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“The kind with trigger discipline…”
You know those means of production?
Well I have an idea…
I just want people to have food, shelter and healthcare at an affordable price.
Some call this “Leftist extremism”. =/
Ugh George Soros poisoned Progressivism!
By “affordable” I’m assuming you mean free. Always wanting a handout, of course.
I just want untaxed inheritance, corporate welfare on top of more tax breaks for me and all my friends, unregulated surveillance and data collection of the plebs so I can continue to make even more money (untaxed obvs), exclusive and elite private universities, and a justice system where I can live free of consequence and purchase a judge at a reasonable price because I believe in being fiscally conservative.
Food, shelter, and healthcare are things I’ve just never had to think about really. Although, I would also prefer that if too many people are worrying about those things in my immediate vicinity, they be shuffled around or forcibly moved to a different vicinity.
That way I don’t have to start thinking too much. It’s really unfair when that happens, because it starts to make me feel all kinds of uncomfortable. Uncomfortable is not something I’m used to feeling, and since I don’t like to think about things, I never stop and think about why somebody else being uncomfortable would also make me feel so uncomfortable.
Logically, the solution is to just put those people somewhere not visible to me, and then complain about what society is “turning into these days” when they slip through the privilege perimeter.
Due to Poe’s Law, I think you really need one of these: /s
Yeah, I thought it was pretty clear, but I guess not. I definitely would have on Reddit but figured it wouldn’t be necessary here
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Basically healthcare is free at point of service in the majority of the most functional and healthy societies. It’s not infinite and its rationed by need as opposed to being rationed according to who has the most money. This is ultimately a more valid solution to finite resources than our over complicated system which hands half the money to middle men in the name of managing it.
I agree, and just to be clear I was being sarcastic. I would also guess it’s way more than half the money.
Between health insurance companies, hospital administrator salaries, liability insurance for doctors, and drug patents making most medications unaffordable, I would say it’s pretty easily about 3/4 or more.
I volunteer in a free clinic in a red state that has had the Medicaid expansion for less than 10 years. It provided the absolute bare minimum healthcare to essentially everyone in need, but it still made such a huge difference in terms of patient health outcomes to just offer that bare minimum.
Now the U.S. is targeting that entire program through budget cuts, and in addition, at least in my state, private hospital oligopolies have been ramping down acceptance for months now because they seemed to know what was coming before anyone else.
The argument is that the cost of providing that bare minimum is unsustainable. Even if that were true, and the cuts weren’t actually only necessary to provide another tax break for the wealthy, there are clearly so many other places we could be making cuts to reduce the cost of healthcare, rather than to the tiny amount that goes towards actually providing the barely minimum healthcare coverage to some of the most vulnerable patient populations.
TERRORIST.
So you want billionaires hoisted up by their figgins as a warning to the rest of the bourgeoisie?? That’s what I’m hearing here.
I think we should have a maximum wealth cap. Set it as an even 1000x the median annual household income. That is the type of money that even the most highly paid wage earners - like anesthesiologists, would struggle to amass if they worked overtime their whole careers, lived like paupers, and invested every penny they made. That would be about $80 million today. Anything above that would be taxed at 100%. And no, I don’t give a shit about your $80 million “family farm.”
But truly obscene levels of wealth? Like 10,000x median household income and above? If we had a wealth cap, and you evaded it, and secretly collected a fortune 10x the cap? A felony whose penalty is 20 to life.
We don’t let people own atomic bombs. We don’t require you to have an atomic bomb license, or only let really nice moral people own nuclear weapons. We simply don’t let individuals own nuclear weapons, as the risk of such power in a single hand is simply too great.
And yet, we let people amass fortunes that they can use to do far more damage than any nuclear weapon. Someone like Musk or Bezos, completely on their own, can absolutely cause suffering and destruction on the level of a nuclear bomb.
No one should have that type of power. Period. That power should only be obtainable through free and fair elections. We need a maximum wealth cap. 1000x median household income. Having a billion dollars should be absurd as owning your own nuclear bomb.
I wish I could upvote this about a dozen times well said.
Idk. The kind where I believe that every adult over 18 should be given 80m2 by the government. Apartment, office space, storage space, workshop, lab, whatever.
I believe that you shouldn’t need to worry about a place to live at the bare minimum, and I believe that not having space for people to use and experiment with is one of the main hindrances of economic development (development, not “growth”)
It took me too long to figure out that you’re the ubi-style left, and not the pew-pew style and I didn’t know what type of gun an 80M2 was. 80M^2 or 80 square meters is super different from what I was picturing.
We can mix it, every family gets a rifle and plot of land.
They can keep all the other stuff if they are giving me 6,400 million dollars
Yeah and what else? Everyone wants free stuff and no one wants to pay…
This is why I hate permanently online leftism. It’s basically “give me free stuffs”
I already pay the top rate of tax in Denmark. I am completely fine with it. My personal belief is cheap accessibility to work and living space is what generates prosperity.
To say “no one wants to pay for it” to me when my marginal rate is over 52% is ridiculous.
If it was enough to cover 80 square meters housing for everyone then it wouldn’t be so ridiculous. Thing is it isn’t even remotely enough
Taxes barely allow for healthcare to work, only because USA pharma companies charge Americans much more to recuperate EU losses.
Not to mention roads, education, national parks, retirement funds, subsidies from energy sector to agriculture. It’s all underfunded
And you wanna pile on top also 80 sq for everyone? Good luck lol
That’s like 40 millions citizens * 500k euro = gargantuan money fed into developers
Hell I would become a developer company myself
(It’s 2E13 10^13 of euros. Trillion? I think 20 trillions) so it is 4x more than whole federal USA budget for 40 million people
It’s unimaginably huge amount of cash and you said “I pay taxes duh” 💀
————
They build like 50 of 40m2 apartments a year over here from taxes and that’s probably best it can realistically get. Maybe you could get it to 200 with some progressive taxes assuming companies wouldn’t just move elsewhere and avoid them altogether
I don’t live in America, I don’t care about America. It would cost about 800b EUR to fund it in Denmark without considering economies of scale, industrialisation or existing stock. In my opinion, it is completely achievable.
It’s not. If any candidate promises you this they are just lying for votes. They did the math and aren’t stupid
No candidate has ever offered this. I am a structural engineer and have decided on this as a view of my own.
Well it’s a wrong view but you do you
there are a lot of affordable houses, just nowhere where people want to live (big cities with limited space).
The very nature of limited space in cities makes it impossible for the whole population to have houses there. Let alone build millions of city houses using some vague miraculous funding
However housing “crisis” will solve itself at the latest around the end of 21 century. Rather like 25 years more or less. That’s when the cities will lose its employment providing role.
Real estate in the cities will still be more expensive and rare but it will no longer be a necessity, merely a luxury.
All the landlords will suddenly wake up with 50% value losses and no takers for their rentable shacks.
Where are you getting that no one wants to pay? I always see people saying the world would be better if their taxes were used to give others something.
I would love it if my taxes went to giving everyone healthcare, education and housing.
When you get down to it, I get more value out of my neighbors being healthy, educated and safe than I would out of the money. And that’s setting aside that I’m already paying for those things inefficiently.
I wish there was a test.
Not a bullshit CosmoBuzzfeed quiz, but an actual “if you answered A on these three questions, you tend towards MarxoCapitalist. Here’s a community full of people who mostly agree with you about political stuff.”
We’d still have Home and Local and All, but it’d be nice to know who my people are instead of needing a college degree to navigate the bullshit everyone says about everyone else.
I don’t think anyone knows what socialism is.
I’m glad there isn’t, sounds divisive
- Hot Dog or Hamburger?
- Pepsi or Coca-Cola?
- 2 wipes or 3 wipes?
- Hamburgers
- Coca-Cola
- Three shells
https://leftvalues.github.io/ Is kinda like that but not exactly. Fun test to take either way.
I’m a Democratic Socialist, apparently.
Marxism-Leninism: 0%
Good.
Im apparently an eco-anarchist.
socialism is whatever country owns the most state owned companies and gives you the cheapest housing I think /j
“You leftists sure are a contentious people”
Ay, you made an energy for life!
I’m a noob leftist. Maybe a reformed (reforming?) liberal. I am anticapitalist.
I don’t think a 19th century European necessarily devised the perfect economic system. Maybe we don’t have to be obliged to label ourselves by which 19th century European we agree with the most. There are a lot of people smarter than me who know more than me who disagree with each other, I don’t know if we can move society in my lifetime enough that the difference between anarchism and communism will make a huge public policy difference. I’m more concerned with stopping fascism and working for universal healthcare.
Welcome to being a leftist. The first thing you’ll want to do is find a slightly similar but different left ideology and hate them with a passion.
Jokes aside, there are people I respect who call themselves anarchists, communists, socialists, and other labels. Most of the real vitriol I see is from Democrats at all of us and from Leftists right back.
“Leftist infighting” is a meme for a reason, but I think too often honest disagreements about principles get written off as such.
Never ask a Lemming what kind of leftist they are, or what is the best Linux distro.
Well, um, whatever kind you use and whatever kind you are, of course.
That’s your favorite distro of linux now, but what previous operating system do you come from?
What if he’s a Gentoo user? He’ll mock me for using Archlinux, I’ve got to play this hand carefully so as to not blow my cover. There’s always the chance he’s a Mint user and I have nothing to worry about, but then, he could be one of those users that says ricing is a waste of time, who uses his OS professionally, but then, he might be a Fedora user… how do I approach this issue without seeming like a pleb?! Based Stallman, help me!
NixOS
How about that vaporwave aesthetic of Garuda Dr460nized edition?
LFS
Windows 2000. I feel like that’s reasonable. It was honestly pretty solid kit.
That was not my experience with 2000. Either 98 or XP (post-SP2) were more solider, from memory.
I think you might be confusing Windows ME with 2000.
Windows 2000 was built on the Windows NT kernel which was business focused so absolutely rock solid.
Windows 98 was a good jump in stability from the 95 kernel bit still very prone to crashing.
I agree XP was good but it was the successor to 2K so built on it and I moved to Linux as soon as the 2K directx support would have forced me to move to XP which wasn’t as lightweight.
For clarity there were two development branches within Microsoft at the turn of the millennium: one that was based off windows 3.1 (and became 95, 98 and ME) and one that was based off windows NT 3.1 which was solid as fuck and eventually became 2000 then XP.
Edit: Here’s a decent graphic: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_Windows_versions#/media/File:Windows_Version_History.svg
Oh shit, I think you’re right!
Now that a stretch my memory back decades, I seem to recall I never extensively used 2000, it was ME.
I agree XP was good
I seem to recall something about XP not being good at the start, and it wasn’t until about SP2 that it reached it’s famed quality. But now I can’t seem to find anything about it.
Ah the naming was terrible in fairness… Windows millennium edition and windows 2000. I mean c’mon like. Haha.
And yeah I was gone by SP2 but I remember my gaming friends holding tight to that for as long as they could. There were even various really lightweight editions of SP2 that you could download if you had the balls to install a hacked together operating system from some randomer on the internet. And they all did.
Different times!!
Edit: also what’s up Dave on the far side of the world!
Slackware is the the only answer
Me: a disillusioned Liberal who runs Fedora, because I’m a basic bıtch and I ain’t got time for this shit anymore.
Fedora is the Todd Howard meme of Linux: it just works
What kind of leftist are you and what is the best Linux distro?
Left libertarian, NixOS naturally.
Post-left anarchist, Arch obv
I don’t use Arch but that wasn’t the question
A libertarian myself thanks for asking.
Someone who doesn’t want to pay taxes or follow age of consent laws all while co-opting an anarchist term for themselves?
Not everyone has US brain rot, in most of Europe “libertarian” still means “anarchist”
Nah as using it with some respect to its orgins of being coined by Joseph Déjaque as a synonym to anarchism as it was illegal at the time. Personally use it as an umbrella term for anti-authoritarian socialist thought. Not whatever “Libertarians” do in the USA.
Eeew
Eeew? Sad leftist noises Can’t we just conquer bread or something together? sniff sniff
I’m pretty authoritarian-leftist, but I have some respect for libertarians after reading Scott Alexander. Do you know his blog?
Also what kind of authoritarian leftist are you? The left landscape is kind of weak where I am so I am actually member of an authoritarian leftist party as they are the only ones locally I know whose comfortable carrying the label of revolutionary. Feels like grasping at straws but its something for now maybe.
I’m happy to hear stories like this, at least we can put our differences aside in some cases haha.
Can’t say I heard of him. I try focusing on reading anarchist theory atm. Halfway though conquest of bread at least. Though some personalities like Noam Chomsky and David Graeber are interesting.
I really don’t get anarchist theory. What is anarchism’s response to requirement for the regulation of certain things? Pollution, nuclear waste, existential threats (AI in n decades?) etc. How’s the conquest of bread?
Regarding Scott Alexander, who I can’t be entirely sure is a libertarian but at least on occasion he claims to be, I liked his essay Meditations on Moloch.
Are you also into boats?
No? I prefer trains. (Not referring to anything special its just that public tranport is goated)
Libertarian regimes have a big history of being obsessed with sea nations, is all, almost comically.
I believe they are saying libertarian leftist, not hyper capitalist nutjob lol
Correct. Felt like risking using the word without redundant labels when answering “What kind of leftist are you?”. Results could be better but it was kinda fun seeing so many responses ngl
What kind am I?
Not a neo liberal or a Tankie.
I’m in-between. I’m caring enough to not agree with Conservatives and want a change to the status quo. I’m educated enough to know how the world actually works and that things can’t be free and other people won’t do stuff for free. Capitalism has its place, but needs to be highly regulated.
You can be anti-capitalist without being a “tankie.” It seems like your position is driven by your aversion to those you perceive as being to your right and to your left rather than on a consistent ideological framework.
I’m educated enough to know how the world actually works and that things can’t be free and other people won’t do stuff for free.
This is capitalist realism. Your education has not made you smart enough to see that capitalism is reality, it has made you so set in your constrained worldview that you’ve become incapable of imagining anything outside of the framework of capitalism. For the majority of time that humans have existed on earth they have organized themselves in a myriad of different ways without the need for private property and exploitation of others. I recommend reading some anthropology, I personally prefer David Graeber.
Hey tankie, I’ve had conversations with other tankies that believe no business should be making a profit and there is no such thing as a good company. They think a business should provide services for free, while they sit on their ass and collect UBI. UBI is something I support, but if I create a business that aims to help people one way or another with a product or service, I’m not doing it for free.
There are other forms of societal framework and I’m sorry, but Marxist Lenonist communism isn’t it. There’s a reason communism always devolves into authoritarianism. And we don’t need to go back to feudalism, which is primarily what has been throughout history, which you ignore.
Don’t you find it interesting that I only said I was anti-capitalist and you immediately assumed a ton of things about what I believe without bothering to ask? I find it interesting, it reveals a lot about your mindset. Even though you’ve decided to be overtly hostile towards me for no reason I’ll take the time to respond, because I believe you think you’re being reasonable.
Hey tankie, I’ve had conversations with other tankies that believe no business should be making a profit and there is no such thing as a good company.
Profit is just the excess labor value that your employer withholds from you. The problem is not that businesses make money, the problem is that the people who produce the value do not get to decide what to do with it. Instead, the capital owner has the ultimate authority and is able to use it to enrich themselves at the expense of those who did the actual work, with no way to hold them accountable. It doesn’t matter if the boss is a “good person” or not because the employer-employee relationship is inherently unequal.
They think a business should provide services for free, while they sit on their ass and collect UBI. UBI is something I support, but if I create a business that aims to help people one way or another with a product or service, I’m not doing it for free.
This is a gross misrepresentation of what socialists believe. Socialists believe that workers should have control over their company. I don’t think workers should provide services for free, I think they should be paid their worth and have the freedom to decide what to do with the excess rather than having it taken from them by capital owners. In the current system it is actually the capital owners who sit on their ass and collect welfare in the form of profits.
The reason socialists also advocate for welfare such as UBI is because we believe that the excess labor value should be reinvested into the community to improve everyone’s standard of living rather than paying for the boss’ 3rd yacht and 5th vacation home.
There are other forms of societal framework and I’m sorry, but Marxist Lenonist communism isn’t it. There’s a reason communism always devolves into authoritarianism.
I’m not a marxist-leninist, I lean more towards libertarian socialism / anarchism. I do wish you would have made an attempt to find out where I stand on things before starting with the name-calling. I agree that marxist-leninists have authoritarian tendencies, but I believe that results from their belief that power should be centralized under the state to establish a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” not from their socialist economics. It is possible (I would actually argue that it’s necessary) for power to be decentralized under federated collectives that practice socialist economics. This is sometimes called anarcho-syndicalism, but I believe there’s more to it than that.
And we don’t need to go back to feudalism, which is primarily what has been throughout history, which you ignore.
The political and economic systems that existed prior to capitalism were far more complex than you’re giving them credit for. Feudalism was actually the precursor to capitalism, and was not the dominant political system for most of human history. Before land was stolen by feudal lords, most of it was managed and held in common by small communities. The process by which landlords stole land and began rent-seeking is called the enclosure of the commons.
Again, I cannot recommend enough that you do some reading on anthropology. I’m not asking you to read political theory, but if you don’t have an understanding of the many different ways that humans organized themselves in the past it limits your ability to imagine ways that we could organize ourselves in the future.
I’m not being hostile. You are reading that, based on nothing more than your interpretation.
This is a gross misrepresentation of what socialists believe.
I never said this is what socialist believe. Now you are reading into something I never said. I simply said I’ve actually had a conversation with more than one tankie that has used those EXACT words. I also never name called, unless you find Tankie offensive. Which I only called you that, because you are using the exact same arguments that tankies do. I also don’t need a history lesson on hopes, dreams, and ideal situations that never happened. You should really count the amount of times you said “belief”, “believe”, or “possible.”
I agree that marxist-leninists have authoritarian tendencies, but I believe that results from their belief that power should be centralized under the state to establish a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” not from their socialist economics.
This is nothing more than a belief that never happens and history has shown that.
You’re recommending things that you don’t even understand and likely never read yourself.
Nobody is interested in your fake conversations with possibly imaginary people that represent a conveniently perfect caricature of the opposing positions when you have actual people with nuanced positions here.
It’s a 100% real conversation that I had and two people were saying the same thing. I happened a few weeks ago, I’ll try to find it in my comment history.
I’m also not saying it represents the Socialist left, I’m saying these two represent the uneducated/ too young to know better/ “Russia” is great tankie.
The “socialists expect people to do stuff for free” trope only exists in capitalist strawman rhetoric.
Cool. Never said that. I consider myself a socialist democrat. I was referring to a conversation I had with a Tankie claiming both sides and said, “Businesses should not earn a profit.” And in a later sentence said, “Everyone should be on universal basic income.” In those exact words.
You literally, almost word for word said exactly the argument laid out in his comment. No slinking away. You were not referring to a conversation and even your rendition of the conversation is nonsensical as if the other’s arguments should lead to some conclusion about the very same argument, the one you ran away from…?
I never even mentioned socialism. Weird how you and the other jump to that conclusion when I reference two tankies I had a conversation with a few weeks ago.
I also have no idea what the hell you are talking about in the later part of your comment. Running away from what? Stop trying to strawman this.
Even Adam Smith was pretty clear what happens when capitalism is unregulated:
We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things, which nobody ever hears of…
The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the labouring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they are going fast backwards.
Ye, if you don’t manage capitalism, the demon capital manages you.
I would like us to seriously try alternatives, but failing that, at least put the mad dog on a leash.
I am not going to prod you the minutia with questions and then try to guess precisely what ideological camp you might fall into, but from what I can gather from your comment, you could either be a social liberal or social democrat. But practically speaking, there is hardly any difference between the two.
Nah bruv, this is bullshit. I’m straight up a centrist. It’s just that anyone who isn’t goose-stepping fascist swine is “leftist” these days. Shit has just moved so far right, it’s fucking insane. Back in the day, repubs would agree with me about minding your own fucking business and let people live the way they fucking want. They’d agree with me that you need to pay for shit, instead of just charging it to your kids. Which also means you need to prioritize shit, and it better nothing be for fucking moneybags over there. Bring back fucking Eisenhower-era taxes, FFS. Those cunts used to believe in free speech and freedom FROM religion. There used to be some common ground. These days? Fuckem. They can all choke to death.
I’m so tired of the labels, I just want things to be better for everyone
Don’t worry anytime you have a slightly different opinion they’ll force the label on you then insult you for the label they applied.
By far the worst trait on the left by a mile.
flexible on range of solutions for dealing with the billionaire problem
I don’t like other leftists. What am I?
Leftist. 🙂
