Lawful evil with utrawides.

Removed by mod

The vast and rapid modernization and industrialization of Russia at the start was a success, but my opinion is that Marxist-Leninism stopped in the USSR when Stalin seized the country and turned it into a crony dictatorship. I don’t believe that lasted long enough to be truly called a success, as it immediately fell to the authoritarianism it overthrew from the monarchy.

If you don’t think that Stalinism was the death of Marxist-Leninism in the USSR then the bread lines, famines, forced labor and relocation, imperial expansionism, etc. as broadly reported by those that lived there and lived through it are a product of socialism. I also believe that would count as failures of socialism and not proof of success.

I agree with you that the PRC is still nominally socialist, but believe they also went Stalinist instead of Marxist-Leninist. I would call them Stalinist Communist rather than socialist. I also do not think the juice was worth the squeeze with the number of dead in the revolution and aftermath, but there is no telling what an alternative would have looked like so that is just, like, my opinion man. I personally don’t consider China as a socialist success story, but instead another warning example for how easily Communism can be corrupted/captured from within.

I totally give you that Marxist-Leninism was the defining ideology of the 20th century, but I’d call it the fuse that lead to “Communism” the failed authoritarian ideology. Like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand is to WWI. That is a hell of a lot more than Georgism ever got, to be sure, but would still say there has never been a successful Marxist country because they never remain Marxist for long.

I know I’m going to get downvoted for this, but since the USSR was a historical failure and Marxists claim China isn’t actually Communist but Capitalist, can’t we say the same for Marxism? An interesting historical curiosity, but it was never actually implemented and thus can’t be said to have ever taken off.

Both Georgists and Marxists get to complain about how things would be so much better if someone would actually just do it the right way for once. I say this as a left leaning Georgist Libertarian, to my heart in the right place Marxist cousins.

I literally just had mine too, there’s dozens of us. Dozens! Happy birthday.

I guarantee you it was, as the only edit I made was to comment on how I somehow got a net 17 downvotes with only you laying out a complete reason for disagreement, even if it was due to a misreading caused misunderstanding apparently. I found it funny that I honestly couldn’t figure out which political party I pissed off to get that many down votes.

I would like to point out that I did 100% say Universal Healthcare, and nowhere did I implay keeping our shitty healthcare system with a UBI. To further clarify, UBI should only replace welfare programs, so stuff like food stamps, WIC, TANIF, state welfare, social security, etc. because those have restrictions and fuck people over almost as many times as they help them.

Social Security probably won’t be solvent in 50 years, food stamps are great until you make a dollar over the max allowable and lose all food assistance, WIC is great until your infant is just a little older and you lose all assistance. SSDI takes years to begin receiving and is, once again, subject to being dropped for any of a variety of reasons.

I will assume that you mean only the 2nd amendment and not that preventing anti-transition and/or anti-abortion legislation would also prevent laws on murder, rape, etc. If I am wrong, I think my response will cover those as well.

The purpose of the government is to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. All those things you listed infringe on the rights and bodily autonomy of others, which falls under justice and general welfare at the very least. What anyone does with and to their own body under their own consent does not, and if thus overreach of the government.

Self defense, whether armed or unarmed, passive or active, is a natural right belonging to any living thing to prevent loss of their autonomy. Guns are tools to enable self defense and even the playing field. They can be and frequently are used without infringing on the rights and autonomy of others.

I also did not include guns under the government not having the right or business to regulate. I think they certainly can, and they have through the 2nd amendment. If you want to change this, you must follow the established and agreed upon rules to do so. If you do not, you weaken all other laws by establishing loopholes where they can be ignored.

Yeah, but you have to take the whole sentence to actually identify the grammar, not just the first 4 words. Beyond what has already been said about well regulated meaning ‘in good functional order’, that is a explanatory preposition to why the rights of the people to keep and bear arms is important. The Federalist papers back this up well enough as well.

If I said “Because being hungry sucks, access to the fridge shall not be restricted”, this does not imply that one must be hungry to have access to the fridge. Maybe it would be better if it were so people couldn’t over eat or eat out of boredom, but you would need to change that sentence to make it mean you had to be hungry to access the fridge.

There is also the fact that under federal law, everyone not serving in the standing military or the national guard (the organized militia) is legally classified as the unorganized militia, but I don’t think that even matters to the reading of the amendment.

I would think that having procedures, medications and other medical costs covered under universal healthcare and having a non-means tested or work gated UBI would be a hell of a lot better than the current Medicaid and SSI disability nightmares.

I include both of these together because currently the overhead expenditures for managing and running both the collective welfare programs at all levels and our for-profit healthcare system run at the behest of and for the profits of health insurance burn a significant amount of both money and time.

Needs may vary a lot, but having hoops to jump through to maintain eligibility for multiple welfare programs and under constant threat of being kicked off of any of them doesn’t seem to be the right answer to me.

Huh, none of that has anything to do with communism. I basically agree with everything except the guns part (I believe that to be a fundamentally incorrect interpretation of the wording of the 2nd amendment), but in a “the government has no business or right to regulate those things” libertarian way.

It’s also not woke because the principle of bodily and personal autonomy is old school “don’t tread on me” libertarianism, and thus “right wing”. I think I agree with Linus about the inability to define those terms, carry on.

I may not be the target audience though as I also totally want socialized healthcare, free education extending into the collegiate level, and a UBI replacing all welfare programs, because those fall under the “General Welfare” set out by the Constitution and those things would cost less than what we have now for far better outcomes.

EDIT Wow, that’s a lot of voting engagement. I am not sure if I pissed off the Left for saying I believe the 2nd amendment as written and intended grants an individual right to guns, the Right for saying universal healthcare and UBI is good and I don’t believe the government can or should legislate abortion/LGBTQ rights/etc, or both sides equally.

Starseige Tribes prepared me for this. Let the telefrags commence!

Voyage of the Mimi theme song intensifies.

Thank you for taking the time to discuss this with me, I am finding this very enjoyable and educational.

I agree with Friedman in principle, but then I look at Ford and the other car companies with the Pinto and Takara airbags, etc. The cost of paying lawsuits gets factored in and until the cost point breaks over the deaths and injuries are just a cost of doing business. With regulation that actually has teeth and enforcement, just doing the bodies-to-profits calculations becomes an untenable solution and the recalls happen even if they aren’t profitable. I don’t think a private tort system is capable of having the teeth to achieve this in the real world. It is why Libertarianism still has a central government. It will have its inefficiencies, but it’s a right tool for the right job kind of thing.

Same with asbestos, lead, fillers in food, etc. The damages from them are so divorced from the product that many may not know who or what caused it. Lawsuits have a hard time with those kinds of things even if you know exactly which business is the cause. Look at tobacco and leaded gasoline and myriad others where lawsuits failed initially because damage was difficult to prove before the government stepped in. If fossil fuel companies can pay for the science that muddies the water on climate change, what chance does John Doe have doing enough through a lawsuit to stop DuPont from flooding the planet with forever chemicals?

I like where Friedman is coming from, but I hold him at the same level as Marx or any other economic theorist: assuming a spherical cow, at a specific temperature, without friction, and without wind resistance. I like Henry George the same way. That’s why I still claim to be a libertarian (just a left leaning centrist one), because I think Friedman and George are actually the better end result and closer to a workable solution than Marx. Marx was onto something though, and shouldn’t be dismissed outright. I do think we have stuff to learn from all branches of economic theory, and subscribe to a “the truth will be somewhere in the middle” philosophy.

There is some merit to that, and free education has the same issues in other countries besides Germany. My planning process was to treat the 2 year associates degree like we do with high school, no performance testing or path tracking. Everyone is entitled to a high school diploma of they want one, and with an associates degree being the new high school diploma it makes sense to include it.

It is what we as a society have determined makes the bare minimum education standard for then learning the rest on the job. The employment sector has moved this bar from high school graduate to associates degree, and the education system should reflect that.

The complete abolishment of public everything and allowing the market to dictate and provide is great in theory, but the same was Marxist communism is. There are always those that will break the system for personal gain.

There are also efficiencies of scale that business in a healthy, non mono/duopolostic environment can’t take advantage of that the government can. This is why I put education and healthcare under the “provide for the common defense and well-being of the people” that it exists for. This is why we the taxpayers should be paying for education in what may be or appear totally irrelevant: it results in a net gain as far as expenditure across the country as a whole and makes companies better able to train workers on the job. It also allows easier job transitions allowing more economic mobility, and also helps maintains balance of power between the worker and the employer.

In a libertarian ideal the worker is not trapped working the job or for the specific employer because that is the only job they are trained for and where their healthcare comes from. It is a contract of mutual gain. It is unreasonable for a worker to start over from scratch to change jobs if an employer is not maintaining market wages. It also allows a worker to more easily become an entrepreneur and open his own company, as this requires a broader education basis to succeed at than the job he does for another.

Strong but limited regulation is need to keep markets free. Regulations preventing pollution of the environment as a common resource, truth in representation of goods and services, prevention of anticompetitive actions and regulatory capture., etc. Without this markets inevitably fall to monopoly and the system switches from mutualism to parasitism.

There is a careful balance to maintain and government overreach is just as easy in the other direction. This is true is any economic and sociological system though. Perfectly free laze fair markets do not exist the same way perfectly egalitarian communism doesn’t exist above the small commune level and for the same reasons. Or perfect democracy where everything is voted on by everyone and everyone is making fully informed and educated decisions. If none of these are possible in the real world, all we can do is take the best parts and attempt to create the best possible real world results.

You need solid anticorruption laws the same way you need solid antitrust laws and they need to be liberally enforced. The problem is that neither have been since the 70’s. Regulatory capture by big business is a massive problem, and I am not sure if it is possible to 100% defend against.

I self identify libertarian but lean left. I’d argue that while things like funding higher education may currently be regressive, if free education extended from the current cap of 12th grade to encompass at least an associates level degree you would have a lot more lower and working class taking advantage of it and making it less regressive. With the country having jettisoned it’s manufacturing and blue collar industry, I would further argue this is necessary for the country to compete on the international stage.

What do you mean older show, it is part of Cartoon Network’s cartoon cartoons and only started airing when I was in high school.

Oh God… No… It can’t be. The year 2000 was only…

Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good…

Close, but it’s a threat: You’ll Never Walk Again. They are kneecapping people up in here.

The environmental music just keeps increasing in tempo and I can’t find the next geyser of air bubbles.

Except for Sprite at a McDonalds, because the water purification and soft drink system costs as much as the rest of the store combined.