That makes a lot more sense than "social democracies “stomp Asia”. There is absolutely a global effort to maintain the status quo that keeps many non-western nations suppressed. I don’t think social democracy, as a system, is the culprit. It’s all a big game for the ultra-wealthy everywhere, and most politicians quickly learn they need to play the game to stay in the game. It won’t stop until we create and implement systems that are impossible to corrupt.

Lol, ok.

I’m reeeaaaally not interested in a reddit-style gotcha debate. But, since you seem adamant on persuading me to agree with your opinions; how does social democracy stomp on Asia? How is my assessment of China’s political system wrong?

Nah, I just don’t click on random links. I’m not familiar with tankie.tube.

Not sure exactly what you’re referring to. Who told me what?

Did you start a discussion so you can inaccurately categorize people’s opinions and try to brow beat them when they don’t agree with your false equivalence statements? I’m just telling you what I think would be a good solution. An easy, smooth transfer towards a blend of systems that seem to work well in some Scandinavian countries.

I don’t think you understand social democracy well enough. The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway all have social democracy. South Asia/East does not. Assuming you’re mostly referring to China, since you referenced dengism earlier, China is an authoritarian regime with a strict class system and unevenly regulated capitalism favoring the authoritarian class at the top. That is the opposite of social democracy.

Nope. It’s social-democratic capitalism, or capitalism with massive guard rails. The emphasis is on guiding society to a more equitable default. We would need to prosecute all of the current billionaire class and their bought politicians and have a massive redistribution of wealth, in the form of reparations. People can choose how they want to live their lives from there. A soft reset.

I don’t think it’s wrong for people who want to lead organizations to have more wealth than others, there just needs to be limits to it. It should be illegal to exploit others in any way. You know; life, liberty, and justice for all.

It’s more about allowing vestiges of the current system to exist to ease the transfer to a more equitable system. When systems are ended abruptly, it tends to have unforseen consequences. We need to treat society as the living construct that it is. It’s very ill right now, so we put it on life support by infusing some socialism, let it stabilize, then add more socialism until we have a system that is truly egalitarian.

I don’t think there’s an inherent problem with people having a (reasonably) large amount of wealth. We just need to make it so having that wealth doesn’t harm anyone else, or deter anyone else from gaining wealth. In other words, let money obsessed people have some money, just make it an amount that every human could achieve, if they wanted to, and make it kind of pointless by making sure every living being has the best quality of life possible, whether they pursue wealth or not. Like the Scandinavian model, we need a system that steers society towards altruism, community, and egalitarianism.

We need tax brackets that go up to 100%. If you own more than $100m in assets, everything above that should be taxed 100%. We need to remove the possibility for billionaires to exist. We also need to dissolve massive corporations by enforcing/expanding antitrust laws. Stop the concentration of wealth, in any form. There should be zero incentive to concentrate wealth in the first place, which could be achieved (at least, at first) with a significant amount of socialism infused into our current capitalist systems.

The power bottoms really do a lot of the heavy lifting. I believe in you power bottoms! ❤️

MY NAME IS

Millennial here. I have had several unaddressed health issues for at least 5 years. I can’t afford to go through another diagnosis/ treatment process because I’m still recovering, financially, from the unrelated health issues I had diagnosed and partially fixed with surgery a few years ago. I also haven’t seen a dentist in at least 8 years. I work way too much and I’m barely keeping my head above water despite doing everything right and living frugally. I’m hoping whatever is going on with me isn’t something terminal, and that I can last long enough to move to a country that supports its people. The US sure as shit isn’t it.

Thank you for your thoughtful response! I think you’re right that the current circumstances aren’t sustainable and we need to establish some systems to address our issues. I already talked to my boss about trying to keep our hours closer to the amount we’re actually being paid for. He’s an ostrich-style “conservative”, so of course he tried to gaslight me about how hard he’s been working me. I think we’re going to have a face to face talk when I get into town and, if we can’t set clear, reasonable boundaries, I’ll have to come up with a different solution…

Providing counter-arguments you clearly haven’t considered is not a bad-faith argument. Lobbing insults and strawman arguments (I never made the case that the majority of people have to drive) is arguing in bad faith.

I work in many different locations. Some of them remote. I often bring large equipment with me. More than that, my work days tend to be anywhere from 10 hours to 16 hours long, typically with a lot of manual labor included. Some of my commutes can be 2 hours one way. I’ve worked plenty of those 16 hour days with 4 hours of driving added on top. The thought of riding a bike or running the public transit gauntlet (which, will typically double or quadruple the commute times in my area) is repulsive.

I think you’re massively over-simplifying this issue.

You can live in a densely populated city and still need to travel long distances regularly though… Especially if you’re poor.

Oil products are used in a lot more things than just cars. But, you’re right. I’ll just ride a bike next time I have to travel 70 miles for one of my regular gigs.

Thank you! This is exactly what I needed to hear. We had a long talk last night and we agreed to give each other some grace for now. We have some stuff to work on but we’re going to focus on a little emotional triage for now, and continue to talk through the issues when things settle down a bit for me.

Yeah, grieving my girl has been the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through. She was my child. She was a very well trained and well loved dog, didn’t leave my side for the first 5 years I had her. I think I’ll be grieving her for a few years at least. I wish I could take a break from work to process that a little more but, unfortunately I work for a small company and I just moved from freelance to a salary position after working for 5 years to get this spot… I talked to my boss today about keeping my schedule closer to 40 hours. He offered a half-solution, so we’ll see how that goes…

As an American, so do I. Unfortunately, a lot of people are deciding it’s not worth it. The good thing is, the more skilled labor that leaves the US, the less GDP the US will have in the long run. In other words, skilled labor leaving is a good way to speedrun the collapse of a shitty empire.

I haven’t made any assumptions about you. I’ve only pointed out things I saw in your posts in this thread. I haven’t read your posts elsewhere, nor am I interested in doing so. Glad you got it thought!

if they feel that a random man is likely to be dangerous enough that they would prefer a random bear

There it is!