Spicy's plan for utopia

[Mrbeansman]

And your going to fix all of this quick and easy and nobody will be left bleeding on the floor in the process except the mean old insurance executives is that what you seriously expect me to believe?

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[Mrbeansman]

This post really did nail it on the head.

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[Melena]

I do genuinely want to believe competent government is possible.

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As someone who lives in a "liberal wonderland" you'd be amazed at how incompetent and cut throat government can be. Hell, the Sheriff's Office I worked for is STILL doing asbestos notifications due to the age of some of the buildings.

[synistar]

Liberal Wonderland can't even get Single Payer healthcare through its supermajority legislative houses.

[arus2001]

More like you have no regard for the people who's lives will be ruined by your reckless rush to the goal line.

And you have no regard for the people fucked by the glacial pace you'd rather take on myriad issues.

Fuck off with your accusations of selfishness. By your own admission in the past, the ACA has helped you. Great. Congratulations. It hasn't helped me and I'm not even complaining about that directly, though I certainly wasn't a fan of the mandate. It's been the source of significant complications in getting needed healthcare to my parents and my cancer-ridden sister, oftentimes requiring 3+ hours drives to get one of them somewhere they need to be and sometimes getting there just for people at the front desk to say they can't do shit. I've done the dance of diving through charities and fundraisers, often being rejected because our cases aren't deemed severe enough.

Your problems shouldn't exist. My family's problems shouldn't exist. When your goal is simply to stop the republicans from doing the bad, you're not improving the current situation. You're just stalling because they've got you by the balls fearing for your meds. No one should ever be tempted into those republican ideals, but its that self-same sluggishness that tells people who buy in that, "Well, what the democrats are doing isn't working, so..." And I know that because I live in an red-jilted environment where I hear people around me buying into all the bullshit. No amount of explaining pros and cons changes their mind because they've been suffering in their own ways and the snail's pace hasn't been helping. People aren't just going to magically come around until attempts have been made and proven successful. And again, I'm wholly aware we have like 30% of the country that'd do anything and everything to sabotage that. They, rather their chosen reps, did it to the ACA prior to its implementation, too. We can't just keep saying we're not ready (like Obama said for single-payer) or that shit's impossible. And it's 100% okay if you don't see a path to the goal, either. Supporting people willing to find it is what's needed and not just perpetually hoping to stop the bleeding.

I could prattle a bit about how the oil and gas industry has utterly fucked the renter's market around here, in relation to that topic, but at this point, what do you care of my own knowledge and experiences? You've settled on me being an enemy based on your habitual overreactions even though I've never once said you shouldn't be included in a less greed-driven society.

[Spicyryan]

It's unfortunate they will just write you off because they are hopelessly lost in an official fairytale mixed with dissolution.

The reason I never cared to talk about anything I personally care for, like murdering the bourgeoisie in their beds, hurr durr. Is because square one is agreeing upon there being problems int he first place, and we never sufficiently got past that step.

[Mrbeansman]

And your plan is to what exactly? Add more suffering to the pile? The ACA wasn't passed by magically changing the minds of these animals. It was passed by brute forcing the system and months later they paid dearly for it at the polls. I dont stan incrementalism becasue I believe it to be the ideal way I stan it because it has been shown time and time again to be the only thing that works.

I live in a blood red area as well btw and I've seen just how sickening these people are. Go work with children who tell you the President is a pedophile or who's dad is no longer in the picture becasue he stormed the capital on January 6 and then come back and tell me these are just poor people who would just come around if someone proved your ideas work. These people hate you they hate you more then you can possibly imagine and untill their dead and buried there will be no sweeping change in this country becasue people like spicy sit at home and let evil triumph.



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[Uzor]

I can get behind the USA changing to free health care, like pretty much every other country on Earth.

[Krandor]

I think the only country in the world that has "free" healthcare is Brazil.

Universal healthcare =/= Free Healthcare

[Gredival]

Spicy's first problem is that his endgoal for society is impossible and unsustainable insofar it's built on a flawed model of human and human society. He rails against how modern society was constructed upon violence and injustice committed by the West, but he has never once stopped to consider the reason: people are self-interested and are more than happy to screw other people over for their own gain. The West is not unique in it's violence, they are just the most recent flavor. Which is why literally everyone else can accept that a transition away from American hegemony would be bad because the rest of us all accept that any other potential hegemon comes with equal (if not more) propensity to abuse its power to further itself at the cost of others and that the loss of liberal institutions would actually reduce our ability to check back this violence.

His solution to literally everything is to achieve some semblance of equality ("multipolarity" for instance), but ignores the difficulty not only in getting to that equality (more on this later) but MAINTAINING it when actors are naturally incentivized to attain advantages against the other. Efficient systems, such as realism and capitalism, work by operating on the assumption that other actors will move in their own self-interest and therefore we should react accordingly. In other words, the best economic system is one that has some form of private property and profit because only those things can sufficiently reward efficiency and success such that we incentivize a productive society. Otherwise the system inevitably collapses.

That's why he doesn't know how to fix housing - he can't account for actors in the system who will react rationally to a system of equality and make it unequal by prioritizing their own self-interest above the collective interest (i.e. too many people who will buy PS5s and 4090s instead of maintaining communally owned properties.).

The tradeoff you have to make in this situation is to restrict freedoms in such a way that you can prevent deviation away from your state of equality. But that's only going to work if we can achieve a stasis point of society first that people are placated enough by what they are given in the equal society such that they don't mind the loss of freedom -- i.e. we can make the robots handle all the hard work of keeping society running while we can enjoy doing nothing together.

That is to say, hierarchy and exploitation are inevitable. We just need to constantly readjust the exploitation to more benign forms. The modern world has "progressed" because we moved from encomienda during imperial colonialism and antebellum South plantation slavery that relied on exploiting slaves, to modern day capitalism which sustains itself on resource extraction and cheap labor from the global south and the third world. Capitalism will reach its terminal end when there is no longer a sustainable hierarchy or when we are able to develop "renewable" resources to exploit (the robots).

But we can certainly make things better along the way. And the way that happens through step-by-step incrementalism.

That's Spicy's second problem: his refusal to engage in "meaningless reform," even if those reforms equate to actual material gains for those who are exploited in the system is infuriating.

Like statements like these:

I do genuinely want to believe competent government is possible.

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More like you have no regard for the people who's lives will be ruined by your reckless rush to the goal line.

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are not just statements regarding the unfeasibility of the end goal, they are also statements about how the current status quo implicates any transition must be undertaken.

When you solve a math equation, you are aiming for a final state of equality. You aim to get to equality by balancing the sides of the equation step by step. Spicy doesn't want to balance equations by dividing by three on both sides, or taking the square root of both sides, etc.

He just wants to punch "No capitalism" into the calculator and poof, problem solved. And that's not how shit worked. It is completely ahistorical to think progress in society comes in leaps and bounds through dramatic bursts of revolution. Revolutions take decades if not centuries.

[thetruepandagod]

I do genuinely want to believe competent government is possible.

most outlandish thing in the thread tbh

[Uzor]

I think the only country in the world that has "free" healthcare is Brazil.

Universal healthcare =/= Free Healthcare

Yes, but you get my point. I just find it hilarious how stupid the arguments are from a lot of the people fighting against universal health care in the U.S. Especially ones such as "But I don't want to pay for others!" Like, what do you think insurance is? You're literally paying for others.

It's obviously so much better to give companies leverage over employees by letting them hold health insurance hostage over them than just having the government provide it. It fucks over everyone that isn't a full-time employee—which is a lot of people since companies go out of the way to keep employees just under the amount of hours required to be considered a full-time employee.

[archibaldcrane]

most outlandish thing in the thread tbh

The largest government expenditures (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security) are all quite well-run programs.

Federalism and state level administration ensures that a large percentage of people experience shitty governance in other areas.

[archibaldcrane]

It fucks over everyone that isn't a full-time employee—which is a lot of people since companies go out of the way to keep employees just under the amount of hours required to be considered a full-time employee.

The percentage of part-time workers who want to be full time is extremely low right now.

[Rhyis.]

can confirm. the workforce does not want to work anymore since covid

people value personal time and mental health more than money nowadays, even the poors

[Spicyryan]

can confirm. the workforce does not want to work anymore since covid

people value personal time and mental health more than money nowadays, even the poors

Difference between not wanting to work and wanting to have a balance of work. Valuing the later is not only health, but incompatible with the goals of capitalism. Workers became more aware to the excessive degree of exploitation they have lived under post COVID. You can tell this because of union drives and the mainstream media narratives on CNBC and other shit about "quiet quiting" or the fair social media response of "acting your wage."

As for Gred, I will respond sometime today. So no one starts whining that I am purposely avoiding that post or something.

[archibaldcrane]

can confirm. the workforce does not want to work anymore since covid

people value personal time and mental health more than money nowadays, even the poors

...

No

My point is that this situation where employers fuck around with hours to keep workers from qualifying for health insurance isn't tenable when labor demand is really high - so there's very few workers "stuck" in that situation anymore.

[Spicyryan]

Spicy's first problem is that his endgoal for society is impossible and unsustainable insofar it's built on a flawed model of human and human society. He rails against how modern society was constructed upon violence and injustice committed by the West, but he has never once stopped to consider the reason: people are self-interested and are more than happy to screw other people over for their own gain. The West is not unique in it's violence, they are just the most recent flavor. Which is why literally everyone else can accept that a transition away from American hegemony would be bad because the rest of us all accept that any other potential hegemon comes with equal (if not more) propensity to abuse its power to further itself at the cost of others and that the loss of liberal institutions would actually reduce our ability to check back this violence.

His solution to literally everything is to achieve some semblance of equality ("multipolarity" for instance), but ignores the difficulty not only in getting to that equality (more on this later) but MAINTAINING it when actors are naturally incentivized to attain advantages against the other. Efficient systems, such as realism and capitalism, work by operating on the assumption that other actors will move in their own self-interest and therefore we should react accordingly. In other words, the best economic system is one that has some form of private property and profit because only those things can sufficiently reward efficiency and success such that we incentivize a productive society. Otherwise the system inevitably collapses.

That's why he doesn't know how to fix housing - he can't account for actors in the system who will react rationally to a system of equality and make it unequal by prioritizing their own self-interest above the collective interest (i.e. too many people who will buy PS5s and 4090s instead of maintaining communally owned properties.).

The tradeoff you have to make in this situation is to restrict freedoms in such a way that you can prevent deviation away from your state of equality. But that's only going to work if we can achieve a stasis point of society first that people are placated enough by what they are given in the equal society such that they don't mind the loss of freedom -- i.e. we can make the robots handle all the hard work of keeping society running while we can enjoy doing nothing together.

That is to say, hierarchy and exploitation are inevitable. We just need to constantly readjust the exploitation to more benign forms. The modern world has "progressed" because we moved from encomienda during imperial colonialism and antebellum South plantation slavery that relied on exploiting slaves, to modern day capitalism which sustains itself on resource extraction and cheap labor from the global south and the third world. Capitalism will reach its terminal end when there is no longer a sustainable hierarchy or when we are able to develop "renewable" resources to exploit (the robots).

But we can certainly make things better along the way. And the way that happens through step-by-step incrementalism.

That's Spicy's second problem: his refusal to engage in "meaningless reform," even if those reforms equate to actual material gains for those who are exploited in the system is infuriating.

Like statements like these:





are not just statements regarding the unfeasibility of the end goal, they are also statements about how the current status quo implicates any transition must be undertaken.

When you solve a math equation, you are aiming for a final state of equality. You aim to get to equality by balancing the sides of the equation step by step. Spicy doesn't want to balance equations by dividing by three on both sides, or taking the square root of both sides, etc.

He just wants to punch "No capitalism" into the calculator and poof, problem solved. And that's not how shit worked. It is completely ahistorical to think progress in society comes in leaps and bounds through dramatic bursts of revolution. Revolutions take decades if not centuries.

Might as well have stopped at "my first problem is it is unsustainable" since that would have been sufficient. If it is impossible then there's no need to proceed further, right?

Calling capitalism an efficient system really ignores the problems and hypocrisy in it. It also does not directly reward efficiency. It just doesn't.
Personally, I see capitalism as an ouroboros. If we really want to talk about unsustainable then we point to the exponential growth capitalism demands. The boom and busts of it being a byproduct of the system and it's inefficiency. COVID alone being enough of an obvious sign that the system is not inefficient and could not shift weight when receiving a counterpunch of it's own making. Natural disasters, including diseases are amplified by the disregard of consequences in the pursuit of the profit motive.
Implying there is no incentive and reward outside of capitalism is also just simply incorrect and at best a gross mischaracterization.

Regulations and laws are restrictions on freedom. Certain behaviors need to be curtailed in any system, and capitalism is not immune from this either.

The reason I can't tell you how to "fix housing" outside of fucking building more of it and then shutting out landlords and profiteering on it is because I am not qualified to.
There are teenagers more educated than myself on that matter let alone in general. I don't make the time in my life to read the books I want to one day get to or steep myself in facts, statistics, or theory enough to sit here shooting down liberal nonsense down with authority.
I listen to people who have dedicated their life to the ideas of socialist economics like Professor Richard D. Wolff and listen to far left talkshows during my commute. I try to extrapolate the concepts and research specific ones on my own rather than regurgitate anything besides basic facts.
So, I firmly believe in a genre of topics and umbrella of ideology. Which, might I point out that I spent most my life shunning as per our culture and education system, but no I am not some Rosa Luxemburg, and have directly said in not an academic/uneducated. I'll keep trying to get there overtime though.
All in all, you can still clearly see a difference between a textbook reactionary like Beans and myself. I don't believe most participants here are even as passively aware of such views. I trust/feel it's obvious someone like AG or Arus or Gred are though.

As for the second point on reform vs revolution, I don't think I need to address that directly. It's an old question which I've made my position on clear, and the track record of reform in this country since the 40s is pretty abysmal.
The communists, anarchists, and over left that fought for the 40 hour work week, labor laws, unemployment insurance, social security, etc. Eventually hit a wall with reform after cutting a deal with FDR to make said reform happen. Until eventually the left lost some steam then was brutally repressed in this country, as we all know.
The nature of capitalism, even with the vastly inadequate ACA is to chip away at and undo reform. Whether it's Glass-Steagall or the individual insurance mandate. These always get rolled back in the name of exploitation so long as the system remains. There is no reforming the essence of capitalism anymore than you can topically treat herpes, it comes back. There is no "balancing" it.

[Gredival]

So you continue to rail against capitalism but you glossed over how there is no viable alternative because no other model is sustainable. Therefore it doesn't really matter how bad capitalism is, because as you said the discussion ends there if I'm right.

Which then means your opposition to incremental reforms isn't founded on anything except your disdain for a reality you can't change.

Who cares about the hundreds of thousands of people Obamacare has saved, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of people capitalism kills. Even though we can mitigate the first impact, let's not bother because the second is inevitable.

[Spicyryan]

So you continue to rail against capitalism but you glossed over how there is no viable alternative because no other model is sustainable. Therefore it doesn't really matter how bad capitalism is, because as you said the discussion ends there if I'm right.

Which then means your opposition to incremental reforms isn't founded on anything except your disdain for a reality you can't change.

Who cares about the hundreds of thousands of people Obamacare has saved, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of people capitalism kills. Even though we can mitigate the first impact, let's not bother because the second is inevitable.

I believe Socialism is a superior system to Capitalism. There is nothing I would intentionally gloss over in that regard. Doesn't mean there aren't pros or cons to either, but to call Socialism unsustainable because it doesn't reward efficiency or provide incentives is just incorrect. It is not like I haven't seen that exact argument before. You are free to make it, but it shows either "glossing over" the subject to reach a desired conclusion or a lack of compiling the available information or circumstances to speak otherwise.
Not that I blame you as this exact argument and the like are front and center in the western education system. I bought into that exact same argument in blind acceptance for a very long time too.
Once again though, I disagree that capitalism is an efficient system. It only grows more inefficient in the pursuit of profits over time. To say otherwise is to believe the market always meets the needs of the people when it does not. That the supply chain does not grow more fragile in the pursuit of profits, which it does. That private industry makes profit through long term planning rather than short ones, which they do not. That companies make greater profit through efficiency and incentives rather than, for example, becoming zombie debt companies like Revlon that we are seeing unable to survive interest rake hikes. As something like buying nearly free debt to increase profit in the short term comes crashing down blowing back on the working class disproportionately, but hey that is the greatest system imaginable we have. It makes a headline, some faceless people suffer time and again, but fuck I can go to cheapcarribeanvacations.com and export my exploitation to feel good about being the top dog and forget about the sickening levels of inequality at home.

Also, don't applaud the ACA for the lives it has saved. You are literally pointing to the problem, and ignoring the further lives universal healthcare would have saved or made better. It is more of yet another exemple of how incremental reform will not fix the system it is built upon. It just won't. I wish it would, but there is a wall you won't pass, and that inevitably comes back on the reform every time. To argue reform can succeed is to say you can change the spots on the leopard and its prey will be alright.