I guess this has run it’s course… but I was @ -ing’ed here, and I’ve learned through bitter experience that us UnStuckers must treat @ -ing-ing with the respect it deserves.
the liberals… should be very wary of having this precedent set. See: FYP above.
The above was an attempt at a humorous aside. I didn’t literally believe the liberals would end up getting banned. Of course, such attempts can be deemed failures when it turns out the humor, so to speak, must be explained. Like this failed attempt…
Some liberals were calling for posters to be banned for posting shit that (allegedly) hurt the progressives.
The liberals should be wary of establishing such a precedent because…
An argument could be made that: ending live on earth >>> hurting the progressives.
An argument could be made that if we are banning for hurting the progressives, and #3 holds, we should ban those who spew pro-capitalist propaganda too.
The liberals spew pro-capitalist propaganda.
Therefore, an argument could be made that we should ban the liberals too.
Well, as long as I’m here… why don’t we chat a little bit about why the liberals will end live on planet earth unless stopped.
As a thought experiment, let’s imagine there are a buncha extra terrestrials kinda like The Predators of movie fame. Except, instead of hunting humans for sport, they were all into destroying ecosystems as a goof. Let’s call these aliens the “Kochators”.
Let’s further thought experiment that the Kochators, through some quizling human agents, had gained 50% ownership of human private companies currently owning and destroying the Amazon. What would our resident members of the liberals say about this though experiment hypothetical…
OK VG, that’s what the liberals do… be “liberal” by being fan-boys of the capitalists, I guess. OK, let’s move on to though experiment #2: after using their quizling human agents to buy up 50% ownership of the Amazon, the Kochators go public. How would the liberals deal with this (sci-fi hypothetical) scenario ???/?
Well, we all know how those relatively to the right hate being “strawmanned”, even “inadvertently strawmanned”… it chaps their hide so severe, that they almost always quit the chat in disgust. So I’m going to bend over backwards not to put words in the mouths of the liberals. Instead, I’ll make a poll…
The liberals wouldn’t care. They would still be for ‘well regulated capitalism’ and private ownership of the Amazon.
The liberals would change their ways regarding being fan-boys of the capitalists.
Option 4: they would fix the regulations that allowed that predatory behavior. Well-regulated capitalism with a strong social safety net. What we have now is nowhere near well-regulated, and our safety net is not strong.
The whole incredibly dysfunctional lower end rental market is a symptom of income inequality. It improves almost instantly when the tenants get any kind of leverage. It’s the same with the bottom of the current job market.
With a UBI that made ‘I’ll just be unemployed until something better comes along’ an actual option for normal people a minimum wage would be totally unnecessary.
OK, just to make extra careful not to “inadvertently strawman”, you’d rewrite the option you prefer as…
The liberals wouldn’t care about the aliens. They’d still have 100% faith that the governments can ‘well regulate’ the capitalists (both alien and human varieties) – question mark.
Again, the last thing I want to do is “inadvertently strawman”. So I’m going to need some feedback from you here… one way or the other.
Agreed. Both function off the fact that people need jobs and housing and thus demand is inelastic and high. It’s not a question of free market value, it’s a question of how much blood can be drawn from that stone.
Late stage capitalism does not have all that many functioning free markets.
I turned your ridiculous hypothetical into something relevant. I’m not here to play thought exercises about liberals vs leftists on matters of [checks notes] alien invasions.
So, not withstanding your mis-understanding of the purpose of thought experiments… is that a “yes”? The liberals have 100% faith that the governments can ‘well regulate’ the capitalists, and thus advert the ending of live on earth?
Well, in the interest of moving things along, and at the risk of “inadvertently strawmanning” (and the risk of scuttling the whole chat by doing so), I’m going to proceed as if that was a “yes”.
Do you feel the governments are currently ‘well regulating’ the capitalists? Or do you feel the governments have some work to do to accomplish that goal?
I missed this, because I wasn’t expecting this bold move…
Could you ballpark how much faith the liberals have that their program will succeed… say 76-99%, 51-74%, 25-50%, 1-24%?
How about you, how confident are you personally that the liberal program will succeed?
ETA: What about the leaders of the liberals? Can you cite any of them handicapping the the odds of: can the governments, in fact, ‘well regulate’ the capitalists? Has J.Biden ever said something like “We got a 58% chance of regulating the oil companies so as to avoid environmental collapse?”
This fascinates me, as I’ve never ever heard a liberal express any doubt here. So… let’s do a poll…
If the governments of the world put their efforts into it, the chances they could ‘well regulate’ enough to keep the capitalists from ending life on earth is…
“By the time the fire season waned at the end of last month, the blazes had emitted a record 244 megatonnes of carbon dioxide — that’s 35% more than last year, which also set records. One culprit, scientists say, could be peatlands that are burning as the top of the world melts. By the time the fire season waned at the end of last month, the blazes had emitted a record 244 megatonnes of carbon dioxide — that’s 35% more than last year, which also set records. One culprit, scientists say, could be peatlands that are burning as the top of the world melts.“
In an attempt to increase the band-width, but being ever vigilante to avoid “inadvertent strawmanning” (like I foolish did above regarding the level of confidence that the liberals have in the governments), I got a few more Qs.
First, I’d hope we can at least agree that the capitalists need to be dealt out, or at the very minimum substantially suppressed, one way or the other, if life is to continue on earth. Second, have the governments ever successfully ‘well regulated’ the capitalists in the past? A good benchmark date would be 1962. That’s the year R.Carson’s Silent Spring was published, which is often credited with kicking off the modern environmental movement.
Q10: odds the capitalists can be ‘regulated’ IRL >= 50%
Q11: the capitalists were ‘regulated’ at times < 1962.
Q12: the capitalists were ‘regulated’ at times 1962-2020.
Q13: if left alone, the capitalists will destroy life on earth?
All this shit about capitalism vs non-capitalism in the context of environmentalism is just you assuming that a socialist state would be better environmentally than a capitalist one, but there is no reason to suppose this. I’m not an expert but I’d say the environmental record of the Soviet Union between 1962 and its dissolution was worse than that of the United States. It was dogshit, anyway.
Climate change is a tough problem because fixing it involves substantial economic pain, because its devastating effects will not become obvious until it’s too late, and because unilateral action on the part of any one government probably isn’t enough to fix it anyway. Switching the economic system to socialism won’t do anything about any of this. It’s just tough to have a democratic system and expect people to vote against their immediate material interest based on what to them is just some abstraction.
Yeah, so? The question was about capitalism and climate change. You don’t think wealth, consumption, production and waste all have something to do with capitalism?
We’re just flat out lucky that renewables are cheaper than coal and oil and electric motors are superior to internal combustion. If those things weren’t true, we’d have no hope.