i am SO FREAKING DONE guys !!!!!!!

20 hours ago, dr_st said:

How do you derail something that started off as a train wreck?

By trying to put it back on the rails....

EDIT: Hi everyone welcome to page 4

1 hour ago, dr_st said:

Sure I do, so what? There are many different groups of people in every society, with varying degrees of intersection, and their interests and priorities are frequently different, often opposite. A functional society has to find ways to balance them. The interests of single mothers are not necessarily the same as the interests of small business owners; interests of employees and employers do not always coincide (even if the employer is a small business, and not a billionaire). Public and private sectors employees also may have fundamentally different priorities, etc.

You don't think the enormous gaps in wealth count for a much bigger difference? A small business owner might have different interests to a worker, but at least the small business owner can't put their thumb on the scales of an entire country through lobbying and bribery. But a single billionaire can.
 

1 hour ago, dr_st said:

For instance - higher wages and better working conditions. For who? For constructions workers? Medical workers? Waiters? Video game developers? Everyone? There is rarely a single policy that affects everyone in the same way. For instance, if you are an engineer, making, let's say 200K USD per year, and I am a minimum wage Walmart employee, what makes you think you and I have the same priorities? Heck, if they raise minimum wage, businesses will be less profitable, will pay lower taxes, and the difference will have to be compensated somehow. How? Well, for example, by making you, the 200K/year employee pay higher taxes. How is that in your interest?

The engineer and the Walmart employee would both have bills to pay and debts to service. The engineer's probably got more in savings and his qualifications and experience can net him a higher income on the job market, but that just means there's a slightly thicker safety barrier between them and destitution. So it is in their mutual interest to at least tax the billionaires properly, rather than allow the billionaires and their cheerleaders to divide them against one another.

I imagine a lot of small business owners would also benefit from getting some breathing room from the billionaires. Like the guys running independent grocery shops vs the supermarket giants like the Waltons.

1 hour ago, dr_st said:

In fact, a minimum wage worker, and a 200K/year worker frequently have very different day-to-day problems. Maybe they have more alike than the average Joe has with the billionaire, but they are still different. So to extend your logic, would you say they cannot trust one another? Why do you want to single out the billionaires as if their priorities are, by design, contradictory to those of everyone else?

Because the difference is so ridiculously, utterly vast that it becomes a significant qualitative change in itself. I notice that you had no reply to the bit where I pointed out that you have to earn double the average US yearly wage every day, for about 30 years just to reach the first billion. Then three millennia to reach Bezos' levels of wealth.

Money is power in this world. I don't see how you can honestly deny that.
 

1 hour ago, dr_st said:

I will claim that they are less artificial, because the current system of laws allows people to become billionaires without lots of specific clauses to that effect. It just happens naturally when someone can own a corporation that, for whatever reason, becomes tremendously profitable and keeps on growing. In what way do you find the idea that billionaires can exist artificial?

In the sense that all social and economic systems are created by humans, and are therefore artificial. We're not ants with brains the size of a pinhead that instinctively react to pheromones. We reflect on ourselves as individuals and as societies all the time. We're doing it right now,in fact.

1 hour ago, dr_st said:

As to what problems? Well, let's first start with a proposal. Which legislation do you suggest to make it impossible for a person to amass 1 billion dollars (let's assume that's the arbitrary limit we set)? I will bet that for anything you can come up with, someone will find a way to circumvent it, legally, in a way that will guarantee no benefit to you or anyone else who you may wish to benefit with this. Unless you go very extreme, such as downright disallowing any privately owned corporations except a handful of small ones, under tight state control. Kind of like the Soviet Union model. Much good did it do the people there, didn't it?

People will always try to circumvent the law. That's not a reason to not have any laws, especially about something as impactful as this. Stupid amounts of money have been wasted on policing people for smoking weed, because it's a minor personal habit that has few problems in and of itself. Almost any idiot can get hold of some buds. The vast majority of the global population have no chance of acquiring a billion. So it's not as if laws about this would need to involve some kind of draconian police state that puts the population in fear. 

That being said, if your point is that the wealth of the these billionaires would enable them to short-circuit any attempts at reigning them in via democratic means, then I think that just proves my point.

1 hour ago, dr_st said:

You don't vote for the billionaires to become billionaires, but in a capitalistic system - you most certainly make them billionaires, by buying what they sell, or investing in their company in other ways. In a nutshell that's how it works. Of course, there have to be checks and balances, and ways to prevent someone from getting too much ahead, when it starts hurting the society / economy as a whole. That's why you have all the anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws, all the merger regulations, etc. Which may not always work effectively, may suffer from poor motivation, and corruption, etc. However, I see those as problems of implementation, not design.

I think you are drawing a false equivalence between voting and buying stuff. In a general election, if you don't like any of the candidates, then you are free to either spoil your ballot, or not turn up at the polling station at all. But when it comes to buying things, you have no choice but to buy stuff if you don't want to starve to death, or run afoul of the law by stealing instead. Maybe you could live off the land somewhere and live as a subsistence farmer, but that's a lifestyle that is increasingly going out of style these days, and is simply not a practical option for big chunks of the population.

I can avoid paying money to the worst examples, and while that's great for my personal conscience, it doesn't address the actual issue. Boycotts are mostly ineffective as I recall.
 

1 hour ago, dr_st said:

As far as the lobbying and "legalized bribery" - yes, I agree with you that this is a big problem, and furthermore, I have a feeling that it's worse in the United States than in most other countries. I think that attempting to somehow curtail these actions is as good start as any in trying to give more power to the people, less to the ultra-rich. Better than trying to play Robin Hood directly.

My crystal ball ain't working so I've no idea if reform is a realistic prospect in the long term. Personally I'm not fond of economic instability and civil unrest, so it would be nice if that kind of thing was kept to a minimum. But look at the world we're living in right now. Interesting times.

1 hour ago, dr_st said:

Becoming a billionaire is also achievable by a great many ordinary folk. I think if you analyze all the people that became billionaires, you will find nothing super extraordinary there. It is just a few specific traits (that may be possessed by millions of people) and a particular extreme streak of luck. Of course, only a handful of individuals will actually have "all the stars aligned just right" to become billionaires, but that's by definition. If rare events were not rare, they would be the subject of special attention.

The fact that there are only about 2000 billionaires in a world of 7 billion people speaks against that. Most billionaires come from a finance and investments background. That in itself should be a strong indicator that billionaires aren't typical people, since typical people aren't high-flying bankers, whereas the typical billionaire is. That would also seem to rule out random luck, it's not as if billionaires are created by lottery.

Although if we must have billionaires, maybe a lottery is how they should be created.

Shilling for the ultra-rich, the people who worked against you for decades and continue to do so, has got to be the most American thing possible. 

"Please Mr. Bezos, reduce my pay! Vote against my interest! I don't need a union! One day I'll be just like you!"

@NoXion

I thought about point-by-point reply, but realized that it will serve no purpose, other than just us going in circles.

Obviously, the fact that some people manage to hoard immense wealth, bothers you deeply, and you think a lot of problems can be solved if you just take their money and distribute it to everyone. It sounds plausible on paper, surely. But it doesn't work for many reasons. First of all, 150 billion is a lot to an individual, but take it and split between the 300 million Americans, and suddenly everyone gets just $500. Not a big deal, is it? Well, let's strip Gates and Zuckerberg and a few others too. Maybe you'll get to 1 trillion USD total. Only a fraction of the US annual budget, and still only gets you about $3000 per US citizen. Let's take all the money of the 2,000 billionaires in the world, with a total worth of about $9 trillion. Divide by the global population - each one gets a little over $1000. Will this really make a long-term change in anyone's life?

Second, you might find that taking this money is a bit tricky, because it's not really there. For such people, most of the assets are not money in the bank, but shares of companies they own. Try forcing them to sell that many shares - who will buy them and what will it do to the share price? That's an issue of the modern financial system in general, not just of the ultra-rich.

Try to come up with clever ways to take their money or prevent them from accumulating it in the first place? Never mind that I still haven't heard a concrete proposal from you (not that I have one myself, but you are the one who seems to think we should have one) - worry not, they will find ways around it. And if not them, someone else will. I'll reiterate the point I brought up in the other thread - no matter what system of rules you come up with - some people will find ways to use it in their advantage.

4 hours ago, NoXion said:

I notice that you had no reply to the bit where I pointed out that you have to earn double the average US yearly wage every day, for about 30 years just to reach the first billion.

I didn't reply to it, because it's a dumb and meaningless statement. I can say also that I can run 100 miles a day for the rest of my life and I still won't cover a distance equal to the distance between the Earth and the sun, or that I can practice basketball for 10 hours a day for the rest of my life and still not become as good as Michael Jordan. There, I replied. Happy?

4 hours ago, NoXion said:

Most billionaires come from a finance and investments background.

You read it wrong. It's not "most". It's 14%.

These debate has gotten really long and I may come across as some guy who has vested influence in supporting unlimited exploitation of the poor by the ultra-rich, or that I oppose to any idea that can reduce the income inequality or increase the average welfare of the population. This is quite far from the truth. Tax reforms that make the super-rich pay more are something that some billionaires have actually advocated for (e.g., Warren Buffet).

It's just that discussions like this don't generally produce any useful ideas, only "take it from those rich bastards and give it to people in need". That won't work, for obvious reasons, along those that I provided above.

In the end, snippets like 

4 hours ago, NoXion said:

getting some breathing room from the billionaires

4 hours ago, NoXion said:

The vast majority of the global population have no chance of acquiring a billion.

4 hours ago, NoXion said:

the wealth of the these billionaires would enable them to short-circuit any attempts at reigning them in via democratic means

4 hours ago, NoXion said:

if we must have billionaires, maybe a lottery is how they should be created

Suggest to me that you are simply bothered by the idea that someone out there has more money that you ever will.

The point is not that we should have billionaires. They serve no purpose. They are simply created as a byproduct of the general economic and financial system. And their existence (bothersome as it is to you) is far from the biggest problem with this system.

Edit:

And another point - you seem to conflate the actions of corporations with the actions of their billionaire owners. Corporations (or even associations of corporations) have a tendency to "bully" and "lobby" and promote goals which may be detrimental to the general public (if allowed to rampage unchecked), regardless of whether they are owned by a single billionaire, or a large group of people, and governed by a board of directors. In that sense, I feel you are barking up the wrong tree, so to speak.

8 hours ago, dr_st said:

Heck, if they raise minimum wage, businesses will be less profitable, will pay lower taxes, and the difference will have to be compensated somehow.

Stop posting undigested propaganda in my owl thread.

Quote

Heck, if they raise minimum wage, businesses will be less profitable, will pay lower taxes, and the difference will have to be compensated somehow.

Here's my stock-standard rebuttal I've had to use against this line about a thousand times in e-arguments before:

Quote

McDonalds settled this years ago, they said they could handle a pretty substantial minimum wage increase just by charging 10 cents more per Big Mac, and the ultra-ultra-rich cocksuckers would see NO perceptible difference.

Heaven forbid they keep the price the same and actually take a pay cut. That would be anti-freedom, or something. If we tell someone who can afford multiple mansions with swimming pools to give a fucking penny back, it's anti-freedom. Which is super weird considering they are only able to attain their massive wealth and thus political influence through the labor of the workers. You'd thinking mandating fair compensation (ie, a wage where one can comfortably afford food, rent, clothes, travel expenses, and occasional luxuries) would be the best idea for stability. Remember the concept of the win-win situation? Whatever happened to that?

Forgive the quote blocks but I've had this argument so many times that I should probably just start printing it on a card and mailing it out or something.

I know you didn't specifically mention the freedom thing, at least not that I noticed, but the arguments tend to come as a package deal.

On 6/13/2020 at 8:16 PM, ‹rd› said:

This reads like that time someone generated complete nonsense text and responded to a Goatlord thread with it.

If you mean threads like this one, I presumed most of the posts were of that type, probably including the OP.

Huh. All I see there is a pretty harmless philosophical talk about morality changing/adapting over time - one that is frankly extremely easy to read and understand, even if you disagree with the various perspectives posters are bringing to the table. I'd hate to see how you'd react to some of the supposedly "more academic" philosophical ideas/literature out there, especially the egregiously sesquipedalian stuff (aka, most of it)

@Doomkid

I see I hit some of your pet peeves with that "minimum wage" comment, which was just an example of how the interests of the minimum-wage worker and those of the highly paid professional may not coincide.

Great job of bringing the McDonalds example as somehow representative of anything, when McDonalds is a huge international business empire that can handle anything and adjust (it probably won't lose any clients by charging just $0.10 more burger either). Why don't you look here, and notice who the opposition is. It's not the "ultra-ultra-rich cocksuckers", it's the small and medium businesses, because they are the ones hit hardest by forced minimum wage increases. And note who the supporters are - it's those rich bastards - McDonalds, Walmart, Target, and... drum roll... Jeff Bezos!!!

As for the rest of your rebuttal, well - to be honest, I didn't see much rebuttal there, just more vitriol towards the "ultra-ultra-rich cocksuckers" with mansions and swimming pools. Then there is that ridiculous "freedom" argument, which is so stupid that I have to wonder if anyone ever really brought it up in debate, or whether you just made that up as a strawman argument, so that your rebuttal looks stronger, because, honestly, as a "stock-standard rebuttal", I find it pretty weak.

If you insist, you can read this (I didn't write it, obviously, and I don't even necessarily support it, but it's just a bunch of studies that shows some other, possibly unintentional consequences of minimum wage increase):

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/four_reasons_not_to_raise_the_minimum_wage.pdf

P.S. Who gets to define what "comfortably afford food, rent, clothes, travel expenses" means, and how much "occasional luxuries" should be mandated? You?

14 hours ago, dr_st said:

@NoXion

I thought about point-by-point reply, but realized that it will serve no purpose, other than just us going in circles.

 

Obviously, the fact that some people manage to hoard immense wealth, bothers you deeply, and you think a lot of problems can be solved if you just take their money and distribute it to everyone. It sounds plausible on paper, surely. But it doesn't work for many reasons. First of all, 150 billion is a lot to an individual, but take it and split between the 300 million Americans, and suddenly everyone gets just $500. Not a big deal, is it? Well, let's strip Gates and Zuckerberg and a few others too. Maybe you'll get to 1 trillion USD total. Only a fraction of the US annual budget, and still only gets you about $3000 per US citizen. Let's take all the money of the 2,000 billionaires in the world, with a total worth of about $9 trillion. Divide by the global population - each one gets a little over $1000. Will this really make a long-term change in anyone's life?

 

Second, you might find that taking this money is a bit tricky, because it's not really there. For such people, most of the assets are not money in the bank, but shares of companies they own. Try forcing them to sell that many shares - who will buy them and what will it do to the share price? That's an issue of the modern financial system in general, not just of the ultra-rich.

 

Try to come up with clever ways to take their money or prevent them from accumulating it in the first place? Never mind that I still haven't heard a concrete proposal from you (not that I have one myself, but you are the one who seems to think we should have one) - worry not, they will find ways around it. And if not them, someone else will. I'll reiterate the point I brought up in the other thread - no matter what system of rules you come up with - some people will find ways to use it in their advantage.

 

I didn't reply to it, because it's a dumb and meaningless statement. I can say also that I can run 100 miles a day for the rest of my life and I still won't cover a distance equal to the distance between the Earth and the sun, or that I can practice basketball for 10 hours a day for the rest of my life and still not become as good as Michael Jordan. There, I replied. Happy?

 

You read it wrong. It's not "most". It's 14%.

 

These debate has gotten really long and I may come across as some guy who has vested influence in supporting unlimited exploitation of the poor by the ultra-rich, or that I oppose to any idea that can reduce the income inequality or increase the average welfare of the population. This is quite far from the truth. Tax reforms that make the super-rich pay more are something that some billionaires have actually advocated for (e.g., Warren Buffet).

 

It's just that discussions like this don't generally produce any useful ideas, only "take it from those rich bastards and give it to people in need". That won't work, for obvious reasons, along those that I provided above.

 

In the end, snippets like 

 

Suggest to me that you are simply bothered by the idea that someone out there has more money that you ever will.

 

The point is not that we should have billionaires. They serve no purpose. They are simply created as a byproduct of the general economic and financial system. And their existence (bothersome as it is to you) is far from the biggest problem with this system.

 

Edit:

And another point - you seem to conflate the actions of corporations with the actions of their billionaire owners. Corporations (or even associations of corporations) have a tendency to "bully" and "lobby" and promote goals which may be detrimental to the general public (if allowed to rampage unchecked), regardless of whether they are owned by a single billionaire, or a large group of people, and governed by a board of directors. In that sense, I feel you are barking up the wrong tree, so to speak.

There are whole universities full of smarter, more qualified people than me, who have various ideas about this kind of thing. I don't need to personally provide detailed solutions in order to recognise a legitimate problem, no more than I need to come up with a fully-detailed plan for how civilisation is to transition to a post-fossil fuel economy in order to recognise the problem of anthropogenic climate change.

It seems rather pointless to talk about practical solutions, when there are still significant numbers of people who aren't even convinced that any problems exist in the first place. Since I'd prefer the solutions to be democratically enacted, I think convincing more people that the problem exists takes priority, over formulating detailed plans that won't be taken seriously by enough people. Solutions proposed by the billionaires themselves are a no-go; that's like listening to oil companies for solutions to climate change. They have a direct interest in maintaining the status quo.

Wealth gaps are far from meaningless. The point of my explanation was to illustrate just how vast that gap is. The fact that I had to come up with a ridiculous hypothetical to get from 0 to billionaire is part of that point. Billionaires aren't superhuman, so there's no way on Earth that they do anything close to the work required actually earn the absurd quantities of wealth that they do control.

If meaningful reform within the parameters of the system is impossible, as you appear to be implying ("no matter what system of rules you come up with..."), then that only leaves change imposed on it from outside. Since you don't strike me as the revolutionary type, I'm not sure you really want to go down the whole "any attempt at internal reform is ultimately doomed" route.

Yeah, I know that individuals with astronomically unearned wealth are only a part of the problem. Kind of like how it's not just climate change we're facing, but also the destruction of arable land through unsustainable agriculture, microplastic pollution of the oceans, and a sixth mass extinction. I don't have detailed solutions to those problems either. So might as well let the world burn, I guess?

@NoXion

Well, given how you present the problem, you'll have to count me in as one of those who aren't even convinced that it exists. I'm sorry, but as I said before, I just don't agree with you that the existence of billionaires is any problem in itself. They are a byproduct of the system, not the cause of any problems (which are very real) in the system.

I also don't think that a meaningful reform within the parameters is impossible. It is very much possible. Step 1 - you should start thinking more about how to help the people you want to help, not how to punish the billionaires who you hold responsible (in my opinion, wrongly so; look at my last point that you quoted to understand my position).

The notion that labour is the only legitimate means of making money is also one I find deeply misguided. May I recommend two books to read, if you haven't yet:

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

The first one surveys a lot more than what is relevant for the discussion here, but I found it interesting in general. The second one is very well-known, and presents various concepts and ideas about finance, enterpreneurship and business, that I think are important for everyone to understand, even if not everyone can or should follow them.

2 minutes ago, dr_st said:

@NoXion

Well, given how you present the problem, you'll have to count me in as one of those who aren't even convinced that it exists. I'm sorry, but as I said before, I just don't agree with you that the existence of billionaires is any problem in itself. They are a byproduct of the system, not the cause of any problems (which are very real) in the system.

 

I also don't think that a meaningful reform within the parameters is impossible. It is very much possible. Step 1 - you should start thinking more about how to help the people you want to help, not how to punish the billionaires who you hold responsible (in my opinion, wrongly so; look at my last point that you quoted to understand my position).

 

The notion that labour is the only legitimate means of making money is also one I find deeply misguided. May I recommend two books to read, if you haven't yet:

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

 

The first one surveys a lot more than what is relevant for the discussion here, but I found it interesting in general. The second one is very well-known, and presents various concepts and ideas about finance, enterpreneurship and business, that I think are important for everyone to understand, even if not everyone can or should follow them.

Billionaires are conscious agents with both the means and the motivation to act in certain ways, that is, to preserve their own wealth and position. Therefore I think it's ridiculous to think that they're just an unavoidable by-product of an unconscious process, as if billionaires were just the socio-economic equivalent of copying errors in DNA replication.

I don't just want to "punish" billionaires for their crimes, I want to abolish them entirely, because their wealth and power allows them to abuse workers on a massive scale and get away with it. I'm looking at you, Jeff, but he's far from the only one. If they can be convinced to willingly and peacefully relinquish their wealth and power, great. I would prefer that over the alternative. But if a small group decides that hanging on to their privilege is more important than a more just and equitable society, then frankly they're as much in the wrong as the French aristocrats who looked down at the starving peasants and told them to eat brioche instead of bread.

Labour is the only means by which wealth is created. All the money in the world won't help you do anything if nobody is willing to work for you. Minerals have to be mined, crops have to be harvested, machines have to be built and maintained, and so on. It's not the billionaires who build the things. It's not the CEOs who write the code. It's not the investors who do the intellectual labour that turns engineering concepts into actual projects. If they could do all that by their lonesome, then they'd keep the money instead of hiring people and paying their wages.

@NoXion

Well, certainly, these theories, popularized by one Karl Marx, have been known for quite some time, and tested with slightly different approaches and varying degrees of success, in several countries around the world. I don't think anywhere they succeeded in creating a "more just and equitable society", though. Therefore, I think you and I can simply agree to disagree, and end this debate.

41 minutes ago, dr_st said:

@NoXion

Well, certainly, these theories, popularized by one Karl Marx, have been known for quite some time, and tested with slightly different approaches and varying degrees of success, in several countries around the world. I don't think anywhere they succeeded in creating a "more just and equitable society", though. Therefore, I think you and I can simply agree to disagree, and end this debate.

The realms of economics and politics as they apply to the real world aren't carried on like a football game, which is supposed to be a fair competition between two equal sides who agree not to cheat, with a genuinely unbiased referee on the field to make sure by keeping an objective eye on both sides. These kind of issues are a matter of life and death, and there is no third-party referee to appeal to in case of unfair dealings. 

One side has had support from an overwhelming majority of ruling classes, with all the attendant advantages that come with such high station. The other side - our side - has had to make do with whatever could be mustered from the people with the time, energy and motivation to contribute. Because the funny thing about workers, you may have noticed, is that they have to work for a decent living.

So yeah, no surprise that they're winning, when they've got centuries of privilege, billions of dollars and the long muscular arms of the state to call upon for help. That doesn't mean they're in the right.

I'm gonna leave it at that as far this exchange is concerned. If you want to have the final word, go ahead.

It's not about having the final word. There never is a "final word" in such debates. I will not try to convince you that my view of the world is any more correct than yours.

What I can say is that my family comes from such a country where it was attempted to build such a economical and political system as you seem to advocate for, and that now I live in a country where the system is more like what you see in the US and most westernized nations. I have some first hand and some second hand understanding of the life of the average person in both systems, and I have no doubt which one I prefer.

I don't think our choices are limited to a binary between Capitalism and Sovietism.

On 6/13/2020 at 7:31 PM, Gokuma said:

Honestly I think there are too many people on earth as it is.   However, I highly disagree with the elite's methods of poisoning and dumbing down (even retarding if you prefer) people when the elite's greed is so much to blame for so many problems in the first place. 

I didn't mean that specifically toward you more to people who use that argument against Gates. Of all the good and bad he's done, I don't know why supporting the idea of maintaining a healthy population level gets so much hate. Some folks just want to see the Earth become a writhing, tangled mass of choking flesh, and not in a cool Doom texture kind of way.

And yes I agree that if people were being secretly sterilized by vaccines that would be evil if it were true.

It has been shown raising quality of life for all people is the best way to prevent excessive population growth and vaccinating people against deadly disease is a big part of that.

Man, what the hell?

Any discussion of how there are "too many people on Earth" is running parallel to unironic support for eugenics. Also interesting that nobody ever considers themselves part of the problem.

16 hours ago, dr_st said:

P.S. Who gets to define what "comfortably afford food, rent, clothes, travel expenses" means, and how much "occasional luxuries" should be mandated? You?

No, not me. That power will remain firmly with the corporate interests you're defending.

Quote

What I can say is that my family comes from such a country where it was attempted to build such a economical and political system as you seem to advocate for, and that now I live in a country where the system is more like what you see in the US and most westernized nations. I have some first hand and some second hand understanding of the life of the average person in both systems, and I have no doubt which one I prefer.

Same but opposite. America is flat-out a worse place to live than Australia economically and in terms of working conditions/worker's rights. The reason things are better here in AUS is because a much more reasonable minimum wage is mandated and, despite being capitalist on the whole (of course), we have more social security and social welfare.

You know what the long-game results of that are? A nation that has more job security on average, more money in the average household (thus more spending by the common citizen) and a substantially higher happiness index and livability index. When the commoners have more money to spend, the federal government has a higher yield for their tax pool and as a result things like infrastructure and other basic municipal responsibilities are actually taken care of - unlike much of America, with a completely decaying infrastructure, not to mention absolutely nothing to give the taxpayers in terms of socialized medicine. (Getting financially raped by insurance companies for minimum coverage that they always try to weasel out of is not preferable to taxpayer funded healthcare and I can prove this as well. Just by the by.)

This ridiculous false dichotomy between laissez faire capitalism and strict, overt communism is absurd. Capitalism which takes some important notes/cues from communism is easily the best approach.

Quote

I don't think anywhere they succeeded in creating a "more just and equitable society", though.

Yes they fucking have! This statement can be readily disproven, there are other countries that are still capitalist by and large but have better regulations and standards put in place that benefit the commoners greatly at only minor expense to the megacorps. They still get to be filthy, disgustingly rich, but the common man isn't going to be subjected to absolutely archaic working conditions and will have a paycheck that is actually fucking livable - which in turn he will put back into the economy, thus making it stronger, the government will have more money to take a cut from and reinvest into infrastructure and other important needs.

This is how an economy works, and when it doesn't work, it's because the money cycle grinds to a halt at the bottom: For example like in America, where 19% of households are making barely enough to scrape by (25k or less per year per household). About 13% of Americans are living in full-blown poverty, on a scale that says poverty is as little as 12k or less per year. I don't care how shit at math someone is, even they have to know that isn't nearly enough to live on annually.

I know you asked that "who gets to say how much is enough to live on" question all sarcastically, but the fact is it should be determined by a fucking calculator. If average cost of rent, food and travel expense in America exceeds what a full time minimum wage worker makes - which, big shock, it fucking does - the minimum wage is too goddamn low. This isn't even economics (or hardly, anyway), it's just simple mathematics at this point.

33 minutes ago, Mr. Freeze said:

Any discussion of how there are "too many people on Earth" is running parallel to unironic support for eugenics. Also interesting that nobody ever considers themselves part of the problem.

Unfettered population growth is an unsustainable model. Just because someone who points that out doesn't instantly fucking kill themselves doesn't mean they are wrong. I've heard this dumb argument before but the fact is, it's not even self-contradictory in the slightest - people who are simply stating that some areas don't have access to enough resources to sustain their population aren't suggesting the people there should be killed, they're suggesting they should have less children than they do on average, because if they have more children, that's just more offspring they'll have to see starve to death. Not exactly an optimal outcome.

Now, granted, there's a very strong argument to be made that it's meddling from the West that has resulted in such economic/resource depravity in those areas that don't have access to sufficient means of sustaining their population and I have no intention of hiding from that fact - but, until we somehow work out a way to get those people what they need in order to survive, suggesting that they bring slightly less offspring into a cruel world where they haven't got adequate drinking water and access to food is not the "lol just murder the poor countries" argument that a lot of dickwads paint it as.

Obviously I'm in the "get people what they need" camp above all else, but I wouldn't subject myself or my loved ones to poverty and starvation, so the suggestion that not wanting to see the masses in other countries go through that is tantamount to "hoping they all just fucking die" is completely dishonest.

EDIT: Just to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt this isn't some eugenics bullshit, here's a suggestion: When it comes to dipping population growth, lets start with America, then after that we can move onto 3rd world countries who are having more children than they can possibly sustain. How's that? For me this isn't about race at all, it's about the goal of minimizing human suffering. (This is partially a joke, only because America is still many times more livable than certain 3rd world countries with resource/population ratio issues, but I just wanted to make it crystal clear that this isn't a "race" or "culture" thing - at least not for me.)

It's also worth mentioning that the aversion to birth control in many 3rd world countries is a result of cunty Catholic missionaries spreading their bullshit to these poor people about how you have to have as many children as possible to keep Jesus happy, oh and by the way the gays and deviants are all bad an aught to be killed. Is it eugenics when they do it? Because I sure as hell think so.

1 hour ago, Mr. Freeze said:

Any discussion of how there are "too many people on Earth" is running parallel to unironic support for eugenics. Also interesting that nobody ever considers themselves part of the problem.

Doomkid's already written up more than what my calm and rational brain would have come up with on a good day.

Based on the wording I'd assume my post was included in the subject of the above, but assuming as such for argument's sake:

1. Do you think I'd exist if given the choice? Many of us would not choose as such and are just doing the best we can with what we've been given.
2. Are you one of the people who think "if you think there should be less people just kill yourself lol"? Suicide is painful, often fails, and deeply harms an incredible number of loved ones. This is why it's seen as a last resort.
3. Do you really think everyone who worries about the impact of billions of humans doesn't try to minimize their own impact on the planet? Which includes, most importantly, having fewer or no children?

This isn't about eugenics. It has nothing to do with who has the children, just asking for the slightest thought about how many.

In case you were unaware, having fewer or no children is the absolute highest impact you can have in preserving the earth's resources and joining in the fight against climate change.

This is part of the conversation that doesn't get brought up because "my country's gotta outbreed the immigrants!" and "the e word! oh no! are you hitler?"

Eugenics? Sure why not. This is Doomworld. We're all pro-death here right?

16 minutes ago, DuckReconMajor said:

Are you one of the people who think "if you think there should be less people just kill yourself lol"? Suicide is painful, often fails, and deeply harms an incredible number of loved ones. This is why it's seen as a last resort.

That's...not what I meant? I just take issue with the premise. 

31 minutes ago, DuckReconMajor said:

In case you were unaware, having fewer or no children is the absolute highest impact you can have in preserving the earth's resources and joining in the fight against climate change.

In what sense? Per capita, the individual's contributions to climate change are miniscule compared to the factory nearby that is not only pumping deadly gas into the atmosphere, but probably lobbied against cleaner production methods. If it's food production you're worried about, we already produce at least twice as much as we use, with the rest being thrown out or rotting due to poor storage. If you're concerned that we don't have enough land, the entire human race could live in New Zealand. 

13 minutes ago, Mr. Freeze said:

If you're concerned that we don't have enough land, the entire human race could live in New Zealand. 

This is gibberish. I could fit 30 people in my living room if I crammed them in tight enough, but my house and every other house in my area could not possibly sustain 30 people living there. If we tried, the local food outlets would have their shelves completely ransacked and bone-dry and the chances of mass civil unrest before the next food shipment would be extremely high.

If we somehow DID manage to produce enough food for the average 2 bedroom house to support 30 goddamn people, the resulting industry in the area to produce all that food and drinkable water would turn the once-beautiful environment into a dead, festering shithole, and as a result of that ecological impact, food production would become more costly and less abundant, and eventually the dramatically raised price of food coupled with the now-destroyed environment would result in.. drum roll.. That's right, massive civil unrest and a population that is completely destitute.

It's like the people who make this dumb argument don't think about it for more than 5 minutes.

I don't think the article is actually arguing we force everyone into a NYC-style living arrangement as much as the concern for usable land is typically overblown. 

That's fair enough in a vacuum, but usable land is only one small slice of the discussion. Given how wasteful we are and how much poverty there already is with the current numbers, it's a safe assumption that with even more of us to produce food, shelter, clothing, etc. for comes even greater ecological impact/destruction and even greater numbers of starving and impoverished people. Then when you mention that we should learn how to take care of all the people we already have rather than producing even more that we don't know what to do with, a good chunk of people often assume you want some kind of race-based eugenics, which is crazy.

Education and access to birth control, unfettered by crazy Catholic missionaries that tell people to breed like mad and kill off all the gay people, would be more than enough to help people on the way to building families of a more manageable size, so they don't have to spread resources so thin that they struggle to function or survive. I don't want people in developing countries to have more manageable birth rates because I hate them and want to see them perish, in fact the reasoning is the direct opposite of that.

4 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Yes they fucking have! This statement can be readily disproven, there are other countries that are still capitalist by and large

Then you must not have been paying enough attention when reading my discussion with NoXion. In countries that are "still capitalist by and large", billionaires are not viewed as criminals and as the enemy, and their existence is not abolished, which is what he seems to advocate for. That is flat out Marxism (as evident also by choice of words such as "ruling classes" and "centuries of privilege"). Now go ahead and try to prove to me that the actual Marxist and communist ideology ever succeeded in creating a just society.

4 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Same but opposite. America is flat-out a worse place to live than Australia economically and in terms of working conditions/worker's rights. The reason things are better here in AUS is because a much more reasonable minimum wage is mandated and, despite being capitalist on the whole (of course), we have more social security and social welfare. You know what the long-game results of that are? A nation that has more job security on average, more money in the average household (thus more spending by the common citizen) and a substantially higher happiness index and livability index.

If you look at the countries surrounding Australia in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report#2019_World_Happiness_Report (Canada, Austria, Costa Rica, Israel), you will find that most of them have minimum wage far lower than Australia, and in fact closer to that of the US. Mininum wage is not the most important factor here, if it matters at all.

4 hours ago, Doomkid said:

This ridiculous false dichotomy between laissez faire capitalism and strict, overt communism is absurd. Capitalism which takes some important notes/cues from communism is easily the best approach.

You may think that I created this false dichotomy? Nowhere did I say that I actually advocate for the US system. I agree with you on a whole lot of things in how the system you have in Australia (as far as I understand it) may be better in many ways that the system in the US. But when someone preaches Marxist ideals to me (even without admitting it), I don't see Australia, I see the USSR. And you know, between that and the current US system, I still prefer the latter.

The auto-play gods have some comedic timing.

While watching the second video, at the moment where he was saying, "I can no longer in good conscience, support" (0:13 - 0:15) Somehow NSP's 6969 started playing on the first video. Maybe I mis-clicked or maybe it was autoplay idk, but that was when Danny started saying 69. And I am dead right now.

On a more on-topic note, can we all declare Doomkid as Dad? I want to see Doomkid as Dad.

I like the parody video on the first page. Then it pivots into why monopolies are bad, and how Billionaires are capable of investing more into elevating humanity's overall quality of life. But instead money machine go brrrrr 

20 hours ago, dr_st said:

Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

LOL! Rich Dad Poor Dad? Are you fucking serious? Is this a joke?