the whole cartoon in one image
here is the other one, split into two files because itâs more than 500 pixels tall
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When you debate the strawman with whom youâd rather argue than the position those to whom you reply have actually advanced, be aware that they are those observing the discussion will see through your rhetorical fallacy even if you choose not to.
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This really isnât what I am interested in. I would like it very much if the term âpovertyâ could be more rigourously defined. The way I see poverty, Donald Trump and the Kardasians and a whole lot of other people usually seen as rich and powerful, are really dirt poor.
But I suspect that definition is going to be even less acceptable than the straw man you accuse me of debating.
How you personally define poverty is up to you, and there are many valid definitions. But you substituted a different definition than any implied or explicated by the interlocutor to whom you were replying. Thatâs not an accusation, itâs a fact, and one that doesnât go unnoticed.
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If I had been paying more attention, I would have emphasized that this smaller definition is generally all thats allowed âout thereâ in the non-boingboing debate sphere. Good of you to notice my mistake. I take notice of your noticing, and now all of us are more aware.
Poverty is having to choose between eating for a week and buying essential medication, because you canât afford both at the same time.
And thatâs just one, small, first-world example of poverty; there are literally thousands of others, in various degrees of suffering.
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Yup. The myth of the ascetic enrichment is most often promoted by the established power structure.
Meanwhile, any society is only three square meals away from revolution.
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Now who is splitting hairs? The government owning shares of companies (see also, the USA), controlling productivity through regulation, loans, incentives, or in any other way picking winners and losers - those are more on the socialist end of the spectrum than capitalist. When a Scandinavian government invests in a manufacturer in exchange for prioritizing government contracts - guess what?
The Payroll Protection Program is a massive socialist program - conditional loans to keep businesses running only if those businesses conform to the requirements of the program. Just because one philosopher defines socialism narrowly doesnât that is the only definition.
You also seem to imply that a socialist economy doesnât use money? Are you okay?
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I completely agree. My stance on socialised healthcare has evolved greatly over the last decade from complete disdain to a much more pragmaic view and considerably closer aligned with the Nordic Model than any other. In this thread, my points are not against shared responsibility but rather a clarification as to how the Nordic countries, and Canada, can afford them. I believe it an important distinction to make, that a free(ish) market is generating the tax revenue that pays for them. As far as âpeople matterâ is concerned, I came around in the healthcare question when I realized that if collectively funding our national security against external geopolitical threats is an acceptable scheme then why the hell not from medical threats. I just have a bit of a hard time discerning what replies to my comments are good faith dissagreements and which ones are ban baiting so I often loose focus.
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Socialism is when the state owns the means of production.
No. No it is not.
LIbertarian socialism is opposed to the existence of a state and has been since the mid 19th century.
If that definition is true then mutualism. anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, council communism, Communalism, and numerous other libertarian socialist tendencies are not socialism. That is clearly a nonsensical result, so the definition is wrong.
As I have already pointed out, if that definition is wrong (which it is) then the whole argument falls apart. This feels like I am arguing with a tankie, except instead of unthinking support of Marxism-Leninism itâs unthinking opposition to all socialism.
Besides, this is classic Argumentum ad dictionarium. I believe the various socialist and communist theory texts are a better source to what socialism is (even when they contradict each other) than the dictionary.
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Now I have to go look up âtankieâ. Is there a specific definition for the word or is it completely fluid and subjective?
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Buckminster Fuller liked to call wealth, âlivingryâ. As in stuff that helps us stay alive. And the other stuff he called, âkillingryâ, the stuff used to threaten people.
I see a lot of verbage hung up on what is capitalism and what does it do to wealth, but at the core of things, you are either using wealth to bid people upwards, or bid them downwards. Guns or butter.
When the number of vacant dwellings outnumbers the number of homeless people two to one, thatâs not butter, thatâs weapons. All this infrastructure devoted to propping up the real estate market, has the direct effect of insuring people are going to be living in tents by the freeway.
TL,DR; Capitalism is just todayâs iteration of a much older phenomenon-Empire. The protests are forcing the empire to show what itâs really built from. Not money, but coersion.
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Depends upon your definition of the means of production. Roads? Water? Electricity generation? Hoover damn? TVA? The training of the workforce- schools? The security of the plant - police? Feeding workers - food stamps? Subsidies for materials- fossil fuels?
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Not alone, but gravitational assists do save on fuel.
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If, in order to get capitalism fetishists to agree to support Nordic-style dsoc policies, we need to agree that those policies are just another variant of capitalism, then Iâm happy to do that. Losing a semantic war is a small price to pay for getting a functioning safety net.
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I can totally understand that from someone who lives in the US. I mean, if you can win the battle to get healthcare then nodding along while some of your allies say weird stuff seems like a small price to pay. Living outside the US, I see creeping nonsense like calling public funds âtaxpayer dollarsâ as an attack on the system we already have. The anti-healthcare crew in the US arenât just trying to stop the US from getting healthcare, they are also trying to get Canada and the UK to get rid of it (among others, I assume).
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Healthcare?
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Oh yes, I agree. The One problem we have in the US is that there are all sorts of basic human entitlements that most of the civilized world take for granted but which people here oppose for what really amount to sloganeering reasons. If we can decouple the policy from the labels that is one impediment sidestepped. On your side, however, any change in the label can look like an attack on the institution, for the same reason.
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A tankie is an apologist for/dogmatic supporter of the Soviet Union and its brand of communism. Coined when Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary to crush the 1956 revolution, causing splits in and mass resignations from Marxist groups across Western Europe.
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It has since expanded to include hardline Maoists, Dengists and supporters of North Korea. Basically they support any form of authoritarian left wing politics.
It does not include orthodox Marxists, libertarian Marxists, or any of the other libertarian socialist tendencies. Trotskyists are decided on a case by case basis, a lot of them are tankies, but a lot of them arenât.
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