• 13igTyme@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    What kind am I?

    Not a neo liberal or a Tankie.

    I’m in-between. I’m caring enough to not agree with Conservatives and want a change to the status quo. I’m educated enough to know how the world actually works and that things can’t be free and other people won’t do stuff for free. Capitalism has its place, but needs to be highly regulated.

    • droans@midwest.social
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      1 month ago

      Even Adam Smith was pretty clear what happens when capitalism is unregulated:

      We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things, which nobody ever hears of

      The liberal reward of labour, therefore, as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the labouring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they are going fast backwards.

    • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I am not going to prod you the minutia with questions and then try to guess precisely what ideological camp you might fall into, but from what I can gather from your comment, you could either be a social liberal or social democrat. But practically speaking, there is hardly any difference between the two.

    • skisnow@lemmy.ca
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      1 month ago

      The “socialists expect people to do stuff for free” trope only exists in capitalist strawman rhetoric.

      • 13igTyme@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Cool. Never said that. I consider myself a socialist democrat. I was referring to a conversation I had with a Tankie claiming both sides and said, “Businesses should not earn a profit.” And in a later sentence said, “Everyone should be on universal basic income.” In those exact words.

        • KeenFlame@feddit.nu
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          1 month ago

          You literally, almost word for word said exactly the argument laid out in his comment. No slinking away. You were not referring to a conversation and even your rendition of the conversation is nonsensical as if the other’s arguments should lead to some conclusion about the very same argument, the one you ran away from…?

  • Ordinary_Person@lemmy.ca
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    1 month ago

    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.

  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 month ago

    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:

    • GorGor@startrek.website
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      1 month ago

      I’m against immigration (for purely economic, not for racist reasons!)

      I really hope you are being sarcastic here.

      • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 month ago

        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.

          • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 month ago

            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?

      • comfy@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        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.

          • comfy@lemmy.ml
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            1 month ago

            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.

    • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      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.

      • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 month ago

        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.

        • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          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.

    • comfy@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      “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.

      • aidan@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Somewhat yeah, but I think there are a few others, just mostly not people who are that vocal about it

        • rabber@lemmy.ca
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          1 month ago

          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

          • aidan@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            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

            • rabber@lemmy.ca
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              1 month ago

              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

              • aidan@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                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.

  • underline960@sh.itjust.works
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    1 month ago

    I wish there was a test.

    Not a bullshit CosmoBuzzfeed quiz, but an actual “if you answered A on these three questions, you tend towards MarxoCapitalist. Here’s a community full of people who mostly agree with you about political stuff.”

    We’d still have Home and Local and All, but it’d be nice to know who my people are instead of needing a college degree to navigate the bullshit everyone says about everyone else.

    I don’t think anyone knows what socialism is.

  • paranoia@feddit.dk
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    1 month ago

    Idk. The kind where I believe that every adult over 18 should be given 80m2 by the government. Apartment, office space, storage space, workshop, lab, whatever.

    I believe that you shouldn’t need to worry about a place to live at the bare minimum, and I believe that not having space for people to use and experiment with is one of the main hindrances of economic development (development, not “growth”)

    • Googledotcom@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      Yeah and what else? Everyone wants free stuff and no one wants to pay…

      This is why I hate permanently online leftism. It’s basically “give me free stuffs”

      • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        Where are you getting that no one wants to pay? I always see people saying the world would be better if their taxes were used to give others something.

        I would love it if my taxes went to giving everyone healthcare, education and housing.
        When you get down to it, I get more value out of my neighbors being healthy, educated and safe than I would out of the money. And that’s setting aside that I’m already paying for those things inefficiently.

      • paranoia@feddit.dk
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        1 month ago

        I already pay the top rate of tax in Denmark. I am completely fine with it. My personal belief is cheap accessibility to work and living space is what generates prosperity.

        To say “no one wants to pay for it” to me when my marginal rate is over 52% is ridiculous.

        • Googledotcom@lemm.ee
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          1 month ago

          If it was enough to cover 80 square meters housing for everyone then it wouldn’t be so ridiculous. Thing is it isn’t even remotely enough

          Taxes barely allow for healthcare to work, only because USA pharma companies charge Americans much more to recuperate EU losses.

          Not to mention roads, education, national parks, retirement funds, subsidies from energy sector to agriculture. It’s all underfunded

          And you wanna pile on top also 80 sq for everyone? Good luck lol

          That’s like 40 millions citizens * 500k euro = gargantuan money fed into developers

          Hell I would become a developer company myself

          (It’s 2E13 10^13 of euros. Trillion? I think 20 trillions) so it is 4x more than whole federal USA budget for 40 million people

          It’s unimaginably huge amount of cash and you said “I pay taxes duh” 💀

          ————

          They build like 50 of 40m2 apartments a year over here from taxes and that’s probably best it can realistically get. Maybe you could get it to 200 with some progressive taxes assuming companies wouldn’t just move elsewhere and avoid them altogether

          • paranoia@feddit.dk
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            1 month ago

            I don’t live in America, I don’t care about America. It would cost about 800b EUR to fund it in Denmark without considering economies of scale, industrialisation or existing stock. In my opinion, it is completely achievable.

            • Googledotcom@lemm.ee
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              1 month ago

              It’s not. If any candidate promises you this they are just lying for votes. They did the math and aren’t stupid

              • paranoia@feddit.dk
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                1 month ago

                No candidate has ever offered this. I am a structural engineer and have decided on this as a view of my own.

                • Googledotcom@lemm.ee
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                  1 month ago

                  Well it’s a wrong view but you do you

                  there are a lot of affordable houses, just nowhere where people want to live (big cities with limited space).

                  The very nature of limited space in cities makes it impossible for the whole population to have houses there. Let alone build millions of city houses using some vague miraculous funding

                  However housing “crisis” will solve itself at the latest around the end of 21 century. Rather like 25 years more or less. That’s when the cities will lose its employment providing role.

                  Real estate in the cities will still be more expensive and rare but it will no longer be a necessity, merely a luxury.

                  All the landlords will suddenly wake up with 50% value losses and no takers for their rentable shacks.

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      It took me too long to figure out that you’re the ubi-style left, and not the pew-pew style and I didn’t know what type of gun an 80M2 was. 80M^2 or 80 square meters is super different from what I was picturing.

  • Dragonstaff@leminal.space
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    1 month ago

    I’m a noob leftist. Maybe a reformed (reforming?) liberal. I am anticapitalist.

    I don’t think a 19th century European necessarily devised the perfect economic system. Maybe we don’t have to be obliged to label ourselves by which 19th century European we agree with the most. There are a lot of people smarter than me who know more than me who disagree with each other, I don’t know if we can move society in my lifetime enough that the difference between anarchism and communism will make a huge public policy difference. I’m more concerned with stopping fascism and working for universal healthcare.

    • Deceptichum@quokk.au
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      1 month ago

      Welcome to being a leftist. The first thing you’ll want to do is find a slightly similar but different left ideology and hate them with a passion.

  • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I don’t subscribe to an ideology per se, but I believe we should give everybody everything, and that the government should take care of every one of our needs, every last one.