↪Frank Apisa The Democratic field is obviously weak. The economy is ok. The impeachment trial will be forgotten. Trump has fairly decent chance of winning a second term.
It's a good time to get philosophical about things. Deflate your passions and look at the situation as if from outer space. — frank
I am being philosophical...but I also am being passionate. My feelings about Trump being our president are extremely negative...and I want very much for him to be out of office. I suspect I would feel that same way if I were on a space station. — Frank Apisa
↪Frank Apisa Tally ho. Get that fox! — frank
↪Frank Apisa One barrier to a socialist agenda in the US is that it would require drastic fiscal restructuring: a progressive property tax probably. No president can do that. Think about how far to the left all three branches of govt would have to be.
Electing a socialist wouldnt be much more than an aesthetic victory. — frank
↪Frank Apisa I think we are indebted to the Chinese. If they initiated a run on the dollar, we'd be in bad shape. — frank
We can borrow from them...to the betterment of capitalism...and at no significant cost to the underling capitalistic system. — Frank Apisa
It would help if we had a capitalist system to begin with, but we don't. In any meaningful sense. It's a corporate nanny state economy. — Xtrix
It's a lot like Clinton in '16. I remember all the celebrities coming out trying to stoke the crowds, pushing the "first woman president" thing, and from what I saw it nearly always fell flat or else looked so contrived as to be embarrassing. — Xtrix
That's a kind of capitalism, it's just state capitalism, which is the worst of both worlds. — Pfhorrest
Of course, they're also equally unenthusiastic about Bernie, yet another old white man, despite the drastic policy differences between them. Sigh. Tribalism makes me sad. — Pfhorrest
Why not call it state socialism? — Xtrix
You see my point -- "capitalism" and "socialism" are almost completely devoid of meaning at this point. — Xtrix
The reality is that our economy is designed to favor concentrations of power -- whatever you call it, it's not what Adam Smith had in mind. — Xtrix
Because it’s not at all socialist? — Pfhorrest
Instead wealth is being concentrated in the hands of those who already have more of it, which is the opposite of socialism: capitalism. — Pfhorrest
f so, that’s a product of Cold War era propaganda conflating them with command economies and free markets, respectively. — Pfhorrest
Adam Smith never advocated capitalism, just free markets. — Pfhorrest
It's a welfare system. What they leave out is that it's mainly welfare for the corporate world, not the welfare queens. — Xtrix
That's not even fair to capitalism, either. — Xtrix
He did give an argument for markets, but the argument was that under conditions of perfect liberty, markets will lead to perfect equality. That’s the argument for them, because he thought that equality of condition (not just opportunity) is what you should be aiming at. — Xtrix
It's the definition of capitalism: where those who have greater wealth than others (specifically in the form of capital) use that difference to extract further wealth from those who have less than them (with which to acquire further capital and accelerate the process). — Pfhorrest
Correct, which is why I think he would have been a libertarian socialist, had he lived to see socialism become a thing at all. The libertarian socialists who came after him have long been proposing solutions to the problem of why markets in practice haven't lived up to that theoretical ideal. (Spoiler warning: it's because states, including private armies bought by capitalist robber-barons, enforcing unlimited claims to property and power to contract, undermines the actual freedom of the market, so the solution is to stop the enforcement of those illegitimate claims and powers and let the market be truly free). — Pfhorrest
Good enough for me. Biden will be my guy...although I'll have to wait for the General Election, because I am a registered Independent. I get no vote in the Primary Election. But at this point, I would vote for Satan rather than Trump...so I will be voting for the Democratic Party candidate no matter what.
I acknowledge that Trump will very likely win a second term. — Frank Apisa
Electing a socialist wouldnt be much more than an aesthetic victory. — frank
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