The Democratic Party's Slide Into Irrelevance

Fetterman vs most of the rest of the party.

Please list examples.

That's just false. She was behind Sanders who had a national organization already, Biden who was a former VP and already ran for president multiple times, probably behind Warren as well. Sje was on the same tier as Corey Booker in a crowded field. Plenty pf people do about as well as her the first time they run for president. Biden definitely did.

But colleges have gone to the extreme left as well . So if colleges starting denying African Americans access you would not want the federal government to step in

Medical experts no common sense .

Lets not forget Hilary and Obama were for strong borders as well

The chart shows what happens when surplus production is consistently reinvested into capital instead of shared as wages.

Imagine a socialist commune where the workers collectively own the means of production, say a tractor. As output increases, they have a choice: keep buying more tractors to expand future capacity, or use some of the surplus now to improve living conditions, raise consumption, and better align their compensation with total output. If they keep prioritizing reinvestment, wages will lag behind production. A lagging behind, not what some call exploitation. That’s what the chart reflects: a growing gap between what we produce and what workers actually consume.

Leaving the political rhetoric aside, that’s simply how modern economies function, whether capitalist or socialist. There’s a natural tension or equilibrium between capital’s desire to reinvest and expand into the future, and worker’s desire to consume more in the present to improve their living standard. The shape of the economy reflects how that balance gets negotiated.

Personally, I think we produce enough consumer goods. So the issue isn’t capital allocation; it’s how those goods are distributed among workers or wage range compression. That’s why I also disagree with the Heritage Foundation’s capital allocation plan to maximize future output capacity.

https://6abc.com/post/pennsylvania-senat...

He has separated himself from many of his fellow Democrats on Israel policy and argued at times that his party needs to work with, not against, Trump. He met with Trump and Trump's nominees - and voted for some - when other Democrats wouldn't.

So Kamala was supposed to be the favorite but they couldn’t even rig it for her?

I guess with any conspiracy theory you have to make the enemy both incredibly weak and stupid while simultaneously conniving and ever-present.

whoopsies

Oh, come the **** on.

Huh? I’m not feeling the weight of the graph you posted. How does this contradict what he’s saying? It shows kamala not neck and neck with sanders at all.

good catch i brain farted into thinking this was discussing hilldawg based on the snippet he was responding to - we can leave the quoted bit up to publicly shame me but i deleted the offending passage from my own side

sorry ec

I think one of the few things that we agree on is that regulating toxic waste is essential since we now have the capability to perform many of the needs with a much lower carbon footprint.

But you quickly go off the rails from there when you talk of banning home ownership, something that would very likely worsen the environment for some time. Debating on whether killing the old and sick is a reasonable approach. Banning travel outside of the country. State control of the economy, (good luck thinking that will benefit the environment) That stuff is horrendously authoritarian and ends up being where the conversation shifts to. Regulating toxins obviously isn't the argument here.

Will you allow water skiing if it could be done with a very low environmental impact?

Sure .... I don't object to people pleasure so long as that pleasure doesn't come at the expense of other's well-being.

While we're at it .... there are some religious groups whose beliefs are incongruent with a vision of an Earth which will be sustainable into the future. These groups adhere to a belief that life on Earth must be destroyed in order for their biblical prophecy to be fulfilled and for humans to ascend to heaven.

I would require all citizens who aspire to managerial or other influential positions in a future government to sign an oath condemning these beliefs.

Is that authoritarian ? Absolutely. But we need absolute clarity on the purpose of the government and we need to draw boundaries. We can't have people who feel that destroying life on Earth is a positive development serving in such a government.

As far as I'm concerned ..... the people running the government today give off the vibe of those who think an apocalypse is a positive thing. In this case, the shoe fits.

Are you claiming that the US Constitution and all of its amendments are not authoritarian ? How do you define authoritarian ?

Every society has laws which are necessary to maintain order and a police force / judicial system to enforce the law and maintain order. Laws, backed up by the means of enforcing them, are inherently authoritarian.

Okay, so you consider it a worthy idea but claim to not have discussed it on this forum. We will leave it at that. I also get you mixed up with Wazz which isn't fair to you.

.

There is some context to it. You made a thread specifically talking about it.

But when you say this...

Is entering an epic level of authoritarianism that has happened under economic institutions that you seem to certainly flirt with. And honestly don't think by saying "well, we are already do kill people, so what's the big deal", really softens things very much.

Again, I would prefer to just debate the core suggestions that you have and whether those ideas have merits, in this forum - it isn't a big deal. Because this thread , or your seven other ones, aren't about discussing the regulatory nature of toxic waste. And it gets a little annoying if we talk about something like that and then delve into something completely different.

Just let it rip! You're an anon on the internet, and nobody cares. Because the philosophical pillow talk has ran its course at this point.

Dear Formula72,

I'm not going to hide from any conversation or debate.

If you don't think discussing resource allocation priorities in environments where resources might become scarce is a legitimate topic of conversation, then just say so.

According to my hypotheses, that is the environment we are heading into. Yesterday the Israeli Knesset was discussing plans for the complete removal of the native population of Gaza and resettlement with 1.2M Jewish Israeli's. That is genocide which has thus far been supported by both major parties of the US government.

We (human governments) are perpetually making decisions about who lives and who dies. But we don't talk about those decisions or the basis upon which they are made. For example, we allow poor people in Flint, Michigan to endure poisoned water from pipes which leach toxic metals.

Most people's stance is that if it doesn't impact them personally, it doesn't bother them. My stance is that the psychology which leads to devaluing the lives of people who are remote to us inevitably leads to a situation which consumes us as well. That psychology is insatiably destructive. It respects no boundaries.

It's only by exploring the current process by which we decide who lives or die that we can make the logical extension that it applies to everyone.

Sometimes, I like to imagine myself as an alien who has traveled to Earth from a distant galaxy and needs to give a report back to the people on his home planet.

What would I tell the people back home about the human population on Earth ?

I would tell them that the humans are quite advanced in many ways, but that they organize themselves around religious beliefs and a hypothetical destination called "heaven" which is the ultimate goal. I would tell them that there are certain religions which have a belief that getting to heaven involves destroying the habitability of the planet for themselves and that those religious preferences are prevailing.

If the people from my home planet wanted to exploit the resources of Earth, I would counsel patience and advise them not to waste resources competing with humans who seem to be well on their way to abandoning their home planet and leaving it undefended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXizlNcJ...

blue party will never change for the better, enjoy arbys

Yeah, when humans can't prioritize the survival of its own habitat, it really shouldn't be in charge of ruling the world.

It was always interesting to see people base their entire economies and power structures around a soft useless metal like gold, or inventing social media that destroys friendships or public trust, or turning life saving healthcare into luxury items.

lol, communism is when you guys decide the form of cooperation you prefer becomes mandatory and you use people with guns to force it to everyone else.

Btw cooperation became a dirty word with the.. Sherman act.

Do you have any objection to the word "police".

Yes ... the people who are charged with the responsibility of maintaining order need the tools to enforce the law. I'm a big supporter of law and order in society. There will lots of jobs to choose from in the new world just like there are lots now. Just like there used to be horse and buggy wagon drivers, some jobs will become obsolete as they become incongruent with societal order.

We are going to get rid of the jobs of people who build private luxury yachts. We'll probably keep kayaks and zodiac boats will come in handy for search and rescue teams.

We're going to need a lot of community building. We need resilient communities. We need a reliable local supply of things like toilet paper in the event of supply chain shocks even if it costs a bit more than the national brand to manufacture it locally. The communities which develop the self reliance and dedication to the collective survival will do better than the ones where its each man to himself.

I define authoritarian the abuse of violence . I define abuse violence which denies basic (negative) human rights.

When a constitution does protect all necessary basic human rights (the current, amended US constitution is close to do that, possibly closer than most other countries because of the 1a, although there is no body autonomy right) then everything that respects that cannot be authoritarian (for me).

Violent simply doesn't mean authoritarian, not synonomous. Violence is a necessary but not sufficient element of authoritarianism.

If you check official definitions they vary a lot. Many include the idea of abuse / violation of ethical norms when using violence in a way similar to what i do. A few don't. I guess it's just one of the many things where it's all about semantics.

But given the word authoritarian is used with a negative connotation, it cannot simply mean violence, because almost everyone agrees that in some cases violence is justified, if not morally imperative (they can disagree about which cases those are), so it's absurd to give it an inherent negative connotation.

So authoritarianism must mean generically "a very bad use of state violence". Bad can vary depending on who is talking.

No in some communist countries (and in some attempts to install communism) it wasn't "police". It was actually people with guns with no formal role. Literally what a revolution is btw.

You can't reach communism without extreme extra-legal violence in most countries, because some tenets of communism go against the local constitution.

Like the fifth amendment in the USA protects against confiscation without just compensation. So you can't do communism unless you amend it (GL), or you juse massive extralegal violence to achieve it.

Lol at "the police". In order to achieve even 1/10th of the collectivism you want to achieve you need a military coup in the USA (and in most other first world countries), that's a lot of people with guns used to enforce your opinion on collectivism.

There is no smooth transition to actual full scale collectivism possible in most 1st world countries because constitutions were written (sometimes on purpose, when that happened after communism was already around) to make it legally impossible.

Like the italian constitution literally has an article about the republic "protecting savings".

ART. 47
The Republic shall encourage and safeguard savings in all forms; it shall
regulate, co-ordinate and monitor the provision of credit.
It shall promote the investment of private savings in the purchase of housing
and of worker-owned farms, as well as direct and indirect investment in the
shares in the country’s large productive concerns.

So you are literally a subversive enemy of the state in Italy if you want to remove private property rights.