Pundits keep on being astonished that the former president repeats actions that are illegal, objectively harmful, inciting violence--- but I think the "logic" (such as it is) is that if it was not wrong then, then why should it be wrong now?
"I'll f-in do it again!"
Basically.
Repeating these actions and *again* not facing any justice serves to "prove" that is it permitted.
That is why the glacial pace and inaction of our justice system may well end this little experiment in democracy.
@futurebird
Bingo!
Nixon didn't go to prison.
Ford wasn't immediately impeached for pardoning Nixon.
Reagan didn't go to prison.
Bush I didn't go to prison.
Bush II didn't go to prison.
Each and every step along the way, Democrats, Republicans, and the mainstream media told us that it would be “too disruptive” to have the rule of law.
So we made Trump inevitable by declaring that Republican presidents are above the law.
I would say losing the republic would be “disruptive.”
CW: US politics
Very nicely put. We have a long line of Republican presidents who attempted to undermine democracy, up to and including collaborating with hostile foreign nations. None of them ever faced meaningful consequences. Trump was not only inevitable, he's not even the end point — the next Republican attempt to subvert or nullify elections will be even more blatant.
CW: US politics
@sphinx @tofugolem @futurebird the so-called other side is not better. Clinton had a bunch of scandals including money from China. Al Gore contested an election and tried to do selective recounts, until the Supreme Court shot him down. And the D party was responsible for a really big insurrection in the 19th century. I could go on.
The parties do not represent competing moral principles. They represent competing collections of interests. They are just rival gangs.
CW: US politics
@mike805 @sphinx @futurebird
Wait.
So you're telling me that a string of Republican presidents didn’t break the law because you believe the conspiracy theories from the official Republican propaganda safe-space?
Buwahahahahahahaha!
You’re just adorable.
First, if your response to an accusation is to accuse someone else of something else, you just confessed to the original accusation. Look up “tu quoque” fallacy sometime.
1/2
CW: US politics
@tofugolem @sphinx @futurebird actually I think the whole system, and all Republican and Democratic presidents, break the law every day.
Anyone who thinks there are good guys in American politics (outside of the occasional local politician who has not been through the filter yet) doesn't get it.
America is just the strong arm of a financial cartel. The British used to perform this function once, but now it is the USA. It is a criminal enterprise, not a government.
CW: US politics
@mike805 @sphinx @futurebird
Yes, yes. You’re trying to use the “but both sides” argument to defend the criminality of Republican presidents. We’ve heard this song before, and I already explained why the logic is completely flaccid.
But keep trying, little guy. Maybe if you repeat yourself often enough, you can turn bad logic into good logic, because that’s how truth works if you were raised in a household that didn’t teach you to value education.
CW: US politics
It would be wrong to put all of this on Republicans. I will give you that, but please don't make the rather lazy conclusion that there is no substantive difference between the results we see when each party has power.
It's easy to see both are sub-optimal but equally obvious they they are radically different and in one case there are signs that there is the desire to end the entire democratic experiment.
CW: US politics
@futurebird @tofugolem @mike805 @sphinx
I just don't agree with that phrasing, because the DNC isn't at all maintaining "the entire democratic experiment". That's rhetoric - it's spin. The outcomes speak for themselves: the government's agenda isn't driven by voter representation - it's dictated by donor representation. The donors get what they want, the voters don't, and being connected to the party means you can act with impunity. It's not the DNC's mission to change that
CW: US politics
@pleaseclap @futurebird @mike805 @sphinx
True, but at least the Democratic party is less fascist than Republicans. So there's that.
CW: US politics
@tofugolem @pleaseclap @futurebird @sphinx yes they are less Fascist. That's the good news.
The bad news is they are a lot more Bolshevik. And not just Bernie. It seems like half their talking points come from the Communist Manifesto.
Sometimes I think we are watching the run-up to the Spanish Civil War, or perhaps the Kampfzeit, repeating as farce (the first time being tragedy!)
Does it really have to be a choice between Communism and Fascism?
CW: US politics
So having strong unions is communism? Kinda watering down the meaning of that word I fear.
Likewise social democracy is a stop gap measure to preserve capitalism by addressing the areas where markets fail.
Communism is a totally different system.
If you don't like the idea of a free market and schools and government health care, fine, but calling it communism is an old anti-union tactic and nothing more.
🇳🇱
CW: US politics
Self organizing unions are great. But when you have the democrats pushing for "right to work" laws where people are **forced** into unions against their will then yea, its stsrting to creep a bit too close to communism.
CW: US politics
Actually your right. I misunderstood the meaning of rigbt to work laws and after reading on it now i was mistaken.
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@freemo @futurebird that was not an accident. The term is supposed to be confusing.
CW: US politics
Well to rephrase the democrats **oppose** right tonwork acts, which would allow workers to have the freedom to decide if they want to join a union or not, as opposed to being forced to joining a union against their will.
CW: US politics
"allow workers to have the freedom to decide if they want to join a union or not"
IDK this isn't what they seem to really do. Have you ever seen some of the things that happen when you try to "choose" to start a union in a company that isn't fully unionized?
Can you see some of the natural conflicts that might arise? (Such as getting fired for joining the union.)
CW: US politics
Absolutely, and i am all for laws that might address those concerns. I think there should be strong anti union busting laws for sure. But in the end employees shoukd have a right to decide how and if to join a union.
@freemo @mike805
"I think there should be strong anti union busting laws for sure."
That's going to take ... SO MANY laws to be effective. And there are already provisions to not deal with unions.
It's hard to start a new one, but it's pretty easy to take an existing union over, replace the leadership. I've seen that done. You get to vote on every damn thing.
But most importantly the *purpose* of right to work laws is to destroy unions. They didn't add anything with them to do what you say.
Doing things the right way isnt always easy, i agree it would probably take a lot of reform. But its better than taking away peoples rights. But as hou probably know our government really doesnt function well enough to do things the right way, so what can we even do i guess.
Thats probably more due to the circles you keep than an honest sampling of the public... there are tons of industries not known for having unions and that is directly due to the tendency for members of that community specifically not wanting them.
I've worked in union-free industries and it's better with a union.
It's even better if you work in an industry and your competitor has unions.
Just having things like no secret wages is massive. Though the kids these days just make a google spreadsheet for that. I've seen that step alone do wonders.
Depends on the industry... for tech ive seen no secret wages completely destroy a company. You loose all the people who are your top players and left with a very mediocre and under performing group... i tech you always need those few people who are miles ahead of the crowd (and paid for it) fixing the problems no one else can while everyone else does the bulk of tbe busy work... this dynamic isnt as critical in many other i dustries so you can get by with open wages without it being a company killer
People are paid by their skill not the amou t of work they do, but that aside i cant speak to your situatio or skills. I also dont know how hard you negotiated for your pay. Perhaps you just werent a touvh negotiator and you got low balled.
My first job at 15 as a programmer paid me 100k, ive never been paid less than that a day in my life. But companies tried and i always negotiated a good pay in the end if i demanded what i was worth, i also always made sure to interview at 30 places at a time so i coukd have tons of competing offers.
Yea if your not a strong negotiator you will likely get pretty badly taken advantage of. No doubt youd have a huge advantage with open salaries, but on the flipside disadvantage to the strong negotiators or those with exceptional skills well above the mean.
Well its sorta doubke ended.. with an ope wage system everyone is driven closer to the mean, so the poor negotiators bring everyone elses wage down too.
Ideally people would learn to be better negotiators, perhaps teach and train it in school, but ideals arent reality either.
Thats true as well. Though there are tools that tell you what a normal wage is for a specific job and skill level. So everyone involved knows when someone is low balled even without open wages.
I myself beleive that s good employee is worth paying a fair wage because thats how you get good loyal work out of ghem.
@freemo @futurebird @mike805 studies have shown that women who negotiate assertively for pay (whether hiring pay, raises, bonuses, discretionary project pay, etc) are more likely to receive a negative outcome (rejection, offer rescinded, termination, etc.)
Please add this to your fact pattern before computing further.
Already part of my fact pattern. But thanks for pointing it out. Its an importang point.
@futurebird @freemo this reminds me of the economics professor who let his class opt to be capitalists or socialists.
The capitalists got their own individual grades. The socialists' grades got averaged, and everyone got the average.
The capitalists always outscored the socialists. Often the socialists flunked, and had to retake the class as capitalists the next time.
Capitalists wshoukd have the option to work together or not while the socialist woukd be forced to see eachothers papers to be fair ;)
@freemo @futurebird Capitalists working together on test answers would be an antitrust violation. They would be required to compete. 😆
Hahah well yea except people argue antitrust is a heck against capatilism because a true and pure capitalism is bad (i am all for antitrust laws though)
@futurebird @freemo good question, and not sure. I just know they had to do papers and take tests and their grades were averaged. And there was a problem with the socialists not turning in their homework.
Yea as tends to be the problem with the socialist model is therr is less incentive to do well if you know others will carry you along.
@freemo @futurebird and the problem with the capitalist model is that people with wealth have no incentive to care about anyone else. Also the capitalists can buy the state.
Id argue that isnt capatilsm at all.. capatilism is not "no rules, mo ey buys all".. capitalism by definitio are markets where supply and demand market pressures are allowed to freely determine price.. if you can "buy off" the system it isnt a free markrt by definition.
@freemo @futurebird we should also differentiate between free enterprise and capitalism. If you run a factory and sell the product for a profit, that's free enterprise. If money, lending, banking, and the stock market rule over the factory owner like a malevolent deity, that is capitalism. We have lots of capitalism and not much free enterprise left in the USA and the UK.
I wouldnt say that an accurate definition of either.. i fact what you describe sounds more like corprotacracy than capitalism.
@futurebird @freemo the connection is (a) the more capable people opted into the capitalist camp and (b) the socialists were less motivated to stay up late finishing their papers. Same applies in the real world. The most capable got out of commie-land if they possibly could. The rest pretended to work while the state pretended to pay them.
Bad education as that's nothing like socialism
Socialism is when everyone shops at the same stores and uses the same websites and walks in lines with their heads down.
@futurebird
No, that's not socialism... Not even close
@Floyd I was being sarcastic. But, this is the internet.
@futurebird
Socialism is when the collective (usually the state) regulates the means of production or supply of goods or services.
So, requiring doctors, pilots, lawyers, etc to be qualified is socialist. Same as requiring companies to not pollute the water you drink
The definition you're using for socialism seems to be pretty common but there is a bit more to it than "governmental intervention"
The core idea of socialism is to empower workers-- so things like worker-owned co-ops and facilitating worker managed industries.
Things like safety regulations, libraries, public schools, health care (basically core services that don't function well in the market) is social democracy which is a kind of capitalism.
@futurebird
Socialism doesn't need government involvement at all.
Capitalism attempts to avoid those regulations under the idea that the free market will sort out the bad players.
@Floyd @futurebird
It bothers me that any mention of socialism immediately takes on political overtones. 100 years of anti-Soviet propaganda have conditioned our thinking.
At it's core, socialism is simply people pooling their resources to accomplish something collectively. You see socialism everywhere in our economy.
Far from being incompatible, capitalism and socialism are two sides of the same coin and no economy can function without finding a balance between the two.
Exactly... Instead of arguing one or the other, we should be considering where that balance should lie. And the optimum position of that balance will change from industry to industry and over time. It's a nuanced complexity that doesn't suit the modern narratives
Personally I think the only way capitalism has a chance in hell of being ethical is if it's in the form of a social democracy.
I'm intrigued by more exotic systems, but also kind of terrified of what "radical change" would look like in a country like the US. I don't think we are in a good place as a nation for a constitutional convention.
But working from the other end it's rewarding and effective to organize co-ops locally. Why wait?
All modern countries are part capitalism and part socialism. The mix varies
Also I feel like I need to mention the context of this conversation is ... having more unions.
Not even having everything unionized, definitely not everything being worker owned and operated.
The context is can we avoid the trauma of some kind of vast social project and change with the uncertainty that carries. But these people are so damn stingy maybe not.
(and that social change might not be the good kind... especially in the US)
@futurebird @mike805 @freemo
Unions just give workers a more fair playing field than they would have without them
@mike805 @futurebird @freemo The sides are misnamed in order to create the metaphor and outcome you so admire. If it was accurate. The capitalists would have the right to prevent socialists from having access to text books and classes. And would exercise that right.
Thats not right. Communism can exist inside capitalism, its cslled a commune, but not the other way around.
So a more accurste representstion woukd be in the communists were allowed to kill the capitslists.
@freemo @mike805 @futurebird Ah, understood, so in your metaphor, capitalists are defined as including the hard working people and the other group includes the lazy sociopaths. So capitalism is a superior system. Got it. Now we know.
No in this metaphor people pick their side. There is no assumption of who is a hard worker or not.. if it just so happens all thr hard workers abandon communism and go capitalist, well that just tells you something about how people woukd respond to collectivism.
@freemo @mmm @futurebird that's not just a metaphor. The East Germans put up a wall for a reason. All the hard working highly motivated people were getting out of the Communist side. I know people whose parents did exactly that.
People were not allowed to leave the Soviet bloc for the same reason: all the wrong people would leave.
Cuba was happy to let their prison population leave during the boatlift in the 80s. Those people had negative social value, so good riddance.
@freemo @futurebird @mike805 that’s not how communism works and that’s not how capitalism works either
@mike805 @futurebird @freemo And capable of what?
Conforming to or gaming the credit system.
However, there is ample research showing that the credit system in education is useless metric of actual expertise in the field studied.
More, it detracts and demotivates from the actual study.
Sure, you can force people to memorize and forget stuff through a credit system but real learning and expertise lies elsewhere.
@hramrach @futurebird @freemo yes, school grades are an artificial metric that doesn't say much about success in the real world.
Getting ahead in a large corporation also has a lot to do with artificial metrics - self-promotion skill, ability to look smart in meetings, social climbing skill.
Making it as an entrepreneur, or at a small business, probably tests real world smarts a lot more.
Given that nearly all real world work is done with the Internet available, tests should be too.
(SF)
It's an extremely well known fact at this point that women are disproportionately penalized for negotiating, and probably people marginalized in other ways are as well. Negotiating salary mostly benefits people who are able to pretend to be more skilled than they actually are.
No doubt there is unfairness in hiring, but women are paid less in unions too, so those issues are less about unions.
@freemo well I was going to point out that the quickest google search will demonstrate how much unions reduce the gender pay gap but now I realize you're just a troll
@sanae why is it always the actual trolls who call people trolls... lol
@freemo @futurebird @mike805 I think that people a being paid based on their skill is — a misconception.
I think its far more complex than just that... for sure... but there is a big negotiating pressure from having skills.
@freemo @mike805
No one is clamoring for this "right" but people who own companies and republicans (and some democrats)
It's a red haring and your concern is at least misplaced if not something worse.