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  1. #21
    Old God endersblade's Avatar
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    I'm not gonna lie, my eyes glazed over and I started drooling about 2 sentences in.
    Quote Originally Posted by Warwithin View Post
    Politicians put their hand on the BIBLE and swore to uphold the CONSTITUTION. They did not put their hand on the CONSTITUTION and swear to uphold the BIBLE.
    Quote Originally Posted by Adam Jensen View Post
    Except maybe Morgan Freeman. That man could convince God to be an atheist with that voice of his . . .
    Quote Originally Posted by LiiLoSNK View Post
    If your girlfriend is a girl and you're a guy, your kid is destined to be some sort of half girl/half guy abomination.

  2. #22
    Quote Originally Posted by endersblade View Post
    I'm not gonna lie, my eyes glazed over and I started drooling about 2 sentences in.
    We assumed it was a blog post, but it was actually an advanced warlock spell: Stupefy. If you had read the entire thing, you'd now be a full fledged #MAGA Republican.

  3. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by newyorkerr View Post
    New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, as you may have heard, made the biggest mistake any elite leftist can. He admitted what he really believes. Lamenting the inability of his government to plan every aspect of real estate in New York City “to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be,” de Blasio identified property rights as the great obstacle to his ambitions. “What’s been hardest,” he said, “is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property.” His comments have attracted a wide range of criticism.

    First of all, the mayor of New York City, the financial capital of the world, complaining about capitalism is much like the mayor of Los Angeles complaining about the entertainment industry holding his town back. If not for the centuries long embrace of private property rights in New York City, de Blasio would be mayor of an impoverished fishing village. Second, his indictment of private property seems to stop just short of trespassing his own. There is nothing stopping de Blasio from handing his multiple rental properties over to the New York City government, yet these rental properties continue to net him thousands of dollars every month.

    But as out of touch and hypocritical as his statement may have been, it serves as a valuable reminder of what is really behind the current “socialist moment” within the Democratic Party. The media has made cult heroes of left wing radicals like Bernie Sanders, who are hard at work trying to create new generation of socialist extremists by extolling the virtues of failed Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke and New York representative elect Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. De Blasio attributes this radical energy to a “socialistic impulse” in communities of people seeking “things to be planned in accordance” to their needs.

    There is an impulse, but it is not socialistic. It is tyrannical, and it is not new. This tyrannical impulse lives within all of us. The desire to set ourselves apart and write special rules for others is the dark side of human nature. It is that immutable impulse, which ever leads men and nations toward ruin, that our Founding Fathers set out to harness and neutralize with the Constitution. They knew no power on earth could turn people into angels. So they consciously devised a political system of divided government and dispersed powers, and cultivated an economic system of free market capitalism, anchored in equal individual property rights.

    De Blasio is absolutely right that the great threat to his ideological goals are private property and the rule of law that protects it. What really frustrates him is that in America, everyone else enjoys the same rights he does. That is the real story about the lament of the New York City mayor, and the reason that boomlet socialism is enjoying a surge on the left.

    Despite what “fake news” tells you, there is nothing populist about socialism. It has never empowered the “little guy.” In socialist systems, the little guy always ends up in bread lines or behind bars. Nor does it, as conservatives sometimes charge, mire everyone in equal misery. On the contrary, in socialist countries, the wealthy and the connected always make out like bandits. Literally. That is why, throughout history, it is always elites like de Blasio, O’Rourke, Ocasio Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, along with their allies in academia, entertainment industry, and the mainstream media, who lead the charge to push forward this disgraced ideology.

    If and when the revolution comes, they expect to be the ones calling the shots. They think they deserve to wield that power over the rest of us deplorables, bitterly clinging to the wrong side of history. Such self satisfied and power hungry elites are exactly the kind of people our Constitution set up to thwart.
    The frustration expressed by de Blasio is a positive outcome of that system, one we should all be eager to protect.

    Source: https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign...de-for-america


    True. Just look at Russia and other 14 independent nations.
    What about Canada, Sweden, Denmark? You people don't understand what people actually want. No one wants a socialist economy.

  4. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by Kangodo View Post
    You are living in a purely capitalistic society.
    Worker's and consumer's rights and regulations say we aren't.

  5. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Kangodo View Post
    Yeah, that is not how it works.
    You don't have to be full "AnCap" in order to be capitalist.
    Would you like to give a definition of a "purely capitalistic" society?
    Can you give one that isn't actually incorrect?

    Workers' and consumers' rights and regulations are things that are there to inhibit the influence of market forces towards conditions like those at the dawn of the industrial revolution.

    There is no purely capitalistic society here on Earth. It sounds like something that belongs more in Hell anyways, if you believe that sort of crap.

  6. #26
    There's a lot of space between "let the market sort out EVERYTHING" and "literally Stalin's Russia".

    People like to prop up either side as a boogeyman. The left unequivocally blames capitalism for everything from unemployment to global warming, while the right equates anything remotely social(ist) with hordes of rabid communists coming to send you to the nearest gulag. But it's not that simple. What ever is?

    There's definitely some serious problems with unchecked capitalism. Having a driving force in the form of personal wealth and property is all well and good, but you need SOME regulation or things run away from you, fast. There is a real question of how far you want to go, and who you want to benefit from prosperity; and many will say it's not exclusively "the 1%". I don't want to live in a society where I can fall and break my leg and go bankrupt as a result, just so we can say we have more billionaires than some other place.

    That being said, I also don't want unchecked socialism. Private property and market structures drive innovation and competition, and ultimately improve life for everyone. You can trust selfish motives more than you can trust communal ideology, at least at this point in our overall social development. People should be allowed to hoard wealth to some extent, if that is what they want; the crux of the matter lying, of course, in the "to some extent" part of that sentence.

    I generally believe the old adage that capitalism is the least terrible systems of the terrible systems we've found practicable so far - IF, and only if, it is kept in check by socially oriented legislation and regulation.

    People, especially in the US, tend to over-exaggerate the impact of regulation. Demanding affordable health insurance will not collapse the market economy. Asking for an education system in which you don't have to bankrupt yourself to go to college will not herald the end of American civilization. Nobody is asking for all the billionaires to be lined up and shot; just for the gap between them and everyone else to be a little smaller. We will still have the Amazons, Apples, and Microsofts of the world coming and going if the middle and working class end up a bit better off. The very suggestion that the system either involves the starving and the rich, or just the hungry is ludicrous and dangerously beside the point.

    Other countries have managed to pull it off, to varying degrees. Northern Europe is one example, though admittedly it doesn't just work as an infinitely scalable model. Central Europe is more like it. Japan is another example, famously touting itself as being "entirely middle class" even though the reality is, of course, quite different; but it has some systems that work, and could be adapted for countries like the US. Naturally, some of the systems also DON'T work, or could use improvement. But that's another piece of rhetoric misdirection I despise - pointing to imperfect solution and disqualifying them because they are not flawless is a ridiculous notion. Nothing is ever flawless. Neoliberal capitalism sure isn't. And yet somehow its defenders will be very quick to point out the many problems alternative solutions have, while downplaying or outright ignoring the flaws already present in their own home.

    I don't pretend to have a comprehensive solution, or anything more than an incipient notion, really. I also am very much aware that this is a hugely complex issues with far-reaching and extremely complicated global implications. But I also know that there are some serious, precarious, damn near fatal flaws building up. And they HAVE to be dealt with very soon, in some way or another.

  7. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    Yeah, nothing there has anything at all to do with "socialism", it has to do with central city planning.
    That's the part the amuses me the most about OP... Mr Newyorker...as someone from New York, the fact that the city has been struggling with urban planning and services for decades is so blatantly obvious I can't grasp how Blasio's statement can be misconstrued like that.

    This has been an issue under de Blasio, Bloomberg, Giuliani, Dinkins, Koch, Beame etc. This has been an issue for fucking decades on end.

  8. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by Celista View Post
    I would love for posters like the OP to live in a purely capitalistic society, where you pay tolls for every road, no public libraries or minimum wage exists and every school is a private school. If you spout partisan drivel on par with the sort of rambling you hear from mentally ill homeless people you deserve to work for $0.50/hour.
    Do you imply he would ever feel (or notice) the lack of public libraries?

  9. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by Flarelaine View Post
    Do you imply he would ever feel (or notice) the lack of public libraries?
    You make it sound like ebooks (and piracy) don't exist.

  10. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by Kangodo View Post
    Yeah, that is not how it works.
    You don't have to be full "AnCap" in order to be capitalist.
    Yeah you don't know what a purely capitalistic society is. Probably because there is not one that exists in the world currently. Any sort of governmental law/regulation that impacts free trade and impacts supply and demand changes the structure of the economy. Any sort of social/governmental ownership is socialist in nature.



    That 4chan post will never stop being relevant.

  11. #31
    Quote Originally Posted by Kangodo View Post
    If you think socialism is when the government does stuff you are literally a walking meme.
    That is clearly not what I said.

  12. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by Kangodo View Post
    > No one
    Billions of people literally want it. But okay.


    You are living in a purely capitalistic society.
    Capitalism doesn't mean you don't have roads, public libraries, etc.
    Libraries were made because the capitalist NEEDED a more educated workforce.
    Minimumwage was introduced by capitalists to lower the revolutionary tendencies.

    Just because a capitalist isn't stupid to accelerate revolution doesn't mean that the society is any less capitalist.


    It's your typical AnCap troll talking shit and showing the entire world he has no clue as to what socialism is, how it works, etc.
    So you’re just making things up or do you believe universal healthcare & education are social economics?

    There also aren’t even a billion people in the US which is the country this is talking about it.

  13. #33
    Immortal Zelk's Avatar
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    we just going to point at things and say they're socialist now then?

  14. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zelk View Post
    we just going to point at things and say they're socialist now then?
    Seems to work for antifa and calling everything nazis...
    O Flora, of the moon, of the dream. O Little ones, O fleeting will of the ancients. Let the hunter be safe. Let them find comfort. And let this dream, their captor, Foretell a pleasant awakening

  15. #35
    TheHill is a good new source. However, it's an editorial, one guy's opinion.
    .

    "This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can."

    -- Capt. Copeland

  16. #36
    Stealthed Defender unbound's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sky High View Post
    don't see a source and I imagine that's deliberate. considering what unfocused garbage this is.
    He added the source. And you are right that it is unfocused garbage...consistent with the vast majority of The Hill articles.

  17. #37
    Quote Originally Posted by newyorkerr View Post
    Anyone who comes from the Eastern Block, and aged 35+ will attest to the truthfulness of that statement.
    Hey now, not everyone personally familiar with the Eastern Bloc is an uneducated moron. Take that opinion and shove it.
    As far as your article, I had trouble making it past the first paragraph, tbph. My eyes started rolling backwards so much, it became difficult to read.

  18. #38
    Quote Originally Posted by unbound View Post
    He added the source. And you are right that it is unfocused garbage...consistent with the vast majority of The Hill articles.
    The Hill is an alright source, most of the time. But since this is an opinion article, it is really bad. Not just an opinion article, but one made by one of the worst Republicans on the planet.

  19. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by newyorkerr View Post
    New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, as you may have heard, made the biggest mistake any elite leftist can. He admitted what he really believes. Lamenting the inability of his government to plan every aspect of real estate in New York City “to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be,” de Blasio identified property rights as the great obstacle to his ambitions. “What’s been hardest,” he said, “is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property.” His comments have attracted a wide range of criticism.

    First of all, the mayor of New York City, the financial capital of the world, complaining about capitalism is much like the mayor of Los Angeles complaining about the entertainment industry holding his town back. If not for the centuries long embrace of private property rights in New York City, de Blasio would be mayor of an impoverished fishing village. Second, his indictment of private property seems to stop just short of trespassing his own. There is nothing stopping de Blasio from handing his multiple rental properties over to the New York City government, yet these rental properties continue to net him thousands of dollars every month.

    But as out of touch and hypocritical as his statement may have been, it serves as a valuable reminder of what is really behind the current “socialist moment” within the Democratic Party. The media has made cult heroes of left wing radicals like Bernie Sanders, who are hard at work trying to create new generation of socialist extremists by extolling the virtues of failed Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke and New York representative elect Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. De Blasio attributes this radical energy to a “socialistic impulse” in communities of people seeking “things to be planned in accordance” to their needs.

    There is an impulse, but it is not socialistic. It is tyrannical, and it is not new. This tyrannical impulse lives within all of us. The desire to set ourselves apart and write special rules for others is the dark side of human nature. It is that immutable impulse, which ever leads men and nations toward ruin, that our Founding Fathers set out to harness and neutralize with the Constitution. They knew no power on earth could turn people into angels. So they consciously devised a political system of divided government and dispersed powers, and cultivated an economic system of free market capitalism, anchored in equal individual property rights.

    De Blasio is absolutely right that the great threat to his ideological goals are private property and the rule of law that protects it. What really frustrates him is that in America, everyone else enjoys the same rights he does. That is the real story about the lament of the New York City mayor, and the reason that boomlet socialism is enjoying a surge on the left.

    Despite what “fake news” tells you, there is nothing populist about socialism. It has never empowered the “little guy.” In socialist systems, the little guy always ends up in bread lines or behind bars. Nor does it, as conservatives sometimes charge, mire everyone in equal misery. On the contrary, in socialist countries, the wealthy and the connected always make out like bandits. Literally. That is why, throughout history, it is always elites like de Blasio, O’Rourke, Ocasio Cortez, Elizabeth Warren, along with their allies in academia, entertainment industry, and the mainstream media, who lead the charge to push forward this disgraced ideology.

    If and when the revolution comes, they expect to be the ones calling the shots. They think they deserve to wield that power over the rest of us deplorables, bitterly clinging to the wrong side of history. Such self satisfied and power hungry elites are exactly the kind of people our Constitution set up to thwart.
    The frustration expressed by de Blasio is a positive outcome of that system, one we should all be eager to protect.

    Source: https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign...de-for-america

    This opinion piece is so uninformed, incoherent, rambling, and sensationalist, it could have been written by one of our resident alt-righters. The Hill must really be going downhill if they're allowing crap like that on their site.

  20. #40
    Reforged Gone Wrong The Stormbringer's Avatar
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    What an incredibly biased and one-sided piece we see here. 8/8 gr8 b8 m8.

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