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Thread: The Rise of Far Left Extremism

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    Quote Originally Posted by ooo View Post
    @FreelancePoliceman the Greeks colonized Italy long before the Romans did, and the later Romans' culture was largely based on the Greek one. all through the middle ages (primacy of the Church) this influence continued, you can smell Plato (neo-platonism), Aristotle and the stoics in every work of religion, art, literature. the intellectual thinkers in the Roman empire have always spoken those "languages", and don't you dare saying that the middle ages had no enlightened artistic peaks.

    btw, if the Greeks were the ones to promote what you define humanist values, we owe it to them for passing it along, not to the Ottomans. uh
    Again, there were mini-Renaissances of a sort during the Middle Ages, and these were generally associated with leaps of artistic and scientific advances. But very generally speaking, the philosophical and intellectual climate you refer to had collapsed in Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The population became largely rural, cities and infrastructure were destroyed or declined naturally with no one to live in/maintain them, and there weren’t as many institutions of learning besides the Church. As the Middle Ages advanced, this trend did begin to reverse at a *very* slow pace. But new ideas in art or science tended to be inspired by contact with the Muslim and Hellenic worlds, which in comparison were more literate, usually placed a greater emphasis on learning and, importantly, physical books, and tended to have noticably more developed architecture, infrastructure, cities, military planning, etc. (For instance, compare the Moorish architecture in Spain to Spanish architecture from the same period; the latter simply sucks in comparison.)

    I think you misunderstood my post. The Byzantines developed humanism; the Ottomans just conquered them and caused a large number of Greek speakers to migrate to Italy.

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    Quote Originally Posted by ooo View Post
    that looks more reasonable and I can agree with that policy, just not with the mono-cultural/mono-ethnic stance, which is a different premise and I don't want to repeat what it seems..
    Yes, mono-ethnic nations are only going to happen in a few select 1st world nations that are actively trying to do it atm (Japan, South Korea, Hungary, Poland, Italy and Australia) and I have accepted that. The rest of the 1st world nations that have chosen that route require strict controlled immigration and cultural assimilation via integration in an inevitable multi-ethnic society.
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    I'm confused about this thread, are we talking about "what lead to the current rise in far left extremism", or "is far left extremism good or bad"? I guess I'll focus on the former.

    It seems to me that the dramatic rise in Antifa (as such) started in 2016 in response to the campaign and subsequent election of Donald Trump.
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    Quote Originally Posted by FreelancePoliceman View Post
    Again, there were mini-Renaissances of a sort during the Middle Ages, and these were generally associated with leaps of artistic and scientific advances. But very generally speaking, the philosophical and intellectual climate you refer to had collapsed in Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The population became largely rural, cities and infrastructure were destroyed or declined naturally with no one to live in/maintain them, and there weren’t as many institutions of learning besides the Church. As the Middle Ages advanced, this trend did begin to reverse at a *very* slow pace. But new ideas in art or science tended to be inspired by contact with the Muslim and Hellenic worlds, which in comparison were more literate, usually placed a greater emphasis on learning and, importantly, physical books, and tended to have noticably more developed architecture, infrastructure, cities, military planning, etc. (For instance, compare the Moorish architecture in Spain to Spanish architecture from the same period; the latter simply sucks in comparison.)

    I think you misunderstood my post. The Byzantines developed humanism; the Ottomans just conquered them and caused a large number of Greek speakers to migrate to Italy.
    yeah, no doubt that the ancient muslim world was incredibly advanced and developed many interesting things, but humanism, or, for what I intended politically, some kind of democratic republic, was not a byzantine invention, nor was it made popular with them.

    I can speak for my country, I know it played a mayor role during those ages, anyway, "Italy" founded the first university in the world, dated 1088. university instutitions and public education started to spread in all the major comuni, which were city states scattered everywhere. medieval architecture is still displayed everywhere you go, beautiful and resilient, so are the works of art and other things from ages that were not dark as we imagine. and there were even female philosophers back in the day, just sayin'.

    you're right that much of the old knowledge got transmitted only after some books were brought to the west and translated into latin, the Corpus Hermeticum is one of the books that inspired a spiritual and mental switch and it was translated from the Greek by Ficino, who received the book from a monk that had traveled to Macedonia.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Raver View Post
    Yes, mono-ethnic nations are only going to happen in a few select 1st world nations that are actively trying to do it atm (Japan, South Korea, Hungary, Poland, Italy and Australia) and I have accepted that. The rest of the 1st world nations that have chosen that route require strict controlled immigration and cultural assimilation via integration in an inevitable multi-ethnic society.
    I don't know if you're confusing it with Austria, but Australia is already an multi-ethnic, multi-cultural country like Canada.

    A lot of the countries in Asia and Africa are already multi-ethnic or multi-cultural.

    Japan, South Korea and North Korea are a special case, because they've been heavily influenced by the "racial purity" ideology of the Empire of Japan, which was influenced by... Nazi Germany. They've basically copied their ideas from the Nazis. Before that, there were no concept of race or ethnicity or nations. People belonged to certain clans or fiefdoms or tribes, and they were loyal to them. So they needed something, a fictional idea to unite people to create the concept of a nation for the war efforts.

    Most countries pretty much only accept highly-skilled immigrants. The US being one of them.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Singu View Post
    Japan, South Korea and North Korea are a special case, because they've been heavily influenced by the "racial purity" ideology of the Empire of Japan, which was influenced by... Nazi Germany. They've basically copied their ideas from the Nazis. Before that, there were no concept of race or ethnicity or nations. People belonged to certain clans or fiefdoms or tribes, and they were loyal to them. So they needed something, a fictional idea to unite people to create the concept of a nation for the war efforts.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edo_period

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    Quote Originally Posted by miss BabyDoll View Post
    this has to be a shitpost.
    I can see why Sol types him EIE now

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    Quote Originally Posted by Taknamay View Post
    I'm confused about this thread, are we talking about "what lead to the current rise in far left extremism", or "is far left extremism good or bad"? I guess I'll focus on the former.

    It seems to me that the dramatic rise in Antifa (as such) started in 2016 in response to the campaign and subsequent election of Donald Trump.
    Idk but a big part of why trump got elected seems precisely BECAUSE of moral righteousness from the left

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    Quote Originally Posted by Raver View Post
    That is true for most legal immigration into the US/Canada/Aus/NZ. As for the mass immigration situation in Europe, there is an awful lot of unskilled economic migrants that will drain the welfare system without contributing any taxes. If European nations only accepted refugees from Syria instead of mostly economic migrants then this wouldn't be an issue.
    Can you show me a credible source which says that immigrants (legal or illegal) use the welfare system more than native residents and commit more crimes than native residents ..?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Number 9 large View Post
    Idk but a big part of why trump got elected seems precisely BECAUSE of moral righteousness from the left
    Identity politics issues like feminism, LGBT, and race have had dramatically increased mainstream attention since 2011 or so, and that may be a factor. I've seen speculation that the reason for the mainstream attention around that time was to take pressure off of economic inequality in light of the aftermath of the 2008 recession, which sounds plausible to me. It's easier for a company to be anti-racism or anti-sexism than a company to be anti-capitalist.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Number 9 large View Post
    Idk but a big part of why trump got elected seems precisely BECAUSE of moral righteousness from the left
    It's a damn shame really, lots of people didn't want Trump or Hillary in 2016. The corporate establishment figured out that the best way to disempower the left was to co-opt it and encourage it to engage in petty SJW bullshit, while at the same time demonizing and mocking the hardcore leftist serious about bringing down capitalism.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Grendel View Post
    During the Edo period, there were hardly a consciousness of "Japanese" among the people of Japan, they were mostly considered to be subjects of the regional feudal domains called the Han, and the people were loyal to their feudal lords.

    During the era of Japanese modernization, most of them went to Germany to study abroad, and they were heavily influenced by Nazi Germany, as Nazism was influential then. When they returned home, they went onto influence the politics of Japan, which were Japanese ultranationalism and Japanese fascism.

    On a related note, I think countries like Germany, Italy and Japan went with the path of ethnic nations, because historically they were so late to the game of state modernization. While countries like France, England and China already had the political systems in its place to modernize and unify the state without having to resort to the idea of ethnicity to unify its people.

    Historians Hans Kohn, Liah Greenfeld, Philip White and others have classified nations such as Germany or Italy, where cultural unification preceded state unification, as ethnic nations or ethnic nationalities. However, "state-driven" national unifications, such as in France, England or China, are more likely to flourish in multiethnic societies, producing a traditional national heritage of civic nations, or territory-based nationalities.
    The relation between racism and ethnic nationalism reached its height in the 20th century fascism and Nazism. The specific combination of "nation" ("people") and "state" expressed in such terms as the Völkische Staat and implemented in laws such as the 1935 Nuremberg laws made fascist states such as early Nazi Germany qualitatively different from non-fascist nation states. Minorities were not considered part of the people (Volk), and were consequently denied to have an authentic or legitimate role in such a state. In Germany, neither Jews nor the Roma were considered part of the people and were specifically targeted for persecution. German nationality law defined "German" on the basis of German ancestry, excluding all non-Germans from the people.
    Germany had of course, completely rejected the idea of an ethnic nation after the defeat of Nazism. It's highly unlikely that any modern Western nation will ever go back to it. Especially for the countries that historically have had the process of state unification before cultural unification, I don't think that it's even in the political consciousness of those countries.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Singu View Post
    During the Edo period, there were hardly a consciousness of "Japanese" among the people of Japan, they were mostly considered to be subjects of the regional feudal domains called the Han, and the people were loyal to their feudal lords.
    You guys really need to stop with this kind of weirdo revisionist projection. Tribal/ethnic/racial consciousness has always been a thing. The only ones who try to pretend otherwise are eunuchs of modernity, or people with ulterior agendas.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Singu View Post
    During the Edo period, there were hardly a consciousness of "Japanese" among the people of Japan, they were mostly considered to be subjects of the regional feudal domains called the Han, and the people were loyal to their feudal lords.

    During the era of Japanese modernization, most of them went to Germany to study abroad, and they were heavily influenced by Nazi Germany, as Nazism was influential then. When they returned home, they went onto influence the politics of Japan, which were Japanese ultranationalism and Japanese fascism.

    On a related note, I think countries like Germany, Italy and Japan went with the path of ethnic nations, because historically they were so late to the game of state modernization. While countries like France, England and China already had the political systems in its place to modernize and unify the state without having to resort to the idea of ethnicity to unify its people.

    The point of ethnic consciousness is a strawman. The history of the Edo period itself goes to show that a general attitude of isolation from world affairs in Japan long predates their exposure to Third Reich ideas during the Meiji Restoration, and their modern attitudes are just as likely influenced by these long, deep-seated notions about their nation's role in the world, as they are by the following period, if not more.



    Also, contrast the relative prosperity that the average peasant in the Edo period had under the isolationist social structure, than the typical plight of the peasant in most other periods of an east asian society.
    Contrast that with the pressure under which the modern Japanese citizen lives, but also scale the relative standard of living with that of most developed countries in this same era. For the time and region, it's likely that the average citizen in the Edo period had it "good," and for the standard these days, in contrast to other developed countries around the world, the average Japanese citizen now has it rather "bad."

    Given how relatively prosperous for its time the Tokogawa Shogunate's policy of isolationism made its country, we could take a lesson or two from their probable line of thinking. And at any rate, the modern incarnations of Japan and China are set to outlast our own civilization regardless.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Taknamay View Post
    I'm confused about this thread, are we talking about "what lead to the current rise in far left extremism", or "is far left extremism good or bad"? I guess I'll focus on the former.

    It seems to me that the dramatic rise in Antifa (as such) started in 2016 in response to the campaign and subsequent election of Donald Trump.
    I agree that the 2016 election certainly had a role in exacerbating it due to Trump getting elected. However, according to social psychologist/professor Jonathan Haidt, far leftism/SJW culture started in 2014 and began slowly manifesting since the eighties and nineties as he explains here:



    Quote Originally Posted by Singu View Post
    I don't know if you're confusing it with Austria, but Australia is already an multi-ethnic, multi-cultural country like Canada.

    A lot of the countries in Asia and Africa are already multi-ethnic or multi-cultural.
    I mentioned Australia because its new PM and government wants to cut down on immigration and it isn't as diverse as Canada and it takes in much less immigrants compared to Canada. However, its PM and government could change in the following elections and allow more immigrants. I will also concede that Australia is already multi-ethnic/multicultural. Asian and African countries are mostly mono-ethnic/monocultural except for a few of them.

    Quote Originally Posted by Singu View Post
    Most countries pretty much only accept highly-skilled immigrants. The US being one of them.
    US/Canada/Aus/NZ do that, but Europe takes in tons of unskilled economic migrants.

    Quote Originally Posted by xerxe View Post
    Can you show me a credible source which says that immigrants (legal or illegal) use the welfare system more than native residents and commit more crimes than native residents ..?
    Here you are, in regards to immigrants draining the welfare system in Europe as I only mentioned welfare in Europe and not crime:

    An estimated 40% of Muslim youth in France and 50% in Germany are unemployed but far from destitute. Rather, they receive a wide range of social benefits. For example, an estimated 40% of welfare outlays in Denmark go to the 5% of the population that is Muslim. According to Otto Schily, former German interior minister, speaking of immigrants in general: “Seventy percent of the newcomers [since 2002] land on welfare the day of their arrival.” In Sweden, perhaps the most acute case, immigrants are estimated at 1.5 million out of 10 million people; immigration is estimated to cost almost $14 billion per year.

    These high levels of welfare are accompanied by high levels of unemployment. Nor has this situation improved; rather, it is deteriorating. According to analyst Christopher Caldwell: “In the early 1970s, 2 million of the 3 million foreigners in Germany were in the labor force; by the turn of this century, 2 million of 7.5 million were.” Similar stories abound in other West European countries.
    Source: https://acdemocracy.org/muslim-immig...cial-benefits/
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    Quote Originally Posted by Singu View Post
    I don't know if you're confusing it with Austria, but Australia is already an multi-ethnic, multi-cultural country like Canada.

    A lot of the countries in Asia and Africa are already multi-ethnic or multi-cultural.

    Japan, South Korea and North Korea are a special case, because they've been heavily influenced by the "racial purity" ideology of the Empire of Japan, which was influenced by... Nazi Germany. They've basically copied their ideas from the Nazis. Before that, there were no concept of race or ethnicity or nations. People belonged to certain clans or fiefdoms or tribes, and they were loyal to them. So they needed something, a fictional idea to unite people to create the concept of a nation for the war efforts.

    Most countries pretty much only accept highly-skilled immigrants. The US being one of them.
    TIL everyone lived in clans, tribes, and kingdoms prior to 1930, when the Nazis invented the idea of race and then borders came into existence. Nazis also somehow time-traveled using Indiana Jones technology to create the Empire of Japan and give them racism, militarism, and national borders hundreds of years before ****** was born, and this also led to North and South Korea, and also countries like America though they aren't racist because before then there was only the United Fiefdoms of America with no borders. K-Pop boys and anime are the modern manifestations of Nazism.

    I feel like what I said basically didn't even need to be added onto what you said. Truth is stranger than fiction.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Raver View Post
    US/Canada/Aus/NZ do that, but Europe takes in tons of unskilled economic migrants.

    Here you are, in regards to immigrants draining the welfare system in Europe as I only mentioned welfare in Europe and not crime:

    Source: https://acdemocracy.org/muslim-immig...cial-benefits/

    So I looked in the "Our Mission" section of the website, which bombastically proclaims their organization's desire to defend "Judeo-Christian" culture, making them comically not neutral on the question of Muslim immigration.

    Quote Originally Posted by Our Mission
    We identify strategies used by radical regimes and movements to subvert Judeo-Christian based Western democratic systems, America’ Constitutional rights, and political and economic freedoms.
    Regardless, the article was written in 2015, so I checked around to see how well the refugees in Germany are integrating. It seems like of the 1.5 million, 400,000+ are already either working or in job training. The article doesn't say what % of that 1.5 million are children, elderly, or women raising children. These figures are, in fact, ahead of what experts predicted. Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-a8901161.html

    Regarding long-time Muslim immigrants to France: if integration is that bad (and I believe it is), then the problem could be structural, whereas the integration of long-time Muslims immigrants to Germany is significantly better, with unemployment matching the national average. Source: https://www.thelocal.de/20170824/int...rest-of-europe



    Regarding immigration to America, according to the CATO institute, which is a right wing / small-government think tank, legal and illegal immigrants receive less welfare benefits and commit fewer crimes than ordinary Americans.

    Source 1: https://www.cato.org/publications/co...-welfare-state.
    Source 2: https://www.cato.org/publications/im...egal-immigrant
    Last edited by xerx; 07-16-2019 at 03:36 AM.

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    @Raver

    Both legal as well as illegal immigrants to America use less welfare and commit fewer crimes. If I was going to be a dick about it, I'd point out how replacing ordinary Americans with illegals might actually make the country better.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Raver View Post
    I mentioned Australia because its new PM and government wants to cut down on immigration and it isn't as diverse as Canada and it takes in much less immigrants compared to Canada. However, its PM and government could change in the following elections and allow more immigrants. I will also concede that Australia is already multi-ethnic/multicultural. Asian and African countries are mostly mono-ethnic/monocultural except for a few of them.
    Australia has about 86% Europeans and Canada has about 73% Europeans. 30% of Australians are born overseas, and I'd suppose they take in a lot of European immigrants.

    Australia frequently has these conservative, reactionary PMs, but I doubt that things will change very much.

    Quote Originally Posted by coeruleum View Post
    TIL everyone lived in clans, tribes, and kingdoms prior to 1930, when the Nazis invented the idea of race and then borders came into existence. Nazis also somehow time-traveled using Indiana Jones technology to create the Empire of Japan and give them racism, militarism, and national borders hundreds of years before ****** was born, and this also led to North and South Korea, and also countries like America though they aren't racist because before then there was only the United Fiefdoms of America with no borders. K-Pop boys and anime are the modern manifestations of Nazism.

    I feel like what I said basically didn't even need to be added onto what you said. Truth is stranger than fiction.
    Yeah, Japan being an island nation that used to copy and import China's political system, was now learning and importing political systems from Europe, imagine that.

    Or, don't talk about things you know nothing about.

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    Quote Originally Posted by xerxe View Post
    Both legal as well as illegal immigrants to America use less welfare and commit fewer crimes.
    That's been debunked over and over: https://cis.org/Report/63-NonCitizen...lfare-Programs

    And they already committed a crime by coming here, hence 'illegals'.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Muddy View Post
    It's a damn shame really, lots of people didn't want Trump or Hillary in 2016. The corporate establishment figured out that the best way to disempower the left was to co-opt it and encourage it to engage in petty SJW bullshit, while at the same time demonizing and mocking the hardcore leftist serious about bringing down capitalism.
    Capitalism isn't bad. Capitalism comes from the word "to capitalize." Capitalizing is good and is how people empower themselves. I'm not a "small government" or minarchist or anarchist person at all, but people should still be allowed to capitalize on whatever they'd like after all other things are considered. I've heard several people think socialism and capitalism will merge in the near future instead of the Marxist path of socialism overthrowing it and it'll look like Sweden, and if that happened I'd be all for it, but I still know for a fact that capitalism shouldn't be demonized as a concept.

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    Quote Originally Posted by mfckrz View Post
    That's been debunked over and over: https://cis.org/Report/63-NonCitizen...lfare-Programs

    And they already committed a crime by coming here, hence 'illegals'.
    That debunking has itself been debunked. https://www.cato.org/blog/center-imm...ve-welfare-use

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    Quote Originally Posted by coeruleum View Post
    Capitalism isn't bad. Capitalism comes from the word "to capitalize." Capitalizing is good and is how people empower themselves. I'm not a "small government" or minarchist or anarchist person at all, but people should still be allowed to capitalize on whatever they'd like after all other things are considered. I've heard several people think socialism and capitalism will merge in the near future instead of the Marxist path of socialism overthrowing it and it'll look like Sweden, and if that happened I'd be all for it, but I still know for a fact that capitalism shouldn't be demonized as a concept.
    I'll just copy and paste a post from the debate communism subreddit:

    Lets unpack the idea that "Capitalism works". In the US, the most developed Capitalist country, the richest country in the history of the world:


    Capitalist hegemony has short-circuited people into buying wildly illogical and ridiculous propaganda like: "Lift yourselves up by the bootstraps" (which shows the almost religious power of capitalist propaganda, that the impossible can become possible), or "Communism doesn't work", when in fact Communism did work extremely well.
    Examples from this post by /u/bayarea415, and Stephen Gowans - Do publicly owned, planned economies work, about the USSR specifically:



    Now let's take a look at what happens after the USSR collapse:


    For an overview of the soviet experiment, watch this brilliant talk by Micheal Parenti, or read his article, Left anticommunism, the unkindest cut.
    Also read this great article by Stephen Gowans, Do publicly owned, planned economies work?. Audio on youtube
    Bonus vid about cyber-communism: Paul Cockshott - Going beyond money.
    More sources: Socialism Crash Course, Socialism FAQ, Glossary.





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    "let's compare the US to cuba, an actual planned economy.
    cuba is the poorest nation in south america, they are under a blockade by the US and can only trade with a handful of countries and have few natural resources of their own.
    the US is the richest nation in the world and trades with most of the world, and is spoiled with natural resources.


    Cuba has:

    - the highest lifespan in the western hemisphere, beating the USA.
    - Universal healthcare for all citizens
    - Universal education for all citizens, all citizens can read.
    - affordable housing for all citizens
    - government provided food and affordable food for all citizens
    - public transportation in major areas
    - guaranteed employment for all citizens
    - the highest standard of living of all south american countries
    - fought off a US invasion



    the USA has:

    - a lower lifespan than the poorest country in the western hemisphere, despite being the richest country in the western hemisphere.
    - 30 million people with no access to healthcare and tens of millions more with incomplete coverage and/or medical debts and bankruptcies.
    - a failing public education system being eaten away by for-profit education, roughly 1-3% of population illiterate.
    - a nationwide housing crisis
    - government food assistance because the private market can't meet people's basic needs
    - public transportation in new york city, a couple of other cities. also has a shitty bus system.
    - Unemployed people, 4 - 12% on average. (i.e. at any one time the US has more desperate people broken by it's terrible system than Cuba has people at all)
    - highest standard of living in western hemisphere for the top 25%, bottom 25% live worse than cubans. middle 50% increasingly worse off.
    - Invades other countries for oil in order to sustain it's economy, once lost a war to vietnam, an impoverished country in the jungle."

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    Quote Originally Posted by Muddy View Post
    "let's compare…"
    Oh look, an extremely online tankie guy extolling Communism. Imagine that.

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    OK, let's say everything you've said is true and absolutely none of it is propaganda. Does any of that matter at all? People give up food and housing and doctors and life for more abstract values. In Cuba you can't pursue more abstract values. Enlightenment liberalism came about as the result of many different religions meeting together. If America's statistics look a pretty as a religious martyr being tormented to death, that's to be expected. Show me all the cultural achievements from Cuba. The only one I can think of is the Cuba libré and I'm not sure that counts.

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    Quote Originally Posted by mfckrz View Post
    Oh look, an extremely online tankie guy extolling Communism. Imagine that.
    You are free to respond with constructive criticism or ignore. You can fuck off however with shitpost replies made in bad faith.

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    Quote Originally Posted by coeruleum View Post
    OK, let's say everything you've said is true and absolutely none of it is propaganda. Does any of that matter at all? People give up food and housing and doctors and life for more abstract values. In Cuba you can't pursue more abstract values. Enlightenment liberalism came about as the result of many different religions meeting together. If America's statistics look a pretty as a religious martyr being tormented to death, that's to be expected. Show me all the cultural achievements from Cuba. The only one I can think of is the Cuba libré and I'm not sure that counts.
    I don't know where you get this idea that art and music are somehow exclusive with socialism. Cuba and all socialist today countries exist in very pressured conditions. The economic planners in those countries obviously are not going have people become artist and musicians while things like food and other necessities need to be produced all from within the country. The art and the music will come to Cuba when they no longer struggle under an embargo and and reach a level of wealth where focusing on such things is feasible.

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    Quote Originally Posted by coeruleum View Post
    OK, let's say everything you've said is true and absolutely none of it is propaganda. Does any of that matter at all? People give up food and housing and doctors and life for more abstract values. In Cuba you can't pursue more abstract values. Enlightenment liberalism came about as the result of many different religions meeting together. If America's statistics look a pretty as a religious martyr being tormented to death, that's to be expected. Show me all the cultural achievements from Cuba. The only one I can think of is the Cuba libré and I'm not sure that counts.


    The freedom to nail down and fetter one's own thinking to the service of fixed abstractions that concern themselves with only their own good, and not the good of the person serving them, is hardly a freedom we'll miss.

    Quote Originally Posted by Muddy View Post
    I don't know where you get this idea that art and music are somehow exclusive with socialism. Cuba and all socialist today countries exist in very pressured conditions. The economic planners in those countries obviously are not going have people become artist and musicians while things like food and other necessities need to be produced all from within the country. The art and the music will come to Cuba when they no longer struggle under an embargo and and reach a level of wealth where focusing on such things is feasible.
    This is why I'm agnostic on economics. It's always the already desperate crud countries that go communist and never really turn out great one way or another that people pull out to "debunk" socialism.

    But I tend to tie death toll to longevity of a regime. The third reich got assblasted to smithereens in an instant, so they only lived to have a lower kill count than the ussr under Lenin and Stalin; which in turn is exceeded by that of the neoliberal order, because that one happened to last the longest.

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    The Soviet Union and Cuba both seem to have had better results than the US in terms of education and health care, but worse results in terms of personal freedom of choice and opportunity.

    I think I'd rather live in the US if I could be certain that I'd be rich, and in the Soviet Union or Cuba if I knew I was going to be poor.

    Clearly, we don't have an all-inclusive solution to this problem yet.

    Since there is more than enough food, wealth, and opportunity to lift everyone out of poverty and give them a shot at a good life, you have to ask yourself why this hasn't happened? Personally, I believe the answer is found in Michael Kalecki's essay
    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012...mployment.html,
    Section IV, part 3.
    Basically, Kalecki says that, while government spending to achieve full employment could easily be done, the rich oppose it, even though they would be financial beneficiaries of it. Apparently, they don't like the idea of full employment because it would cause the workers to "get out of hand". In other words, some rich people prefer to give up some potential wealth if it keeps other people down.

    I believe this is the reason that the Communists in China succeeded in overthrowing the old system, and why there is a desire in some people to shoot the rich. I feel that way myself towards anyone who wants to keep me down.
    Last edited by Adam Strange; 07-16-2019 at 12:17 PM.

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    With respect to "art," Capitalism has produced Boy bands and Justin Bieber. Enough said.

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    free love

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    Quote Originally Posted by Adam Strange View Post
    Basically, Kalecki says that, while government spending to achieve full employment could easily be done, the rich oppose it, even though they would be financial beneficiaries of it. Apparently, they don't like the idea of full employment because it would cause the workers to "get out of hand". In other words, some rich people prefer to give up some potential wealth if it keeps other people down.

    I believe this is the reason that the Communists in China succeeded in overthrowing the old system, and why there is a desire in some people to shoot the rich. I feel that way myself towards anyone who wants to keep me down.
    yep. sometimes the cream rises to the top. oftentimes it's the scum that rises to the top.
    Last edited by xerx; 07-16-2019 at 04:34 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by xerxe View Post
    With respect to "art," Capitalism has produced Boy bands and Justin Bieber. Enough said.
    Study the difference between music produced in Communist East Germany and Capitalist West Germany during the 1960s and 1970s.

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    Quote Originally Posted by soulless ginger mutant View Post
    Study the difference between music produced in Communist East Germany and Capitalist West Germany during the 1960s and 1970s.
    What are you getting at?

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    Quote Originally Posted by xerxe View Post
    What are you getting at?
    As an exercise, it's an illuminating look at a culture split into opposing capitalist and communist systems and how the art produced under either system differed.

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    Quote Originally Posted by soulless ginger mutant View Post
    As an exercise, it's an illuminating look at a culture split into opposing capitalist and communist systems and how the art produced under either system differed.
    I know that. Make a case for what you're intending me to discover or provide sources; don't make other people do your research for you.

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    Quote Originally Posted by xerxe View Post
    I know that. Make a case for what you're intending me to discover or provide sources; don't make other people do your research for you.

    I've already done my research on this subject. I don't do other people's homework for them because experience has taught me that they usually ignore or dismiss the results if they don't like them. If you care enough, you can do it yourself. If you don't, that's fine too.

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    Quote Originally Posted by soulless ginger mutant View Post

    I've already done my research on this subject. I don't do other people's homework for them because experience has taught me that they usually ignore or dismiss the results if they don't like them. If you care enough, you can do it yourself. If you don't, that's fine too.
    Oh, I see; you were just pointing out that they're different. I thought you were trying to insinuate that one was better than the other in order to make a political point.

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    Quote Originally Posted by xerxe View Post
    Oh, I see; you were just pointing out that they're different. I thought you were trying to insinuate that one was better than the other in order to make a political point.
    In terms of freedoms allowed musicians and the industry, I think system one was better. You might disagree. It's not my place to tell you what to think.

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