• 3 Posts
  • 27 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • Every unregulated capitalist economy has devolved

    Right, but I’m not arguing for unregulated capitalism. I think capitalism should be highly regulated. I’m arguing for fair markets that reward good actors and punish bad. I’m arguing for continually refining capitalism and fixing the problems. Which is why I keep having this argument. You’re obviously an intelligent person, motivated to change society for the better, with a good moral compass. I want you on my side. I want people to want to work on the actual problems, and not pin their hopes on some big idea that will fix everything, because that doesn’t exist.

    Sure, there have been authoritarian governments that said they were socialist for PR.

    This is the cognitive dissonance about Marxism that bugs me the most. You believe that a system such as Capitalism is so flawed that it must be replaced with something else, but you are unwilling to see that Socialism is also flawed in different ways. If you adhered to the principles of pure Marxism, you would see that Socialism as well must be discarded for a better alternative. Instead of seeing that, you will label every failed Socialist state as a fake. We need something else.


  • Steam engines literally led to the development of electric motors. Steam engines led to steam turbines which led to dynamos which led to electric motors, each invention building off the knowledge gained at the previous step.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_turbine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Algernon_Parsons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamo

    Your analogy is doubly flawed. Each type of engine you mention has strengths and weaknesses that depend on external variables. Internal combustion isn’t better at producing electricity for instance, which is why we mostly use external combustion to do that. Electric motors aren’t better than internal combustion, except that internal combustion is causing climate change. It’s also flawed because history has shown that Socialism doesn’t work better than Capitalism. I could see, if this were purely theoretical, someone arguing the benefits of Marxist ideas, but it’s been tried. In several places around the world, people tried to put in place the kind of changes you’re advocating. In every case it led to authoritarianism, brutal repression, and starvation. Does it suck that poor kids don’t have enough to eat, while Bezos builds space yachts? Yeah it sucks, but it’s not millions-starving-to-death levels of suck like we actually, not theoretically, got every time we tried Communism or Socialism or any kind of take-their-stuff-and-give-it-to-me-ism.














  • Hot take: you shouldn’t subscribe to an ism.

    You know what my political affiliation is? I’m an engineer. You want to solve a problem, you break it apart and fix the broken parts.

    Abortion? Sure.

    What’s the problem? Women are pregnant and they don’t wanna be.

    Well how’d they get pregnant? They had unprotected sex, or they got raped(including all kinds here). Teach people how to use birth control and make it easy to get. Teach men about consent. Fund sex crime policing.

    That takes care of the input side of the equation. What’s next? Oh yeah, they don’t wanna be pregnant. Why not? Because it could kill them, or wreck thier bodies. OK, well let’s fund research and support for maternal mortality issues (including post-partum). If a pregnancy is likely to kill a woman (like double the normal mortality rate) she should be allowed to abort, even if she’s not in immediate danger. You can’t force somebody to risk their life.

    Any other reasons? Because the fetus is severely deformed and will die in pain if allowed to make it to full term? Abortion, no question. Honestly any other position on this one is fucked up. I’m sure of very little when it comes to God, but I’m sure it doesn’t want preventable suffering.

    What else? Families can’t afford a kid? Free high quality childcare for everyone. Free healthcare for kids and post-partum mothers (probably for everyone but that’s a different topic).

    What about adoption? Well, as they say, adoption is the answer to a different question. Just to cover all cases though, let’s fund high-quality adoption services, including counseling for the birth mother for as long as she needs.

    How do we pay for it all? Taxes. Taxes are good for society. Shut the fuck up and pony up your fair share. If you use our stuff, eat our food, drink our clean water, taxes are what you owe.

    These are just off the top of my head. The real answers are probably way more complicated, but it’s going to take work to figure it all out. This is how you fix a problem though. Lots of hard work to understand the whole thing, soup to nuts, and then you fix it all.

    Does that make me a leftist?