Or be born to rich parents.
IIRC, didn’t Marx once say that communism would never actually work in Russia?
Though it is obviously a highly subjective issue, I find that my best and most productive ability is what I am currently doing now, which is a direct result of my graduate-level education. No, I do not wish to be less vague than that.
Yes, I am paid well enough by your system. That is nice, but is not the point. I am well off because I am intelligent, and because my parents were both intelligent and economically stable enough to see that I received a proper education. Were I, say, an offspring of poor American ghetto denizens, I could never have achieved my current status.
In other words: I would be well off under either system, but this isn’t about me. This is about my brethren that were not given my personal advantages in life. A proper system must take care of everyone, not just the ones that won the birth lottery.
And, no, neither of my parents were wealthy in the US sense of the world. We never starved, but we were never rich, either. I am not particularly rich, either, though my life is a comfortable one.
As I just stated, I can work for what I need in either system, thank you very much. However, I DO think that a person should be entitled to material freedoms simply by virtue of being human.
Do you disagree? Let me tell you a story.
I have an old childhood friend back in Belarus, easily one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever known. While pursuing his degree in chemistry, he was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of multiple sclerosis. He was never able to finish the university, much less to work.
He is very sick now, but alive. He is also receiving absolutely the best treatments available, absolutely free of charge. I do not doubt that this is what has kept him alive to this day. He is being taken care of by the very same nation that he was never really able to contribute to.
Tell me, is Belarus wrong to care for him? Should it have used the US model, instead, and told him to go fuck himself? Should my friend be dead now, because that is apparently the better system according to heartless cretins such as yourself?
Through the magic of online old english dictionaries, I have determined that a modern english translation of this phrase would be something close to, “I pity to you a writing method of domination.”
I think we must. If you are to defend the Empire, you must do so in a global context. Picking a single category in which you beat Russia is intellectually lazy. For example, I notice that you did not choose to compare the per capita university degrees. Why’s that? Oh, yes - it’s because we kick your, as well as pretty much everyone else’s, ass in that category.
Well, the second one doesn’t work for me right now, but I think I get the gist of your argument. Problem is, Link #1 uses unknown methodology, and Link #3 seems to depict driving in a mudslide, which is hardly typical for us, you know.
In rebuttal, I offer my own anecdotal evidence. When I drive in Belarus, the roads are fucking awesome. Straight, flat, pristine (let’s leave out the dirt field roads, since I can avoid those if I choose to do so). When I drive to work in the Empire, on the other hand, I have to do 3 lane changes on a 2-lane street just to avoid potholes the size of a grown man. Not cool, as the kids may or may not say these days.
Yes, because our respective air forces combat each other every other day… Look, neither one of us knows how a real showdown would end. You probably have better airplanes. We probably have better ground-to-air missile technology. Until we fight, we won’t know. And if we do fight, we’ll all wake up under a mushroom cloud, so we still won’t know. So quit masturbating to your own delusions of grandeur - we’re both strong enough to not care who’s technically stronger.
No, some of it has been quite good. I particularly like Pulp Fiction, for instance. Overall, however, you tend to produce mindless refuse that wouldn’t pose an intellectual challenge to a 4-year old.
Really? Which ones “would just shoot them?”
First of all, quit pulling numbers out of Solzhenitsin’s filthy ass. You want to claim 23M, I want to see 23M names. Secondly, murder isn’t a math game; you don’t wash your hands of your guilt by proving that somebody, at some point, killed more people than you did.
Highly ironic from a man dismissing 700,000 dead humans as “paltry.” Next, you’ll be claiming that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were harmless pranks.
Once again, I call your bluff. Give me other names, along with people killed. And please spare me sob stories about the Imperial family, if at all possible.
Depends on your definitions. I would argue, for example, that the Greeks had a system of checks and balances that preceded you by three millenia. Also, let’s avoid worshiping your silly little Constitution. Don’t forget that it codified slavery, for example. Oops.
Do you claim that both are rights recognized by your government, then? If so, I must deliver this wonderful news to the homeless encampment permanently erected not 100 meters from my apartment complex. They must have missed the memo.
I think so. The Russian revolution ironically undercut Marxist theory from the beginning. The supposedly predictable path of cultural development was supposed to go feudalism-capitalism-communism, not skip a step. Communism was supposed to take over in the most advanced, most prosperous, most capitalistic countries first.
I strongly disagree with that analysis, my friend. You see, Marxism is NOT a religious tract. If we tweak it, angels will not descend down upon us and have wanton intercourse with our anal orifices, or whatnot.
Basically, Marx wrote good stuff, but he was no politician. Lenin read his theory, adapted it to the real world, implemented it, and THEN we were off and running. Remember, all human knowledge belongs to us humans. We may change it when need be.
Oh, but Marxism/Communism is a religion; it just doesn’t call itself one. It is a faith based worldview and a set of faith based rules for how society should run; that’s religion. It’s opposed to other religions for the same reason Christianity is; it hates competition. They really are quite similar belief systems in many ways.
No, my silly little friend, no. I am afraid that religion is not part of our ideology. We reject Judeo-Christian thinking because it is stupid. Nothing more, nothing less. Ourselves, we reject religion.
It is one election and the people who got the most votes won the offices they got the most votes for. That is the way that it works, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I would have voted differently in some races and not others and I don’t care for some of the politicians elected. That’s what happens in democracy.Work harder to get more people registered and out to vote next time if you want a different outcome. That’s what I will do.
Just out of curiosity, why are you so confident in the integrity of the Imperials? Is this something that you have drilled into you at an early age? In other words, the Empire is peefect?
Just like the Christians do; they repudiate other religions and recognize them as stupid. The difference is that they call what they believe a religion, and you don’t. But that doesn’t make it any less of one; it doesn’t make it any more rational or any more based on reality.
No, the US isn’t perfect however I did not spend my early sexy 20s trying to lure a man to marry me and import me to a new country as a wife.
And while I am at it:
And after all his practice.
Regards,
Shodan
Even a numbnut finds a squirrel every once in awhile. It is pretty silly for people to claim that Communism is a religion and then attack self-proclaimed Communists for not faithfully following their religion! Talk about strawmen.
And what does any of that have to do with the wonders of Communism? Has Lukashenko decided he’s a Marxist this month?
Hey Comissar… again I ask…
Why would 171 people risk their lives to escape a perfect society?
171 people were killed or died attempting to escape at the Berlin Wall between August 13, 1961 and November 9, 1989.
So, is trial by AK-47/74 really better than the jury system?
I was really hoping it was going to be about a man named Jed.
He was a commie who barely kept his family fed.