Hey, at least we’re consistent!
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I strongly disagree.
Capitalism only requires allowing private ownership of the means of production for profit. However, it does not require exclusive private ownership of the means of production.
By contrast, Socialism was a backlash against Capitalism. The only unifying thread between the highly fractured forms of Socialism is the rejection of Capitalism. That requires exclusive collective ownership of the means of production and/or the elimination of profit.
So every real-world economic system actually is true Capitalism since afaik every country today allows private ownership of the means of production for profit.
Capitalism has no dog in the fight about who should be in charge of wealth, only that one should be able to accrue it through the ownership of business. It is purely an economic system. Taxation, regulation, interventionism, etc. are all outside the scope of Capitalism until you get into one of the specific versions of it like laissez-faire.
Different strains of Socialism have varied considerably in their tolerance of private property.
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I thought the US was Canada’s underpants.
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However all strains reject production for profit which along with ownership of businesses are the defining characteristics of Capitalism. To put it another way - Socialism is the rejection of Capitalism, but Capitalism has nothing to say about Socialism.
Indeed Capitalism has no problem having Socialism within it (co-ops, communes, state-owned business, etc.), but Socialism doesn’t allow Capitalism to exist within it.
The only exception to this would be if you considered Social Democracy to actually be Socialism and not just a pro-Union version of Welfare Capitalism. Of course nearly all Social Democrats refer to themselves as Socialists even though they are Capitalists.
No they don’t. Market Socialism may retain the profit motive. It may vary as to whom those profits should accrue.
Well, it isn’t the only exception, as stated, but I’ll accept that there is controversy as to whether Social Democracy is a form of Socialism - just as there is controversy about virtually every position anyone has ever taken in Socialism, ever, hotly disputed by pretty much everyone else in Socialism.
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I oversimplified. Market Socialism rejects the private ownership of the means of production. Non-Market Socialism rejects production for profit and usually, but not always private ownership.
All forms of Socialism are a rejection of Capitalism which requires allowing private ownership of the means of production for profit.
Anyway, I fully expect another generation of Social Democrats calling themselves Socialists while not truly rejecting Capitalism and getting actual Socialists simultaneously happy that Socialist is becoming less of a dirty word, but also angry because a bunch of people are running around calling themselves Socialists who aren’t.
I also expect an entire generation of people who say they reject Capitalism, but actually support allowing people to own companies that make stuff and then sell it for profit.
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And those bits get transmitted by a noncompetitive ISP using power distributed by a noncompetitive utility, generated by fossil fuels subsidizes in a variety of ways. You don’t have to look far to see thumbs on the scales of Capitalism. Sometimes they’re in our favor like environmental protections, but way too often they’re favoring Exxon, Halliburton & Bechtel et al.
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From the perspective of NotAmerica, the call from Trump (and now Mister44) to extract payments from non-Americans in order to support the insanely bloated US military budget is interpreted as “we should make the protection racket more overt now”.
The US does not “have our back”. The US can be relied upon to intervene militarily when its own geopolitical interests are threatened, with a heavy emphasis on things that threaten the profits of US corporations.
US troops stationed in Europe are not there to “protect” Europeans, and never were. They were placed there to ensure that the battlefield of any war against the USSR was kept as far from US soil as possible.
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From the perspective of a US citizen not represented by the elected government, I say a 1000 times this.
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The main thing beyond shorter daylight hours is that the lower illumination angle means fewer watts per square meter of surface, regardless of what the atmosphere is doing.
Go outside with a flashlight at night. Shine it straight down at the ground, the spot of light is very bright. Shine it at an angle, the same amount of light is spread more dimly across a larger area.
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We’re selling billions of dolla worth of light armoured vehicles to the Saudis… surely that counts for something… that we probably shouldn’t do…
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Is there some way I can implant this comment into every US citizen’s brain? (The ignorance of such things here in the US is so, so profound and destructive.)
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That is rather why I make a point of repeating similar comments every time this comes up. There’s a mental list of US-exceptionalism hot buttons:
- “America won WW1 and WW2”
- “America is the only ethnically diverse immigrant nation”
- “Any deviation from American legal/cultural norms equals tyranny”
- “America’s constant use of military force is an act of altruism”
Back when I was a grad student, so had a tiny amount of money to spare, I used to regularly spend it on buying textbooks and science equipment for impoverished USAdian schools.
I might’ve done more direct good by directing that cash towards vaccines in Africa or somesuch. But I decided that, in the long term, American ignorance does much greater harm, and is therefore a higher priority target.
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Welp, I wished the rest of America actually thought those of us working on advanced degrees were worth listening to, but you know… those of us in academia aren’t part of the REAL AMERICA, so… oh well.[quote=“Wanderfound, post:98, topic:77262”]
American ignorance does much greater harm
[/quote]
Yeppers.
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I’m glad that we have a powerful military, but this seems like a fun creative writing exercise since what we’re talking about is how it’s funded and deployed. So let’s try out a different ‘sort of like’ from what one might imagine an outside perspective to be:
Sort of like, many years ago, you saw a bear roaring in the distance and it scared you. So to this day, decades later, you still spend 1/6th of every paycheck on beartraps, even though the bear never attacked you and bears have long been gone from your civilized neighborhood. To justify your spending, you take expensive trips to remote areas of the world to set out the traps, even though you are much more likely to get one of the locals and/or your own leg caught in it.
You know the rest of the world doesn’t want you setting traps on their land, so you’ve purchased a couple of bears from zoos, and set them loose to rampage in other countries so that you could rush over there and trap them so that everyone will see that what you are doing is good. Otherwise though, your traps usually just wound a fox and piss it off. The locals also get pissed off when you leave and they have to deal with the angry fox.
You feel pride in being the toughest guy on the block and boast that your neighbors should pay you for keeping them safe from the nonexistent bears, but hey, you’re a good guy so you’re willing to do it for free. Meanwhile they are spending their money on the medicine they need and their children’s education. They all think you’re kinda loony.
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Protection racket? How about living up to the agreed upon alliance?
I am not saying the US doesn’t get something out of the NATO alliance. Alliances are generally mutually beneficial. But at the same time Europe certainly has benefited from the US presence, especially during the Cold War. And I take some umbrage at the suggestion that the US wouldn’t defend a NATO ally. Defending NATO and our allies IS within US interests.
One could argue that the presence isn’t need now like it was 30-40 years ago, and I would agree. Also the bloated military budget isn’t entirely due to NATO obligations. But it is part of it. And as the charts show, only a few of the countries in the pact are living up to the agreed upon amount of funding. I think we should reduce both budget and foot print, and if the NATO allies feel a bit naked then they can up their budget. Conversely, if they worked out a deal to subsidize our presence, that would work too.
ETA:
Eh - I get your point. I think it was a bit more than just seeing a bear roaring in the distance. I mean, you act the the bear was harmless. Tell that to Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, etc. Tell that to Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and several other wars fought by proxy. The fact the bear had enough teeth and claws to rip the world asunder was a real danger.
Now since the fall of the USSR, it has mellowed out some in it’s old age. I don’t think it will start anything large scale anytime soon, but they aren’t above still mixing it up.
The problem is since WWII we had this brilliant notion of having a large enough military to fight wars on two different fronts. I think that level of preparedness is a bit overkill at this point.
When you make your rare forays outside of the isolated, indoctrinating, liberal-hotbed ivory tower, do you cover your egghead with something, or do you just leave it exposed to abuse and ridicule? (I mean, it’s not like studying something as hard as you eggheads do means you actually know anything about it.)
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Oh, I just slip by undetected… I’m a tiny, unassuming person, so I just fly under the radar! 
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The establishment of the NATO alliance by the US was not an act of altruism. The placement of US troops in Germany had two major purposes:
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To ensure that an amphibious assault would not be required if the US decided to invade Europe again, and
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To make sure that any US-USSR conflict was fought “over there” instead of “over here”.
The Germans and Turks were not “protected” by nominating their countries as ground zero for the opening stages of WWIII. Even if NATO had successfully done what it was theoretically supposed to do, and even if the nukes were somehow neutralised, central Europe would have been left as a smoking depopulated ruin.
The appropriate historical analogy for 20th century America is the Delian League. That was also, in theory, a mutually beneficial cooperative defence pact against a tyrannical foreign threat. In practice, it was an imperial protection racket that siphoned wealth and power towards the centre through a combination of threats, economic blackmail and naked force.
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