281–290 of 970 posts
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Every generation thinks the world is ending but eventually one will be correct.
Do you think there can't be any civilizations in the universe which exist indefinitely? For the past millions or even billions of years? If humans get past the next couple of centuries and start spreading out into the solar system and possibly beyond, what would cause us to have a last generation?
Yesterday I made the comment "everything is collapsing underneath" though there's context etc. I think the better way to say it. "Is everything falling apart for the USA?" Yes indeed. Most other countries have problems. Sure Sri Lanka has the same problems. Sure the middle east just went through the same problems and some states are still enduring civil war. Though from what I can tell it's mostly the USA in this 'fa…
You are missing bias. Elons "graph" only shows the left moving away, like they were running away from the globalists lovin satanist-migrants. Or maybe just climate scientists? This entire "blaming wokeism" is just identity tribalism form the other side. How come you fail to realize ...
Which has been objectively measured.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2014/06/12/political-po...
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-polarization-of-politic...
>This entire "blaming wokeism" is just identity tribalism form the other side. How come you fail to realize ...
I never blamed wokeism.
It's easy to lament polarization, but the reason it's not going away is that there are important differences in how people view the world, and calls for unity are really closer to "It would be so peaceful if we could eliminate the opposing viewpoint once and for all".
I agree. It seems "compromise" is increasingly used as "What I'm proposing should be considered the compromise and you should listen to me". There's no real debate. Nobody tries to address the other side's concerns. And then we do have, as you say, some fundamental differences in world views and experiences that sometimes form an impasse.
These issues were cultivated by right-wing think tanks over decade with the sole purpose of making it impossible for voters to even think of doing anything but electing Republicans.
I’m not excusing the idiocy of the Democrats here, but you can’t both-sides the fundamentals of the culture war — it’s not a symmetrical problem.
I'd argue that the greater risk of things falling apart is economic rather than political. We've built our society on two near-ponzi schemes that are in danger of falling apart. The first is pension funds which are paid into by current workers to pay out for past workers. Pension funds inherently depend on population growth to avoid shortfalls. They rely on the fact that more people pay into them then take out from t…
> Pension funds inherently depend on population growth to avoid shortfalls. Pension funds inherently depend on increases in production. Population growth is one factor, but technological development can also increase production. > The other near-ponzi scheme is the real estate market. In my city of Toronto, average real estate prices have gone from 2x average income in 1972 to 16x average income today. Hello from a V…
Reducing the value of property to the structures on them by having heavy taxation rates on unimproved land is fairer than the current system and makes access to property far easier. It reduces speculation in real estate which also improves access.
I also agree with the Georgist moral perspective that we have equal entitlements to all land and natural resources. From there, distributing land that is undertaxed seems to give certain individuals and companies unfair advantages. An added benefit is that income taxes and capital gains taxes have always from my perspective been on morally shaky ground as I struggle to find a good moral perspective that justifies them compared to other forms of taxation that seem morally just.
Doing a transition like that will be just as difficult as popping a housing bubble (if not more so) but I think it will be of great benefit to society.
The elephant in the room is that the Industrial world wanted alot of people, and the post Industrial world does not. Not only in terms of production, but in terms of having a livable environment for everyone. So what happens to what are now "excess" people? The answer to that question is gonna define pretty much everything.
We can’t sustain our current levels of spending without a growing population. The lions share of American spending goes to social services: social security, Medicare, Medicaid. If you’re referencing to automation taking over…I fully agree with your point. It seems like half the people around me have made up jobs.
Automation can make all the things they would want. Why do they need you around again? Especially when having you around creates pollution that makes things worse for them....
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It's an endless cycle. As the saying goes... Hard times make strong men Strong men make good times Good times make weak men And weak men make hard times.
"Strong men" make fascism, not good times. It's pretty much the definition of fascism - a delusional paternalistic idiot infecting everyone around him with his own neuroses and narcissism, in the name of "patriotism" and "respect."
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Eh, there have been institutions with almost absurd longevity in history. The catholic church has stood largely unchanged for the 1600 odd years between Constantine and Vatican II. Ancient Egypt was already thousands of years old when Socrates harassed aristocrats in Athens. It's very easy to forget that the revolutions of Britain, France, America, Russia; it happened just a few generations ago, and upended most of t…
> catholic church has stood largely unchanged for the 1600 odd years You have a very flexible definition of "unchanged" then. The Catholic Church pre-Charlemagne is going to be very different from Saeculum Obscurum-era, itself different from Investiture Crisis-era, itself different from the one familiar in the Late Medieval, different from Counter Reformation-era one. It's absurd to me that you think the first time i…
If anything, Egypt is one hell of a counter example of institutional stability. I would also make the pedantic quibble that the HRE never called itself "Germany" until the term was incorporated into part of its much longer official title in the late 1400s. English usage started in the 1500s. It's not to say that the concept of "Germany" or "Deutschland" didn't exist, but pre-Westphalia it's difficult to make truly apt comparisons to conceptualizations of states today, and the term equivalent to Germany was used, intermittently at that, from Charlemagne's death for the next 700 years somewhat like the status of Scotland or Wales within the UK today, as in, it coexisted with the HRE as an part but not considered to have referred to the whole until the HRE lost its non-German territories an that was pretty much all that was left.
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Why did he think the paychecks would stop coming?
My grandfather worked for the steel mills. Some workers didn't get anything for their pensions. He was one of the lucky ones and got something, like 10 cents on the dollar. I think they even stopped sending them before he died (remember him saying something about that was the last check and complaining about the company).
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I agree. It seems "compromise" is increasingly used as "What I'm proposing should be considered the compromise and you should listen to me". There's no real debate. Nobody tries to address the other side's concerns. And then we do have, as you say, some fundamental differences in world views and experiences that sometimes form an impasse.
As someone who follows gun laws, "compromise" often takes this form: Lawmakers: "We intend to outlaw all semi-automatic rifles with scary black stocks" Gun owners: "Please don't do that." Lawmakers: "Ok, let's compromise, we'll only outlaw scary rifles with collapsing stocks and vertical handgrips on the front." (time passes) Lawmakers: "There is a terrible loophole in our gun regulations..."
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/guns-became-leading-killer-...
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I can’t understand what you’re trying to convey. The terms fascist and nazi seem to have lost all meaning nowadays…at least to the far left.
Good god, enough with this "fascist and nazi seem to have lost all meaning" nonsense. Let's call it the "No true fascist fallacy". I could bring the corpse of Himmler here and some people would regurgitate the same "Bu-bu-but that's not actually fascist enough!". OP was basically quoting the definition of Ur-fascism by Umberto Eco. Is that historically accurate enough for you? Or should we check beforehand if whoever…