Lurker > Nrrr

It is incredible that they wouldn't approve the male birth control because of side effects that are actually less bad than the current birth control that women take. I just cannot fathom how that is a reasoning anyone can give with a straight face to deny it and actually be considered anything but a laughingstock amongst their profession.

And I'd like to add that the impending climate doom caused by capitalisms necessary imperialism and growth actually benefits capitalists and disincentivizes stopping it. Right wing fascism is on the rise thanks to things like scary immigrants created, in fact, by the conditions in their country caused by imperial aspirations and climate change.

metroid composite posted...

Nrrr posted...

and I love ContraPoints, but how are you seriously going to have a post talking about how you love capitalism except for the bad parts like...advertising. I mean, ads are terrible and I hate them too...but its pretty far down my list of 'unfortunate effects of capitalism'

I mean...I was putting things into personal relateable terms as opposed to grand economic terms.

Income inequality is currently probably the biggest issue with the current system, but massive wealth gaps have been a big issue at lots of points for lots of political systems. The French Revolution was basically a bunch of peasants killing a bunch of nobles and installing capitalism so that they would not be ridiculously poor, and for this purpose capitalism worked.

Massive income inequality gaps is mostly a sign that the system is failing and needs to be replaced (historically this often meant violence, although 1930s America under Roosevelt was a pretty significant economic overhaul and happened in a non-violent way).

So like...outside of the massive wealth gaps, which I see more as just a sign of a system in decline, the stuff that stands out as uniquely bad about capitalism compared to older economic systems that came before (feudalism etc) is...among other things advertising (selling people things they do not need; encouraging people to buy more than they need), and the requirement to maximize profits (incentivizing addictive aspects to products like adding gambling aspects to games. Incentivizing increasing prices on life saving drugs to squeeze dying patients for as much money as possible. Incentivizing cheating and bypassing environmental regulations if it will squeeze out more profit).

These latter issues conflicting with hard requirements on climate change is why the UN report is saying that a capitalism replacement is probably needed (as opposed to a capitalism overhaul like what happened under Roosevelt). But yes, I do think advertising as a mechanism is one of the flaws with capitalism that may well make it incompatible with a sustainable future (the purpose of advertising is to make people buy things they don't need or want, which is not really compatible with massively reducing our energy consumption).

Ahh I see, you meant more that it is a negative feature unique to capitalism that was not present in other economic systems through history. That's certainly the case. I definitely take issue with the idea of massive wealth gaps under capitalism being an issue, that is it working exactly as intended. The problem isn't just "how do we bandaid the poors getting uppity before they kill the rich again", it is "how do we reduce power and incentives to exploit?" But capitalism is a system that encouges and requires the powerful to use that power to exploit as much as they possibly can. It just isn't equipped to deal with climate change. If we had a robust democracy with an engaged, informed, and well organized workers, maybe...but capitalisms natural instinct is to discourage a robust democracy with an engaged, informed, and organized workforce so as to better exploit profit from their labor (and don't forget their leisure). And the corrective method of killing all the rich like in the old days isn't viable when everyone feels out for themselves and has no solidarity or class consciousness and the powerful have nukes and drones and modern surveillance toos. It's socialism or barbarism and we already made our choice, comrades.

and I love ContraPoints, but how are you seriously going to have a post talking about how you love capitalism except for the bad parts like...advertising. I mean, ads are terrible and I hate them too...but its pretty far down my list of 'unfortunate effects of capitalism'

we are totally doomed lol

there is just no way that any capitalist nation ever stops its growth in the name of profits, and it would take ALL of them agreeing to do so to actually address climate change. we could have a bunch of AVALANCHE style environmental terrorists groups trying to save the planet and the typical american would just be like "oh yeah who is the one trying to destroy the planet the JOB CREATORS or the TERRORISTS", like how everyone is convinced the real threat is antifa and not the facist nazis running the government.

holy s***, f*** Tony Blair and all, but he was pretty much just complicit. so many Bush administration officials would have a lot to answer to if this ever happened stateside.


it would never happen stateside though. powerful politicians are never held accountable for anything because they are all afraid that they will then get held accountable themselves. too many people with too much blood on their hands. i don't know anyone in US politics who would even consider such a thing. not even ocasio-cortez would.

metroid composite posted...

Nrrr posted...

Genuinely don't see how anyone can support anything but the complete abolition of the police at this point. It is an inherently immoral institution that only serves the purpose of protection of property rights and turning poor people into slaves.

https://www.thenation.com/article/abolish-police-instead-lets-have-full-social-economic-and-political-equality/

From the perspective of someone who is white and female...no I don't agree with abolishing police. (Although granted I am aware there are people with similar demographics to me who are in favour of abolishing police such as Chelsea Manning).

I fully understand that there are police departments in need of reform, and that training of subconscious bias really needs to be a part of basic police training. But I also think there's a lot of vulnerable people who do currently benefit a fair bit from police. Police currently kind-of go off of intuition and stereotypes, which means they will protect old people and women (and yes often fail quite badly at protecting african american men). I would rather reform police departments than protect nobody.

There's pretty clear trends in statistics when you look across multiple countries that for any given crime rates of that crime will go up if punishment is lower, and rates of that crime will go up if enforcement is lower.

I will say, one of the things that the Nation seems to take issue with is that police are primarily enforcing property rights and business rights. And yeah, the Nation is a socialist/communist publication, so it makes sense that they would take issue with property and business rights. But it's not really the job of the police to determine the laws. They just enforce laws. Politicians write laws.

(Whether or not property rights/bussiness rights are a good thing is a different question).

Putting aside my issues with property rights etc I don't think it just a simple "just get rid of it" situation like with ICE, but I am for abolishing the police as it currently exists completely. I think that there are a lot of interesting ideas about what to do instead. One issue is obviously the training and hiring practices, but also the fact that we absolutely do not need heavily armed militarized police for the overwhelming majority of the work that falls under their jurisdiction (and the removal of the intimidation and threat of death/murder would certainly go a long way to addressing the problem). I think some of the work they do could even be handled by completely separate institutions. Not to mention the fact that the police make almost no effort to prevent/apprehend white collar criminals in comparison, despite it being a larger percentage of the crime being committed by FAR. Another major issue, and the major reason it should be abolished as it now stands, is that the police is completely undemocratic, with absolutely no accountability, lacking transparency, and without connection to the people that they "serve", pitting them against communities instead of feeling as though they are a part of them. Police should actually be serving these communities, working to reduce the crime rates by addressing the systemic causes of the crimes that plague their communities, as well as enforcing the laws. The safest places on Earth aren't the places with totalitarian police control by a bunch of fascist thugs, its the places where people have the least reason to commit crimes, because their community has systems in place to take care of more people, there is social trust, etc. Not completely related to the police itself, but obviously the prison system needs to be totally reformed as well at the same time.

Genuinely don't see how anyone can support anything but the complete abolition of the police at this point. It is an inherently immoral institution that only serves the purpose of protection of property rights and turning poor people into slaves.

https://www.thenation.com/article/abolish-police-instead-lets-have-full-social-economic-and-political-equality/

please keep your fascist thoughts in the fascist topic series, this is a topic for people who think a lot of the time breaking laws is good and a lot of people in prison are heroes, and all of them deserve a shot at rehabilitation.

my mind also immediately went there until I clicked the link.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-still-prepared-to-call-for-war-crimes-investigation-into-tony-blair-a7042926.html

this is beautiful

I am down for Sigma or Phi if that emerges as a consensus, too.

Xiahou Shake posted...

There's (unfortunately) pretty much no way any of them make it in, but I'd say Junpei would be the safest bet.

yeah, I think I will just nom junpei because nothing else is really jumpy-ing out at me for my last nom

HRC in this context is referring to the Human Rights Campaign, not Hillary Clinton. (unless you are referring to the hrc as 'she' and I am the one misreading things!)

anyone think of a good rep for the zero escape series to nominate?
zero? junpei? akane? sigma?...lagomorph? gab? or does everyone think it would just be kind of pointless endeavor and there is no way they get in?

I can only imagine the kind of person who is motivated by ensuring rights remain taken away is a florida man

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/06/florida-voting-rights-restoration-felons/

I really hope this passes. Although I am deeply skeptical of good things ever happening, and of voting being a potential method of real change, there is absolutely no good reason to be removing the voting rights of felons.

I think just in general a major problem in the tech world is a complete lack or morals and willingness to make quite literally any product for anyone without questioning whether or not they SHOULD make it or how this might actually effect the real world...which is just how things go in a system that only values continued growth and profit at all costs, and is full of people who think STEM = smart and humanities = useless, full of idiots.

But yeah, not really shocked to hear that IBM is working with nazis both in WW2 and today.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/apple-banned-alex-jones-infowars-app-store

on one hand, fuck infowars and the effect Alex Jones has had on mush brained people around the world...but on the other hand...I will miss his over the top nonsense rants about goblins.

ass is not typically consumed, and there is no master of the ass. we each have democratic power over who we allow to eat our own ass, and when someone else feels they have ownership over our ass we rightly recognize this as exploitation. strange this does not carry over into the rest of our lives.

already a capitalist dog is attempting to contain leftist thought, right out of the american playbook...

feel like we need a politics topic that isn't full of fascists or libs

what this topic is:
intended to discuss politics if you are a social democrat or further to the left
a place to get mad and horny and never have to use logic or facts

what this topic is not:
a place to support captalism, imperialism, sexism, racism, ableism, civility, proper decorum, or respect for john mccain

more effort/ better reasoning helps.

no

I don't see how it 'saved gaming', was gaming even in trouble?

Rintaro Okabe (Steins;gate)
Gundham Tanaka (Danganronpa 2)

I am nominating Snorlax.

I am nominating Monokuma.