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Patrickbateman said:

Navy seals told not to report war crimes commited by their chief

The fish rots from the head.

Arkos said:

It would be more fun to see Burnie verses Trump. Those two facing off in a debate would be one of the greatest face offs in ages. That and I think Burnie is in better health and has more energy than Biden has.

And you think Trump would easily beat Bernie.

Yea President Trump would beat Bernie, but it would be a far more active fight. It also gives us two distinct candidates to choose from. Bernie is an open socialist, President Trump is an open capitalist. You can't have any starker choice than that.

We're implying that the reason why you want Democrats to choose Bernie is so that Trump will win and that you don't actually believe Trump can with 100% certainty win against Biden.

Speaking of Trump, Cohen's search warrant got unsealed; Cohen had over a thousand financial contacts with a Russian company. The same mystery company that is currently in a grand jury.

Nevada joined the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact; bringing it to 195 electoral votes. Obviously it'll go to court though.

New York just joined 23 other states where a presidential pardon does not prevent the state from seeking criminal investigations committed in their state. Simply put, yes Trump could pardon those that went to jail BUT they'll never be able to step foot in 24 states or risk getting thrown into state ran jails. Trump could pardon Manafort, but if he stepped foot in New York chances are state police will yank him off the streets and throw him back in jail and if Trump tried to pardon him again state police will ignore him.

Well shit; that's why everyone is freaking out about birth rates in the USA. In 2018 USA population grew just 0.6%; in short birth rates have fallen in the USA to the point at which pretty soon in a couple years chances are the USA's population will start declining. Right now it's not a problem; it 18 years it's going to be a massive economic problem.

The real reason everyone is freaking out about birth rates is because we have a social welfare system that is dependent on the labor of young people to sustain the pensioners. Let's not pretend that the mass bulk (40%) of our federal spending goes directly to people 65.

That is also why places like Germany, which had a loss of 2 million people in a span of 5 years in the late 2000s, and early 2010s, was so keen on having mass-migration come. Especially when much of that mass migration happens to be able bodied young men.

That's kind of what I was getting at; once we start running out of people able to work shit's probably going to go south economically. Contrary to popular belief a 0% unemployment rate isn't actually a good thing, a very low unemployment rate actually means that there's not enough young people to offset people retiring.

Well you're wrong there kiddo. President Trump can beat Biden and I am 110% certain he can do so. The reason I want Bernie to face off with President Trump is that it will be a much more active campaign than what Biden could do. The debates alone would be glorious to see. Besides, I do feel a bit sorry for Bernie who got robbed by Hillary in 2016. I've heard that the Democrat party said they got rid of their super delegates system, but I had not seem much of that changed at all.

The DeVos family punishes Justin Amash by cutting funding for his re-election campaign.

Yo
Scientists discover China has been secretly emitting banned ozone-depleting gas

Not surprised about China.
Most of Ocean-garbage comes from South East and East Asia.

But a lot of the UN proposals don't target that region because "developing". They instead target the US, despite the US is leading all the countries in CO2 reduction.

But let's be real. It was never really about ecological healing – if it was they'd be targeting a lot of "developing" nations – such as Brazil, such as China, such as central and southern Asia.

It's always been about sticking it to the Americans.
That is why so many "environmentalists" have, often time, focus exclusively focus on America's eco-footprint. And American industry.

Or you can greatly reform how our welfare system works, prioritizing need vs universal ism.
It's complex, and it will hurt in the short term – but it can be done. Fact of the matter is, we are using a welfare system designed in the 19th century, implemented in the 20th century, and failing miserably by the 21st.

But that will not happen as long as elderly people outvote younger people by 2 or even 3:1 margins. Nor will it happen when people are so paranoid that any change to reform means that it is illiberal in terms of providing for the poor.

So much of the politics revolving around welfare is based entirely on emotional response than pragmatism.

Take medicare for example. A hospital has to reduce the cost of some of the most expensive medical procedures by about 50-80% when it has to negotiate with the government. So when someone who is not 65+ has to get the same procedure they do not have the government's power to protect the cost, and the hospital will exploit that to make up for the loss-in-revenue from geriatric patients. Costs are distorted greatly. Now, someone on the left would make the case well then government should get involved and protect the costs of everyone, which means that the hospital will take that loss for every procedure it has to do. Why would, the hospital, then invest into modern, but highly expensive, medical equipment? Why would invest hundreds of doctor-hours into training the staff to use these equipment? Let's take it further, why should the company that manufactures the new equipment want to invest so much into R&D for new medical equipment if the over-all revenue drops? Why would they even get into the business? And if you think that all of it should be under the planned economics of socialist government, why would any bureaucrat care about actually delivering on good service? Or better products?

Take the USSR for example. For decades it suffered from chronic underfunding, antiquated and deteriorating facilities, inadequate supplies and outmoded equipment, poor morale and few incentives for health care workers, and consumer dissatisfaction?

Fact of the matter is, we have a ton of interlinked institutionalized systems that force the cost of medicine to be radically expensive in the US. mixed-economy, driving costs up, a powerful medical association that has near total control over the cost of medicine, the radically high cost of med-schools, the pressure for specialization in medicine, creating generations of doctors that are highly expensive but highly specialized, etc etc.

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding you, but it sounds like you're saying that money is the only motivator, that people will just stop doing things for the good of society if they can't use it as some get-rich-quick scheme. I think we need to take matters of basic necessities out of the hands of profiteers (or bureaucrats, for that matter) and back into the hands of common people, the people that actually use and are affected by these things.

It's not the only motivator. But it is a great motivator.
Especially when all other motivators, such as ideological or social zeal fade. Especially when you no longer find respect, or admiration for what you do. Or when the idealism of what you aspire you become harder, and harder to achieve.

Not everyone has the capacity to be utterly selfless, and while we totally should lift people up who are, the fact of the matter is most people aren't. And it doesn't really help when your particular selfless goals require others to support and sustain.

For example, say you are a doctor, and you racked up 300,000 dollars in debt studying medicine, paying for bills while you studied, etc. But you decide to use all of your medical knowledge to exclusively help the poor and the impoverished. Well, you could argue that the doctor's debt's should therefore be forgiven, and in fact the doctor should be wholly subsidized for continuing this noble endeavor. But the reality is, someone had to come up with the capital to even give the doctor that kind of a loan and if they took a loss on that – they wouldn't be able to extend a similar investment on someone else. Someone would have to toil and work hard to produce the kind of taxable revenue to subsidize that doctor. Ultimately, because we live in a world of scarcity, someone is going to have to take the hit. Is it fair that 200 farmers now have to work 3 hours longer to produce the taxable revenue to sustain one doctor's noble mission to heal the poor and the weak? Well if you're not the one waking up at 5 am and toiling the earth until 6pm, sure.

And above is just a simplistic hypothetical example. But it provides a bit of an insight that production, distribution, and ultimately consumption of scarce resources is a fairly complex model and someone has to figure out a way to properly do it that is both fair to the producer and consumer. Especially if the production, distribution, and consumption of said resources is varied and radical in terms of value. I mean, an artist could spend 5 hours painting a beautiful picture, but why should some farmer work 20 hours just to buy it? Are there work the same? Are the value of their end-product the same? No. It is not.

>and back into the hands of common people, the people that actually use and are affected by these things.

It's easy to say those things until you start have to figure out how exactly you are going to do that. Perhaps block-chain technology could make such things easier, ultimately, keeping less and less of the middle-man out of the production – distribution – consumption pipeline. But in every chain requires links, and every link requires some sense to sustain them. That is why, a store clerk will charge you 50 cents for a potato that the farmer that grew it valued it at 20 cents. The 30 cent up-charge covers the cost of transportation, and the shelf-space (because space is also a scarce and tangible thing) while simultaneously making enough net profit that gives the clerk the ability to buy that fancy new iPhone. And even then the price could also be determined by the demand – so let's say there are a lot of people in one month that want those potatoes but not enough to potatoes to go around for everyone, how do you determine who needs it more than another?

It is this hyper complex system of distribution of scarce resources that ultimately created so many problems for planned economies like the USSR (and all other socialist states). One day you go to the market and there is plenty of milk, but not enough eggs, because some beuracrat didn't make the right prediction – as there is some eggs that may have been damaged, not enough were produced, or someone bought too many on the first day. Other days you'd have not enough milk but plenty of eggs. But who is ultimately at fault for this? And what happens when one part of your logistic chain fails at another? What happens when the top-leadership comes up with a seemingly seamless logistics model where the farmers grow the food that goes to inner cities which in turn produce the consumer goods that are then going to go to the farmers? Sounds great on paper until there is a harsh winter and not enough food was grown. Who is then to blame? In the case of the USSR the blame fell on the farmers. It wasn't that the leadership failed to account for potential problems in growing enough food. Nor was it the fault of well-influenced scholars such as Lysenko that created bullshit theories that ultimately failed. It was the fault of the farmers for not producing enough food – in fact they DID produce enough food but must have hidden it because they are greedy and enemies of the state. So we send the police, the army to take that food. "But we don't have enough" say the farmers. But why should the army believe them, knowing full well if that they don't bring the food back to the cities it is their fault for the failure? And so the peasants starve.
And this is in a nut shell how the Holodomor happened, where millions of millions of Ukrainians perished. This is also how 36 Million Chinese died during the great Chinese Famine under Mao. This is also how the Ethopian famine by the communist Derg also occured.

But don't think that this is a product of just "communism" or socialism. Any totalitarian system that put control of resources into the the hand of powerful authorities ends up abusing the resources and starving the people. This is especially true of the more brutal colonial ventures in the name of preserving the mother-country's grip on power.

It's as Zizek critiqued of the modern "marxist" revolutionary – beyond the empty slogans, the rhetoric, the idealism, once you come into power "Then what?". And the answer always comes down to the same patterns. Always the same patterns.

It's why, despite not being the "fairest" model to distribution, production, etc. Free-markets and capitalist sytems that put a lot of that power into the hands of individuals to determine tends to be the most efficient at mitigating economic problems. I just think that in the modern sense, too many people have forgotten what the world before an expansion of liberal free market economies was like. Does it create a system where some have it and some don't? Yes. But more often than not, the vast majority have it, with a very small minority that doesn't. It's not a fair system, and that's what I think grinds a lot of people's gears because it isn't fair.

But it's far more fairer than many MANY of the alternatives that have been tried and tested.

But we live in a different world now than the USSR (and the USSR actually did quite well, all things considered). We aren’t really in a world of such scarcity anymore. The world produces enough food for 10 billion, and there are 7 billion people, yet people starve. 4/10 of that food goes uneaten in the US alone. Much of that food (and other products) is deliberately destroy in order to avoid devaluing the product. In the US, vacant houses outnumber the homeless 6-to-1. That isn’t scarcity, that’s overproduction and profit-led distribution. That’s people working more hours than they have to, and people being underserved all the same.

If anything, your point about the doctor just goes to show that we can’t go into this with half-measures--we’re either all in or all out. What if we just measured/kept stock of our consumption, our wants and needs, and base production off of that (with a healthy surplus as a margin of error)? What if we got rid of the wage system altogether and just simply worked off mutual aid and free agreement--that if you make your contribution to society, society will contribute right back to you and make sure all your needs are met, guaranteed? What if we really did operate in this post-scarcity world on the principle of “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need?” I believe the world would be a much better place for just about everyone involved if this was the case.

Julian Assange just got charged with 18 counts of violating the Espionage Act.

And those of you claiming that this somehow violates the First Amendment, here is page 36 destroying that rationale.

Unless you guys think journalists in the United States do this on a regular basis, you can stop right there.

poochyena said:

…and impeachment proceedings haven't happened yet. Discussing and recommending impeachment

Discussing impeachment =/= "voting for impeachment." When the House votes to impeach, it grinds the government to a halt, which is why Gingrich got his ass kicked. The people saw it as a huge waste of time when actual shit could have been done. Let's hope Pelosi's taken that to heart.

Adegeneratefurry said:

…trying to argue that man made concepts are aspects of biology…

Who makes this argument? At best, you have the nature vs. nurture debate, but that's with regards to behavioral development and not ideological ideas. I can't think of anyone that says capitalism or communism is genetic, primarily because that's completely stupid.

…capitalism isn't popular in the USA anymore is people stopped believing in it…

Capitalism's not popular because people don't see the real world alternative anymore. In the 70s, you could point to Russia and say "this is what communism, you're main alternative, is about." Today, the millennials who never saw what it was all about google communism, read the utopian ideal and think its great. They don't realize that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" phase never actually ends.

education reform

Common core failed. Every student succeeds failed. No child left behind failed. Can't wait to see what failure they come up with next.

Annie said:

It's actually evil.

Man, society must be in the toilet when trying to protect unborn humans is declared evil. It's something I'd expect the villain in a dystopian novel to say.

PatrickBateman96 said:

…you shouldn't even be implying you care about life…

Why is this always the de facto argument pro-choice people go to? As though you can create a moral equivalency between protecting an unborn human and a geopolitical war thousands of miles away or the death of a convicted murderer.

Pro-Trump=Pro-murder

C'mon, Patrick. Get that Huffpost Comment Section-tier stuff outta here.

Adegeneratefurry said:

you're saying she should be forced to give birth to the baby?

I'd say the sins of the father should not be placed on the son. It's a tragic situation, to be sure, but it's not the child's fault and the child shouldn't be punished for it.

A 10 year old would likely have complications, which leads into the mother vs baby health ethical quandary.

should she have carried the baby to birth?

If there would have been little chance of complications, yes. Give the baby up for adoption with the knowledge something good was able to come from something so evil.

poochyena said:

Women should be able to do whatever they want with their body.

And innocent human life needs to be protected, especially when it cannot protect itself. Now you see why there's an argument.

my city

lol

Adegeneratefurry said:

they'll never be able to step foot in 24 states or risk getting thrown into state ran jails

Depends on how Gamble v United States turns out. If it goes the way I hope, given pardons are done after convictions, double jeopardy would attach.

@xTSGx
"I'd say the sins of the father should not be placed on the son. It's a tragic situation, to be sure, but it's not the child's fault and the child shouldn't be punished for it."
"If there would have been little chance of complications, yes. Give the baby up for adoption with the knowledge something good was able to come from something so evil."
What the fuck is wrong with you people? I may be a massive dickwad that's mainly here to cause arguments and such, but causing heated arguments stops being funny when the other person is trying to argue that raped teen girls should be forced to give birth to the babies. Where the fuck do you live? Saudi Arabia?

@xTSGx
"Why is this always the de facto argument pro-choice people go to? As though you can create a moral equivalency between protecting an unborn human and a geopolitical war thousands of miles away or the death of a convicted murderer."

It's the de facto argument because it points out the hypocrisy of people who are "pro life". They lose their minds when it comes to abortion but you don't hear a peep when children are starving to death in Yemen because of US foreign policy.

@Degenerate

At least you admit you're a massive dickwad now.

Babies are innocent. Don't kill the innocent. Simple as that. Yes, babies born from rapes are tragic, but that is no excuse to kill innocent life. Besides, that child could turn out to be one of the greatest person in the world. Why are you so hell bent on killing innocent healthy babies?

>Where the fuck do you live? Saudi Arabia?

He lives up in Ann Arbor, MI.

Look, Yemen wouldn't be like this if they just stop having religious wars among themselves and just took care of their own. Also it's kinda hard to feel sorry for a group of people who value death more than life.

We do live in a different world than the USSR. I don't know what you mean by "USSR did actually quite well all things considered", in it's earliest phase it suffered famines, purges, horrors that you can't even dream of. In it's later phases it suffered from chronic food shortages, medical shortages, and massive consumer goods shortages. The quality of goods was abysmal, which is why jeans were so ridiculously popular – not because of the look but because of durability. And I am not talking about ancient history here. I was born in 1985 in Moldova SSR, here is what we had to deal with:

Chronic shortages of food, clothing, and hygiene products was constant. My friend, who was from Minsk, had to wear his sister's shoes for an entire summer because there was such a huge scarcity of shoes in his city.

You and I had a discussion in the comments of another page regarding the food distribution. I pointed out then and I'll point out now, that global hunger is dropping rapidly, but there are two major factors that people who often cite that statistic seem to totally miss. And since you still haven't fully digested these two factors I'll repeat it: distribution logistics, and even bigger than that, interruption to local economies. One of the biggest problems that kept many African nations in perpetual poverty was that over-abundance of food-aid led made it so local farmers (of which in many of these countries constitutes a massive bulk of labor) were not able to compete with, creating a cycle of perpetual poverty.

Food waste in the US in my opinion is a result of how cheap our food is because of the huge subsidization programs that farmers in the US enjoy. Higher cost of food would result, in my opinion, better utilization of it since throwing it away would be an economic disadvantage. But that's just my opinion on it, I think many other factors involved would also be the absurd expiration dates and weird fetishes about food "looking good".

Vacancies. Let's look at that. Let's look at the geographical distribution of vacant homes.
In Flint, Michigan 7.5% of homes are vacanct. In Detroit, Michigan 5.3% vacant. But that's not where the homeless are. In fact, Michigan has one of the lowest rates of homelessness in the country. But let's look to where I live, California, which has one of the highest amount of homelessness in the country. California does not have that much vacancy at all

So again, the statistic you cite doesn't factor in logistical reasons as to why there are 6 times more vacant homes than there are homeless. Because the fact is, the places where the homeless are the most prominent have also the lowest amount of vacancies. There's a reason they don't live in Michigan, it's cold, it's wet, and there is little economic opportunities. There is a reason they come to California, it's sunny year round, warm, and we have generous welfare services that provide them economic benefits.

New York is a different beast. There are a lot of home vacancies but one of the largest factors of why that is because the vacant homes tend to be in well-to-do rich neighborhoods, and are oft-times just vacation homes for the rich. But it's not nearly as huge as one would think, and simply saying "we can just house the homeless there" would have massive consequences for the neighborhoods, and continued home construction.

Vacancies also exploded after the recession and the housing boom. Which is still something people are recovering from.

> What if we just measured/kept stock of our consumption, our wants and needs, and base production off of that (with a healthy surplus as a margin of error)?

The sheer number of variables make such a system virtually impossible. The Communists believed that they could have achieved this with absolutely abysmal results. As I pointed out, a myriad of factors make predicting and calculating such things virtually impossible.

>What if we got rid of the wage system altogether and just simply worked off mutual aid and free agreement--that if you make your contribution to society, society will contribute right back to you and make sure all your needs are met, guaranteed?

Who the hell determines what is the value of your contribution vs what I contribute? I point out. An artist spends 5 hours painting a picture. A farmer spends 20 hours growing food. How do you determine who contributed the most to society here. Simply hours spent on work?

>“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need?”

My experience has been that people who often say this tend to have very little to contribute, and quite a lot of needs to fulfill.

>I believe the world would be a much better place for just about everyone involved if this was the case.

I too believe in hypothetical utopias that exist in my imagination would be a wonderful place to live. And every time some Utopian idealist gained the power to try to make this a reality, it was met with unmitigated disaster. Mostly, because the people who have this Utopian idealistic view often have little to no understanding about economics, logistics, distributions, or even how basic businesses and trade functions. Hence why I reference Zizec: You won the revolution. Now what? And the answer is usually implementing a disastrous system that sounds good on paper but horrible when applied.

One day maybe technology will be good enough that we do live in a true post-scarcity society. And that we have AI that can predict and calculate at high rates the needs and wants of every individual, everywhere. But that isn't today. And it's not going to be here anytime soon.

If Trump came out against US involvement in Yemen you wouldn't be saying that.

I should stop trying to use this site on mobile since the site’s mobile support is abysmal, but here I go. However bad the USSR was isn’t helpful information unless we also know where they were coming from and all other factors that could’ve contributed to their poor conditions independent of socialism.

As for contribution, yes I think it should be measured in hours, not because everyone makes the same contribution in a set amount of time, but because everyone’s time is equally valuable. This time should be spent toward work that society has deemed necessary--such as housing, food, electricity, etc. Society would decide democratically what work is necessary and how much time must be spent working. So then the basic societal agreement would be that you put in your hours in a field (or fields) of your choice, and in return, you get all those necessities freely provided to you. Then the rest of your time is freed up for arts or sciences or just general leisure. If someone is slacking off during that time, then their comrades will notice and try and get them to pick up the slack. Trying to free-ride off of other people’s labor isn’t normal or natural, it’s anti-social--it’s a problem that in most, if not all cases can be fixed. And if that’s person is genuinely too lazy/disagreeable, they would just be cast out. And on the other hand, people would work as hard as they can, because if they produce more, than they can lower that floor of minimum hours they have to work. They’re helping themselves as well as society.

The problem with the fight over Trump's taxes backfired a fair bit. The case got fast tracked again in the appellate court and will be heard in July and both sides have to present their argument in June; however the judge overhearing the case is a Obama appointee.

The problem for Trump if the case does go to the supreme court then the supreme court has to rule on it before July of 2020. Because the case got fast tracked so fast the supreme court will have to issue a ruling before the 2020 election. Some Republicans want to just rip the bandaid off now rather than in July of 2020 considering that'll be dead center of the election cycle.

Also a federal judge blocked the Mississippi abortion ban.

Trump is sidestepping Congress with an Emergency Powers declaration to approve of weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.

How is that a national emergency?

Trade war with China: Trump will help farmers:
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/23/18637836/trump-huawei-ban-explanation-trade-deal-national-security-risk
https://moreforexbrokers.com/best-forex-brokers-in-saudi-arabia/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48392021

>However bad the USSR was isn’t helpful information unless we also know where they were coming from and all other factors that could’ve contributed to their poor conditions independent of socialism.

Very few factors contributed to the poor conditions independent of socialism. The major factors was always mis-allocation of resources by bureaucracy of planned economics. Production quotas, mis-allocation of resources, a culture by where the people in charge had no incentive to produce more than what was barely required, just to maintain their own positions in the hierarchy. I'm sorry, to say, but you can't keep excusing systemic shortfalls of basic goods such as food, clothing etc, on external environmental factors when every single country that practiced planned economic system ran into the same exact disastrous problem.

>As for contribution, yes I think it should be measured in hours, not because everyone makes the same contribution in a set amount of time, but because everyone’s time is equally valuable.

Tell a doctor that the 5 hours of labor (a product of hundreds if not thousands of hours of study, development, skill etc) is equivalent to the 5 hours a janitor spent washing a hallway. And then you start to wonder why even invest all that time, tears, sweat, blood to attain a highly specialized skill when in the end, you're only as valuable as the shmuck who just barely put any effort into their work. And is it no wonder then, as I have pointed out, that by the 1980s there was chronic and consistent problem with not enough medical staff to treat patients in the USSR.

Fundamentally speaking, everything you've suggested isn't new or all that radical. It has been tried. And it has consistently created bad results, because ultimately, ultimately, no person, no organization, no system can predict with certainty the myriad of wants and needs. Even if "society" votes on certain quotas, how do we know that what they voted on was correct or not? You ultimately don't. Even the democratic system in of itself has a tendency to create a tyranny of majority, and a tyranny of the ignorant, since the vast majority of people participating in decision making have little to no real understanding the complexity on the issues they are in fact voting on.

I'm sorry. But we aren't drones. We don't have some sort of fixed unit of needs and wants for goods and services.

The earliest Marxists viewed society as a labratory to experimentation. They sought to engineer a society through scientific means. They sought to create a harmonious society where, as you say, everyone's needs are met, where production and distribution aligns perfectly with the demands and wants of the population. In every attempt to realize such a society has led to massive man-made disasters. Because in the end, no one is the same. No one has the same needs or wants. And when you put the power to dictate who or what needs or deserves what into the hands of dispassionate authoritarians, disaster soon follows.

But this is the kind of idealism that emerges out of people more obsessed with realizing a utopia – obsessed with theories, and ideas – than people who actually have to work the fields, drive the trucks, build the machines, create and design the myriad of goods and services provided.

>Continued use of chemical weapons on enemies.
>Massacres and purges of ethnic groups such as the Kurds, and his own people leaving nearly 300,000 people dead in a span of 1990-2002.
>Genocide of Kurds in 1988, 1991, with renewed attempts in 1993, and 1996, violating UN resolutions seeking to protect ethnic minorities in Iraq.
>Attempts at assassinating President George H.W Bush while he was visiting Kuwait City.
>Seeking hegemonic control over a resource that is in great demand by the world.
>Refusing time and time and time again UN inspection crews through the 90s into illegal WMDs. Non compliance with resolution 678, 687 and 1441.
>Irrefutable evidence that there was intent to at the very least develop WMD technology. As far as the late 90s.
>Resulting in the 1998 Desert Fox operation where Clinton himself had to blow up numerous Iraqi targets that were attempting to develop this technology.
>Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report concluded that the threat wasn't from existing WMDs but Iraq's "long standing determination to acquire such weapons, it's scientific and technical resources…to make them, and it's demonstrated willingness to use them."

Was the 2003 invasion of Iraq based on non-compliance with Resolution 678 (which Clinton subsequently used as a justification) i.e. "going after weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" a good justification? In hindsight, no, it wasn't. It was a bad reason to make the case for the invasion.

Was the 2003 invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam justified?
Hell yes it was.
At the very very VERY least, humanitarian grounds it absolutely was.

There is a better way of dealing with religious zealots is knowledge and education. There's a reason why terrorists attack schools a lot, because if people are educated and literate they are exposed to information that makes them question their beliefs. While correlation doesn't mean causation there is a massive coincidence between low literacy and higher levels of violence.

A ironic example of what I mean by this is, granted it's not a religious example, but 70% of China think that free markets are better than statist economies.

If I was president I'd invest a shitload of money into a completely decentralized multi-national online education platform in every language and try and do it numerous different ways. Like what I mean is not just teaching English speakers who have smartphones high school chemistry, but also like plan text messages trying to teach people who live in impoverished countries and who don't speak English chemistry and such.

>you can't keep excusing systemic shortfalls of basic goods such as food, clothing etc, on external environmental factors when every single country that practiced planned economic system ran into the same exact disastrous problem.

When every single country that practiced planned economic system was ostracized by the rest of the world and had the biggest world power waging economic warfare, proxy warfare, and funding (or directly participating in) coups, regime change and other attempts at sabotage, why shouldn’t we consider that as a factor in their failure?

>And then you start to wonder why even invest all that time, tears, sweat, blood to attain a highly specialized skill when in the end, you're only as valuable as the shmuck who just barely put any effort into their work.

That’s a lot of assumptions here. If janitors are so useless and “barely put any effort into their work” then we’d just get rid of the job entirely. You don’t think doctors appreciate being able to work in a clean and sterilized environment? You don’t think doctors do what they do because they just want to heal people? Sure some of them might be greedy and only in it for the money, and you’ll lose them. But imagine all the millions of people living in poverty that dream to be doctors but don’t have the resources to do so because of capitalism. Imagine if we let people follow their passions instead of following what pays well. How does that not make for a better world, for everyone, really?

>no person, no organization, no system can predict with certainty the myriad of wants and needs.

You’re telling me that there’s no measurement of how much needs to be produced under Capitalism? It’s just magically hits the (mostly) right numbers? We can measure our consumption. We can produce that much, plus surplus to keep within a safe margin. Just because we’re changing production to be human-driven rather than profit-driven doesn’t suddenly make it impossible to measure and direct.

>Even the democratic system in of itself has a tendency to create a tyranny of majority, and a tyranny of the ignorant, since the vast majority of people participating in decision making have little to no real understanding the complexity on the issues they are in fact voting on.

Then teach them. If this is the problem, then you have three explanations. Either it’s unfeasible to educate/train the vast majority of people to participate intelligently and diplomatically, or the vast majority of people are just inherently not equipped for democracy, or under the current system we just don’t care. The second option is basically just eugenics, and I should hope you’re not push that kind of view, so either we don’t have the capacity to educate everyone, or we just don’t care. Considering evidence that the current system benefits from ignorance, I find the latter more plausible.

>No one has the same needs or wants.
Yes, that’s what equity is all about. Don’t give everyone the same thing, give everyone whatever they want/need. If we know the community needs 500 apples, then we grow 500 apples and put it in the community storehouse for whoever to take however many they need. If we get close to running out, we know to make more apples next time. It isn’t about making sure everyone gets the same number of apples, it’s about making sure everyone gets enough apples. And for some, enough is 3, and for others, enough is 1. But I know one thing. Enough is often more than what little money the majority of people right now have access to can buy.

>no person, no organization, no system can predict with certainty the myriad of wants and needs.
I'm sorry Chewybunny, but that's sort of the point at which you went massively off the rails here. The reason why so many companies are continuing to grow in the USA drastically despite how over saturated many markets are is that what many companies have found out is that MOST of the time people buy things in pairs and that by keeping track of how many of x product is sold with fairly accurate certainty you can predict how much of y product is going to be sold.

Because people who buy a lot of salsa chips tend to buy salsa with it you can predict within a margin of certainty how much salsa is going to be sold and because people who tend to buy chips and salsa together you can predict with fairly good certainty how much cheese dip is going to be sold.

While it is impossible for a company or organization to be absolutely 100.00000000% accurate in predicting wants and needs you can be 95% accurate in predicting wants and needs. If a computer can predict who has lung cancer with 95% accuracy then predicting if someone is going to buy tampons with 95% accuracy is child's play.

This is why I think the people predicting the fall of China are insane is because China has so much data on the everyday habits, needs and wants of it's people that saying it's going to collapse economically is pretty far fetched.

China has evolved into surveillance socialism where you have no privacy from the government and the USA has evolved into surveillance capitalism where you have no privacy from companies. The only reason why the USA is really growing anymore is we've traded our personal liberties and privacy to companies. China on the other hand has traded all their personal liberties and privacy to the government.

@adegeneratefurry

Companies do not produce the exact amount of goods that is in demand. They produce as many goods as they can. If the demand falls then it signals to the company that they must lower the price of the goods to reach a broader market. If the demand rises it means they aren't producing enough and thus they invest in growth. Failure to do this spells the end of the company, and another one will take it's place as long as there is a demand.

The key difference here is that the market system sends signals to companies the demand vs supply, excess or scarcity dictate prices and prices control distribution. This is something that planned economies simply do not do. They do not change prices, they are ill equipped to change the dynamic. Furthermore, a planned economy, by definition is far more centralized. In a market economy a myriad of companies exist in perpetual rivalry of the market share. Failure means the end of a company. Price mechanisms, which the planned economies can never keep up with, dictates value of goods.

Fundamentally, the key difference between planned and market based economic systems is that individual companies and individuals (be they shop-keepers, CEOs, etc) determine the production and distribution quotas with the incentive of profit as a main driving point of success or failure. Planned economies do not have private individuals determining distribution models. They have an army of dispassionate bureaucrats that determine this – with no real incentive to compete.

In laymen's terms: it's far more efficient to have 100 people determine production/distribution models competing with one another to access the market share, than it is for 1 person to determine the production/distribution models without any consequences of success or failure.

Modern technology has made it far more easier for companies to predict the exact demand, and thus output of their production/distribution, to be sure. But as you said it's not 100% accurate and I sincerely doubt it will ever be. Facebook's algorithms, for example, predict with certainty that I am in the market to purchase a fancy new work shirt. So they tailor their advertisements to show me more shirts from various companies. But what facebook doesn't know is that I over-spent this week a bit on buying Wendys hamburgers (Holy shit are they fucking fantastic or what?) and decide that it's not worth it for me to put down 40 bucks for a brand new shirt.

Isn't demand just an abstraction of consumption? If demand rises, it's because consumption rises. IF it changes to something else, it's because people are consuming other things. These are things that can be measured directly. You can measure yourself how much you eat per day, per month, per year. You can poll your friends about it, too; your neighborhood even. Just figure out a starting point, keep stock of all the things we produce, and in what amounts, and produce a surplus. And if the margin is shrinking on one item or another, you know to amp up production of that item. Likewise, if the margin grows on some item, you know to rein in production of that item.

This can all be decided democratically, as well, of course. If there's something that isn't being produced at all, for example, or something that is being produced, but someone has a way to make it better, or make some derivative of that product that some people prefer to the original. These wants and needs can all be communicated, and production can shift toward that. That's what it's all about. Socialism is about directing production toward real human need and want, not just what is profitable. That's an ideology, or motive; it isn't constrained to any one kind of implementation or another. It doesn't even have to be centralized, as libertarian socialists would tell you.

edit: also I feel like you oversimplified demand a bit. Demand isn't going to rise indefinitely the cheaper you go, because people only ever need so much of one thing at a time. If you had free access to an apple orchard, you wouldn't suddenly take all the apples in the orchard (unless you had some profit motive to do so such as under capitalism). Therefore, a company would be foolish to produce as all that they possibly can, because much of that could very well go unsold, no matter how far they lower their prices.

@tinderfox
>coups, regime change and other attempts at sabotage, why shouldn’t we consider that as a factor in their failure?

Good question. And one that I always raise with a lot of socialist/communist types. How is it that for a long-term socialist model to exist it must depend entirely on a capitalist country to sustain itself. Ironic isn't it? The sad reality that so many socialist countries maintain their socialist standing by depending almost exclusively on capitalist nations.

But in reality, simply put, they can't compete. While many people think it was the arms race that did the USSR in, I always say it was slow but steady access to better western goods, such as jeans which was far more durable in quality.

A lot of the socialist countries had total power to trade with the western capitalist countries. In fact, they probably could have alleviated much of their suffering if they did so. But that would ultimately betray the fundamental core of the revolution, wouldn't it? Which is why, they didn't.
And Oh, by the way, North Korea's MO is exactly that: saber rattle so the western world would feed them. China has realized that they couldn't maintain the socialist model they had before, and when they started "liberalizing" (caveats galore) their markets, they had a rapid transformation of quality of life for their people. TO put it in perspective, on average, today, a chinese worker makes nearly 4 times more than a chinese worker in 2001.

>You don’t think doctors appreciate being able to work in a clean and sterilized environment? You don’t think doctors do what they do because they just want to heal people?

They do. But because the skill level of a janitor is so low, and they are so easily replacable, that the value of a janitor is actually quite low. You can replace a janitor with anyone willing to work that job. The same cannot be said of a doctor who had to go though a decade of training to have that job. Literally, nearly 1/8th of your life is invested in just gaining a particular skill to do a job vs someone who doesn't need more than a week's worth of training to get the job done.

If there was a sudden lack of janitors and the hospitals and doctors needed them, guess what they would do? Increase wages to incite more janitors to work. But because low-skilled labor pool is far FAR greater than high skill-labor pool, that is something that doesn't happen as often.

>But imagine all the millions of people living in poverty that dream to be doctors but don’t have the resources to do so because of capitalism.

Just because you dream of doing something doesn't mean you are capable. Doctors require, often, someone with a particular set of self-discipline, and high intelligence to accomplish. There was a time in the US believe it or not where entire communities would pool money together to send their brightest into medical school for the investment of having them return as community doctors. This was an effective model. It requires a lot of resources to create a doctor you know. Without referring directly to money, you have to house someone, have to feed them, look after them, provide for them for a good solid decade before they become the doctor that they are. You think just anyone with a dream can accomplish that? I'm sorry, but I just don't buy the "you can be whatever you want to be mantra" that was sold to us during the 90s and early 2000s. It is this same mantra that has put millions of students today into debt that they simply cannot ever pay back. And even if they did it wouldn't guarantee an actual job.

>You’re telling me that there’s no measurement of how much needs to be produced under Capitalism?

There is. price mechanisms, which are determined by supply/demand. And because such a mechanism is done by thousands if not millions of individuals (many of which will fail), a good large chunk of it get's fulfilled. But price mechanisms also mean that some things may be out of economic reach for some but not others because there is a limited supply of those things.

> We can measure our consumption. We can produce that much, plus surplus to keep within a safe margin.

"we" can. 100 people trying to compete in a market share is far better than just 1 person dictating the market. The thing is, of those 100 people, maybe 50 would get it wrong, and lose money, while 50 would get it right. If it's just 1 person, if they are wrong. everyone suffers.

>Then teach them

No one can know everything about the complexity of myriad of industries and activities. This is also why "lobbying exists". Because lobbying is essentially people will a stick in the game trying to influence people with positions of power to enact laws. It's why I like representative democracies rather than just direct democracies. But I am not going to expand much on that as I have little time to write essays on it :)

>If we know the community needs 500 apples, then we grow 500 apples and put it in the community storehouse for whoever to take however many they need.

But we don't know that.
We also don't know if those apples are up to standard.
We ALSO don't know how those apples will be utilized.

Again, this is the fundamental problem of treating society as some sort of game of Civilization. It's not just so simple as "I got 10 pops, therefore I need 10 units of food". God if it was only that easy.

>Enough is often more than what little money the majority of people right now have access to can buy.

Because of largely free-market and capitalist markets, the VAST majority of people have greater and greater access to things they can buy. I can cite statistic after statistics. Example after example. It is near universal that when a country adopts this model that's precisely what happens; more and more people have more and more money to buy goods.

Here's a quick stat i like to often quote: in the 1960s, nearly 20% of your paycheck went into buying groceries in the US. Today, it is less than 8%.

@Chewybunny
>over 100,000 civilians dead
>over 4,000 coalition dead
>caused the rise of ISIS
>current government is extremely corrupt virtually nullifying the Saddam overthrow
>permanent US occupation of Iraq
Iraq was never an offensive threat to the US. The Bush administration never cared about Iraqi's, they only cared about lining they're pockets with bribes from defense contractors and oil companies.

>How is it that for a long-term socialist model to exist it must depend entirely on a capitalist country to sustain itself

Begging the question here, aren't you? I made the point that many socialist societies suffered or even collapsed due to capitalist intervention. So where did you come up with the idea that a socialist society is inherently dependent on capitalism, and on what basis?

>Without referring directly to money, you have to house someone, have to feed them, look after them, provide for them for a good solid decade before they become the doctor that they are

Those are all things anyone needs, doctor or otherwise. Not everyone is going to pursue becoming a doctor because, like you said, it's a lot of work. And most people probably don't even want to be a doctor. But if we make sure everyone's needs are taken care of, i.e. food, housing, etc. and make education as accessible as possible, we'll open up the doors to a lot more people.

>They do. But because the skill level of a janitor is so low, and they are so easily replaceable, that the value of a janitor is actually quite low

That's your appraisal of labor value. That you can divide labor into "skilled" and "unskilled" and that one is objectively more valuable than the other. But "unskilled" labor very often contributes to "skilled" labor. The way I see it, any labor that is necessary is equally valuable. Because someone has to do that labor. And the janitor cleaning your halls means that you yourself don't have to. You should appreciate that.

>But we don't know that.
We also don't know if those apples are up to standard.
We ALSO don't know how those apples will be utilized.

What's so difficult about measuring these things? Especially with the advent of incredible technologies like the Internet. How hard would it be to keep track of how many apples we produce and how many are consumed? How hard would it be to just ask people if they're "up to standard" or keep an open forum where people can democratically influence the production of apples to suit the needs of the people?

>Here's a quick stat i like to often quote: in the 1960s, nearly 20% of your paycheck went into buying groceries in the US. Today, it is less than 8%.

And what percent of that paycheck now goes towards paying for rent or other housing costs? Or higher education? Healthcare? I very much doubt that the cost of necessities as a whole as a percentage of people's incomes has gone down considering the massive increases in those costs (even if the cost of that one thing, groceries, has gone down) compounded with the fact that wages have largely stagnated since the 1970s, even though productivity has doubled.

I just want to throw this out there. The majority of goods you people are arguing over in terms of Capitalists vs Socialists debate is actually easily answered. The market economy wins it hands down, over the planned economy.

The reason for this is simple. Companies aren't actually guessing when it comes to production numbers. They're doing it by order. Most people get their shopping down at super markets or retail stores, who scan product codes for purchase. That scan is not just some scan to find the price, it also doubles as a way for the computer system that keeps track of the stores entire inventory and demand. For food specifically, the check outs are scanned, and in addition, the excess stock is also scanned out as a loss. This data is transmitted to suppliers directly, and alongside in-store managers placing orders, can allocate more resources to go to supplying certain items over others. It's why stores will often have rotating selections of goods, and how stores can tell what does sell and what doesn't, and stop ordering products that don't.

This kind of system just can't exist in a planned economy. Because the amount of production needed to accommodate a to-order production line basically invalidates the entire concept of a plan. If a plan goes through revisions and changes every day because it needs to keep up with customers demands or dropping demands, then there's no actual way to make something like a 5 year plan. Because by the time you get to, say, 1 month, the plans already been altered so that the rest of the months, cascading into years, have to be changed as well. And this isn't even getting into the simple fact that making a planned economy for something dependent on Farmland is incredibly stupid. Bad weather conditions completely dictate how much of a crop is going to be around as your supply. This is pretty much the entire flaw with planned economies in a nutshell, in that if anything single things goes wrong with the projected yield of the crop, such as damage by insects, drought, disease, or just a drop in demand that year, it puts the entire plan, and thus the entire economy, into jeopardy.

Not that it matters much because Socialists countries have been getting bailed out by the Capitalists west for a long time. Even in the middle of the USSR's rule in the 70's, they were getting fed off of the US's grain supplies. In fact, the event was dubbed the "Great Grain Robbery" because Russia spent 10 million (61 million in todays money) buying subsidized wheat, soy, and other products via subsidized Us international agriculture sales. They bought so much of it in fact that it hit a 125 year record high in price via this Soviet Wheat Deal, and started seeing spikes in prices for bushels. So even with the so called "sabotage" that the USSR was being subjected to, they were pretty much surviving off of the US to make up the shortcomings of their 5 year plans, which saw such brilliant outcomes like turning the Aral Sea into a fucking desert.

Speaking of which, I just want to point out that the Aral Sea disaster is another thing that absolutely reflects on Communism and Socialism. Environmental disasters aren't a unknown under Capitalism either, I'm not going to pretend like that's the case. But at the very least in a Capitalist society, efforts are able to be mounted in order to hold people accountable, funds can be raised to help those impacted by the disaster, and aid can be garnered in order to try and mitigate or at least contain the damage, or possibly be used to research ways to counter-act the disaster. The canals used to cut off the 2 rivers that fed the Aral Sea in order to make the desert viable for growing produce and cotton for the Soviet Union began in the 40's using slave labor and by the 60's many of the people in Russia knew the sea was going to evaporate up and destroy the lives of people in that region. But because it benefited the people of the Soviet Union and was far away, public opinion didn't really care about that problem because of "the greater good". And officials didn't need to worry about it because it was still allowing them to follow the 5 year plan, even if it meant creating one of the absolute worst man-made disasters in human history.

And it is so very indicative of the major problem with all of this. Because of the way socialism and communism work, it is only viable if you force people to take part. Communism utilized slave labor to build up its infrastructure. Those who didn't support the communists were trialed, sentenced to hard labor, and forced to serve the state, and in most cases, die for the state. And the majority of people didn't care, because it benefited them and as long as they did their mandatory part, they wouldn't get the same treatment. It's funny how a lot of Socialists and Communists countries have people who can be sentenced to slavery as an "enemy of the people" and yet that's somehow more fair then what we have now.

The biggest issue with the Utopian idea of Socialism or Communism is that in the Utopian hypothetical, 100% of people willingly sign up for it, and there's a 0% number of dissenters or exploiters. There isn't room in the thought experiment for people who won't do their absolute best, and would just be satisfied doing the minimal amount of work needed to get their paycheck. There's no room for the person not agreeing with the status quo and wanting to do things differently then everyone else. Currently, I'm a person who believes in the hybrid amalgamation of ideas we've cobbled together on top of capitalism to bring in some of the better elements of socialism. And I'm talking with people who are stunchley against any form of socialism and all about libertarian capitalism, and those who feel we need to fully embrace communism or otherwise abolish the state to get the world back on track.

This kind of diversity of ideas doesn't exist in a lot of communist countries, and wasn't tolerated, because it exposed the fundamental flaw of that system. There's no answer to someone not wanting to participate, so either they are forced to participate in prison, or they were removed from the equation by firing squad. And I've yet to see any of you understand the very real, very dark, and very dirty, side of your ideological stances. Capitalism creates social strife when left unchecked, and even when left in check is volatile enough to ruin many people's lives based on the actions of a small few, who most of those ruined people never even met in their life. It's a very real flaw, and a very real problem. But so is political prisoners, and forced participation, and over-reliance of bureaucracy and violence to solve problems. That's communism biggest faults, and until you guys are willing to actually admit it, I think there's very little point in talking about the issue.

Could anyone explain why it is so important to have a war with Iran? Or to antagonize Iran?

Trump wants to get re-elected /half-joking

Nowhere in your explanation of how the capitalist “market” system “just works” do I see any reason that you can’t just remove money and the profit motive from the equation and not make it better. You can still use the same store system with scans and all to keep track of inventory and such--the only difference is that you wouldn’t be charging people money for it, and all the items in the store would be produced according to what best served the people, not what is most profitable. That means making food that’s actually nutritious, and sustainable long-term and environment-friendly, as well, for example.

As for why the USSR was dependent on grain imports, there’s a multitude of reasons why, but what I can tell from a quick look on the subject is that they pushed for rapid growth and industrialization--even faster than the US or other capitalist countries ever had--and their food production wasn’t developing fast enough to sustain it. Part of that rapid industrialization, like the arms race, was likely for the reason that they needed to make sure to protect themselves against western, capitalist powers like the US.

>The biggest issue with the Utopian idea of Socialism or Communism is that in the Utopian hypothetical, 100% of people willingly sign up for it, and there's a 0% number of dissenters or exploiters

Why do you believe that? The way I see it, the vast majority of people--if not everyone--would subscribe to socialism, especially to communism, once they’re educated on the subject. Socialism can make everybody’s lives better, and it’s easy to see that once you start studying it with an open mind. The problem is that most people have, for most of their lives, only heard what the west and capitalist powers have wanted people to hear about alternatives (i.e. potential threats) to capitalism, and couldn’t even tell you the basic definition of socialism or communism. So if in some socialist society, there are “dissenters” or “exploiters,” then I would try to understand why, since it’s probably built on some misunderstanding of the system, and can be corrected through open dialogue and diplomacy. If they fully understand the system and still don’t wish to participate fully in it, then I wouldn’t force them into it. They’d be totally free, of course, to go off somewhere else that’s more agreeable to them--and we could probably even give them the materials they need to do so. But if they choose to stay, you would do with them whatever is pragmatic and agreed upon by the rest of scociety. If they’re seriously a drain on the system, then their privileges might be constrained or they may even be exiled, in order to preserve resources for those who do contribute. But if there are more than enough resources to go around, and the rest of society--for whatever reason--is okay with that person freeriding, then nothing really needs to be done about it.

>Currently, I'm a person who believes in the hybrid amalgamation of ideas we've cobbled together on top of capitalism to bring in some of the better elements of socialism

Can you explain what these “better elements of socialism” are? Because there’s really only two main elements of socialism: worker ownership of the means of production, and aligning production and distribution toward real human need and want, not just what is most profitable. I don’t want to assume anything about your understanding of these things, but in my experience, usually when someone says something like “elements of socialism” it’s a good sign they might not actually know what socialism is or is about.

The elements of socialism that work are the Social Support programs which subsidize or even fully cover the Medical, Food, Educational, Municipal, needs of the people, usually those within lower income, in order to help them survive. I don't believe it's perfect and there is definitely room form improvement, but these elements aren't ones that exist in a strictly capitalist system. Stuff like Medicare and Medicaid, as well as EBT, Unemployment benefits, Etc, go a long way to help out people and are definitely elements taken from socialist ideologies of as it distributes goods not out of profit but out of the desire to help in human needs.

However, your own reply shows that you also have a bjt of that slaver mentality in you. As you see no problem in forcing people to be "reeducated", a Poor choice of words as the reeducation camps were and still are prisons designed to force people to convert or face corporal punishment. Xinjiang re-education camps come to mind, trying to forcibly convert native muslims uighurs out of seeing themselves as anything but Chinese. North Korea uses reeducation as the justification for its forced labor as well. Hell, even going all the way back to Russia, the Gulag promoted reeducation through hard labor, so basically slavery to break you down and make you stop opposing the will of communism.

Also it's pretty fucked up to want people to be banished from their home for disagreeing with the government. You obviously disagree with Capitalism but nobody is trying to say you should be detained, taught the glory of capitalism, and then telling you to gtfo of the country if you refuse. The reason people oppose things would be Simple, people like to go counter to what they think everyone else does. It's human nature to always have those people who eventually decide to go against everything people tell them to do and try to do something else, just because. That's entirely how new ideas are formed, including new ideas on how to run a country. So when you start getting people a couple generations from now who, like you, think they can fix the communist country by looking back at that old system of capitalism, and have the same thought that if it wasn't for that pesky communism things would be different.

It's pretty disheartening that your response to that is "convert or leave", and there's absolutely no room for political discourse in your model. As if nobody would opppse something even if there are many net benefits of it.

Iran has the fourth largest oil reserves in the world and politicians who push for war get money from the military industrial complex if they start a war. War is a business.

Lets see here, Iran has been non stop antagonizing the west and it's neighbors for over 40 years.

They have been funding Hamas with cash and weapons to kill Jewish people in Israel and aboard.

They have helped Syria in funding, arming, and even their use of chemical weapons

Iran has been killing our troops in Iraq for years now with no retaliation and that shit has to end.

And also Iran is doing it's hardest to build nuclear warheads.

Now combine that with this There is a China/Iran weapons trading network going on

So yes, Iran will get it's teeth knocked out if they fuck with us any more. And they deserve it too.

Way to completely sensationalize what I just said.

I thought I made it pretty clear that it would be purely pragmatic. Yeah it would suck if your entire neighborhood wanted you to leave, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. If you’re a drain on society, and literally everybody in society wants you to either start contributing or leave, who’s the bad guy in that situation? Society? You don’t even have to believe in the system, just contribute to it. If you’re going to take food, water, electricity etc. from the communist society, then you better contribute to the communist society, while you’re working to changing it. That’s what us Leftists (for the most part) are doing. We’re forced to participate in capitalism even as we work to change it. So you don’t get to just hunker down and say “fuck communism I’m gonna take everything you make and do nothing to help produce it because this system is wrong!” and incur no consequences. You don’t get to enjoy the benefits of a society that you don’t participate in--whether it be capitalism or communism; that’s universal.

And I even added the qualification that, so long as society agrees to it democratically and there are resources to cover it, people would be allowed to freeload. But if resources are sparse, and/or you’ve pissed off everyone in the neighborhood, what other course of action is there (after all attempts at mediation have been exhausted) other than kicking you out?

@Team Arkos
"Iran has been killing our troops in Iraq for years now with no retaliation and that shit has to end."
The fact that you don't see the irony in that is amazing.

And the reason why the world is such a shit show.

The thing about Iran is that Trump doesn't have the votes in the House to declare war so he's trying to antagonize a war, but that's not working either. If we do go to war with Iran, and they don't shoot first, and he doesn't go through congress then that genuinely would be a impeachable offense because the power to make war in the constitution given to congress.

His only option is to try and antagonize Iran into shooting first.

So populists and euroskeptics in the Europe elections lost a couple seats. The political groups that did the best were liberals and green groups.

The only exception is France.

In Denmark the nationalist party only won 12% of the vote while last election they got 21% of the vote.
Slovakia the far right party lost massively.
In Finland the far right only has 13% of voters.

Laughs in Liberal