I’m getting reports further down, I have no idea if what anyone says is true or not. It’s borderline rule 5, but not quite there. This is a strong reminder to hate the argument, not the arguer.
- Public Roads
- Police
- Fire Departments
- Social Security for retirees
This is also socialism (not communism, he’s an idiot). I hate that socialism/communism = evil got shoved down our collective throats so goddamn hard in the middle of last century that people still fucking believe it without thought. Whatever keeps the capitalist hellscape grinding us into the dirt I guess, the old guard on both sides are still happy as hell to villainize social programs paid for by fucking tax dollars, and the tubes are too ignorant to understand that when everyone benefits that includes themselves.
I had an argument with an American once over whether health care should be free or not. They’re so brainwashed into thinking that they’ll somehow be disadvantaged by a universal healthcare system even when they’re paying out their ass for private health insurance, and at the same time blaming patrons of their restaurant who don’t tip enough for their poor income while happily accepting minimum wage from their employer. It’s absolutely mental.
We Americans have that hammered into our heads every day of our lives. Along with “God loves us but doesn’t want us to have sex.” and “America is the greatest, freeest [intentional mis-spelling] country on Earth”.
Takes a while to realize all of this is bunk. Many never realize it.
It’s true, this place fucking sucks. Welcome to America where you’re free to fuck off and die, here’s your bill, and if you dare have an abortion we’ll throw your routing carcass in jail and bill the infant for it.
Welcome to America where you’re free to fuck off and die
Technically, you’re only free to die if it’s slow and painful. If you try to hurry it along they’ll imprison you for attempting suicide. :-/
/s
The checkmark is an idiot self-identification tool.
Lol
This is why they figured out in Lakota culture many years ago that it’s not safe to use sarcasm in your language. Some people might not get it and that makes them feel left out. Others may think dumb things are true so it can only make your whole culture dumber and unable to know what is true or misinformation. The entire sarcastic subtype of comedy is basically just not done, condoned, or laughed at which I think it’s pretty awesome
it’s not safe to use sarcasm
Learning this myself the hard way.
Up until the communism part I thought they were endorsing him.
I mean, maybe they are a communist, and like the ideas and are endorsing him!
dont you mean marxist part.
If Communism is when wages go up and cost of living goes down, what is Capitalism?
assets get concentrated, rent goes up
That’s just the efficiency of the free market. Mamdani would ruin a perfect system.
This system is already about as perfect as I can handle
Next step: Everything goes to shit for normal people, they vote for fascists. Fascists take over, and people get concentrated as well, into camps.
What’s the rent there like and what happens to my student l*ans and is life outside the camp worth living anyway?
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief. “Bad news, detective. We got a situation.” “What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?” “Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.” The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?” “Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.” “Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.” He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.” “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.” I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside. “Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t. “Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up. “Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?” It didn’t seem like they did. “Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.” Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing. I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it. “Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled. Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him. “Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen. I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!” He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose. “All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.” “Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy. “Because I was afraid.” “Afraid?” “Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.” I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head. “Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.” He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
Some classic pasta right there.
Brought to you by Carl’s Jr
“I’m a central banker.” I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner.
My favorite part lol
Existence, privatized.
cost of living goes up quality of living goes up (for some) and the poor get poorer
Y’know what always annoys me about this type of statement (aside from it being socialism and not communism lol) is the amount of tax it takes isn’t even that much in the grand scheme of things, PLUS it generally pays for itself in not having to imprison people or treat emergency room visits, etc.
People just have a very hard time grasping governmental budgets, though. The cost of paying for 200k housing sounds like a lot but man is it not compared to some of the other shit we waste money on.
*social democracy
PLUS it generally pays for itself
That’s just how taxes work when done right: you take some money from everyone to make everything better so that it’s cheaper for most people to be alive.
SNAP, for example, benefits the economy to the tune of at least $7 for every dollar invested. That’s the kind of return on investment that makes greedy fucks like Pitbull cream their pants.
I heard preschool is around $8 per dollar, although it’s maybe even higher than that. Basically, ya. Frustrating when people can’t see the forest from the trees.
FYI, the user in the screenshot is not Pitbull the artist.
We can refer to him, the artist, as “Mr. Worldwide” to reduce confusion.
Still sounds like a greedy fuck so the point stands 🤷
The nypd is larger and better equipped than many national armies. The city of new york could cut them by 15%, still have a credible army and minimal navy, and fund all of this plus tax cuts.
Whoa. Is this true?! What? No. Please no.
34k-ish sworn members. They have more boots and better arms than a lot of small nations.
“But at 8 million, also a larger population than some nations”, @[email protected] added defensively.
It might just be cost? Idr the exavt statistic, and i know most cops get paid 6 figures, which i assume mos[ soldiers do not.
Based on the ads I see on the subway, NYPD correctional officers start in the mid‑US$50Ks.
Thwy write their own time sheets including overtime. So they can crack half a million if they’re greedy (with multipliers, like 9th+ hour on a holiday)
Yeah, but then they can’t line their pockets with tax money if it actually benefits people.
How the fuck is a higher minimum wage anything but our current system?
I’m not convinced it’s not satire
$20 is socialism and $30 is communism. I’m sure Karl Marx said something like that.
Why oh why do we peg it to a number rather than to a metric, even if it were Big Macs ffs!!!
They need to base politicians salaries off minimum wage. If they only earned a salary based off 4-5x the minimum wage, that shit would never be lagging as bad as it is now
this only works if they stop them from being able to hold investments in companies, and markets, they pass laws for, as well as getting rid of political donations. If we don’t do that their salary going down would only negatively affect the small number of congress members that want actual change to things.
I have a solution, make it legal to kill politicians who hold investments or take bribes. They become outlaw and anything done to them is just the consequences of their actions.
Why 4x minimum wage? How could they represent the poorest people in a country if they make quadruple the money?
If they cant live with minimum wage, its their problem to solveIt’s [supposed to be] a demanding position. Relative to the skills we should be demanding these people to have, the pay they currently get is actually not that impressive.
4 times as demanding sounds kinda funny. 254000× or whatever sounds like religious fairy tales. To the guillotines.
Wtf are you talking about? Congress’s salary is only ~178k.
Congress is the 4. Private sector is the ∞.
No one in this thread had mentioned private sector. Try to stay on topic.
It’s not the already obscenely rich accumulating more wealth to the detriment of everyone else, which is the inevitable consequence of the current system of laissez faire capitalism.
For some reason the quotes around the word free make it seem not satirical to me.
I don’t care what you call it, I want that. Call it doodoo pickle butting, if it offers that, sign me up for everyone else too.
Call it butt sex and then we can also claim this was the gay agenda we kept hearing about.
Thats the thing, im past the stupid naming and everything. I just want policies that help people and not billionaires. Call it marxism, stalinism, whatever the fuck you want.
It’s a pathetic attempt to rile the old people who remember the cold war propaganda against communism and socialism. While young people are like “So what?”
I have a 20-something son who basically grew up with MAGA shitting on everything. From his perspective ( and his friends), they don’t see anything wrong with trying out Socialism/ Marxism/ Communism. They feel like the current system of “Democratic Capitalism” has led to the rise of vicious MAGA Nazis, and weak Democratic defenders of our Nation, with the majority of Americans suffering to some degree, so why are we fighting so hard to preserve it?
When we emerge from the other side of this, don’t expect America to go back to anything resembling what it was before.
When we emerge from the other side of this, don’t expect America to go back to anything resembling what it was before.
One can only hope so. What we had before wasn’t great either and pretty much lead to how things are now.
Exactly. In a way, we agree with MAGA, it’s time for a change. They took the initiative, and turned the country in their direction, which is evil, by any definition.
The Establishment Democrats were asleep at the wheel while this played out over 40 years, despite many warnings and steady escalations. Now, we have arrived at their Promised Land, and it is as ugly as they promised, and as a student of history, I promise you it WILL get a lot uglier, likely far beyond any of our imaginations.
We can’t return to the Status Quo, because that WAS the problem. We need to create a new Paradigm, one that will not be afraid to ferociously defend Liberty from Traitors, Crooks, and worse.
Yeah sadly that doesnt work here in eastern europe because communism and even social democratism(what this actually is) is associated with the ussr which was a truly horrible regime.
Eastern Europeans are some of the most gullible people on earth. Stalin never even claimed that the USSR had achieved communism, yet somehow every grandma in his “state socialist” empire thinks full communism was reached and the state withered away like Marx predicted. They believe lies he never even told.
I understand that’s the power of propaganda, but damn… It’s been 40 years and most of them never bothered to sit down and learn what a communism is. I can’t imagine being that willfully ignorant.
can’t imagine being that willfully ignorant.
I have some trump supporting neighbors I’d like to introduce you to.
Stalin never even claimed that the USSR had achieved communism, yet somehow every grandma in his “state socialist” empire thinks full communism was reached and the state withered away like Marx predicted. They believe lies he never even told.
He did claim to be communist though - as in, he is ideologically driven to attempt to bring about communism. So calling the USSR “communist” is 100% correct. And naturally, what do you call life under communists? Communism! (This is wrong, but it’s an understandable switch-up).
Well, that’s where I have to disagree with Stalin’s official narrative. I don’t think he was a communist, I think he was an opportunist with no ideology beyond personal empowerment. I think he’d have said he believed in anything if it gave him more power.
Sounds a lot like trump
To elaborate on the evidence for this:
Marx said after the workers seize the state, it should become unnecessary and wither away. Stalin was the primary person in charge of overseeing this process. He should have been encouraging the development of community governance. Helping set up neighbourhood watches so he could defund the police. Granting power over workplaces to the trade unions. Encouraging the gift economy to grow to the point that the ruble could be cancelled. These were always the steps in the plan to get from the USSR to a communist system.
Stalin didn’t want to do that, because it would have made him less powerful. Instead of defunding the police, he expanded their powers. Instead of empowering the trade unions, he put down workers’ revolts. This is the opposite of communism.
I’m surprised it’s not more associated with France since social democracy is what the have going on.
‘“Free” stuff is actually paid by our taxes, checkmate liberal!’
‘…uh, yeah?’
It’s funny that they never complain about the “free” roads or the “free” police.
I feel like this doesn’t get called out more often as the straw man that it is. Right-wingers just love mocking the left for supposedly wanting “free” stuff.
I find it fascinating how nowadays, basic human decency is called “woke” and “communism”.
It’s the primary symptom of being infected with the broke mind virus, which effectively all republicans suffer.
Should bring actual communism back toexplain the difference.
I think this is why we’ll never have a UBI/leisure society/Star Trek style utopia. We are miserable biological apes and revel in other’s misery.
Fuck that; this aggressively horrible crab bucketing is cultivated. Pretending decades of capitalist propaganda every god damn second of your waking life while you live in a fantasy wirld based on nonsense abstractions is ‘just a staye of nature’ is insane.
And yet, railing against observed reality is …???
Its where we are, and whay has been done, it is tge past we must reckon with, but it is not the default for humanity, and it was wrought by human hands.
If it can be made by us, it can be unmade by us.
Amen brother. Anyone who says “that’s just the way it is” is giving up. That’s not the way it is, that’s the way it was MADE. By powerful evil people, and we can remake it.
Please don’t assume masculinity, but yes.
I would phrase as ‘that’s the way it is because of constant work to make it that way, and it was not and will not always be that way’.
Amen sibling?
Hmm, I can’t hear that in Hulk Hogan’s voice, but for you, I’ll make the exception. 😜
We […] revel in other’s misery.
Well, i don’t.
Fantastic. I’m hungry, when can I come over?
Now.
If you’re actually hungry I can help you find food.
There’s plenty of studies showing that conservatism, sadism, and psychopathy correlate.
This is one of the main reasons Republicans don’t like education. They want to dismantle it and go to a charter system. That way they can profit off education and keep people stupid.
You forgot “woke communism”
i wish communism was as cool as republicans make it sound
What we really should have:
Fully automated luxury gay space communism!
Powerbottomin to end poverty and sickness
I’d be down for that
It’s even cooler
The gulags in Siberia confirms!
You realize there are currently concentration camps in the US eating Americans’ tax dollars right?
The problems that the soviet union had weren’t exclusive to communism, they were exclusive to corruption.
While either system can become corrupted by bad actors, ideologically, capitalism rewards selfishness, and individualism, while communism encourages sharing and community.
At its base, capitalism is literally impossible without exploitation of the surplus value workers create. Capitalism cannot exist without profit, and profit cannot exist without stealing money from workers.
Stop taking everyone for an American.
Also: you just had to shoehorn in a whatabout the USA in there hadn’t you. Got no other arguments? 😁
Then don’t read that part, it doesn’t change the rest of what I said.
Whereas your entire comment was a whatabout the soviet union?
Just had to argue against a strawman, eh? Weird ass thought process when I was just meeting you at your own level, bruv.
And Guantanamo Bay, black sites, Alligator Auschwitz, and the American prison population confirms the downsides of capitalism?
One shit iteration of “communism” that by definition didn’t meet any of the requirements to be called communism can’t be held up forever to be the boogeyman to prevent progress.
Communism (from Latin communis ‘common, universal’)[1][2] is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement,[1] whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products in society based on need.[3][4][5] A communist society entails the absence of private property and social classes,[1] and ultimately money[6] and the state.[7][8][9]
The USSR:
- Common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange - not achieved, state owned but not common owned
- Allocates products in society based on need - not achieved
- Absence of private property - partially achieved, state owned
- Absence of social classes - not achieved
- Absence of money - not achieved
- Absence of the state - fucking lol
Someone has filled your head with propaganda.
The gulags were the just the name of their prison system and most of them were actually west of the Caucasus.
Oh, and America now imprisons more people (by numbers and per capita) than the USSR ever did.
Also America’s prison system is for profit, encouraging them to incarcerate as many people as possible.
You are at beast don’t know what you’re talking about. Иисправительно-трудовые лагерея (ЛАГ in GULAG) are specifically, namely, explicitly concentration camps that used forced labour to kill people. It’s very distinct from the regular prison system, which used inhuman conditions to kill people at lower rates.
The gulags were concentration camps my dude, people got sent there for breaking laws like “criticism of the government”. Most “prisoners” died there.
Also, you just couldn’t not make a “whatabout the USA” lol. Such a trope.
Ah yes when discussing history you can only discuss the specific time period and CANNOT make any comparisons to modern day otherwise some idiot lemmy computer janitor will say it’s a trope or a fallacy or some stupid shit
You are factually incorrect.
I’ll believe it when I see it. Not to say that I’m not willing to give it a shot, fuck knows what we’re doing now isn’t fucking working.
We have never found a perfect political/economic system. That’s why it’s so important that we continue to evolve what we have to be better. I feel like this has stalled out in this country and we are seeing the fallout live.
What’s next? “Free” school, “free” parks, “free” police, “free” firefighters, “free” military, “free” health inspections? Pay up, freeloader!
Woah woah woah stop there Lenin
You are a special kind of stupid (and brainwashed) if you think any of those things listed are bad
And also completely unrelated to Communism.
