Red flag in the US: one of three Democrats identifies as Socialist

You are describing society in general. That is human history. We are talking about human idealism.

Maybe the ignorance of Americans about the destructiveness of socialism is clouding their mind. Socialism can sound good at the beginning because it promises lot of things for the people, which can be partially true, but when you least expect it, you are fucked.

I find this whole national conversation of socialism vs capitalism to be ridiculous. No, Americans don’t know what the term actually means (otherwise the political right would have already lost its mind over Trump imposing *actual* socialism on us), but that aside, to the extent most Americans are using the term socialism is not an alternative to capitalism, every developed nation on earth is using some combination of the two. The actual debate we’re having is; what level of government intervention in our economy is best?

It’s not a surprise that more and more Americans are looking around right now and saying “a lot more than this”. Because of course they are. The middle class has all but disappeared. The rich continue gobbling up whatever net worth is left to gain. 

Right now one single man owns more wealth than the bottom 40% of the country combined, that’s well over 100 million Americans. You think that’s because they’re all just lazy? No, it’s because there isn’t real opportunity anymore. People pay tens of thousands of dollars and spend years of their lives getting an education just to find a job barely making more than minimum wage. You can dismiss that all you want at the individual level, zooming out and seeing how prevalent these kinds of stories are, something is deeply wrong.

So how about this, rather than creating threads just to attack as dumb and clueless the people falling for the dEmoCRat con with little more than political labels, why don’t you tell us what you would do. How would you fix the economic conditions facing ordinary Americans today?

Ah, well, at last you're taking off the mask.

You should have said from the get-go that you are one of these Democrats who identifies as socialist so that I don't waste my time trying to figure out why you and Sidewalker (who strangely think exactly the same way as you) hate Trump so much.

Double_R wrote:

why don’t you tell us what you would do. How would you fix the economic conditions facing ordinary Americans today?

The user @linate, who has a socialist heart as you, opened several threads trying to convince us that there is nothing wrong about deploying socialism in the US. I mean, I don't deny there is an economic problem in the US because I heard a slice of pizza costs 6 bucks and that many Americans need two jobs to make ends meet. That's terrible and I feel sorry for that, but as I responded in those threads, the problem is not the capitalism but the system that is built over it, specifically the one created by the financial industry.

I don't want to expand on it because I don't have time but if you search it as "financialization of America" you'll find that the financial industry is distorting the market with pure speculation. So, I wouldn't say capitalism is the problem because this system is the most natural for human beings. In contrast, socialism is the worst system for us because it basically digs into our pockets to maintain a stupid idealization of equality.

You need to stay up to date, your handlers say replace the Socialism smear with a Communism smear, it's much scarier.

House GOP memo shows ‘socialist’ scare tactics aren’t working

You can't be an effective minion if you don't follow orders.

Pay attention.

Is it time for America to turn to Socialism after running a 40 trillion national debt under capitalism? Many countries are turning to socialism as a solution. Maybe it’s time for Trump to declare capitalism a failure. Remember he files 7 bankruptcies under a capitalist system.

Debby wrote:

Is it time for America to turn to Socialism after running a 40 trillion national debt under capitalism? Many countries are turning to socialism as a solution.

No, we need $40 trillion, socialism won't raise $40 trillion, we need to bring in the money, we could try selling the red states but that won't work because the red states aren't worth anything.

Maybe it’s time for Trump to declare capitalism a failure. Remember he files 7 bankruptcies under a capitalist system.

Trump already declared democracy a failure, but since he's a billionaire, not much chance Trump will declare capitalism a failure,

Maybe we can have a bake sale.

The billionaires will donate more to a socialist government.

Debby wrote:

The billionaires will donate more to a socialist government.

Republicans want fascism, not socialism.

You should have said from the get-go that you are one of these Democrats who identifies as socialist

And perhaps you could have said from the get go that you’re an unserious clown not interested in adult level conversations, cause that’s what this is giving right now.

I’ve never in my life identified as a socialist, and I made explicitly clear in my last post that the national debate over the label is itself pretty stupid because it doesn’t address what people are actually disagreeing about in the first place. I would then challenge you to tell us what you think should be done and you don’t have time for that. No, you had time to attack people for believing government has a larger role to play in our economy but no time to address a better path forward. That’s awfully telling.

So, I wouldn't say capitalism is the problem because this system is the most natural for human beings.

The problem with capitalism is something inherent within it. In a capitalistic society, money = power, and basic human nature will always default to using that power to attain even more power. To put it more simply, wealth begets wealth.

Ask yourself a question, why does Walmart have the best prices? Answer: because they have more money, which means they have more power. Because they are such a large retailer they can demand their suppliers to sell them goods for less than they would charge anyone else. Their suppliers can’t afford to lose Walmart cause they’d go out of business, so they have to squeeze themselves to remain employed.

Imagine you have a house for sale, listing price $300k. A buyer comes along and offers you asking price. That buyer now has to apply for a mortgage, which requires inspections, insurance applications, lender approvals, etc. That could take months and possibly get denied leaving you still looking for a buyer. Here comes private equity fund offering you $270k in your bank account tomorrow. What are you likely to do? Most would take the $270. More money equals better purchasing power.

This is why, under any capitalistic system, eventually the wealth within that society will wind up being concentrated amongst a very small few, because the more powerful they get the more power they will be able to attain. And power is largely a zero sum game. Eventually, that gap will become unsustainable and result in economic collapse. The only entity with the power to address this is government. So to claim right off the bat that government intervention has no place is absurd. That collapse is inevitable, government is the only thing left that can stop it.

This doesn’t mean we just give money to the poor and declare our problems solved. It means we need a very serious conservation about not whether government needs to intervene, but what that intervention should look like and how do so while preserving a system that rewards the things we value, like innovation, risk taking and hard work. To dismiss that merely because it falls under a label you’ve been taught to demonize is what’s unserious.

Even China has embraced capitalism.

Hmmm...So idealism and human social history and ongoing social development are in no way linked.

Please explain Debs.

Human history is an attempt to correct the problems of the past sometimes creating new problems.

Debby wrote:

Human history is an attempt to correct the problems of the past sometimes creating new problems.

Come on Debs, you've rushed this reply too.

Human history is human history, and therefore might influence how we make future decisions.

Though how does human history "attempt to correct the problems of the past sometimes creating new problems"?

A common fundamental mistake is defining capitalism as a system of power. It isn't. Capitalism is mainly a system of freedom: the freedom to own, build, save, invest, trade, take risks, succeed, fail, and try again. Its central question isn't “Who has the power?” It's “Are you free to build?”...or does some other entity control your future?

The trite phrase: “wealth begets wealth” isn't really axiomatic. Otherwise, everyone would be billionaires. Wealth, actually in real life, begets consumption, not wealth, remarkably easily. For wealth to become productive capital, someone generally has to make a personal choice devoid of external compulsion to delay gratification: to consume less than they could today, to save the difference, to invest it, to accept risk, to wait for a return, and frequently develop a habit to reinvest that return rather than consume it in a fit of class signaling. Only by living this way repeatedly for years can "wealth beget wealth." But the compounding isn't some magical privilege bestowed upon someone merely because they possess money. Kids flush inheritances down the toilet as the norm. The willingness to sacrifice consumption today for greater productive capacity tomorrow is precisely one of the behaviors capitalism rewards with prosperity. It's an incentive structure for those willing to sacrifice, and the reward is much more than monetary wealth, it's a sense of worldly purpose, of participating in divine growth. If the ultimate purpose of life is to evolve, grow, and pass on to the next generation, no other economic system allows a person to embrace this natural urge. Wealth doesn't beget wealth. Wealth weeds out the immoral.

The Walmart example doesn't contradict this; Walmart exists because generations of capital were accumulated and reinvested into stores, warehouses, trucks, inventory, logistics, technology, and distribution rather than simply consumed. That scale now gives Walmart bargaining advantages today, certainly. But DoubleR is describing the result of accumulated investment as though the accumulation required no sacrifice, risk, competition, or restraint to create. More importantly, Walmart is NOT authoritarian. It makes offers. Suppliers make choices. Consumers make choices. Competitors remain free to build something better. Capitalism protects that freedom, not Walmart's wealth. In fact, wealth untended will always decay due to simple entropy. It was never, and can never be, a zero-sum concept in a world of natural entropy. This concept of wealth not being zero-sum goes far beyond the trite teach a man to fish, give a man a fish framework. It's more like giving a man a live fish and telling him that the fish has a set zero-sum value, and not to raise the fish for roe and offspring because his urge to gratify himself is the highest virtue.

His house example actually demonstrates the same principle. The cash buyer who offers $270,000 acquired the ability to make that offer because somebody already possesses $270,000 that they have chosen not to consume. The homeowner, meanwhile, owns the house and remains free to reject the offer. If he accepts less money in exchange for immediate payment and certainty, both parties have exercised their freedom over property they own. That's a free exchange, not subjugation OR exploitation. What actually IS exploitation is the government making this kind of transaction near impossible.

Shifting the words wealth and power to say that “power is largely zero-sum” reveals the deeper error. Political power is zero-sum. If I acquire legal authority to control you, I've gained something at the expense of your freedom. Prosperity isn't. A farmer who saves for a tractor can produce more food. A carpenter who buys better equipment can produce more furniture. An entrepreneur who reinvests profits can build another factory. Their increased wealth doesn't require an equivalent subtraction from somebody else's wealth. They created productive capacity that didn't previously exist, and they TOOK IT FROM NOBODY. That is NOT zero-sum.

If zero-sum theory was a universal reality, we would all still be living in caves with zero growth.

That's why I will NEVER see inequality as evidence that capitalism has failed. Inequality is the measure of freedom. People can choose to decay and embrace entropy. People can thrive and grow and rage, rage against the dying of the light, as Dylan Thomas penned in his famous poem. If two people are equally free and one consistently consumes today while another consistently sacrifices today, saves, invests, risks and reinvests, eventually their wealth WILL become radically unequal. Preventing that inequality would mean preventing one of them from fully enjoying the consequences of his choices. At some point, supposedly correcting “power” becomes restricting freedom. In the end, to pursue equality would entail fierce authoritarianism to take humans and turn them into robots with no agency.

Fine, I will concede that government has a legitimate role in protecting that system: enforce contracts, punish fraud and theft, protect property, and prevent people from replacing voluntary exchange with coercion. But government possesses the awful taint of actual coercive power and monopoly on justified force. Giving it ever-increasing authority to determine how much prosperity someone is permitted to retain really just concentrates a different and much more literal kind of it. And it naturally creates a class where the only justified wealth holders are the ones managing wealth levels in the government when the system is "might makes right"

So when I hear “wealth begets wealth,” I don't hear an indictment of capitalism. I hear a resounding description of one of its most important incentives:

Delay gratification. Save instead of consuming everything. Build instead of merely possessing. Risk what you've saved. Reinvest what succeeds. Do it long enough, and prosperity compounds. That is freedom rewarding the moral behavior that creates more tomorrow than it consumes today. Matthew 25:29

Sidewalker wrote:

You need to stay up to date, your handlers say replace the Socialism smear with a Communism smear, it's much scarier.

House GOP memo shows ‘socialist’ scare tactics aren’t working

You can't be an effective minion if you don't follow orders.

Pay attention.

Yes, that's the same shit some lefties used to argue when Hugo Chavez was running for office.

Double_R wrote:

The problem with capitalism is something inherent within it. In a capitalistic society, money = power, and basic human nature will always default to using that power to attain even more power. To put it more simply, wealth begets wealth.

I don't know how you come to that conclusion but I think you're confusing economy with politics. I can agree that politics have the power to control the economy, that's why many entrepreneurs lobby the government or the Congress for taking some advantage of the system, but they can't do anything by themselves, they need the politics. Maybe you're refering to what entrepreneurs can do with their money which has nothing to do with capitalism.

If you refer to entrepreneurs taking advantage of legal voids for making more money, that has nothing to do with capitalism either. Capitalism is not a moral system but an economic one. If a man kills another man with a kitchen knife, you can't blame that knife for the assassination. People need to understand that capitalism is a tool for progress, not for achieving social justice. The trap of socialists like you is that they convince people to believe that capitalism is the source of corruption, deceive and inequality when it's just a fkn mechanism for achieving wealth. Capitalism is amoral, so all depends on how people use it. Going back to the example of the stabber, it is as if socialists wanted to ban the use of kitchen knives only because people die stabbed. Ridiculous!!

So, capitalism is a tool, and as any tool that the man invents, we need a set of rules that prevents abuse from the people, because human beings are very corruptible. That's why China has progressed so much, because they understood that capitalism was just a tool so they kept communism in a political level.

As to the American economy, as I said, all the financial crisis had their origin in the stock market. So, the problem is the financial industry and the speculation. If the US fix it with new draconian rules like Singapore does, Americans will not starve any longer.

It is not capitalism but corruption that is hurting the American system of government. Trump himself has been charged with tax evasion and fraud.

Debby:

We are talking about human idealism. [youir #31]

Tell me what is truly "ideal" about communism/socialism. Given its single-generation demise, on average, wherever it has been tried is testament enough to consider C/S has any ideal worth imitating. Turn on your AI and offer a list.

The problem with capitalism is something inherent within it. In a capitalistic society, money = power, and basic human nature will always default to using that power to attain even more power. To put it more simply, wealth begets wealth. [from your #39]

Try inserting communism/socialism everywhere in that commentary in place of capitalism. Doing so results in the very same conclusions. The reason is not that capitalism is evil and C/S is good, but that both can be corrupted by greed. That is the enemy of both. However, the real flaw of C/S is that it does not know how to create personal or collective wealth; it can only spend, not make, and that is by their choice, and has always, and will always be their demise. Forced occupation of another's wealth is not creating wealth; it is simple theft. Pure capitalism knows everything about the creation of personal or collective wealth. It knows it is dependent on, first, ambition [to make something of oneself by one's own education, innovation, and ambition], then planning, and execution. The government can do the same by being more creative with tax revenue. Currently, this government [USA] is drunk on spending and poorly applies investment by leaving investment to produce its own growth. By the latter's means, my own investment in silver and gold since 1977 has seen value increase of 2,550% in silver, and 3,680% in gold, I've not sold and spent an ounce of either. I can go anywhere in the world where accepted by passport I desire to go, to do anything within the law I want to do. I can live just about anywhere in the wolrd I'd want to is enticing, but I live in the U.S., and spend over 95% of my time at home [on ground and water], because that's where I most want to be. I do not spend aggressively and continue to invest, while giving 20% of my income to charities of my choice, mostly within my own county, where I know and can see the results. I wish the government would do likewise. One day, it will.

Republicans love Trump more than they like the constitution.

RemyBrown wrote:

This post you made is Rage Bait.

Is that your expert opinion?

Omg, I've really got to tone it down if RemyBrown is getting triggered by my posts.

You can start by removing your vote against me.

It’s a simple yes or no vote.

Misterio wrote:

Sidewalker wrote:

Trump has used regulatory interventions to take US Government ownership stakes in 30 corporations so far, is that what you mean by "nationalization of private companies"?

Are you saying Trump is a socialist?

Trump just did what many governments in the world usually do,

He did what many socialist governments in the world do.

which is buy a bit of participation in a private company.

He didn't buy participation, he extorted it with regulatory power.

It's not a big deal, Trump is not expropiating anything.

It's the very definition of expropriating. you only think it's not a big deal because it's Trump, he always gets a pass. With Trump and his sycophants, accusations are confessions. Whenever he is leveling unfounded accusations at people he doesn't like, it is a sure sign he is distracting our attention away from what he is doing. You guys get an erection when he says the Biden family is corrupt (with absolutely no evidence of any wrongdoing), and he gets a pass for being the most corrupt Presidential family in history.

His MO is to accuse your enemies of the crime before they accuse you, and his "poorly educated" followers swallow that nonsense. The most powerful political tool in his playbook isn’t policy or leadership, it is accusation as preemptive confession—with his mindless followers it allows him to shift attention, sow doubt, and leave the public too dizzy to track the truth. Divert, distort, deny. is his approach to corruption.

“The election was rigged” means he is trying to rig the election with coordinated false electors, pressure on secretaries of state, lied to the public, in court, and under oath. He tried to overturn the vote while fundraising off the lie with his gullible followers, that was the game plan.

“Hillary mishandled classified documents” means he hoarded state secrets in his golf club basement, showed them off to guests, got indicted for obstruction and espionage charges, leaked U.S. airstrike plans in a Signal group chat, and bragged about classified information in front of the public in Mar-Lago restaurants. Of course, he gets a pass as long as he keeps his minions focused on how someone’s private email server was the national crisis.

“They’re weaponizing the DOJ!” means he is literally using the DOJ as his personal fixer squad. Bill Barr torpedoed investigations, spun the Mueller report, and helped bury corruption, while Trump publicly called for his political enemies to be jailed—without trial, as all authoritarian regimes do.

“They’re coming for YOU.” means Trump is tear-gassed peaceful protesters, demonized immigrants, attacked voting rights, weaponizing the DOJ against the opposition, and called the press “the enemy of the people”. He was telling you what he planned to do.

He can get a pass for inciting an insurrection, attacking our electoral process, attacking the countries institutions, crapping on the Constitution, and his followers think it's the American thing to do because he hugs a flag on stage. There's a reason he "loves the poorly educated", is because they are such patsies.

What I can criticize about Trump, though, is the terrible economic management he's carrying out. I heard that a slice of pizza costs 6 bucks in New York. That's crazy shit, man. With 6 bucks I can have a big piece of beef with a lot of sauce in the city where I live.

Wars, tariffs, corruption, billions in vanity projects, if he gets a pass, then his followers have no right to complain about inflation.

Misterio wrote:

Sidewalker wrote:

You need to stay up to date, your handlers say replace the Socialism smear with a Communism smear, it's much scarier.

House GOP memo shows ‘socialist’ scare tactics aren’t working

You can't be an effective minion if you don't follow orders.

Pay attention.

Yes, that's the same shit some lefties used to argue when Hugo Chavez was running for office.

LOL, Trump's "poorly educated" are just adorable, the Pavlovian reaction is to toss out non-sequiturs that make it clear they don't even know who Hugo Chavez was.

Your orders were very clear, the socialism smear is not effective, go with the communist smear.

Either that or just go with the tired old "accusations are confessions" approach and accuse Democrats of authoritarianism and fascism.

Be a good minion, remember your 3Ds, divert, distort, deny.