Socialism in Venezuela.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

No, my point that acting like a single failed state somehow proves an entire economic system is broken while disregarding any and every other factor that went into the state failing is idiotic, yet is exactly what pr was doing the entire thread.

I didn't think I could have made the snark any more clearer without putting in bold letters, "THIS IS SNARK". Though I have to admit, I didn't expect to kill two birds with one stone when I posted it...

Well, if the complaint is that it has never been done right, then that means it can't be done right.

Or that the definition is "this unworkable system works", which is inherently self-contradictory.

Besides, it worked in Venezuela.  Everyone is equal and everyone is a millionaire.

[Shiranu]

Well, if the complaint is that it has never been done right, then that means it can't be done right.

Except it has been done right, so that complaint is inherently wrong.

Repeating pr's argument for him, without any sort of explanation, doesn't magically make it true.

Besides, it worked in Venezuela.  Everyone is equal and everyone is a millionaire.

Everyone being a millionaire is not the goal of socialism.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Except it has been done right, so that complaint is inherently wrong.

You can show me a country where the means of production were nationalized and it worked?

Don't show me some country with a generous safety net.  You said that it has worked, so you can show me a country where it was implemented, and then worked.

[pr126]

I agree that socialism in Venezuela has been done right.
This is how socialism works everywhere.

The proof is in the results, we can all see it. Monumental fail.

Alexandria Cortez, take heed. (She won't.)

[Shiranu]

You can show me a country where the means of production were nationalized and it worked?

Yes, in fact it's the one we both live in.

Our public education, like essentially every developed country, is a socialized industry. Our police force is almost fully socialized, though more and more private security forms are trying to regain the power they had as well as corporations and donors trying to have more influence on our police forces. In countries or cities with effective public transportation, their public transportation.

The list goes on and on... our system is a hybrid of socialism and capitalism, and it works better than nearly any other system mankind has ever implemented.

Too much socialism is bad. There, I said it. Likewise, too much capitalism is bad. But we have reached such a point in our society where even suggesting that we should lean closer to the "socialist" side of the hybrid because we have drifted too far into extreme capitalism now labels you as a "socialist", when in truth it's mostly it's a centralist ideology that lead to the American Golden Age as well as societies in Europe being amongst the most free, the most economically stable and the most economically equal societies.

What pr just said is a glaring example of this, that Cortez-Ocasio should "take heed", as if she is proposing Venezuelan corruption, autocracy and communism, the things that brought the country  down.

People have drifted so far right that what was what made America great is now considered just as radical and and the same branch of "socialist" as Venezuela's broken government. Somehow proposing that banks should have regulations, corporations shouldn't have carte blanc to do as they please, and that the government should provide adequate protections to basic human rights protected within our Constitution (Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness) is equal to saying we should have an autocratic/plutocratic corrupt government.

Ironically, people like pr are so quick to scream about the terrors of the left that they don't hear the words coming out of their mouth, just noise. Pr has argued in favour of a religious-backed dictator who has argued in favour of torture and abolishing democracy because he shares similar ideological hatred of "the left", of "the globalist".

Surely the insanity of telling me to fear socialists destroying Western culture, while making excuses for a dictator backed by theocratic values who openly questions democracy in a Western nation, is not lost on you?

[Baruch]

Au contraire.  I think everyone who'll take a time machine and live in E Berlin under socialism ... will learn a lesson or two.  The best of Hitler and Stalin.

Fact is, labels don't matter.  There are people who use politics to do evil, and people who use some other tool to do evil.  Is the US, killing a million Iraqis, better?

Shiranu objects, out of his own experience, against certain kinds of politics.  pr126 does the same thing, but their personal experience is very different, so their objections are different.  Their solutions to their problems differ also.  Both have the same ultimate egomania ... the answer is to become more like Shiranu or more like pr126.

Because of my age and particular experience, I am more triggered the way pr126 is, because of the Soviet Union pointing nukes at me for much of my life.  It is rude to point!  Also my experience of the 60s wasn't positive in regards to progressives (hippies).  So less triggered the way Shiranu is.  Of course both are critics, and critics are always right, about something or other.

[Jason Harvestdancer]

You list public education and law enforcement as good examples.  Oh boy.

If the unspoken contract of public education is "we give you tax money, you produce an educated populace" then the contract is being broken on the side of the education system, not the side of the tax paying public.

And police?  Ah, that is such a big topic of inappropriate behavior, abuse, and chronic mismanagement that it really does deserve its own thread.  Only someone who holds the government in a divine status could write that post.  Wow.  When you became an atheist, did you replace god with government?

[Baruch]

You list public education and law enforcement as good examples.  Oh boy.

If the unspoken contract of public education is "we give you tax money, you produce an educated populace" then the contract is being broken on the side of the education system, not the side of the tax paying public.

And police?  Ah, that is such a big topic of inappropriate behavior, abuse, and chronic mismanagement that it really does deserve its own thread.  Only someone who holds the government in a divine status could write that post.  Wow.  When you became an atheist, did you replace god with government?

It would be nice if the police and the educators all did their work as theorized in Civics 101.  Have they aver done that?  Or are liberals just being nostalgic for a time that never happened.  I mean liberal in this case as someone who believes in the American system of government (in theory), where the government is legitimately taking care of the common good, rather than taking care of special people (no, that is never the poor).

[Cavebear]

If the unspoken contract of public education is "we give you tax money, you produce an educated populace" then the contract is being broken on the side of the education system, not the side of the tax paying public".

The public school system was broken years ago when Conservatives decide that teaching kids at home to avoid all science was a Good Thing.  The tax payers are not the problem.  The anti-science and basic anti-education people are.

[Shiranu]

If the unspoken contract of public education is "we give you tax money, you produce an educated populace" then the contract is being broken on the side of the education system, not the side of the tax paying public.

"Because it doesn't work perfectly in America, it doesn't work anywhere else!"

And police?  Ah, that is such a big topic of inappropriate behavior, abuse, and chronic mismanagement that it really does deserve its own thread. 

"Because it doesn't work perfectly in America, it doesn't work anywhere else!"



Firstly, our education and police system have both worked before, and the quality of it is not uniform, so to act like the flaws in these systems totally invalidate any success they have had is ridiculous. It's the libertarian equivalent of, "All cops are racist!". There are places where they works nearly perfectly, just as there are places where they works poorly. That doesn't mean the system is inherently broken, no more than it working in places means it inherently works.


It works because the best countries in the world all practice socialized police and socialized education systems. For someone so versed in economics, you should realise that you don't throw something away because it failed once. That is just poor business. If my car has a flat-tire, I don't throw the car to the trash-heap and insist that all cars are evil and there are better systems of transportation than cars. I fix the tire and move on with my life.


If everyone else is buying a product, and it is doing amazing for them while you struggle to operate it, that doesn't mean the product sucks... it means you need to learn how to use it better.

[Baruch]

Pink colored glasses nostalgia for the good old days of ... 2010.  The past was never as good as anyone thinks it was.  Except of course when the Democrats controlled the Federal government (all three branches) and most state governments.  But only a Democrat would believe that.  Republicans would consider that past a dystopia of one sided ideology.

[Cavebear]

"Because it doesn't work perfectly in America, it doesn't work anywhere else!"

"Because it doesn't work perfectly in America, it doesn't work anywhere else!"



Firstly, our education and police system have both worked before, and the quality of it is not uniform, so to act like the flaws in these systems totally invalidate any success they have had is ridiculous. It's the libertarian equivalent of, "All cops are racist!". There are places where they works nearly perfectly, just as there are places where they works poorly. That doesn't mean the system is inherently broken, no more than it working in places means it inherently works.


It works because the best countries in the world all practice socialized police and socialized education systems. For someone so versed in economics, you should realise that you don't throw something away because it failed once. That is just poor business. If my car has a flat-tire, I don't throw the car to the trash-heap and insist that all cars are evil and there are better systems of transportation than cars. I fix the tire and move on with my life.


If everyone else is buying a product, and it is doing amazing for them while you struggle to operate it, that doesn't mean the product sucks... it means you need to learn how to use it better.

Please stop deleting poster's names in the quotes.  It matters.  I have mentioned previously that this is a bad habit of yours.  I now suspect it is deliberate.  It is "discussionally" offensive.

[Shiranu]

I now suspect it is deliberate.

It's only deliberate in that I don't feel like having to manually type in, [...="so-and-so"] every time I want to quote someone, and assume that the person who said it (and whom I am responding to) knows what they said.

[Cavebear]

It's only deliberate in that I don't feel like having to manually type in, [...="so-and-so"] every time I want to quote someone, and assume that the person who said it (and whom I am responding to) knows what they said.

Actually, you have to actively delete or ignore them.  I like your opinions usually, I support a lot of what you say.  But actively deleting authors is confusing and wrong.  So please stop doing it.  Its a request.

[Baruch]

Actually, you have to actively delete or ignore them.  I like your opinions usually, I support a lot of what you say.  But actively deleting authors is confusing and wrong.  So please stop doing it.  Its a request.

The Stazzi don't respond to requests ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBBuzHrZBro

Yes, same old America as 1958.  Not a nice feeling.