Talking to someone who justifies this kinda shit is always a trip. They'll say that people who aren't earning a living wage just need to work harder and pick up a marketable skill to improve their situation. But you can simultaneously get them to agree that many of these low wage "unskilled" jobs need to exist for society to continue functioning, so which fucking is it?
The answer is that the capitalist parasites and their horde of boot lickers believe it's totally acceptable for there to exist an underclass of human beings born to work until their bodies give out for the enrichment of their superior employer.
They can't afford to live a dignified life doing the shit I need them to do? That's fine, just toss 'em into the hole when they stop working and replace them with the next generation.
Honestly man, I'm getting real sick and tired of pretending to be above violent retribution when it comes to these people. My blood fucking boils each and every time I need to look my boss in the eye and pretend to smile as they say farcical shit like "we're all a family here" or "let us know if there's anything you need" while paying me exactly the minimum wage and hiring the exact number of employees it takes for them to avoid giving any of us enough hours to qualify for benefits.
Anyway, Stalin had the right idea with gulags, and we should bring those back. Thanks for coming to my TED talk
This is where the idea of "personal responsibility" is useful for liberals. Flatly admitting that they want a desperate underclass is too mask off for them to feel like good people so they invent a way of blaming individual victims rather than the economic system.
The poor has a theoretical opportunity to pull themselves up by the bootstraps so when they don't do that it's really their own fault. Of course that theoretical opportunity doesn't translate into actual opportunity for most people but that's fine, as there's enough window dressing of meritocracy to make the opportunity look real if you are careful not to go into too much detail.
This is also the reason why liberals hate discussing real-world examples. Their logic only works in abstract thought experiments where they get to control the variables. Saying that everyone has the opportunity to succeed is a lot easier than saying that Bob, who has a set of very concrete and undeniable material conditions, has the opportunity succeed.
Anyway, Stalin had the right idea with gulags, and we should bring those back.
Very edgy. Straight outta 4chan
lmao this lemmitors comparing Hexbear users to 4channers shit never gets old. When you liberals meet someone far to your left it must really break your brain for you to lump us in with fascists.
You know what I almost never see referred to as edgy out of hand? People who don't want to fully abolish the US prison system, which to this day kills far more people far more often than the Soviet gulag system did shortly after the end of WW2. And that's really strange considering the US prison system is designed from the ground up to maintain a pool of slave labor by incarcerating racial minorities on bullshit drug offenses. Personally, I'd much rather prison be used to keep dangerous reactionaries from causing trouble while they're being reeducated.
Look mate I don't live in USA, I have nothing to do with USA. I was commenting on your stupid ass glorification of forced labor camps in soviet shithole
And you clearly don't seem to have problem with US prison system, only that wrong people are sent there. You're as full of shit as the people you think you're criticizing. You'd rather be yelling at people not loving your dear dictators than actually trying to do anything good for the world.
Don't worry, you may not live in the US, but you're definitely an American in spirit.
And you clearly don't seem to have problem with US prison system, only that wrong people are sent there. You're as full of shit as the people you think you're criticizing
Soviet Union: Sequesters fascists and counter-revolutionaries for reeducation after Nazi Germany murdered millions of people while invading the USSR with the express purpose of genocide.
The US: Uses drug prohibition as a bullshit excuse to systematically arrests racial minorities in their millions in order to continue enslavement after the abolition of chattel slavery. The conditions are so brutal that the death rate for modern US prison inmates exceeds that of the Soviet gulag system just a decade into recovering from the devastation wrought by WW2.
Lemmitor turbolib: Wow, these are morally equivalent. If you replace the words "fascist comprador looking to resume the brutalization of the working class" with the words "black people" then you tankies are starting to look an awful lot like 4channers!
i think billionaires should be shot, not sent to gulags. gulags are for non-bourgeois liberals.
THIS, this is the correct way of doing it, Gulags are not for the highest level offenders
I have nothing good going on in my life, so I’ve adopted an extreme viewpoint
Correct. Oppressed peoples tend to support "radical" movements that would improve their lives, and this is a stupid comment for trying to make that sound like a bad thing.
People who have been fucked over by the system often adopt a position to advocate for radical system change? Wooah, very insightful. If you care about people who are negatively affected by modern systems, then that makes their opinion and lived experience more important, not less.
You even admit that the user may be targeting the right people, so your point is what? That violence is unjustifiable? That strongly believing in a cause leads to disaster? They're not true points, but they'd be much better starting points for constructive discussion, so you can just say whatever you actually mean.
People making such pretentious, word-salad arguments as yours should not be throwing around the term 'self-righteous asshat'.
God are you people so fucking stupid, just a bunch of unwarranted self importance and navel gazing nonsense all crammed into a skull cavity the size of a thimble.
Please note, I've not made any statement on whether you're wrong or right in your targeting. That's a separate discussion.
LMAO
Your entire attitude fucking screams "I have nothing good going on in my life, so I've adopted an extreme viewpoint...".
You mean to tell me that people who are chewed up and shat out by the current order are willing to take drastic measures and radically change the world!??!
My life situation is great, actually. I still think gulags are appropriate.
Honestly dude if I lost a debate as hard as you did I wouldn't be spouting this psychobabble diarrhea
"you believe in stuff and that's bad cause I don't believe in anything" is never the place you want to be in a discussion, you basically admitted you have no clue what the fuck you're talking about and because your opponent does that somehow makes them mentally ill????
Seriously get a grip
So are only people who are "in a good place" in their lives capable of having "extreme" political beliefs? How do you justify who is in a "good place" and who isn't? Do you think it could ever be related to political or economic forces? Or are "extreme" political ideologies all universally forbidden? How do you qualify what is "extreme"? Are people who are not in "a good place" only able to have conservative positions that maintain status quo or are they only able to be apolitical? How do you think maintaining status quo or not having any political beliefs would help their "life situation [improve] enough" if there is no change to their politico-economic reality which directly impacts their life situation? If one is in a "good place" what kinds of political beliefs would they typically exhibit or are they allowed to have?
Your entire attitude fucking screams "I have no real political analysis but suffer from a great sense of narcissism that leads me to a false sense of intelligence which makes me think I can paternalistically psychologize others' entire lives without knowing them so that I can justify sharing my ignorant opinions that communicate that I believe I have a better life than others do and that makes me a superior person" so that gives me hope you won't be able to help yourself from responding further. Also happy to pay you with Hexbear gold for a similar psychological analysis and thorough breakdown of my political potential if it saves me a trip to the therapist, kind stranger. Thanks.
You'd rather be yelling at people not loving your dear dictators than actually trying to do anything good for the world.
You were the one who scolded them for being "edgy"; so weird how you immediately switch things up when anyone could simply scroll up and see what really happened. And Stalin, the famous dictator who attempted to resign four separate times and who the CIA admitted was not in total control of the USSR.
Hey I'm not American either and you're still a dumbass that doesn't know what they're talking about. Lmao
And you clearly don't seem to have problem with US prison system, only that wrong people are sent there.
No shit? What, you want to send the wrong people to prison? Good one bozo.
You don't know shit about the Soviets, don't pretend red scare propaganda wasn't a thing.
I'm sure life in Russia was great under the Tzars and now under capitalist Putin/oligarchs.
That is 100% true in a capitalist society. You are measured by your ability to produce.
Edit: Apparently this needs some clarification. You are measured by your ability to produce for your owner.
Youths of today discovering idioms of yesteryear going, "mm technically, this implies..." as if that wasn't the obvious, intended implication to begin with.
Yes, and fascists will happily say that's a good thing. They like it. They're sadists.
They're morons that don't understand how social species survive and thrive.
Take your eugenics pseudoscience bullshit and shove it up your ass.
There is no if. We're a social species, if everyone thought like you, people like Stephen Hawking would have never lived a full life.
We lose so many good people to the "earn it" mentality.
Babies don't come out the womb walking. Nor are people born with the ability to hunt. Everything you have was given to you by another. Your mother didn't ask you to earn it until you could, and whether or not people can is largely determined by their environment.
Not to mention, how fucking arrogant do you have to be to demand someone earn the right to live? Who do you think you are, God?
And then there is the little problem of capitalism rewarding people who "earned it" who are actually bad for society. Unless you think people like Biden and Trump somehow are more competent than most people? Both are rich and powerful people. Yet one is a genocidal asshole and the other is a con man. You'd have to be crazy to think they earned their power. I'd wager there are many homeless people that do less harm to the world than either.
Take your eugenics pseudoscience bullshit and shove it up your ass.
How very rational and social of you to make assumptions about what I'm saying and to attack me based on that. Shall we move on?
There is no if. We're a social species, if everyone thought like you, people like Stephen Hawking would have never lived a full life.
Firstly - you're making a lot of assumptions about how I think. Secondly - this is like those billboards that say "This baby was destined to cure cancer, but she was aborted." It has no merit. What happened in reality was, in a world where there are constraints on available energy, some people took care of Stephen Hawking (which is great). I have no problem with that. But those people are not obligated to. They did so for their own reasons, and we're all the richer for it.
Had they been forced to, that would simply be slavery.
We lose so many good people to the "earn it" mentality.
Perhaps that is because it's an important facet of life. While not the only facet, it's an important one. If you deny that, it will simply continue happening, only you'll feel violated by its existence. If you accept it, you can see that it has areas of applicability, and areas where it's not applicable. ..and the whole us-vs-them fuck-the-man bullshit goes right out the window, along with the whole 'fuck everyone else, it's all cold and hard, i'm just gonna get mine' bullshit.
Babies don't come out the womb walking. Nor are people born with the ability to hunt. Everything you have was given to you by another. Your mother didn't ask you to earn it until you could, and whether or not people can is largely determined by their environment.
Absolutely. We all stand on the foundations that have been created by others and by fundamental processes. If we don't care for others, we lose not just the capacity to pass on what we have built and learned, but also some pretty core stuff that makes the human experience worthwhile.
However, the underlying processes of life and death, of energy requirements, and of rational necessity also cannot be denied without paying a huge cost in quality of life, and in life itself.
Not to mention, how fucking arrogant do you have to be to demand someone earn the right to live? Who do you think you are, God?
I make no demands. I simply state what the underlying reality is. To me, it looks like you are subject to the requirement that you must "earn a living", or have someone earn a living for you - regardless of whether you are a human in a capitalist society, a socialist one, or one that accepts or denies your sovereignty. Hell, you could even be a plant, and you'd still have to do the things required for survival. One way people think of that is 'earning a living.' But, of course, you can think of it (or not) however makes you happy.
And then there is the little problem of capitalism rewarding people who "earned it" who are actually bad for society. Unless you think people like Biden and Trump somehow are more competent than most people? Both are rich and powerful people. Yet one is a genocidal asshole and the other is a con man. You'd have to be crazy to think they earned their power. I'd wager there are many homeless people that do less harm to the world than either.
I don't think they earned their power. I think they are examples of the way in which our current systemic principles are failing. As our principles fail (all do at some point), they start to leak power, which gets snapped up by whatever form of life (like genocidal assholes and conmen) that is willing to seize that power niche. But, they are like starving people, fighting for scraps rather than ensuring there will be food. Or like drowning people, pulling down anyone who tries to help. I can't really blame them - that's the situation they were put into - but I definitely wouldn't back them. Better to do things a way that does work.
Had they been forced to, that would simply be slavery.
Having a mutual obligation to care for others in your community is exactly the same as being rounded up at gunpoint, ripped from your homeland, shipped to a field or a mine halfway across the world, and forced to toil all day every day for barely enough to survive on until you inevitably succumb to the horrible conditions inflicted upon you
It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal liberty" is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment. Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible.
-J. Stalin
you're just insane
Wow, who would have guessed the social darwinism defender was ableist
Is your point that you're an asshole, because that's the only thing you've managed to prove
Coming from the attitude you have right now, that's a compliment, tbh.
Gee, I thought our standards of living had raised since the hunter gatherer days. I thought we had an idea of human rights. But it seems that advocates of capital like yourself are more willing to let the disabled die than most hunter gatherer tribespeople would be. All our wealth, and you people are more miserly with it than those who have nearly nothing.
Our standards of living have increased, and that's nice. But there is no question of whether or not anyone deserves to live. You simply live, until you don't, like all life.
The increase in standards of living isn't because we have eradicated the underlying animal needs, but rather, because we have been meeting them effectively. Sadly, this is only in the short term - we have major species-wide issues with our long-term course, but that, perhaps, is another conversation.
In any case, by denying the fundamental system you are based in, and demanding that survival not take any energy, you undercut your own foundation, and that causes problems for you.
Human rights are a social contract. They are nice, and we should keep them. However, they don't eradicate the animal and natural foundation upon which we stand, and they absolutely must bend to necessity.
You have an animal right to exist until you die by natural processes, like disease, old age, predation, etc. You have a human right not to be tortured, enslaved, etc, because that is a goal we all agree on. But you don't have a right to have other animals take care of all of your needs when they don't want to. That would be slavery.