Faster Loading Politics

POSTED BY: ReeQueen
UPDATED: Wednesday, January 26, 2005 02:43
VIEWED: 5371
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SIGNYM

Sunday, January 23, 2005 3:24 PM

Y'all have forgotten corporations, which control government and have their own set of morals (dog eat dog) and forms of control (threat of unemployment, commercials, snooping and spying on people, getting government to enforce corporote agenda which means the full power of the police and military state etc.) And YOU think that YOU control corporations with your piddly ability to choose the color of your toilet paper. Oh yeah, you're free alright....

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! (laughs long and bitterly)

REEQUEEN

Sunday, January 23, 2005 8:35 PM

It just seems that until we all have the Automatic Reconstitutors, we will all still have to truck with corporations.

Which bugs me, because I'd really rather not.

I mean, I need toilet paper, seriously. And I think we're all better off for the switch from book, news, and magazine paper to bathroom tissue.

And cat food, what about cat food? I'm certainly not going to make my own cat food, especially when I can barely cook a meal for my family. Not going to risk the cats getting peckish and start with the gnawing on me. They would start with me, too, since I'm the one who they see as the Bringer of Food, if I let them down, who are they going to blame? Me.

It'd be face first, as well, and I'm tellin' ya, my face is important to me. Might not be that aesthetically pleasing to most, but I've enjoyed it over the years.

Although I'd love to pick my own cotton, or clip my own wool, spin, weave, and dye all my own fabrics, I'm afraid I just don't have the time or equipment. No cotton plants or wool trees, to start with. No spinning wheel, besides the one in my head; as for dyestuffs, well, all that mess with mordants and fixatives. As bad as cooking, if you ask me. And it'd involve way too much gardening which I just don't have the back strength for at the moment.

Not going to be butchering anything, ever, either. I prefer my meat nice and anonymous. Despite the fact that I helped eat parts of Junior back in college. It was Junior's fate, as a 4-H project, to be part of the family deep freeze, and naming your food in front of roommates always helps alleviate tension.

I'll probably be much better off when technology catches up to my distaste for the corporate, or when I finally gain all those telekinetic powers I've been striving for. Daresn't call it magic, because then the religious wackaloons will want to burn me for a witch.

Where's a fair godmother when you really need one?

If I can avoid the major polluters, I'm a bit happier. If I can afford a car that runs efficiently on something non-fossil-related, I'll buy it. If there's any way to choose the relative benignity of one corporation over the Pure Evilness (tm) of another, I'll do it.

But I still need toilet paper.

"He has a gorm horizon. All gorm that falls past it is lost forever." UserFriendly http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20050114

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Sunday, January 23, 2005 8:54 PM

Ah yes. Capitalism will always win, because the virtues of toilet paper will always trump the idealism of Socialism.

REEQUEEN

Sunday, January 23, 2005 9:05 PM

One can be a semi-socialist and still need toilet paper, Finn.

One can even be a capitalist, and still want the general population to be taken care of in every way. One can make money, in fact, more than one can make money, and still have first world benefits available to all.

There is not a finite amount of success or wealth in the world, despite current popular belief. If I'm successful, it doesn't mean someone else has to starve or go sick. If you're successful, it doesn't mean I can't be successful as well.

And if we extrapolate, to beyond this watery blue globe, the possibilities are endless.

Social Darwinism, which is really the definition most capitalists believe of captialism, is ignorant of possiblities, seeing only what can be gained and kept, and ignoring the chance that someone who doesn't have a lot of money might still be worth clothing, feeding, and keeping well.

"He has a gorm horizon. All gorm that falls past it is lost forever." UserFriendly http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20050114

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Sunday, January 23, 2005 9:23 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by ReeQueen:
There is not a finite amount of success or wealth in the world, despite current popular belief. If I'm successful, it doesn't mean someone else has to starve or go sick. If you're successful, it doesn't mean I can't be successful as well.

I’m not arguing. As a staunch capitalist I would say that there is plenty of success to go around for all of us. In fact, it is socialists who claim that there is a finite amount of wealth that must be spread evenly among the people.

Quote:
Originally posted by ReeQueen:
Social Darwinism, which is really the definition most capitalists believe of captialism, is ignorant of possiblities, seeing only what can be gained and kept, and ignoring the chance that someone who doesn't have a lot of money might still be worth clothing, feeding, and keeping well.

Well, this may be what socialist think capitalist believe capitalism is, but in general, I doubt it is. Just because you assume that capitalists are all evil greedy bastards doesn’t mean it’s true. And considering some of the more ardent socialist states (Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, North Korea), not all socialists are quite as angelic and good-hearted as some might want to believe.

REEQUEEN

Sunday, January 23, 2005 10:38 PM

Socialism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism

"advocating an egalitarian society, with an economics that would, in their view, serve the broad populace rather than a favored few."

Let's get defs straight, first, 'kay?

Quote:
In fact, it is socialists who claim that there is a finite amount of wealth that must be spread evenly among the people.

Where? Where does it say that? I'm a semi-socialist, and I don't claim there is a finite amount of wealth. I think the resources can and should be spread more evenly than they are now, but that's just good sense. Envy is what is causing a lot of our problems right now, and I think spreading the good around might do a lot to alleviate that.

Pinching resources isn't the way to either make friends or influence people.

Quote:
Just because you assume that capitalists are all evil greedy bastards doesn’t mean it’s true.

Actually, I assume very little. I listen, I read, and I try to pay attention....try, I said.

I don't really believe all capitalists are evil, greedy, bastards, but a lot of the Social Darwinists who think they're capitalists are. In fact, I would say that the very definition of a Social Darwinist is evil, greedy, bastard.

Much like the people who are so afraid of losing any money at all to taxes, they'll vote down programs that will ensure the health and welfare of those who don't make a lot of money. Or who didn't inherit a lot of money. Or, because they will never have a chance at getting a higher education, will never have a chance to even have a steady job with benefits, to even make a living wage and thus become free, eventually, of welfare and health programs.

I talk not just of this country, but 'round the world. If we're going to solve problems, we have to do it on a global scale, or we're only bandaiding the issues. I don't like thinking small.

Quote:
And considering some of the more ardent socialist states (Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, North Korea), not all socialists are quite as angelic and good-hearted as some might want to believe.

And, we're back to definitions. The states you listed were not socialist, although they may have gone by the name and used the notion, propaganda-wise. Nor was the Soviet Union truly communist, as North Korea is not truly communist now.

The words you are looking for are "nationalist" and "fascist."

Nationalism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalism

"an ideology that creates and sustains a nation as a concept of a common identity for groups of humans. According to the theory of nationalism, the preservation of identity features, the independence in all subjects, the wellbeing, and the glory of one's own nation are fundamental values.

"Nationalists base nations on various notions of political legitimacy. These can derive from the Romantic theory of "cultural identity", the liberal argument that political legitimacy is derived from the consent of a region's population, or combinations of the two."

Fascism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism

"The State not only is authority which governs and molds individual wills with laws and values of spiritual life, but it is also power which makes its will prevail abroad.... For the Fascist, everything is within the State and... neither individuals nor groups are outside the State.... For Fascism, the State is an absolute, before which individuals or groups are only relative...."

Then we have your "totalitarian" and "dictatorship" hyphenates which make it all come together.

There are many, many, decent, upstanding, semi-allies of the US that have socialist aspects of their governments, Finn. Britain is just the cherry on top of the sundae of examples.

"He has a gorm horizon. All gorm that falls past it is lost forever." UserFriendly http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20050114

RAT

Monday, January 24, 2005 5:29 AM

VOTE RAT ON CTP#11

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-Ratboy

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Monday, January 24, 2005 8:03 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by ReeQueen:
Where? Where does it say that? I'm a semi-socialist, and I don't claim there is a finite amount of wealth. I think the resources can and should be spread more evenly than they are now, but that's just good sense. Envy is what is causing a lot of our problems right now, and I think spreading the good around might do a lot to alleviate that.

It’s a simple deduction. If wealth is not finite then why does it need to be redistributed? Why does wealth need to be taken from those who have rightfully gained it and given to people who have not if there is an infinite amount of wealth? Indeed Socialists must believe that wealth is limited or there would be no reason to redistribute it.

Quote:
Originally posted by ReeQueen:
I don't really believe all capitalists are evil, greedy, bastards, but a lot of the Social Darwinists who think they're capitalists are. In fact, I would say that the very definition of a Social Darwinist is evil, greedy, bastard.

Okay, but that’s a far cry from claiming that most capitalists are social Darwinists.

Quote:
Originally posted by ReeQueen:
And, we're back to definitions. The states you listed were not socialist, although they may have gone by the name and used the notion, propaganda-wise. Nor was the Soviet Union truly communist, as North Korea is not truly communist now.

Certainly they were/are indeed socialist states; in all three cases the government owned and controlled the economic capital, which is socialism by definition. That they were also fascist and/or totalitarian states doesn’t exclude them from being socialist states.

REEQUEEN

Monday, January 24, 2005 6:42 PM

First off, I make a distinction between "resources" and "wealth." Resources being things like...oh....oil and such, that belong to another country.

Wealth, now, well....how much money does one really need? To be rich, how much money should one acquire?

Just askin'.

"He has a gorm horizon. All gorm that falls past it is lost forever." UserFriendly http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20050114

FINN MAC CUMHAL

Tuesday, January 25, 2005 1:57 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by ReeQueen:
First off, I make a distinction between "resources" and "wealth." Resources being things like...oh....oil and such, that belong to another country.

Or to our own country. Indeed if you substitute resources for “wealth” or “success” in your previous comments, then we would have been in accordance. Economics is the study of scarcity and how to distribute scarce resources.

Quote:
Originally posted by ReeQueen:
Wealth, now, well....how much money does one really need? To be rich, how much money should one acquire?

Just askin'.

How much freedom does one really need? How much right does the government have to take away wealth that someone else has rightfully earned? How much right does someone who chooses not to produce have to wealth they didn’t earn?

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