Against Champagne Socialists
Why Bernie Sanders, Hasan Piker, and Elizabeth Warren should open their wallets before they open their mouths.
It's been a bad year in public relations for Champagne socialists—or if you prefer, Neiman Marxists. The socialist Twitch streamer and Young Turks host Hasan Piker bought a $2.7 million house in Beverly Hills, complete with a swimming pool and an outdoor widescreen perfect for entertaining. Millionaire Aurora James designed Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's show-stealing "Tax the Rich" dress, which she wore to the $35,000-per-ticket Met Gala.
The phenomenon of egalitarians living in luxury while denouncing the evils of inequality is not new. In 2018, socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders paid an effective tax rate of 26 percent despite campaigning on a platform that would require him to pay more than 40 percent. After taxes and donations, Sanders remains within the top 1 percent of U.S. earners and the top .02 percent worldwide. Curious observers may question why Sanders, a tireless critic of the 1 percent, doesn't sell his $575,000 vacation home and give the proceeds to charity or offer them as a general donation to the U.S. government via pay.gov. The same goes for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a longtime progressive who has a net worth of over $10 million and yet donated a mere $50,128 in 2018.
At first glance, the hypocrisy of rich egalitarians with their in-egalitarian lifestyles looks undeniable. They call for higher taxes on people like themselves because they think it's unjust for some to have so much while others have so little. It seems wrong, then, for them to spend their extra money on themselves instead of donating it to the poor. After all, by the egalitarian's own lights, the poor have a stronger moral claim to this money than they themselves do.
Put another way, rich egalitarians regard their excess income as unjustly held property. But it's strange to demand that the state force you to give your unjustly held property to its rightful owners instead of just giving it to them yourself. If your neighbor drops his wallet, you should choose to return it to him, not wait for the cops to force you to return it. If the poor have a stronger claim to your excess income than you do, donate it to them—don't wait for the IRS to take it (especially if you know they don't plan to).
But perhaps champagne socialists can defend themselves. Egalitarians often say that inequality is a structural problem about patterns of the distributions of wealth, income, and status. Inequality is caused by unjust institutions, and so eliminating inequality requires changing those institutions rather than changing individual behavior. Indeed, Piker himself argues on Twitter, "The necessity of charity is an indication of systemic failure. It's still useful to help out mutual aid orgs in the short term but that's not how you solve structural problems." He suggests, "Listen, if you're mad at me tax the fuck out of people like me." Realizing economic equality, he thinks, requires changes in the tax code rather than changes in individual giving behavior. Fixing injustice requires us, not Piker, to open his wallet.
Yet as the Oxford philosopher G.A. Cohen pointed out in his book If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?, the simple fact that you can't fix an unjust institution doesn't imply that you shouldn't fix some of the harms caused by that institution. Suppose we discover that cops are systematically framing innocent people by planting their fingerprints at crime scenes. It would be absurd for a jury or district attorney who knew this to refuse to release a single innocent person on the grounds that saving one victim doesn't fix the system. Similarly, suppose the gap between rich and poor is unjust—the rich have too much and the poor have too little. It would be morally wrong for a rich person to refuse to give some of his excess to the poor on the grounds that the donation doesn't fix the tax system that enabled him to accumulate the excess.
A related defense of Champagne socialism alleges that individual donations are merely a "drop in the ocean," to borrow Cohen's phrase. Even donating a million dollars to the poor won't make a meaningful difference to the overall distribution of wealth and income. Sometimes arguments like this make sense. Suppose a person says, "Climate change is a serious problem" but doesn't bike or drive an electric car. He can justify this by saying, correctly, that a decision to bike or switch to an electric car would have literally a negligible effect on climate change. It would help no one. Climate change is arguably a classic collective action problem where what matters is what we do, not what any one of us does.
It's true that the rich egalitarian cannot personally eliminate nationwide inequality by donating her excess income. It's true that if she does so, the change in distribution of income or wealth will be negligible. But—unlike the climate case—she can in fact make a significant positive difference about something she cares about: the well-being of the poor. An individual cannot eliminate inequality, but she can save a life or end someone's deprivation. When a rich egalitarian donates to the poor, she transfers money from someone who she believes shouldn't have it to someone who she believes should. A single donation may be a drop in the ocean, but sometimes drops in the ocean are morally required. Releasing the wrongfully convicted prisoner may not have a meaningful effect on the total number of wrongfully convicted inmates, but you still have a moral obligation to release him.
What's more, taking the "drop in the ocean" argument seriously would mean that people are under no obligation to do many of the things that egalitarians think they should—such as voting for Bernie Sanders. Your vote for Sanders won't determine the electoral outcome, but he urges us to do it anyway. Of course, Sanders encouraging others to give him power helps him, while his donating money would hurt him. Sanders might say that if enough of us vote the right way, he can be empowered to help reduce inequality. But if enough of us donate the right way, we can reduce nationwide inequality and poverty.
An egalitarian might respond that the real reason to prioritize large-scale, systemic change isn't to enrich the poor but to end capitalist exploitation. A donation to charity won't do that. The Brooklyn College political theorist Corey Robin asserts: "Under capitalism, we're forced to submit to the boss. Terrified of getting on his bad side, we bow and scrape, flatter and flirt, or worse—just to get that raise or make sure we don't get fired. The socialist argument against capitalism isn't that it makes us poor. It's that it makes us unfree." Similarly, Mathew Snow writes in the August 2015 Jacobin article "Against Charity" that focusing our moral attention on effective individual giving ironically "implores individuals to use their money to procure necessities for those who desperately need them, but says nothing about the system that determines how those necessities are produced and distributed in the first place." If Piker forgoes his pool to donate the spared income to the poor, he still wouldn't liberate his beneficiaries from domination by the capitalist class. Maybe they can now fix their Chevy's air conditioning, but they'll still drive it to work to labor under the boss's thumb.
Even if we grant this questionable critique of capitalism, the objection doesn't work. There's no doubt that a rich socialist can't singlehandedly abolish capitalist exploitation; however, she could reduce capitalist exploitation on the margin. She could, perhaps taking a suggestion from the Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, use her millions to finance a worker-controlled firm that operates according to democratic socialist principles. Nozick argued that labor unions looking to liberate workers from employer domination would do well to take matters into their own hands: They could empty their treasuries to start firms that make workers their own bosses. Decisions about what to make, whom to hire, and whom to fire could be made collectively, with each worker having an equal say. From the socialist perspective, surely this DIY strategy is more promising than lobbying a capitalist for more scraps from her table.
While Nozick focused on labor unions, his point generalizes: Rich egalitarians could use their millions to fund worker co-ops. We'll note that this was precisely the sort of arrangement that Nathan Robinson, author of 2019's Why You Should Be a Socialist (All Points Books) and vocal advocate of unionization, allegedly attempted to shut down at his magazine. (Robinson later apologized for his plans to reorganize the magazine while denying that he "tried to prevent [Current Affairs] from becoming a cooperative.") Of course, democratizing a single workplace would leave capitalist economic structures intact elsewhere. Still, that you cannot eliminate all exploitation or oppression is no reason to not eliminate some exploitation and oppression, and it's certainly not a license to oppress workers yourself.
The New York University philosopher Thomas Nagel offers a different rationale for keeping his money: It's unreasonable for him to shoulder the burden of donating his excess income when others do not. This sort of argument is plausible when we're talking about a competition. For instance, Sanders advocates public financing of elections yet accepts private campaign funds. We can justify this apparent inconsistency: You can call for changing the current rules while not being obliged to disadvantage yourself by following your ideal rules now, especially when doing so reduces your chances of reforming the rules. That's true of football and elections.
But distributive justice isn't a competition like an election. The point of being an egalitarian isn't to defeat others; it's to help those in need. If people are drowning for lack of life preservers, you should toss them yours to save their lives, regardless of whether your neighbors are doing the same.
Consider how bizarre the "fairness" argument sounds when applied to virtually any other question of justice. Imagine that you're pleading with a kidnapper to return the children he's taken and to quit kidnapping for good. He replies, "But this would be unfair! I won't return these children and retire from kidnapping until everyone else does too." This argument is absurd. As the saying goes, two wrongs don't make a right. Noting that other egalitarians aren't giving away their wealth is neither a justification nor an excuse, as our youngest children can tell you (and trust us, they are hardly moral savants).
Nagel also claims that deciding when and where to donate your money is "more irksome" than paying your taxes. Is it, though? Storing our credit card information to allow for monthly charitable donations is far easier than filing our taxes. And figuring out which charities effectively help the poor isn't particularly irksome either, because charity evaluators have already done that for you. To give one example, Givewell.org's Maximum Impact Fund distributes funds to those charities that it concludes do the most good per dollar donated.
To be clear, we aren't making a banal point that people sometimes work within institutions or structures they reject. An anarchist has little choice but to drive on public roads. A libertarian might send his kids to the public schools his taxes pay for. A Marxist might despise private production but still work at a for-profit firm. People cannot be expected to martyr themselves for their ideologies and are entitled to live decent lives given the surrounding structures they cannot control.
But Neiman Marxists who donate their excess income will still live decent lives. Our point is not that they ought to immiserate themselves to become martyrs for their cause. We claim only that they should give away the amount that they themselves regard as appropriate to tax away—money which, by their own standards, they shouldn't have in the first place. (In 2018, Sanders deducted $18,950 in charitable donations—just 3.3 percent of his total income.)
Lastly, it is especially wrong for someone to use moral posturing to become rich and famous, and then, instead of avoiding the behavior they claim is wrong, to revel in it or engage in it far more than others. There is something ridiculous and rotten about the fundamentalist Christian pastor who becomes famous for condemning extramarital sex but who also employs a harem of prostitutes. Or consider government leaders who demand social distancing and masking for the masses but have large, unmasked parties while their states are on lockdown. Or the public intellectual who decries the commodification of everything but demands $30,000 and first-class airfare to give guest lectures on commodification. When the disconnect between personal behavior and expressed ideology is this dramatic, and when the person gets rich and famous for expressing that ideology, we have to wonder whether he was ever sincere or was instead merely trying to promote himself.
The reality is that for many people, publicly expressing ideology is not about trying to say what's right and wrong; it's about trying to look good to others. It's moral masturbation, not moral theory. Rather than helping others—which might cost them something!—they advocate helping others. Rather than ameliorating some of the bad effects of injustice—which might cost them something!—they advocate for justice. They then consume the warm glow of cheap altruism and earn the admiration of like-minded peers, all while living a self-centered luxury lifestyle.
The George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen once noted that in the United States, cities' politics and behavior seem to be at odds. Egalitarian cities with fairly equal distributions of income tend to have a conservative ethos, while cities that have massive disparities in wealth and that shower rewards upon high-status people—such as Los Angeles and New York—tend to have left-wing and egalitarian ideologies. One possibility is that wearing a left-wing ideology is a sort of cover for living a right-wing life. Perhaps this partly explains why elite universities are so left-wing. They sell elite status, but they cover this up with incessant praise of social justice. It could be that Harvard is a right-wing institution that undermines social justice, but if it never stops talking about equality, maybe you won't notice.
Consider the American ritual of giving an expensive engagement ring when one proposes marriage. Among other things, the ring serves a signaling purpose: The fact that the proposer was willing to bear a cost, to sacrifice two months' salary for a trinket, is strong evidence that this person is sincere and committed. Generally speaking, when people bear a real cost to live by their professed views, as when religious people abstain from delicious food, that is evidence they mean it.
In the same spirit, Piker could sell his Beverly Hills house and give most of the money to charity to show his commitment to equality. Talking about socialism is cheap (indeed, even lucrative); a $2 million donation is not. Yet rather than bear a real cost to really help the poor, Piker and other prominent egalitarians adopt a philosophy that they think demonstrates their good hearts but that allows them to live high while people die.
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Nieman Marxists
Well done. Fauxialists are the worst.
Where I live (think plastic straws, hotel mini-shampoo bottles, etc) it’s the Cali-Ban I worry about.
The writer ignores the fact that the Nieman Marxists only trot out their Marxism when its convenient. It never exists as a matter of principle, only to demonize opponents and “a reason to give me power”. Most of them don’t have a single worthy policy to run on other than a promise of someone else’s money. And their threshold always seems to be just above their earning power and only targets future income, not their own current assets.
“From the February 2022 isdue.”
???? Ti me warp?
Printed magazines usually come out a month early.
Well, income and wealth (assets) are two different things.
Something these folks can’t seem to distinguish at all.
See Saunder’s latest attack on Buffett where he applies income taxes paid to total net worth and comes up with a fractional percentage as his “effective tax rate”.
These folks give Robinhood a bad name!
What about cocktail party libertarians?
“What about cocktail party libertarians?”
When they show up at Der JesseBahnFuhrer’s cocktail party, ESPECIALLY if they are polite, civil, and soft-spoken REAL libertarians (desiring a small Government Not-so-Almighty), then Der JesseBahnFuhrer will promptly evict them from what is, after all, Der JesseBahnFuhrer’s property.
However, all web sites everywhere (which are NOT Der JesseBahnFuhrer’s property) need to be micro-managed by Government Almighty, per the EXACT desires of Der JesseBahnFuhrer!
(Der JesseBahnFuhrer imagines that the libs will then cry all day every day, and will NEVER think of using Government Almighty micro-management to pussy-grab Der JesseBahnFuhrer right back!)
I actually think champagne socialists are great. Their ideology is quite useful for us Koch / Reason libertarians and our #BillionairesKnowBest philosophy.
With their eat-the-rich messaging, politicians like Warren and Sanders trick poor voters into believing they’re “drinking billionaire tears” when they vote Democrat. Those of us who really pay attention, of course, know that billionaires want Democrats running things.
#OBLsFirstLaw
It’s always easy to find justifications for doing what you were planning on doing in the first place, especially if you’re an evil greedy bastard who thinks yourself qualified to run other people’s lives. Looking at you, Bill Gates and George Soros and Klaus Schwab and John Kerry.
Why even bother being a super-rich, super-elite if you can’t run the world?
Rich man’s burden.
The problem is, this is kind of a tu quoque argument.
The validity of their “tax the rich” proposals has nothing to do with whether they themselves are hypocrites.
If you argue that their hypocrisy weakens their argument, that implies that if they started giving away more money, it would strengthen their argument. Careful….
It would strengthen their argument by demonstrating sincerity and lack of hypocrisy.
I suspect you may be defining “argument” as only pure logic and facts, but a broader definition of “argument” included anything they can use to convince others to accept their point of view, including the appeal of genuineness.
As things stand, people like AOC, Sanders,
and Warren plainly don’t walk the walk to match their talk.
Anyone else see irony in this post?
We’re seeing the self-justification for why Mike says the things he does.
I see TONS of irony in the idea that JesseBahnFuhrer would like to lecture ANYONE about the evils of hypocrisy, or the blessings of the lack of hypocrisy!
Fuck off and die, asshole
You first, SmegmaLung! You hypocrite! If you are NOT a hypocrite, you will GLADLY lead by example! (Just like the Neiman Marxists).
AOC and Sanders are popular with committed marxists and ignorant fools who feel good listening to their inane rants. Similar to Obama’s popularity.
this is kind of a tu quoque argument
Looks like eyeroller’s going to accidentally summon a sarcasmic. Maybe he can explain to sarc what it actually means.
It suggests they do not believe in the argument they are making. It doesn’t lend any support that if they believe their argument (say such as Bin Laden) that there is merit or some additional merit to their argument. In their case, it appears it is tax some rich not as a Robin Hood type deal but as a form of control. And possibly more opportunity to play Santa to folks that mail in ballots for them.
I don’t think the authors are really addressing the strength of the “tax the rich” argument; rather, the hypocrisy itself is the focus.
It really belies the authoritarian nature of the system required for socialism. If proponents, themselves, recognize that they can’t be trusted to comply without coercion (i.e. Thomas Nagel), then what kind of far-reaching statism might be required to subject society as a whole to their “preferred” system?
If they gave up all of their money it wouldn’t strengthen their argument. Socialism would still be an evil political/social system. The only point it would serve would be for them to look less hypocritical and less shitty, which they don’t care about because their cult members don’t care as long as the weasels say the right things.
The only point it would serve would be
that they would be less willing to work for this ‘equity’ to occur without the lifestyle perks.
If no one actually believes the argument, should it really be taken seriously? And if the people who claim to believe the argument clearly do not and are therefore hypocritical liars… does that not indicate that even they don’t believe their argument? And if the “believer” does not actually believe, why should anyone?
Nah, it wouldn’t strengthen their argument a bit because the fact they are wrong isn’t based on whether they adhere to their moral argument. It would merely indicate they are true believers, which they aren’t, and it’s not much of a gamble anyway. It’s because they aren’t true believers that one can make the argument that even THEY don’t believe the bullshit they are spewing.
It attacks the validity and sincerity of the speaker, which is important when your base is nothing more than a cult of personality. So many people like Bernie because he’s an “honest politician” and the argument that he’s not honest reduces his credibility and thus the credibility of his proposals.
They’re guilted into saying these things or pretending to believe them, but their hypocrisy demonstrates that deep down they don’t believe the bullshit themselves. And by bullshit I mean the goal of Big Government Power, Control and Redistribution of Wealth and the Evils of Capitalism and Private Property.
$471 billion in charitable contributions in 2020. Seems like that helps someone.
But it didn’t help ANYONE because only the government can decide who’s worthy of help, what they should be helped with, and how much help they deserve.
And “the government “= Democrats.
Not much new here; Progressives donate money to lobby groups like WWF or the Sierra Club so that they can leverage it into taxes levied against everyone. Makes sense if you consider everyone else as a resource to me mined.
Conservatives and libertarians don’t want to manage our lives through government, so mostly donate to actual charities like churches.
Did not know that the World Wrestling Federation is a charity. Should have saved my ticket stubs.
But even those donations to WWF & Sierra are tax deductible so clearly they don’t want taxes levied against everyone
I used to give to the WWF, but then Hulk Hogan retired.
He’s too busy plowing his neighbors wives while they watch.
you say that like it’s a bad thing
https://www.thatawesomeshirt.com/shirt/39/wwf_wrestling_pandas/
https://www.worldwildlife.org
I don’t think they’ll wrestle the moniker away.
It’s strange to demand that the state force you to give your unjustly held property to its rightful owners instead of just giving it to them yourself.”
It’s reminiscent of ancient arguments within the Catholic church about why the Vatican doesn’t sell its incredible art collection, for instance, and use it to feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless, etc. After all, Catholics all over the world are sacrificing smaller extravagances of their own to pay for the church. Why can’t the church chip in by sacrificing some extravagances of its own?
That question presupposes something about the relative unimportantance of the church itself compared to its mission. Catholics believe the church was instituted by God–for his own reasons. Progressivism is the same. It’s a religion with the government in place of a church, and even when the purpose of their church is to force people to make sacrifices for the benefit of the poor (as they see it), that isn’t the only thing it does.
Stop assuming that the purpose of progressivism is to help the poor. Just like any religion, its purpose is to make people feel like they’re part of something larger than themselves and to give their lives meaning and purpose–with forced sacrifice being just one important example. The benefit of their sacrifices for the poor is mostly incidental. The important thing is feeling like their lives have meaning and purpose.
Not just progressives. Behind Trump’s Presidency was literal religion: evangelical Christianity’s whitewashing of Trump’s personality and past, and his promotion as a holy warrior for good:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/10/25/god-trump-closed-door-world-council-national-policy/
“On hand for Trump’s presentation was Ralph Reed, an evangelical political leader and CNP member. By his own account, he had come to know and admire Trump. But Reed sensed intense skepticism from other CNP members, as he writes in his book ‘For God and Country: The Christian Case for Trump.’ Then, at the meeting, something unexpected happened. After his presentation, Trump, like the other Republican candidates, answered questions and offered to stand with any CNP member for a photo. The line went clear out of the ballroom.”
Mike. Why do you run to wapo to discuss the thoughts of others instead if asking those people. Evangelicals knew trump wasn’t a Saint. But they also knew how pro abortion Hillary and the left are retard. They didn’t ignore Trump’s flaws, they looked at his policy as more important.
Stop getting your views of others from those that call them enemies dummy.
Mike doesn’t have the slightest ability to form a “thought”; a mysterious function which others can accomplish, but a concept entirely foreign to him.
Progressives resist seeing their movement as a religion because they see that as an insult. I don’t see religion as insulting–by itself–as all. One of the reasons progressives are among America’s most horrible people is because they’re religious fanatics. I’m fully onboard with the idea that religion can be entirely rational–with Kierkegaard and Tillich being examples.
Fanaticism is religion without reason with the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem witch trials being good examples. The problem with progressivisim isn’t that it’s a religion. The problem with progressivism is that they’re religious fanatics. They don’t care whether their facts are true or false. They don’t care whether they’re rational or irrational. They don’t care whether they’re wrong or right.
They don’t really care whether our sacrifices will achieve anything. It’s all about making their own sacrifices, and it’s about the idea of sacrifice itself.
Modern leftism requires a sole dedication to the state. Many of the policies they rnact are to hamper community, religion, and other social bonds between groups. They push single parent benefits. They attack religious charities. They attack secular charities. They believe charity through the state and not through community action.
They actually describe racism in terms of original sin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Original_Sin
They also see sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia in terms of sin, and they have no concern for the opinions of sinners.
Cancel culture is excommunication.
One of the features of their religion is that they don’t believe in the separation of their church and state. Christians believe that adultery is a sin, but very few want the government to throw people in prison for cheating on their spouses. Progressivism isn’t like that. They believe the whole purpose of the government is to impose their religion on sinners and unbelievers. That’s another reason why progressives are America’s most horrible people.
This.
People like Mike Laursen see Christianity as competition to be eliminated, and imagine that their beliefs are purely rational.
But they don’t understand that their beliefs are actually a form of Christianity stripped of redemption and forgiveness. The American left has internalized all the worst excesses of Calvinism and Roman Catholicism without any of their tempering doctrines.
I don’t know about Mike but I reject all superstitious dogma.
Much like Ayn Rand did. In fact, if you want to say I “worship” the individual go ahead.
I am a secular humanist like Ayn Rand. Conservatives hate us.
You worship the state. The opposite of Rand.
You’re a Big Government loving Trump-tard who defends his record $3 trillion deficits and the Trump Welfare and Handout Bill of 2020.
I actually objected to every spending bill he signed just like I objected to thr 14 gop members extending the debt ceiling idiot.
But I also recognize he could not veto spending bills signed by 90 senators and 80% of the House. Unlike you I know how government works so I blame Congress
You blame him to defend Obama like you did below dummy.
Youre a big government statist, not me.
All your time here is spent defending the left.
GO BIG OR GO HOME’ Trump ready to sign off on BIGGER stimulus deal with more $1,200 checks and slams Pelosi for ‘holding it up’
https://www.the-sun.com/news/1638523/trump-go-big-stimulus-checks-pelosi/
Trump WANTED to spend trillions more than the amount Congress passed.
You mean Trump said financial should go to the people, instead of propping up the usual corporate suspects in order to maximize shareholder profit$ for Democratic Party donees like Soros and Buffett.
That would have been awful, huh? Giving it to the hoi polli forcibly locked in their homes instead of funneling it to Blackrock and pals?
Seriously, every commenter here has said they oppose the wuflu bail out and the eviction moritorium, yet the resident pedofile completely ignores that
Young Lives Matter
– Pluggo
turd lies; it’s all he ever does. turd is a TDS-addled piece of lefty shit and a pathological liar besides, entirely too stupid to remember which lies he posted even minutes ago, and also too stupid to understand we all know he’s a liar.
If anything he posts isn’t a lie, it’s totally accidental.
turd lies; it’s what he does. turd is a lying pile of lefty shit.
I have Mother’s muted so I don’t have the context for your comment replying to his comment. I take it he tried to focus the conversation on me.
I’d gladly discuss my religious views if they were relevant to the discussion and not in response to an ad hominem, but that doesn’t appear to be this discussion.
Why do idiots brag about their willful ignorance and even attempt conjectured strawmen?
He made himself sound like an even bigger idiot than usual, so I’m fine with it.
Well said.
Progressives imagine their beliefs aren’t religious because they think they don’t believe in the supernatural. Before evolution, etc., true believing Christians didn’t believe in the supernatural either. They believed that God was part of the natural world–like the ground under our feet.
To the extent that progressives don’t believe in the supernatural, they make up for it with their beliefs in how the economy works, in their disregard of facts or logic, and their disregard for the likely consequences of their policies. If China and India have more coal plants under construction than we could possibly decommission, don’t let that dissuade you. America needs to sacrifice our standard of living on the altar of climate change anyway!
Progressives are often encouraging people to make sacrifices without any consideration for the consequences–because the sacrifice itself makes them feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves and gives their life meaning. It’s like eating fish on Fridays or refraining from drinking alcohol as a matter of faith. Only now they’re sacrificing their supposed white privilege (whatever those are) to feel pious–more pious than the infidels.
The sunk cost fallacy scratches the same religious sacrificial itch and may be its ultimate origin–why people are so susceptible. Their progressive faith has meaning because, in their minds, they have sacrificed something for their faith, and the more they sacrifice, the more meaningful they feel their beliefs and their lives become. Listen to this story from This American Life (from a few weeks ago)–about a guy who basically became an environmentalist fanatic.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/748/the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it/act-one-6
It’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. This guy seems to have lost his family to the same kind of progressive fanaticism.
“Christians didn’t believe in the supernatural either”
-BURN the witch!!!!
They believed the devil was real, and they believed that witches were real. If you believe the devil and witches are a real part of the real world, you only believe in the supernatural from the perspective of nonbelievers. If they truly believed that God created all the life on this planet in six days, that is not evidence that they believed in the supernatural from their own perspective.
When progressives insist that increasing the money supply faster than the rate of real economic growth will NOT cause inflation, we may recognize that as a ridiculous belief–like the belief that bubonic plague is caused by witches and people sinning rather than bacteria. But that doesn’t mean true believers in the progressive religion believe in the supernatural from their own perspective per se. It means their religious beliefs are like the religious believers of old.
When progressives insist that increasing the money supply faster than the rate of real economic growth will NOT cause inflation, we may recognize that as a ridiculous belief–like the belief that bubonic plague is caused by witches and people sinning rather than bacteria.
On some level they don’t believe it though. If we look closely at the revealed preferences of Marxist pontifficators, they adhere to the tenets of capitalism in their private dealings. Marxism has been this way since it’s inception.
Of course religious types aren’t free of this kind of mentality. With a few exceptions, religious persons claiming that the world will end in their lifetimes won’t actually bet real money on it.
Socialism cannot exist without capitalism to steal from, Karl marx even stated that
They don’t care whether it’s true or false.
There were plenty of people who were prepared to believe in transubstantiation regardless of whether it was actually true.
Progressives generally don’t care whether the things they believe are true. What they care about is that you believe them.
“Progressives imagine their beliefs aren’t religious because they think they don’t believe in the supernatural.”
Wow, first sentence and you are already dealing in broad over-generalizations serving your obsession with painting progressives as evil. It is an unfounded, illogical assumption on your part that there are no religious progressives.
No joke! Ken saying progressives have the ability to think is giving them way too muck credit
Shut your whore mouth Dee.
I was on an Always Sunny marathon this week. Laughed at every bird comment.
Did it include Dee and Dennis doing crack? That’s Dee when she gets upset with people criticizing Reason staff.
Yeah. The time warp episode where he falls out the window and thinks it is 2006 again. So dee and Dennis start crack again. Hilarious.
“It is an unfounded, illogical assumption on your part that there are no religious progressives.”
Ken literally stated the opposite, Clowntits.
He noted that progressivism itself has become your religion.
Hence your antipathy to Christianity isn’t that of an anti-theist, but that of a zealot raging against heresy.
Indeed Jesse. The evangelicals saw that Hillary was so evil that regardless of Trump’s character flaws and personal track record, he was an infinitely better choice. Notice how every single thing for which they’ve criticized him, his opponents are no better, or worse.
The alternate to Trump was Clinton.
Sometimes you have to chose the lesser evil and greater good,
than chose the lesser good and greater evil.
Mike what does that have to do with this article?
Trump ain’t calling for the rich to be crushed while simultaneously living large.
There is a cadre of commenters that are so consumed with Trump living in their head that they have to bring him up, even in response to articles that have nothing to do with Trump. Mike appears to be one of them.
mike has a ring of paint around his mouth…
Nothing to do with the article. It has to do with adding onto Ken’s comment, pointing out that it is not just the Left or progressives that mix religion and politics.
So you didnt add to it. You tried leeching your leftist onto it.
So, bowf sidez?
For the left, politics is their religion.
But that wasn’t necessary, and you were so wrong that shrike tried to white Knight for you. Fucking pathetic.
Evangelicals on Trump in a nutshell: “Donald Trump is going to embarrass me every day of the year, but unlike the other side, he doesn’t hate my faith, and actively seek to do me harm.”
Christians are just voting for whichever political party is less likely to make their faith illegal one day.
If you guys could hold back on the crazy hatemongering and eliminationist rhetoric a touch, maybe they wouldn’t all be running to guys like Trump for protection.
Incidentally, I’ve noticed your team is starting to pull the same thing on Orthodox and Conservative Jews in the last five years.
You’re nuts. Joe Biden doesn’t hate Christians. He belongs to the original Christian sect and not some crazy offshoot of it.
His administration ha scinstantly backed down from defending religious institutions. Just recently the DoJ succumbed to LGBTQ protestations against them saying they were forced to defend the RFRA.
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/biden-doj-updates-court-filing-lgbtq-backlash-religious-discrimination-rcna1146
Biden was against the hobby lobby decision. He supports abortion and other antibreligious ideas. He rescinded a trump era rule protecting religious bias and discrimination.
https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20211108
If you didn’t lie you’d have nothing.
And catholicism wasn’t the original Christian sect you fucking idiot. It was formed under guidance from the Roman empire about the third century a.d.
How are you so fucking clueless.
Pluggo thinks 2+2=5. Unless it is inflation, in which case it equals zero.
2+2=4, but in electrical engineering
2A+2A=4A, but I’m going to put 5A just to be safe
Maybe more if that is a motor and the number isn’t starting current.
And not even then. The doctrines that distinguish modern Roman Catholicism didn’t really form until the 1100’s.
The Ethiopian church, the Syriacs, the Orthodox, the Nestorians, etc. all boast equal or greater heritage. Only the Protestants who are the result of an internal Roman Catholic revolution, can’t.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/11/chai-feldblum-returns.php
opening sentence:
Joe Biden, the devout Catholic who doesn’t know that the “P” in Psalms is silent, seems poised to carry on the left’s attack on religion.
Does he still pronounce the P in Psaki?
That’s it? He doesn’t know how to pronounce the word, “psalms”?
There’s also the rest of the article, if you’re interested.
She’s not. She’s only here to squawk.
Yes, that’s it. He linked to an entire article but was kind enough to quote only the first sentence to save you the trouble from actually reading the whole thing… even though he linked to the whole thing!
He could have saved himself some time and energy and left the link out since it was only the snark about pronouncing Psalms that mattered.
I did read quite a bit of it. It appeared to be a right-wing blog post arguing that Biden isn’t truly religious because he appointed a gay rights activist in his administration.
And it also made the ridiculously thin claim Biden isn’t truly religious because he mispronounced “psalm”.
So because you learned actual facts you didnt know previously it is right wing. Hilarious.
“It appeared to be a right-wing blog post”
“Everyone who disagrees with me is
Hitlerright-wing”How to pronounce “psalms” is not important, except that anyone who bothered to learn much about Christianity from anything but a book would have heard it properly pronounced many times. Biden doesn’t strike me as ever having been a shut-in. So I suspect that if he missed how to pronounce “psalms”, he didn’t stay awake through many church services.
OTOH, I’ve seen many fervent advocates of injecting their allegedly Christian religion into everything who knew less about the Bible than I do – and I’ve been an atheist ever since I first understood what the guy with a funny collar was going on about. So why expect an obvious idiot like Biden to know anything about his own religion?
And on the third hand, Biden has a competing religion: belief in the almighty government.
turd lies; it’s all he ever does. turd is a TDS-addled piece of lefty shit and a pathological liar besides, entirely too stupid to remember which lies he posted even minutes ago, and also too stupid to understand we all know he’s a liar.
If anything he posts isn’t a lie, it’s totally accidental.
turd lies; it’s what he does. turd is a lying pile of lefty shit who should make the world a better place by fucking off and dying
“some crazy offshoot”
And then you whine that Evangelicals are running to Trump.
You really can’t control yourselves, can you? But thanks for illustrating my point so well.
Do you post here to convince us all you’re an idiot? Because we already know that, so you can stop.
Joe Biden is bought and paid for. By the ChiComs, by the extreme left, and by a myriad of financial interests. He will be whatever they lay him to be. He has no intrinsic political philosophy now, nor has he ever.
Evangelicals were acting rationally by supporting Trump. Reason acted irrationally by supporting Biden who was obviously less libertarian. They voted against their own self interests.
“Reason acted irrationally by supporting Biden who was obviously less libertarian. They voted against their own self interests.”
I think Occam’s Razor demonstrates that rather than voting against their interests, the current crop of Reasonistas aren’t actually libertarian.
Someone get this guy a chicken dinner.
this is just another window dressing of leftism. Its repackaged for resale to another group.
A lot of beltway people like Nock, Robby, Welch, etc. are more concerned about appearing on cable news networks and getting cocktail party invites than they are about being politically and philosophically consistent.
Essentially, they’re weak people, and it shows.
Just an idea, and not a very libertarian one, but am I the only one that would enjoy watching the democrats arm wrestle each other? The loser of each contest would be summarily executed. Which would add to the suspense.
You mean you tube videos of beating jews in the street?
Democrat ‘activism’?
Nothing at all like #metoo leftists voting for Hillary Clinton.
Nice analogy.
I don’t mean this as an analogy.
Out neocortex ( the thing that makes us human) evolved to leverage the advantages of language and religion, and our brains haven’t evolved much in 150,000 years. Religious thinking is hardwired into our brains, and progressive atheists use their neocortex for thinking–just like everyone else for the last 150,000 years. The evolutionary advantages of religion appears to be associated with group cohesion. Shared sacrifice for others makes us feel like we’re part of something bigger than our individual selves–and that’s the kind of thing we’re talking about when we’re talking about religion.
“Stephen Jay Gould suggests that religion may have grown out of evolutionary changes which favored larger brains as a means of cementing group coherence among savanna hunters, after that larger brain enabled reflection on the inevitability of personal mortality.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_origin_of_religions#Increased_brain_size
Progressives are religious fanatics, and that is not an analogy.
At least true-believing catholics endure sacrifice and deprivation now in the hope of a heavenly afterlife. True-believing socialists seem to promote human suffering for the sake of suffering.
I’m not sure progressives have developed a true vision of utopia yet, but they do believe in an environmental apocalypse that can be avoided through forced communal sacrifice–regardless of the cost.
Ask progressives questions about things like: “How much will we need to sacrifice in terms of GDP per capita (our standard of living) before our sacrifices start to lower the average temperature?
If they don’t know the answer to that question but them want to sacrifice our standard of living anyway, there’s a reason for that. It’s probably related to the same reason why moths are attracted to a flame or why suicide bombers willingly destroy themselves.
People who are willing to make sacrifices for something without any consideration for the benefits and the costs–that’s probably a pretty good definition of fanaticism. Throwing a virgin into a volcano doesn’t make much sense from a likelihood of preventing a volcanic eruption perspective, but at least they’re clear on the actual cost of the sacrifice.
According to James Lindsey…
Utopia means “no place” because it can not exist. Not that it is perfection. Leftist thinkers like Herbert Marcuse (and I think it was either Horkheimer or Adorno) literally say that the socialist can not tell you what the perfect world looks like. They believe it already exists within this world. The issue is that it is covered up by the imperfect… which is capitalism and a lack of “liberation” (which is a massively perverse concept when understood on their terms). The goal is to disrupt the current world structure so that it crumbles away leaving behind the perfect. It is like the old story of Michaelangelo claiming that he did not create the sculpture, it already exists. He is merely removing that which is in the way.
so those with mental problems are trying to tell us what normalcy is…
I C..
Hey, what else can humanities professors do for a living?
wash car windows at intersections.
Work for Coca Cola training employees to be less white.
( golf clap )
Bask
In
Reflected
Glory
The term used when a fan of something feels euphoria when that something has success. Such as fans of a sports team. “We won!” as if they were on the team. It also comes into play when the entity does something wrong (Penn State football fans rallying for Paterno knowing that his inaction facilitated some bad things off the field).
What did Penn state do wrong? Sanduski was just a minor attracted person, really he was a trendsetter
It’s just his sexualit!
Neither Warren nor Sanders is an egalitarian; their lifestyle, speech and behavior demonstrates clearly that they do not think all people are to be treated equally under the law.
To be fair $2.7 million will get you a shack in the slums of Beverly Hills.
Reverse…an ex Chicago cop told me that the poor druggies were kicked out of Cabrini Green ( Chicago South side worst) and its been transformed into a paradise…
“…Curious observers may question why Sanders, a tireless critic of the 1 percent, doesn’t sell his $575,000 vacation home and give the proceeds to charity or offer them as a general donation to the U.S. government via pay.gov…”
Ditto that hypocrite Warren Buffet.
It has sentimental value from when he sold out to Hillary.
Did not mean to flag for review. Fat fingers on my phone.
Don’t worry about it. Nobody at Reason actually reviews anything that is flagged.
They also don’t stop people from stealing other’s handles, like when you stole mine to teach Tulpa a moral lesson.
Your morals are fucked up btw.
He’s a shitweasel, that’s for sure.
One problem unmentioned about fixing the system before relieving its individual symptoms is, who decides when the system is fixed? Must it be 100% fixed, or is 99% good enough? 90%, 50%, even 10%?
It’s never fixed. That’s the game. They always want MORE.
One of the reasons Obama was a much better POTUS than the Con Man is this:
WASHINGTON—China joins U.S. allies including Japan and Australia in a new Asia-Pacific trade agreement that launches Saturday—with the U.S. watching from the sidelines.
The new Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, will eventually eliminate more than 90% of tariffs on commerce among its 15 member countries, in what economists say will be a boon to trade in the region.
It will also give China a more prominent role in setting rules of trade in the Asia-Pacific region at the expense of the U.S., according to some analysts.
“This will be a grouping of countries that will work together and try to develop new rules and new standards,” said Wendy Cutler, vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute and a former U.S. trade official. “[The U.S. is] moving in the other direction.”
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-on-sidelines-as-china-and-other-asia-pacific-nations-launch-trade-pact-11641038401?mod=hp_lead_pos4
The TPP was squashed by populists like Trump and Warren even though it would have eliminated tariffs on 16,000 US made goods.
Now China is writing trade rules for the Pacific region.
Fuck you both, Trump and Lizzie Warren.
Oh, and I realize the fake libertarian Trump-tards will spout some nonsense about a “New World Order”. Fuck you too.
Lol.
turd lies; it’s all he ever does. turd is a TDS-addled piece of lefty shit and a pathological liar besides, entirely too stupid to remember which lies he posted even minutes ago, and also too stupid to understand we all know he’s a liar.
If anything he posts isn’t a lie, it’s totally accidental.
turd lies; it’s what he does. turd is a lying pile of lefty shit.
“The new Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, will eventually eliminate more than 90% of tariffs on commerce among its 15 member countries”
You’re hailing the creation of an Asian EU with China in the drivers seat and a Byzantine regulatory framework?
As expected of you, Buttplug.
Well spoken, guailo comrade. You will die last.
Isn’t Biden the President now, though?
TDS is permanent.
So is pedophilia. Also, did you know Buttplug’s favorite song is ‘Sweet Child of Mine’?
Imagine being such a partisan piece of shit you’re shilling for a opaque trade deal for Obama 6 years after the motherfucker left office.
Never change demfag.
“The necessity of charity is an indication of systemic failure.”
No, the “necessity” for charity is an indication of individual failure. Living in abject poverty in the US now requires an exceptional level of incompetence, and often some deliberate effort. Given both broad opportunities and universal information on how to succeed, or at least avoid deprivation, people have to be stupid to fail. And stupid is in the person, not the “system”.
Actually, from working with a lot of business people over the years, stupid can be very successful. They do one thing well, every single time, never deviate, never procrastinate.
To be in poverty for more than a brief period takes personal effort to not even try. Years ago, I had a client that refused to go to work, as she wanted the Earned Income Credit (usually about $5,000) because of her husband’s low income. Once the children were older, she got a supermarket job making $25K per year, multiples of the EIC. Household income almost doubled and moved well above the poverty line. They just preferred the government handout until is wasn’t there.
( golf clap)
Consider these two statements…
1) I’m sorry you are having to work today and make me my $7 coffee – walks away feeling guilty and sipping their coffee and hoping someday the government-run coffee shop will pay them more.
2) I appreciate you are working today and making me my $7 coffee – here’s a $1 tip.
The progressive crowd and champagne socialists feel 1 and wouldn’t even consider 2.
No one wants someone to feel sorry for them, but they all want to feel appreciated. It’s a mindset of destruction, but self and social.
uhg…. 1 is a mindset of destruction, both self and social.
It says a lot about how those two different groups of people value that work and the people who do it.
That masters degree in something non-productive will not pay for itself, hence those in camp 1.
tech drop back around 2001…PhDs offered $29K salaries in job ads…
Had a boss that used to work for a competitor of Intel. That company closed. He said that at the new job he lost 2/3 of the pay he previously had. I mentioned that the old job was no longer an option but he was able to retain 1/3 of his old pay (which was decent). Another option was doing nothing for 0/3 of the pay.
Welcone to H1B land. A Dystopian present destroying peoples lives with foriegners invading the country.
Either way I bet they miss the point that even charging $7 for coffee, the shop can only pay them mediocre wages. And if they decide to increase revenue by charging $12 for coffee, many will end up with no wages, and the others will still not be able to afford stuff.
$3 for coffee.
$4 for Free Wi Fi
Comrades, we cannot expect our leaders such as Warren and Sanders to live on the average U.S. household income and lifestyle.
They are doing critical, important and exhausting work on behalf of the proletariat and thus must enjoy a little infrequent comfort, designer clothing, fines wines, gourmet foods, and lush estates in order to recharge their psyches for this important work on your behalf.
Elizabeth Warren is no share Okie.
a little? That would be OK.
Till it becomes Insider Trading.
But perhaps the goal of Champagne Socialists and Limousine Liberals is not so much what they should do with their own money, but what they want to do with other people’s money. Hypocrisy might be a misdemeanor, but wholesale confiscation of private property is a capital crime.
Bingo.
“It would be morally wrong for a rich person to refuse to give some of his excess to the poor on the grounds that the donation doesn’t fix the tax system that enabled him to accumulate the excess.”
Except the tax system they want would just be another bandaid on the problem.
The tax system is not the structural cause that enables some people to accumulate great wealth. Well, maybe if we were talking about hereditary heads of state.
The tax system should eventually aid economic growth therefore benefit EVERYONE. They should INDICATE economic prosperity, not pretend to BE it.
Taxes built the Interstate highway system.
Those benefits have been profound.
Problem now is we dont really have an economy anymore, its been crushed out of existance by regulations and sending it to Mexico and overseas so poverty is taking over. Much of it, Im told, is trading and stocks. Not circular economics.
Then poor waifs cry for Government money and get it.
Thats addictive to both parties thus becomes a convenient circle jerk to demand more central government.
Communism, IOW.
And the Communist likes of Nancy Pelosi spout off about welfare being good for tge economy which is Broken Windiw and an obvious lie, except that the Poor Waifs neither know why or care.
Thus, why Communism is always marked by poverty.
This is why the practice of Marxism should be aggressively criminalized.
isnt communism illegal here?
Some people accumulate great wealth because they create value for others. Socialists see that as a problem, for some reason.
they are parasites and leeches that dont create anything useful.
50 US cities with the highest burglary rates.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/american-cities-with-the-highest-rates-of-break-ins/ss-AASi7j7?ocid=msedgntp
37 are in red states.
#1 is Hot Springs, Arkansas.
Why did you take cities and parse them to states?
Are those blue cities?
Now that you mention it….
Because he’s a dishonest pedo.
turd lies; it’s all he ever does. turd is a TDS-addled piece of lefty shit and a pathological liar besides, entirely too stupid to remember which lies he posted even minutes ago, and also too stupid to understand we all know he’s a liar.
If anything he posts isn’t a lie, it’s totally accidental.
turd lies; it’s what he does.
So you’re saying that Democrats in red states are more likely to prey on one another?
#1 is Hot Springs, Arkansas
A tourist trap with a Democratic mayor and a population that’s 35% brown?
Why are you so racist, Buttplug?
Is there a reason you linked to MSN’s coverage of the 24/7 Wall St article or would the original headline The City With the Most Property Crimes in Every State have given it all away? Functionally all it really says is that there are 37 red states.
Besides, why did Hot Springs even make the cut as a city? It’s little more than a two horse piss hole. I’ve lived in bigger unincorporated suburbs with four times the population density and crime wasn’t a big deal there. Then without a mayor or police department there wasn’t a constant advertising/political campaign to show how very needed they were.
Damn, this should be embarrassing for dildo, getting caught so obviously lying.
It also doesn’t make sense since MSN lists “the worst” as Hot Springs which they then state:
“Property crimes per 100K people: 3,583.5 — 12th highest of 276 metros”
How can it be both the worst and 12th highest simultaneously? I’d expect the worst to be the highest not 12th.
“the poor have a stronger moral claim to this money “
You’re talking about the morality of money. What is money?
Money is simply transferable work.
Until a man can do 500 times as much work as another he will not morally deserve 500 times as much.
Do you think money should be used for coercion?
That’s why we don’t have a democracy and private interests control the government.
I mean, if you’re into fascism, just say so.
Why are you asking yourself if you’re into fascism? You’re a Nazi, so you obviously are.
Either you believe the poor persecuted Jews suffered a little over 3 holocausts a year around the world betw 1900 and 1945 affecting and killing about 18 million Jews a year as they claimed or you don’t and are denying at least a few of them. Are you a Nazi?
How did you choose which of their 166 holocausts of 6 million were fake to be denied and how did you believe any of them were true?
Cite as proof
http://wearswar.wordpress.com/2017/10/31/repeated-claims-of-6-million-jews-dying-decades-before-hitler-vs-ignored-soviet-death-camp-tolls/
So when the price of a particular good increases due to it becoming incredibly popular (like people reselling Tickle-Me-Elmo years ago), it reflects that all the sudden the people manufacturing the dolls in Bangladesh or wherever had to work harder than when the dolls were not popular?
The word you’re looking for is value, not work.
Except the price didn’t increase because of popularity.
Demand, supply, how does that work?
The market based economy is a rigged gambling fiction that puts the generation of wealth ahead of morality.
We need to do better.
“The market based economy is a rigged gambling fiction that puts the generation of wealth ahead of morality.”
You.
Are.
Full.
Of.
Shit.
And an ignorant Nazi besides.
Do you need the meaning of the red and blue pills explained to you again?
So if everyone had decided that Tickle-Me-Elmo dolls were dumb, boring toys that no one liked, they still would have been sold at a very high price by scalpers?
The price of anything is based on its cost to produce by a viable company.
There is no rational reason why it should be based on the greed of customers.
Customers dictate what will be sold. Unless you want your system to also require people to buy specific products.
With some fads, scarcity creates value. Either buy low-sell high or don’t participate. Nobody was required to buy an Elmo doll. Or Dutch tulips.
Not participating in the economy is not a reasonable alternative.
So a central planner will dictate what and how much each person will be obligated to purchase at whatever inflated price they deem necessary to cover the artificially elevated labor costs? And that central planner, being central to the scheme, should be well compensated. Am I right?
You haven’t got a clue and the straw man you’re so feebly making is illogical.
Why did it increase?
Greed and opportunity
The Jooooosssss, right?
Whose greed? What was the opportunity?
Rob’s greed. And the opportunity to have money taken from productive people and given to less productive people.
The words you’re looking for are greed and immortality.
Ther words I’m looking for are “ignorant” and “Nazi”
Three alternate words: SPRINGTIME FOR MISEK
lol
Yeah
Unless you believe as Jews claimed that 166 holocausts of 6 million Jews occurred since before WW1, you, your fuckwit lying Jewish grandparents collecting reparations, all the veteran liberators of prison camps, all the judges and prosecutors of holocaust crimes, etc etc etc are ALL HOLOCAUST DENIERS or worse.
Think about it. Now squirm like a worm on a hook for the rest of your life while I laugh.
Hahaha
It’s funny, whenever someone uses the word “greed” to describe someone else’s behavior, they’re very often on the other side of the equation, trying to maximize their value as well.
Greed is undeniably a powerful influence regardless of the harm it causes when unchecked .
We can and should do better.
People full of jealous greed believe that they should be paid for existing and not being reimbursed for the value of their production.
Agreed.
That’s how they justify taking credit for another’s labour and 500 times more compensation.
Anyone laboring has an agreement when they start work that defined their compensation. If they are compensated less than that agreement, there is recourse for that. To expect additional compensation is greed. They should instead start a business and pay what their feelings expect folks to be compensated.
We choose the regulations of the society we live in.
Paying people less than a living wage for a fair days work should be illegal.
If you don’t want to pay a living wage, don’t be an employer. There are plenty of other people who will.
Successful people learn to multiply their labor by employing others. It’s called an economy.
You don’t get to claim others labour as your own, unless you’re a slaver.
So if GG and I mutually agree to divide labor and profits amongst ourselves, you are saying this is slavery?
What if others choose to sell their labor to you, for you to make use of? Is that slavery or just people exchanging things of value?
Sell their labour, like slavery. That isn’t freedom.
Our inalienable rights can’t be sold.
What? That makes zero sense.
Are you sure you know what the word “slavery” is?
Slavery is working for someone else’s benefit other than your own.
Why would anyone want to be paid for someone else’s labour besides taking what you don’t deserve?
Your word salad is wilted and limp.
Slavery is forced labor without compensation and without the freedom to choose other employment.
Employees in the US are paid wages for their labor. If they don’t like their wages, they are free to leave and find other employment.
Or we can change the corrupt system.
You can’t refute what you deny.
Change it to what? One in which people are NOT free to decide when and how they want to exchange labor for compensation? Or one on which employers are NOT free to decide how much they want to pay whom for labor?
You just want to exchange imagined compulsion for actual compulsion.
One where regulations that we install ensure that money is recognized as transferable work, and the resources that we share on this planet are used to everyone’s benefit, not just the rich who coerce the rest.
“…and the resources that we share on this planet are used to everyone’s benefit, not just the rich who coerce the rest.”
Fuck off and die, slaver.
He wants a system run by a new Fuhrer. Maybe his Nazi pals saved Hitler’s brain.
have you been hacked? this argument is even less coherent than the holocaust denial, and that is saying a lot.
“Slavery” and “forced labor”…. Yes, National Socialists are quite caught up on both.
computer generated Trolls just spit out text, they cant handle context.
Exactly, and you aren’t.
It’s about respecting a fair days work with a living wage and never taking credit for another’s contributions.
It’s a different way, that’s all.
“It’s about respecting a fair days work with a living wage and never taking credit for another’s contributions.”
You.
Are.
Full.
Of.
Shit.
And an ignorant Nazi besides.
Recognizing that you have never refuted anything I have said nor proven any claim you’ve made, why do you bother shitposting.
My entertainment? Forget it, you’re a tiresome troll.
Employment is an at will contract. If a worker feels they are underpaid for the task, they can go elsewhere for more pay.
As a paying customer, I’m not interested in paying more than market price for labor. And would find alternate options if government artificially increases it.
You’re a puppet of a corrupt system and will be happier when the system is fair unless you advocate corruption.
In which case what you want won’t matter.
I will be happier when I am forced to pay more for the same goods and services when no additional value comes with that increased price? I disagree.
“Recognizing that you have never refuted anything I have said nor proven any claim you’ve made, why do you bother shitposting.”
You’ve been called on your bullshit ‘proofs’ by me and others here, so a a shit-filled Nazi, you simeply stick your fingers in your ears and claim no one has.
Fuck you with Tony’s dick lying pile of Nazi shit.
You piss and moan like you’re doing now but you’ve never refuted what I’ve said or proved what you say.
Deny it, I have dared you, by citing a link to any example as proof.
Your silence is deafening.
Whatever the fuck that means.
I think Herr Misuck has transitioned from glue to paint
Jawohl. All shall be equal as ordered.
I said that people should be compensated commensurately with their contribution and that they cannot claim others labour as their own.
Don’t try to put your dipshit words in my mouth.
Who decides what someone’s contributions are worth? Are you saying that two people voluntarily entering into a contract are not equipped to determine how much each person’s contributions are worth?
I’m saying that those in power will coerce people unless clear regulations protect people, like inalienable rights do.
Do Jews get rights too?
“They already run the world, what do they need rights for?” -Herr Misek
I have demonstrated how Jews have acted like the wastes of skin who fake cancer on a go fund me page to extort money, power and sympathy .
Since you have never refuted it, do you advocate their shameful criminal behaviour?
All the Jews did that?
If so, we should probably throw them all in ovens.
Unless you believe that there were actually 166 holocausts of 6 million Jews you are by definition a holocaust denier.
Which is it fuckwit?
Like I’ve said many times before, it was only a matter of time before all you fuckwits recognized the truth.
What’s it going to be red pull or blue pill?
Hahaha
Damn Rob, brining up throwing Jews in ovens really got you worked up!
Yeah, the only people who don’t find it repugnant are the lying Jews who made it up.
They, you, just can’t seem to get enough of it.
Oh well, you’re been proven to be a lying waste of skin and a holocaust denier to boot.
I love it.
fuck me. I should have scrolled down.
Whoever is buying the product decides on the fair price of it, because they decide what they’re willing to pay for it.
Commies like Misek don’t understand that labor is like any other good in the economy- you sell it to someone who wants to buy it, at a price they’re willing to pay for it. If you don’t like the offered price, go sell it somewhere else.
That perspective favours the rich at the expense of everyone else.
It is uncivilized and puts wealth ahead of morality and inalienable rights.
We need to, can and will do better than the greedy likes of you.
You are the most progressive Nazi I’ve ever met, hands down.
Do you ask the barrista to do a small ‘stache in your soy latte?
You’re just another dime a dozen bigot who can neither prove what you claim nor refute what you deny and refuses to consider counter arguments.
You’re the rabid anti semite here…… calling everyone else bigots. You really have zero self awareness.
Bigotry is demonstrated by the refusal to consider counter arguments.
I have repeatedly presented truth, reality demonstrated by logic, science and the fact that it has never been refuted.
When have you demonstrated anything but bigotry?
You’re a bigot because you hurt his little feelings.
Unless you believe as Jews claimed that 166 holocausts of 6 million Jews occurred since before WW1, you, your fuckwit lying Jewish grandparents collecting reparations, all the veteran liberators of prison camps, all the judges and prosecutors of holocaust crimes, etc etc etc are ALL HOLOCAUST DENIERS or worse.
Think about it. Now squirm like a worm on a hook for the rest of your life while I laugh.
Hahaha
And what about when different values (there’s that word again) are present? What if one person values consistency and lack of risk over monetary gain?
People can choose their careers.
Risk is generally covered by insurance.
I’m talking about monetary risk.
Let’s say I decide to start a professional services firm. Whether I have enough for my desired lifestyle depends on my ability to attract clients and service their needs.
Someone who might be interested in working for me, rather than starting a competing firm, would value making money but would be much more interested in having a steady and predicable income.
I take on significant risk, he doesn’t. In fact, I add a lot to his work. I give him a network, a reputation, additional knowledge, etc. How is that compensated?
By knowing that the money Rob has taken from has be redistributed by Rob against your will. How is that not more than enough compensation?
Pretty sure Rob is a 17 year old subway employee who’s mad that he has to clean the bathroom but the shift supervisor never does, and recently read a book about communism.
If Rob can’t swim in a silo of gold coins, nobody can swim in a silo of gold coins, dammit!
Rob is also free to open a business and pay $50/hr for unskilled labor. Full benefits. Four weeks of vacation. Full college tuition reimbursement. Etc.
I understand that this requires “out of the box” thinking.
There are many variables that would constitute someone’s contribution.
Everyone would be compensated according to the same model. Some people would receive many times that of another.
Only the base full time wage would be a living wage and the ceiling for compensation, while yielding a significantly superior standard of living would not be obscene king like as it is today.
Our current system is corrupt. We need to do better.
So we just institute a wage ceiling and a wage floor?
What happens to the people who can’t provide enough value to justify this “livable wage” that will be different for every person? Do you force someone to employ them against their will?
And when someone creates something that is truly revolutionary and makes everyone’s life better? At a certain point, you take their money once you’ve determined the value they added to the world has compensated?
That’s not out-of-the-box thinking; it has been tried many times.
It’s not even qualified as “thinking”; it’s 5YO playground “I want part of your candy bar!!!”
Can you show me what kind of universal model could calculate value fairly for every type of transaction in the world? Is there an app for it, and how many different modifiers would there be?
Y’all do realize that you’re debating economics and labor markets with a Holocaust-denying Hitlerite…..right???
I have demonstrated how Jews have acted like the wastes of skin who fake cancer on a go fund me page to extort money, power and sympathy .
Jews claimed a holocaust of 6 million around the world no less than 166 times beginning before WW1.
Since you have never refuted it, do you advocate their shameful criminal behaviour and are you also a “holocaust denier”?
Not to mention that people don’t value money the same to begin with. Plenty of people might decide that money means less than contacts in the industry, for example.
Presumably that would be one of the modifiers. Maybe a scale from 0 to 10. Mine would go up to 11 obviously.
Suffice to say that your desperate attempt to refute what I’ve suggested has taken you outside your economic paradigm, box.
The fact that you have asked for clarification demonstrates that you are considering counter arguments. That’s a start.
If you’re looking for a complete proposal for a new economic model you’re going to have to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
Seriously, I don’t think people are ready to not only see but recognize the inherent corruption of our market based economy.
Having the opportunity to realize infinite greed is a powerful influence, regardless of the harm it does.
I will continue to demonstrate the harm and our potential to do better. If you ever do refute anything I say, I welcome it.
You may consider it a work in progress.
It’s a bad pipe dream that can’t work. For obvious reasons. I’m not surprised that a proud nazi would favor such a system.
It’s baad eh?
You goats head is showing.
Your swastika is showing. And is there a sun glare in your face? You have your right hand raised and it appears as of you are trying to block light.
Unless you believe as Jews claimed that there were actually 166 holocausts of 6 million Jews you are by definition a holocaust denier.
You want to see the face of your bogeyman jew? Look in the mirror.
Like I said, it was only a matter of time. What’s it going to be, red pill or blue pill?
Hahaha
So you can’t show me the model until I believe it will work?
And you never answered my questions about those who are unfairly treated by minimum wages.
Is there something you can’t grasp about a work in progress?
If you’re truly interested in a better model than what we have today I’ll be happy to discuss it with you.
You want to know about the people who don’t deserve a living wage? I imagine that there will need to be some accommodation for the handicapped that want to work. There will alway be those who don’t want to work.
Did you know that 5% of the 1% highest paid people are listed as having no job at all?
If you’re just looking for an opportunity to throw stones, as you can see, I’m not shy.
And what evidence do you have that your system will be better? You’ve already claimed that two people are not smart enough to enter into a contract with each other without a third party acting as an arbiter. You’ve claimed greed is responsible for all the ills present in our current system but have given no reason why your system would make that greed go away. In fact, it seems like greed would be even more present, if you’re prepared to provide for people who choose not to work. If I had a choice between a livable wage and working 40 hours a week or a livable wage and working 0 hours a week, I’ll choose the latter. If I know that my value will be confiscated above a certain arbitrary ceiling, I’ll do the safe, easy thing and not risk anything.
Can you government remake man into an altruistic new man who no longer puts himself first?
People have demonstrated time and again that we can accomplish great things when we work together.
Not “my system” but our system that we create to achieve the most good with the least evil.
You deserve a living wage even if you choose to push a broom all day every day.
If you choose to be lazy, you’ll get fired.
Yeah you didn’t answer any of my questions. “People can do great things” is not evidence.
It’s not your system but it’s a work in progress that you can’t show to anyone unless they believe that your system will work.
As for people being fired for being lazy, that sounds like a greedy rich person problem. Lazy people deserve living wages too, I thought.
You thought wrong.
by a union stealing it from you.
” the workers own all thats produced” or some Marxist bullshit like that. Saw it on a T shirt…
Must be the Joos fault, amiright?
Unless you believe as Jews claimed that 166 holocausts of 6 million Jews occurred since before WW1, you, your fuckwit lying Jewish grandparents collecting reparations, all the veteran liberators of prison camps, all the judges and prosecutors of holocaust crimes, etc etc etc are ALL HOLOCAUST DENIERS or worse.
Think about it. Now squirm like a worm on a hook for the rest of your life while I laugh.
Yeah, you’re all holocaust deniers. Are you also anti Semites? You cried to see the face of your bogeyman jew, now look in a mirror.
Hahaha
Hmmm…I’m not Jewish. And you’re rambling.
Either you believe the poor persecuted Jews suffered a little over 3 holocausts a year around the world affecting and killing about 18 million Jews a year as they claimed or you don’t and are denying at least a few of them.
How did you choose which of their 166 holocausts of 6 million were fake to be denied and how did you believe any of them were true?
Let’s try to steelman a case for socialist multimillionaires.
Wealth confers political power, and the relationship between power and wealth is supralinear: giving a million dollars to one person increases that person’s power more than the total increase of power produced by giving ten bucks to each of 100,000 people.
Some people in possession of wealth and power will use them to promote redistribution of wealth toward themselves, by pushing for special tax breaks and subsidies for people like themselves and by opposing measures that might lead to a more uniform distribution.
If wealthy socialists immediately distribute their wealth among many people, there will be a net loss of political power for the progressive cause. This will increase the power of rent-seeking plutocrats to promote policies that will bring themselves even more money and power.
It therefore behooves rich progressives to hang onto their mazuma rather than redistributing it directly, since they can accomplish more by using their bucks to pursue redistributionist policies. This pursuit can include displays of conspicuous wealth since, like it or not, we live in a culture that lionizes celebrities. Sanders’ $575,000 vacation home enables him to entertain influential people and to promote progressive causes more effectively than he could from a modest three-bedroom apartment. AOC’s $35,000 Met Gala ticket buys more publicity for her causes than she could get by staying at home and writing a well-reasoned editorial supporting them.
Meh. Still a pretty bad argument. It’s a good way of saying they shouldn’t have to live like monks, but it doesn’t explain luxury yachts and multiple vacation homes.
The luxury yachts and the multiple vacation homes might add to the political power of the benefactors of great wealth. As I pointed out in my initial post, ours is a culture that places great store on the doings of celebrities. Let’s remember that people eagerly read of the adventures of random Kardashians, and that the TV show “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” enjoyed a nine-year run. If Warren, Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders, Thunberg, et al. were leading modest middle-class lives, they’d probably get less attention from the media, which would translate into less influence to promote their preferred policies.
Kamalas an exception.
She entertained her way into political power using a mattress and kneepads.
And here’s how you make that steelman rust and crumble:
Entrepreneurs get wealthy by creating goods and services people want, while keeping costs low (and hence consuming fewer resources), at prices people are willing to pay.
Politicians and bureacrats want to take a sizable portion of that wealth and distribute it for political gain or out of some notion of fairness.
In the first case (entrepreneurs accumulating wealth), wealth grows exponentially as those who are good at creating wealth accumulate more of it and invest in others who are also good at creating wealth.
In the second case the money goes to people who are good at making promises. When the promises don’t pan out, they take even more money.
If the entrepreneurs (unhindered) can grow wealth at 10% a year, and the politicians (with good intentions) can grow wealth at 2% a year, after 20 or 30 years you end up with 2 very different levels of wealth, for everyone in the nation.
Czecs and Slovaks proved that. It was so contrasting that Politboro Broadcasting System admitted.
I don’t agree at all with our progressive friends’ belief in economic redistribution. Beside CE’s utility argument, I oppose it on moral grounds: forcibly taking money from A for the sole benefit of B is prima facie wrong, and should generally be opposed. It’s particularly reprehensible when promoted by C, who wants moral points for helping B but would rather not get out his own wallet.
However, I think we need to apply the principle of charity to wealthy leftists. Brennan & Freiman suggest that their observed behavior can best be explained by rank hypocrisy. I’m positing an explanation that might tend to acquit them of that charge, without in any way supporting their overall redistributionist philosophy.
No, I don’t expect a person to go to extremes, but when they participate in things that they want to ban, I have to question it.
I don’t think a preacher’s word is meaningless because he does not live like a monk. Even Jesus accepted some luxuries, saying “the poor will always be with you”. However, if you are exceedingly wealthy, to the point of millionairehood, I have to question whether you are pasturing your people or pasturing yourself upon them.
I don’t think climate activists should have to live in tiny eco-huts (even though if they followed their teachings about population control, they should be dead). However, I am skeptical when lectured by international jetsetting celebrities cry out about carbon footprints. Worse are those that act like they are doing something yet their actions make it worse (like Greta Thumberg getting a luxury yauht
Sorry, apparently I didn’t hit the “stop” button fast enough when I accidentally hit submit while typing.
this comment system desperately needs improving.
No, I don’t expect a person to go to extremes, but when they participate in things that they want to ban, I have to question it.
I don’t think a preacher’s word is meaningless because he does not live like a monk. Even Jesus accepted some luxuries, saying “the poor will always be with you”. However, if you are exceedingly wealthy, to the point of millionairehood, I have to question whether you are pasturing your people or pasturing yourself upon them.
I don’t think climate activists should have to live in tiny eco-huts (even though if they followed their teachings about population control, they should be dead). However, I am skeptical when lectured by international jetsetting celebrities cry out about carbon footprints. Worse are those that act like they are doing something but their actions make it worse (like Greta Thumberg getting a luxury yacht cruise across the Atlantic rather than flying commercial, resulting in 100 times the carbon emissions, or Greenpeace protestors forcing emergency shutdowns of coal plants, creating huge quantities of emissions).
“No, I don’t expect a person to go to extremes, but when they participate in things that they want to ban, I have to question it.”
Look what you made me do.
And it’s YOUR fault, too!
You should have stopped me.
Really? I maintain that in an environmentalist (or anyone for that matter) say the world will end in x number of years, then when that time is up and the world isn’t over, they should be executed. See all of the assholes that 14 years ago said the world will end in 20 years. They all got a ton of research and great money from the Gov (ie my money) and they dont have to prove a thing or be right. In the private sector if your that wrong that often you go broke.
These people should have the courage of their conviction.
tell them theyll be executed a year after they predict the world will end and watch their end- dates stretch waaaaayyy out!
I already have.
“hether you are pasturing your people or pasturing yourself upon them.”
Thats binary, not unary..
Yourrme referring to Communism and such systems that are nit economic systems.
In Capitalism, those prosper and ‘ get rich’ based on acceptance of their products by Consumers. The Consumer creates the outcome.
The Scrooge Mc Duck phenomenin doesnt really exist in Capitalism, contrary to the lies from the Communists, bc Capitalist gains are universally ‘ re distributed’ by lending and business expansion. Rich capitalists do not sit in treasure baths like Mr Burns. Their gains get plowed back into their businesses or lent to others with which to buy houses or fund education.
In most situations I would agree with you. However, I make an exception for the clergy. They made a vow to help others, and accumulating wealth for themselves interferes with this vow.
To go to extremes, Joel Osteen is a multimillionaire with a massive church in Houston that used to be a basketball stadium. When Hurricane Harvey came through, Osteen bolted his doors shut.
To compare, James McIngvale aka Matress Mack, who owns Gallery Furniture, opened his stores to those in need, actually keeping families in his bedroom displays. He acted more like a clergyman than Osteen in addition to earning customer loyalty for the next fifty years
On the seventh day of Kwaanza the judge gave Dr. Karenga 1 to 10 years in the hole.
for
soldering irons in their pieholes,
a toaster upside their domes,
detergent up their nose,
a vice to crush their toes,
karate baton blows,
and a whipping with electrical cords.
” chips, dips, chains, whips…usual party kind of stuff..”
Some 1980s movie..
Weird Science
80s movies were the best!
I dunno if 80s movies were the best but Kelly LeBrock certainly didn’t hurt their rating.
Im in The Oval Office .
Hillary Clintons here up on a ladder with a bottle of Beefeaters in one hand and a tape measure in the other, measuring the windows.
I asked her what she was doing in my office and she shouted something about ” blinds to go.”
And you thought I had screws loose?
I think shes planning to move in!
Little known fact, the number 1 cause of prison suicide is haveing dirt on the clintons
Hillary Clinton’s motorcade has killed more people than my guns.*
* One gun came from a then socialist nation that engaged in acts of genocide after that gun was manufactured.
Guns dont kill people, Clintons kill people.
22 women and children at Waco to be precise.
Dance Party makes Waco go away!
yeah but what makes Clintons go away?
Sunlight?
Crosses?
Silver?
Clorox?
Donald Trump
22 women and children at Waco to be precise.
86 people were killed… women and kids were amongst them in disproportionate numbers.
It is true that women earn less than men
no, uneducated Tool…22 women and children were in tgmhe underground bunker when the military tank retriever tank with flame thrower collapsed the building over the tunbel entrance then set it on fire.
Theres an image that goes aling with the ’22’
What is it about the deaths of those 22 that makes you gloss over the other 64 Branch Davidians? There were 86 citizens killed by Janet Reno and her ATF over a $200 tax stamp and a Congressional Budget Hearing. it is immaterial how they identified themselves compared to the greater horror of how acceptable that police action was to the nation-at-large.
The #1 lie of the Athiestic Left..its IMMORAL to not help the poor…
Well in Europe, the US and much of the world Christianity or similar ” Bible” based religion is the standard of ” morals.” Our legal system is heavily based thereon.
The Bible CLEARLY states in Psalms its VERY bad to throw your purse in a common pot. IE Socialism.
It also exemplifies PERSONAL EFFORT AND PROSPERITY with ” one shall not plant and another reap” and the parable of the talents.
So the Pathologically Lying Left are Pathologically Lying not as financeers but as ATHIESTS whose sole goal us to destroy the US.
Their goal is to eliminate private property rights. The mainstream Left is saying it out loud now and few care. Blame decades of indoctrination that wealth simply exists and just needs government and a wise and benevolent elite to redistribute it properly.
They aren’t being hypocrites by keeping their own piles of cash. If they started to encourage people to give freely and generously to support charitable causes, it would undermine their argument that only government can solve problems.
They want everyone to be forced to give, and the government to be in charge of distributing the loot, so it can be distributed “equitably” and they can advance their political careers by delivering the proceeds to selected groups.
Minus a small “handling” fee, of course, in government salaries and perqs.
charitable giving is heavily a religious concept.
Athiests hate that…
A famous song commented on this topic…..
” till there are no rich no more…”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BYRTK62pVWQ
Image a newspaper article in 1776.
“Mr. Thomas Jefferson writes well about freedom and the right of self-determination. But he himself hold people in bondage as slaves. Should he not free those slaves? Would that make his message more true? The fact is that Mr. Jefferson freeing his own slaves would not solve the question of whether slavery should be accepted, but it would make him less the hypocrite.”
Yes, Sanders and Warren are hypocrites. There are plenty of examples of hypocrisy, that does not always mean the message is wrong.
Jefferson promoted a free and equal society, even if he did not live it. And perhaps can be partially excused as a man of his era. As his vision became real, all people were better off.
Sanders and Warren promote significant degrees of socialism at the expense of liberty, which they seem to like for themselves but not others. If their visions come true most if not all people will be far worse off.
So, yes, their message is wrong.
…society…apart FROM Government.
Theres the key.
Yes. Jefferson should have. Iirc, he contemplated this and resolved that to maintain his lifestyle he required the slaves. It certainly would have mattered to those specific people. And would have sent a message to others. He did free five slaves in his will. He had more than one hundred slaves at the time of his death.
If Jefferson got rid of his slaves, he’d probably have lost his land to someone who would have bought more slaves.
I actually did read a contemporary article like that. I believe it was a Federalist paper around the time of the Adams/Jefferson election
By definition only the first 2 standard deviations are middle class. The point is under capitolism the standard shifts up, under all others the standard stagnate.
Correct. Hypocrisy doesn’t mean the message is wrong. However, in this case it is. But that’s a typical reason article. Concede the premise and quibble over the details. A better article would discuss all the issues and wrongs with government take-over and redistribution of wealth.
Anyway, someone’s gotta point out the hypocrisy…and there it is for all to see.
Ah Censor Bots on the job.
Again:
Charitable donations $ 470 B
Us Govt welfare, $8.3T
Tax receipts, $ 3.46 T
US GDP 23.2 T
ILLEGAL ALIENS IN US ~ 11 MILLION ( Pew)
Whats wrong with this picture?
( censor bot wouldnt let me post sources)
2021 figures, 2019 for income tax
One link at a time works.
They’ve been saying around 11 million illegals for decades. I’m sure it’s at least double at now.
2 million were caught at the border just this year.
WAY more than that. 11is all theyll admit
America has 380 million people. There is no economic model that can lead to 90% of the population being at least middle class and prosperous at an equal level. Capitalism is the most optimal choice out of many flawed options. It has its own flaws and will not wipe out “inequity”. It’s just best suited for most societies.
The left does not believe there are tiers and variances in human existence. Not everyone can be Mozart or Einstein. Making college education free isn’t going to create a wave of scientists and doctors. While no one is inherently superior, some cultures are simply ahead of others in how they do things. Asians dominate college admission for reasons that obvious. Libs think schools ran by their own people systemically filtering out blacks.
Most people aren’t winners who are being held down by systemic racism. Ask any black family if their deadbeat uncle can secure good paying job if racism just disappeared tomorrow. What if CA became independent an 70% Latino and Asian? Let the good times roll for black people, since most white people are gone?
The left believes in utopic existence. If healthcare was free, no one would ever get sick because everyone would get tested. Housing crisis would disappear if governments simply paid for houses. The poor are victims of a system and would elevate by default if we dismantled it. They don’t believe in cause and effect, things like inflation. The pandemic accelerated the downside and removed safety nets that would usually obscure them.
there is only ONE model of equity.
Economic collapse. Equal poverty.
But only briefly… shortly thereafter money will accumulate once again to those who can produce.
it takes a while bc they kill off the rich.
Universal poverty!
Elizabeth Warren isn’t a socialist. And you don’t have to put yourself in poverty for the amusement of troll libertarians before you can advocate a different distribution of wealth.
I’m no fan of internet socialists who talk revolution but make their living without leaving their masturbation chair, but I intend to advocate for downward redistribution, because it’s good policy and good for humans, while I maximize my net worth, because it’s fun and I like comfort.
We want to maximize the availability of a good standard of living, that’s all. There can be no moral justification for allowing poverty to persist in a society wealthy enough to eliminate it. When you go on attributing poverty to moral unworthiness (while at the same time believing that greed is actually a moral imperative), you are just making excuses and you know it.
Hey Tony have you seen my year-end report on the Biden economy’s astounding success concentrating wealth at the very top? Here are the key findings.
In 2021 Democrats raised the minimum wage by: $0.00 / hour
In 2021 the 10 richest Americans gained a combined: $324 billion
IOW Biden turned out to be exactly what we Koch / Reason libertarians hoped for. You can pretend you supported him because you wanted to hurt Mark Zuckerberg, but we both know better. In fact you’re a #GenitaliaAboveAll Democrat who will obediently vote the way billionaires want you to. Because when you get in that booth all you’re thinking about is sodomy, abortion, and ladydick in the women’s locker room.
#BillionairesForBiden
But did you see the free preschooling they had planned to give out but, oh darn, Joe Manchin!
Now where will the little darlings spend their days?
No problem. If you think that free preschool is a good idea, just get a Republican senator to support it.
Oh, of course, educating the next generation is Socialist, so we don’t do that.
“Elizabeth Warren isn’t a socialist.”
Narrator’s voice: It was at this point that everyone reading the comments chuckled.
Elizabeth Warren blames the wreckers and the hoarders for inflation.
She’s a Hugo Chavez wannabe.
At least Ugo was entertaining in a Pee Wee Herman sort of way.
Shes more of a Xusha type.
1000 bonus points to anyone who knows who that was
Populism is about attacking an easy target, and that’s rich fucks when it comes to the left. Taxing the rich is a more popular idea than Christmas Santa in America, and the fact that they don’t go up speaks to the undemocratic power of certain interests.
But I know, and she probably does too, that people are just people, and a rich person would be a fool not to minimize his tax burden. A poor person too, for that matter.
In the end it’s just about taking away the power they have over you and me because it’s not just or free for them to have it.
How is Elon Musk hurting you?
Elon hasn’t asked Tony for a date.
I figured mentioning a child porn star would bring a Troll out from under a Bridge.
Voila, Tony!
Watch the sobering documentary Don’t Look Up for a good explanation.
I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they have good intentions. And elimination of poverty is a worthy and important goal.
However, their economic ideas, and even their grasp of simple accounting, is lacking. There isn’t enough billionaire wealth out there to confiscate to solve poverty in the wasteful, futile way they want to go about it.
Charity is wonderful, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to what economic growth does to lift people out of poverty.
Just to clarify, when I say someone has good intentions, I don’t consider that giving high praise. I consider it saying they don’t intend evil, but they are also not intelligent.
Uh oh. Mike has been reading my mocking criticism. And yes Mike, that is exactly what you are doing.
For starters, the entire point of most progressive programs is to lower the cost for nonrich people of things they have to pay for anyway, like healthcare, food, and shelter. We choose whether to spend resources on private-sector profits or for people’s basic needs.
Second, Elon Musk is worth $300 billion, which is about 3.75 times the entire cost of the SNAP program. So we could just steal all of his money and pay for a pretty good chunk of a safety net.
But of course we don’t really tax billionaires to pay for social programs, we tax them so that they don’t have so much money, because too much concentrated wealth is itself a threat to human welfare and democracy.
It isn’t wise to confiscate wealth from people who use it well and to give it to people who don’t.
What would SNAP do with Tesla anyway?
Fuck it up costing many good-paying jobs. Taking all of Musk’s money would also result in future NASA launches costing a lot more since that industry would be sold, stripped and no longer present.
Musk isn’t really worth $300 billion. That’s a theoretical calculation based on Tesla stock price. I’m skeptical anyone would actually pay that much for his stock. If he did sell, I’m guessing that he wouldn’t get nearly that much for it.
Truth.
Thats the Lie from the Left that ruch people are Mr Burns with mansions full of treasure.
They dont. Their moneys ( usually) plowed back into their business or invested for others to use.
One can only save 250K in the bank under FDIC insurance.
So theres no excess money to tax.
Biden and those rich Demotards who do have it are just trying to deflect attention from their hidden wealth in their offshore accounts got from their Insider Trading.
Here’s what very rich people do with their wealth: Borrow off of it to maintain their lifestyle so they don’t every have to pay taxes:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/20/the-wealthy-may-avoid-163-billion-in-annual-taxes-how-they-do-it-.html
I dunno, what is Tesla doing with all of my money it was given?
You have them your welfare money?
Investing it in the company that’s worth billions of dollars now.
Confiscating Elon Musk’s wealth is confiscating Tesla. He’s not sitting on a pile of money.
Now what is SNAP going to do with Tesla?
Another way to ask this question: “who should be running Tesla? Musk or SNAP?”
Pro-tip: Venezuela.
But Tesla would be nothing without having first received my tax dollars.
Excapt those programs don’t actually lower the costs of those things. They shuffle the cost of those things onto other people. And don’t kid yourself think that means Elon Musk will pay for it. He doesn’t have $300 billion in his bank account to confiscate. The people that pay for it are the middle class, through higher taxes and higher cost of living for themselves.
If I’m going to end up paying for poor people, I want to choose where that money goes, by giving it to a charity, and not by giving it to the government to squander on inefficient programs that don’t actually do anything to help the poor.
“If I’m going to end up paying for poor people”
Everyone should own one…
I posted above, LESS tax revenues than welfare, and that was just the Fed.
So much for the lying Meme about ” my tax dollars paying for …”
So wheres the ” money” coming from?
It’s not a law of physics that government programs have to be inefficient, nor is it factual. It’s just a convenient excuse for you. The incentives of for-profit healthcare are manifestly perverse, and programs like Medicare are indisputably more efficient.
It’s completely factual. You have zero idea of what you’re talking about. This is typical of you. As you RE incredibly ignorant, and stupid.
Tony, let’s just put forth this. Let’s say you confiscate all of Musk’s wealth, and you somehow manage to sell everything for full value (ignoring that attempting to do so would cause a crash in the stock price and there wouldn’t be enough buyers). Now, you pay for SNAP for four years. ONE government program. For four years.
Now what?
Even if you put someone competent in charge of Tesla, Musk isn’t just competent (whatever you think of the man, you have to be exceptional to accomplish what he did), so Tesla will necessarily be less well managed.
Secondly, would anyone ever accumulate wealth in the country again? If you just up and steal someone’s company because they got too rich?
It’s not like Hugo Chavez didn’t do EXACTLY that not a decade ago. A kleptocracy works great until they run out of stolen money and there’s nothing else to steal.
That’s all pops and buzzes to Tony.
LOL Thanks.
It is not that government programs have to be inefficient. It is that government administrators have little incentive to make a government program efficient, there are just few mechanisms in government that reliably punish inefficiency and reward efficiency. In fact, the excuse for many programs being put in the public sector are to avoid the consequences of inefficiency that are inherent in the private sector.
There is a common misconception that doing something at a large scale leads to efficiency, because that’s what we see in the business world.
What is often missed is that the efficiency of scale in the business world is the result of hard work looking for and creating efficiencies. A large scale enterprise, like Medicare, can just as easily be a massive money wasting machine.
But it’s not.
the same flawed assumption that all people who don’t seem to understand “wealth” make: that some asset with a book value in dollars can be readily converted to an equal dollar amount of anything else.
If Elon Mask had $300B worth of food in a warehouse somewhere, one could argue it could be confiscated to alleviate hunger, though one would have to wonder for how long, and would that remove the motivation that caused him to acquire all that food in the first place. In any case, he doesn’t have $300B worth of food or medical care or housing to redistribute. He has $300B worth of “company”. how do you convert a company into actual resources to better others lives? Confiscate and liquidate? Who would buy it knowing its likely to be taken again?
People need to stop obsessing over the accounting value of the fortunes of the rich. Ask yourself: How much in “excess” actual resources are being consumed by the rich that could actually be repurposed to better others lives?
And thats not even getting into the question of whether or not the benevolent omniscient geniuses you think will justly and fairly ‘reallocate’ those resources even exist.
As an example: A while back i knew someone who worked for one of those firms thats basically a bunch of billionaires buying up houses to rent back to people. If you were to argue that these people hoarding houses when the average joe can’t afford one home for themselves is a problem, i would agree thats probably a problem even if we don’t see eye to eye on the solution.
Elon Musk owning $300B worth of Tesla is NOT the same thing. Its not putting anyone in the poor house (quite the opposite actually) and people need to stop obsessing over it.
theres massive fraud behind the real estate thing.
Straw Sales to force prices up.
To be honest, I’m almost in favor of scrapping the whole system and not doing taxation anymore in the traditional sense. You people have propagandized it into disfavor so much we end up with things like $30 trillion debts.
It’s just that taxation is a peaceable way we incentivize behavior, so it’s certainly superior to police for achieving many social ends. It’s also useful for rebalancing a poorly distributed economy.
But I am open to ideas for doing these things by sheer fiat, but I can’t think of such a system that isn’t simply less free.
Nobody gives a shit about what you’re almost in favor of commie. If we can move the discussion to you playing frogger across a 6 lane expressway during rush hour that might induce some care about your life.
( thundrous applause)
1,000 bonus points for invoking Frogger.
Taxation is backed up by men with guns. It is only peacable so long as it is tolerable. Taxation is a poor way to incentivize behavior, and often leads to tragic results, in small part because the people creating tax policy and deciding that the economy is “poorly distributed” are ignoramuses.
It is also something to think about that high taxation and trying to shape society in the late Roman Empire is one of the main factors that led to the development of feudalism in Europe.
tax is constitutional.
BUT its FEDERAL.
Federalism is a nexus of States and central government.
Therefore…incone tax should ONLY apply to the States since Citizens are not a party to Federalism.
We do not have high taxation.
Hey Tony. The system currently is the most progressive it has ever been in history dummy. You can go look up effective tax rates by quintile at bls.gov or irs.gov if you care to learn facts.
“Second, Elon Musk is worth $300 billion, which is about 3.75 times the entire cost of the SNAP program. So we could just steal all of his money and pay for a pretty good chunk of a safety net.”
Elon Musk is not sitting on a $300 billion dollar wad of cash. That $300 billion is Tesla, SpaceX and whatever other companies he owns and their assets. Even if that is stolen, it is not liquid assets that the government can easily use as tax revenue.
Corporations dismantle each other all the time. Doesn’t seem to be a problem for them.
Dismantle huh? Why would they do that?
That is a non sequitur response.
“Let’s dismantle the most valuable all-electric car company, solely for the reason that it makes Elon Musk too powerful!”
It just makes sense.
That may be the ideal goal, but in our actual experience the two biggest entitlement programs, Social Security and Medicare, are for the middle class as much as, or more so, than they are for poor people. Meanwhile, the government has many policies that drive up the cost of medical care.
So, you take all Elon Musk’s money for three or four years to finance one program, then what do you do? What about all the jobs you destroy when you destroy Tesla?
Define poverty and explain how you would eliminate it.
Sometimes relative likeness isn’t a moral failure, but just a difference in priorities.
Some people are very industrious, and want to work hard, and make money.
Some people want low stress and lots of time masturbating.
I don’t mind your hobbies, but if your primary interest is jerking off, then I don’t have any sympathy when you come after my income.m to make it more “fair.”
Or how about this: if you’re entitled to some of my income, shouldn’t you have to at least blow me to make up for the jacking off time I didn’t waste being so industrious?
There’s no moral justification to reducing equality to one dimension.
Ask Kamala. She blew her way to the top.
speaking of BJs theres Tony!
I prefer to believe in freedom and dispense with all the ridiculous moral jumping hoops you are prattling about. You claim that wealth is a function of hard work, but will defend the excess wealth, to the cent, of some goober tech bro, even if all he does all day is masturbate.
Earning is a story we tell ourselves. I can enumerate all sorts of behaviors I think should be rewarded with wealth and privilege, and I bet the industries of finance, corporate mergers, and, say, sports management don’t even make the list.
Finance serves an important function in society, even if you are too ignorant to understand it. Corporate mergers tend to cull unproductive businesses. Sports are rewarded with wealth and privilege because the masses on average vote with their wallets and eyeballs despite your disapproval. Earning is generally the result of providing a good or service that is wanted or needed. If you do not like what society prioritizes as its wants and needs and seek to use the law to jigger the result, then you are not for freedom.
Sports are rewarded with wealth and privilege because the masses on average vote with their wallets and eyeballs despite your disapproval.
not a good example… Professional and Collegiate Sports Entertainment ventures are successful because the because the businesses, workers, and consumers of these entertainments are shielded from the true cost and value of participation and any risk of failure by generous tax subsidies and favorable legislation.
…and religion
Opiates.
Imagine all that money put to some useful use instead of thrown away on entertainment.
Some real economic use such as building semiconductor fab plants in the US instead of for our enemies in China.
Now you are giving in to puritanical mindset, deciding that what people do for entertainment is insufficiently virtuous.
At what point is wealth excess? 1 more dollar than you?
one more dollar than me*
excluding stock options, dividend income, passive investment losses, and real estate holdings.
You’re putting moralistic word in my mouth. I didn’t use that language at all. I used preferences.
Some people like doing different things, and some people respond differently to other people than others.
Some people prefer doing the kinds of things that make others like to give them money. I call that “earning”. There’s no moral claim there.
Other people prefer avoiding doing things like that if it involves lots of effort. I call that “relaxing” or “education in humanities.”
But you are the one trying to make it about morals:
Tony: “ I prefer to believe in freedom and dispense with all the ridiculous moral jumping hoops you are prattling about.”
Earlier Tony: “There can be no moral justification for allowing poverty to persist in a society wealthy enough to eliminate it.”
I’m the one actually skipping your moral lecture.
Of what I actually said, you’ve addressed 0 percent.
“Earning is a story we tell ourselves.”
Everything is a story we tell ourselves. What’s the point?
“There can be no moral justification for allowing poverty to persist in a society wealthy enough to eliminate it.” Is a story you tell yourself.
Some stories are better than others. I think stories are the best when they’re useful. For example, when they make predictions about the world, in a manner consistent with other useful stories, that allows me to maximize human well-being.
“Wealth is never about your own personal choices” is a horrible story to embrace if you care about your own happiness, or anyone else’s. However, if you just want to maximize your own fake victimhood, it’s a good one. I can see why people try to embrace it in political discussions, but those are the stories of children looking for excuses, rather than adults trying to minimize human suffering.
That’s a Red Herring.
When you consider that Bernie and Elizabeth are participating in a system that incentivize a certain politicians to espouse a certain rhetoric to advance their careers at the expense of other people, it all makes sense.
Were slipping.
Fuck Joe Biden.
And his little dog too.
And now …TRAITORS AT FACEBOOK AND TWITTER
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-harvests-masses-of-data-on-western-targets-documents-show/ar-AASk8e0
Did they peacefully protest? Or put feet on a desk?
Ill take ” aiding and abetting” for
$1000, Alex.
“The Brooklyn College political theorist Corey Robin asserts: “Under capitalism, we’re forced to submit to the boss. Terrified of getting on his bad side, we bow and scrape, flatter and flirt, or worse—just to get that raise or make sure we don’t get fired. The socialist argument against capitalism isn’t that it makes us poor. It’s that it makes us unfree.”
The argument against socialism is that socialism does nothing to change this in reality (as opposed to theory). It just gives the oppressive power to the politician, the bureaucrat, and the party boss where useful ability is less rewarded but the ability to play politics is rewarded. Not so strangely, it is the people without a useful skill set, like Bernie Sanders, who advocate for socialism.
In socialist systems you work or you get shot. I guess that’s pretty solid motivation too.
NO. In socialist systems you _successfully_ suck up to the boss or you get assigned the worst jobs, paid the least, and shot for complaining about it. Or shot just because the boss needs a scapegoat for the failures caused by his interfering in things he does not understand and removing the incentives to do a good job. OTOH, if you’re well-connected, you live in luxury without working – and this is likely to last longer than an inherited fortune does in a free market system.
well the theorist is lying in the first place…
The typical ” all or none” to float a false argument.
If the boss is bad, find another job.
With Socialism the new boss is same as the old boss.
I feel a song coming on.
That is the issue with the socialist, it does not solve the problems it purports to solve, it merely changes the relationships to an even worse form.
the Social- ist pretends to be socia- ble while implementing hard Communism.
The Horse is full of Trojans.
We are only as free from corruption, in any system we create, as we have implemented the regulations that prohibit and expose corruption.
It’s easy to point out flaws in any system that were never intentionally identified and corrected.
It was the Joos, amiright?
Socialism and democracy aspire to distribute power to the people equally. Argue against that and you’re arguing for giving power to some guy for reasons that are almost certainly ludicrous. You can bitch about corrupt politicians all you want, but that’s why we invented democracy, so we can get rid of those ones.
What socialism claims to aspire to is much different from what it actually does. Giving someone power for winning a popularity contest is ludicrous. The problems with democracy are less outright corruption though that exists, than that it rewards a parasitic class of people whose sole talents are winning popularity contests and sucking up to those who do. As the saw goes: Those who can, do. Those who cannot do, teach. Those who cannot teach, administrate. Democracy and socialism tends to elevate the last group to the most powerful class.
+1,000,000
No, socialism aspires to reward all people equally, regardless of their actual effort and output. Thus above average achievers have no incentives, and give up. And below average achievers never even bother.
Ever wonder why socialist systems end in poverty and violence?
so hows that jive with Marxism?
Classes cant all be equal. That doesnt facilitate Class Warfare.
Sorry I have to this, but it’s “jibe”
sorry youre an idiot
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jive
i meant exactly what I wrote in the way I wrote it with or without your approval.
.If youre no more intelligent than to ‘ get it’ then buggar off.
Sorry, thats an English term possibly over your head.
Ill use smaller words at the 5th grade level for you in the future.
Like that nightmarish hellscape Sweden?
Nobody is advocating adopting the Stalinist or Maoist model. If you think that, you aren’t thinking very hard.
One possibility is that wearing a left-wing ideology is a sort of cover for living a right-wing life.
This is stupid and offensive. There’s nothing right wing about their lives.
The Lefts brain damaged Lemmings think that kind of gibberish sounds sophisticated and in that they dont understand it, because a.) theyre idiots and b.) its utter nonsense , they think its intelligent.
They fancy themselves intellectuals in the process.
FJB
Pix at top of page. White person doing the Black Power Salute.
Is that ” rayciss” or ” cultural appropriation”?
Sensitivity training is indicated.
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The reason Nieman Marxists do this is because secretly they don’t want to actually live in the world they advocate for. If they did at a minimum they wouldn’t have large vacation homes, fleets of expensive cars, etc.
The real reason they don’t give away their money is because they know the world they advocate for is unlikely to ever politically come to be. So they can literally have their cake and eat it to. They can claim to care about these issues and actually earn income from “caring” about these issues, but don’t have to give up any wealth on the grounds outlined in the article.
These are the worst types of hypocrites.
“they don’t want to actually live in the world they advocate for.”
Thats bc. they are not Progressives.
They are Regressive- Progressive.
First step- destroy. Tear down the Old Order.
Step 2, rebuild in the Socislist- Communist image.
Since they are in Step 1 now, of course they dont want to be IN the destruction they foment.
FJB
Oh and Happy New Year to who are left of the 4,000 Americans Joe Biden Abandoned in Afghaniatan.
If youre still alive!
10OCT1986 Spokane Chronicle: Ranting mob drives off raiding Bolivian, U.S. narcotics agents. Santa Ana, Bolivia.—Bolivian and U.S. narcotics agents raided this town today in search of cocaine traffickers but had to abandon the mission when hundreds of residents drove them out, shouting “Kill the Yankees.” (https://tinyurl.com/y6l8huz2)
ONE MONTH EARLIER…
September 27, 1986 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD – SENATE (Bayes page number) S 13973
Mr. BIDEN… These vitally important programs will now go unfunded if this amendment is not adopted. The TASC Program was designed as a response to a rapidly increasing proper crime rate caused, in significant part, by drug offenders.
We all know why that is. The fact of the matter is that, unless you happen to be a multimillionaire or have access to a bank, if you have a drug habit, it is an expensive habit.
And there is no doubt in anyone’s mind why there is so much street crime. Somewhere on the order of 50% of all the street crime in America is attributable to drug abuse. That is, when someone wants to go buy the cocaine or go buy the heroin or go buy the marijuana, they crack someone over the top of the head, take their wallet, take their purse, and half the time they are under the influence at the time.
I see my colleague from Arizona standing, I am happy to yield to him.
Mr. GOLDWATER. I was interested in what the Sen. had to say about the cost of the dope habit. And I recall – I may be wrong – but I think I recall that England at one time sold narcotics at drugstores without prescriptions or anything else. I have often wondered – not facetiously – whether that might not be a cure in our country. They are going to kill themselves eventually. Let them do it cheap.
Moral: Biden, Reagan, Bush wrecked Latin America
gee…why do they hate us overseas?
No idea….
FJB
Now, about those libertarians accepting social security in amounts beyond a reasonable return on the tax paid in.
You can give back to me exactly what you took plus 4% interest year on year and we’ll call it even.
Notes:
-4% is generously low.
-It’s been a lot of years.
Thanks in advance.
I have to admire the way that the wumao derail any discussion of socialism here. Post after post about their personalities, nothing about their desire to take everything that other people worked for.
What goes beyond hypocrisy is the elite leftists who proclaim that climate change is about to cause great increases in the sea level, but buy or build expensive houses on the beach front. Either they don’t believe what they are saying (and maybe want to scare others out of the beach front to lower the price of land), or there’s a gap running through the middle of their mind so they absolutely cannot connect their ideology to real things.
Which “elite leftists” would those be? Links, or it didn’t happen.
Of course, “about to cause great increase” is hyperbola. Current predictions are around 3 meters over the next century or two. So maybe they just reckon that having some beachfront property for another 50 years is a good enough deal. The amortised value of land that lasts for 50 years isn’t that much less than land that lasts indefinitely, and the house itself isn’t going to be worth much in 50 years regardless of what the sea does.
But whenever someone poor argues for higher taxes and better social security, they are accused of the “politics of envy” and “discrimination against those who happen to earn more”.
So tell me, is there some band in the middle who in your books *are* allowed to argue for a fairer economy? Or will you just use one or the other rhetorical soundbite against everyone?
Forgot link: https://www.ocpathink.org/post/the-penalty-of-leadership
the poor arent arguing for it.
Rich Liberals are.
That was a piss poor attempt at reframing.
I heard (from an unverified source) that Bernie’s parents were founding members of Association of German National Jews, an organization which had begun during the Weimar Republic. The odd thing about them was, they hooked up with Hitler as soon as he came into office.
Why I think this is plausible is because Bernie use the exact same rhetoric as Hilter. But, instead of ‘the Jews got us in this mess’, it’ “the rich who got us in this mess”.
Bernie’s a Jew-baiter.
The cocktail party REAL libertarians will be “censored” by conservaturd party-throwers, by either not being invited, or being thrown out, by the EXACT same hypocritical conservaturd party-throwers who then bemoan the “censorship” of… OMG, wait for it now… Having their posts taken DOWN by, for example FacePooooo!!! Booo-Hooo-Hooo, I say, for those who want to boss around FacePoooo, w/o owning 51% of FacePoooo stock!
Whining, crying, crybaby hypocrite MARXISTS all of ye!
Sarc is still drunk from drinking alone last night.
Der JesseBahnFuhrer can’t defend its stupid and wrong ideas. Instead, Der JesseBahnFuhrer threadshits with 1st-grade insults. WHAT a surprise!
When I drink alone I prefer to be by myself.
Sarc, your entire being is threadshitting the lives of others.
When you’re ready to discuss things above a 5th grade level and stop being a shit weasel, let me know.
TDS-addled spastic asshole gets fir flag of 2022.
Fuck off and die, you pathetic excuse for humanity.
Sqrlsy? Criticizing the far left for censorship and hypocrisy?
That’s never going to happen.
He’s an establishment man.
Cue 300-line crazy rant…
Not going to happen. Trolling is his fetish.
More and more vapid lies and insults from more and more morons does NOT erase the stench of hypocrisy!
Oh and by the way, you, too, are all poopy-heads!!! Nanny-nanny-boo-boo! (There, I stooped to y’all’s levels).
Hey MammaryBahnFuhrer… How is Your new org coming along? Are You gaining many new converts and perverts to “Expert Christian Theologians for Identity Theft?” And where do we sign up for your newsletter?
In https://reason.com/2021/03/21/why-we-still-shouldnt-censor-misinformation/#comment-8818090 Mamma fesses to her being an identity-thief and sock!
chemjeff radical individualist
March.21.2021 at 4:27 pm
Uh oh, I think you left your sock on.
Reply
1. SQRLSY 0ne
March.21.2021 at 5:06 pm
Yeah, sigh.
Hey MammaryBahnFuhrer, Expert Christian Theologian! Did Jesus appear to You in a vision, and tell You that ID theft is a GREAT, wonderful thing? Or ARE You Jesus, returned to us, maybe?
SQRLSY is both evidence for and against socialized medicine. Or at least socialized medication.
As someone who spends some time here and reads a lot of comments, anytime I see a thread where people respond to SQRLSY, I literally just skip the whole thread until I find the next comment. I never read these conversations.
Que one more flag for the TDS-addled spastic pile of shit.
Go get a flagpole rammed up your ass so you can die painfully; your family well be relieved.
Fuck off and die, asshole.
“ID theft”
Mocking you isn’t ID theft, you gibbering troll.
SmegmaLung, drinking SmegmaLung Kool-Aid in a spiraling vortex of darkness, cannot or will not see the Light… It’s a VERY sad song! Kinda like this…
He’s a real Kool-Aid Man,
Sitting in his Kool-Aid Land,
Playing with his Kool-Aid Gland,
His Hero is Jimmy Jones,
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jim-Jones
Loves death and the dying moans,
Then he likes to munch their bones!
Has no thoughts that help the people,
He wants to turn them all to sheeple!
On the sheeple, his Master would feast,
Master? A disaster! Just the nastiest Beast!
Kool-Aid man, please listen,
You don’t know, what you’re missin’,
Kool-Aid man, better thoughts are at hand,
The Beast, to LEAVE, you must COMMAND!
A helpful book is to be found here: M. Scott Peck, Glimpses of the Devil
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1439167265/reasonmagazinea-20/
Hey SmegmaLung …
If EVERYONE who makes you look bad, by being smarter and better-looking than you, killed themselves, per your wishes, then there would be NO ONE left!
Who would feed you? Who’s tits would you suck at, to make a living? WHO would change your perpetually-smelly DIAPERS?!!?
You’d better come up with a better plan, Stan!
“M. Scott Peck, Glimpses of the Devil is about guys like you, Sqrlsy. Isn’t it self-defeating for you to post about it?”
The TDS-addled spastic asshole is not capable of rationality.
stupid sumbitch is winning flag after flag.
M. Scott Peck, Glimpses of the Devil is about guys like you, Sqrlsy. Isn’t it self-defeating for you to post about it?
What the fuck is wrong with you???
Evil Marxist Bitches ALWAYS rationalize away their evils! It is ALWAYS done for our own good! This is KNOWN, dammit, ’cause the Marxists say so!
This asshole seems to think there’s some finite number of flags.
Only the adoring fellation of Orange Felon’s Phallus is “rational”, to demented so-called “minds”!
Steaming pile of shit gets another flag.
He certainly doesn’t think there is a finite number of characters eligible for worthless posts.
This pithy insult is funnier than anything sqrl has ever posted.
I muted it months ago. Comment section shrunk by 40 percent.
Have to admit I only skim SQRLSY’s longer comments. Reading them in their entirety might induce madness.
“As someone who spends some time here and reads a lot of comments, anytime I see a thread where people respond to SQRLSY, I literally just skip the whole thread until I find the next comment. I never read these conversations.”
I can’t blame you at all! If I (or some other of the few REAL libertarians around here) post something pointed and cogent, then all of the hypocritical tribalists will crawl out of under their rocks, slinging empty-headed insults. Those of us who are correct, well informed, and benevolent, have ALWAYS been bullied, threatened, and insulted by the self-righteous hordes!
So see WHY this is true (programmed sociobiology basically), in detail, see http://www.churchofsqrls.com/Do_Gooders_Bad/ , and, to a lesser extent, http://www.churchofsqrls.com/Jesus_Validated/ as well.
To the empty-headed shit-slingers I say…
“Relax! Just Because I am Right and You are Wrong, Doesn’t Mean that I Want to Steal ‘Your’ Woman”
I just tend to laugh at his comments. It’s like watching a 7th grade boy with the emotional depth of a 4 year old.
Sarc has no choice though.
Do you drink one bourbon, one scotch, and one beer?
The only one who will drink with me is my dear old gran dad, and we drink alone
He’s so bad at it that he needs a new one. It can’t be healthy to long for something you suck at.
I wish his fetish was suicide.
Sarc doesn’t always drink beer. But when he does, he always drinks beer alone.
Dos Lados
Too late.
Asshole get another flag
Do you recall the awesome enchanter named “Tim”, in “Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail”? The one who could “summon fire without flint or tinder”? Well, you remind me of Tim… You are an enchanter who can summon persuasion without facts or logic!
So I discussed your awesome talents with some dear personal friends on the Reason staff… Accordingly…
Reason staff has asked me to convey the following message to you:
Hi Fantastically Talented Author:
Obviously, you are a silver-tongued orator, and you also know how to translate your spectacular talents to the written word! We at Reason have need for writers like you, who have near-magical persuasive powers, without having to write at great, tedious length, or resorting to boring facts and citations.
At Reason, we pay above-market-band salaries to permanent staff, or above-market-band per-word-based fees to freelancers, at your choice. To both permanent staff, and to free-lancers, we provide excellent health, dental, and vision benefits. We also provide FREE unlimited access to nubile young groupies, although we do firmly stipulate that persuasion, not coercion, MUST be applied when taking advantage of said nubile young groupies.
Please send your resume, and another sample of your writings, along with your salary or fee demands, to ReasonNeedsBrilliantlyPersuasiveWriters@Reason.com .
Thank You! -Reason Staff
lobotomy
asshole gets another flag!
The lame Timpost is what Sqrlsy posts when he knows he’s lost and he’s having a pout.
I’d rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy!
And I’d rather be ass-fucked AND have root canals on ALL of my teeth, done simultaneously, by in-heat, ferocious shitweasels, than to have Der TrumpfenFuhrer and Vice Dictator davecaca compose my next dictatorshit!
Spastic asshole gets another flag.
Euthanisia.
It was amazing. And I can still read Dr. Bronner in the shower for my daily dose of deranged text bombs.
Same.
It is what I post in response to TOTALLY empty-headed poopy-head insults! Here, grade-schoolers!
Fuck off, spaz!
You eat shit, you said so yourself!
You’re a racist Hitler-lover!
Take your meds!
That’s so retarded!
You’re a Marxist!
Your feet stink and you don’t love Trump!
Your source is leftist, so it must be false!
Trump rules and leftists drool!
You are SOOO icky-poo!
But Goo-Goo-Gah-Gah!
Wow, I am now 11 times as smart and original as you are!
TDS-addled pile of spastic shit wins another flag. Fuck off and die, asshole.
See what I mean, everyone.
Embarrassing sarc
Nah, he drinks with his buddy Wiser
If only he would, I’ve recommended he commit suicide many times.
Would launching out of a trebuchet into the Grand Canyon be considered medicine?
Well, if it HAD a dick in the first place… I WOULD like JesseBahnFuhrer’s dick… To STOP this monkeyshine of constantly making JesseBahnFuhrer constantly be an insufferable, evil, lying prick!
Dude. Don’t gross me out like that. He probably still has shit in his mouth. And an old alcoholic.
No but that there would be good value for your entertainment dollar!