You must log in or register to comment.
The one that wants to provide universal basic income based on a wealth tax.
I know this is a meme but i fundamentally disagree with what lots of other people call “left politics”. I’m against immigration (for purely economic, not for racist reasons!), and i think that “men are the root of all evil” is a false and meaningless statement. It creates unnecessary tension within society and in my opinion provokes a civil war. It’s literally that meme:
If you have a country that’s below it’s replacement rate then you need net positive immigration to compensate for this. Likewise if your above replacement rate and have problems with overpopulation then you need net negative immigration. This is fairly straightforward demographics and economics. Being too far below replacement rate without immigration leads to an aging population, and even countries like China which used to have serious overpopulation issues can fall fowl of this. Aging population is the root of a lot of economic and cultural issues. Saying immigration is bad is not just wrong, it’s the exact opposite of what the situation calls for in most European nations, the USA, Japan, and South Korea.
2% of workers produce enough agricultural output to provide for 200% of society. And it’s similar in other branches of the economy. We’d be able to live well with a significantly lower number of workers. The reason why people still work so much is because we’re not actually working for the wellbeing of society, but mostly towards the pockets of the rich. That’s what causes a shortage of workers.
There’s not actually a shortage of workers if society produces for the wellbeing of society, instead of for the pockets of the rich.
On top of that, if AI replaces workers in the near future, we’d have the opposite problem of a mass unemployment crisis. Having fewer people in the country is then a good thing because there’s less workers to fill the remaining workplaces.
Note that it doesn’t matter whether you think that AI can replace workers. What matters here is what companies think. And we’re already seeing mass layoffs due to AI.
I mean this is full of stuff that dosen’t pass the sniff test.
Modern society has a lot more than just agricultural workers, and in western countries much of the food is imported anyway which I am not sure you have accounted for. If you want modern standards of living your going to need a lot more workers than that.
As for the whole thing of us working for rich people. You are exactly right that they have the most money. That doesn’t mean they actually spend all that on themselves, and it certainly doesn’t mean they consume the lions share of physical goods requiring work for their personal pleasure. If you look at someone like Elon for example, as evil as they are most of the money they spend will be in investments to public companies. Things like the development of SpaceX rockets, new electric cars, data centers to push AI, and so on. Very little of that is spent on their personal needs. Still way more than we could ever afford, none of us are getting rides in private jets, but since there are only so few people at that level it doesn’t add up to much in the scheme of things. Even if we got rid of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and so forth we would still have to fund R&D somehow, and all those scientists and engineers still want to be paid or taken care of. Things could potentially be made more efficient by combining the efforts of some of these companies, but that doesn’t mean you ask scientists to go home, it just means innovation happens that much faster. Heck sometimes competition can be good for innovation, so you might still keep around competing teams even if they are all technically funded by the same government or public institution.
If anything we might need to work harder for a time after capitalism to repair the damage done to people and the planet. Certainly all oil and gas infrastructure needs to be replaced, and that means lots of new stuff needs to be built and research needs to be done at break neck pace. Ending economic exploitation doesn’t magically fix everything that’s wrong with the world, it would only be step 1.
It’s also unlikely that capitalism is going away soon anyway, so this is all moot. It is after all the most efficient system we have built to date, even if it’s crazy bad in some areas, and coming up with something to replace it that wouldn’t just be worse is a tall order. Many have died trying.
“men are the root of all evil”
I’ve never heard this claim, only “money is the root of all evil”.
Patriarchal society is profoundly harmful, but that’s not an issue that divides sex or gender - patriarchal culture also directly hurts men. Men aren’t immune from its problems simply because patriarchy systematically positions them above others. We can generalize this false-attribution error to other identity conflicts like sexuality, race, ethnicity, appearance, etc., it’s easier to notice and then blame the tangible benefactor rather than identify the underlying system and its roots.
The love of money is the root of all evil.
I’m against immigration (for purely economic, not for racist reasons!)
I really hope you are being sarcastic here.
No, i’m sick of being lied to.
I’m not a nationalist in the sense that i think my country’s any better than any other country.
But I do comprehend the significance of borders. Imagine people had no skin. They couldn’t survive. When you go to a restaurant and ask for a glass of apple juice, you wouldn’t expect a server of another restaurant to give it to you. Because one server is associated to one restaurant, and not to the other restaurant.
That has exactly nothing to do with thinking you’re superior. It’s just a concept to help organize the world. I hope i’ve made my point clear enough.
You lost some of us at the presumption of restaurants and servers.
Maybe imagine no countries (nothing to kill or die for, etc. etc.)
Presume that everyone is a person and has all the rights you do.
apart from the issue with borders. states also serve a second purpose:
the state is the only thing that restricts company’s powers and protects the people from companies. at least that’s how it works in every sane country (which includes the US). how do you avoid company-towns if there’s no state? do the physical violence yourself and threaten companies to treat the people not completely shitty? would you really do that?
Actual democracy and collective decision making solves that
I am not anti-immigration because I prioritize social factors in my country’s situation, but that is a real position that people make valid arguments for.
Immigration is a real economic factor used by the owning class to lower wages. It exploits both local and immigrant workers. Look at Trump voters complaining in the news about how anti-immigration has ruined their workforce - they were exploiting immigrants to save money instead of paying local workers a (…relatively) reasonable wage.
Except this is not true. Immigration does not depress wages. It boosts the economy.
What do you mean by boosting ‘the economy’? GDP (PPP) per capita? Median wages? Labor productivity? A nebulous all-encompasing concept of a country’s production, distribution and trade? It’s not a meaningful term on its own, it’s usually just a rhetorical trick in mass media to make it sound like shareholders making more money is somehow good for the country.
I was not talking about the abstract grand scheme of things, like benefits from their diverse experiences and overall population benefits, I’m talking about the direct immediate effects on worker wages. Due to social circumstances, companies can, and often do, save wage costs by replacing local labor with immigrant labor they can underpay, and with the special case of illegal immigrants, even pay illegally small amounts. Immigration increases the reserve army of labor that compete for lower wages. This is happening in my workplace, actually, not with immigration but with outsourcing, the human resources department are replacing trained capable local workers with undertrained workers in countries with lower labor costs and regulations (e.g. India) purely to cut wage costs. But the principle is the same, outsourcing like this only applies to work capable of being done remotely (e.g. call centers, graphic design, tech work), for manual labor then immigration has a similar benefit to a business owner.
Once again, I’m not talking about whether immigration is beneficial, (and like I said, I believe it is) I’m talking about how immigration is used by the owning class to reduce wages and enrich themselves.
ah yes, because leftists are such unreasonable people always fighting each other
flexible on range of solutions for dealing with the billionaire problem
I’m a mid 90s Liberal Party OF Canada Leftist. That used to mean center left and right leaning on a few fiscal issues. I have no idea what it means by today’s standards.
The fundamental objective of leftism is the dispersion of sociopolitical power as widely and evenly as possible, with an ideal (neither realized or considered possible) in which each person has no more and no less power than any other.
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
Really good film. He nailed his role. So much so it was a little scary how good he was.
This scene really got to me, this was the first time I really felt how awful war is
You could hear a pin drop in the theatre when this scene dropped, it was just too real.
Jesse Plemons needs more lead roles. He reminds me of Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
If they hadn’t done “east west” instead of some other cardinal directions, it would probably be prophetic
The moment I heard “alliance between California and Texas” I was detached from the movie. That is literally the least likely alliance I could think of
The point of the film is to show how horrible war is in a context Americans can relate to. If they made a more realistic alliance, down some sort of real life right / left politics the message would be lost and it would be held up as some sort of propaganda film by one side of politics with the other side using it to justify why they’re correct.
So, yes the “alliance between the California and Texas” is a very deliberate choice.
There are pluralities of leftist in Texas, and wrongists in California. There would probably be two alliances between them, one on each side.
It was a bit much to work with, but once I realized that the civil war itself and the whys weren’t what the movie was about, I went with it. This scene was the most disturbing of them all. Maybe because it’s not that hard to imagine some people going this far. I’m sure there’s some veterans of various conflicts that would agree and saw it happen.
You know those means of production?
Well I have an idea…
marxist-linuxist
Arch Communist
“Ally? That’s a funny way to spell FASCIST!”
-the American left during the 24’ election
Yeaahh, american left needs to learn how to accept an imperfect ally.
I’m so tired of the labels, I just want things to be better for everyone
Don’t worry anytime you have a slightly different opinion they’ll force the label on you then insult you for the label they applied.
By far the worst trait on the left by a mile.
I’m a Democrat.
Most of Lemmy: EAT THE RICH!!!
Me: Idk, liberal democracy with reasonable social safety nets, some wealth anti-accumulation, and a robust education system? We should get there by showing up to city council meetings.
Most of Lemmy: LINUX!!!
Me: but I want a computer where I don’t have to troubleshoot the wifi driver every 3 months…
I think you’re reading the room accurately. Nothing flops here like exposing childish extreme views to reality. If you’re not an extremist for their side, you’re worse than a monster.
I don’t think anyone here is an extremist I think they’re all so pigeonholed in their respective flavors of progressiveness that they forget other people have slightly different views.
Anyone who supports communism is an extremist relative to the rest of society. At least this is the case in the whole of USA and Europe.
The anti right wing/trump kind.
You are a leftist.
I just think the GOP needs to burn.
We are not the same.
Do you advocate for the status quo? Because that’s what it sounds like
No.
I advocate for removing the southern racist conservatives (aka the christofascist dixiecrats) by any and all means necessary.
Once they are neutralized I advocate for a more balanced status quo, closer to northern European social democracy.
But mostly, the south has to burn. They are the cancer destroying this country.
I advocate for a reasonable debate, a fair fight, not corporatism.
I know that makes me literally worse than zionist super-Hitler to the tankies.
Hohoho!, so you’re a leftist then! You do know that status quo is over there on the left yes? Though framing your enemy as the people in the south is self defeating. You want a class warfare not a geo locational line in the sand.
No I’m a me.
Fuck all your labels and causes.
Rightists won’t be happy till we’re all slaves.
Leftists will never, ever be happy and the more they win the more chaotic things will get as the internal politics of leftism is broken as well.
I ally with leftists to destroy the right when they are clearly out of control.
We are not the same.
Stop calling them the GOP or Republicans
They’re NAZIS.
They have Nazi goals, Nazi tactics, Nazi personnel, Nazi legislation, Nazi ideology, Nazi violence.
They are NAZIS.
This is completely untrue.
The GOP was taken over by racist southern dixiecrats.
Dixiecrats inspired Hitler and the nazis, he wrote about them as the model Germany must follow in mein kampf, and the Nuremberg Laws are just Jim crow without the one drop rule.
The south are worse than nazis, they literally inspired them, without southern racists we wouldn’t have had nazis.
What you are describing are conservatives.
You’re admitting outright that the GOP are Nazis. You said yourself the party was taken over by them.
TRUMP IS A NAZI.
THE GOP ARE NAZIS.
It is ABSOLUTELY true.
Now post a pic of your Confederate flag for us all.
There used to be conservatives who weren’t nazis.
They were taken over by southern dixiecrats who are far worse.
But Trump is from that wing.
And don’t you ever, ever associate me with Confederate scum.
The whole southern filth needed to be rounded up and put down after the war ended, letting them continue is what destroyed this country, you idiot.
not one
a rare sighting on lemmy
Somewhat yeah, but I think there are a few others, just mostly not people who are that vocal about it
Yeah I’m not really either but you just get attacked so I tend to stay out of politics here
Other day I tried explaining to lemmy why it’s disrespectful to hang a LGBT flag on the side of a mountain and just got a bunch of hatred lol
I’m sorry about that you got attacked. Also I’m not trying to restart it, and not trying to attack. I am genuinely curious what’s disrespectful
I think protesting is great but not on El capitan in Yosemite. That’s just plain white people behaviour. It’s not just a rock, it’s an incredibly sacred place that has a great significance in human history and it transcends religions
I’m a pantheist and I just personally find it super offensive which is why I bothered getting into it I guess. I know the demographic here doesn’t actually go outside or have a love for the mountains so I knew it would be a losing battle but damn man there’s just no fucking respect for nature anymore
Mother Nature is literally going to make us extinct in the near future due to how we treated her yet white people still treat it like Disneyland
think protesting is great but not on El capitan in Yosemite. That’s just plain white people behaviour. It’s not just a rock, it’s an incredibly sacred place that has a great significance in human history and it transcends religions
That’s totally fair. I didn’t here anything about it so didn’t know the situation at all. Yea that can be kinda disrespectful.
I know the demographic here doesn’t actually go outside or have a love for the mountains so I knew it would be a losing battle but damn man there’s just no fucking respect for nature anymore
XD yea fair. My philosophy is very much human supremacist. Maybe some animals. But I don’t really care about nature other than it its useful and valued by people. But its also fair to have a different position.
I hope they all vote for Democrats though, in places where FPTP voting is still used
Yeahhhh, I hate to break it to you but…there’s a lot of them that do not vote blue especially when it counts.
Hillary lost because the DNC ran a corrupt campaign where they ignored the will of their voters.
Kamala lost because the DNC ran a corrupt campaign where they ignored the will of their voters.
Your statements and mine are both true. The first time we didn’t know what a trump presidency would be like. In 2024 we did. I didn’t vote for Hilary over the Bernie snub, but I knew better in 2024.
Despite Kamala being the most centrist thing we could ever elect, we wouldn’t be in a crisis in this country like we are today if she won. virtue signaling, self righteous, no compromise, bite my nose off to deport my neighbor ultra leftists can’t be bothered to use a little empathy. They are too wrapped up in their fee fees about the establishment not listening to them to do the tough thing and minimize the harm. Help the Dems win. elect someone who will respond to pressure.
There’s no excuse for letting trump win and enabling his administration to hurt untold numbers of people through illegal raids, deportation, support of genocide, pulling support from Ukraine, cutting social security and Medicaid benefits, removing narcan from first responders, driving stigma against trans people, overturning abortion laws and criminalizing it, and much more I can’t keep track of or has yet to happen…we had the data from 45. We knew what p2025 was going to do. We still put him there. There is no excuse. This electorate is so embarrassing, they’ve completely lost the plot.
Blaming voters for the outcome of an election will never be a viable strategy unless you want infighting.
Are you confused about how voting works? The eligible voters are the ones responsible for who wins in a free and fair election.
Ok so you’re telling us you want infighting.
Because blaming voters for not voting is something that never has gotten people to magically make the “correct” decision.
If someone wants another person to vote for them they have to communicate to and appeal to that person.
Democrata have not seriously listened or helped their voters my entire life, when they feel like forcing the rich to make concessions then people who would benefit from those concessions will vote for them.
Until then you whining about a voting block that has and probably never will show up is only dividing people.
Yeah the brand of leftist that cannot understand two things can be true is so annoying.
Yeah it’s sad human beings have issues accepting doublethink
Exhibit A
Nuance /=/ doublethink. We were trying to save people… You’re not a good person if you threw your vote away in spite to send a message. People are suffering and dying because of this.
Btw what’s up with all these states up and banning Ranked Choice Voting? Most of them in the past 1-2 years too. I’m not exactly sure of the context, like if there was a bill or a referendum, but with a referendum I would have expected it to say “rejected”/“not adopted”, instead of “banned”. Definitely seems like RCV needs to be really fought for, and seems like the major parties are afraid of it.
RCV experiments have gotten a lot of backlash from establishment parties, usually because they lost and they want to blame the “new process” instead of their platforms, policies, or actions.
It’s almost like it threatens their duopoly power
I agree, but I have to say, the term “duopoly” doesn’t ring the same in this environment where Republicans are frothing at the mouth to mass arrest the Democrats.
“I’m scared of the bad cop so I will put my trust in the good cop”
This is a torture/interegation tactic to manipulate you.
I’m not having this conversation. Good luck.
Sure, but your conflating the common man who votes that way and who we also prescribe the same labels to with the actual representatives with power. Chuck shumer and Nancy pelosi do not want the Bernie’s of the world getting power. They like being the lesser of two evils because they can do almost as much as the trump admin does and be praised for it when in reality it’s still evil. You really think they want citizens United repealed? The patriot act repealed? Federally elected officials banned from buying investments? Fptp voting changed to ranked choice means independents can win and actual implement change.
It’s a duopoly.
That’s true, I was just pointing out that the Schumer types at the DNC really don’t understand that their Republican “colleagues” are taking active steps to throw them in jail or worse. In this sense it feels weird to call it a duopoly given that the only ones giving any direction the whole time were the GOP, while the establishment Dems were their useful idiots, always following their lead and trying to triangulate their policy and rhetoric between status quo and fascism, you know, to appeal to the “middle” and the “moderate Republican”. It’s absolute madness! And you might say they know what they’re doing, that they planned this like a good/bad cop routine, but honestly… I find it much easier to see them as old stupid out of touch aristocrats with big piles of money going blindly wherever capital leads them, than as scheming double agents, because the latter would imply some actual awareness of their surroundings, which they don’t have! They’re totally blind to the fact that the only logical conclusion to their triangulation strategy with fascists is them in a gulag. It’s plain as day, it’s happening right now under their very eyes, but their priorities are… fighting David Hogg??
I’m referring to the politicians here btw, not the voters. I think the voters are really mad at Schumer and the DNC right now, and I think they’re looking for new leadership. In that sense, AOC has risen in popularity recently because she’s been engaging with people directly both IRL and on social media, but I’m not getting my hopes up until I see something real actually happen, and I mean nothing short of seeing the establishment Dems gone. Because even now as the world burns, the DNC is fighting tooth and nail against anyone challenging them from the left. And honestly, it may already be too late as it is, like for the whole country. I hope not, but I don’t have much hope left tbh.
I can’t argue with that angle tbh, they really might just be that stupid lol
It’s really down to the individual as to what they believe the Democrats are really up to. It certainly isn’t helping the middle and lower classes. The bar is so low right now…any change that drags us back to the left at all would be mind blowing at this point.
I’m hoping for someone like mayor Pete in 2028 if we are lucky enough to have a fair election by then, he’s a great speaker and likeable to a ton of people I think. He has a shot at uniting the voters.
what if im pro imperialist but anti capitalist?
Fuck you?
Like the CCP? At least rhetorically.
Trolls usually vote for Republicans
Remember, Republicans are the proletariat, at least at the bottom, and they are the reactionary forces that you eventually will need to adopt if you would want to see a better day. They are the reactionary elements of capitalism in crisis. They are those that were left to their own devices to fester in agony due to liberalism.
One of them can actually pass policy unfortunately
Edit: I’m not saying I agree with their policies dumbasses. I want the left to pass policy. But until the left understands how to become politically effective and build coalitions we’re stuck in this quagmire forever
They keep saying that but…
Well, compared to the other one which one would you say passed more policies?
Republicans without a doubt pass more policies.
Democrats pass policies that funnel money into corporations, but fail to pass meaningful policy that helps the majority.
We clearly need different leadership than the Duopoly.
I’m not doing a good job communicating what I’m trying to say and I take full responsibility.
To me the Dems are liberals – or republican lite with sprinkle of some progressive social policies.
I know the left is constrained to building its coalition within the big tent that is the democratic party. But when I look at the way the left goes about building power --especially when looking at the nature of online discourse – I get the sense they are not interested in building effective power or accomplishing their goals. It feels more like verbal mental masturbation 99% of the time.
We could put the dems in the same circle with the left if we paid them enough. Have we tried that yet? Everyone empty your pockets on the table here and lets count.
Ahh yes, the “left party”
I agree we need a third party where leftist policies are allowed to exist
Where is the bubble that says “imperialism by Russia is fine”?
I don’t like other leftists. What am I?
Leftist. 🙂
