority wrote:Yes Hobbes was an early social contract theorist, famously theorized about the "state of nature" etc.

One could argue that taxes aren't theft. As part of a leviathan (government polity), we implicity agree to the social contract of whatever country we choose to remain in. Meaning we agree that we only get one vote among millions and agree to follow the laws decided by the politicians elected by the people within the leviathan. Since we implicitly agree to this social contract, taxes may not technically be "theft".

Of course Hobbes was personally a proponent of retaining the power of the English monarchy for the sake of order, over democratic reform, but his main theories are still applicable.

Hobbes was a man of his era. Plato felt that only the gifted should lead nations. Aristotle another smart guy felt women were only good for sex and procreation, nothing else.
#15144101
Unthinking Majority wrote:Everything the government owns is socialism. Socialism is common collective ownership. Roads, hydro lines, the military, schools, all public infrastructure...it's all socialism. Taxes pay for these common goods/services. Taxes are socialism. Socialism is theft.

Ah I remember this delination of socialism.
#15144103
Drlee wrote:Ahhh no. Just no.


Yes. Saying "no" isn't an argument.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
Socialism is a political, social and economic philosophy encompassing a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production and workers' self-management of enterprises. It includes the political theories and movements associated with such systems. Social ownership can be public, collective, cooperative, or of equity.[11] While no single definition encapsulates many types of socialism, social ownership is the one common element.
#15144106
Thank you for posting proof of my assertion....no. Just no.


Read what you posted then look at the definition you posted.
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