I know I’ve seen that analogy elsewhere recently, but it is a damn good one.
Man, I’d really like to enjoy this thread, but I’m going into a meeting with Seth Rogen.
Because I can do all of those things and you cannot. How am I not more free than you?
God damn it Mark, now we’ll never know how Seth feels.
Ya, I posted it here a while back… I did not come up with it.
Yet…
It’s OK because the Universal Laws of Human Rights are a higher authority and exert more power than Greek national laws.
I definitely don’t agree with your interpretation of this scenario.
To me it’s more like this…
When you are using a social media account, they are letting you use their assets (code and infrastructure) because the network makes money (or at least tries to) from your usage. The user doesn’t own anything, nor do they have the absolute right to be able to continue to use these assets. The service is their property.
In my view your belief system in this area is so outside the norm (at least in the US) that your arguments just don’t make any sense to many people here. You are free to believe in your viewpoint, you are even free to convince others it is the best viewpoint, but you can’t reasonably say that it is objectively the right viewpoint.
Wow, this thread has really been going places…
Yeah, but it explained the Greek economic crisis in a way that 37 different articles couldn’t.
This is what I expect by next week:
If you could only hear yourselves. “Human rights.” The very name is racist. The Federation is no more than a homo sapiens-only club.
Because in America, black lives don’t seem to matter very much.
Man, I saw the post count and thought another march had happened and been overshadowed by the Harvey news, but nope, it’s Marxist day in the Neo-Nazi thread. Joy!
Marxism is fundamentally flawed, end of story. It’s not coincidence that literally every single country that ever attempted to adopt a Marxist model descended shortly thereafter into a repressive nightmare. Even when you attempt to separate Marxism from Communism and Socialism (and there are subtle differences), the pure theory of it is still hyper-dependent on oppression. You literally are trying to make everyone the same. Freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom to pursue the things that make you happy and unique, there is no room for these things in a system in which individual rights are sacrificed in an attempt to eliminate the class system. Repression is woven into the very fabric of the Marxist ideal. Sugar coat it all you want, it’s not going to change.
I also never cease to be amazed by how attractive Marxism and Communism seems to be to young people who have suddenly “woke” to the fact that Capitalism is “Teh Evil”. This despite the fact that if we implemented a Marxist society, young people would never have the opportunity to be “Woke” in the first place. Capitalism and Democracy WORK. They are highly prone to manipulation and exploitation, but all the evidence still points to that combination being the best at producing countries with healthy, happy and successful populations. That’s not to say that successful capitalist democracies can’t include some socialist elements in their constructs…American Healthcare for example could really use a healthy dose of socialist reform since capitalism seems to have wholly corrupted it at this point.
In any event, all of that is an argument for another thread, and one I am too old and thus too aware of the value of my time to actively participate in.
I’d say Communism got it’s fair shake in Cambodia and we saw how that worked out.
Which isn’t to say some ideals of Marxism aren’t bad, but ultimately it relies on human beings not being human beings and those sorts of systems are doomed to failure from the concept stage.
Jesus dude. Don’t you have an appointment you need to go be late for?
Normally I wouldn’t throw a tangent like this out here, but this thread is already a trainwreck so why not.
I completely agree that all attempts at communism to date have not produced good long term outcomes, though sometimes short-term outcomes have been promising. But eventually the horrible vulnerability of such a centrally planned system to any sort of corruption in the controlling bureaucracy catches up with it, and it fails to produce good outcomes.
What’s more fun to ponder is, could this problem be fixed in the future? Could a hypothetical completely selfless and impartial Artifical Intelligence or group of AIs actually run an efficient communist state that would produce better outcomes in terms of wealth and happiness for its citizen than a free market capitalist system. I’m inclined to think yes, but it just shifts the corruption problem to the AIs and it would be of vital importance that they are beyond tampering and truly selfless.