CuriousCat Archive Page 137 of 202

  1. I take it you don't believe Tara Reade? That's sad. Whatever happened to believing women?

    What gave you the impression I don't believe Tara Reade?

  2. Socdems are not socialists stop lying to yourself

    I never said they were?

  3. What do you think of the rent strike?

    it's not going to work because we didn't do any prep

  4. There's been a number of primary delays, can Bernie scrape with that extra time?

    I don't know. I hope so.

  5. We should keep doing this as long as we can even after the pandemic is done https://twitter.com/joyceestick/status/1242502689289719808

    The problem with doing a general strike is you have to actually plan it? You propose a general strike and a worker's going to ask a lot of questions: how do I pay my rent? what happens to my healthcare? what if not enough people strike with me and I just get fired? what if there are tons of people willing to scab? if the strike actually works, how do I get groceries if the grocers are striking?

    If you want a general strike you need all those questions answered *before* the strike begins. You need massive community support, huge networks of existing groups working together to support people, tons of people pledged to participate in advance, some kind of strike fund or guaranteed way of getting people's needs met. You're functionally creating a socialist system of mutual aid that's going to sustain itself independent of capitalism. You can just *improvise* the greatest labor uprising in US history. Without support systems in place, you're just asking individuals to take an enormous risk on a hope and a prayer when the consequences include dying from a pandemic.

    Would've been nice if all the people calling for a general strike had been doing the hard work of prepping for one so we could effectively seize this opportunity. Given that the US economy has nearly collapsed and needed a bailout twice in the last dozen years, I recommend we start doing that work immediately because it's only a matter of time til the next one comes.

  6. which screenwriting books were you talking about on your last video?

    Robert McKee's Story is the go-to, but the stuff I'm talking about is in a lot of them.

  7. I see you're close to 5000 curiouscat answers. When you answer your 5,000th query, will you celebrate the occasion?

    I probably won't notice.

  8. How do you feel about the retcon at the end of Half-Life Alyx?

    It is very kind of you to think I might own a VR headset, but I don't make that kinda money.

  9. As far as you can tell, what's the difference between Joe Biden & democratic politicians like Anthony Weiner, Al Franken, or even Katie Hill who faced actual consequences for allegations of sexual misconduct? Is it just that he's running for president?

    Biden's pattern of misconduct is easier to construe as misunderstandings or oversensitivity, I guess. Him running for President probably makes people want to believe that more.

  11. What I was trying to convey was a sense of nuance, as I see it.

    in response to (Social Distancing is giving me more time then normal, and I don't expect a response to these - they aren't really questions fit for curious cat. Just thank you for your time if you did read though them) Yes even "Homelessness" and "Food Insecurity" are culturally determined values. My country has a population of Bedouin who are have a nomadic culture and has been try to force them into permanent settlements for decades, with mixed resulted (not saying if that's a right/wrong thing to do, just that "homelessness" isn't as an objective or agreed upon term). Regarding food insecurity, we again have the same issue of where the line crosses. Is it merely calorically measured? Or do you also require other nutritional values (fiber, vitamins and so on)? Does it include meat? Lots of cultural determinations here. As for China and "sweat shops", it's a complicated issue but IMO yea, subsistence farming is worse. And that's really the alternative here. Lefties tend to either ignore that or they romanticize subsistence farming. Now the usual Marxist position is that due to the LTV even giving subsistence farmers the option of selling their labor is exploitative and therefore it's worse. Since I don't accept the LTV I wouldn't agree with that but I guess a theory of value is a moral value judgement so it difficult to actually talk about with regards to evidence. Ended up not agreeing on both things :)

    that's a fancy way of saying "I didn't have a point, I was just disagreeing for the hell of it"

  12. NK Jemison's new book "The City We Became" is so fucking good. Not really a question, I know, but it's just so goddamn good omg

    I believe it.

  13. Curious Cat Looks Different Now For Me

    yeah i hate it

  14. Isn't it ironic that Star Wars, for all of George Lucas' intention to make it an anti war fantasy movie, ends up being a pro-war sci do fantasy movie series?

    I wouldn't call any part of the series anti-war, they're all pro-revolution.

  15. Hi Ian, I don't know if you remember, but I messaged you on twitter a while ago saying I had added Brazilian Portuguese subtitles to some of the ARP videos. The thing is they still haven't showed up on the videos themselves, so I don't if you have to personally ok them or something like that. Do you know what's up? Thank you for reading.

    what's up is I'm a horrible flake, sorry

  16. Why are capitalists so nihilistic? Also don't they claim that capitalism encourages innovation? I absolutely don't see any because any attempt at improving always seems to be labelled as "socialism therefore some fate worse than hell". If anything there is absolutely no innovation.

    in response to He did not. Feudalism and that kind of exploitation made servants poor for centuries. Not unlike socialist paradises like Corea, or China, in the times of Mao Really how capitalism is the worst option?

    When people defend capitalism they're almost always talking about how it works on paper and not able to conceptualize it in terms of their lived experience. They describe a system that bears little resemblance to the one we live in. But it's such a big and complex thing that, well... it's hard to even think about without simplifying it.

  17. Do you know where Joe Biden is?

    yeah and you'll never catch me copper!

  18. From your perspective, is there more talk of the Democratic primary being rigged or less relative to 2016? I feel like there's less from my perspective.

    feels like fewer people are doing it but the ones who are are making wilder reaches

  21. So Britney Spears is a socialist now

    it's pretty neat

  22. Why do some people have this impression?

    in response to Why is "liberal" synonymous with "left-wing" in the US?

    I mean, I had this impression for a long time, because the party on the left in America is a liberal party, so, yeah, they are generally conflated. I recently had to explain to a fairly politically-engaged person that "leftist" and "liberal" weren't synonyms. So I get it. I even offended a leftist friend a long time about by referring to her as a liberal thinking it was a compliment. But as soon as you dip a toe into actual leftist discourse you see the difference pretty dramatically.

  23. I mean it kinda is though? At least on mainstream news, they'll talk about Bernie Sanders and AOC as the "liberal" lane of the Democratic party, in comparison to the "moderate" lane. And somehow I don't think they're anarchists throwing shade.

    in response to Why is "liberal" synonymous with "left-wing" in the US?

    Yeah, this gets into squidgy territory of, like, what words mean in different contexts. Do we go by dictionary definitions or popular usage? If we go by usage, *whose* usage? Mainstream media may call AOC a liberal, but they certainly don't use "leftist" interchangeably. So... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  24. Why is "liberal" synonymous with "left-wing" in the US?

    it's not

  28. Do you own a switch?

    If so can you recommend any cheap to download games me and my brother can play during lockdown?

    For single-player: Celeste, Iconoclasts, Minit, Baba is You.

    If you want something multiplayer grab TowerFall and/or Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime.

  29. If someone insists on going to work "for the economy," should we just let them go and get sick of the virus? so that they either a) die and leave us with one less opponent or b) recover and have learned their lesson

    people compelled to work under capitalism are not your opponents, they're the people you're fighting for

  31. What do you think about the concept that class-based politics is better praxis than identity-based politics? I recently thought that classed-based is more effective because if you build politics around supporting marginalized people as a group, not only will marginalized identities have a broadly better footing to have their individual needs heard but so will any marginalized identity that either 1. isn't in the public consciousness right now or 2. develops in the future.

    acting like those are things you have to choose between is a crock of shit

  32. Care to expand?

    in response to So now Yahtzee’s *~*problematic?*~*

    I dunno, fam, it's... extremely obvious from watching his stuff what I'd take issue with. If you don't see it, I'm not going to convince you.

  33. Careful not to choke on your own smug there, kiddo.

    in response to Do you not like Yahtzee as a critic?

    if you hated smugness you wouldn't be defending Yahtzee

  34. Have you read any of Yahtzee's books?

    lol no

  35. I’ve seen studies that show that empathy as we know it doesn’t show up until a person is around 12, on average; you can imagine what obscene inherited wealth might do to someone’s ability to form empathy in their youth.

    in response to Studies show the wealthy lack empathy, but is this because having wealth decreases a person's empathy, or because it takes a lack of empathy to do what's necessary to acquire wealth under capitalism in the first place?

    I suppose it depends on how you define empathy. Very young children are extremely empathetic in that they often feel whatever the person around them is feeling, they just have difficulty modeling another person's thoughts in their heads and understanding their own effect on people.

  36. I'll second the Russian Revolutions podcast, because it does a great job showing the cycles and methods of revolutions and the foundations for much of the modern political world.

    And the Haitian Revolution always needs more love

    Also Russia is the second Socialist Revolution, he does the Paris Commune as well.

    Oh, he does? That one's SUPER important! Thanks for telling me!

  37. Do you not like Yahtzee as a critic?

    I had my Yahtzee phase but then I grew up.

  39. Does it feel like Nazis are less prevalent than in previous years or have I managed to avoid a lot of it

    I think there's just been a lot of shit going and we're not paying as much attention to them.

  40. Studies show the wealthy lack empathy, but is this because having wealth decreases a person's empathy, or because it takes a lack of empathy to do what's necessary to acquire wealth under capitalism in the first place?

    You're talking as though a person is born with a certain quantity of empathy that stays constant throughout their life. I would argue that, under capitalism, empathy is a luxury and a liability, and we are encouraged to reign it in in order to succeed.

  41. How concerning is it that Trump's approval ratings have increased in light of his largely ineffectual pandemic response?

    haha, we're all gonna die

  42. You're probably familiar with it, but wanted to give a quick plug to Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast--currently knee-deep in its discussion of the Russian Revolution, and an EXCELLENT resource to consider some of these questions!

    in response to My grandmother was living in the Ukrainian USSR. When I try to explain her why I am socialist and communist in the long run and that we should redistribute wealth, she becomes very upset. She tells me about how her relatives were dekulakized and her father was killed by communists. And even that money and recources were nationalized people were dirt poor and only people benefiting from all that were the minority consisting of military types and people from upper party(sorry English is not perfect). She tells me that she much prefers capitalism and her life was much better during captialism, even though she lived through very turbulent and hard 90s. She tells me that amount of suffering during USSR is not immeasurable. What I am saying is that I am more and more convinced that communism is too perfect of a concept to be realised and too often it was just an excuse to execute millions of people(ethnic minorities included). When I read twitter about how violent revolution is the best way to end capitalism and to kill rich I remember what my grandma told me and I can't really side with this people anymore. I am still a leftist, but I am more aware of how wrong it all could go. Do you think radical leftists and those who are more inclined to communism need to learn about history of orher countries? Or am I just too easy to impress?

    I'm aware of it, trouble is the Russian Revolution is the only *socialist* revolution he covers, and he says it's gonna be the last one he does. So, very useful, but I need to compare with the revolutions/civil wars in China, Cuba, Korea, Burkina Faso, Spain, etc. etc. Gonna have to do a lot of legwork myself.

  43. Do you think current events make it politically tenable for Joe to shift politically and endorse a more universal healthcare system? I know he won’t, I just need to know what level of disappointed to be, because this really feels like the universe giving him an opportunity he has locked himself out of.

    I'm no good at political predictions. It's not my skillset. I would assume it's off the table for at least the duration of the primary, because it's the same problem Warren faced: if you propose a healthcare bill that isn't as good as Bernie's, you're going to look shitty by comparison. Biden's safest move is to refuse the comparison and then maybe, *maybe*, adopt a watered-down version of Bernie's plan once he has the nomination.

    But I have no idea what he's going to do and could be hilariously wrong about everything. This is why I don't bet on horse races.

  44. If you put a video game into a museum that people could play would it count as performance art

    OK, so this is an easy answer but still an interesting can of worms.

    On the face of it, no. Video games have been displayed in museums many times and are not generally considered performance art. Performance art is usually live, often involving a degree of improvisation and interaction with/reaction to the audience. While video games can give unexpected outcomes and respond to the audience, they are bounded by the their programming; the creator has created a concrete possibility space that can be explored but cannot be broken out of. So we would generally consider a video game to be interactive art rather than performance art.

    But, as with all genres, these are just lenses. Which poses the question: what would happen if you viewed video games through the lens of performance art?

    My first question would be, who is the performer? The designer, or the player? Because the player can still do something unexpected. They can't break the game's rules, but they can play it against its intentions. They can make a point of running Mario down a pit 500 times in a row. They can make Link spin in place instead of seeking the Triforce. Who, then, is the artist? And is the game the art, or the way it is being played? Is the guy who plays Gears of War multiplayer without killing anyone a performance artist? Are speedrunners performance artists? I mean... no, because they don't think of themselves that way and neither does their audience; the lens is not being applied. But what if it were? If they *did* think of themselves as performance artists, how would they play differently? What does applying that lens open up for us?

    There's a long tradition in modern art of applying lenses in places where they theoretically shouldn't be. It's exactly the kind of thing that pisses people off about modern art; Judy Grahn's prose story, The Psychoanalysis of Edward the Dyke, was labeled a "poem" and collected in a work of poetry. The Paul Joseph Watson response is to just call bullshit and hate on the art world, but it can raise interesting questions about the margins between free verse poetry and prose, and how trying to look at a traditional story with the set of expectations you would bring to a poem can change your reading. There is the similar logic behind calling a blank canvas a painting or a prefabricated urinal a sculpture. It's not making a statement that, from now on, canvases should be considered paintings, but asking audiences to apply "wrong" lenses to objects and try to see them differently.

    I know this was probably a joke question, but I have an art degree, so this is the kinda stuff I'm into.

  45. Is there a genre of video game you've yet to understand the appeal of?

    There are genres I don't enjoy but nothing where I can't fathom why *anyone* enjoys it.

  46. Really, people who say "but capitalism has lifted everyone out of poverty" is like Deng Xiaoping-era CCP supporters who say "but state capitalism by the CCP has lifted lots out of poverty". Like, technically that's true, but really? Factory suicide nets? That's the best system we have? That's the most democratic and egalitarian system we'll ever get?

  49. Do you think you would say that Half-Life 1 and 2 are "retro" games?

    I mean... in the sense that they're old, sure, but don't we usually say "retro" when we mean a modern game made with old-school design? While, if you made a game in the style of Half-Life today it would be seen as a throwback, at the time they came out they were actually very forward-thinking.

  50. Do you know anything about Kingdom Hearts, if so what would you change about it

    I enjoy listening to people break their brains trying to summarize Kingdom Hearts lore. From what I gather, sometimes the combat is tedious and/or frustrating; I'd change that so people can spend more time on the nonsense.

  51. What's the most recent thing you googled?

    per the last question, I googled "Simone Giertz" to make sure I was spelling it right

  52. Hypothetical: you've somehow swapped YouTube channels with another creator and you have to make one (1) video that fits in their ouvre. Who would you most and least hope you swapped with, and what would you make?

    I'd like to make a single, socially-conscious episode of Zero Punctuation, just to show that you can be funny and vulgar without being a shithead.

    I guess what I'd hate most is to be swapped with someone who has skills I absolutely lack. Like, I would be a disaster trying to be Simone Giertz or Sideways.

  53. Remember chest high walls

    fam, I had a Mac during the cover shooter phase of video games

  54. Would Mike Pence be a better or preferable President to Trump?

    It would be a trade-off. Pence would be far less chaotic, and aligns with the more implicit authoritarianism of the Republican Party rather than the outright demagoguery of Trump. He might even compromise with Democrats here and there to keep up appearances. But he'd also be more competent at fucking people over in lasting ways.

    I think, in a final analysis, not having an autocrat in office would be an improvement, but it would be an extremely mixed bag.

  55. Do you have a preferred version of Loom? I didn't know there were different versions when I first played it so I ended up playing the fully voice acted one. I love the voice acting but the truncated script and puzzles are a bummer.

    oh, the 16-color, no-voice version, for sure

    it's funny, I spent *years* trying to get ahold of the CD version, because it went out of print very quickly, and when I finally got the digital version it was just... worse

  56. Also, to tag on to Anon with Ukranian USSR grandmother (please bear with me, I swear I'm not asking in bad faith):

    I have a similar scenario, only instead of Ukrainian USSR it's Maoist China. My grandfather's parents were landlords, so they were treated pretty horribly. I completely understand the socialist arguments against the position of landlords, but I really don't think they had to execute/torture them all, after they had already taken their land.

    However, one thing that really struck me was that a lot of the violence was not perpetuated directly by the state. Rather, Mao just incited the people through articles he wrote, then simply "relaxed protections" on the landlords and sat and allowed the people to do whatever they wanted.

    IMO, this kind of poses a big question to libertarian socialists and anarchists who say that their ideal socialist society will not be oppressive as there will be no centralized state apparatus: even in a system whose power rested not only in a centralized state but also in the people themselves, these mass killings still occurred. So my question is: even in a radical libertarian socialist society which opposes USSR-style centralized state oppression, how would such a kind of "popular anger" by the masses be controlled so that it doesn't translate to mass killings? Or would you argue that the main problem in Maoist China was the social hierarchy: the cult of personality around Mao which gave him an immense amount of social power, to incite these sorts of acts?

    I know Mao's status as the top of the hierarchy definitely made this happen, though I can't say that it wouldn't happen without a leader. My research has stressed that authoritarian followers act specifically when they feel the authorities are encouraging and permitting them; they love to feel like the "arm of the law." They also don't feel responsible for their actions because they are following (explicit or implied) orders, and because their behavior is culturally determined to be "normal."

    I don't know that this problem disappears absent a state apparatus, but, in this case, it is definitely pushed by an apparatus that I think most anarchists would seek to remove.

    As for your earlier point: yeah, I can't sign off on executing landlords, they're not the cause of the problem.

  57. Do you believe your best work is still yet to come?

    I don't really think about it in those terms? I think I have *different* work still to come, more ambitious work, and I think my skills keep improving with time. But I tend not to assign the finished products with objective values. I mean... it's hard enough to compare my older stuff about video games to my current political stuff, and they're both video essays. How will I compare that to other things I wanna do? If I make a game someday, or a movie, or a webseries, or a comic, how do I even determine which is "best"?

    I dunno, that kinda thinking just makes me anxious. I just try to make sure each project is the best version of itself I can manage, and, if I keep getting better with time, cool.

  58. Given the inciting rhetoric spread by Trump about the "Chinese virus", how scared should I be as a person who is ethnically Chinese, and is planning to study in the US/Canada? Maybe scared isn't the right word, perhaps "alert" or "aware"?

    Also, what steps can I take to defend myself if it is indeed a big deal?

    I'm afraid I can't answer that. I know there has been a spike in hate crimes against Asians. I don't know how big a spike or how long it'll last.

  59. How's your life under quarantine been going?

    I'm antsy.

  60. What's your favourite game by Yahtzee Croshaw?

    Trilby's Notes

  61. Do you think its racist to call corona virus "the chinese virus"? I thought about it and it seems to me that a lot of diseases get named after where they supposedly originated from(Spanish flu, Ebola, Sudan Virus.) so it really doesn't seem to unusual to me. Do you think people would have cared at all if it started in russia or sweden or any western country and they named it after those places?

    Of course it's racist. "Spanish flu" was also xenophobic; we know it didn't originate in Spain, and most likely started in Kansas. Trump intentionally changed his speech to say "Chinese virus" because the only card conservatives have is blame and domination, and you can't villainize a disease, so they try to blame on in dirty foreigners.

  62. What's LTV?

    in response to (Social Distancing is giving me more time then normal, and I don't expect a response to these - they aren't really questions fit for curious cat. Just thank you for your time if you did read though them) Yes even "Homelessness" and "Food Insecurity" are culturally determined values. My country has a population of Bedouin who are have a nomadic culture and has been try to force them into permanent settlements for decades, with mixed resulted (not saying if that's a right/wrong thing to do, just that "homelessness" isn't as an objective or agreed upon term). Regarding food insecurity, we again have the same issue of where the line crosses. Is it merely calorically measured? Or do you also require other nutritional values (fiber, vitamins and so on)? Does it include meat? Lots of cultural determinations here. As for China and "sweat shops", it's a complicated issue but IMO yea, subsistence farming is worse. And that's really the alternative here. Lefties tend to either ignore that or they romanticize subsistence farming. Now the usual Marxist position is that due to the LTV even giving subsistence farmers the option of selling their labor is exploitative and therefore it's worse. Since I don't accept the LTV I wouldn't agree with that but I guess a theory of value is a moral value judgement so it difficult to actually talk about with regards to evidence. Ended up not agreeing on both things :)

    The Labor Theory of Value. I do a brief overview in this vid.

    https://youtu.be/E4CI2vk3ugk

  63. My grandmother was living in the Ukrainian USSR. When I try to explain her why I am socialist and communist in the long run and that we should redistribute wealth, she becomes very upset. She tells me about how her relatives were dekulakized and her father was killed by communists. And even that money and recources were nationalized people were dirt poor and only people benefiting from all that were the minority consisting of military types and people from upper party(sorry English is not perfect). She tells me that she much prefers capitalism and her life was much better during captialism, even though she lived through very turbulent and hard 90s. She tells me that amount of suffering during USSR is not immeasurable.

    What I am saying is that I am more and more convinced that communism is too perfect of a concept to be realised and too often it was just an excuse to execute millions of people(ethnic minorities included). When I read twitter about how violent revolution is the best way to end capitalism and to kill rich I remember what my grandma told me and I can't really side with this people anymore.

    I am still a leftist, but I am more aware of how wrong it all could go. Do you think radical leftists and those who are more inclined to communism need to learn about history of orher countries? Or am I just too easy to impress?

    It's really complicated, because most leftists would tell you that the USSR, at least after Lenin died and arguably even before, wasn't properly communist. What often happens in a revolution is people who claimed they would bring the power to the people keep a lot of the leftist rhetoric but actually consolidate power for themselves. So, yes, there are many, many atrocities committed by nations that call themselves communist, but, if you read the kinds of societies most communists and socialists say they want to create, you can't really claim that the USSR or China or North Korea resemble them at all.

    And it's frustrating how we blame these atrocities on communism, but the same rule never applies to capitalism. Why isn't American capitalism to blame for the genocide of the Native Americans and chattel slavery? Why isn't capitalism blamed for the climate crisis? Why is that always the flaw of individual nations and not of the system they all run on, while any failed socialist state is an indictment of socialism?

    The history I feel the need to study is the history of revolutions, because I want to know why so many socialist revolutions don't result in what most leftists would consider socialist states. People who advocate violent revolution concern me as well, because we can't even point to many violent revolutions that actually accomplished what they set out to *even when they won*. How do you create a leftist state of the kind we actually imagine when we read leftist texts? What differentiates the revolutions that create reasonably socialist societies from the ones that create authoritarian regimes that brand themselves socialist? How do you keep autocrats from seizing power once the old guard is overthrown?

    I don't have answers to these questions. It's the thing I want to study most when I finish The Alt-Right Playbook.

  64. (Social Distancing is giving me more time then normal, and I don't expect a response to these - they aren't really questions fit for curious cat. Just thank you for your time if you did read though them)

    Yes even "Homelessness" and "Food Insecurity" are culturally determined values.

    My country has a population of Bedouin who are have a nomadic culture and has been try to force them into permanent settlements for decades, with mixed resulted (not saying if that's a right/wrong thing to do, just that "homelessness" isn't as an objective or agreed upon term).
    Regarding food insecurity, we again have the same issue of where the line crosses. Is it merely calorically measured? Or do you also require other nutritional values (fiber, vitamins and so on)? Does it include meat? Lots of cultural determinations here.

    As for China and "sweat shops", it's a complicated issue but IMO yea, subsistence farming is worse. And that's really the alternative here. Lefties tend to either ignore that or they romanticize subsistence farming.

    Now the usual Marxist position is that due to the LTV even giving subsistence farmers the option of selling their labor is exploitative and therefore it's worse. Since I don't accept the LTV I wouldn't agree with that but I guess a theory of value is a moral value judgement so it difficult to actually talk about with regards to evidence.

    Ended up not agreeing on both things :)

    in response to That may be one definition (And I thank you for giving it, I was curious what yours was) but poverty is measured and defined in different ways depending who you ask. The OECD and EU use a relative poverty measurement, while the US used an absolute one. The "basic needs" definition tends to have issues since as you might imagine what the basic needs are changes culturally. For instance, is internet access a "basic need"? Is broadband required or is a dial up connection sufficient? As you might imagine often people choose the definition that most supports the conclusion they want to reach. Anyway that was to rambley and I'll just mention again that China's standards of living increased as it *liberalized* in the 70's - not in relation to it's technological status.

    What, exactly, is your point? Like, is it just that defining "poverty" is complicated because there are always edge-cases? In that case, yes, I agree, and these things will need to be tackled with care. But I'm not sure why you'd be bringing that up except to say that, since defining homelessness might dick over some nomadic peoples, we should just let people keep starving in the streets.

    I'm gonna ignore the stuff about LTV and your defense of sweatshops for now.

  68. Is Mario nice

    hmm, I guess I only know Mario's personality from what he puts forth in his games. it may be a carefully cultivated persona. do you wonder if he's like Ellen Degeneres, and the whole world loves him but if you move the Mushroom Kingdom everyone's like "he's good at what he does, but he's a real dick when you meet him"?

  69. Eh? So what is it about Jordan Peterson that you don't like? Is it the ethos behind all his lectures and speeches?

    Because I thought the way he conducts his speeches and lectures seem more measured compared to the others that often use viral soundbites to catch people's attention, that includes the liberals

    in response to Don't you feel Jordan Peterson's earlier lectures before the BBC incident was actually less conservative and more against neoliberal/pseudo-liberal left ideas?

    Peterson doesn't have soundbytes because his winding diatribes only appear to make sense in context; the fact that he's spouting gibberish gets *really obvious* when excerpted, but then people just say "you gotta watch seven hours of speeches to really understand it."

  70. Do you think the entire debacle of the guy who bought out all the hand sanitizers in an entire region so he could hoard and price gouge it, is an example of how artificial scarcity is created under capitalism?

    I think we literally couldn't come up with a better example

  71. That may be one definition (And I thank you for giving it, I was curious what yours was) but poverty is measured and defined in different ways depending who you ask.

    The OECD and EU use a relative poverty measurement, while the US used an absolute one.

    The "basic needs" definition tends to have issues since as you might imagine what the basic needs are changes culturally. For instance, is internet access a "basic need"? Is broadband required or is a dial up connection sufficient?

    As you might imagine often people choose the definition that most supports the conclusion they want to reach.

    Anyway that was to rambley and I'll just mention again that China's standards of living increased as it *liberalized* in the 70's - not in relation to it's technological status.

    in response to Since poverty is defined proportionally (by the way the *left* uses it), it's definitionally impossible to lift everyone out of poverty.

    Surely you will grant me that any definition of "basic needs" will need to address homelessness and food insecurity.

    And aren't the worst standards of living in China things like the Foxconn sweatshops, which exist to satisfy the capitalist demands of American corporations?

  72. Do you think in the 60s, there may have been civil rights activists saying, "we gotta remember this is bigger than Dr. King and stop focusing so much on his big dream speech," in much the same way you keep saying it's not all about Bernie?

    I can't speak to what people were saying 20 years before I was born, but I know we had rather a lot of activists in those days, and that King didn't reach the deified status we grant him now until after he was assassinated

  74. Um, people don't defend "Capitalism" because the term itself is a pejorative Marxist term.

    There are lots of proponents of free trade, free market economics, economic liberalism and other related concepts, as you know.

    Whether they're right or wrong, they do exist.

    in response to He did not. Feudalism and that kind of exploitation made servants poor for centuries. Not unlike socialist paradises like Corea, or China, in the times of Mao Really how capitalism is the worst option?

    "people don't defend 'capitalism'"

    https://theintercept.com/2016/08/09/capitalism-is-a-lot-more-important-than-democracy-says-donald-trumps-economic-adviser/

  75. Since poverty is defined proportionally (by the way the *left* uses it), it's definitionally impossible to lift everyone out of poverty.

    in response to How can you be an anti-capitalist when capitalism has lifted so many people out of poverty over the last 200 years?

    what? poverty is defined by the cost of living. the poverty line is drawn (usually inaccurately, but bear with me) at the point where a person can theoretically get their base needs met. it is entirely possible to guarantee a standard of living for everyone.

Anon commented:
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