commie

Means testing is pointless and creates perverse incentives. More importantly, politically it's a poison pill (meaning that people insist on it in order to sabotage the measures they want to attach it to by making them less popular).

Garbage doesn't balance garbage. It's just more garbage. More importantly, there's more that unites the contemporary gringo left and the contemporary gringo right that sets them apart. You'd get basically the same thing if you watched stuff coming from both sides of the same coin. I don't mean to say you've suggested nothing of value. Contrapoints for instance is of course not garbage. But if something truly isn't worth watching, there's no way to get back the time you've invested in it. And if you've been misled, you're most likely not going to be set right simply by watching something something coming from another part of the same political spectrum.

There are two approaches that are known to work (and work best when combined): a) learn by doing (that is, do political work with people which have different ideologies) b) history (not what you learn in school or Internet drivel but detail-oriented professional books as well as historical documents including of course old books in which dead people expound on their dated ideologies) I know that there is no such thing. The level of delusion typically involved in people's thinking about political ideologies is amazing.

In my experience, most people do not have the morals of their culture. They more pretend to, more or less effectively and more or less artfully. The problem with moral relativism is simply that it denies the self-evident moral absolute: your morals.

Nothing is bad or less evolved as far as I'm concerned but harm would be caused by raising so many cows and chickens even if it was done respectfully (which will never happen as long as the numbers look anything like the way they do now). The moral problems people have with meat are typically rooted in hypocrisy. Human as well as non-human animals are harmed by your actions regardless of your diet. That's of course not some kind of free pass but it means that vegans who aren't doing anything about the animals harmed in the process of growing plants simply have an eating disorder. If on the other hand meat simply disgusts you, that is of course healthy. I haven't eaten meat in a very long time. Maybe that's what allows me not to identify as "spiritual". :-) Magical thinking aside, it hardly matters whether you eat meat or not. If you do, simply take care to exercise moderation when doing so.

Sure, it's doable. I like the idea in principle, precisely because of the complicated and slow changes it would both require and bring about if was done properly. But so far as I know, the idea has only been used to harm people by gutting social programs so far.

Perhaps I've been too charitable in assuming people understood what UBI is... UBI makes no sense outside of a society which works in such a transactional way because the whole point is to get paid. And the problem isn't that people might not want to contribute but that such contributions aren't fungible and that the societies we live in are set up so as to require many workers to obey instructions no one would follow if they were not under duress.

Look up what a regressive tax is. The right amount is 0%. This is especially important with a UBI which would disincentivize poor people from working. Sometimes the benefit of a policy is worth such a disincentive as in the case of a carbon tax. VAT on the other hand has no benefits and just makes the problem worse.

Of course not. The CP is investing abroad in order to keep the Chinese people poorer than they could be. If you're not spending the surplus abroad, either you're not producing as much as you could or you're spending it at home. Don't they teach exploitation, imperialism and stuff in Chinese schools? In any case, I obviously agree: independent unions and public spending on human needs (education, health, housing and so forth) are extremely important. So true. :-) Except that the USSR didn't need containing. It's obvious in hindsight but even at the time, there was no more evidence for this than there was for Iraq's infamously fictional WMDs. Either the Chinese statesmen of the time lied or (more likely) they were naive and believed Uncle Sam's lies like so many other governments.

VAT is a regressive tax. Transaction taxes aren't quite as bad but still... paying for a UBI that way is a terrible idea. If you can't fund it more sanely, better drop the issue! Most states in a position to offer a UBI don't need more tax revenues anyway but that's another topic.

The CP isn't burning billions overseas in spite of the inequality but because of the inequality, exactly like your typical European imperialist state back in the day. And if you object to spending billions on Africa, what of the the billions that have been spent on the USA when the average Chinese was even poorer? Since you're offering... are most Chinese unaware that their government is propping up the USA and more generally that these two states have been allies since Nixon? Thanks for dropping by and speaking up!

What the CP fears isn't liberal fantasies but mass movements (or "mass incidents"). Past authoritarian government had ways of watching and persecuting dissenters, all useless even though they typically worked very well. Regimes fall when they can't persecute their opposition because the people becomes the opposition. :-)

Education is government controlled everywhere. And what authoritarian regime has ever needed anything like AI? The teacher's in denial. As to the original question, nothing is inevitable.

The white profile pic threw me off. The thing about anger (or whatever) is, would you be motivated to fight if you were comfortable? I don't resent people who behave angrily when they're also contributing more than the ones next to them. I get policing your own behavior to be safer but the most likely outcome is that the haters will find someone slightly less angry to hate on. So from a collective perspective, I don't think it works. It's kind of like nationalism: good for throwing off the imperialist yoke but you gotta leave it behind at some point.

I'm not sure who you mean with "we" but I don't think people should worry about looking hysterial. Hysteria is always in the eye of the beholder. That's not the word people typically use for Trump for instance.

Racism. The issue gets gringos very defensive for some reason.

No, I have no idea why you reacted to Dyslexic posts that way. Maybe it is projection (that's common enough) and maybe it isn't. The problem as I see it is the way you read their posts, irrespective of your motives. That said, sure: Dyslexic could be less confrontational.

I'm talking about the way you (among others) are reacting to what Dyslexic is saying. That is, you are dealing with it as a move in some kind of one-upmanship game (just in case: that's a reference to the entertaining musings of one Alan Watts which should be familiar to every native English speaker here) instead of examining what's actually being said.

It's not my mother tongue either but I had no trouble getting it. You seem to be paying too much attention to the package and not enough to the content. As far as I can tell, Dyslexic wasn't trying to humiliate anyone. Indeed they have shown a remarkable amount of patience by trying to inform people. I don't remember anyone in this thread doing even a tenth of the work they did. You are limiting your own intellectual development by ascribing ego stuff to the exposition of facts and theories. I realize this is quite common (just look at the rest of the thread) but that doesn't make it any healthier. Just in case anyone gets the wrong idea, I should add I disagree with Dyslexic. Only I take note of the information provided.

Agreeing with them would be irresponsible. That only emboldens them. But that doesn't mean you somehow become responsible for defending the opposing view. Let them know you think people are taking advantage of their credulity and leave it at that unless you actually know the topic and enjoy silly arguments. In my experience, they won't change their mind even if you show them documents, authoritative analyses and the like. Only do research for your own sake and not theirs. Wasting your valuable time wouldn't be open-mindedness! You can't possibly listen to everyone so you have to choose. The one thing you might need to be open-minded about is right-wing views. There are reasonable right-wingers. In some times and places, the average right-winger is going to be brainwashed into idiocy but you shouldn't generalize. They'll probably only change their mind when their leaders are defeated. Work towards that if you care but don't waste your time on clueless followers.

The dearth of worthwhile content on this forum is in no small part due to the games of one-upmanship played with "the structure of the lines of reasoning and ways of expression". Colors, delusions with regard to "personal" this or that, pseudo-spirituality and so forth all routinely serve this purpose. @Forestluv You don't conjure a castle to defend against online drivel (a cat video does that job just fine) but against voices within. One can't commission the arifa here but I know what character I don't want to be playing.

I thought you were doing a parody. Another one for Poe's law! Take this Large Talking Point Collider output for instance:

This isn't about the EU but the EZ. It's not help. Dublin has access to ridiculous amounts of free money. Prague for instance doesn't. Typically, governments pay loans back with new loans. Everyone who matters is totally fine with this. Don't worry yourself about this stuff. Most teens can't do online effectively and most parents can't coach their teens effectively. Smaller kids simply need to be in some kind of school.

This is the most sensible post I've read on this forum in months. One nitpick though... There are large differences in death rates within countries (between majority-German and majority-French areas in Switzerland for instance) so this isn't a matter of borders. Germany normally isn't even trying to control who crosses their borders. I don't know of any evidence that this spring's extraordinary border restrictions have had any effect.

Kids need school. You can do without non-essential shops. Businesses only need support from the state. Talking of which... You don't seem to be familiar with the jargon so it's not clear what you're talking about but the RoI (which is what you call "Ireland", right?) is in the Eurozone which means the government has been told to run a massive deficit by the grownups in Frankfurt who are making sure money keeps flowing. I would gladly step in and buy RoI bonds if the deficit was large enough and I assure you I'm not the only one (look at the BTP market!). Quit listening to propaganda and drivel.