251–260 of 275 posts
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Agreed, I am British and got out just before the full power of the Conservatives was realised. I would not plan on going back any time soon, I'm sure I'm not a minority in thinking this.
I'm British and I'm scared I'm going to be worse off staying in Britain - how did you come to be able to leave?
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Do you have any specific criticisms of the partiality of the story, or are you just throwing bombs? Who is your favorite "impartial" reporter? Publication?
It's entirely acceptable to raise the question of the quality of the source if it's unknown. I, for one, know nothing about the World Socialist Web Site, or whether they have a habit of pushing stories with glaring omissions, unfounded additions or in the worst case, plain falsehoods. I do know to some degree about a fair number of larger news organizations, and while none are perfect, I trust a number of them to not…
By propaganda I mean stories whose only purpose is engender attitudinal change, eg gleefully reporting on sex scandals but only if they happen to your political enemies. Obviously they have a pretty orthodox Marxist/communist agenda but since they're completely open about that I don't consider it manipulative of their readership.
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> This is partly why I am an anarcho-Communist You believe in an oxymoron?
Anarcho-Communism is not an oxymoron; Communism is by definition a stateless and indeed classless society, as described by Marx and Engels.
Consider something else, reproduction. While not all people want to have children, it is a major desire of many people. How do we ensure equal opportunity of reproduction to all who wish to have children?
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Given how easy a group can be swayed and controlled given our current centralization of media/culture, our technology, and our understanding of psychology, is it possible for there to ever again be a people's democracy? Giving the vote to the people seems to be inherently giving the vote to those who control the information being fed to the people, be that an oligarchy or the government.
The only viable forms of government i see now is a benevolent enlightened dictator or a scientocracy. The only way to remove manipulation is to remove emotion from politics. So you either need someone who knows what needs to be done and can't be influenced otherwise, or a system that is not easy to influence, like one based on facts and evidence. Enlightened dictator is a high risk high reward type of deal though, ev…
I personally think the solution may be to remove the idea of representation from government, because the perverse incentives for anyone at a structural node are tempting and human nature is fragile. You can try to engineer corruption and rent-seeking with rule systems, but as we've seen in many Communist countries taking money out of things doesn't necessarily get your a more equitable or sustainable society.
I see a future with a much abridged legal code that is maintained somewhat like Wikipedia or a version control system, and whose implementation is built around blockchain technology and a narrowly-defined ethical calculus. However I can only handwave this for the time being as the challenges of computation legal and governmental systems are non-trivia, not to mention offering the many novel problems that would surely ensue.
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Anarcho-Communism is not an oxymoron; Communism is by definition a stateless and indeed classless society, as described by Marx and Engels.
While I feel this is deviating from the topic at hand, I have always had some questions about how a society could be classless. Even a kindergarten was made into a class society based solely on eye color after the teacher mentioned that eye colors meant certain things about a person. In a communist society, even if wealth were equal, there are many inherent factors that differ between people due to their unique genet…
Karl Marx died in 1883 so while he was probably able to make guesses about how steam engines would be deployed in the future he never lived to see an actual automobile. Adam Smith's economic insights were likewise somewhat limited by the technology of his day; one has to be careful not to attribute knowledge that we only enjoy with hindsight to economic theorists of earlier eras.
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Do you have any specific criticisms of the partiality of the story, or are you just throwing bombs? Who is your favorite "impartial" reporter? Publication?
It's entirely acceptable to raise the question of the quality of the source if it's unknown. I, for one, know nothing about the World Socialist Web Site, or whether they have a habit of pushing stories with glaring omissions, unfounded additions or in the worst case, plain falsehoods. I do know to some degree about a fair number of larger news organizations, and while none are perfect, I trust a number of them to not…
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Impartial or not: let's count the MSM-sources that do not report on this matter; or only report late (because it would otherwise become weird if they wouldn't). I did not see this yet in any of the MSM sites I sometimes poll on these matters. Nothing yet! If this news if true, which I believe at this point, then it is a BIG story (proven total failure of democracy, high up officials in charge have to step down becaus…
> let's count the MSM-sources that do not report on this matter It originated in the Guardian. That is a MSM outlet. That said, it originated in an opinion piece. What you have is something that the Guardian didn't have enough facts for to make a real story yet, and you are expecting other MSM sources to report on it, which means they would be reporting on a Guardian opinion piece, since that's all the evidence they…
Dunno man. I've seen stuff being reported by MSMs that was well below the professional threshold for me. Guardian seems to be one to better big outlets.
But I have to give to credit for pointing out a very valid reason for other MSMs not reporting on it.
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This is partly why I am an anarcho-Communist, in favour of decentralised planning or to a lesser extent market Socialism. I'm not sure what to do about giving the vote to people; arguably democracy is very good, but I would rather have per-commune direct democracy (with instantly recallable delegates or without) rather than a representative democracy. In short, I want to do away with voting for masters, as it will be…
> This is partly why I am an anarcho-Communist You believe in an oxymoron?
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I'm gonna continue to play Devils advocate here and that person in question could of merely confirmed that it was close. But realistically I think your right. People will gladly handout passwords to people who sound authoritative. It's amazing to me how many DEFCON talks begin with: "So we just pretended to be X and asked for their password and got it."
OT: I see you've used "could of" multiple times. Just wanted to say it's "could have". Cheers.
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> I do not consider potential property damage to be a form of terrorism... So under your definition of terrorism someone needs to be injured? You're diverging from the dictionary a little there.
I don't find it useful to use the term beyond attacks aimed at actually terrorizing people. Stuff like suicide bombs in crowded public squares or metros, sarin gas releases, etc. A particular attack doesn't have to actually have any victims to qualify (it could be unsuccessful, or the outcome could be lucky), but it at least has to have that goal, or else how is it in any way "terror"? Some kinds of animal-rights att…
The comment I replied to generalised the work of these activists as "potential property damage"... which in the case of the Animal Liberation Front's firebombing campaign, or the plan to interfere with the safe operation of a nuclear power station is incorrect. They're both acts that put lives at risk and clearly intend to cause fear beyond the event.