Quote :

"Well, no. No, it isn't. That's why you used a different word"

i didn't use that word, that's what it's called:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism

10/9/2018 1:30:53 PM

Quote :

"I don't mind market socialists or people who aren't hardline Capitalists."

But I'm not a die-hard capitalist. I love worker owned businesses. They just need to buy them like anyone else. But I recognize why they choose not to: it is ill advised to tie up a large chunk of your savings in your own employer. Better to work one place and diversify elsewhere, so if your employer goes belly up, you have not lost everything.

10/10/2018 9:02:58 AM

Quote :

"I recognize why they choose not to"

no dude it's because no one has the money to do that, and most business owners are not interested in selling to their workers. how do you constantly fuck this up?

10/10/2018 10:56:34 AM

An open stock company has no choice in who buys their stock. There is no "these shares cannot under any circumstances be sold to employees." And it is odd to believe a business owner would hate money so much he'd refuse a buy-out offer, just because it was his employees. I met a dude once whose sole lot in life was starting businesses, getting them running, then getting bored and selling them to his employees. So yea, they can. They can't afford Walmart or Apple, but a huge chunk of the economy is not sexy enough or profitable enough to have such sky high valuations.

10/10/2018 1:00:44 PM

dude has never met a poor person

10/10/2018 1:10:12 PM

^ im not sure I understand the end game here. Providing corporate ownership to the workers does not eliminate poverty. Some companies succeed, others fail. A massive welfare state would still need to exist.

Unless the entire community owns all means of production and the negative impacts are offset by the good you will still have massive discrepancies in standard of living.

10/10/2018 1:22:41 PM

^^ I can only assume you're being purposefully dense. I say worker owned businesses are a thing, there could be more than there are but I see why there isn't, and you respond with an assault on my intelligence. Okay then.

^ I am curious there. Surely in a worker-owned economy firms must still be allowed to fail on their merits by some means and there must be a mechanism for creating new firms. Otherwise poorly run monopolies will inevitably result, to the detriment of society at large. Bad management and economic change is a thing society must have means of addressing.

[Edited on October 10, 2018 at 1:28 PM. Reason : .,.]

10/10/2018 1:24:13 PM

Quote :

"^ im not sure I understand the end game here. Providing corporate ownership to the workers does not eliminate poverty. Some companies succeed, others fail. A massive welfare state would still need to exist. Unless the entire community owns all means of production and the negative impacts are offset by the good you will still have massive discrepancies in standard of living."

This is why market socialism is a stepping stone and not true socialism. True socialism means the entire community owns the means of production and produces based on need, not profit motive.

10/10/2018 1:33:39 PM

I don’t see that happening in any meaningful capacity.

To be clear, I mean a transition from the first step to the second.

[Edited on October 10, 2018 at 1:55 PM. Reason : !]

10/10/2018 1:54:07 PM

There's an absolute shitload of theory regarding that transition, but I haven't read much of it so I can't help you there. I's a lot harder to be a socialist than a libertarian, because you're expected to know all the answers to a complicated theoretical system.

And even if we never get there, we can get as close as possible.

10/10/2018 2:37:20 PM

If it is too theoretical for its boosters to bother understanding or even knowing the talking points about, what the hell hope does society at large have of learning it well enough to live under it?

How can you be in favor of an economic system you yourself claim to have no understanding of?

[Edited on October 10, 2018 at 3:20 PM. Reason : .,.]

10/10/2018 3:19:15 PM

Quote :

"If it is too theoretical for its boosters to bother understanding or even knowing the talking points about, what the hell hope does society at large have of learning it well enough to live under it?"

The average person couldn't explain our current economy either.

Quote :

"How can you be in favor of an economic system you yourself claim to have no understanding of?"

Disingenuous representation of what I said.

10/10/2018 3:29:08 PM

Capitalism's immense appeal to dumbass conservatives is it's ability to offer "supply and demand, bro" and "economics 101, man" and "let the markets decide" as incredibly simplistic answers that are vomited out every time they are asked to confront a societal ill.

10/10/2018 7:59:40 PM

Socialism's immense appeal to dumbasses is it's ability to offer "blame the rich, bro" and "the man's keeping us down, man" and "make the rick pay for it" and "get the government to do it" as incredibly simplistic answers that are vomited out every time they are asked to confront a societal ill.

[Edited on October 12, 2018 at 11:09 PM. Reason : .,.]

10/12/2018 11:09:18 PM

What did Rick ever do to you?

10/13/2018 12:25:22 AM

He abandoned me in this statist hell of a dimension just because I'm the evil Morty.

10/13/2018 10:51:47 AM

i love it

https://www.gazettetimes.com/opinion/letters/letter-despite-loss-council-candidate-triumphed/article_7fb9c2e3-c994-52ac-9742-6789b955ab1b.html

11/15/2018 8:57:46 PM

FYI there are a shitload of Howard Zinn lectures on Spotify.

11/27/2018 5:17:07 PM

https://twitter.com/aoc/status/1085236210963021824?s=21

70% marginal tax rate on top earners is now a majority US position

[Edited on January 15, 2019 at 3:36 PM. Reason : .]

1/15/2019 3:35:02 PM

^this is why Republicans and Democrats are terrified of her

1/15/2019 5:05:27 PM

Great essay

https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/why-i-call-myself-socialist/

2/14/2020 4:36:33 PM

https://news.yahoo.com/new-yahoo-news-you-gov-poll-shows-sanderss-strength-going-head-to-head-with-rivals-181522968.html

Quote :

"The poll isn’t all good news for Sanders, however. Many progressives seem to believe the Vermont senator would be a shoo-in to defeat Donald Trump if only the Democratic establishment would get out of his way and award him the party’s presidential nomination. Yet there may be trouble ahead. Sixty-two percent of Americans — and a near-identical 61 percent of independents — say that Sanders is a “socialist.” Only a quarter of Americans (26 percent) have a favorable view of socialism, while almost half (47 percent) have an unfavorable view. Sanders describes himself as a democratic socialist and frames his agenda — Medicare for All, free public college, a Green New Deal — as a continuation of FDR-style liberalism. But voters don’t necessarily grasp the distinction between socialism and democratic socialism. When asked whether the two ideologies are the same or different, 38 percent of Americans said “the same” and 38 percent said “different.” Another 24 percent said they weren’t sure. Regardless, only 35 percent of Americans said they would even consider voting in a general election for a candidate who called himself or herself a “democratic socialist.” Forty-six percent said no, while another 18 percent said they weren’t sure. Among independents, those numbers were even less favorable to Sanders: 31 percent yes, 47 percent no and 22 percent not sure. Meanwhile, most Americans (52 percent) said only “some” or “a few” of their peers would consider voting for a democratic socialist. In the poll, no other candidate characteristic seemed to have such a strong negative effect on electability. Sixty percent of Americans said they would consider voting for a gay candidate (like Buttigieg). Sixty-seven percent said they would consider voting for a billionaire (like Bloomberg and Tom Steyer and, taking him at his own word, Trump). Fifty-four percent said they would consider voting for a candidate with no prior experience in national government (like Buttigieg, Bloomberg and Steyer). Forty-seven percent said they would consider voting for a candidate over 75 years old (like Sanders, Biden and Bloomberg). Sixty-four percent said they would consider voting for a candidate under 40 years old (like Buttigieg). Eighty-three percent said they would consider voting for a woman (like Warren and Klobuchar). Eighty-four percent said they would consider voting for a Jewish candidate (like Sanders and Bloomberg). And 44 percent said they would vote for a Muslim candidate (there isn’t one this year) — nearly 10 points more than the number who said they would vote for a democratic socialist. "

Concerning.

I really hope he becomes POTUS.

2/15/2020 5:30:23 AM

Probably too late since it has been just said so much but seems like the effort could be made to "rebrand" the democratic socialism to something like being a democratic opportunist.

Our country loves a good rebrand. A democratic opportunist wants to create opportunities for future generations to ensure the American dream lives on. Providing health care and education creates opportunities for those that want to live the American Dream, some crap like that.

You don't need everyone to buy in, just that middle 10% who hear socialism and just have that natural reaction and scare. Educating people on what that word means is harder than just using a different word.

2/22/2020 9:19:47 AM

an opportunist has a negative connotation as "one that takes advantage" of something.

2/22/2020 1:36:37 PM

Quote :

"Great essay"

Utter and complete bullshit. We are not sorted at birth, and what we do for a living does not define us. The author is just so full of himself as an actor as if that is the most important position in society. Crazy. People do the jobs they do because they chose to do them. That cashier could have made different choices and been somewhere else. "The Market" is not an actual thing we can point to that is forcing people to do jobs the actor author views as beneath himself and therefore beneath everyone. These people play lots of roles in their lives. They're mothers, fathers, siblings, etc. You can ask them what they care about on a daily basis, but the author would rather paint them as mindless slaves to "The Market" with no will of their own. Maybe they're supporting themselves until that call back finally makes them an actor. Until you ask, you don't know.

That the electronics factory calls for millions of workers does not mean millions of worker appear. Workers have to choose that life for themselves based upon the options available to them. The cashiers and truck drivers the author spends the article belittling made choices, choices I'm sure the author might have respected if he bothered finding out what they were. They fell in love, wanted to start a family, had to take care of their parents, hated school, hated the 9-5 grind, all preferences that kept them out of school and rules them out as becoming biologists, apparently one of the few professions the author respects. So they didn't follow that path, they followed another one, choosing family, the open road, or following their spouses work somewhere that their own work wasn't an option. These are choices free people make, not slaves to "The Market"

I guess he's a Socialist because he wants people to be forced to make choices he prefers. More actors. More Biologists. A profession will be chosen by your betters and any deviation will get you punished, severely, until you're finally made beautiful to the author's sensibilities.

2/22/2020 2:06:13 PM

You are right about choices but thats the problem. Why should anyone have to make a choice between supporting their family and furthering their education or pursuing their dreams?

2/22/2020 3:30:00 PM

Statistically speaking, across the globe, we are absolutely pre-sorted. Some “make it”. The vast majority do not and often are literally unable to.

Hell of an interpretation there

[Edited on February 22, 2020 at 4:35 PM. Reason : .]

2/22/2020 4:28:57 PM

Quote :

"I am grieved to tell you that @nathanjrobinson has effectively fired me & most of the @curaffairs staff because we were trying to organize into a worker’s co-op. This isn’t a bit. I wish it was. https://t.co/0lmnJlzAEX https://t.co/5P6U88d4VR"

8/18/2021 12:26:27 PM

lol wow i knew that guy was full of shit but this is something else

8/18/2021 12:32:01 PM