Epikur

Democracy needs people who are ready for it. The swiss, even their women could not vote till recently, came closest to it. Other countries have a mash up system of Democracy, Oligarchy and Monarchy.

There are talks about defunding the police. It seems we need the police but maybe some people want to put it into test. Steven Pinker, the psychologist who was born and grew up in Montreal recalled how the wildcat police strike and the lawlessness that followed changed his views: "As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin's anarchism. I laughed off my parents' argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 a.m. on October 7, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike. By 11:20 am, the first bank was robbed. By noon, most of the downtown stores were closed because of looting. Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine service that competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty carloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city authorities had to call in the army and, of course, the Mounties to restore order. This decisive empirical test left my politics in tatters (and offered a foretaste of life as a scientist)."[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray-Hill_riot

No I have spent hundreds of ours with analysis from center left to hard left. Kulinsky, Packman, Seder, Dore, Vaush... With my example I didn't mean Sanders or AOC. I mean the more extremist progressives specially from academia.

Well I gave you a context. How many fundamentalists should one or your country take in?

I know them pretty good. In the left their is a race about who is the most progressive. In general the extremists are very powerful like in other ideologies like islam. A black man can not be racist to a white men is already a very popularized opinion.

No I asked you a question what is progressive? Where is the limit? Read careful. I didn't talk about the immigrants who are in the country. I talked about why not let in fundamentalists? If not maybe you are not progressive enough?

What is progressive? To let in fundamentalist immigrants in your country? How many? 10 times your countries population? Otherwise you are weird or maybe a racist? Actually this is true for some progressives. Their idea is we have to make everybody brown or make the whites a minority everywhere. This is the priority. We will get some islamistic fundamentalism but that is ok because of emperialism and racism of whites.

It can be seen as playing with fire. It reminds of other revolutions where you got somethings worse like civil war, dictatorships, genocides. There is probably a better way to do it than steeling TV's and destroying peoples livelihoods and being racist to fight against racism. Reminds me of Zimbabwe where the revolutionaries produced hunger and destruction. Now this thing even came to Europe. Thugs on the street. Though sometimes it works.

One reason historically might be that in a greater sense whites hade a kind community. That community seem to have created fascism and world wars. I think that is one reason that whites lost their confidence. They might know they have a lot of power but it went really bad couple of times. Now they want to be more passiv I guess. Little bit like historic empires who lost power or energy and concentrate on living more peacefully. They might become victim to other powers if they can't find the right balance.

In case of indigene groups it seems that they are difficult to integrate into the modern world. Groups like chinese or japanese on the other hand can even be more successful than the west. So it might be thinkable that there are groups in between that are not that difficult to integrate like indigene volks but also not as easily like the asian examples.

My guess is many people in Europe also would not vote for a democratic socialist but rather for a social democrat. Yes with M4A that is how to explain but that is only 20%. I for example didn't understand it at the beginning. Like said before there a still studies that go against these 22 studies. I might dwelve in deeper to understand the numbers when I get the motivation.

I am also not from the US. That is how it looks to me as well. If it would be all white they probably would have M4A.

CNN and friends seem to be big on this divide. They like to stay silent about victims like David Dorn a black retired cop who got shot by looters. Chris Cuomo from CNN said regarding the riots: ""Please, show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful,"

In Europe I guess it would be Portugal. They have a very liberal policy. Where in Amerika and Asia would it be? Uruguay comes to mind with South Amerika.

That is one way to see it. I like sometimes watching muslim debates just to check what is out there. One bing imam was from the USA. He is a black guy he had this black coolness mixed with muslim way of life. He said if you are a drug addict then watching MMA is good for you. If you are already high on your way then don't watch MMA. So it depends how high you are. If you are to low you might need still low input, It will just take time and effort to get higher. In the mean time you might 'need' petty human shit. Of course this is probably just the non-dualistic way.

It is good to work with a source that is widely trusted and accepted like Wikipedia that has obviously its faults too. The problem for a reasonable person is that Bernie Sanders doesn't explain that he is not following academic's definition of Socialism. Therefore reasonable people might lose their trust in him. Many center left guys like Kyle Kulinsky were critisizing him for not using the term Social Democrat. He might have gained 10% more votes even some republicans would have voted for him. This way he might look like a guy with a "communist" agenda. For M4A the 22 studies are quite impressiv. The thing is a reasonable person thinks if it is so clear then it is a no brainer. Or is there more to it? One has to play devil's advocate. Blind face even if it is with sources is not enough. After a little bit googling I came to this from the Atlantic: "The Urban Institute, a center-left think tank highly respected among Democrats, is projecting that a plan similar to what Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders are pushing would require $34 trillion in additional federal spending over its first decade in operation. That’s more than the federal government’s total cost over the coming decade for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid combined, according to the most recent Congressional Budget Office projections." A reasonable person would have problems to find a clear answer through the mixed messages. I think if you want to convince a reasonable person one method I recently heard is steelmanning. You try to make your opponent's version as strong as possible and then try to argue against it. For example in our discussions it would be providing me sources against your own arguments before I provided it. Like the the ones from AOC, Wikipedia, the Atlantic. Convincing is sometimes too hard to do. Just to have a reasonable conversation steelmanning would be one element. That way you gain trust and will be trusted as a good faith actor. I know it is very hard to go against ones notions but it is often important to have a balanced view on things even if not for you but for the sake of a satisfying conversation.

You were right with AOC. She didn't say that but it seems that she ment that. She said, quote form Newsweek: "We have to have respect for children, respect for families, respect for human rights and respect for the right of human mobility. Because it is a right. It is a right. Because we are standing on native land, and Latino people are descendants of native people," Ocasio-Cortez said. "And we cannot be told and criminalized simply for our identity or our status. Period." For a reasonable person it can easily be interpreted for open borders. If she didn't ment that she could make it clear, could be said. Regarding Bernie Sanders. Your link is just a random website that might not mean much for a reasonable person. On the other hand when a reasonable person checks Wikipedia he will see that all academics there agree that Bernie Sanders' definition of Democratic Socialism is wrong. So this person would have the opinion that Sanders' is not telling the truth. Regarding Medicare for all there are a lot of numbers flying around. For a reasonable person 'the hill' might be a good source as they are not much partisan. Their number is 32 billion dollars over 10 years. Roughly the military budget. A point to USA as a world police: The problematics of policing the world is probably known to a reasonable person. But again,to say it in the spirit of Nassim Taleb, the author of the black swan: The most important thing is to be prepared for the worst case scenario. In the stock market it would be a total crash. In geopolitics it would be a world war. We had the example with World War 1. One difficult question: which superpower will be more reasonable in the future the USA or China?

Yes USA ranges in the low ranks in many other markers as well. It is though that the cost of medicare for all is roughly the same as the military budget. If one would eliminate the bigger part of the military budget it could work out. Though the USA is the police of the world. We had the luxury of "pax USA". Without the US miltary power we might be in the situation of pre World War 1. Every country is fighting for dominance. With China in the horizon that would mean it is a lost battle. Europe for example probably would surrender to China right now without the USA but that is just a possibility.

But as far I can remember you talked about AOC and it seems like she said this: "Latinos must be exempt from immigration laws because they are 'Native' to US." Regarding Berny Sanders he calls himself Socialist. The classic definition of Socialism is when the people own the means of production. That is a horror idea for most reasonable people. Regarding Medicare for All. I heard it depends on how you formulate the question. Everybody is for free Medicare. When you say how much it costs the acceptance rate goes much lower. I think some people think that it depends on the country if medicare for all works or not. USA is a difficult one because it is very diverse.

When I am thinking about it not only is self improvement closer to the right wing but even spirituality is closer to the right wing. In general leftists, marxists are materialists. So they don't believe in spirituality or god. Right wing on the other hand believes in mystery, occult, paganism, religion and drugs.

That is the reason why they are feared. This saying can be and sometimes are interpreted like we are all equal and must be treated equal even if one lives in USA and one in Afrika. Then it becomes suddenly "logical" not to have borders and national states. When reasonable people hear that they turn away in horror.

When I think about it I could add "drugged CEO, Samurais" who become more effective. Like the historical assassins and ninjas. Though I don't know if the ninjas were drugged but it would make sense.

This comes to my mind: Actually this site is very interesting in this regard. Self improvement is the pillar of this site. This is not a left wing talking point but it is regarded as a right wing talking point. Even the color stages can be seen as racist. It could be interpreted as othering people. It is an other way of saying that they are primitive and unciviliced. Coincidently almost all black communities and Afrika are then lower stages. The stages can be seen as hierarchical structures. The person on the top has more authority. It reminds of protestants who talk about god and compassion but they use that to calm their mind to be then more charged to go for the real thing that is money and power. Or it reminds me of the CEOs and Samurais who meditate and are ego-less temporarily to be even more effective later in their "wars" The difference of this site to the right wingers is that this site puts more weight into socialistic visions. With all that in mind this site repells far left and far right people. So this site is quite centrist politically from an european point of view. The art of this site is that it can channel the angry energy of the users into spirituality. This is the trick why this forum does not become toxic like other forums and that is something special.

TheAlchemist, I agree at the moment Naval seems to be the guy who has most of all for me. I am looking for intellectuals who have less blindspots. He seems to be one of them. First I tried it with Zizek but it did not workout. Then Eric Weinstein but he has also lots of blindspots. I just relistened to the podcast yesterday with him and Tim Ferriss and that was quite nice. I am going to listen more to his work. I was following RSD for years. The Derek guy was never on my radar. Lately he is doing more marketing and I checked him out. He is really hard to digest. He feels really not likable.

I am doing the breathing exercises on and off for couple years. One thing I rediscovered is that it effects my sleeping pattern. In general the breathing exercise gives me around 50% more energy throughout the day. That means I don't get tired at the usual time. I get tired 3 hours later. So I have to adjust to it. Another effect of the exercise is lower intellectual capacity. It seems like the exercise raises the energy level through tapping into survival mode. In that mode the brain function seems to get lower in the priority hierarchy. So one has to count in the trade off. I am going to look more in to the Gracie breathing exercise as well. He says with this method the survival mode will not be triggered.