Philosophical Productive Discussion

[benji]

Let's see how bad this will go, inducted by moving from the research center:

Royalan, B-dubs, Red Mercury, Soliloquy of a Dogge, Hodgy, some other posters that I can't remember but are probably landlords will swarm any political thread that doesn't involve trans people or the current administration fucking up and tell any poster that's further left than them who's upset with the Democratic party that by god, they better vote for the Democrats because you don't want Republicans to WIN do you, and everything would be fixed if they could just get the VOTES, don't you understand that, you stupid voices of the people you, fucking fall in line already. Anyone telling them that hey, boilerplate leftist policies that are relatively normal in the rest of the world are actually pretty popular with Americans and would go a long way in boosting their poll numbers are hit with how unrealistic we're being, we don't know how government works, we have to be pragmatic, etc etc. 

"We have to win elections before we can do anything, and that means appealing to moderates!". All right. If you say so. Go ahead and cook.

Then out come the shocked pikachu faces and disgust when the moderate party full of moderates that they fought so hard for adopt moderate positions like "Not punishing the police for misbehaving at all and funding 'better training' instead" or "It's not worth my time and political capital to rule on corner case trans issues right now".

The Democratic party team sports lib warriors never, ever, ever show their face in threads where lunatics are bitching about how some moderate D took a moderate position and threw them under the bus. They don't have the balls to say "you don't want Republicans to WIN, do you?" to ClickyCal or Excelsiorlef. If you're a straight guy who's furious that our healthcare sucks, yes, even and especially the ACA? Well NOW they have the stones to be in your face all of a sudden.

Meanwhile, the RE minority contingent will bitch about the Democratic party and... what, push back against them? Advocate that people withhold their votes so that Dems might run someone better suited to them? Nope, never seen it. It's basically just a thread full of "fucking cis people" and then that's it. What I call "bitching around the cracker barrel" comments. It's not just fucking useless, it's boring. 

I'm reminded of that sad thread that I don't feel like finding right now where someone was really fired up about trans issues, some law had been passed, and they actually wanted to organize something for once, and their solution was the old "everyone call your representative, all the time, every day! Let's record our efforts here!". It was pages and pages of "I called today, did my part" interspersed with "it's TELLING how barren this thread is". I don't know, maybe it's that calling your rep does not and has never worked, even accoring to the OP of the thread who admitted it might be a waste of time but he wanted to feel like he was doing something?

In a democracy, which of the following positions do you actually think gets closer to the end goal of progressive change that you want?

1. Pragmatic realpolitik and compromising where you have to in order to make tiny steps forward
   
2. Recalcitrant ideological positioning, where you would rather have nothing than water down what you want (which is coincidentally the end goal of the people who hate the very principle of the change you want to make)
   

Niether gets closer to it, it's a trick question. In a Democracy, you must have at least two opposing positions that nevertheless are participating in good faith. America has never had this, so you can never compromise to get what you want. Even if you could, the right wing destroys progressivism faster than compromise and incremental change could ever create, and this is why the Democratic party is, and always will be unless pressed by force, useless for actual positive change. If the Democratic party was capable in any way, shape or form of making the country better, they would have by now, but they have not. Republicans have largely attained all the goals they set out to achieve around the time Reagan was elected, but Democrats are still eternally on step one of... well, any issue they're supposed to be behind. Change will come from the direct and collective action of the people in various forms, not a party. But, as has been stated, this isn't a politics thread.

This is a rejection of democracy justified in reverse.

Perhaps a politik productive discussion thread is warranted, though from my experience that just leads to a cessation of the topic in general due to the intractability of illiberal and anti-democratic premises. 

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

So perhaps such a thread is doubly warranted.

Let's try to be somewhat nice to each other. In particular, please avoid accusations based on supposed motivations. This is not a moderation threat but a request as the instigator of this thread.

[Potato]

All I want to know is, why the left got such a hard-on for telling other peoples how to live?

[Eric Cartman]

In a democracy, which of the following positions do you actually think gets closer to the end goal of progressive change that you want?
Pragmatic realpolitik and compromising where you have to in order to make tiny steps forward
Recalcitrant ideological positioning, where you would rather have nothing than water down what you want (which is coincidentally the end goal of the people who hate the very principle of the change you want to make)

Niether gets closer to it, it's a trick question. In a Democracy, you must have at least two opposing positions that nevertheless are participating in good faith. America has never had this, so you can never compromise to get what you want. Even if you could, the right wing destroys progressivism faster than compromise and incremental change could ever create, and this is why the Democratic party is, and always will be unless pressed by force, useless for actual positive change. If the Democratic party was capable in any way, shape or form of making the country better, they would have by now, but they have not. Republicans have largely attained all the goals they set out to achieve around the time Reagan was elected, but Democrats are still eternally on step one of... well, any issue they're supposed to be behind. Change will come from the direct and collective action of the people in various forms, not a party.

Okay, so let's just test this thesis quickly on a broad level;
Let's concede that in a democracy, any given minority voting only in that minorities interests is at a disadvantage, because a majority vote will always win.
Lets take gay people as an example, with ~10% of the population.

Is a typical gay man worse off, better off, or about the same today as a typical gay man in 2000?
In 1975?
In 1950?
Feel free to use any test of 'better / worse / the same' you choose in terms of the ability to pursue happiness: financial, social, legal, medical, educational.

[Eric Cartman]

As a corollary, if you as an amoral populist political figure decide to portray yourself as an uncompromising ideologue, you are basically guaranteed a well funded job for life, because other ideologues who only want one thing and don't care about the repercussions will fund you up the wazoo, and the one thing you purport to want with no compromises is something that reasonable people will never acquiesce to, so you will never have a "I've done it, I can now retire" moment.

[Nintex]

All I want to know is, why the left got such a hard-on for telling other peoples how to live?

The problem is that in order to build their new utopia the "left" wants to bring down the existing world and doesn't care what happens to those who live in it in the process.

I'm seeing it happen here. Big corporations have done questionable things but they also brought about wealth and welfare without equal. However they're currently labeled als polluters basically being told to fuck off as more and more people are groomed to glue themselves to the streets to 'save the climate' and film it with their iPhones.
I don't know why the west allows itself to be destroyed like this. 

For example, why do we allow the Turks to ship thousands of Africans to Europe who start groping the NGO workers the minute they arrive? Is it a fetish?

[Megamandrn001]

In a democracy, which of the following positions do you actually think gets closer to the end goal of progressive change that you want?
Pragmatic realpolitik and compromising where you have to in order to make tiny steps forward
Recalcitrant ideological positioning, where you would rather have nothing than water down what you want (which is coincidentally the end goal of the people who hate the very principle of the change you want to make)

Niether gets closer to it, it's a trick question. In a Democracy, you must have at least two opposing positions that nevertheless are participating in good faith. America has never had this, so you can never compromise to get what you want. Even if you could, the right wing destroys progressivism faster than compromise and incremental change could ever create, and this is why the Democratic party is, and always will be unless pressed by force, useless for actual positive change. If the Democratic party was capable in any way, shape or form of making the country better, they would have by now, but they have not. Republicans have largely attained all the goals they set out to achieve around the time Reagan was elected, but Democrats are still eternally on step one of... well, any issue they're supposed to be behind. Change will come from the direct and collective action of the people in various forms, not a party.

Okay, so let's just test this thesis quickly on a broad level;
Let's concede that in a democracy, any given minority voting only in that minorities interests is at a disadvantage, because a majority vote will always win.
Lets take gay people as an example, with ~10% of the population.

Is a typical gay man worse off, better off, or about the same today as a typical gay man in 2000?
In 1975?
In 1950?
Feel free to use any test of 'better / worse / the same' you choose in terms of the ability to pursue happiness: financial, social, legal, medical, educational.

Is your assumption that any gains this minority group has made is due to a political party that listened to constituents and passed laws/regulations/what have you during the natural course of operating the democratic machine?

Because this is not the case. Every civil rights gain in America has been due to activists fighting and putting outside pressure on a party, until the party either had no choice but to bend, or said activism made the aforementioned civil rights gain politically advantageous.

[Megamandrn001]

As a corollary, if you as an amoral populist political figure decide to portray yourself as an uncompromising ideologue, you are basically guaranteed a well funded job for life, because other ideologues who only want one thing and don't care about the repercussions will fund you up the wazoo, and the one thing you purport to want with no compromises is something that reasonable people will never acquiesce to, so you will never have a "I've done it, I can now retire" moment.

Let's test this.

Who are the billionaires funding the push for socialized medicine in America? 

If someone wants single payer healthcare, with no compromises, something much of the rest of the world has, is that something "reasonable people will never acquiesce to"?

[Megamandrn001]

Big corporations have done questionable things but they also brought about wealth and welfare without equal. However they're currently labeled als polluters basically being told to fuck off as more and more people are groomed to glue themselves to the streets to 'save the climate' and film it with their iPhones.

Are you anti-union?

[benji]

Republicans have largely attained all the goals they set out to achieve around the time Reagan was elected, but Democrats are still eternally on step one of... well, any issue they're supposed to be behind.

To pick two: The Department of Education has not been eliminated (now it has an armed force) and no balanced budget has ever occurred, indeed the federal government has grown by 60+% relative to GDP and is only set to increase exponentially until it consumes everything.

This isn't a rejection of Democracy. It's a rejection of the idea that America has ever had a truly functional one. If it ever did, it certainly doesn't now.

I'm not against the idea of incremental change. I'm against the idea of incremental change being the only tool in the toolbox that is useful in all political climes and eras. It's perfectly fine in times of relative internal peace and relative unity. This has not described America since roughly around Nixon.

You're going to have to define "functional" and "democracy" for me before I can ascertain if this is utopianism or an actual political position.

If someone wants single payer healthcare, with no compromises, something much of the rest of the world has

This is not remotely correct.

I don't know why the west allows itself to be destroyed like this. 

For example, why do we allow the Turks to ship thousands of Africans to Europe who start groping the NGO workers the minute they arrive? Is it a fetish?

Because autarky is stupid and what the people you claim to be fighting desire.

[Megamandrn001]

To pick two: The Department of Education has not been eliminated (now it has an armed force) and no balanced budget has ever occurred, indeed the federal government has grown by 60+% relative to GDP and is only set to increase exponentially until it consumes everything.

They took over the Department of Education with someone hostile to education who is the wife of a Mercenary army. It might as well have been destroyed. As it is, being a teacher is an incredibly low paying job on purpose.

You're going to have to define "functional" and "democracy" for me before I can ascertain if this is utopianism or an actual political position.

I already did. At least two opposing groups operating on the good faith assumption that they both want what's best for all citizens and to have the best government possible governing them. America does not have this.

This is not remotely correct.

Yes, it is. Among the top ten developed nations, America's healthcare system is A) unique and B) dead last in terms of rankings, and has been for ten years running. It is not unreasonable to not want that anymore.

[Eric Cartman]

Is your assumption that any gains this minority group has made is due to a political party that listened to constituents and passed laws/regulations/what have you during the natural course of operating the democratic machine?

Because this is not the case. Every civil rights gain in America has been due to activists fighting and putting outside pressure on a party, until the party either had no choice but to bend, or said activism made the aforementioned civil rights gain politically advantageous.

I'll take this as an admission that things are generally better for minorities today than even just 25 years ago.

So let's test the follow up thesis;
When you say 'fighting' and 'pressure', are you referring to physical, violent coercion to force political capitulation? Also known as 'Terrorism'?
Or are you using those in a more rhetorical sense, to describe lobbying, advocacy, promotion of a viewpoint in the media, etc?

Because one of those is the use of legitimate political power in a democracy - persuading reasonable people as to the rightness of your cause, and gain their votes, and the other is the illegitimate use of force to enforce a mandate through fear.
Of the two, which do you think takes hold more strongly in a society and is likely to last?
Being tricked or strong armed into doing what you're told, or being persuaded to reconsider things?

Let's test this.

Who are the billionaires funding the push for socialized medicine in America? 

If someone wants single payer healthcare, with no compromises, something much of the rest of the world has, is that something "reasonable people will never acquiesce to"?

Many of those billionaires either made or perpetuate that wealth through for-profit medical care. Why would they be pushing for it at all?
All they have to do is say "If you want universal healthcare you're gonna have to pay for it in taxes" and chuck in some insinuation how you're also going to be paying for junkies fentanyl chasers.

If you WANT reasonable people to vote for it, you make a reasonable argument.

Let's say, "Hey, even if you really believe you can bootstraps your way out of sickness, what about people who legally can't have bootstraps? Why don't we say everyone too young to legally work gets free healthcare?"
Becomes a lot harder for someone reasonable to say they'd rather a 10 year old die of a treatable leukaemia than skip a gingerbread spiced soy chai latte a week.

[Nintex]

Big corporations have done questionable things but they also brought about wealth and welfare without equal. However they're currently labeled als polluters basically being told to fuck off as more and more people are groomed to glue themselves to the streets to 'save the climate' and film it with their iPhones.

Are you anti-union?

Unions suck because they only look after themselves. I am in favor of workers confronting their bosses but unions are just another piece of a non-functioning system the boomers cling on to. The idea of company co-ownership really appeals to me for example.

Overall I find most corporations useless as at some point it becomes more about keeping the corporation running than any real added value.
Apple post Steve Jobs is a good example of this and of course Disney. I believe more in folks that have the X-factor and take risks, like Sakurai, Gabe Newell, Tom Cruise, Jensen Huang, Elon Musk etc. . Most of them also treat their employees well or don't have an hierarchy in the first place.

However in most cases corporations become risk averse and everything stalls and they actively try to prevent others from innovating too. Facebook is a good example of this, Oculus could've achieved so much more if Mark Zuckercuck didn't get his grubby hands on it. It gets even worse when corpos and governments work in tandem to prevent new players gaining a foothold, like what happened during COVID or with the EU GDPR cookie/privacy bullshit.

[benji]

I'll continue the pile on first with some empirical issues:

They took over the Department of Education with someone hostile to education who is the wife of a Mercenary army. It might as well have been destroyed. As it is, being a teacher is an incredibly low paying job on purpose.

Education funding in this country has more than doubled, in real dollars, since 1980. Tertiary education is probably even bigger. Teacher pay is tied to a mandatory seniority schedule with an unfunded benefit scheme.

Yes, it is. Among the top ten developed nations, America's healthcare system is A) unique and B) dead last in terms of rankings, and has been for ten years running. It is not unreasonable to not want that anymore.

Single-payer healthcare is not the norm anywhere you will want to look to. Even Canada was forced to allow a private market rather than continue to politically restrict supply. And I think like the above the explosion of government spending and control should lead you to question your premises about the likely benefits of further monopolizing the sector with a single corporation.

Onto the more philosophical one:

I already did. At least two opposing groups operating on the good faith assumption that they both want what's best for all citizens and to have the best government possible governing them. America does not have this.

I think this is a very utopian vision of not just democracy but politics itself. The nature of politics, especially in a state that is increasingly seizing more of the means of production, is not a dialectic towards identifying a general will. Many positions are simply irreconcilable. Your and Joanne's best government possible may be a 100% tax rate to fund the trans genocide, but this is irreconcilable with my best government possible that does not engage in genocide nor tax anyone. It is not bad faith to believe others intended mandatory policies are not just unwise but potentially dangerous.

It gets even worse when corpos and governments work in tandem to prevent new players gaining a foothold

Like current residents wanting to deliberately limit the supply of potential legal workers?

[Megamandrn001]

I'll take this as an admission that things are generally better for minorities today than even just 25 years ago.

So let's test the follow up thesis;
When you say 'fighting' and 'pressure', are you referring to physical, violent coercion to force political capitulation? Also known as 'Terrorism'?
Or are you using those in a more rhetorical sense, to describe lobbying, advocacy, promotion of a viewpoint in the media, etc?

Because one of those is the use of legitimate political power in a democracy - persuading reasonable people as to the rightness of your cause, and gain their votes, and the other is the illegitimate use of force to enforce a mandate through fear.
Of the two, which do you think takes hold more strongly in a society and is likely to last?
Being tricked or strong armed into doing what you're told, or being persuaded to reconsider things?

I mean both. Nobody wants violence. At least nobody sane and mature. And lest you control the narrative with clever wordplay, what constitutes "terrorism" is largely based on who won and who wrote things down. And I think being strongarmed is more effective, since studies show persuading people is far harder than we once thought, as people tend to double down when faced with just being flat out wrong and having to admit so instead of adjusting. This doesn't mean you go right to it, but to admit that it's never the way to go is simply ahistorical.

Meanwhile, there's plenty of instances where force was used to affect positive change, and it stuck, since once it was in place people realized it was great and accepted it. Let's lay out a couple:

The CRA and the VRA and basically the entire Civil Rights movement in general was extremely unpopular with the general American public. This is a big simplification because i'm not trying to write a college course here, but in essence LBJ was staring down the barrel of a full blown race war unless he got the government to do something, knowing full well getting these laws passed would deal significant damage to his party for decades, and he was right.

Once those laws were passed and a little time went by, they are now basically viewed as unvarnished good.

Let's do another one: Slavery!

In 1856, Charles Sumner gave one of the most impassioned speeches about the horrors of slavery and how it should be ended as soon as possible the Senate had ever seen. According to people who were there, not a dry eye was to be found in the crowd. As a reward for this, a fellow senator from a slave state beat Sumner into permanent disability with his cane, right there on the floor.

Slavery was not ended by compromise, or by persuasion, or by incremental change. There is no universe where it would have been possible to do this. It was ultimately ended by people shooting other people who wanted to keep slavery until they couldn't realistically resist anymore. And now we don't have slavery anymore, and almost everyone thinks that's good, and god I hope that includes people in this thread. Every time someone fighting for slavery was killed that was a cool and good thing that happened because it led to slavery's end. What the North did wasn't "terrorism", although I'm sure the plantation owners that got their houses burned down would disagree.

You might argue "that was then, this is now, we're more evolved/civilized, it doesn't apply" and I don't agree. This is what humanity is and will always be. I think it's funny leftists are made fun of for wanting "utopia", but it seems unrealistically utopian to me that humanity will ever create a society that won't get to a point where at some point, you'll just have to shoot some folks or else not have that society anymore. Best you can hope for is that you shoot some folks for a good cause, which, I am very well aware, is a rare and tall order. It's why nobody sane wants to ever go there if they can help it.

Many of those billionaires either made or perpetuate that wealth through for-profit medical care. Why would they be pushing for it at all?
All they have to do is say "If you want universal healthcare you're gonna have to pay for it in taxes" and chuck in some insinuation how you're also going to be paying for junkies fentanyl chasers.

If you WANT reasonable people to vote for it, you make a reasonable argument.

Let's say, "Hey, even if you really believe you can bootstraps your way out of sickness, what about people who legally can't have bootstraps? Why don't we say everyone too young to legally work gets free healthcare?"
Becomes a lot harder for someone reasonable to say they'd rather a 10 year old die of a treatable leukaemia than skip a gingerbread spiced soy chai latte a week.

This argument assumes that over 17 billion dollars a year is not spent by said unique for-profit healthcare system billionaires specifically to make the idea that taxes should pay for healthcare a ridiculous, unreasonable assertion. No other countries would hear "your taxes will pay for everyone's health care" and flip out. Only America, and this is on purpose. This also assumes that reasonable arguments for single payer healthcare haven't been made yet, and this is silly and dismissive and not worth further discussion.

[benji]

The CRA and the VRA and basically the entire Civil Rights movement in general was extremely unpopular with the general American public. This is a big simplification because i'm not trying to write a college course here, but in essence LBJ was staring down the barrel of a full blown race war unless he got the government to do something, knowing full well getting these laws passed would deal significant damage to his party for decades, and he was right.

...

Slavery was not ended by compromise, or by persuasion, or by incremental change. There is no universe where it would have been possible to do this. It was ultimately ended by people shooting other people who wanted to keep slavery until they couldn't realistically resist anymore. And now we don't have slavery anymore, and almost everyone thinks that's good, and god I hope that includes people in this thread. Every time someone fighting for slavery was killed that was a cool and good thing that happened because it led to slavery's end. What the North did wasn't "terrorism", although I'm sure the plantation owners that got their houses burned down would disagree.

Speaking of simply ahistorical.

That is to say, more specifically for one of these, that slavery was doomed. It was the nature of that doom that induced the Confederates to resort to rejecting the democratic process for pre-emptive violence in a futile misguided attempt to buy time.

[Megamandrn001]

Education funding in this country has more than doubled, in real dollars, since 1980. Tertiary education is probably even bigger. Teacher pay is tied to a mandatory seniority schedule with an unfunded benefit scheme.

You'll notice this has nothing to do with what I said. That doubling of real dollar is not reaching teachers. Education, and by extension, the DOE, is in shambles. This is not an accident, it's by design. My point stands.

Single-payer healthcare is not the norm anywhere you will want to look to. Even Canada was forced to allow a private market rather than continue to politically restrict supply. And I think like the above the explosion of government spending and control should lead you to question your premises about the likely benefits of further monopolizing the sector with a single corporation.

It wasn't forced into it, it was propagandized into it, since everyone who's not blind can see how much money private healthcare pulls in in America. You are not naive enough to think that the powers that be everywhere would not move heaven and earth to get a piece of that pie for themselves. There is no data that supports the idea that private healthcare is superior to single payer anywhere on earth.
Again, I don't have to question the premise: reputable agencies that conduct examinations every year of health outcomes in countries around the world have rated America's unique private healthcare system dead last in almost every category for ten years running.

One thing I've learned is that most problems we've faced have had studies done in order to hash out what the best way to achieve this or that is. Obviously these aren't set in stone and are not gospel, but for me, scientific evidence of the best possible outcome is an incredibly strong indicator of which way to go, even if it clashes with previously held beliefs.

I think this is a very utopian vision of not just democracy but politics itself. The nature of politics, especially in a state that is increasingly seizing more of the means of production, is not a dialectic towards identifying a general will. Many positions are simply irreconcilable. Your and Joanne's best government possible may be a 100% tax rate to fund the trans genocide, but this is irreconcilable with my best government possible that does not engage in genocide nor tax anyone. It is not bad faith to believe others intended mandatory policies are not just unwise but potentially dangerous.

You're not wrong. In fact, this proves my point about what I typed up there about the Civil War. Joanne wanted a country with legal slavery and my side did not, and what resulted was some shootin' of folks until the issue was laid to rest. Mentioning that a system of governance doesn't function perfectly for all time and eventually falls apart isn't an indictment of said system, because... well, they all do in one way or another. Eventually things devolve into violence. You don't want it to, but that seems to be how it always goes. All you can hope for at that point is that the violence ends up destroying something vile. That's a pretty big gamble, and why you shouldn't try or hope for it!

I'm a leftist, but I don't think socialism is perfect and infallible and obviously the best way to go all the time around the world. I think that socialism is the thing you have to use to push back the pendulum that's swung incredibly far into late stage capitalism, lest the wheels fall off that. Were the pendulum to swing left for the next hundred years or so, that would turn to shambles as well and some rightward pushback would be warranted.

[Megamandrn001]

The CRA and the VRA and basically the entire Civil Rights movement in general was extremely unpopular with the general American public. This is a big simplification because i'm not trying to write a college course here, but in essence LBJ was staring down the barrel of a full blown race war unless he got the government to do something, knowing full well getting these laws passed would deal significant damage to his party for decades, and he was right.

...

Slavery was not ended by compromise, or by persuasion, or by incremental change. There is no universe where it would have been possible to do this. It was ultimately ended by people shooting other people who wanted to keep slavery until they couldn't realistically resist anymore. And now we don't have slavery anymore, and almost everyone thinks that's good, and god I hope that includes people in this thread. Every time someone fighting for slavery was killed that was a cool and good thing that happened because it led to slavery's end. What the North did wasn't "terrorism", although I'm sure the plantation owners that got their houses burned down would disagree.

Speaking of simply ahistorical.

That is to say, more specifically for one of these, that slavery was doomed. It was the nature of that doom that induced the Confederates to resort to rejecting the democratic process for pre-emptive violence in a futile misguided attempt to buy time.

You're mostly right. However, this just proves my point: Slavery was not ever going to fall apart in a non-violent way. Folks were going to have to be shot to end it. In addition, Frederick Douglass told Lincoln directly that slavery was never going to be completely done away with, that diplomacy was no longer going to do anything, only violence would.

[benji]

It wasn't forced into it, it was propagandized into it

Yes, it was forced into it. The courts said that they had to allow Canadians to privately purchase outside the monopoly because the monopoly could not supply everyone with health care. This was, of course, an obvious result as this is inherently the nature of central planning.

There is no data that supports the idea that private healthcare is superior to single payer anywhere on earth.
...
One thing I've learned is that most problems we've faced have had studies done in order to hash out what the best way to achieve this or that is. Obviously these aren't set in stone and are not gospel, but for me, scientific evidence of the best possible outcome is an incredibly strong indicator of which way to go, even if it clashes with previously held beliefs.

You are rejecting all the scientific evidence to maintain your beliefs both in this and in the education topic. Again, no country you will want to point to has single-payer. That's the first piece of evidence. We can go beyond that to know why this is the case, because a single monopoly corporation over a sector does not work as well as the market. This is why we do not have a monopoly corporation that controls the entire food sector, when people have tried this it has been only famine. An additional piece of evidence you might want to not reject would again be how you're condemning a system in which the size of monopoly control over the sector as you advocate has increased exponentially. Like in education if the expansion of what you desire is not achieving results you may want to reconsider your methods.

edit: To be more pointed, neither a safety net nor a parasitic welfare state is socialism.

[Eric Cartman]

I mean both. Nobody wants violence. At least nobody sane and mature. And lest you control the narrative with clever wordplay, what constitutes "terrorism" is largely based on who won and who wrote things down. And I think being strongarmed is more effective, since studies show persuading people is far harder than we once thought, as people tend to double down when faced with just being flat out wrong and having to admit so instead of adjusting. This doesn't mean you go right to it, but to admit that it's never the way to go is simply ahistorical.

We have very recent historical data on how successful long term pushing societal change through force rather than persuasion is in pandemic mask mandates, and the resultant pushback.

Let's do another one: Slavery!

In 1856, Charles Sumner gave one of the most impassioned speeches about the horrors of slavery and how it should be ended as soon as possible the Senate had ever seen. According to people who were there, not a dry eye was to be found in the crowd. As a reward for this, a fellow senator from a slave state beat Sumner into permanent disability with his cane, right there on the floor.

Slavery was not ended by compromise, or by persuasion, or by incremental change. There is no universe where it would have been possible to do this. It was ultimately ended by people shooting other people who wanted to keep slavery until they couldn't realistically resist anymore. And now we don't have slavery anymore, and almost everyone thinks that's good, and god I hope that includes people in this thread. Every time someone fighting for slavery was killed that was a cool and good thing that happened because it led to slavery's end. What the North did wasn't "terrorism", although I'm sure the plantation owners that got their houses burned down would disagree.

You might argue "that was then, this is now, we're more evolved/civilized, it doesn't apply" and I don't agree. This is what humanity is and will always be. I think it's funny leftists are made fun of for wanting "utopia", but it seems unrealistically utopian to me that humanity will ever create a society that won't get to a point where at some point, you'll just have to shoot some folks or else not have that society anymore. Best you can hope for is that you shoot some folks for a good cause, which, I am very well aware, is a rare and tall order. It's why nobody sane wants to ever go there if they can help it.

This is a very US-centric perspective.

The idea that change only happens through violence because those are the examples that happened to you is in itself an example of US exceptionalism.
If you'd stayed a UK colony, you'd have had slavery abolished in 1807 like the rest of the empire.
That was done through persuasion.
People had a moral imperative that enslaving another human is fundamentally wrong, and managed to persuade people of that stance.

Also, as an FYI, slavery is not 'over'. There are actually more people in slavery today in absolute numbers than at the very height of the transatlantic slave trade.
It doesn't get much traction in US politics because the people taking up all the oxygen discussing 'slavery' are demanding recompense for historical grievance, not actually attempting to address what remains an ongoing global societal ill.

This argument assumes that over 17 billion dollars a year is not spent by said unique for-profit healthcare system billionaires specifically to make the idea that taxes should pay for healthcare a ridiculous, unreasonable assertion. No other countries would hear "your taxes will pay for everyone's health care" and flip out. Only America, and this is on purpose. This also assumes that reasonable arguments for single payer healthcare haven't been made yet, and this is silly and dismissive and not worth further discussion.

But people did flip out when the NHS was proposed. On exactly those grounds.
"Why should I have to pay for fat smoking whoremongers health care?"
It was through rhetoric that the public were persuaded.


Now that we have it, it would be absolute political suicide to suggest getting rid of it, because everyone can see the benefit.
The incremental change that doesn't make the sky fall established the precedence for further change.

We also have private health insurance running concurrently; it has tangible benefits for those who can afford it, not the least of which is a much faster turnaround.

[Megamandrn001]

Yes, it was forced into it. The courts said that they had to allow Canadians to privately purchase outside the monopoly because the monopoly could not supply everyone with health care. This was, of course, an obvious result as this is inherently the nature of central planning.

And the people that comprised these courts fell out of the sky, unaware of the concept of money.

You are rejecting all the scientific evidence to maintain your beliefs both in this and in the education topic. Again, no country you will want to point to has single-payer. That's the first piece of evidence. We can go beyond that to know why this is the case, because a single monopoly corporation over a sector does not work as well as the market. This is why we do not have a monopoly corporation that controls the entire food sector, when people have tried this it has been only famine. An additional piece of evidence you might want to not reject would again be how you're condemning a system in which the size of monopoly control over the sector as you advocate has increased exponentially. Like in education if the expansion of what you desire is not achieving results you may want to reconsider your methods.

Countries with single payer healthcare: Norway, Japan, United Kingdom, Kuwait, Sweden, Bahrain, Canada, United Arab Emirates, Denmark, Finland, Slovenia, Italy, Portugal, Cyprus, Spain, and Iceland. In case you're wondering what single payer is, it is a type of universal healthcare that is publicly administered and is financed by taxes. Single-payer healthcare covers the costs of essential healthcare for all of a country’s residents with costs paid for by a single public system. The US's healthcare ranks behind all of them.

What I think you might be getting at is most countries have some sort of mix of private and single payer healthcare. As for whether this would be better for the US than what it has now, there's quite literally a mountain of studies that says yes, in every concievable way.

As for education, what I desire for it has not been tried yet. I thought this was made clear when I pointed out that the money increase over time has not reached teachers, but I'm glad I could clear that up.

[benji]

You're mostly right. However, this just proves my point: Slavery was not ever going to fall apart in a non-violent way. Folks were going to have to be shot to end it. In addition, Frederick Douglass told Lincoln directly that slavery was never going to be completely done away with, that diplomacy was no longer going to do anything, only violence would.

If the Confederacy was allowed to go, slavery would have been abolished in the United States without mass death and destruction even if Delaware had tried to put up a fight of some kind.

What I think you might be getting at is most countries have some sort of mix of private and single payer healthcare.

A "mix" is not "single-payer" in the slightest, you will want to check your list again.

To quote my edit that you would have unfortunately missed: neither a safety net nor a parasitic welfare state is socialism.

As for education, what I desire for it has not been tried yet. I thought this was made clear when I pointed out that the money increase over time has not reached teachers, but I'm glad I could clear that up.

You did not indicate what you desired, yes, I assumed you wanted greater resources provided to the state. I apologize if this is not what you want.

[Megamandrn001]

We have very recent historical data on how successful long term pushing societal change through force rather than persuasion is in pandemic mask mandates, and the resultant pushback.

We can argue as to whether anyone was actually forced to wear a mask, and as someone whose job it was to literally ensure people wore masks before they entered a building, I can assure you we did not.

This is a very US-centric perspective.

The idea that change only happens through violence because those are the examples that happened to you is in itself an example of US exceptionalism.
If you'd stayed a UK colony, you'd have had slavery abolished in 1807 like the rest of the empire.
That was done through persuasion.
People had a moral imperative that enslaving another human is fundamentally wrong, and managed to persuade people of that stance.

Also, as an FYI, slavery is not 'over'. There are actually more people in slavery today in absolute numbers than at the very height of the transatlantic slave trade.
It doesn't get much traction in US politics because the people taking up all the oxygen discussing 'slavery' are demanding recompense for historical grievance, not actually attempting to address what remains an ongoing global societal ill.

You're not really wrong with any of this, (except saying I said change only happens through violence, which I didn't do) but this is due to my knowledge mainly being limited to US history and living in the US. I was not clear that I was speaking primarily from a US perspective. I would not presume to speak on UK politics or history. In other words, it was intentionally US-centric, not out of a sense of superiority, but of limited scope on my part.

However, I will point out that Slavery did end (sort of) in the US with violence and did not in the UK. The moral imperative persuasion worked in the UK. It didn't work in the US. It follows that the countries will follow similar paths on many things throughout history, i.e. the US is much less amenable to persuaded change. Why that's not true for the UK, i'll leave up to you.

As for slavery being over, you're also correct: as per the 13th amendment, slavery is still legal in regards to the prison system.

But people did flip out when the NHS was proposed. On exactly those grounds.
"Why should I have to pay for fat smoking whoremongers health care?"
It was through rhetoric that the public were persuaded.


Now that we have it, it would be absolute political suicide to suggest getting rid of it, because everyone can see the benefit.
The incremental change that doesn't make the sky fall established the precedence for further change.

We also have private health insurance running concurrently; it has tangible benefits for those who can afford it, not the least of which is a much faster turnaround.

And again, rhetoric that worked in the UK did not work in the US. Although, as per what you said about political suicide, the same would follow if you strongarmed people in the US into having an NHS-like system: it would stick around once they had it. Why persuasion works in one place and not another? I will freely admit I'm not smart enough to even hazard a guess. I'm reminded of other countries where it took one mass shooting to heavily restrict/ban/whatever guns, but not the US. Why? a hundred different cultural factors i'm not smart enough to even begin to comment on.

[Megamandrn001]

If the Confederacy was allowed to go, slavery would have been abolished in the United States without mass death and destruction even if Delaware had tried to put up a fight of some kind.

Yes, but it would still exist in the Confederacy, would become untenable, result in a hostile, failing state and THAT would have mass death and destruction.

Also, I assume you're not implying it would have been better for slavery to still exist in the southern states rather than end it via violence.

A "mix" is not "single-payer" in the slightest, you will want to check your list again.

To quote my edit that you would have unfortunately missed: neither a safety net nor a parasitic welfare state is socialism.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-with-single-payer

That's literally the definition, I'm sorry. It's not "Parasitic" to ensure that your citizens are taken care of enough to participate in society to their full potential. Everyone wins.

You did not indicate what you desired, yes, I assumed you wanted greater resources provided to the state. I apologize if this is not what you want.

More resources? I don't know about that. I'm not going to pretend I know whether the current funds are sufficient or not. Better redistributed resources and a DoE that actually functions is more what I was getting at.

[Megamandrn001]

Unions suck because they only look after themselves. I am in favor of workers confronting their bosses but unions are just another piece of a non-functioning system the boomers cling on to. 

Are you aware of the research that states that Unions both raise wages and benefits for both workers in the union, and non-union workers in adjacent industries/competing companies?

[Besticus Maximus]

This requires no debate. The answer is strong majority social democratic governments. Good stuff happens broadly and there is no gulag.

[Uncle]

And I think being strongarmed is more effective, since studies show persuading people is far harder than we once thought, as people tend to double down when faced with just being flat out wrong and having to admit so instead of adjusting.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7462781/

One of the most concerning notions for science communicators, fact-checkers, and advocates of truth is the backfire effect. A backfire effect occurs when an evidence-based correction is presented to an individual and they report believing even more in the very misconception the correction is aiming to rectify (Lewandowsky, Ecker, Seifert, Schwarz, & Cook, 2012). This phenomenon has extremely important practical applications for fact-checking, social media, and all corrective communication efforts. However, there is currently a debate in the literature as to whether backfire effects exist at all, as recent studies have failed to find them, even under theoretically favorable conditions (e.g., Swire, Ecker, & Lewandowsky, 2017; Wood & Porter, 2019).

https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/03/the-backfire-effect-is-mostly-a-myth-a-broad-look-at-the-research-suggests/

Full Fact research manager Amy Sippett reviewed seven studies that have explored the backfire effect and found that “cases where backfire effects were found tended to be particularly contentious topics, or where the factual claim being asked about was ambiguous.” The studies where a backfire effect was not found also tended to be larger than the studies where it was found. Full Fact cautions that most of the research on the backfire effect has been done in the U.S., and “we still need more evidence to understand how fact-checking content can be most effective.”

of course, the best way to prove the backfire effect is to reject this new information that it may not exist, and to believe even harder that most people double down on entrenched positions

[benji]

Yes, but it would still exist in the Confederacy, would become untenable, result in a hostile, failing state and THAT would have mass death and destruction.

Also, I assume you're not implying it would have been better for slavery to still exist in the southern states rather than end it via violence.

Yes, I'm not so cavalier as you in mass casualties of others to achieve what I want. (Not that the Union warred to end slavery anyway.) If the Confederacy had left, slavery would have collapsed because it would have no longer been subsidized by the North. Many Confederates knew this, Alexander Stephens outright publicly predicted that secession guaranteed it. The South was an impoverished backwater, being cut off from the North would have destroyed its exports of the few goods the plantation economy produced. Especially if the other countries peacefully banning slavery started searching for alternative sources as did happen when the war stopped exports. 80% of the South did not own slaves which would have mandated a diversifying of the economy that did not exist prior. This is not to mention how slavery was uneconomic if the North and Europe was no longer subsidizing it. And it's also not to mention the effect of a North unbounded from the Fugitive Slave Laws and actively hostile to the South sitting on its border.

As for it still existing in another country, slavery currently still exists, how many lives are you willing to sacrifice for ending it? For me, the number is zero because I don't believe I have the right to dispose of other's lives for my ends.

That's literally the definition, I'm sorry.

If that's the definition then the United States is borderline single-payer.

It's not "Parasitic" to ensure that your citizens are taken care of enough to participate in society to their full potential. Everyone wins.

Why do you believe that a monopoly corporation completely controlling a sector ensures that everyone is taken care of, let alone "enough ... to their full potential"? Why do you believe the managers and employees of monopoly corporations are omniscient and omnipotent? Why do you believe that constraining supply is the best method to ensure citizens are taken care of? What's the logic behind arguing that no, citizens should not be allowed to have as much healthcare as they want?

This is why I contended that you're being utopian rather than following scientific evidence. It's not like the evidence is still out on if central planning works, it doesn't, nobody has ever even come up with how it's supposed to hypothetically work. We don't centrally plan food and feeding, why is any other sector, be it education or healthcare or many other things, different in this regard? Especially to the point of outlawing the exit part of exit and voice. It's also why I pointed to how your complaints are coming in a system that is increasingly moving in the direction you desire, but when the results you want don't happen because they can't you contend it was misallocation or not enough monopolization as if this would somehow cease the complaints that are the obvious and inherent result of monopolization. Misallocation is the fundamental issue of central planning because it's literally impossible to determine wants and even establish a concept of efficiency. (Yes, I take the argument one step further (CLOSER TO EDGE AND I'M ABOUT TO BREAK) than the Great Minds because I believe the logic makes it inevitable, they felt people would wake up when they saw the obvious mistakes of the logic whereas I assume they will cling harder to the religion.)

edit: I intended "parasitic welfare state" to mean the extreme of the other end from "a safety net" neither of which yet passes over into socialism. Yes, in general, I do believe that seizing other people's labor to use for your own ends, as a way of life, is parasitic but that was not the intent of the particular phrasing. Think instead of, say, a welfare state that taxes everyone so that ResetERA.com staff members can live in luxury as deserved by their high intellectual status.

[Eric Cartman]

However, I will point out that Slavery did end (sort of) in the US with violence and did not in the UK. The moral imperative persuasion worked in the UK. It didn't work in the US. It follows that the countries will follow similar paths on many things throughout history, i.e. the US is much less amenable to persuaded change. Why that's not true for the UK, i'll leave up to you.

As for slavery being over, you're also correct: as per the 13th amendment, slavery is still legal in regards to the prison system.

I'm not talking about people who have free rent, food and medical care not also getting minimum wage as part of their highly expensive to society incarceration - I'm talking about actual modern slavery.
Contemporary examples are depressingly common.

Regardless, its a diversion from my initial stance - that just because the only 4 historical events Always Online Americans know about (Revolutionary War for Independence, Civil War, WW2 and the Civil Rights movement) had violent actions and the end result was 'good' that good things only come from violent actions is demonstrably false, even if you take a tunnel view of 'only in america' and ignore the vast entirety of the history of the rest of the world.

Like, gay marriage didn't get legalised because a bunch of homos firebombed a registry office, or roamed the streets in gangs looking for priests to assault.

Its fine to think things move too slowly in a democracy, because consensus building takes time but its also a good thing that whoever happens to be in power at any given time can't easily rush through whatever they want on multiple levels.
You minimise unintended consequences, you minimise logistical waste of time and resources (because Blue team would spend all their time undoing everything Red team did last turn, and vice versa), and you pretty much force people into taking a longer view than whatever will get them their next round of votes consequences be damned.

Like the aphorism says, "Democracy is the worst form of government - except for all the others"

[Eric Cartman]

Unlike Benji, I'd actually be sorta okay with some kind of AI benevolent dictator central planning running everything 100% impartially for the greater good, but I don't think it'd be very long before the law of unintended consequences kicks in and things we as humans would find intolerable would just get rolled out as the best option - limiting families to only a certain permitted number of children, forced mass euthanasia at certain thresholds for economic reasons, etc

[HardcoreRetro]

Sounds like a brave new world.