Talk about anything and everything. Book clubs, TV, current events, sports, personal lives, study groups, etc.

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Some people argue that people should have unrestricted gun ownership. Others argue that all guns should be banned. I think a middle ground is a more sensible approach. We let people own guns but we require them to have a licence by getting a test similar to licences that are required for driving vehicles. the test should be about safety training and mental fitness. anyone who pass the test should be able to own guns.

I’ve often heard people parrot the idea that Tik tok should be banned since it is Chinese spyware for the CCP. However, these same people often disregard that American companies do the same thing, if not at a more alarming rate. A series of sham congressional hearings have proved that tik tok is not spyware, and does not wish to collect the information of American users. If you have evidence of the contrary, let me know.

In 2013, and most of the 2010s, Ex-NSA employee Edward Snowden revealed to the world through his leaks that the US and several other EU countries were conducting worldwide surveillance through our cellphone and computers. Several of these programs only existed due to secret treaties signed decades before, and only came to fruition after 9/11, when the patriot act gave the green light to turn on these systems. A few are listed below:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/nov/01/snowden-nsa-files-surveillance-revelations-decoded#section/1

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora#:~:text=Tempora%20is%20the%20codeword%20for,Government%20Communications%20Headquarters%20(GCHQ).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_global_surveillance_disclosures

For those of you worried about Chinese surveillance, are you just as worried about NATO/US surveillance too?

I often hear people say China will overtake the US in GDP within the next few decades.

This focus on the economic aspect overlooks a far more important element of the rivalry between the two nations. Research.

Last year Chinese researchers overtook the US in number of publications to "high-quality journals".

And at the close of 2023 Nature released a story claiming that this Chinese research is 82% self-collaborative, or in other worlds, only 18% of it collaborates with international researchers.

I noticed this myself as a researcher for a company involved in synthesizing micron-scale silver powders for use as conductive materials in phones and other hightech devices. The majority of relevant up-to-date research I would find was published by Chinese authors and attributed to Chinese schools and research institutes, and most of the names were Chinese. I initially thought this was unique to this particular niche field of research. But some cursory searching found that China is absolutely crushing the west in research.

This combination indicates that China is not only out-performing Western research, but is able to do so self-sufficiently. More than the economic markers and the geopolitical shifts, I believe this is the true inflection point at which China becomes globally dominant over the West.

Recently, California implemented their $20 minimum wage hike for restaurants with more than 60 chains in the state. As a result, many restaurants are increasing their prices to cover the new labor costs. This is a textbook definition of inflation.

Pivot to immigration. One of the arguments against immigration of low-skilled workers—legal or illegal—is that they are paid low wages, which depresses wages for all low-skilled workers, including Americans and legal residents. Many argue that by getting rid of these migrant workers, employers will have to raise their wages to attract American workers to these industries. Of course, raising wages would lead to a rise in prices. This is inflationary.

Why would someone be against one of these policies, but not the other? Is one of these policies more inflationary that the other? I am mostly asking conservatives, but I am happy to hear from anyone else.

Often when I mention how the state artificially changes the market through mechanisms such as intellectual property, many libertarians actually agree. I've even encountered many who propose doing away with IP, as they're basically state granted monopolies. However, I've only heard this a handful of times, and only once I brought up the topic. Why is this specific issue rarely discussed by libertarians?

Also, when it's pointed out that private power, especially in the workplace, can be just as coercive as state power, many libertarians say they have no problem with trade unionism and similar type of organizing/free association. However, again I've never encountered a libertarian who actually advocates for this kind of organizing as a countervailing force. At best, it's viewed as permissible, but is either not talked about, or even seen negatively.

So why are so few libertarians vocal on these specific topics?

I mean, if big business and the stock market are strong, they make a lot of money and the economy grows

However, companies are still pursuing profits and laying off employees without reason, even companies with very good profits.

This is a common criticism of the Biden economy, the economic indicators are great, but people's lives are getting harder

I think this is bad, but the question is, why would this situation make people not support Biden? If businesses profit and workers lose, shouldn't people elect a government more to the left?

Attack on this issue when Democrats are relatively left(not veru much) seems to call for a president who is further left than Biden

POTUS Joe Biden's poll numbers aren't looking good against POTUS Donald Trump in the General Election. And there are enough Governor Nikki Haley supporters inclined to not want to vote for POTUS Donald Trump.

And given what POTUS Donald Trump wanted during the Trump Administration, US Ambassador Haley seemingly did a good job in that role.

I think having surrogates ranging politically from AOC (I hope POTUS Joe Biden actually wants her as a surrogate and would value her as one) to US Ambassador Nikki Haley would seemingly greatly help POTUS Joe Biden's reelection chances--assuming there is a Permanent Ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza 'war' soon enough before Early Voting starts in the 2024 General Election. And assuming POTUS Joe Biden does at least a few more other popular things before Early Voting starts in the 2024 General Election.

POLL: Should POTUS Joe Biden offer US Ambassador Nikki Haley something big--including US Secretary of State--in order to get her endorsement and have her campaign for him?

View Poll

There's currently an ordinance that passed a first reading to ammend the Telluride Mountain Village, CO charter (via a vote of the entire electorate) to make this allowance.

https://www.telluridenews.com/news/article_a5bcf516-ed5e-11ee-8e48-c3d4839138c9.html

Generally if you ask the majority of people they can roughly tell you the same idea if weather an ideology is right or left wing but thares little to cement all left wing ideologies as left wing and little to cement all right wing ideologies as right wing. they don't entirely share the same things in common. furthermore most attempts to make a proper model to display the differences between ideologies have either been led to deeply flawed or deeply ideological bias. why is this a problem we can't fix and how can we agree on so much but virtually not be able to decide on why. ideological differences are one reason but why can't we seem to find a model that isn't ideologically bias and represents all ideologies in the way we typically associate them. This and possible models are both a mojor question. does anyone have any ideas and why have all previous attempts failed.

Thoughts on this claim?

From this article, https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/08/american-self-reliance-individualism-sweden/671003/

I strongly support free speech even for views that I strongly disagree with but I have wondered where the limits of that. One limit is called the harm principle. It's where you are free as long as you don't harm anyone's rights and freedoms like threatening or inviting violence but it's not always that simple. How do we define harm? Is the socialist who advocate for depriving people of the right to own property harming their rights? What about the religious fundamentalist who advocate for a theocracy that will impose its religion on everyone and deprive them of religious freedom? What if it's a nazi who is advocating genocide against another race? Some of those have the freedom to express their abhorrent views in many countries yet they advocated harm towards others. A religious fundamentalist will be able to demand a theocracy but a nazi will be arrested for inciting genocide. What if it's a white supremacist who believe that other races should be enslaved or purged? Where do we draw the line and how do we protect people from calls for harm?

Our sub houses many different frames of thought. Everything from Anarcho-Capitalists to Marxist-Leninists and everything in-between. Because of this and the beliefs we hold things can get uncivilized pretty quickly.

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quote

Way more CEOs are Republicans than Democrats. Here’s the proof

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/14/business/republican-democrat-ceos/index.html

Executives of America’s large public companies have long played a role in public policy by advising leaders of both parties — but those corporate chieftains themselves are far more likely to be Republicans than Democrats, a new study shows.

In a working paper released this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, researchers at Harvard Law School and Tel Aviv University ran the names of all individuals to have run a company listed in the S&P 1500 between 2000 and 2017 through federal campaign finance databases, which include contributions to both congressional and presidential candidates as well as party committees.

The result: 18.6% of CEOs consistently donated to Democrats, while 57.7% donated to Republicans, with the rest leaning toward neither party.

end quote

Corporation Republican Led CEO continue to create inflation as a political strategy, we've seen it repeatedly used by Republican CEO's before.

• They use it like a tool, to sway votes to Republican who will let them get by without adhering to Regulations, who let them get by with massive tax cuts and let them get by with keeping wages low.

It's sad that people continue to fall for it each time... People know democratic Presidents will get blamed, when they don't control these CEO's.

The way people combat this manipulation upon and against society, it to "boycott the big players, and continue to vote Democrat" and back and support democratic regulations and tax increase on Corporate entities.

It take that type of force to put pressure on these CEO's and it takes stiffer regulation of CEO and Economic Conduct of Corporation, where they can be charged and prosecuted. To do this we need to strengthen the Fair Trade Commission, give it the teeth to hold these people accountable and to charge and prosecute them based on data. I think A.I. will be a big help to curb this political madness that Republican CEO's engage of playing inflation games to fleece the people and delude people to back Republicans who fight against regulations and fight against taxing corporations and allow corporates to keep wages low, as they fight against Unions, and promote policies that not only by pass and ignore regulation, but they under-pay the labor and strip them off their benefits.

******

To stop this madness, "Vote Democrat", for House and Senate and President, then we can get the regulation in place to reel in the greed programming of manufactured inflation for political gain by Republicanism and Republican CEO's and Republican Board Members.

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They did what they had to in order to protect the republic and parlimentarism from the potentially dangerous far left spartacists. Ebert and the SPD leadership feared an October revolution scenario that would lead to chaos, bloodshed, dictstorship and red terror. Indeed he allied with the right wing(and some proto-fascists) freikorps in order to put down the inssurection but they had little choice considering the army had to be downsized drastically and the Freikrops were the only paramilitary willing to take on the spartacists. Also while i do not condone the deaths of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht they basically out a mark on their backs by participating and leading the insurrection.

https://truthout.org/articles/white-house-wants-895-billion-for-pentagon-and-nukes-in-fiscal-year-2025/

This is simply just absurd. Out of all the things the US is struggling on (homelessness, healthcare, education, corporate greed, etc…) the White House prioritizes the Pentagon (who has failed six audits in a row) and nukes. It just goes to show what the US’s priorities are, and what is to come given the current conflicts happening in the world right now. What do ya’ll think?

It’s labeled as a discussion, but debate is more than welcome too.

In the US, we have various cross-over ideas that sometimes bring different parts of our two broad coalitions out to support a single cause.

For example, sometimes the parts of the left and right that actually don't trust the government get together to support some form of governmental audit or accountability measure. For another, sometimes the dove left and hawk right will come together to increase funding to VA care for wildly different underlying reasons, but ultimately both looking to increase quality of care.

It's not always a great thing either of course, both left and right in the US have a pearl clutching law and order type that is less afraid of governmental overreach, and sometimes they come together on some absolutely heinous policy.

Anyone have any examples of areas where there is clear room for cooperation that doesn't happen because of the current state of politics? Anyone in other countries that might have more diverse and varied representation?

​

What do you think of Trump using the Bible emblazoned with an American flag and the words “God Bless the USA” printed on the cover?

quote

The Christian reaction to Trump’s Bible endorsement goes deeper than you think

https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-christians-angry-trump-god-173235981.html

Former President Donald Trump is officially selling a patriotic copy of the Christian Bible themed to Lee Greenwood’s famous song, “God Bless the USA.”

“Happy Holy Week!” Trump announced on social media Tuesday, during the most solemn period of the Christian calendar, the last week of the Lenten season marking the suffering and death of Jesus. “As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless The USA Bible.”

The concept of a Bible covered in the American flag, as well as a former president’s endorsement of a text Christians consider to be sacred, has raised concern among religious circles. It’s also raised questions about Trump’s motivations, as the former president finds himself in the middle of several expensive legal battles.

‘Sacrilege,’ theology, and the shadow of Christian nationalism

The $59.99 Bible, which was first published in 2021, features an American flag and the words “God Bless the USA” printed on the cover. Inside, it has the words to “God Bless the USA” and the text of The Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance and other historic American documents.

***Promotional material for the Bible shows the former president alongside country singer Lee Greenwood.

Responses to Trump’s social media announcement called the endorsement “sacrilege,” “heresy” and “borderline offensive” and cite lessons directly from the Bible that suggest taking advantage of people’s faith for money should be condemned.

“It is a bankrupt Christianity that sees a demagogue co-opting our faith and even our holy scriptures for the sake of his own pursuit of power and praise him for it rather than insist that we refuse to allow our sacred faith and scriptures to become a mouthpiece for an empire,” said Rev. Benjamin Cremer on X.

end quote

They are looking at a voter initiative in my state for ranked choice voting. I must confess I do not understand what it is and why it is favorable to just regular old voting. If you have it in your state, what are your experiences with it good and bad?

The main thing I seek to find out is how warmly or coldly do people view certain ways of thinking that disagree with them and why. Is thare any tread to this and whare do some groups of people who disagree find common ground. I'm a market socialist so I both disagree and agree with alot of ideas perposed by some other socialist ideologies and even some capitalist ones. I do wonder if this changes how warmly or coldly an person person of a different ideologies views it.

“Peaceful Protest “ tend not to work. It’s a tool companies and politicians are using to keep out voices heard but muffled. They listen best there is violence or destruction.

It’s not that I like this, but it is an undeniable truth. The Civil Rights era wouldn’t have been as effective if the protesters just laid down on a highway and held up signs. Those load marching, building fires, riots, etc sent a message. Should it have gotten to that? No. But history has proven the government listens best when the voices are loud; and it’s not much louder than destruction. Just look how effective the George Floyd riots were, and how quick the government was to listen.

We need to protest like we did in the past. Imagine how quick the government would change things if we started rioting in the streets over wage slavery. It's an unfortunate truth, the government best listens when the riots become violent.

Side note:

And before someone starts labeling protests that were peaceful and worked, know that wasn’t the point. The point was violent protest sent a louder message and faster/ more effective results than a peaceful one.

What are they? I typically just here the moralistic ones about owners not having their property rights taken away, that workers wouldn't be motivated to work as hard etc.

In case there is any confusion, Socialism broadly being defined that workers should have ownership of their workplace.

This can mean specifically just their place of work, or it can mean at the scale of society, through governmental controls.

What are some arguments that this couldn't work from an economics perspective?

While debating my father based on the pros and cons of both communism and neoliberalism he states that he doesn't adhere to either one of these political theories.

When questioned futher, my father suggested as he recognises the harm that international influence can have on smaller countries (for example here in Ireland our government are at the mercy of what foreign investors tells us to do) therefore he put forward the belief that Ireland should be fully independent, but still incorporates some sectors of free market economics. His belief is that no foreign corporations should be introduced or have a strong influence over Ireland, instead there should be competition only between local family businesses, and that we can import necessary foreign raw materials through the trade of producing as much national produce as possible which first goes into the local economy and the excess should be used to sell off to foreign countries in exchange for needed raw materials.

He recognises that this would lead to a drastic decrease in innotive consumer goods but beliefs would ultimately make Ireland less corrupted. We have an abundance of livestock, fish, crops and a skilled English speaking workforce that we can sell our excess off to international countries.

Would this method work? Where on the political spectrum would this belief situate itself? What are the pros and cons of this belief?

Perhaps and unpopular view for Reddit:

So much dialog lately coming from the socialist, communist camp about workers not reaping the fruits of their labor. Being exploited. That's false. The fruits of their labor is called wages. Equity SHOULD enjoy the lion's share of profit as they are the risk takers, entrepreneurs, innovators and visionaries. Their is no justice in diluting equity's rewards.

The wealthy haven't gotten there by magic. It takes effort (perhaps not the kind that produces perspiration) and often risk.

Even in my case, to buy my first business at 50+ years old, I liquidated a large portion of my retirement savings, and used my home as collateral to finance the business purchase (I was betting on me). My employee's haven't risked anything. They're renumerated by being paid for their labor. I am rewarded with every dollar of profit the business makes.

Labor is a necessary evil. It's a cost of business. The Balance Sheet doesn't list your work-force under Assets. They're NOT an asset. I cannot sell them, nor can I depreciate them. The workforce part of the cost of goods and services. An operating EXPENSE.

I'm certainly NOT arguing that people are equivalent to a my liability insurance policy. Mostly because it's much easier to replace my insurance than my manager. Your workforce should be treated as the valuable part of your product delivery that they are. The COST of finding and training new people adds to the COGS. Business owners try to reduce costs: yes for their own benefit - but also for the benefit of their customers.

The argument that I should 'share' my rewards with my workforce is absurd. If they want a share of profit, they should get their own business. It was actually easier than I imagined. The SBA (Small Business Administration) is ready with lending.

So, in conclusion, I like the class struggle. Workers should aspire to be business owners and not bemoan their station. The working class want freedom from risk while reaping the rewards of others' risks. If my business fails, my workers will walk away relatively unscathed. My life would be in financial ruins (for a while). It is a symbiotic relationship, but we are NOT the same.

I suppose to start, I’ll define Democracy so we all understand where I’m coming from.

Democracy is a theory of government where the law reflects the will of the majority as determined by direct vote or elected representatives.

Now, addressing my first claim that Democracy is authoritarian…Democracy requires government, and government in and of itself is authoritarian, no matter how democratic a government it may be. Every government imposes laws on society, and if one acts out of the confines of what the government deems to be acceptable, then the government utilizes its monopoly on violence to punish you. These laws aren’t objective, they’re subjective, and the government is using its authority to impose its subjective beliefs onto all of us, and that’s just one example. Democracy is also tyranny of the majority. Even with Direct Democracy where the people vote directly on policy initiatives, the minority is still crushed by the majority, and must abide by the majority’s decisions. This is simply just a terrible idea. What happens if the majority decides to vote that they should be allowed to own slaves, and thus begin enslaving a particular group or race of people?

Total free association, anarchy, where everyone voluntarily associates with whoever they want, with no systems of hierarchy and authority dictating their lives, is a much more preferable alternative.

Addressing my second claim that Democracy is antiquated…Democracy has simply failed to empower the people. Have some Democracies empowered the people more so than others? Sure. However, every single ruling class in every country utilizes the State/government apparatus to further and advance their own interests, meanwhile the people have to fight over crumbs. All different forms of Democracy have been tried throughout history, from Liberal Representative Democracy, to radical Communist Direct Democracies, and all of them have failed to truly empower the people and challenge the currently existing variations of Capitalist systems in place around the world.

Hence why I now think the Left (not Liberals) has proven itself to be a monumental failure in its objectives. The Right being no better, if not worse, as the Right wants to double down on social hierarchies and maintain particular traditional values and utilize government as a means to impose them.

International Politics

The Trump Admin meeting with the Taliban and then removing troops.... Set in motion for the Taliban to take over, and now women in Afghanistan is suffering the results.

He never should have played his political insidiousness of leaving the Afghan President and Afghan Military Leader out of the talks with the Taliban.

• All he did was result to give the Taliban the "Ok" to take over. Now, the women of Afghanistan will continue with more extreme suffering because of his insidious and callous political stunt.

quote

Taliban leader says women will be stoned to death in public

https://www.yahoo.com/news/taliban-leader-says-women-stoned-195243252.html

quote

After 20 yrs of reforms where women were not under this kind of persecution, with all the investment and efforts in Afghanistan, and he screwed it up, with his lack of understanding, that resulted in the Taliban retaking control.

He knows absolutely Nothing about Foreign Policy, and the results are showing and people are suffering as a result, especially the Women in Afghanistan.

I've noticed that since 2020, there has been a rise in safety and quality issues from multiple corporations in different sectors and the more I think about it, the more I think there is something fundamentally wrong with the market, with many signs pointing to the stock market itself.

Let's go back to 2020. Many senators engaged in insider trading and sold their portfolio in January, then the Great Recession hit and the U.S. economy crashed hard before it was lifted up by Congress, mainly with stimulus checks and bailouts, with many companies that should've failed being kept alive as zombie companies.

Robinhood started becoming popular during that time as a trading platform due to its business model, ease of access and ease of use, and suddenly millions of first-time investors signed up and started trading on the stock market, leading to crowdsourced market manipulation and meme stocking like GME, AMD, BBBY, etc, leading to Robinhood to pause trading for certain stocks in the wake of the madness and earn a million-dollar fine in response.

Then inflation happened and interest rate hikes ensued in 2021. Now we're starting to see all sorts of issues with companies in different sectors:

- Boeing had serious safety issues leading to injuries and deaths, a whistleblower who may or may not have committed suicide and then Dave Calhoun agreed to step down by the end of this year, Stan Deal who resigned immediately and Larry Kellner, who will not be up for re-election at the next shareholder's annual meeting.

- American Airlines has another set of safety issues altogether, which is increasing scrutiny from regulators.

- FTX collapsed and SBF got sentenced to a century in prison for rampant fraud and federal felonies.

- Tesla is facing regulatory pressure, safety concerns and lawsuits everywhere. Elon's shenanigans don't help neither, but his tweets might also be political posturing for Republicans in order to protect his business interests. He would probably do the same for Democrats if they supported him more than Republicans.

Based on the diversity of issues many companies in different sectors are facing, it is clear that there seems to be something fundamentally wrong with the stock market, which in turn may be driving the behavior of many corporations towards short-term gratification, with CEOs maximizing shareholder value in the short-term and giving up long-term gains.

Retail investors, in turn, are using the ease of access to the stock market to essentially gamble in the stock market, engaging in frequent trading, opening life-threatening options positions, going along with a trendy/meme stock or trying to "outsmart" the market by placing puts when a stock is successful and vice versa, only for their options to expire worthless and end up penniless.

I believe that even though the stock market has always been irrational, more and more people are totally ignoring the fundamentals of a given company and just gambling away their money. And the problem at the other end of the spectrum is that the "good" retail investors just dump their money in an ETF/index and hold for years or decades. While this is a good slow and steady approach, I am not sure if these ETFs/Indexes dilute the true value of a company between different companies in a basket of tickers.

Don't get me wrong, it's not wrong to place a good chunk of your buying power in an index in order to stabilize your portfolio and mitigate risk, but you tend to invest in a company because you believe it will be successful and I think the spirit of that attitude has been grossly distorted in recent years with the increased number of participants in the market.

So I'm just sitting here thinking if retail investors are clearly looking for short-term, immediate gratification, then are CEOs adapting to a market of immediate gratification in turn, which is causing them to lower the quality of their services, take shortcuts in operations and pursue short-term gain just like modern retail investors are?

If so, what happens here? Are there possible regulations towards retail investors or corporations? Is there anything that can be done to right the ship and incentivize long-term gain for CEOs in order to make the market more steady? Will companies ever be able to correct to their true valuation in a market that is showing signs of going off rails?

Don't get me wrong, I don't believe a recession is coming by any means. Not like COVID, anyway. But I do think this type of behavior could have long-term negative economic consequences and could lead to a net negative in society.

I would like this post to serve as a portal for the debate between Trotskyists and "Stalinists" (I put it in quotes because I know that almost everyone denies that term).

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