141–150 of 242 posts
"I think the propaganda of "The Communists" has been drilled into the American public so solidly" You mean the part where communists murdered 100 million people in the last century? That "propaganda"?
http://maoistrebelnews.com/2012/03/16/1-6-billion-killed-by-...
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Zizek phrased it kind of nicely once, in a way that stuck with me. He probably borrowed from somewhere, and I'll continue to lossily reproduce whatever the sentiment was, but it goes something like this. How is it possible that we are completely and utterly optimistic about breaking all sorts of physical barriers, like landing on Mars, and reusing rockets, and communicating worldwide via little handheld microcomputer…
Communism happened. It killed lots of people, and made radical changes in the social order unappealing to most. Now ideas don't just have to sound plausible, but you also have to prove that they won't lead to the deaths of millions.
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> Does anyone really believe that if only the rules weren't "rigged" local shops and businesses would be able to compete against Wal-Mart and Amazon? We're talking about corruption and you're listing companies best known for getting where they are through aggressive free market competition. Can't we come up with some better examples than that? AT&T, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, AIG, Monsanto, Elsevier, Microsoft,…
I'm curious in what ways Monsanto is corrupt. Forgive me if this sounds like an obvious point, but I've seen too much GMOphobic noise around this to know where the signal is.
Monsanto makes Roundup (glyphosate)-resistant crops. As far as anybody can tell the gene modifications have no inherently harmful effect on the resulting food. But then all the crops get sprayed with glyphosate and the food is contaminated with glyphosate.
Monsanto is also very aggressive about asserting ownership of the seeds that grow from the plants that grow from their seeds. If the neighboring farm plants Monsanto crops and the seeds blow into your farm, lawyers follow. It's basically an intimidation tactic; buy seeds from Monsanto or you may end up with them anyway, and then you're going to get sued.
So farmers buy the seeds, to such an extent that it's become a biodiversity problem. Their crops are becoming a monoculture. Think systemic risk like the housing crisis, but this time it's the food supply.
In other words, there are legitimate reasons to object, even if they aren't the ones most popularly aired. So people may want to know when they're buying GMO crops and potentially contributing to these problems. Even if some people start avoiding the GMO crops for other reasons with no rational basis, that still helps with the biodiversity problem. But whenever a bill comes around to label them, guess who shows up to lobby against it.
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It took me years to realize that economics isn't physics - and it isn't ruled by physics-like laws. Instead, economics is governed by laws created by our society. And what we think of as "free market" is really just norms of trade which are created by our society. There is no reason why the bulk of the billions taken-in by WalMart should go to the Walton family while their employees live on food-stamps - that is just…
Zizek phrased it kind of nicely once, in a way that stuck with me. He probably borrowed from somewhere, and I'll continue to lossily reproduce whatever the sentiment was, but it goes something like this. How is it possible that we are completely and utterly optimistic about breaking all sorts of physical barriers, like landing on Mars, and reusing rockets, and communicating worldwide via little handheld microcomputer…
The key distinction in this problem is between overcoming fixed barriers of nature and overcoming the dynamic, highly adaptable nature of human beings. Personally, I don't believe we're ever going to come up with a fixed set of laws that could constrain the infinite range of human behaviour to the realm of fairness and make cheating impossible. At least not without eliminating all freedom for everyone.
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> what's up with the bounds of our imagination? How come they're limitless when it comes to facing off against gravity, and completely defeatist when it comes to erasing class distinctions? In my experience, that's only true in America. People in Canada, Australia, England and Argentina and perfectly happy to discuss and debate ideas and ways to remove (or drastically reduce) class distinctions. Politicians even enac…
The US redistributes enough money to the poor to make them richer than the UK, and likely many other wealthy nations in the world. It's not like the US is some Mad Max universe where the poor are forgotten and left without aid.
Source? Also what do you mean richer than the UK?
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Interesting perspective. I wonder how much "cronyism" costs. It is a problem, but how big? Sort of the issue is that their is a systemic change taking place globally and it moves at a compounding rate. Most governments on a micro scale, are inefficient snd comprised of largely unaccountable people. They make (benevolent/naive view) decisions but are ill equipped with the skills to make the proper ones or (cynical) in…
>Cable is being challenged. cable tv is being replaced by internet service through the same provider, with the fiber optic deployments being limited by legislation lobbied for by the original cable tv providers. >The monetary system is being challenged. Total BTC is about 4 billion usd, much smaller than most nations currency circulation.
"At the very least, we should strive for a non-regressive tax system, which is what we have now." I'm super pro regressive taxes. Regressive taxes are fantastic for the poor. They get more than they put in AND the elite are less able to avoid paying them. The socialized promised lands of Scandinavia are highly regressive. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/why-im-soft-on-s...
Regressive taxes do not correct the use of money as a tool of political empowerment, though. They cause the problem. Its not about having social safety nets, its about nobody having the wealth to be powerful enough to own government.
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What alternative to man-made law would you propose?
Scriptural law, for example. Each religion enforces its own law. This solution may not be ideal in every possible respect, but to the extent that it puts a halt to the invention of new man-made laws, it will certainly mitigate the problem. Every man-made law represents a reduction in your freedom with the purpose of serving the interests of someone else. Therefore, I am in favour of any alternative solution that will…
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Communism happened. It killed lots of people, and made radical changes in the social order unappealing to most. Now ideas don't just have to sound plausible, but you also have to prove that they won't lead to the deaths of millions.
Communism never happened. Communist propaganda happened.