The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

Don't worry, it was obvious enough. My response was similarly dry. British humour is a strange and wonderful beast

not true. not everything is as simple and can be boiled down to a two party system.

I just think the american right generally don't represent an Australian's interests and he's obviously growing up surrounded by old political references in the american right-wing flavor and nothing else. I wonder where that's coming from. There must be a certain environment.

you can't grow up bigoted if you're the only one around you that has different opinions. that's a state of being that just cannot survive.

besides that are you not responding to my posts one page back?

This is every american politics thread ever.

Socialism means something different to different people. Americans use communism and socialism as synonyms.

We speak the same language but there's very little communication.

IKR??

it makes so little sense.

either they think the whole of europe isn't the slightest bit socialist or they think the whole of europe is like north korea.

either way it's so ridiculously far-fetched.

Socialism is a watered down version of communism. It has the same guiding principles, with one difference:

Communism requires a revolution, socialism requires bully votes from the poor.

Yeah socialism, comunism, sexism, islam, christianism... mean something different to everyone of us se we can't talk about any of those and find no universal reality. We should them live all alone in isolation and never interact with each other.

Err, nope sorry. Communism as I see it is mainly what places like the USSR did. A completely planned out and 100% centralized economy. No free market at all, no democracy either. The government says "we need this much of that good in 2 years, produce it". Obviously can't work,
as managing a state down to such details is simply impossible. Reality isn't a game of Anno and Germany isn't a watered down version of the USSR

A state employing socialistic concepts is (or can be, there is a broad spectrum) quite different.
The concept I'd favor is a state that has a free market, controlled only where it goes wrong and a socialistic social security that provides people with a basic fallback should they be befallen by bad luck.
Simply put the state should ensure that a person who is sick gets to see a doctor,
a person who is hungry should get something to eat and
a person who needs to sleep should have a dry and warm place to do so.
No need to make the free market a game about "will you starve or not?". "Will you have more than the bare minimum or not?" is more than enough. Nobody wants the bare minimum. People living on social security around here do have to basically turn around every € twice before spending it. That sucks and you want to get away from that situation.

It's beyond me why anybody would advocate to let a sick person die, let a hungry person starve or let a person have to sleep under a bridge.

Unsurprisingly what I describe is what Germany, and many other EU states, try to do. I sure am a product of the environment I grow up in.

I'd tend to agree, but with the caveat that there needs to be a centralized institution called "the government" that provides an equal playing field, at least a common minimum level of existence to everyone.

Yeah there are some solution at the horizon. Although I doubt without the governments pushing towards them there would be much reason to go after them. Who was it that paid the research to even understand there is climate research? Probably not private companies. Who is it that puts massive taxes on the old, bad-for-climate ways of producing energy? Not private companies. At least here in Germany the price of the gasoline you buy is nearly 60% taxes. If you were to take away those 60% Tesla and other alternative concepts would look quite a bit worse to the consumer. Electric cars get taxes advantages on top of this. And they are still only developing rather slowly.

If I read that I think the government needs to build schools and provide the men with the means to attend it. This includes giving them fish until they can feed themselves, so they have time to visit the school. It also includes ensuring the men is healthy and has a place to live.
The perfect sentence to explain what a welfare state needs to do
If you cut away all that welfare you basically don't teach the men to fish at all. All you do is tell him "oh you are hungry? Well better look up how to fish then, good luck".

There undoubtedly are many examples of failed ways to help people. Helping people is not easy. It's incredibly hard. But that isn't a reason not to try it.

I do not know enough about what happend in the US. I know that my current understanding of the US as a state is that it isn't a very strong welfare state and generally not a very good example of how a state should function. I mean they still make drama about "do we need health care for people who are sick?!" and they somehow managed to boil down their whole presidential election to ..... what it is.
But what comes to mind is that the welfare state in the end was a reaction to the unacceptable levels of poverty created by a capitalistic market without bounds. It was an attempt to solve a problem. Probably not a very well thought out attempt, but just not trying to solve the problem won't make it better.
If you let capitalism on the lose without any control you get slums next to thick walls beyond the rich build their mansions.
Capitalism is a strong force and the concept of a free market is a good one, but you can't just let it spiral completely out of control and hope it will end well. It has not gone well in the past/even right now and the reaction to that failure was the welfare state.

EDIT:
Oh, @elodea I just stumped upon an example of a problem with a monopoly on reddit that might strike close to your home.
Australien Internet

Starting a new internet company is pretty hard if you're not google. And even google has troubles in the US, putting fiber cables into the ground everywhere is too costly even for them. You can't just start a new company to undercut Telstra. You don't have cables in the ground to do so.

Around here the government is basically forcing the big players who have the cables to rent them out to smaller companies so that there may be competition. I have pretty cheap unlimited internet because of that.

I am sure you have an explanation that involves the government fiddling with the market too long somehow?

USSR as it's name says was socialist. Communism=no property and no state
Socialism=no property but a state
Social democracy=property with social aids.

this is nuts. you guys are crazy.

you didn't even address my point : how is it we're not anything like north-korea ? or russia? or china? politically.

there's never been an instance of communism that hasn't devolved into a dictatorship. not even once.

also basically none of the principles that got the people sold on the idea are represented in the end result.

Communism means today what the dictators that rule over these countries have twisted it into.

Socialism on the other hand has also been the result of revolutions. however has never turned into a dictatorship.

this is baby-level stuff that I'm handing you but obviously the disparities between the two span a much longer list.

my approach is this : the world-wide majority defines the meaning of a term. sematic origins of the world have neigh-null weight in the balance. perfect example is communism.

I refuse the definition the word communism bore when Karl Marx came up with it. much like (Harry Potter reference) Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem is no longer a prized possession but an object defiled with black magic she only wants destroyed now. The people by and large see it as a Horcrux first and foremost, nevermind that it was once Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem.

The people who agree with the ideas of "Capital" (1867) or "The Communist Manifesto" (1848) probably are ready to admit they no longer own the word. Putin does. Kim Jong-Il does. ect.

Which is fine. You don't need the cool word on the block for ideas to survive/persist/spread/grow. they can just create a new word and use that to define their ideas. Marxism is already taken and means something else but it would really have been on-point to me but I think this illustrates my point : true-at-heart communists who aren't for dictatorship and all could take the term for their own. they could easily outnumber socioeconomists.

You'll never find a term which you can't find a good definition for online. the online community is busy. wikipedia is active and Urban Dictionary (if you can stomach the occasional vulgarity although if you're searching for serious terms such as these good luck finding any) gives the modern-day global consensus definitions for a lot of things. Urban Dictionary's article on communism is very historic at first but you only have to go to second place answer and beyond to find what I'm talking about and even then the first answer spells it out towards the end.

let's try socialism.

yuuup I find that to be pretty accurate.

see what I mean?

interacting with people on the same plane of definition is much easier than you say it is.

I'll be the first to tell you that Babel stands in the way of any word that comes out of your mouth having the one meaning you gave it when saying it to the listener.

but we do have tools to fight back.

If you mean to tell someone you think karl marx's ideal were a bunch of boloni you can say "19th century communism is boloni!"
If you mean to tell someone you think socialism and communist dictatorships are one and the same you can, you'll look like an idiot but you can. You just say: "modern-day socialism equals modern-day communism."

you can also say "kappa" if you wish to loose even more credibility and sound like you need to be part of a flock and loose all individuality and originality so bad the global IQ of said flock is the last of your concerns.

A parte : how in the hell is sexism a hard word to define????

in other news:
the democratic republic of the Congo now defines both what is a democracy and a republic.

seriously how thick are you??


when they say "diet soda" do you also buy that in an effort to get thinner??? "but it says diet on it! so it must be true ! "

So a guy invents a word but you, as almighty ruler of this world, define its meaning. Nice.

I stated what those words mean in my neighbourhood, if it is different in your's don't hit me please. And by the way, you used one the most vaguely defined terms "right-wing". I don't care what a bunch of Brits seated on the right side used to think. But people keep using that label to group completely different ideas that even differ from one country to another.

THIS is my response to your post one page back, as I simply do not have the time do repeat a 3-post-long post 19 or 23 more times...

: > "I only have memes and "F u" to resort to now because my resources to argue with have run dry and I'd be resorting to gut feeling by now and potentially damaging my credibility further."

seems my post went amiss.

no I am not dictating anything. I'm looking it up. there is a global consensus.

and semantic origins of words are as useful to their meanings as a flame paint job to the speed of any vehicle.

I don't see you defining slavery the way it was defined when the word was invented. (or do i?)

also I'm not the one claiming USSR was socialist or that the Democratic Republic of the Congo is any of the things it's name claims it is (would you go as far as to say that, though?)

We are promoting democratic socialism, not Marxist Socialism.

both of these are still a billion times better than what he's actually referring to when saying the words communism or socialism.

What credibility? I am human garbage because I do not follow your ideals to the letter. We already established this.

If YOU want to keep arguing, keep quoting my last quotes, over and over, from the last 70 pages, and arguing with them. I can copy-paste them to this page for you, if you're really that lazy, because that's what I'll basically end up doing if I must continue, and what you have pretty much been doing yourself since you ran out of anything original to say after the first 5 pages.

Remember that time when you said "vehicles can't be used for mass murders like guns", a week before the Nice attack? Pepperidge Farm remembers...

@thetrophysystem you say "you" and quote Stuart.

an aside : you really do have a knack for insensitivity. I don't know why it should be me that has to explain this to you but : getting uppity about terrorism coaligning with your forum debate stance is just so incredibly vain and self-righteous not to mention really really fuckingg insensitive.

I think you're confusing pointing out the discrepancies and dangers in something with a dire need to "win out".

the thing is, by metaphorically having the murderous vehicle on your side you're not proving anything to anyone apart that you fail to see what this debate is about : attempting to save lives.


you claim that as your "victory"? look what it takes to tear it to shreds:

and you managed to ignore it then and upon re-quoting it now. You see life through a prism. one that prevents you from seeing any cracks or flaws in what you say.

@cola_colin

yup, here's the thing about this recent article making the rounds - it's inaccurate click bait. And I don't say that because it jives against what i think, but because it doesn't make any sense compared with actual reality.

1. I don't pay anywhere near that price and I'm on telstra HFC 100mbps. My plan is actually comparable to the price they list for US internet 20mbps. Far be it from me to be a telstra apologist, I don't exactly like them and i'll get into why in a minute. But facts have to be accurately represented if people want to make a case.
   
2. Over the past 10 years, telstra internet prices have gone down while bandwidth has gone up like 20 fold quite literally as a result of competition. They were directly responding to optus both pre-emptively and reactively. Telstra is a bit more expensive than other ISP's, but in my area they are also the best quality provider by far. Optus charges slightly less but constantly drops out and has huge congestion on their international lines during peak time. I pay extra for quality.
3. There is a lot of competition that i could switch to if i wanted. IInet, internode, tpg, optus etc. This claim of monopoly actually has not much backing.
   http://point-topic.com/free-analysis/australia-broadband-overview/
   
4. Fiber was already getting started by private enterprise all on it's own a few years back before the NBN. The government saw this and said hey let's copy what everyone is doing and beat them to it (another terrible idea which again i'll get to in a second). Telstra was already doing it's own prototyping in small areas, and there were other companies planning fiber rollouts in city apartments as the first step of expanding on already existing business fiber infrastructure.
5. NBN, the company that was supposed to do fiber work is/was set up to run as private enterprise with profit motive and as such had come up with FTTH as the best solution. The problem is that it was also controlled by the government. Political machinations over the past few years have been doing nothing but ******* around with it instead of just letting it do it's thing. Corruption and crony capitalism got its claws in, and government ordered NBN to buy out Telstra rotting copper network and switch to essentially FTTN.
6. The last and most important point to make - the one i said i was getting to - is that the origin of telstra is that of a government monopoly. Government created the natural infrastructure monopoly in the first place, and then they privatised it in a wholly corrupt and inept manner. Frankly, i'm surprised that we have as much competition as we do seeing as government made damn sure that only one company had vast majority ownership of all infrastructure.

simple thing vehicles are primarily meant for bringing a person from point a to point b .... what are guns meant for? to kill or wound ... but still more the former ... because if you talk about selfdefence you could use a tazer without killing a person or being attacking you ...

if people however use ANY object to kill then realy that's their cause for missusing the object ... a gun however IS all about that ... yes you can kill with a kitchenknife or a car, a drill or yes a friggin cup but that's not the purpose they were made for .... what's a guns purpose? it launches projectiles at high velocity ... that is what it does ... so other than hunting or sports which is done by a very low percentage of a population what practical use does it have for civilians other than to shoot at someone?

people make comparisons of people dying getting hit by cars more than guns ... so what do you realy think that makes the deaths caused by guns any better? "oh it's a lower number so it's ok, right?" it does't change the fact that these deaths were almost always planned ... people die of car accidents, alcohol, drugs and smoking but compared to deaths by guns these simply tend happen ... they aren't planned but caused by carelessness for the most part ...

almost any death by gun however happened because the person to use it for that death ... be it murder or suicide