CuriousCat Archive Page 59 of 202

  1. Why do some people treat Marx like a religious saint who's every word must be right?

    in response to Fake Marxist. "in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade." - Karl Marx

    they only believe this when he says something they like

  4. Do you hate capitalism?

    I have not been subtle about this fact

  5. Fake Marxist.

    "in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favor of free trade." - Karl Marx

    in response to Can you elaborate on that?

    the way people quote Marx like it's scripture and any disagreement is grounds for excommunication... y'all know some of the shit he said about Jews, right? keep the baby but toss the bathwater.

  6. Should having access to sex and a relationship be considered a basic human right?

    is this that Jordan Peterson thing about trying to socialize women's bodies?

  7. Do you have any thoughts on taylor sheridan's "frontier trilogy" (sicario, hell or high water, wind river)?

    for some reason I have seen the two that aren't Sicario, even though Sicario is pretty universally considered the best one. Hell or High Water is pretty good ("we don't serve no goddamn trout"), Wind River is not particularly good.

  9. Why don’t democrats try their hand at gerrymandering?

    they do, which is (I assume) why they don't fight it harder. they're just not as aggro about it because, you know, it's immoral? and they're ambivalent about it or something?

  11. favorite gaming urban legend

    luigi in mario 64

  13. What do you think about "vote blue no matter who"?

    well, I don't agree with the logic behind it, i.e. "if the dems get a majority they will accomplish good things" because, with some exception, they do not do that. but the blunter logic of "vote for pretty much anyone else and things get worse faster" is a generally accurate heuristic.

  14. What *do* you think can accurately reflect the needs of the public?

    in response to How is the presidency an “unjust power?”

    I'm interested in forms of governance where the public is directly involved in getting their needs met, rather than going through a representative.

  15. Was Barack Obama the least worst president?

    in response to Was Barack Obama a good president?

    I haven't put thought towards that. can you tell me what you feel is valuable about this question?

  16. Based on what you said about music under socialist societies being something people do for fun and expression, rather than something they do for money (as there would be no money in your ideal form of government), then... wouldn't it be fair to assume that you wouldn't be able to do Innuendo Studios as your full time "job" in your ideal socialist system?

    you mean I could do it as much as I feel like doing it, rather than having dealing with abject terror every time a health crisis means I can't release videos for a while and the patreon starts to dip? you mean I could leave room in my life for other passions? you mean I might spend some of my time doing work that is more materially beneficial to society, like how I used to work in education but you can't make a living as an educator unless you do it full-time?

    like, fam, I would ABSOLUTELY spend some afternoons tilling soil if it meant I got a guaranteed basic income and the rest of my week is mine.

  17. What is your favorite video game soundtrack?

    the boring answer is still the correct one: Chrono Trigger

  18. Do you like Sneaker Pimps as a fan trip-hop?

    I hear their later stuff is good. I was unmoved by Becoming X.

  19. Are trans people the most disadvantaged minority group?

    it's not a competition

  20. How is the presidency an “unjust power?”

    because it's a massive amount of power held by a single person and electoral system that puts them there currently rather broken, and they sit at the head of a capitalist, imperialist government that is immoral in its conception, and even if all that were changed I still don't believe representative democracy can accurately reflect the needs of the public

  21. Do you have any stocks or other investment? If I have extra money where should I invest?

    my financial planner sets people up with investment accounts if they want them, but the minimum buy-in is $5000, which is more money than I have in the world right now

  22. I don't know how many unabashed stalinists (marxist-leninists, if you prefer) there are in the active left these days, but there are quite a few leninists (who are also marxists, of course)

    it's worth reading lenin to understand where they're coming from

    the exact labels are really very very unimportant, unless you want to play internet goal-scoring games (which I assume you don't)

    the important thing is what ideas are influencing which people to take which actions, and lots of people take lenin seriously while few have read stalin at all

    in response to State and Revolution by Lenin is considered canonical by many, but it's also sometimes considered self-contradictory, or unrepresentative of Lenin's later thought and practice The April Theses, a set of 10 demands he published around a similar time, prompted another Russian Marxist to remark: "Lenin has now made himself a candidate for one European throne that has been vacant for thirty years — the throne of Bakunin! Lenin’s new words echo something old — the superannuated truths of primitive anarchism" Obviously that wouldn't hold after the Bolsheviks took state power Anyway, they're worth reading, and neither is long It's almost hopeful, the sense that one gets from State and Rev, you can see in it the hints of the tragedy to come, but also a truly revolutionary vision

    "Marxist-Leninism" is a political philosophy created by Stalin to justify his authoritarian policies after the death of Lenin. he wrote essay after essay arguing that the centralization of power was in keeping with the teachings of Marx and Lenin. whether or not people call themselves Stalinists, Marxist-Leninists are following in his footsteps, and every existing communist nation identifies as Marxist-Leninist. I get what you're saying, but you can't write Stalin out of the narrative on this.

  23. thoughts on calvino?

    The Distance of the Moon is one of my absolute favorite stories

  24. What do you think about Biden's student loan relief plan?

    better than I expected of him, honestly. still had to means-test it and make a bunch of provisos and disallow a lot of people because that's what libs do, but it is still a net positive.

  25. Badminton or croquet?

    minton

  26. what should i do when i win the powerball? wipe out world hunger? buy a bunch of cocaine? two chicks at once?

    pretty sure you can afford all three

  27. Why did you include pictures of NFTs and Jordan Peterson in the “radicalizing to the cause” photo montage in your last video?

    because NFTs are a haven for libertarian hypercapitalists and the biggest name in NFTs modeled their logo after the totenkopf, and Jordan Peterson is one of the major gateways to the radical right whether he's trying to be or not (and believing he isn't trying to even in his "up yours woke moralists" phase is pretty daft)

  28. Why is gender dysphoria not treated as a mental illness?

    gender dysphoria *is* treated as a mental illness, and gender confirmation surgery has been demonstrated the most effective treatment

  29. Hi Mr. Studios. Long time, first time. So something i've been thinking about for a short while now is how to resolve communism and authoritarianism. I promise this is not a bad faith question, but if we want a system that equitably distributes wealth, etc. we would need a centralised authority to do so, right? And so, does a communist system necessarily need to be authoritarian?

    well:

    1) centralized authority does not ipso facto mean authoritarianism. most existing governments have authority structures but few are fully authoritarian regimes.

    2) many schools of socialist and anarchist thought have proposals for how to distribute authority such that it only ever exists briefly and in small quantities; syndicalists, for instance, propose we cycle leadership roles between the entire community every few weeks, so everyone wields power some of the time but never for long.

    3) the supposition that wealth needs to be distributed presumes that a thing like money is necessary for the functioning of society, which I am increasingly unconvinced by. it is true that some form of organization would be needed for the distribution of resources, but I'm not convinced that system needs to be centralized.

  30. Is there a way, in general, to distinguish concern trolling from genuine concern? How should one respond when unsure?

    well, where this issue gets sticky is, sometimes being concern troll with legitimate criticism.

    I think about this a lot with regards to being called a "white night." if I say "Jessica Price should not have been fired over her personal tweets," someone might come in and tell me to stop white knighting. and, the fact is, white knighting is a thing! a lot of men will leap to a woman's defense because they think women need to be protected, that they can't fight their own fights; some men have codified male feminism as a new kind of chivalry, which isn't treating women as equals. sometimes people say the right things for the wrong reasons.

    it's good to have a sitdown with someone you trust to be brutally honest with you and ask, hey, can we check my motivations? am I doing that unconscious misogyny thing? am I stepping in where I shouldn't? take an opportunity to check yourself now and then.

    but still: regardless of your reasons for saying it, JESSICA PRICE SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN FIRED OVER HER PERSONAL TWEETS. it is still a true fact that she was an opinionated woman who did not perform for her customers 24/7 and they harassed her until the bosses fired her for PR reasons. and, no matter what some concern troll thinks my reasons for saying so, that is still a true statement.

    you should be concerned with doing what is right, and you should be concerned with knowing your reasons for doing so. but don't mix the two up.

  31. whats up with the new twitter profile

    I feel it's pretty self explanatory: this account is now being run by Dumb Elon Musk

  32. What do you think about the original incel killer Elliot Rodger?

    I suppose I haven't shared many opinions on Elliot Rodger, the chief inspiration for sexist mass murderers everywhere, and my silence on the issue speaks volumes

    I do not care for Elliot Rodger

  33. Why is the guillotine viewed as a leftist symbol?

    in response to How do you feel about the hammer and sickle symbol?

    cuz the French used it in a people's revolt to chop the heads off the ruling class

    it's symbology leaves out that this did not result in a stable democracy and the guillotine was thereafter used a lot more on the poor than the powerful, but that's how symbols often go!

  34. Correction: a community being good is contingent on it not having any people with coercive authority. Leadership can be based on coercive authority, but it can also be based on expertise (e.g. a teacher leading a classroom) or time (e.g. farming communes where the group responsible for determining who does what work rotates every 6 months)

    in response to Do all good communities need Leaders

    fair point. I guess I was considering "leaders" in the context of leading the community itself, the way elected officials do, rather than leading subsets based on expertise. there's also the semantic question of whether a teacher or farm shift organizer is a "leader" in this context or if these are just jobs same as all the others and we only consider them leadership positions under our current hierarchical model...

    anyway, that's stuff I like to think about but your point is well taken!

  35. Can an effective community have no leaders?

    in response to Do all good communities need Leaders

    of course, the question is how big does it scale

  36. Do all good communities need Leaders

    the anarchist would say a community being good is contingent on it NOT having leaders

  37. How do you feel about the hammer and sickle symbol?

    like the guillotine, it's a useful shorthand for leftism that nevertheless represents a very complicated history. it works as a symbol because it's been decontextualized from that history.

  38. favorite rage against the machine song

    in response to favorite queen song

    my neck, my back

  39. If you got elected president, would you be a good president? What would you actually try to do?

    in response to Was Barack Obama a good president?

    you mean, like, if I ran for president and won? or if I was informed tomorrow that, by a record number of write-ins, I had been made president?

    I guess, either way, I would do my best. but, no, I don't think you can sit at the seat of an unjust power ethically, and I don't think the person who sits at that seat is able to fundamentally change the system by themself.

  40. What food do you typically get at the movie theater?

    sour patch kids and a root beer

  41. OK, let me get real for a moment. Will there be more good music under socialism?

    I don't wanna "no true Scotsman" socialist societies that have not been very artistic. but the socialism I believe in is one where everyone has the freedom and security to make music without having to turn a profit with it, where music can be shared freely and widely, where the industrialization of music doesn't wreck artists with massive debt to labels or burn them out with constant touring. it's where music is simply a thing people are empowered to do and share.

    it's impossible to predict how this would change music. what happens to pop music when music can't make you wealthy and making it is no longer a rarefied profession? do we still have glitz and glam? I don't know. maybe some genres will change or fall out of fashion.

    but what I do know is the range of music produced would be widened, the pressures of playing to the whims of radio stations and labels would fade, and artists would no longer fail because some suit decided they weren't marketable. I can only believe those conditions would make music better.

  42. Was Barack Obama a good president?

    there are no good presidents

  43. So, I understand there's some propaganda involved in this, but to what degree would you say that being a socialist in a developed country is at the very least correlated with also being more secular?

    in certain countries this is the case - Soviet-style communism was very anti-religion. but Christianity is core to socialist movements in Latin America.

  44. favorite queen song

    in response to favorite ween song?

    Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy

  46. if you had to pick one or the other, do you think you'd be a clown or do you think you'd be a mime

    Mime is a more interesting skillset but clown's is more versatile. It's a coin toss.

  48. There is also, if you read your David Graeber, an assumption you yourself are using here, money was never "meant to be more efficient than bartering" it existed because powerful people and states maintained and issued it, there were and are a variety of ways that value and goods have been exchanged
    I'm not trying to pull a gotcha here, i'm saying to anyone that read this answer and felt like something was amiss or unrealistic about it that "we had barter and invented money because that was better" is just the first step of the "and so obviously we need a bank to regulate that,, who obviously will control the money supply via various indirect means, because *obviously* we will still need people to work in order to access the means to live, as they do now" path dependency that the question goes down

    It's very easy to assume the tools we build (like money) do not twist the way we look at the world, and at history.

    in response to In what specific way would socialism solve this problem? It seems fair to presume that you saying "this is why capitalism sucks" means that you think this would not happen in a socialist state. I doubt currency would be abolished in a realistic socialist state, I doubt the concept of a job would be abolished either (just that workers would be justly compensated for their labor), and I see no reason that the central bank would be removed (as regulation of the economy seems important regardless of what economic system is in play).

    I don't disagree with you, but I think you're extrapolating things I didn't say. My points was that money can exist in post- or non-capitalist societies as a means of facilitating exchange without capitalist features like inflation. Wasn't trying to claim that this was a prelapsarian state we actually lived through.

  49. Different anon, but I think the questioner is referring to the people who say that the pre-1967 borders of Israel or even the original land given designated as Israel by the UN from British Palestine is occupied land and not a real country.
    The Gaza Strip and the West Bank are 100% occupied land and there is absolutely no justification for settlements there.
    But it is less clear about the land of Israel proper. Legally that is a country.

    in response to Namely those that refer to Israelis as "Zionists" and claim Israel isn't a real country; and is instead occupied Palestinian land. You can find such sentiments are all over the place whenever Israel is in the news.

    As I said: debating its "realness" seems largely semantic. It's what the debate about "realness" is a shorthand for.

  50. How do you feel about YouTube’s recommendation algorithm?

    I've seen it be quite effective for a few people. It is complete trash for me.

  52. If you can't have a market without scarcity, then isn't inflation a function of *commerce*, not capitalism?

    in response to In what specific way would socialism solve this problem? It seems fair to presume that you saying "this is why capitalism sucks" means that you think this would not happen in a socialist state. I doubt currency would be abolished in a realistic socialist state, I doubt the concept of a job would be abolished either (just that workers would be justly compensated for their labor), and I see no reason that the central bank would be removed (as regulation of the economy seems important regardless of what economic system is in play).

    you can't have a *capitalist* market without scarcity. commerce happened without this bullshit for millennia before capitalism existed.

  53. Namely those that refer to Israelis as "Zionists" and claim Israel isn't a real country; and is instead occupied Palestinian land. You can find such sentiments are all over the place whenever Israel is in the news.

    in response to In the wake of the current wave of antisemitism is it worth reevaluating leftist critiques of Israel's treatment of Palestine?

    do you agree that the occupation of Gaza is occupation of Palestinian land? because it is right to critique that. debates over the "realness" of the country don't seem fruitful, but it's only antisemitic if you accept the framing that Israel is the sovereign nation of the Jewish people and therefore any criticism of the country is a criticism of Jews. this is is a pretty fucked up freaking given it assumes the Palestinians who live there are not real citizens because they're Muslim.

  54. favorite ween song?

    push th' little daisies

  55. In what specific way would socialism solve this problem? It seems fair to presume that you saying "this is why capitalism sucks" means that you think this would not happen in a socialist state. I doubt currency would be abolished in a realistic socialist state, I doubt the concept of a job would be abolished either (just that workers would be justly compensated for their labor), and I see no reason that the central bank would be removed (as regulation of the economy seems important regardless of what economic system is in play).

    in response to How do you respond to the conventional explanation for the mechanism by which lowering unemployment beyond a certain point requires actions that increase inflation? i.e. there always exists frictions in the labor market. People will necessarily be unemployed when job hunting, especially when trying to do something like switch industries. As a result, there is a "natural rate" of unemployment, where all the remaining unemployment is caused by these frictions. So in order to push unemployment below this natural rate, the central bank has to increase demand more and more exponentially (firms try to speed up this hiring process when to meet demand, and they aren't able to properly distinguish between demand from the central bank increasing aggregate demand, and a relative increase in demand for only those goods (making it desirable to increase output) but this "trick" can only happen if price growth accelerates, otherwise firms will figure out that all the stable price growth is from the central bank. Hence inflation must accelerate. )

    the concept of inflation is capitalist. it's not a natural function of money. if money is simply a convenient means of representing goods and services meant to be more efficient than bartering, there is no reason that printing more money should deflate its value; it would only be reflective of more goods/services/productivity entering the system (which, indeed, has been happening). the idea that MY money is worth LESS because YOU have more of it is a function of capitalism. you can't have a market unless you have scarcity, so you have to limit the amount of "value" in the system.

  56. They also may be not aware or be deliberately leaving out the part that the litterbox story started because of a video where said litterbox was mentioned as a way for students to relieve themselves in case they were locked in their classroom because of a shooting going on, but I cannot imagine why a conservative would want to leave that fact out

    in response to (different anon) I think he's talking about furries.

  57. In the wake of the current wave of antisemitism is it worth reevaluating leftist critiques of Israel's treatment of Palestine?

    which leftist critiques are you referring to

  58. can I colonize you

    buy me dinner first

  59. Doing the replying-to-another-op thing. Just wanted to say that this conversation reminded me of this quote from Tuck and Yang's Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor (2012):

    "An ethic of incommensurability, which guides moves that unsettle innocence, stands in contrast to aims of reconciliation, which motivate settler moves to innocence. Reconciliation is about rescuing settler normalcy, about rescuing a settler future. Reconciliation is concerned with questions of what will decolonization look like? What will happen after abolition? What will be the consequences of decolonization for the settler? Incommensurability acknowledges that these questions need not, and perhaps cannot, be answered in order for decolonization to exist as a framework.

    We want to say, first, that decolonization is not obliged to answer those questions - decolonization is not accountable to settlers, or settler futurity. Decolonization is accountable to Indigenous sovereignty and futurity. Still, we acknowledge the questions of those wary participants in Occupy Oakland and other settlers who want to know what decolonization will require of them. The answers are not fully in view and can’t be as long as decolonization remains punctuated by metaphor. The answers will not emerge from friendly understanding, and indeed require a dangerous understanding of uncommonality that un-coalesces coalition politics - moves that may feel very unfriendly. But we will find out the answers as we get there, 'in the exact measure that we can discern the movements which give [decolonization] historical form and content' (Fanon, 1963, p. 36)."

    in response to What *do* you think would happen if (somehow) land were returned to Native Americans?

  60. Okay, but you support returning land, don't you? Supporting something without understanding it seems absurd, and.if you understand it then surely you should be able to explain it, right? So what's the hangup?

    in response to Why? What I'm asking is what *you think* would happen - how does that necessitate anyone's input but your own?

    the hang-up is a) knowing that a thing is just does not make you an expert in how to implement it, and b) you should not be encouraged to treat white people as explainers

  61. If you were stranded on a deserted island and started to befriend an inanimate object, what would you name it?

    Edward Norton

  62. Is there a meaningful difference between authoritarianism and fascism?

    in the sense that there is a difference between squares and rectangles

  63. Why has communism historically been viewed as a threat to democracy and the Western world?

    Communism is a threat to capitalism, which non-communist democracies are.

  65. How do you respond to the conventional explanation for the mechanism by which lowering unemployment beyond a certain point requires actions that increase inflation?

    i.e. there always exists frictions in the labor market. People will necessarily be unemployed when job hunting, especially when trying to do something like switch industries. As a result, there is a "natural rate" of unemployment, where all the remaining unemployment is caused by these frictions. So in order to push unemployment below this natural rate, the central bank has to increase demand more and more exponentially (firms try to speed up this hiring process when to meet demand, and they aren't able to properly distinguish between demand from the central bank increasing aggregate demand, and a relative increase in demand for only those goods (making it desirable to increase output) but this "trick" can only happen if price growth accelerates, otherwise firms will figure out that all the stable price growth is from the central bank. Hence inflation must accelerate. )

    I respond by saying "this is why capitalism sucks"

  68. Notably the early part of the German invasion of the USSR went so well for the nazis because Stalin had purged most of the upper ranks of the army, and been so paranoid about betrayal that he ignored his own spies that had discovered the invasion was happening weeks in advance, he even ignored early messages *about the invasion* as it was happening because he was so paranoid,
    Lenin brought the USSR to world power status, just by scaling what industry existed and sharing the products of that with the rural peasantry, Stalin nearly killed that in the cradle and even after the post-war era he still managed to hobble the form of government so badly that dictatorship or dissolution became the only possibilities for the soviet union going forward, Lenin was also not great, but he had enough good ideas and awareness of how to achieve them to maybe be considered a necessary evil, Russia is good at repelling invasions just by doing very well executed defense in-depth backed up by artillery (battle of Kursk is descriptive here- "I consider it inadvisable for our forces to go over to an offensive in the near future in order to forestall the enemy, It would be better to make the enemy exhaust himself against our defences, and knock out his tanks and then, bringing up fresh reserves, to go over to the general offensive which would finally finish off his main force"), this wasn't throwing bodies into a meat grinder, if you want to see that you need to look at say, an important industrial city you cannot hand to an enemy that was protecting Russian oil fields, like say, Stalingrad,,,

    in response to Was Joseph Stalin’s dictatorship a necessary evil? He successfully fought off the largest land invasion in history and brought the Soviet Union to world power status.

  69. What *do* you think would happen if (somehow) land were returned to Native Americans?

    in response to What do you mean “have the means?” As of the 2020 census, there were about 5,000,000 Native Americans and about 328,000,000 colonizers in the United States. 5,000,000 people cannot expel nor can they rule over 328,000,000 people. Even if it’s the right thing to do and would probably be better than the status quo.

    you'd have to ask them

  70. That's all well and good, but that still leaves the problem of how a native population of 5,000,000 can be expected to *govern* a nation of over 300 million. There are almost 20,000,000 government employees (presumably with important jobs for maintaining a democratic republic) at the state and local levels alone. If the national government were abolished and the land divided into polities governed by the tribes that originated upon them, they would almost *have* to expel a large number of non-native peoples to reduce the population to a manageable number. That's not "thinking like a colonizer", it's just a practical reality.

    in response to What do you mean “have the means?” As of the 2020 census, there were about 5,000,000 Native Americans and about 328,000,000 colonizers in the United States. 5,000,000 people cannot expel nor can they rule over 328,000,000 people. Even if it’s the right thing to do and would probably be better than the status quo.

    your seem very confident in your assertions of how modern tribal societies would operate, how they would divide land, and many people they require to keep order. what is your expertise in this area, exactly?

  71. What do you mean “have the means?” As of the 2020 census, there were about 5,000,000 Native Americans and about 328,000,000 colonizers in the United States. 5,000,000 people cannot expel nor can they rule over 328,000,000 people. Even if it’s the right thing to do and would probably be better than the status quo.

    in response to Is it pointless to teach children that the U.S was built on stolen land if we have no means or intention of *giving it back*? Not in the piecemeal way the few victories of the #landback movement have manifested, but all at once? As in, effectively abolishing the U.S government and letting territorial and administrative control of these lands be determined by the tribes that originated upon them?

    why do you assume Native Americans would expel all the people who live here if the land were returned to them? not everyone thinks like a colonizer.

  72. Can you ELI5 how capitalism requires poverty to exist?

    this is not super technical, but you asked for ELI5, so:

    right now, the unemployment rate is 3.7%. there are fewer jobs than people who need them. this means, if you are looking for a job there's a chance you won't find one. you need a job to live. so that gives employers leverage: if they offer you a job, and the alternative to taking it is the risk of not having an income, you will make concessions. you will accept a lower salary, fewer sick days, etc. companies save money when your alternative to working for them is being unemployed.

    if the unemployment rate were 0%, employees would have leverage. now, if the company needs a job filled, there isn't a population of millions of unemployed people to pick from. the worker's alternative to taking one job is simply taking a different job. and, if the job doesn't treat them well, they can more easily go somewhere else, because there is a scarcity of people looking for work. this drives wages up and drives down barriers of entry. when workers have leverage, the *companies* make concessions. maybe instead of requiring a bachelor's degree they start offering on-site training; maybe they offer better insurance plans, bigger bonuses, more paid vacation. they can't make money if can't get positions filled, and that costs them money to fill positions when employees don't have fear of unemployment.

    in short: without unemployment, companies compete with each other for workers. with unemployment, workers compete with each other for jobs. the former drives wages up, the latter drives wages down.

    CURRENT CONVENTIONAL WISDOM (which is a different thing from fact) is that, if employment is high and wages/perks go up, inflation goes up as well. with companies having to spend more to keep employees happy, they lose profit. in turn, they raise prices to get those profits back. with when prices go up, so does cost of living. so employees demand higher salaries to afford the higher cost of living. so companies raise prices, and so on and so forth. this (supposedly) causes inflation. (I'm no economist but I know this is only *sometimes* true; there are many instances of unemployment falling without inflation rising.)

    but, under the current dominant economic model, unemployment and inflation exist in a ratio, and everyone having a job is a divide-by-zero error. it means runaway inflation. the economy would collapse.

    the Federal Reserve has a notion called "maximum employment," which is the unemployment rate at which inflation is kept at around 2%. if people are employed at higher than "maximum employment," they hike interest rates to INTENTIONALLY REDUCE EMPLOYMENT to keep inflation under control. they have, in fact, just done this, acknowledging that it may cause a recession: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fed-interest-rate-hikes-unemployment-increase-layoffs-inflation/

    you need a job to get paid. the economy collapses if everyone has a job. therefore, poverty *must* exist.

  74. Is it pointless to teach children that the U.S was built on stolen land if we have no means or intention of *giving it back*? Not in the piecemeal way the few victories of the #landback movement have manifested, but all at once? As in, effectively abolishing the U.S government and letting territorial and administrative control of these lands be determined by the tribes that originated upon them?

    I don't think I can get along with the idea that, if you're not going to write a wrong, you should pretend it never happened. because descendants of the people we took it from are still here.

    also, we absolutely have the means, and future generations might have the intention.

  75. Was Joseph Stalin’s dictatorship a necessary evil? He successfully fought off the largest land invasion in history and brought the Soviet Union to world power status.

    I mean... I'm no historian, but I think Russia is good at fighting off land invasions because they just have a shitload more people than any invading nation and can send. that's true no matter who runs the country. and I don't know why "world power status" should be desirable for a country that claims to be abolishing hierarchical power structures, you know?

    in general, I've never found anything authoritarians can accomplish that hasn't been accomplished without them except massive amounts of death and suffering.

Anon commented:
Ian replied: