United States Politics Thread 47

[zompist]

Marx never advised people to kill sparrows or produce backyard pig iron. These capitalist arguments are non sequiturs unless specifically directed against Maoist policies.

No, Marx didn't, Mao did. It's not a "capitalist argument" to point out Mao's self-destructive policies. Socialism is not advanced by trying to slander or shut up anyone daring to criticize its historical mistakes.

The framing is specifically:

You can point to all the dead sparrows and rotten pig iron all you like, but you cannot convince me that giving fascists trillions of dollars while people like me cannot even afford basic health care is a rational or benevolent economic system.

As written, such arguments make no sense. They are also fairly common.

Your response is baffling. Are you really not aware malloc is a left-winger who is criticizing capitalism? Not very coherently, here: there was just a long argument on the board protesting communists and laissez-faire capitalists both happy to pretend that those two systems are the only ones possible. Why did you take his comment as being an attack on Marx? Why is criticism of Mao a "capitalist argument"?

[rotting bones]

No, Marx didn't, Mao did. It's not a "capitalist argument" to point out Mao's self-destructive policies. Socialism is not advanced by trying to slander or shut up anyone daring to criticize its historical mistakes.

The framing is specifically:

You can point to all the dead sparrows and rotten pig iron all you like, but you cannot convince me that giving fascists trillions of dollars while people like me cannot even afford basic health care is a rational or benevolent economic system.

As written, such arguments make no sense. They are also fairly common.

Your response is baffling. Are you really not aware malloc is a left-winger who is criticizing capitalism? Not very coherently, here: there was just a long argument on the board protesting communists and laissez-faire capitalists both happy to pretend that those two systems are the only ones possible. Why did you take his comment as being an attack on Marx?

I took it as sarcasm about how socialism is attacked. I was agreeing.

[Travis B.]

Marx never advised people to kill sparrows or produce backyard pig iron. These capitalist arguments are non sequiturs unless specifically directed against Maoist policies.

No, Marx didn't, Mao did. It's not a "capitalist argument" to point out Mao's self-destructive policies. Socialism is not advanced by trying to slander or shut up anyone daring to criticize its historical mistakes.

The framing is specifically:

You can point to all the dead sparrows and rotten pig iron all you like, but you cannot convince me that giving fascists trillions of dollars while people like me cannot even afford basic health care is a rational or benevolent economic system.

As written, such arguments make no sense. They are also fairly common.

I would also accept pointing to these as a criticism of dictatorship. Or a criticism of a lack of education in science and math.

The criticism of capitalism was not original to Mao. IIRC even in China, the original leader of the Chinese Communists was killed. Mao was a fallback option.

malloc's point is that as much as one can point at the crimes of individual leftists, that does not somehow justify the ultracapitalist status quo.

[bradrn]

you cannot convince me that giving fascists trillions of dollars while people like me cannot even afford basic health care is a rational or benevolent economic system.

Did anyone here even attempt to argue that it is? Quite the reverse, in fact.

[malloc]

The extreme wealth of Elon Musk is not merely unjust but also dangerous. He could easily outspend everyone else on electoral campaign donations, buy any media platform he wants, or bribe his way out of any legal problem. Can we even resist someone for whom one billion dollars is mere pocket change?

[bradrn]

The extreme wealth of Elon Musk is not merely unjust but also dangerous. He could easily outspend everyone else on electoral campaign donations, buy any media platform he wants, or bribe his way out of any legal problem. Can we even resist someone for whom one billion dollars is mere pocket change?

Wasn’t there an election just last year where he funded a candidate who lost?

[WeepingElf]

The extreme wealth of Elon Musk is not merely unjust but also dangerous. He could easily outspend everyone else on electoral campaign donations, buy any media platform he wants, or bribe his way out of any legal problem. Can we even resist someone for whom one billion dollars is mere pocket change?

malloc, I am worried about many of the things you are worried about, too, and Elon Musk's obscenely enormous wealth is one of them. But I am not paranoid about them. I am convinced that these problems can and eventually will be overcome - humanity has managed to end human sacrifices, almost managed to end slavery and witch-hunts, and successfully dealt with the Nazis and the ozone hole, and that makes me confident that we will overcome such things as AIs clogging web sites with their scrapers and flooding the media with slop, the climate crisis, the current wave of right-wing extremism and all that, too. Human history so far has been a story of progress, with occasional setbacks, and there is no reason not to assume that the current setback is just one more of these occasional setbacks. We are not doomed; we have to stand up against the problems we are facing, but we can solve them.

[Travis B.]

The extreme wealth of Elon Musk is not merely unjust but also dangerous. He could easily outspend everyone else on electoral campaign donations, buy any media platform he wants, or bribe his way out of any legal problem. Can we even resist someone for whom one billion dollars is mere pocket change?

Wasn’t there an election just last year where he funded a candidate who lost?

You're talking about the state Supreme Court election here in Wisconsin where his chosen candidate lost by a landslide despite all the money he was pouring in.

[bradrn]

The extreme wealth of Elon Musk is not merely unjust but also dangerous. He could easily outspend everyone else on electoral campaign donations, buy any media platform he wants, or bribe his way out of any legal problem. Can we even resist someone for whom one billion dollars is mere pocket change?

Wasn’t there an election just last year where he funded a candidate who lost?

You're talking about the state Supreme Court election here in Wisconsin where his chosen candidate lost by a landslide despite all the money he was pouring in.

That sounds like the one, yes.

[Travis B.]

Wasn’t there an election just last year where he funded a candidate who lost?

You're talking about the state Supreme Court election here in Wisconsin where his chosen candidate lost by a landslide despite all the money he was pouring in.

That sounds like the one, yes.

That election in particular demonstrated the limitations of simply pouring in money, as the involvement of Elon Musk likely increased the depth of the landslide by angering voters against his candidate.

[Raphael]

One possible silver lining to cling to in the whole Musk con is that while it will guarantee him a very long status as an unimaginably extremely rich man, it might eventually lead to a lot of his fans and sycophants and other assorted business idiots losing certain amounts of money.

He's clearly from that whole white power/white pride crowd. No, not because of one tattoo, but because of a whole number of things. Though people only seem to be talking about the tattoo, because all too many people reporting or commenting on politics are apparently unable to pay attention to more than one thing at the same time in the same context. When you've got a pattern, you might be able to explain away every individual part of it, but in that case, the very fact that you have to explain away so many different things is quite telling.

Please explain the "whole number of things" more.

I'm also curious.

For one thing, he told a podcast host who's apparently from that crowd that he's a big fan of his podcast. That's not the kind of thing people do by accident.

[Travis B.]

One possible silver lining to cling to in the whole Musk con is that while it will guarantee him a very long status as an unimaginably extremely rich man, it might eventually lead to a lot of his fans and sycophants and other assorted business idiots losing certain amounts of money.

Please explain the "whole number of things" more.

I'm also curious.

For one thing, he told a podcast host who's apparently from that crowd that he's a big fan of his podcast. That's not the kind of thing people do by accident.

Which podcast host is this?

[alice]

I'm not sure that Musk now being a trillionaire actually means that he can to go into a widget shop and buy a trillion widgets at $1 each, even assuming he already has the space to store them.

Still an (expletive), though,

[Raphael]

Which podcast host is this?

Some guy named Nate Cornacchia.

[Raphael]

I'm not sure that Musk now being a trillionaire actually means that he can to go into a widget shop and buy a trillion widgets at $1 each, even assuming he already has the space to store them.

Still an (expletive), though,

Beat you to it! https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?p=75034#p75034

For what it's worth, as much as I dislike Musk, I kind of like the fact that he's around. If he wouldn't actually exist, people with our kind of political views would have to make him up.

[malloc]

For what it's worth, as much as I dislike Musk, I kind of like the fact that he's around. If he wouldn't actually exist, people with our kind of political views would have to make him up.

That doesn't make any sense. You can argue that he provides us with a clear and easily hated enemy, but that doesn't make him any less dangerous. He is now armed with financial nukes that he can drop where ever he wants, not only in the US but anywhere he wants to sway an election.

[bradrn]

He is now armed with financial nukes that he can drop where ever he wants, not only in the US but anywhere he wants to sway an election.

Not necessarily successfully, though, as we said.

(Also, it’s not like he wasn’t ultra-rich already…)

[Travis B.]

He is now armed with financial nukes that he can drop where ever he wants, not only in the US but anywhere he wants to sway an election.

Not necessarily successfully, though, as we said.

(Also, it’s not like he wasn’t ultra-rich already…)

But but but Elon Musk is omnipotent!

[Ketsuban]

humanity has managed to end [bad things in the past], and that makes me confident that we will overcome such things as AIs clogging web sites with their scrapers and flooding the media with slop

My main concern is the possibility that the people with the power to effect the decision may very well propose sunsetting the open Internet entirely in favour of a bunch of proprietary protocols, similar to the practice of offering an app for your phone which just shows the same information as the website but doesn't use the web browser's plugins so you can't block the ads.

[WeepingElf]

humanity has managed to end [bad things in the past], and that makes me confident that we will overcome such things as AIs clogging web sites with their scrapers and flooding the media with slop

My main concern is the possibility that the people with the power to effect the decision may very well propose sunsetting the open Internet entirely in favour of a bunch of proprietary protocols, similar to the practice of offering an app for your phone which just shows the same information as the website but doesn't use the web browser's plugins so you can't block the ads.

I am concerned about that, too.