If influencer corruption is inevitable, what exactly should Dems & the Left do, Leo?

[Leo Gura]

Yes, capitalists will always undermine socialists, because socialists want to take away their property and capitalists thrive on leeching labor from plebs. Also because socialism fails miserably when implemented by anyone anywhere.

[Hardkill]

14 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Yes, capitalists will always undermine socialists, because socialists want to take away their property and capitalists thrive on leeching labor from plebs. Also because socialism fails miserably when implemented by anyone anywhere.

Yeah....

However, the centrist/corporate/establishment Dems can't continue to squash or ignore the growing left-wing supporters in the country forever.

Otherwise, they will eventually lose too many big elections. 

 

[Leo Gura]

28 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

Yeah....

However, the centrist/corporate/establishment Dems can't continue to squash or ignore the growing left-wing supporters in the country forever.

Otherwise, they will eventually lose too many big elections. 

This isn't some new thing. People must compromise to make a society work and no one gets exactly what they want. This is how things work.

The problem with leftists is that they expect to win with no compromises.

Leftists will never get what they want because survival trumps their ideals.

[Hardkill]

Just now, Leo Gura said:

This isn't some new thing. People must compromise to make a society work and no one gets exactly what they want. This is how things work.

The problem with leftists is that they expect to win with no compromises.

Leftists will never get what they want because survival trumps their ideals.

I know.

But centrists are going to have to compromise as well as by accepting enough support from leftists in order to win many elections.

Moreover, if leftists and centrists can't ever put aside their differences to unite, then how are they ever going to gain back real power again and stop both right-wing authoritarianism and the wealthy oligarchs from taking over this country before it's too late?

[Daniel Balan]

27 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

I know.

But centrists are going to have to compromise as well as by accepting enough support from leftists in order to win many elections.

Moreover, if leftists and centrists can't ever put aside their differences to unite, then how are they ever going to gain back real power again and stop both right-wing authoritarianism and the wealthy oligarchs from taking over this country before it's too late?

If you look at the last election Kamala lost due to the moderates that choose to go with Trump. Those same moderates voted Biden in 2020, but now they went with Trump because of the huge inflation that happened under Biden. I don't say that the inflation is the fault of Biden, but the average voter perceived it that way.

Bottom line of what I'm trying to say is that progessives are irrelevant in elections, in the swing states and the popular vote overall, the moderate luck warm voters are those who decide who is gonna win, and those moderates felt that Biden worsened the economy thus this time they voted for Trump.

Progressives are litteraly dust in the wind in the grand arithmetic of general elections. I don't think there is a more meaningless demographic than progressives. Sometimes, ironically enough, these progressives are the ones that actually regress society due to their refusal to mobilize and vote the moderate candidate with the higest chanches to win. 

Edited September 7 by Daniel Balan

[Husseinisdoingfine]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Also because socialism fails miserably when implemented by anyone anywhere.

This disputable. The modern socialists are not advocating for centrally planned state socialism. Mamdani has yet to release a platform advocating for significant worker ownership or representation. But we do have examples throughout history where common ownership of property does lead to better outcomes. 

Sumeria, 2100 BC, had a state planned economy, where food was directly distributed through the state. The code of Hammurabi fixed the wages of workers, and capped how much physicians were allowed to charge their patients. In Egypt during the Ptolemaic dynasty from 323 to 30 BC, the state controlled the means of production and every aspect of commerce, the government owned all of the land and decided what crops should be grown and where.

We have as well have modern examples of it working, such as; Yugoslavia, Burkina Faso, Guatemala under president Jacobo Arbenz, and Chile under president Allende. 

And even the so called "failed" experiments didn't really fail, according to this study:

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.76.6.661

[Daniel Balan]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

This isn't some new thing. People must compromise to make a society work and no one gets exactly what they want. This is how things work.

The problem with leftists is that they expect to win with no compromises.

Leftists will never get what they want because survival trumps their ideals.

Progressives and leftists are some of the most immature and dangerous among the political groups. They make the liberals look bad thus giving fascists free fuel to power their political machine. 

I put progressives in the same pot with libertarians. Utterly immature and dangerously ignorant. 

The whole political debate should be between which side steals more ( The conservatives) and which side steals less( The liberals) which side is pro status quo( conservatives) and which side is pro government reform and improvement (liberals). But because of those ignorant progessives, we are debating who is preserving culture and who is fighting to change tradition and culture. This allows conservatives to continue to steal and uphold the status quo under the banner that they defend tradition and American culture from those looney progressives. Right now, counter-intuitively progressives actually regress society with their naivety and ignorance. Those fools need to be dropped into a war zone to get in touch with reality. Their dumb political positions are ensuring that they make sure the voters don't vote liberal thus ensuring that the status quo thieves keep on robbing public resources.

 

Edited September 7 by Daniel Balan

[Daniel Balan]

I give an example. Imagine there is a mayoral election for lets say Paris. There are 4 candidates. 

The nationalist/conservative, the moderate liberal, the progressive and the libertarian. 

The conservative one is polling 1 week before election at 40% the liberal is at 35% the progressive is at 15% and the libertarian is at 10%. If progressives have a brain, they would vote the moderate liberal thus giving him 50%, winning with 10% difference over the conservative, and now the city of Paris would move slowly towards reform and the diminishing of the corruption. But because progressives are brain dead they vote their progressive candidate that has no chanche of winning , thus the conservative candidate wins the election beating the liberal with the score 40%  over 35%. Now the status quo is upheld, the robbery of the public money continues and the progressives as always did their best to regress society.

Edited September 7 by Daniel Balan

[Husseinisdoingfine]

19 hours ago, Husseinisdoingfine said:

 And even the so called "failed" experiments didn't really fail, according to this study:

https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.76.6.661

 

Response to criticisms of the study:

 

[Leo Gura]

23 hours ago, Husseinisdoingfine said:

The modern socialists are not advocating for centrally planned state socialism.

Yes, but even modern socialism would still involve a heavy-handed redistribution of power and wealth, otherwise it would be pointless. But given the historical track record of socialism's implementation over the last 100 years in dozens of nations, you can appreciate why capitalists would be so leery and resistant to try that experiment again with their wealth on the chopping block.

Imagine you worked hard and honest for 30 years to earn yourself $10 million dollars. And now some naive socialist comes along and suggests taking that away. Of course you will fight it tooth and nail.

Edited September 8 by Leo Gura

[Apparition of Jack]

6 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Yes, but even modern socialism would still involve a heavy-handed redistribution of power and wealth, otherwise it would be pointless. But given the historical track record of socialism's implementation over the last 100 years in dozens of nations, you can appreciate why capitalists would be so leery and resistant to try that experiment again with their wealth on the chopping block.

Imagine you worked hard and honest for 30 years to earn yourself $10 million dollars. And now some naive socialist comes along and suggests taking that away. Of course you will fight it tooth and nail.

Post-War Europe was basically an equal mix of socialism and capitalism. By which I mean, trade unions, workers, actual communists, etc had immense influence over the government and pushed to create the modern welfare state we know today, which has created some of the most stable and equitable societies on the planet. The public health systems in these countries that America lacks is in large part a result of this movement, for instance.

The problem is America is far too embedded in the unrepentant materialism brainrot. Americans genuinely think owning a yacht, owning a Maserati and popping pills your entire life to stave off existential angst is the height of human existence, and will fuck over their fellow countrymen to get there. It completely eludes them that social cohesion, well-being, public health, community spirit etc are their own goods, which is what the countries of Europe, Japan, Canada etc have known for decades.

[Hardkill]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Yes, but even modern socialism would still involve a heavy-handed redistribution of power and wealth, otherwise it would be pointless. But given the historical track record of socialism's implementation over the last 100 years in dozens of nations, you can appreciate why capitalists would be so leery and resistant to try that experiment again with their wealth on the chopping block.

Imagine you worked hard and honest for 30 years to earn yourself $10 million dollars. And now some naive socialist comes along and suggests taking that away. Of course you will fight it tooth and nail.

Imagine working hard and honestly for over 30 years, only to earn next to nothing, and now you’re starving through no fault of your own. Then along comes some robber baron who wants to drain the very soul out of you by exploiting you as a slave for only $7 an hour. You have no choice but to work literally every hour of every day—including weekends—just to barely survive, or even then, still not make ends meet at all.

Now multiply this by millions of people across the country who have been going through the same struggle for years, utterly betrayed by the false promises of "capitalism free from the government" and the so-called “American Dream.”

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, Apparition of Jack said:

Post-War Europe was basically an equal mix of socialism and capitalism

To me it's not socialism if large businesses are privately owned and traded on stock markets. That's capitalism. Western Europe is capitalist with some restrictions. America is capitalism on steroids and meth, with a chainsaw.

[Daniel Balan]

51 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

To me it's not socialism if large businesses are privately owned and traded on stock markets. That's capitalism. Western Europe is capitalist with some restrictions. America is capitalism on steroids and meth, with a chainsaw.

Isn't the economic model of Western Europe the best economic model that mankind has to offer right now? Capitalism with strong regulations and oversight? I think the best economic model is capitalism that is closely regulated by a big government, a government that also owns some key industries like energy, gas and petrol, aviation, road infrastructure etc. 

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Daniel Balan said:

I think the best economic model is capitalism that is closely regulated by a big government

That seems to be the best system we have invented so far. That's why I'm not a socialist.

[Apparition of Jack]

18 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

That seems to be the best system we have invented so far. That's why I'm not a socialist.

I understand not wanting to call yourself a Marxist-Leninist or whatever, as you say history tells us that out of control communism never ends well, but at the same time, don’t you think the pendulum has swung too far in favour of laissez-faire capitalism? 
 

The welfare state came about as a result of both the unregulated capitalism of the Great Depression and collective experiences of WW2, for instance. Likewise, today’s economic situation of massive wealth inequality and poor worker’s rights is much the result of the neoliberalism pushed by Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s. 
 

There’s also the fact that technology has just in general become far more productive over the last 50 years and we now have the machines, computers etc to adequately give everyone a decent basic standard of living. Even something like car production has become absurdly more productive since the 1970s, so the idea of guaranteeing everyone a car wouldn’t be completely out of the realm of possibility, for instance.

That’s why I’m a supporter of people like Bernie, AOC, Mamdani, etc. If you sat them down and asked would there be a place for private enterprise in their ideal future, I think they would truthfully say yes; the idea of Stalinist-style collectivisation seems to be a thing of the past. But we absolutely still can do things like tackle social media corruption, white collar crime, the two-tiered justice system, a severe lack of housing, education, healthcare, etc without turning into radical Stalinists or whatever. The problem is too many elites are too greedy and simply refuse to admit that their wealth is built off the back of millions of workers, often at the expense of those worker’s well-being.

There’s no reason why, in 2025, with all the absurd amount of technology we have, a barista or office administrator should never be able to buy a home, repay their education loans, get medical needs fixed without bankrupting them, etc. The social contract states that if people contribute to a society, that society should look after them, not instead try and extract as much wealth from them as possible and leave them with nothing. That’s how you get the French Revolution.

Edited September 9 by Apparition of Jack

[Daniel Balan]

16 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

That seems to be the best system we have invented so far. That's why I'm not a socialist.

I'm not Einstein, But I think that closely regulated capitalism is the best in the 21th century and it will be the best in the 1000th century if humanity survives until then.

I don't agree with you that humanity is not yet developed enough for socialism. Living in a state built rat box, owning nothing, having no private property whatsoever, working all your life so the state can benefit from your work while you get only what the state thinks you need is not the hallmark of development and never will be.

In my eyes socialism is a step down in development not a step up. There is a reason why at stage purple socialism works wonderfully. Because only utter barbarians need to have a higer authority puppet them and put them to do the work necessary for survival. If one needs a master with a whip in order to function properly that is a sign of low development not high development.

I bet that the higher humanity evolves and develops on the spiral, the less and less humanity will need to be regulated and puppeted by the state.