Jussie Smollett: great example of supply v demand

[_Themis]

Both, if it matters to Kevin. Use of the term Socialism has become very sloppy in the US. So I’m trying to make sure I understand what he means with respect to ownership of the means of production.

It's nice to see a poster who asks questions to understand other people's actual beliefs. I gave both conditions because I think it makes a huge difference. I would define pure socialism as the government owning, or maybe controlling, the means of production. I don't think full socialism has worked well where humans are a vital component of production, but full capitalism has also not worked well, which is why we see all countries have a combination of both. I wonder though in an eventual future where machines can do all production better and cheaper how we can have a successful system of private ownership of production. We already see a world where the 1% own most of the worlds resources and means of production. Without the need of humans to produce they won't have the ability to make money to survive on, and the wealthy elite will have no need of the them at all. They will just take up space and resources.

[_Themis]

My politics are typically classified as center-right.

Maybe you could say what about EA you think fits so well with the left and why it should be considered far left. I won't hold my breath though.

[_EAllusion]

EA: I support replacing corporate taxes with a value added tax. Because consumption taxes are regressive, I would like to issue a universal rebate to offset the regressiveness and have that rebate function as a UBI alternative to some social safety net programs.

Doc: OMG. That’s the Marxist ideology that has has led to the slaughter of millions and is bloodthirsty for more. Reasonable fear of this is the specific reason Donald Trump won.

[_Kevin Graham]

It's called the Electoral College moron.

You think maybe that's why I said, "Trump won because of the electoral college"?

Nah, you're too busy skimming posts and articles while jumping to idiotic arguments with no understanding of what's been said.

You're so ____ r____, Mr. Might As Well Get A Jump on Communism Again. I mean, you totally lost any and all credibility with that one.

Jesus you're daft sometimes.

- Doc

You don't understand communism any more than you understand anything that was just said. I mean you literally just quoted me without even knowing it and then accused me of not knowing what you just unknowingly quoted me as saying. Way to go there Captain Obvious.

[_Kevin Graham]

Even if an industry is fully automated, it’s an industry. I’m asking whether you favor government ownership of all industry or just some.

I'm speaking of the distant future and where we're headed. Our resources today are finite. Job numbers are dwindling and land is becoming sparse. At some point in the future mankind will have to shift towards some other system that resembles socialism more than capitalism. That's just logical.

[_Kevin Graham]

Roseanne tweets something offensive and gets fired with show rewrite.
Jussie fakes a hate crime, Trump is to blame, back on show set within the week.

No surprise you're defending notorious racists like Roseanne. You're the same idiot who takes his wife to Paula Dean's Kitchen for a romantic night out.

[_Kevin Graham]

Consider this scenario.

Government funding produces medical breakthroughs at public Universities. Effective drugs treating terminal illnesses are discovered. But the Government doesn't get the credit for any of this. The taxpayers who funded the medical breakthrough doesn't profit from the discovery. The scientists working on a public salary don't profit from the discovery. Instead, because of corporate lobbying from big PHARMA, the government hands it over to private companies so they can patent/license it out and then manipulate it slightly to patent the many variations of it for marketing purposes. The public is duped into believing these companies need to make billions so they can keep on creating cures like these, which they never created to begin with (the bulk of their funding goes towards marketing, not research and development). Then they're allowed to charge whatever they want for the drug because capitalism is awesome and anything else would be intrusive government interference, meaning communism!

Meanwhile, thousands of Americans suffer because they cannot afford to buy the drug their own tax dollars helped create in the first place.

Ya think maybe we'd be better off as a nation if the government did something with these drugs instead of handing them over to private corporations whose only motive is to make insane profits, knowing perfectly well people would rather take out huge loans to pay rather than, you know, die?

Here is another cool example. The internet.

Imagine if there was a network able to connect every living human in seconds, allowing instantaneous audio/video footage, and allowing every human to quickly access information on virtually any subject there is? Its existence effectively boosts consumer spending, makes all business more efficient, etc.

Imagine if the people who funded such innovation could benefit from the fruits of their own tax dollars without having to pay for it again and again because the government refuses to control any such industry, because, again, capitalism is awesome!

The best internet service in the country a few years ago was in Chattanooga Tennessee, and it was publicly owned and operated. It was the fastest and it was nearly free. But they weren't allowed to expand because their competition (capitalism!) lobbied legislatures to block them from expanding.

My point I guess, is that not all government involvement translates to a Stalinesque Dictatorship.

[_Res Ipsa]

Even if an industry is fully automated, it’s an industry. I’m asking whether you favor government ownership of all industry or just some.

I'm speaking of the distant future and where we're headed. Our resources today are finite. Job numbers are dwindling and land is becoming sparse. At some point in the future mankind will have to shift towards some other system that resembles socialism more than capitalism. That's just logical.

Got it. Thanks.

[_Kevin Graham]

The City That Was Saved by the Internet

Years before Google Fiber, Chattanooga was the first city in the United States to have a citywide gigabit-per-second fiber internet network. And the city's government built it itself.

At a time when small cities, towns, and rural areas are seeing an exodus of young people to large cities and a precipitous decline in solidly middle class jobs, the Gig has helped Chattanooga thrive and create a new identity for itself.

It's an internet boomtown, and Chattanooga has turned itself from what could have been another failing mid-sized city into a startup hub that's filling up with exiles from Manhattan, San Francisco, and Austin.

Chattanooga and many of the other 82 other cities and towns in the United States that have thus far built their own government-owned, fiber-based internet are held up as examples for the rest of the country to follow. Like the presence of well-paved roads, good internet access doesn't guarantee that a city will be successful. But the lack of it guarantees that a community will get left behind as the economy increasingly demands that companies compete not just with their neighbors next door, but with the entire world.

But not every rural community can just lay its own fiber. Cities and towns that build their own internet have found themselves squarely in the crosshairs of telecom lobbyists and lawyers, who have managed to enact laws making it difficult or illegal to build government-owned networks.

But the success of these networks is beginning to open eyes around the country: If we start treating the internet not as a product sold by a company but as a necessary utility, can the economic prospects of rural America be saved?

[_MeDotOrg]

http://www.dailycal.org/2019/02/20/man- ... ey-campus/

Man tabling for conservative group allegedly assaulted on UC Berkeley campus

It's ironic to remember how the free speech movement started at Berkeley's Sproul Plaza with Mario Savio passionately protesting for the right to have political discussions. Setting up a card table in the plaza was the exact right they for which they were fighting.


Do all revolutions eat their young? Keeping with the trend of dystopian literary references, this feels like the end of Animal Farm: Four legs good! Two legs better!

Now exactly how this altercation started is unclear. I don't know if this was an instance where it took 2 to tango, or it was a unilateral escalation. But Turning Point USA is not some white skinhead neonazi group. You may disagree with them, but they have a right to be there.