CuriousCat Archive Page 109 of 202

  1. The series on leftist revolutions sounds like a really interesting idea, although I can already imagine the Tankies yelling at you online for mentioning Kronstadt and Stalin etc.
    Is the potential backlash something you keep in mind or are you not fazed by it anymore after years of making videos about GamerGate and the Alt-Right?

    in response to What's your Post-Alt right play book plans gonna be for the channel?

    Backlash is always a concern, but I don't let it stop me from saying things I want to say. However, sometimes backlash has so poisoned certain subjects that I can't find a way to talk about it constructively, and I've backed off of certain topics for that reason. But I'm not terribly afraid of tankies.

  2. hiiiii

    sup

  3. Different anon but a quick look at their twitter indicates that they are very upset at people being happy about Biden winning.

    in response to Who hurt peter coffins crowd and why are they all like that?

    well that sounds like a productive expenditure of energy

  4. Reading your response about finishing the Alt-Right Playbook made me wonder...what might you have done if Trump and his fascist supporters had won? It seems like that would be something people like you would want to talk about, if you could think of a "treatment".

    It's still likely I would finish TARP, but it would dramatically change tone and direction. But, like... it's hard to imagine what I would do under a complete collapse of democracy because there's just a lot of variables.

  6. What's something that you both want to do and most likely won't?

    most likely won't because I don't have the resources: I want to write and direct and neo-noir film

    most likely won't because it's a bad idea: I want to do a gonzo journalism piece where I work as a political street canvasser and then talk about why the institution of street canvassing is broken

  8. Post-BNL Steven Page or post-Steven Page BNL?

    until this post I didn't realize there WAS a post-BnL Steven page

  9. What's your Post-Alt right play book plans gonna be for the channel?

    in response to Couple questions: First, (though I'm sure you're already getting this one a lot) will you finish The Alt-Right Playbook now that Trump is out? Second, (on a related note) having just read through the retweet you did of Matt Sheffield's twitter thread, how on Earth are we supposed to persuade people to change their political opinions when they actively reject reality?

    I don't like to talk about what I'm working on before I release things. Don't want to build expectations, since I might change my mind. But, for general ideas:

    - I've been thinking for a while of doing a series where I look at leftist revolutions throughout history - which ones succeeded and which ones failed, and which ones resulted in something we might consider real leftism and which ones turned into military dictatorships that merely called themselves leftist. I want to know what conditions lead to building the kind of society leftists actually want.
    - I wanna do this series where I map the history of the adventure game year by year, starting in 1984 with King's Quest. It would be shamelessly stealing the idea from Errant Signal's Children of DOOM series, but it would be a lot of fun.
    - I've wanted to do a series tentatively called In Context, where I just take a complex issue and deep dive into it, not necessary arguing for any specific position but rather teasing out why the issue is way, way more complicated than people arguing about it tend to assume. I have thoughts for a video on poverty, a video on sexual assault statistics, a video on the history of women in tech, and stuff like that.

    I would have to get to the end of ARP before I can really assess which of these I would tackle next, or if I wanna do one-off videos on various topics instead of anchoring my channel on a single series. Might be fun to do that for a while.

  10. Couple questions:

    First, (though I'm sure you're already getting this one a lot) will you finish The Alt-Right Playbook now that Trump is out?

    Second, (on a related note) having just read through the retweet you did of Matt Sheffield's twitter thread, how on Earth are we supposed to persuade people to change their political opinions when they actively reject reality?

    First, yes, I am going to finish The Alt-Right Playbook. Honestly, I'd be *less* likely to finish it had Trump won, because a series about how to deal with encroaching fascism is a bit moot when democracy has fully failed and the fascists are in power.

    Second, I can answer in two parts:

    For one, I reiterate that changing conservatives' minds should not be your primary task. The election horse race frames politics as two groups, left and right, who are roughly equal in size, and each election is them fighting over the moderates in the middle. The real truth is a smallish and largely unpopular conservative party vs. then rest of the goddamn country, but, through a mixture of gerrymandering, vote suppression, and electoral college shenanigans, they have artificially shrunk the voting population of their opponents to be of comparable size to them. And liberals don't help the matter, running milquetoast, centrist candidates that don't inspire the people on the left who *can* vote. Which is to say: focusing on flipping conservatives is and always has been a complete failure to recognize our strength. We *already outnumber them*, and the only way they win is by cheating. Fix the game and they stop winning. Empower the allies you already have. Don't focus on convincing them, focus on defeating them.

    Additionally, the way you change their minds is by figuring out what about their lives makes this reality-rejecting, angry, solipsistic, hateful worldview appealing to them, and then offer them a better story and a better community. This kind of has to be tailored individually and can rarely be done by strangers. But don't think it's going to come from winning an argument. As we say on the internet: you can't logic someone out of a position they didn't logic themselves into.

  11. Recent study on 2.6k entrepreneurs in 18 countries including the US shows that female-led companies generates 13% higher revenue than men, plus women-owned businesses tend to be good investments.

    Pursuing equality is the difference, ain't it?

    the solution to inequality is never capitalism, friendo

  12. Who hurt peter coffins crowd and why are they all like that?

    I will have to ask, again, what in specific you are referring to

  14. I voted for Joe Biden & feel relieved that he might win, but I'm outraged by the victory of abusive revenge porn guy Aaron Coleman in the election he ran in--does this make me a hypocrite? Does it matter if it does? Would refusing to vote for Biden or Trump be the only way to stay true to the principal that you should never reward someone who has committed sexual assault?

    staying true to your principles by doing nothing helps absolutely no one

  15. I hope it's something simple like that. Would be a nice change from all the problems that are nowhere near as simple to deal with.

    in response to In your video "How to Radicalize a Normie", you talk about how one way for a Gabe to get out of the alt-right is to have a 'holding space', somewhere private where the person can work through their thoughts and feelings and are expected to be better, but are not, in the moment, judged. What does such a space look like? How can it be built?

    I mean... just because it's simple to organize doesn't make it easy work. Building an effective holding space is *hard*.

  16. humans are made of blood and blood is made of gold and gold is the blood of the gods therefore humans are gods

    "humans are made of blood..."
    gotcha, I'm with you
    "...and blood is made of gold..."
    hold up

  17. You want to believe that people don't try to marry high status because then you'll feel like you have more romantic options.

    in response to How do manosphere types maintain belief in the idea of "hypergamy" (that women pursue men who are more desirable than they are) when nearly every straight couple in the media involves a woman who is much more conventionally attractive than the man?

    you want to believe scoffing at my arguments is as good as arguing against them, in the vain hope that you can neg people into agreeing with you for fear of looking ignorant

    also appreciate the little rhetorical move from "women" to "people" there, nice save

  19. This sounds right to me, but like, if you point out the hypocrisy about this they're not gonna suddenly change their minds, right?

    in response to How do manosphere types maintain belief in the idea of "hypergamy" (that women pursue men who are more desirable than they are) when nearly every straight couple in the media involves a woman who is much more conventionally attractive than the man?

    no, but they might conceivably change their minds if they are led to recognize the hypocrisy themselves, maybe with subtle help from you

    it's delicate work but obviously people *do* leave reactionary forums regularly, and it's often thanks to contact from other people

  21. In your video "How to Radicalize a Normie", you talk about how one way for a Gabe to get out of the alt-right is to have a 'holding space', somewhere private where the person can work through their thoughts and feelings and are expected to be better, but are not, in the moment, judged. What does such a space look like? How can it be built?

    It's actually the process deradicalization groups like Life After Hate use for deprogramming Nazis, but we'll have to figure out how to do it with online reactionaries. That's not something I know how to build on my own, but it could be as simple as a Discord server with some formers and maybe some trained counselors?

  22. How do manosphere types maintain belief in the idea of "hypergamy" (that women pursue men who are more desirable than they are) when nearly every straight couple in the media involves a woman who is much more conventionally attractive than the man?

    A thing to keep in mind about human cognition in general and especially conservative thinking is that, often enough, when people hear an argument they don't actually pay attention to the argument itself, they pay attention to the conclusion. If the conclusion is something they agree with, they decide the argument must've been accurate. This is a reflex everyone has, but conservatism is BUILT on it.

    Bob Altemeyer did this study where he showed people the syllogism, "Fish live in the water. Sharks live in the water. Therefore sharks are fish." Now, the conclusion is accurate - sharks ARE fish - but that's not *why*. And he found that, the more authoritarian tendencies a person shows, the more likely they are to agree with the syllogism. Because they're not really thinking about the argument, they're scanning to the conclusion.

    Conservatives believe in hypergamy because its conclusion is "women are shallow and slutty." And they accept "hot wife, schlubby husband" because the conclusion is "women are shrill nags who complain to their men all the time." The part they agree with is "women suck," and they only think about *why* long enough to come to that conclusion. Since they immediately stop thinking about the "why" until they need it again, they rarely have to consider both concepts at the same time, and therefore don't see the tension between them.

  23. Should we not apply gender to animals since they can't consent to being gendered?

    this is where the sex/gender differentiation is useful

  24. Now are you afraid of angels? I bet you are.

    Have a good night sleeping when one of them reveals themselves to you

    https://youtu.be/40KcrrfbJ6o

    I've read too much Madeleine L'engle to be scared of this

  25. Think you'll ever rise to the 12th most pretentious? Perhaps higher?

    the idea that I need to rise in the rankings is capitalist thinking

  26. I may not have been paying attention that day in Manosphere Studies, but isn't 'hypergamy' about women seeking a higher class status through sex/marriage, not about them seeking out more desirable males?

    in response to How do manosphere types maintain belief in the idea of "hypergamy" (that women pursue men who are more desirable than they are) when nearly every straight couple in the media involves a woman who is much more conventionally attractive than the man?

    to my understanding, Manosphere men think of men as having values that can be ranked into more and less desirability, which can be class desirability or physical desirability, though it emphasizes the latter. (I also suspect incels' philosophy of victimization equates attractiveness with success in all arenas - social, sexual, and financial, i.e. the reason for ALL your failings is not having the right skull shape or whatever.)

  28. Since we could be looking at a Biden administration over the next four years, do you agree with the idea that Sanders should be Secretary of Labor, as Politico says he might be pushing for it?

    buddy three days ago I couldn't imagine the future at all, gimme time before I make an administration headcanon

  30. 95% of Lefty infighting amounts to people screaming "No, YOUR standards of 'too problematic' are wrong!" at each other.

    in response to I've seen some people claim online that "purity testing" is a real problem for the left, in the sense that if you hold one prejudice, you're out, i.e. someone who is economically left but racist is not welcome, nor is black person who hates gay people, etc. By their argument, if you have someone who votes for Bernie but is a racist, that's still a vote for Bernie. Conversely, if you're gay but hate trans people, you might be welcomed by the right with open arms (for now; you've talked about this before). My response is that if you want to protect a certain group, you can't also include the people that hate them, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

    I think the largest minority in the lefty infighting wars actually says "problematic is a bourgeois concept"

  31. Do you think democrats were hurt by the GOP associating them with "defund the police" messaging (that they didn't support) or do you think they were more hurt by refusing to actually go all in on defunding the police?

    the biggest spike in Democrat voter registration was right after the George Floyd protests, so I think at least having a harsher stance on police would've been catering to an electorate that *clearly* wanted them to do exactly that

  32. I've seen some people claim online that "purity testing" is a real problem for the left, in the sense that if you hold one prejudice, you're out, i.e. someone who is economically left but racist is not welcome, nor is black person who hates gay people, etc. By their argument, if you have someone who votes for Bernie but is a racist, that's still a vote for Bernie. Conversely, if you're gay but hate trans people, you might be welcomed by the right with open arms (for now; you've talked about this before).

    My response is that if you want to protect a certain group, you can't also include the people that hate them, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

    I think if your leftism isn't intersectional it's predominantly useless

    but most of the talk about "purity testing" *I* see is people being cast out because they once liked a tweet by someone who six years later turned out to be racist, or because their work does not meet some random lefty's personal definition of "material analysis"

  34. You've probably answered this before but: what do you think of AOC?

    I admire her a lot

  35. If Obama and Clinton won by selling themselves as more progressive than the democratic base then why did Bernie lose so hard during the primary?

    in response to While obviously a Bernie presidency would have been better then a Biden one will be, in your opinion would Bernie v Trump would have given us a better election night? (As in winning states Biden lost, dems winning senate or house seats that the GOP won, etc). Or is white supremacy so entrenched that even a more progressive candidate would have struggled the same why Biden did?

    he didn't lose "so hard," he was skyrocketing up in popularity for much of the campaign before the other centrists dropped out and their voters all consolidated around Biden. primarily it seems Bernie lost because Biden was perceived as "more electable," i.e. people assume centrism is safer than progressivism despite 40 years of evidence to the contrary.

  36. Is Disco Elysium an adventure game?

    Disco Elysium is kind of a genre mashup, but functionally it's a no-combat RPG. The fact that stripping the combat out of an RPG makes it very similar to an adventure game is interesting.

  37. While obviously a Bernie presidency would have been better then a Biden one will be, in your opinion would Bernie v Trump would have given us a better election night? (As in winning states Biden lost, dems winning senate or house seats that the GOP won, etc). Or is white supremacy so entrenched that even a more progressive candidate would have struggled the same why Biden did?

    Biden's (probable) victory is the first time one of these milquetoast centrist Dems has won an election in 40 years, and it took a massively despised opponent who had both ruined the economy and killed 300,000 people to do it and he still barely won. Both Clinton and Obama won by selling themselves as more progressive than the Democratic base. So, yes, I suspect Sanders would've had an easier time.

    My concern with Sanders, which I've voiced before, is that he's not always very good at reaching out to the communities that would be best served by his policies. So maybe he would've had similar troubles to Biden in some districts.

  38. Is there anything bernie supporters can learn from a biden victory (if it happens)?

    I think there's more for Biden supporters to learn from Bernie

  39. What if Trump actually did die from COVID, and the guy running for re-election right now is an actor they hired to take his place?

    then he's very convincing

  40. As you had specified "compulsory", are there therefore *non*-compulsory gender roles?

    in response to Would you delete gender if you had the courage

    being nonbinary, or gender non-conforming, or even just cis and gay, are all non-compulsory, to the point of being actively suppressed

  41. You answered your own question. I'm talking about Cuba. About the Soviet Union under Stalin and Lenin. For the record, nowhere did I say that the human rights abuses suffered in these and other "dictatorial dystopias" weren't "commonplace in dozens of capitalist nations". All I said was that living there wasn't *better* than living in America by default *because capitalism*. I did not think that was a controversial statement.

    For the record, I am in favor of government-funded healthcare and social programs. Of taxing the rich and giving the poor a living wage. Of doing all we can to turn America into a social democracy that meets the standard set by the rest of the western world. I'd like to think we are mostly on the same side, for whatever that's worth.

    in response to I know a lot about human nature. Which we both agree that no economic system can account for. See, the thing is, other systems *have* been tried. And almost none of them have worked out any *better* for common people than American capitalism. Surely you're not suggesting we ignore precedent and just *try something else* 'cause "capitalism bad"? You said a while ago that a lot of people's relationship to capitalism is "This is what I have to work with". I'm one of those.

    you left like 80% of my argument on the table so I think I'm don talking to you

  42. Would you delete gender if you had the courage

    I would delete compulsory gender roles

  43. I know a lot about human nature. Which we both agree that no economic system can account for. See, the thing is, other systems *have* been tried. And almost none of them have worked out any *better* for common people than American capitalism. Surely you're not suggesting we ignore precedent and just *try something else* 'cause "capitalism bad"? You said a while ago that a lot of people's relationship to capitalism is "This is what I have to work with". I'm one of those.

    in response to That's not what I'm saying at all. I saying that you can incentivize cooperation, generosity and collective action all you want; those self-interested parties with no regard for others' wellbeing will *find a way* to get ahead, and by doing so consolidate power into the hands of a few. And so altruistic behavior cannot exist long term within *any* economic system without *constant* vigilance and oversight.

    "I know a lot about human nature" here means "I have anecdotal experience with humans living under capitalism, and presume humans can be no other way." Europe is filled with countries more socialized than us that are happier, healthier, and more egalitarian. What do you know about life in socialist nations, and in what ways is it worse than the country that just let 300,000 people die to save the economy? Tell me what you know about life in Cuba, about life in Vietnam, about life in Laos. Even in the worst, most dicatorial communist dystopia, show a single human rights abuse that isn't commonplace in dozens of capitalist nations. Capitalism has been tried hundreds of times in hundreds of nations for hundreds of years, and, in all that time of tinkering with it, it is STILL plagued with wealth gaps, corrupted democracies, regular economic collapses, forced servitude, and exploitation on a scale incomprehensible to the average human. You know that corporate wage theft adds up to more stolen money than all other forms of crime combined, yes? You know that most of our lives are filled with unpaid, collaborative labor, yes? That that's like 80% of the internet? Humans are a wildly homosocial species, and all evolutionary evidence insists that cooperation is overwhelmingly more successful within groups than competition.

    I'm sorry, but what the everloving fuck are you even talking about?

  44. Why is Joe Biden not your ideal President for your country?

    in brief: why *would* he be?

  45. If Biden wins, do you really wanna see how america progresses from it?

    My cynical answer is that America "progressing" went out the window when Sanders conceded, all Biden does for us is slow the bleeding for a few years.

    To be more realistic: there are things we managed to accomplish in spite of Trump, and Biden will an easier obstacle to overcome. I don't anticipate things being *good* for a long time, but some avenues are marginally more open to us now. We lost several seats in the Senate (which is *really* bad), but we gained several progressive, DSA-endorsed people in Congress, which means we have a higher ratio of younger, leftier people in the government now.

    Provided Trump fails to literally break democracy and stay in power, I think the next four years will continue to be hard. But things being even a little less intensely awful feels like a relief right now.

  46. Can the Biden presidency do anything without the Senate?

    if he fights hard and gets creative, maybe, but don't hold your breath

  47. That's not what I'm saying at all. I saying that you can incentivize cooperation, generosity and collective action all you want; those self-interested parties with no regard for others' wellbeing will *find a way* to get ahead, and by doing so consolidate power into the hands of a few. And so altruistic behavior cannot exist long term within *any* economic system without *constant* vigilance and oversight.

    in response to Different anon, but I just wanted to say that while wealth distribution is great and all, it won't solve the problem of human greed. The ultra-rich have so much money that the government could take enough off the top of their earnings to give everyone in the country a living wage and they'd still be ultra-rich. The economic hierarchy remains the same. It would still be a form of Capitalism, albeit a much fairer and well-regulated form. The only way to erase economic disparity is to go for full-blown communism and give everybody the same share. But even then, if everyone had *enough*, they'd still happily kill their neighbors to have *more*. Because no economic system can solve the problem of human greed. You've said that capitalism is a system that *relies* on greed. But what is the material difference between it and any other system if no other system is immune to corruption due to greed?

    you seem to know a lot about the inner workings of systems we haven't tried

  48. One of these has to go: bread, pasta, potatoes, or rice. Which do you pick?

    yes, I too saw this Twitter meme

    it's a nightmare decision but the one I can stand to lose is rice. hopefully I can get by with, like, quinoa and farro and barley or whatever.

  49. Anything you think a lotta folks would be shocked - SHOCKED! To find out is completely vegan?

    people always act surprised when I tell them Oreos are vegan. my usual explanation is "they contain no actual food."

  50. Shaun has also used all social media he's a part of to blow off steam (he has suggested he won't do an election night stream, because he's probably going to just drink through it, and he barely got out, through fits of giggles, that "I was gonna post on twitter 'whatever happens in the election, the day after, we all need to come together as one' just because i knew as a non-american, it would mightily annoy basically every american who read it")
    So question to a twitter user and an american, is this a healthy use of twitter/more healthy than average?

    in response to Shaun has indicated he thinks there’s a decent possibility that dems are not blocking trump v much, not out of ‘decorum’ as you suggest in this vid, but actually because they are more closely aligned with trump than with any kind of progressive policy. What do you think?

    Shaun's health is not for me to determine, nor is it my business.

  51. Do you know of any ghost stories about YouTubers?

    Big Joel has been dead for seven years

  52. What game do you recommend to fill a Outer Wilds-shaped hole in my heart?

    Nothing can fill that hole, but if you want something that will absorb for hours you while exploring an interesting sci-fi conceit, I recommend Heaven's Vault.

  53. What do you think is the primary motivation behind this impetus? The cynic in me says "donor money" because Liberals gonna Capitalism but they might actually believe that The High Ground has value so I am confusion.

    in response to He’s talked about it before this as well but this is most recent https://twitter.com/shaun_vids/status/1321089696533983234?s=20

    because, if the party moved left, most of the people *in* the party would get primaried by younger, leftier candidates

    that has been my suspicion for some time

  54. human

    in response to Is breast milk vegan?

    ew no then

  55. Do you think polyamorous marriages being legalized should be a priority?

    I would sooner dissolve marriage as a legal entity and let it continue as a purely religious and/or social institution. At which point, if you can find someone willing to perform your poly wedding, you can be poly married.

  56. He’s talked about it before this as well but this is most recent

    https://twitter.com/shaun_vids/status/1321089696533983234?s=20

    in response to Shaun has indicated he thinks there’s a decent possibility that dems are not blocking trump v much, not out of ‘decorum’ as you suggest in this vid, but actually because they are more closely aligned with trump than with any kind of progressive policy. What do you think?

    I (mostly) agree with Shaun's sentiment and have said many times that Dems prefer to lose on their own terms than win by moving left. (Though I don't think that's mutually exclusive with being incompetent.)

    That's not quite what OP said, though.

  57. Favorite movie or TV show mostly related and thematically about chess?

    Besides the current Netflix series, Queen's Gambit

    Adventures in Wonderland

  58. Is there anything you realized you *don't* actually miss that much during quarantine?

    I've gone broke many times in my adult life and had start cooking all my own meals because I can't afford restaurants, and it never takes more than a week or two before dining in feels extremely normal and I find it very strange how much I dined out. So I've had that experience again.

  59. Is breast milk vegan?

    who's offering?

  60. How important do you think the quality of A/V equipment is for experiencing movies?

    clearly not very, because we regularly watch them on our phones

  61. Shaun has indicated he thinks there’s a decent possibility that dems are not blocking trump v much, not out of ‘decorum’ as you suggest in this vid, but actually because they are more closely aligned with trump than with any kind of progressive policy. What do you think?

    in response to how can we get every democrat to watch ‘they go low we go high’ pls pls

    define "indicated"

  63. Just admit you became vegan for the cool hair style and psychic powers, already. You can stop hiding it, we all know.

    I became vegan so I could date Brie Larson

  64. how can we get every democrat to watch ‘they go low we go high’ pls pls

  65. Genuine Q: taken in the entirety of his character and viewed in our modern context, is Abraham Lincoln a good or aspirational figure?

    it is generous of you to think I know more about Abe Lincoln than the basics

  66. Are you ever kept awake at nights thinking about the maddening fact that, despite all the "four year journey" talk, Grim Fandango actually takes place over three years? Or is that just me?

    given that it starts with Manny clearly having already been dead for a while, no

    what keeps me up at night is the fact that the journey CLEARLY could have taken 5 or even 10 years and tickets on the #9 get you there in 4 minutes, so where the HECK did all this "four year journey" stuff come from?!

  67. Are there any systems you know of that actively incentivize cooperation, generosity, and collective action?

    in response to Different anon, but I just wanted to say that while wealth distribution is great and all, it won't solve the problem of human greed. The ultra-rich have so much money that the government could take enough off the top of their earnings to give everyone in the country a living wage and they'd still be ultra-rich. The economic hierarchy remains the same. It would still be a form of Capitalism, albeit a much fairer and well-regulated form. The only way to erase economic disparity is to go for full-blown communism and give everybody the same share. But even then, if everyone had *enough*, they'd still happily kill their neighbors to have *more*. Because no economic system can solve the problem of human greed. You've said that capitalism is a system that *relies* on greed. But what is the material difference between it and any other system if no other system is immune to corruption due to greed?

  68. I'm antisemitic

    stop it

  69. Different anon, but I just wanted to say that while wealth distribution is great and all, it won't solve the problem of human greed. The ultra-rich have so much money that the government could take enough off the top of their earnings to give everyone in the country a living wage and they'd still be ultra-rich. The economic hierarchy remains the same. It would still be a form of Capitalism, albeit a much fairer and well-regulated form.

    The only way to erase economic disparity is to go for full-blown communism and give everybody the same share. But even then, if everyone had *enough*, they'd still happily kill their neighbors to have *more*. Because no economic system can solve the problem of human greed.

    You've said that capitalism is a system that *relies* on greed. But what is the material difference between it and any other system if no other system is immune to corruption due to greed?

    in response to UBI and this aren't mutually exclusive, and this plan is to address wealth inequality not replace welfare.

    Under capitalism, if you are not always acting in your own interest without regard for the wellbeing of others, you will be out-competed by someone who is. Altruistic behavior *cannot* exist long-term within the market. I don't know how to put it simpler than that.

    No one is trying to cure greed. No one is claiming they can. But we can create a system where cooperation, generosity, and collective action are viable strategies. Under capitalism, they are not.

    If all you can hear when I say "maybe don't make greed the only viable strategy" is "I believe I can cure human corruption!" then I don't know how to talk to you. That's the same as when conservatives say we have to accept mass shootings because "you can't regulate evil." Do you really see no space in between CURING evil and INCENTIVIZING it?

  70. do you consider yourself an academic researcher for your work on the alt right?

    No, but maybe that's underselling myself.

  71. is there a piece of art where you agree with the political message, but the work as a whole isn't very good or entertaining?

    Sure, tons. Ruby Sparks, for instance, is a really intelligent dissection of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope with a high concept twist, but, moment to moment, it's mildly diverting at best.

    I can rarely *dislike* a work if it's saying something I find meaningful, but a lot of good ideas are inexpertly delivered and that can bum me out.

  72. UBI and this aren't mutually exclusive, and this plan is to address wealth inequality not replace welfare.

    in response to https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/social-wealth-fund/ What do you think of Social Wealth Funds as proposed here? It's a fund created by the government where every citizen gets one share they cannot sell. After the fund is created, the government will slowly accumulate assets for the fund to manage (like stocks, bonds, and real estate) and every citizen would be payed a universal basic dividend each year from the investment income earned by the fund.

    What I resent is the idea that people should get a "share" in a wealth-accrual program, meaning we address inequality if and only if the US increases its overall wealth. It's the kind of liberal means-testing nonsense that insists we can only help the working class if the country as a whole prospers from it.

    You wanna address wealth inequality, take the money from the billionaires. That's it. Done.

  73. Thoughts on Kitty Horrorshow?

    I don't really play spoopy games.

  74. https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/social-wealth-fund/

    What do you think of Social Wealth Funds as proposed here?

    It's a fund created by the government where every citizen gets one share they cannot sell. After the fund is created, the government will slowly accumulate assets for the fund to manage (like stocks, bonds, and real estate) and every citizen would be payed a universal basic dividend each year from the investment income earned by the fund.

    or, hear me out: just give people the money they need to live for fuck's sake

  75. Diff anon but how specific will the issue be that would make or break bipartisanship in relation to capital? Like when the liberal party starts mentioning and in full support of a tax relief for all businesses (big & small)? Or privatisation of housing developments & automobiles? Or a digital parliamentary debate to be supported & developed by a tech company?

    in response to What would be the point that breaks the bipartisanship between liberals and socialists?

    the specific issue will be that capitalism always trends towards the consolidation of power into the hands of the few, which is fundamentally opposite to leftism but ultimately normal and just to the liberal

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