Huh? No, the objective is that black people aren't murdered by cops in public on film - among other things. Not these shitty meaningless slogans that made for kindergarden children. — StreetlightX

Wow, you mean to go back to the subject and not go on replying to your bombastic yet confused "consensus is poison" views? Fine.

So is talking about "US police using excessive force" OK or does that anger you too much? Can with systemic racism also be mentioned systemic inequality, systemic povetry and crime? Police training, policing strategies? Or is talking about them a sign of avoiding the issue or hidden racism itself according to you?

I am, as has been pointed out, a 'batshit crazy leftist' — Isaac

I've been pointed out to be far worse.

yet my government is lead by the political equivalent of Benny Hill — Isaac

Now there's an underestimated/underappreciated comedian, perhaps too sexist for these times.

My views are a product of my mental activity and my environment. — Isaac

That's a great start. Especially the mental activity.

I think at some point dialogue doesn't do much, that is when your basic premisses are totally different... no amount of argument will change that, because those basic values are not a matter of rational argument or dialogue to begin with. — ChatteringMonkey

We usually believe that our basic premises are totally different, and we believe our own strawmen depictions of the other. Some people want and have to see their fellow people as enemies. Populism is a great way to do that.

Of course the alternative for political dialogue is violence.

There's simply no need to convince each person one-by-one using rational persuasion. — Isaac

So nobody has to persuade you? You just go with the flock or what?

The left and the right of what? All you're saying here is that opinion won't ever be homogenous. — Isaac

Many issues like income distribution as a political issue go far longer than just few hundred years and do go somewhat along the lines of what is considered politically left and politically right (remember the Gracchi brothers from the Roman Republic). I don't think the political juxtaposition will disappear.

So if nobody does anything to change things, they won't change their mind... and consequently nothing changes. — ChatteringMonkey

Why think that seeking a consensus is doing nothing? Why think it wouldn't mean trying to change views?

Actually it's worse: insofar as the material situation is terrible, the call for 'consensus' is a call to stall change, to compromise on it, and to continue the shitty way things are. I mean it when I say: consensus is poison. — StreetlightX

I disagree.

Consensus isn't about giving up, not faltering away from your objectives. It's not equivalent to compromise or upholding the status quo. Consensus is the true objective for real change to be successful. You want real change? That happens when there's a general consensus on what ought to be, what is wrong or right, when all those annoying people who otherwise don't agree with you do agree on a certain issue. That's true change. The left and the right will surely remain, yet on what they can agree on can and will change. That should be the objective.

Or you think you can just defeat the other side? You think that the other side can be terrorized into silence, that they fear so much to be silent? Nonsense, democracy will ensure that there will be voices both on the left and the right always. Peace, prosperity and successful policies won't eradicate the divide either. What works is when the other side accepts your point as his or her own.

Or do you think that cannot be reached? Oh we can change.

A conservative would hold earlier the view that the king or emperor has the power because it was given to him by God. And they would quote from the Bible:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good.

And do conservatives believe today in this? No. The above quote isn't from the "Founding Fathers" or any constitution. I could give example how leftist and socialist views have also changed, but I guess that would anger you too much.

I hope you realise how extreme the people you're debating in this thread are.

Baden and StreetlightX are batshit crazy leftists who say all kinds of stupid nonsense, Benkei is possibly even worse and Isaac seems no better. I mean you probably already noticed this by how they're giving you grief about saying random, unrelated people shouldn't have their lives ruined because people are angry about systemic racism.

These people don't think about things in terms of individuals and talking about things in these terms will get you nowhere here. — Judaka

:clap: :up:

However I wouldn't say their batshit crazy as then there isn't any reason continue any discussion. I do believe in the intellect of people in the PF, even if they have totally opposite views to me (which even that usually isn't the case). This issue gets tempers up and is prone to make people misunderstand others. However if on this site discussion is impossible, that's really an ominous sign of the times we live in.

Again, not a word from you about the changes that have already taken place, and more utter irrelevancies about other times and other places. — StreetlightX

Oh as if you read what I write?

I've persistently said that good things will come out of this and things have improved and the one of the biggest issues here is that there is a consensus here, the vast majority Americans do think that excessive force by the police is problem.

However if I then state that we have been here, we have had similar outrageous acts from the police, there have been various committees inspecting these incidents and police reform have been implemented yet these things happen, for some reason you get quite angry and tell me it's utterly irrelevant and I'm crazy.

Can he now have lunch with Putin again? Last time RT paid over 30 000$ to Flynn for the nice photo op! They'll have their 15th anniversary this year.

I don't remember where exactly I heard it, but the best spin to the covid-pandemic in the US was:

"Yes, we are having more infections, but the infected are younger hence the death rate is down!"

So what do you think of the current situation? Will be there the significant improvement of the systemic problems? What could make the current protest unique is the broad support of the mainstream media, the considerable part of the political elite, and big corporations. — Number2018

Support from majority of the people to do something about the issue has made the the media and politicians respond to these issues. Even from Trump we got a "police reform". But I'm not so sure how dramatic the changes will be in the long run. Some here think there's a huge transformation underway, yet I'm not yet sure about it. It's positive though.

There surely will be some improvements, but the real question will the police culture change dramatically change? The so-called Blue wall of silence or "blue code", which makes these things difficult to change and the police unions. For example, after the Rodney King beating (and the following L.A. riots) resulted in the Christopher Commission (headed by later secretary of state Warren Christopher) to produce a following findings:

There is a significant number of officers in the LAPD who repetitively use excessive force against the public and persistently ignore the written guidelines of the department regarding force.

The failure to control these officers is a management issue that is at the heart of the problem. The documents and data that we have analyzed have all been available to the department; indeed, most of this information came from that source. The LAPD's failure to analyze and act upon these revealing data evidences a significant breakdown in the management and leadership of the Department. The Police Commission, lacking investigators or other resources, failed in its duty to monitor the Department in this sensitive use of force area. The Department not only failed to deal with the problem group of officers but it often rewarded them with positive evaluations and promotions.

The commission highlighted the problem of "repeat offenders" on the force, finding that of approximately 1,800 officers against whom an allegation of excessive force or improper tactics was made from 1986 to 1990, more than 1,400 had only one or two allegations.

This was in 1991. In just one large US city.

As there isn't one uniform police department, but many, the reform process is a complex one. Also now when an economic depression is likely underway, the big problem is if the US can get violence and homicides generally to continue to decrease as has happened now.

And has LAPD improved from the 1990's? That's a good question and I don't know the answer. Then in the 90's it was majority white, but now white policemen are a minority in the force. One article put it this way few years ago:

Today, the LAPD is still battling demons, though these seem to come more in the form of "lone wolf" bad cops than systemic malfeasance. There is still some hemming and hawing over the issuing of department-wide mandatory body cams, which seem an inevitability for departments around the country at this point. The LAPD is, as far as one can tell, striving for accountability.

As union leader and police veteran Craig Lilly noted in a 2015 press conference, "We're still just one crisis away from people saying, 'See? There's the old LAPD again.'"

So the question is, how many police departments will be battling old demons in 2030?

I have no idea what I'm talking about, those graphs seem to correspond to the last stage in what the author of the linked article describes as a cyclical process : strong currencies inevitably devalue themselves, where finally debt is just too high that the central bank begins feverishly to print money and buy up debt until people start fleeing to other currencies. — csalisbury

It's good to understand the basics: how money is created through debt and how the fiat system works. Of course there is the "Fed & other central bankers are evil" discourse, which can be viewed critically, yet they tell the basics in a very simple way for the beginners to understand. Once you think you understand what money is and how it's made in a fiat system, then time to look at MMT (modern monetary theory). I think it is useful as we have negative real interest rates and the Federal Reserve is ballooning it's balance sheet with trillions in one of the worst economic depression we have experienced. And Americans don't understand how much of their Superpower status relies on the role of the dollar.

It actually raises many philosophical questions too.

What exactly can we learn from the past to understand the meaning of the current protest? - Even the Occupy movement of 2011 was completely different. — Number2018

It's not about the meaning of the protests, it's just what happens afterwards. When the media focus and our focus is turned somewhere else and when in a few years similar issues rise again.

As I earlier said, as a young boy I saw the huge smoke clouds (which were btw never shown on TV) of "race riot" in Miami in 1980, that was all too similar story: the police killing an African American, Arthur McDuffie and then the police officers being acquitted. Then riots, National Guard called in and 18 deaths reported. Forty years ago the same story, so one can ask what has happened in forty years? I think one important issue to note is how is it that for decades similar events create similar outrage, yet then lead in the end the same issues repeating themselves again and again...

This picture doesn't capture how large the smoke clouds were:


Yes, the OWS was cleared away in the middle of the night in November without any media present in a coordinated operation and then it disappeared after 2012. You can argue that it was different. Well there were similarities...

Occupy Chicago demonstration in 2012:


However George Zimmerman shooting Treyvon Martin in 2012, the victim that President Obama said could have been himself 35 years ago, is quite similar and has links to the present namely with being the start of the BLM movement. (If you ask me what systemic racism is from me, I'd answer acting president Obama's answer tell a lot of the systemic racism.) And then came Ferguson.

What happened after that? Well, various reports and task forces like President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing etc. And now we have Trump's police reform.

Do these help?

Yes, especially if the reforms genuinely lead to supreme court rulings and true change. But if it just leads to new committees and just new people being put on the pedestal of being "movement leaders", the systemic aspect won't be changed. Changing a whole legal system is a daunting task. Doing something about systemic inequality is another. If we just create a new lithurgy how we talk about these issues, there's no real improvement. If we think that now everything will change, we will only fool ourselves.

And the basic reason is that if you don't know the history, you'll make the mistakes as before.

You will never get a socially conscious racist to defend racism. It will always always always be a reaction to negate any specific anti-racist thing. - You will never get a socially conscious politician to defend inequality. It will always always always be a reaction to negate any specific equalising measure. — fdrake

And who are then negating anti-racism or equalising measures? Is there some negating anti-racism here?

Any honest grappling with what is going on now takes as it's starting point the recognition that the crisis is contemporary and the that crisis is current; not some hangover from the past. — StreetlightX

Yet you might learn something from the past before thinking that this now everything is so totally different. For starters, perhaps you should ease with the bombastic righteous hubris of declaration like the following:

The ruling class is shitting their pants and if you can't see that you're either not looking or an idiot. Every one of them is scrambling to show some kind of solidarity with the protestors - faked or otherwise. — StreetlightX

In fact, they aren't.

Few people handling the social media pages of politicians in their PR teams having to weigh in their tweets isn't equivalent of "the ruling class shitting their pants". Those making their livelyhoods out of the media circus will naturally be all hyped up, but that isn't everything.

Don't you hope for all their hopes to come true? — fdrake

Their hopes or our hopes?

Is there someone for racism? Not here, not many out there.

Is there someone for more inequality? Again no.

It's easy to see what the problems are, more difficult to say what exactly works for the most complex questions.

Something about power and standardization and money and language, but all I got is that mishmash for now. Something, something about bedrock, tectonic plates, and the magma beneath. Very confused, i'm sure, but maybe there's something there? — csalisbury

Is there anything? There's the thing we believe now even if we don't, Modern Monetary Theory!



...and a trillion more.

Well, it seems that many people think that they are on a cusp of a massive Earth-moving change.

The ruling class is shitting their pants and if you can't see that you're either not looking or an idiot. Every one of them is scrambling to show some kind of solidarity with the protestors - faked or otherwise. Even a fuckbag like Trump was prompted to gesture his way into some barely-there police reforms. And the display of brutal, racist police forces to quell the riots are just a sign of ruling class weakness. — StreetlightX

:smile:

I didn't know it was 1789.

Wait a minute,
it isn't!

So even if police brutality statistics can be squarely traced back to the socio-economic circumstances of black people and higher crime rates today then they are there because the system did not and never did anything to make black people equal. That's, in my view, still a form of systemic racism as I consider any social organisation that disregards how we got here as not taking into account history and such things as inheritance inequality. In other words, it's not enough for a system not be racist, you need to be actively anti-racist. This is why I have likened systemic racism as an emergent property before in this and the other thread. — Benkei

OK, but we cannot change what has happened so I guess what we do now still is the most important. Yet this begs the question: just what you mean by being actively anti-racist?

Then you don't know history and should probably stop talking. When the ruling class get scared, that's when massive, systemic change happens - everytime. — StreetlightX

Who gets scared is the question.

You think the ruling class gets scared about some riots? And that massive systemic change is going to happen?

Again, not my country. And if you need to wait for someone to declare 'civil war' then you've already lost. You don't wait for a holocaust before deciding maybe that things are not so good. — StreetlightX

Yes, I remember that you were our angry Australian.

I'm quite sure a holocaust won't happen soon either in your or my country or in the US. Sorry if I annoy with the talk that civil wars should be prevented and that the underlying issues causing them can be tackled another way. In the US there's a lot of talk about everything ending up in a civil war, but I gather that the richest country in the World still has a long way to go in ruining their country before that outcome would be inevitable.

And I believe that terrifying someone into submission usually doesn't work, sorry.

As for the whole 'unity' shtick - those who say peace when there is no peace is say nothing at all. — StreetlightX

Stop thinking that your country is in a civil war. You'll really notice it if there's a real one. Have you even seen war?

And they are disproportionally poor because...? — Benkei

You know the various reasons, starting from slavery and the people that call even their own poor "trash".

Yet it's a complex issue and not to be dealt with a religious lithurgy.

Let's assume this is all true. This is different from systemic racism because...? Or do you agree there's systemic racism but think people are not clear on the causes yet? — Benkei

Part of Sowell's criticism on failed programs are quite similar how in general welfare programs don't eradicate povetry.

So you think Americans will be divided by the use of flag?
— ssu

I don't know. It's possible. You'd have to ask them. But to me any flag is only as important and valuable as it's recognized as being so across different sectors of society as well as within them. If there's a schism on that then, yes, they'll be divided. — Baden

I took this example up as this is one way an artificial division or juxtaposition of "the people" can be done in the "culture wars". I know, perhaps it seems not to be the correct thread, but the reason why I mention it is that it's these kind of small issues that actually will be used in the public debate. And these small issues then chip away from a true consensus about the bigger issues at hand. Think of it as noise that has the ability to separate us and loose focus. Because my simple question is: the US has been here many times, so why hasn't much anything happened before?

Symbols that are intended to be unifying are deliberately made to be divisive. When you say "any flag is only as important and valuable as it's recognized as being so across different sectors of society as well as within them", you also give the reason just why flags are and will be attacked. And there's several reasons why.

Just like kneeling when the national anthem is played was made deliberately by Trump an issue (which I find absurd, because kneeling is far more polite than just sitting down), earlier the same shtick was used by the older George Bush when he tried to ban the burning of the flag (which was shot down by the supreme court). Both actions were intended to get a response from liberals and for conservatives to notice how different liberals are. Unfortunately it doesn't end there. Naturally the extreme right wants to own such national symbols and try to make the absurd claim that they are the only ones defending such symbols. As if there weren't leftists/centrist or others who do love their country. And in a macabre twist the extreme left is an ardent supporter of this view that indeed yes, those symbols of national unity aren't symbols of unity at all, but racist and fascist symbols of the extreme right. As, of course, the state represents basically fascism. Yet when you think of it, it's obvious that extremists are against anything that has unified us. That the symbol has been unifying is an obstacle for their agenda.

And that's why I think flag burning could be the next small issue that the media takes interest. Or that the next absurd thing will be that "flying the national flag is racist, because you show your approval of the inherent racism of the US state". Such nonsense can get noticed, because both on the left and the right there will be people that will be pleased with that absurd line if it would catch the public discourse. I hope it doesn't.

I don't think those are the only two options, and this type of binary thinking (e.g. "you must agree systemic racism exists or you must be a racist") is typical for this debate. It's polarizing, but most of all it's anti-intellectual, since reality is almost universally more complicated than we like to assume. — Tzeentch

↪Tzeentch PragerU, are you serious — darthbarracuda

Anyone who cites Prager U disqualifies themselves from being taken seriously, ever. — StreetlightX

I think Coleman Hughes usually makes quite good remarks and isn't the Prager U type staunch conservative with a conservative agenda. But of course this is the typical response at the present: "Ah! You referred to those people, Eff you! I'll ignore you." Are the stats false? I don't think they are.

Let's go back a few steps. Are blacks disproportionality killed by police and incarcerated in the US or not? — Benkei

Yes.

But then again there is disproportionately more crime done by African Americans than by whites. Of course in a similar way we could argue that in any country (yours or mine) it's the poor that are disproportionately the "customers" of the police as seldom is it the rich people mugging people or stealing things.

I'm glad we agree: land, and thus its means of provision, can be stolen from a people. And you would agree, then, that this did indeed happen in the Americas? And that the same land can be bought and inherited by the descendants of those thieves because of that theft? Because if so we're in violent agreement. — Kenosha Kid

America's colonial past is one fundamental reason for many persistent problems even today. However as Judaka said, colonialism isn't capitalism. Enlargement of ones territories really isn't only an endeavor with capitalistic countries.

You might look at the from the historical point of view of the Colonialists and the natives that lands were colonized and find yourself a thief and a victim. But go to the Eurasian landmass and where do you draw the line? Who is thief let's say in Iran? The descendants of the Timurids, the Mongols, the Muslims, the Sasanians, the Parthians, the Greeks?

What is notable that after the imperialism of the 19th Century, capitalism seldom works using direct force. Even after the occupation of Iraq, it's not only the American companies that pump oil from Iraq. American companies are a minority presence in the country, just one among many. The biggest foreign companies operating in volatile Iraq are CNPC (Chinese), Petronas (Malaysian), Lukoil (Russian), KOGAS (South Korean) among BP (British), Shell (Dutch) and Exxon (American). Hence Donald Trump is again in his ignorant dreamworld again when he talks that if US boots are on the ground, US should get the oil revenues too.

Capitalism today works globally through a rapid increase in cross-border movement of goods, services, technology, and capital along with companies operation in various countries. This makes many times the old 19th Century or early 20th Century criticism of capitalism a bit off.

I'd like to see them ban me for that I'm Ashkenazi Jewish with family killed in the Holocaust. — BitconnectCarlos

That was a bad joke from me. They won't ban you. I trust in these guys.

Anyway, I'm off for now.

I can see this being the case. Honestly, my point was that even if the rioters concerns are valid - and I have no problem with body cameras or better training for police or independent commissions going over police reports - there are appropriate and inappropriate ways to go about trying to achieve reforms. Even if the rioters consider this a war there are still valid and invalid targets in war. — BitconnectCarlos

Humanity is something we can easily forget. We adapt perhaps too easily to things we shouldn't.

If you think burning a shitty piece of fabric is more important than the deaths of black people then you're well and truly fucked — StreetlightX

Oh that's how you see it? Did I say that? You genuinely think that?

(Again, great moderation...)

I will respond to you: No, I don't think any piece of material, or statue or holy place is worth one single human life. Yet I do think we can value things what are our heritage. But that you juxtapose it so is a bit odd.

I said this earlier with Baden: Even Jews in 1935-1936 wouldn't have been justified in destroying local German businesses (ones unconnected with Nazism) because even in war there are valid and invalid targets. — BitconnectCarlos

Watch out that you don't get banned.

American symbols like the flag or anthem don't have a sacred right to survive in perpetuity. They either represent Americans as a whole or they don't. And that's up to Americans and the various communities among them to decide. — Baden

So you think Americans will be divided by the use of flag? Putting the flag up on your home is a sign that one accepts systemic racism?

There already have been people killed in the protests - almost all of them by police and by white supremacists. But the fucktards blubbering about 'violence' are silent as a fucking grave about it. — StreetlightX

At least I have said that the response from the right should be noticed. Fox News is in full swing of the culture war, that's their shtick. The rigth-wing extremists do have their proven tactics: lone gunmen actors who buy that self loading rifle etc. When they don't be members of some movement, there's no movement to be put on the FBI terrorist list.

You do have record breaking number of fire arms being bought just now.

So if you think violence works... well, there is a negative aspect of that. Just saying that countries can always disappoint you.

If you're asking me about real riots which ended up destroying real black-owned businesses then that harm has been very much documented. That harm is very much real and will likely persist for years to come. — BitconnectCarlos

I think that this is the reason just why nothing dramatic that would change the underlying reasons will happen.

The excessive stupidity just takes over.

Nobody will say: "Ok, we got the reforms we wanted." Nobody will be happy about the majority of people being against police brutality. Nope, it will go to a level of stupidity where some will see everywhere traces of systemic racism and will attack this systemic racism. So I guess soon burning the US Flag will be an act of protest against systemic racism and then flying the US flag will become a microaggression and racist.

The bottom line. Things will get even more stupid.

Fear works, antagonism works, discord is wildly productive. — StreetlightX

Well you're all worked up!

If it works so well, when are people going to start killing each other there? Oh right, it will be put into a different category.

This applies plenty to first world countries too. A “decent loan” has to be one with low enough interest that it can actually be paid off eventually. In California here, I’d need to put hundreds of thousands of dollars down to get a loan on the remaining balance with interest not exceeding the cost of my current rent. It’s hard enough saving while paying that rent, so buying would mean it would take even longer to build up enough equity to stop owing for housing. — Pfhorrest

Do notice btw, the bigger and longer loans ordinary people can get, the more real estate will cost. The interesting phenomenon is that the modern good apartments or houses in a Third World country will cost roughly the same or even more. The difference is that those are for rich people.

And do notice that from this we get into a great topic of institutional racism. In my country no bank has in it's loan application a box for race/ethnicity. Hence how well these institutions work affects how well capitalism and the free market works in a society.

The problem is that some people have fantastically more leverage than others in such agreements to the point that the “choices” they make are almost comparable to “your money or your life”. — Pfhorrest

Yes. And when there are too many poor and few if any very rich, then at some time social cohesion is lost. Any power structure has to have enough support to stay alive. If it's just the few rich and their paid soldiers, the society is quite vulnerable to have a bad times ahead. And that's why we do have to have those safety valves called individual rights, democracy, independent legal system etc. to avoid a situation of tyranny by the ruling elite. Goes beyond simple capitalism.

And that there are systemic mechanisms like rent (including interest) that continuously exaggerate differences in such leverage so that small random differences blow up over time into such huge differences which then become self-sustaining and entrenched. — Pfhorrest

Yes, but there is a difference between a loan shark and long term low interest debt from at least somewhat respectable bank or financial institution. I'd say one of the major reasons why many Third World countries stay poor is because people cannot get a decent loan for buying a home. If the majority of the people have to rent, just barely make enough to feed their family and are outside a normal functioning financial sector, not only is the society going to remain poor. The rich people, the few there are, are going to be similarly poor compared to other countries. Aggregate demand is important, you know.

I didn’t say that absolutely everything today is like it was under feudalism. — Pfhorrest

I think this wasn't meant directly to you.

Capitalism — which is not the same thing as a free market, NB — is precisely the vestiges of feudalism that still persist. The dependency and subservience of those with less to those with more, because they must borrow a place to live and capital to labor upon in order to have the opportunity of participating in the “free” market. — Pfhorrest

Globalized capitalism gets it's current form from many different things than feudalism. You can argue that it leads to a somewhat similar situation, that I can admit. This can be seen how capitalism has developed. Take ANY field or sector of the market, be it car manufacturing, making movies, computers or whatever and the situation is that roughly about 20 large oligopolies rule the global market and small producers or providers have large difficulties to compete with them, if the don't specialize in a narrow market. Oligopolies rule the World.

And these are all stock companies, which own each other and among the various institutional investors (hedge funds, pension funds etc.) there's the small list of your billionaires that for some reason or another have a lion's share of the stock.

I would dare to say that even if this looks like feudalism, it has little if anything to do with feudalism and especially how it came to be.

Throughout history, the norm was that real property, i.e. land, could not be privately held. It was always held by the Band, Tribe, King or state. Individual real property is a relatively new phenomenon. — Echarmion

And here it ought to be mentioned that the UK (and hence the US) has gone through this history a little bit differently than Nordic countries where I come from.

In medieval times you had the Open Field System, yet use of the forests were open to everybody...and actually is even today in Finland (you can pick berries, mushrooms and wander without the permission of the land owner) with the law existing prior Christianity. And in many places the family or people that cut down the forest and turned the piece of land into a field GOT THE OWNERSHIP OF THAT FIELD. Aristocrats were few and far between and in all Nordic countries there was a strong independent peasantry. Feudalism wasn't so tight, just like in Russia where peasants could simply go away further into the forest if forced to. So it can be quite common that the same peasant family has farmed the same plot of land since the late 15th Century or earlier. So when KK assumes that all land is stolen, I beg to differ. Hence the situation is a bit different from let's say the British Isles, which was quite well turned into fields for agriculture when the Romans invaded. And unlike the UK, there was a the Great Partition of 1757 which transformed altogether and quickly the old Open Field-system. If I remember British history correctly, these changes took a long time in the British Isles.

Now that doesn't mean that there weren't individual rights to certain uses of that land, so it's not a black and white issue of "full property" or "no property". However, European individualism is, historically, an anomaly. — Echarmion

This is true. For example until a revolution in the 1970's, land ownership in Imperial Ethiopia was quite by the lines of feudalism.

Yes. Slavery did not enter into my argument. Are you setting up a ridiculous dichotomy in which everyone is either a slave or works for themselves? — Kenosha Kid

No. You are talking that you are working for someone else and don't admit that you get a salary, income, be it large or small, for that.

Does it? So you would argue it was all well and proper that European settlers took the land of Native Americans because it belonged to no one in particular? How horrid. — Kenosha Kid

No. I say that the Native Americans saw it as their property too. I'm saying that property has existed, so when you argue that it has been stolen, where do you put the line where it wasn't stolen? I'm not sure why you don't get this.

This is begging the question. Capitalism is a system of private ownership; communism a system of group ownership. The tribe with its water hole was a group. — Kenosha Kid

Yet that group was a specific tribe or family in the tribe. And so are companies a system of group ownership. Just as cooperatives are also.

Sorry ssu, but your post is shallow, stupid, and ignorant. Ciao xxx. — jamalrob

Thanks for your moderation, jamalrob. Hopefully we can find a topic to discuss later.

No, I labour for others, as the majority of people do. — Kenosha Kid

Yet you aren't a slave. You do get an income, I assume. And you do have the option to look for other work (I assume also).

It is illogical to say that if I say there has been a theft, it follows I personally have been stolen from. — Kenosha Kid

Someone has. Stealing MEANS that there is property.

You imagine it was peaceful? If you gotta believe it, you gotta believe it I guess. I'd think a glimpse at the natural world would disillusion you. — Kenosha Kid

It would make only my point. Animals can only learn from experience that "better not go to that watering hole, because there's a really bad tempered territorial water buffalo there", only after the have been nearly stomped to death by the crazy water buffalo. Humans can agree on issues, either the way the water buffalo does it or even peacefully.

The right to own property and that it cannot arbitrarily taken away from you is one of the basic institutions necessary for a functioning society. If this institution isn't upheld, like if I just can bribe a judge and come with a paper that the land that you have lived all your life is actually mine, there are huge problems in the society. In many Third World countries the lack of these institution of property is a major problem. Which indeed itself is a great topic when discussing communism.