And that trip was not necessary because I already follow what you said. I do also check the right wing media, and I even posted recommendations for good right wing sources of information in a thread about good sites from the right to check, I have found that they are becoming more unhinged recently up to the point that I would not recommend them anymore, just about the American Conservative remains in my list of recommendations.
Damn you! I was so sure a I had Lance, Hamlet and Elucidator this close to voting for Trump.
Foiled again.
Good for you. Sincerely.
Nice neat division into two categories there.
In which category do you put the people who are busting their asses off working at jobs essential to the functioning of the society as a whole, but not making enough to live on?
In which category do you put the people who are busting their asses off working at equally essential work that this society doesn’t pay for at all?
In which category do you put the people who don’t much care to do any work but have plenty of money anyway?
Actually, poor people often wind up paying more than rich people for the same goods.
Bill Gates can buy a case of tuna at bulk prices on sale, if he feels like it. He’s got the available funds, and he’s got plenty of storage space for it, and he can carry the whole thing back at once without any problem because he doesn’t have to haul it on the bus along with the rest of the groceries.
The broke person has to buy the tuna when they need it, a little at a time. It costs more that way.
Three things:
One, we weren’t even talking about the ticket. We were talking about the fence that keeps the ball within the field, not the fence that keeps the people who didn’t pay for a ticket from getting close enough to watch the game.
Two: ball games are not a scarcity. If there are lots of people who want to watch ball games, there are also lots of people who want to play ball games. Nobody said the fence in question was only preventing people from seeing the Olympic level players.
Three, those aren’t extremes and outliers. Those are the utterly normal course of events in the current system, that the people with money can afford tickets even if they don’t much care whether they see the game or not, and the people without money can’t get in no matter how much they love and know about the game.
The system is not efficiently allocating tickets to the people who want them most; that’s nonsense. It wouldn’t be nonsense if everyone had enough disposable income to buy tickets without having to give up the essentials of having a halfway comfortable life to do so. It also wouldn’t be nonsense if nobody had enough income to buy tickets without its really hurting, either. But the more drastic the state of income inequality is, the bigger a piece of nonsense it is.
Now before you jump in here saying that I want everybody to have absolutely equal income, no, that is most definitely not what I’m saying. For one thing, there could be significant differences in income and as long as everyone, or nearly everyone, was comfortable enough to choose between ball game tickets and, say, dinner at a really good restaurant or a sixth pair of shoes that fit, then the argument that people who want the tickets more will get them will hold up. It’s when some of them have to choose between the tickets and dinner at all, or any shoes that fit the growing kid, that it falls down so spectacularly. For another, the discussion as to what to do about the problem is a separate discussion from whether the argument being made makes any sense. And, in the current situation, it makes no sense to say that the market is allocating the tickets most efficiently because everyone can choose to use their money to buy a ticket when no, a lot of people can’t make that choice, because the money to buy that ticket is not in their pockets or in their accounts.
If you go read what I posted, you’ll note that what I did was to fix the fence so that it both allows everybody to see, and better protects the tall guy. Everybody’s better off. The kid who wants to stay home can still stay home, nobody (other than maybe their parents) is making them go watch the game. What this has to do with central communist planning is beyond me – it’s still up to every individual family to decide whether they want to watch the game. If kids’ parents are dragging them to the games when they don’t want to go, that’s very much a private sector problem.
Why?
Capitalism certainly needs people with money to invest, yes. Why can’t a larger number of people with moderate amounts of money to invest do the job? Why does it need to be a handful of people with huge amounts of money?
Nobody is suggesting taxing everybody down to the edge of poverty.
The thing is . . .
there’s no way of telling who and what we’re missing out on.
Musk and Bezos and Gates were able to do what they did because they weren’t working sixty hours a week cleaning toilets scraping for enough to pay their or their kids’ medical bills, and spending the rest of their time unable to concentrate on anything due to worrying about those bills.
Now somebody’s got to scrub the toilets (though the ones in private houses could usually be scrubbed by those using them; and the people who are scrubbing other people’s could be better paid.) But we have flat out no way of knowing whether the reason people are dying of cancer or AIDS or Alzheimers, or the reason we don’t all have cheap energy-generating installations on our roofs and really good batteries in the closets, or the reason we don’t all get to spend time doing whizmos (you never heard of whizmos? nobody has. nobody had heard of the internet, either), is because the person who could have invented those things or ways to fix those things never got the chance, for lack of a decent social safety net.
Only if it stays in the hands of government.
If government uses it in ways that gets it back into the hands of people making less than $1 million, then it’s no longer in the hands of government, is it? And some of those people can invest in those companies that actually do need a lot of capital; because they’ll have the money to do so.
No, I don’t realize that.
Government would have to make sure there were enough houses for people to live in, yes. I don’t see how that would stop anyone from building houses in various places, styles, and sizes; let alone choosing who they wanted to live with.
Not that anybody is actually recommending exactly that specific society.
Why should colleges be scarce resources? Elementary schools aren’t. High schools aren’t.
And quite possibly fewer people would want to go, if they didn’t think their not winding up living on the street might be dependent on the degree.
And the obvious mechanism, if there really is a scarcity, is entrance exams; made as fair as possible. Or, failing that, a lottery.
If you want people to take risks, it’s really helpful to have a decent safety net. Not only so people whose first attempt or two don’t succeed won’t wind up utterly broken; but also so more people will be willing to take those risks.
Capitalism certainly isn’t destroying that, either.
No; because we don’t like it that so many people are dirt poor.
Lots of people know their own hierarchy of values without having to go to a marketplace. And many such values don’t translate into cash even after they go to a marketplace.
– I’m getting too tired to phrase what else I’m trying to say on this one.
In other words, capitalism has no solution to that problem either. It’s a problem of concentration of resources into fewer entities each of which has more resources – which is exactly what you were insisting is necessary for capitalism to work at all.
Trump’s not a Democrat or a Republican. Trump is an opportunist.
The Republican party, on the other hand, chose to support him. The Democratic party didn’t.
Now I agree that equating Republicans to conservatives is simplistic. But conservatives who are choosing to support Trump ought to expect that that support will have consequences.
Conservative positions at least used to include opposition to totalitarianism, respect for the rule of law, respect for marriage vows, respect for restrained and polite behavior in public. None of that is based upon bigotry, as long as one isn’t bigoted about who can take the marriage vows, and as long as the law being respected isn’t bigoted. A position that social change shouldn’t be engaged in without serious consideration of the need for it and the likely consequences of it is also not itself based in bigotry – as long as the change being resisted isn’t a change to lessen acceptance of bigotry. That last one is a tricky qualifier, because a great deal of tradition does include a significant substrate of bigotry. If the position is just plain that social change is bad, it’s going to founder on that problem and can quite reasonably be considered bigoted in its results, whatever its theoretical intentions. If the position is that such change needs to be carefully considered, I think that in the areas in which it’s changing now this society has in fact been considering the changes for quite some time; some people more carefully and more consciously than others, of course.
While I’ve got all this typed the thread has probably moved on. But I need to get to bed.
This is unhelpful, Scylla. Rein that in.
What you seem to believe as some sort of flaw in the system is simply a part of life. I make a good living, but I have no means to buy a major league baseball team, for example. That doesn’t mean that there is a market failure when, say, the Pittsburgh Pirates are being sold and bids are taken.
Perhaps if the Pirates were sold for $400 million, if I understand your argument correctly, and further if I had Bill Gates money, I might have paid $700 million for them because I really, really want to own a baseball team. But because I don’t have that type of wealth, they sell for $400 million and the market is distorted, or stated better, the market doesn’t set the true value based on want, or allocates baseball team ownership efficiently. If I have misstated your argument, please correct me.
However, in order to correct that, you would need to have ever person have the means to purchase a baseball team. Or better stated, everyone would have to be equally comfortable in paying those types of sums relative to the remainder of their wealth. That requires absolute wealth redistribution.
Now, you would say that is an absurd example, but you get the same thing if you scale it down to baseball tickets, Ipads, or six packs of beer.
Well, before I go on, I want to make sure we are talking about the same thing. Are we?
(I’m going to assume you identify as “conservative” if you’re not, feel free to disregard the rest of this post)
What meaningful actions have “conservatives” done to preserve the rule of law, uphold your constitution anything under Trump?
Do you agree Trump is a net negative for democracy, honesty, decency in the USA and the world?
What values do you hold dear that cause you to identify as “conservative”?
Do you believe it is useful for people to claim to be “conservative” if that doesn’t mean anything politically?
Do you believe “I am a conservative but do not support the Republican Party” is a meaningful position?
What the fuck does that even mean?
Are you talking about communism? That’s the only way I can make sense of what you’re referring to. If so, socialism is not the same as communism. There are two different words for a reason – two different concepts and systems of government.
“Fixed the problem”? They passed numerous bills with bipartisan support. They provided over a billion for border security. I’m sure Trump would say that didn’t “fix the problem”, because he was obsessed with a pointless wall, but that had previously been agreed to by both parties.
But if you were unaware the Democrats passed numerous bipartisan border-security funding bills, then hopefully this helps.
Ha! I disagree with the DHS, not surprisingly (if they did even say this – you didn’t offer a cite).
North Korea only has about 150 miles of border. Also, they’ve mined it heavily and are willing to kill those who try and cross it.
If you want to advocate mining the border and killing migrants, feel free. Is that your position? If not, then I don’t see how this is relevant.
If true, so what? And do you have a cite? So far you’ve been so inaccurate on the facts that I’m skeptical that this is correct just based on your uncited post.
Your understanding of the facts is so inaccurate that I don’t think you’re currently capable of recognizing “batshit crazy”. I think you should look for new sources of information; your current sources are failing you terribly.
If that’s the way you vote, then that’s who you are as a citizen, and that’s what you’re responsible for, whether or not you held your nose when you did it.
And no, don’t bother telling us “Hey, I only voted for guns, not the rest of that stuff, so don’t hold me responsible” - not, unless, you’re actively *opposing *the rest of that stuff. Otherwise, the evidence is that you’re okay with it.
I’ve read the Bible, which is frankly more than a lot of Christians seem to have done, and which is plenty to have at least a passing knowledge of what Jesus is recorded said. But hey, this is GD - if I’m wrong it should be easy to absolutely demolish me with cites. Just reference the bible passages where Jesus clearly comes out in favor of the non-bigoted conservative values that people have listed (or that you’d like to add) like resource extraction (obviously oil wouldn’t be directly mentioned as that’s a more modern phenomenon), a large military, foreign military ventures, and so on, and I’ll be proven an ignorant fool. (Also to forestall the obvious: I’m only looking for things referencing Jesus directly, I’m not looking for anything from the non-Jesus parts of the bible, or teachings that various churches have added later).
Should be an easy victory if my knowledge is really so lacking, and I’m encouraging you to take the easy shot so fire away!
As I’ve pointed out earlier, none of these are conservative values, in fact they are all things that conservatives oppose in practice. Conservative attacks on free speech and religion have been noted repeatedly, the drug war and abortion restriction both directly assault the soverignity of the individual, ‘family values’ oppose the equality of man, laws favoring the already-extremely-rich over the not-currently rich oppose equality of opportunity and 'the american dream. You simply can’t on one hand advocate for forcing a 13 year old rape victim to carry the fetus fathered by her rapist to term, then spend the next 18 years interacting with him over custody, then on the other claim to be in favor of sovereignty of the individual on the other.
It’s bizarre to blame ‘neo Marxist nihilists’ for bathroom laws sponsored by and passed by conservative republicans to target a distinct and vulnerable minority.
This word, “bipartisan,” I do not think it means what you think it means.
No I recall. You just mischaracterized it beyond my ability to recognize what you are talking about.
Again, bipartisan does not mean “all the Democrats”
My word is my cite, but here you go:
“Walls Work. When it comes to stopping drugs and illegal aliens from crossing our borders, border walls have proven to be extremely effective”
Your argument is that it is impossible to build an effective border wall. That’s just silly.
I see. It’s either land mines or nothing. Great logic.
I don’t believe there has actually ever been an actual communist country. No. I am talking about Socialism, like the Russians, Chinese, Cubans, N. Koreans etc.
Conservative values at work:
According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, regarding the impact of states not opting into the networks because of “conservative values”, … in non-expansion states, failure to expand in these states likely resulted in 15,600 additional deaths
over this four year period that could have been avoided if the states had opted to expand coverage.
I grant your point that at times conservatives have not perfected these values.
Those are not conservative values. Those are values that traditionally liberals and conservatives agree on. The argue about how to implement them, and in that argument, hopefully we progress.
The point that I was trying to make is that classic liberalism seems to have left the building and been replaced with radical leftism.
Right now radical leftists are attacking those values. Republicans are defending them. I’m with the Republicans because of this.
I think it’s bizarre that it is an issue. Personally, I think a good guideline to choosing a bathroom should be: Choose the one, that raises the fewest eyebrows/makes the fewest people uncomfortable. This tendency should be influenced by the urinal rule. If all you need is the urinal and you are equipped to use one, choose that unless it conflicts with the first part.
Those bills were supported by both Democrats and Republicans. That’s generally what bipartisan means. They were opposed only by Republicans.
Further, the House and Senate had already agreed to funding levels that would have passed with large bipartisan majorities. But the president rejected that bipartisan deal and decided to shut down the government.
So what I said is accurate - the Democratic House passed bipartisan bills to fund border security. That is a fact.
Maybe it’s possible, but the wall Trump has pushed for would be both ineffective and serve as a giant symbol of hatred and white supremacy. Of course Democrats are going to oppose such a pointless and symbolically racist gesture.
That’s not what I said. I was wondering why you brought up NK as an example. Why did you? If you think they should be emulated, then I disagree, but at least that’s a coherent argument. If you don’t think they should be emulated, then how are they relevant?
Ah, I see where the confusion is. I also oppose the system of those countries, as do Bernie and AOC. We want socialism like it’s practiced in Canada and much of western Europe. They’ve explicitly rejected the failed systems of those countries, and have explicitly endorsed and admired the types of socialism practiced by Canada and many western European countries.
Of course, you can choose to ignore their own words and believe that these are secret evil communists who hate America and want Americans to suffer, but that seems silly to me.