The Democratic Party's Slide Into Irrelevance

Not having constitutional rights that are enforceable by a court with constitutional power to control the government's guns or other coercive powers.

I think this is mostly correct but cooperation isn't specifically tied to communism. Mixed economies encourage cooperation with safety nets and regulations.

What communism does is that it substitutes market competition with political power struggles inside a centralized states on a belief that we close how eyes and tap our toes and everything goes according to plan. But it doesn't math out in either theory or practice or history.

A market based social democracy with strong protections and regulations is unequivocally the nuts. It isn't really even a mystery anymore. All of your better points rest inside that particular system. Its when you branch of from there where things get interesting - and I think it's mostly idealistic.

The driving force with a lot of people who advocate for communism is their hatred for capitalism. And their desired platform can only include a system that excludes that first - everything else is negligible.

I don't hate capitalism. I hate the lack of regulation that comes with the current version of it.

In an ideal world, the people who study for many years to do the harder to fill jobs will get some preferences. No problem with that. But they won't be given dominion over the oceans, atmosphere and the Earth's crust.

There has never been a single moment in human history with fewer pages of regulations applying to businesses than today.

Not only we are at peak regulation worldwide, the most regulated country in 1890 was FAR less regulated than the median one is today.

So you are complaining that after 100k years of human history, even the greatest amouint of regulations existing IS NOT ENOUGH FOR YOU.

What the ****ing hell do you want more than the already 100x bigger than necessary regulatory state that we have?

My rule of thumb is that opening a business should require IN TOTAL an amount of regulation that a normal IQ and normally educated person can fully learn in ALL DETAILS in a month fulltime, including EVERYTHING, from labor laws to everything else, like literally the totality of laws and regulations that apply to a normal business a normal person can open should be fully complied with WITHOUT PROFESSIONAL COUNSEL.

The fact that you need external counsel to operate a business that doesn't have hundreds of employees is a crime against humanity.

Do you think there should be regulations which govern how much plastic is accumulating in our brains ? Hint: there aren't any.

Will Lucifer answer that question ? Probably not.

How do we test that?

So then why communism?

You acknowledge a person who studies and works should essentially get paid more, but so much that he can reign over the world. And would probably accept the fact that creating a demand to innovate the things we can use more effectively is a very helpful tool.

You corrected me that you aren't against home ownership for a family dwelling - just against being able to buy multiple properties for profit.

You're not against capitalism but hate how it is currently regulated.

If the regulations, wealth distributions, and social needs adhered to your criteria under a strict form of capitalism, would that be good enough for you?

The regulations that I have in mind regarding regulation of toxic waste may too profound to exist in a capitalist system.

Private markets were not meant to fix a Tragedy of the Commons.

I would give everyone UBI which guarantees a dignified life and put people to work trying to restore the environment, building resilient communities.

Yeah, but the real problem is that this is Sim City.

You're imagining a utopia that you can personally control - which is fine to talk about. But different people in different regions are going to have wildly different values and priorities that you can't just out muscle.

Even if one person wants to plant more trees and another wants to ban all cars, a centralized system isn't going to be able to make it work, democratically.

I think your vision is fine, but implementing it was never realistic.

I would eliminate money. Give people everything they need via UBI. The people who do the scarce work will get perks.

Unless your giving out handjobs or something, this sounds awfully similar to paying them more.

Also do you rhink removing money in your lifetime is possible?

Do you remember what happened to the money in Nazi Germany? Hyperinflation. It became worthless.

At the end of the day .... what has value ?

A stable supply of food, water and breathable air have value. Protection from harmful environmental conditions has value and that is the thing which is in peril. Weapons have value if they serve as a deterrent from someone else talking away our valuables. But the weapons of old have less value now that drones can be equipped to eliminate people.

Minerals which we use to make the gear we use are valuable. Relationships and communities which work together as a cohesive team has value. Trusteed leadership has value. Education has value.

The US dollar is only valuable so long as the union remains strong and the financial system remains stable. It's losing those qualities very rapidly.

The future will have a different currency than the US dollar. Will there be some form of currency ? Yes. But it might look a lot more like a barter system.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/...

The new DNC Chair seems to agree with me on something.

Martin pointed to surveys that indicated a "majority of Americans believe that the Republican Party best represents the interests of the working class and the poor, and the Democratic Party is the party of the wealthy and the elites. And sure enough, the only two groups that we over performed within the last election cycle were college-educated voters and wealthy households."

The problem if you read the article ..... he doesn't have a single policy he is proposing that will benefit the working class. He acknowledges the problem and offers no solutions other than to say that the GOP is worse. That's the formula that got Democrats where they are ...... they didn't select a new chair for the purpose of changing that dynamic.

I watched an interview with this DNC Chair Ken Martin. Holy crap .... is this guy unimpressive and out of touch.

Acknowledges that the party has a problem connecting with voter ..... but at no point does he suggest getting feedback directly from the voters and their ideas for making a better country. They don't even care to say that they will champion policies that poll well.

Democrats .... "we're on your side"

Also Democrats "you're not important enough for us to listen to".

This is not democracy .... it's a club. And the rules of the club are to take care of the people who pay for the club. The message to the American people is loud and clear .... "you're on your own people" ..... the govt doesn't care about you.

I never thought Orwellian society would be so thinly masked. I imagined it being more sinister and clever. But these people don't even respect us enough to try and trick us. They just assume everyone is so overwhelmed with stimulation, that they no one is paying attention.

1. I endorse this message.

2. This message applies to every party and virtually every politician in the history of the planet.

3. Have a grateful day!

Those sort of shallow critiques apply to every person in the history of the planet just as well.

Humor me .... explain to me how these shallow critiques might apply to someone like Gandhi or Abe Lincoln. Not saying you can't do it ...... I'm just curious to read what your shallow critiques of those people who exhibited effective leadership during historical efforts to promote equality would look like.

Ken Martin took the role of chairman of the DNC. That's a leadership position he's taking during at a moment when the US has experienced a half century of uninterrupted income and wealth concentration. He's not like every other person in the history of the planet ..... he's in a public leadership position. The critiques he is subject to are therefore unique in terms of their applicability to leadership qualities.

Yeah, anything is possible. The dollar could become worthless, and we could be bartering for corn and tobacco products.

But I think that's a little too much to put any weight or any expectations on it happening within our children's lives.

The dollar is stronger now than at any time when Obama was in office. And it didn't reflect folks thinking that the world was coming to an end. The dollar was a lot weaker then than it is now, mostly due to QE and low rates compared to other currencies.

Its part of the same reason why the dollar fell hard (almost identical to last 6 months) the last time trump entered office in 2017 and then stabilized a bit. Trump didn't dig the expected rate hikes then and he doesn't want them now. People really just don't understand how the strength of the dollar is going to eloquently follow our rates in comparison to other countries.

We were much closer to a collapse during the 08 crash and covid than we are now.

Also, NN, and I mean this genuinely, if you really feel super duper convinced that the dollar or the US is going to be in a much worse position economically compared to the rest of the world, or just relative to now, and are just spreading the word of that certainty, you could certainly safeguard a future for yourself financially with a few trades. Because right now, the Algos are disagreeing with you, but they're often zoned out.

The doomsday threads have been around for a while and you've literally got 8 of them on this page now.

...Although Cali might be fully ****ed so I won't argue with you there.

I don't think it's a rational position to believe they we can safeguard a future for ourselves.

Steve Jobs had a great quote "You can hire someone to drive a car for you, make money for you, but you cannot rent someone to carry the disease for you."

I think it should be apparent that the US is going to be in a worse relative position economically going forward ...... simply by reversion to the mean. The US experienced a once in a lifetime elevation as a result of WW2 and the ensuing economic boom which made it an unparalleled superpower on the global stage.

Look at the progress and wealth creation in China and growth in GDP in the last 40 years. It has been growing faster than the US and dominates global trade exports.

We are clearly less dominant than we once were ...... that's the nature of empires ..... they rise and they fall.

At this point .... the US only does a few things things better than the rest of the world

1) We have the greatest arsenal of military weaponry.
2) We concentrate wealth in fewer and fewer hands which undermines the social cohesion necessary for a stable society
3) We foster large populations of Christian religious fanatics whose will is very effectively expressed politically through groups like the Heritage Foundation, Federalist Society and Project 2025
4) We teach our citizens to fear each other as evidenced by the current polarization

Look around. We just built a concentration camp in Florida called Alligator Alcatraz. Trump just signed an executive order whose aim is forced internment of homeless people. We are going down the path that the Nazis went in the 1930's. Our attitude toward climate change and insulting the sovereignty of nations like Canada and Denmark is alienating us from the rest of the world which is adapting by de-emphasizing their trust and reliance on the US as an ally. We are losing friends overseas.

Here in Las Vegas, tourism is down 6% year over year. Canadians and Mexicans are staying away. We are becoming an isolated nation.

At this point the term "United States" is an oxymoron.

We would more appropriately be referred to as the "Divided States".

The only thing Trump has united is global opinion of the US as a rogue state which is providing the weaponry for a genocide that allows Israel to annex more territory.

I agree with you a lot here. I said this on UP in the stocks thread when I was bearish, and was wrong, at least up to this point....

I think longerm investing is still going to be lucrative in the next 15-30 years but I think there are some realistic caveats to what we have been experiencing in the last decade or longer.

Backtesting proves that the US has become the powerhouse from its growth of the last 75 years but that doesn’t mean the same going forward. FOr starters, 10% returns over the next 30 years from where we are now would basically put US equities from 50 trillion to 900 trillion - when the global GDP is in the ballpark of 100 trillion.

Sooner or later, either the US sucks up the entire global economy or we start reaching 10% inflation yoy. We’ve also benefited from an increasing population that is dramatically slowing down. At some point mathematically, the stock market growth can’t maintain these figures.

The only thing I'd add is that there is a large gap between the US slowing down and what you're anticipating.

Also, China is more capitalist in the last 40 years and that's the main driver for their economic success.

Abe Lincoln was not an abolitionist who fought a war to preserve the union and protect monied interests in the north, killing hundreds of thousands in the process. That's a shallow critique as convincing as your arguments. Did you post under another name here before? Getting serious deja vu.

China uses capitalism as a tool to support the larger communist objective. That's the model which is taking over. Billionaires who get out of line there don't meet with a happy fate.

In the US, capitalism has become an end in itself. We have gotten away from the goal in the Constitution to form a "more perfect union". Our society is disintegrating.

1) Do you really have the greatest arsenal . Yes maybe ships, tanks and planes but we seem to be seeing drones dominating . As well China is building their military at a far greater rapid pace

3) I am not sure what you consider a Christian religious fanatic? Someone against abortion? teaching their kids values they do not believe in? Id say the Muslim population is more radical than the Christian .

Concentration camp ? Looks very similar to what Obama built just a different location

As for the US's attitude towards climate change yes it has fallen off but sadly if you do not have China participating and India its a lost cause . Even Canada's new Liberal government dropped many of its climate policies

Yes tourism has fallen off in Las Vegas and some of it can be attributed to Trumps tariff's I personally have not done Vegas partially for that reason but its also due to a low $ and Vegas is just got so expensive and greedy. I am heading there in September but probably would not have gone if one of my fav bands is playing at the Red Rock