There is no point getting into a debate with someone who can't provide a single bit of justification from the onset.

not at all

Everyone is entitled to their own belief. — creativesoul

In this case, only if it can be substantiated.

I don't dispute the point that social mobility is nearly non-existent, or that worker wages have stagnated, that economic inequality has erupted, or that certain material gains such as buying a house is out of reach for many Americans. All that is undeniably true; most Americans feel economic anxiety. The question is whether or not these conditions have, in your words, "led up to Trump" or explain Trump. There is nothing to suggest that this is the case and this frequent talking point masks a pressing concern confronting the country: white racial antipathy and ethno-nationalism.

Sure, but economically marginalized people also voted for Clinton or supported Sanders so you're not making a meaningful point.

The problem with this analysis and explanation for Trump is that it is predominantly a materialist one, i.e. that people who voted for him did so because they wanted economic results. Myriad research shows, however, that there's no correlation between so called "economic anxiety" and voting for Trump. However, racial antipathy was correlated, and to a lesser extent, white racial solidarity. As I've said elsewhere, Trump's election was the result of the white identity, along with socio-cultural, economic, and political status slowly being questioned and balanced, and we are experiencing that backlash to this.

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon by Marx
Theses on Feuerbach by Marx
The Limits of Capital by David Harvey

Yes, I love MARX

M - Marx
A - Always
R - Right
X - xoxo

I was being sarcastic.

Well, the professions you mention are in the business of trying to make people happy. — Wallows

At best, they are in the business of making or saving their customers money. Not "happy".

It's extremely terrifying how normalized white ethno-nationalism is becoming.

What's very frustrating about these types of polls on socialism is that the term is never defined for the people being polled, so there's only so much to take away from it.

When I think of people who have good, moral intentions and beliefs, I think economists, financiers, and accountants

If someone didn't know that Trump inherented a long growing economy with decreasing unemployment probably didn't know because their head was so far up their ass.

Ilhan Omar was born in Somalia

Trump Tells Four Democratic Congressmen of Color to 'Go Back' to the Countries They Came From. Three of four of them were born and raised in America.

Uh the Koch Brothers aren't Jewish

Goes to show how barren theology has become, when modern arguments for God are nothing more than restated millennium-old syllogisms

Nike has seen a 2% stock increase and added nearly $3 billion in market value since cancelling the kicks

Hey some of you should probably call the marketing department over at Nike and tell them how this doesn't make sense

This was also corroborated by a friend of the 13 year old girl who she told, and also by an associate of Epstein. Will have to look up the details again, but there is evidence that Trump did rape a 13 year old girl.

lmao

I'm simply explaining why Nike decided to pull the shoe from market, which is categorically different from being in favor of the decision or complaining about it, the latter of which is what most people here are doing.

What I would say is that Cioran doesn't really provide any arguments for or against suicide, but that, like existential absurdity itself, life as a problem isn't something to be solved, but simply to be endured. In that sense, Cioran would view a suicide as an optimist who has attempted to "solve" the problem of life.

So, a new way of doing business. Stir the country up with issues of racism, then watch the stock market.

If true it’s a dangerous precedent. Well, interesting, anyway, especially if you look at target audiences and their political views based on identity politics — Brett

Like I said, hilarious over-analyzing over what's in actuality a straightforward answer. One of Nike's biggest brand ambassadors criticized the design of a product and Nike pulled it. That's it. This isn't even about "identity politics". Nike's core audience is simply younger and more liberal than the general population.

And this actually just shows the absurdity of the whole issue. — ssu

A shoe was pulled from the market. It's not an actual "issue".

Yes, it suggests, for a moment, they were a bit casual about their core market and then pulled themselves into line again. A costly mistake.

Though we’ll never know what might or might not have happened to sales. — Brett

Nike's stock prices fell 0.03% on June 26th when the shoe was pulled from their online site, and exceeded the value prior to the drop less than a week later, so no probably wasn't a costly mistake.

Hilarious over-analyzing and indignation over what is a straightforward non-issue. Nike's core target audience is a younger demographic, around 16-34 years old, which is an overlap of two of the largest and heaviest consumer spending generations, Millennials and Gen Z, who are more likely to buy shoes, care about what shoes they wear, want to be hip and fashionable. According to a recent PEW survey, these generations are more - sometimes far more - liberal/progressive on social and political issues than older generations. Notably, a majority of Millennials and Gen Z (62% and 61%, respectively) approve of "players choosing to kneel during the national anthem as a form of protest", compared to the minority approval ratings of older generations (e.g., only 37% of Boomers approve). When Nike signed on Colin Kaepernick and prominently featured him on a controversial ad campaign, a poll found that "those 18 to 34 approving of Nike’s decision by a 67-21 margin, while voters 65 and older disapproved of the decision, 46 to 39 percent".

I won't say whether or not Colin Kaepernick is correct his view of the Betty Ross flag, or if Nike is correct in yielding to him, and pulling the product out of market, mostly because I don't care, but also because it is irrelevant to Nike's overarching brand strategy.

None of you are Nike's target audience so it's really funny that you think they should give a shit what you think

Grundrisse by Marx
Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci

I always considered “[Atlas Shrugged]” to be a criticism of the users, the con men and bureaucrats that soak up taxpayers hard earned money. The way governments waste money and the way those who don’t earn it spend it. The waste that comes about from spending money you didn’t earn, and the waste that comes about from government behaving as if they know anything about business, behaving as if they’re a successful business because they have their hands on so much money, none of it earned by themselves. Obviously hostile to socialism: it’s easy to spend other people’s money until you run out of it. — Brett

The irony here is that a year after Atlas Shrugged was published (1957), DARPA was created by the US Government as a reaction to the Soviets launching Sputnik. DARPA was a key early funder of various military technology departments, and computer science departments including the early stages of the internet and human-computer interaction research, and was pivotal in providing preliminary research for tech and personal computer startups, such as Apple.

Cioran is one of my favorite philosophers, but if you want to understand his aphorisms it is more appropriate to understand them within 1) the context of the work in which it appears, since they are often thematic, and 2) within his overall anti-systemic philosophy, which only really goes through a major change from his very early work (viz. his Romanian works) and later works (French works). Quite of few of the aphorisms presented here, while seemingly incoherent or contradictory on their own are easily understandable within the context of his overall thought, which remained consistent from A Short History of Decay and beyond.

You list Emma Goldman and Antonio Gramsci as two of your favorite philosophers so if you can't figure out why Ayn Rand is garbage from that, I dunno what to tell you.

Was wondering that too, knew she had some pretty serious dental surgery or something that was coming up

So just why then they decided NOT TO invest the larger funds money into the domestic market. — ssu

You said originally said that the internal fund "doesn't at all invest in Norwegian companies as the Norwegians understand the negative consequences such move could have", the obvious answer simply being 1) that it's a fund dedicated to international stocks, not domestic stocks, because 2) they have had sizable investments for 30+ years prior in their domestic stock. 1/3 ownership in their domestic is already a sizable percentage.

Sure, but that is something called reaching a consensus in politics. You have to remember that these kind of policies, especially the so-called socialist welfare programs, were here accepted and done together with right-wing parties. As I've always said, a right-wing conservative from a Nordic country would seem to an American as a left-leaning Democrat, if not a pinko liberal. Yet again the social democrats here are also different breed from genuine socialists. Again the power of consensus politics. — ssu

It's at least nice that the Nordic countries can agree on a strong welfare state, strong worker's rights, and other common sense policies and programs that should be a foundation to a developed country. But the GOP has mostly turned away from consensus politics since the 90s and have only escalated their Machiavellianism since McConnell took the helm, while simultaneous turning farther to the right.

yeah Trump loves a good ethno-state

What you attempt to insinuate is that the Norwegian government owns/controls 60% (or the majority) of the means of production in the country. — ritikew

Ownership of wealth doesn't mean ownership of the means of production. They own 70+ SOEs, but that doesn't constitute 60% ownership of the country's wealth.

Who is this by the way, you are running around claiming I'm autistic and insecure several times, I think you should probably just say who you are.

Because that wealth that you are talking about, the Norwegian 1 trillion dollar wealth fund (Government Pension Fund Global), which was last year worth about $195,000 per every Norwegian citizen (which explains the stats you desperately cling on to as evidence of a step towards socialism), invests in the global stock market and hence just embraces the globalized capitalist system. The fund doesn't at all invest in Norwegian companies as the Norwegians understand the negative consequences such move could have (which truly would be genuinely a way to socialism...and also a path to inefficiency and possible corruption). — ssu

No, the Sovereign Trust Fund is a component of the wealth that I am talking about. The other being the 70+ SOEs that comprise a majority of Norway's GDP, wealth stemming from land ownership, and nearly 30% ownership of stocks on Norway's domestic Oslo Stock Exchange. In fact, the Sovereign Trust Fund wasn't established until 1990, and didn't receive in-flow until six years later, at which point the Norwegian government nevertheless owned nearly 40% of the nation's wealth. This latter fund, the Government Pension Fund of Norway, was established 50 years ago and invests in many large Norwegian companies. Such a shame they couldn't have known of the "terrible consequences" and the "inefficiency" and "corruption" you are speaking about. My point is that these are workable solutions that step away from capitalism towards a "flavor", if you will, of socialism i.e. government managed wealth used to fund the welfare of a state within which there are free and fair elections so that even a right-wing party is able to win elections (although I'd wager that Norway's Conservative Party is still to the left of America's Democratic Party). To my mind, any sort of meaningful socialism necessarily (but not sufficiently) requires collective ownership of wealth. Is Norway a "socialist" country? No, but certainly such a system is more ideologically aligned with socialism than it is with capitalism

God never won the Stanley Cup

a bit insecure, hence his 'contemptuously dismissive' comments.... Nevertheless, he is incredibly well read — ritikew

I'm not "contemptuously dismissive" because I'm "insecure". I'm contemptuously dismissive because I'm "incredibly well read" while being an "intelligent bloke" :smirk:

I also haven't considered myself to be a libertarian socialist since around 2015, or since whenever I read Mariana Mazzucato's book, The Entrepreneurial State.

The Prince by Machiavelli

I haven't read Nussbaum's Frontiers of Justice, but I did read Creating Capabilities when it first came out, which outlines her approach to the Capabilities Approach and human development. It was very influential for me in developing my own views regarding ethics and politics, along with Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom, given the centrality of human agency. (I also find Spinoza's moral philosophy to be very much aligned with this approach). I think it is a very persuasive model outlining the importance (and fragility) of positive rights, which, to my mind, are of absolute necessity in a flourishing society (consider Aristotle's eudiamonia).

Not quite the "socialist" country that people like to portray.. — ritikew

is a specific tax policy sufficient for doing a socialism now?

The statistic "non-home wealth" is ad hoc defined to serve a political agenda. — ritikew

The article doesn't hide the percentage of national wealth owned by the state when homeownership is factored in, which is nearly 60%. What's the problem?