Should I stay in America if it has become too corrupt and too undemocratic?

[Hatfort]

4 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

That's what I said.

But science is a broad notion. Science isn't limited to precise mathematical proofs.

Economics is a very loose science.

Okay, got you.

[JTL]

58 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Why must you have a money surplus in your bank account?

that surplus would be from a pay check, but that comes from business' revenue expenses and not profits. i think  @Leo Gura

[Leo Gura]

4 minutes ago, JTL said:

that surplus would be from a pay check, but that comes from business' revenue expenses and not profits. i think  @Leo Gura

Think harder.

[JTL]

45 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Think harder.

@Leo Gura okey, no need to be rude.

[Leo Gura]

6 minutes ago, JTL said:

@Leo Gura okey, no need to be rude.

 Thinking is not rude.

[Bobby_2021]

3 hours ago, aurum said:

You perpetually downplay or straight up deny the devilry / corruption of the east. And it's because you are biased towards hating the west.

Clear?

I don't downplaying anything.

The difference in scale is so astronomical that it's like saying Andrew Tate is scammer as much as your those locals charging extra from foreign tourists visiting poor countries.

 The west has astronomically more devilry from exploiting the global South. It's just a fact of the capitalist machinery. 

What do you want me to say? That both are equally corrupt?

Consider that the world hates west for legit reasons. Just like the world hates Hitler. It's not for no reason.

Do self introspection on the insane devilry of the west. I am pointing it out for you. 

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Dude, the oligarches who rule all these 3rd world countries are not stealing bags of rice to feed their poor kids. They live in palaces with golden toilets and super yatchs. Their spoiled kids drive gold-plated G-Wagons.

These people steal by the billions. Americans can't even fathom that much theft.

Hamas leaders are billionaires.

@Leo Gura

Notice how you derailed my initial point on inter-nation exploitation to internal exploitations occuring within nations.

You are still doing false equivalence either way. Trillions and Billions are not the same no matter how much you try to twist it. 

I don't deny exploitation within. But that was not the point. You conveniently ignore the larger context in which internal exploitations happen. Which is global exploitations in the level of Trillions. 

This is like saying Hamas scams Gazans while Israel is bombing their kids. There is a small difference I guess.

I would gladly allow myself to get scammed for few dollars in exchange for not getting fucking bombed by IDF.

[Raze]

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

 Thinking is not rude.

How many economics books have you read?

[Bobby_2021]

3 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

You know how Ukraine's richest oligarch made his billions? He had a staff of 50 thugs on call who would walk into corporate board meetings with baseballs bats.

Imagine showing up to Apple's quarterly board meeting with 20 thugs with baseball bats. "Now, let's talk about stock options."

US govt walks up to other govts doorstep and overthrows them and exploits the entire countries wealth which runs in the Trillions.

I am still talking about Ukraine.

And Americans don't have to imagine this. As I said earlier your daddy govt does it for you. You can remain blissfully oblivious to it.

Edited July 22 by Bobby_2021

[Staples]

@Bobby_2021 I am not sure you're really interested in understanding the structure of what is going on.

You're more interested in engaging in anti-war, anti-west rhetoric. Which is fine, you're not wrong there.

It's just so easy to denounce war and big stick vs little stick. You're engaging in very easy politics. Grasping why that evil exists and what can be done about it is much more difficult and a brutal pill to swallow, which is why most armchair progressives will never do it.

I really encourage you to disengage your emotional reaction and directly grasp why these things happen and what is truly at stake.

I understand I am coming from an extremely privileged position, but that doesn't make the position wrong.

[Bobby_2021]

1 minute ago, Staples said:

directly grasp why these things happen and what is truly at stake

Please tell me why these things happen. What's truly at stake? 

I am listening.

[Staples]

@Bobby_2021

15 minutes ago, Bobby_2021 said:

Please tell me why these things happen. What's truly at stake? 

I am listening.

Low consciousness base survival. Monkeys fighting monkeys, to make sure the other monkey doesn't take his shit.

If you give any low consciousness being or nation a big stick, you bet they would do the same to you. And no one or nation on this planet is even close to high conciousness.

It's not just americans vs the world. Israel vs Palestine. Russia vs Ukraine. Those are just labels that describes the current actors in play.

It's big fucks small. Crocodile bites monkey.

We will not be free of this cycle until all survival needs are met globally, and higher conciousness values become completely emobodied.

That is thousands of years away, and might not be possible for the current evolution of the human mind. 

At least that's how I try and understand things, it's not complete and I am trying to grasp deeper.

Edited July 22 by Staples

[Leo Gura]

46 minutes ago, Bobby_2021 said:

I don't downplaying anything.

The difference in scale is so astronomical that it's like saying Andrew Tate is scammer as much as your those locals charging extra from foreign tourists visiting poor countries.

 The west has astronomically more devilry from exploiting the global South. It's just a fact of the capitalist machinery. 

What do you want me to say? That both are equally corrupt?

Consider that the world hates west for legit reasons. Just like the world hates Hitler. It's not for no reason.

Do self introspection on the insane devilry of the west. I am pointing it out for you. 

@Leo Gura

Notice how you derailed my initial point on inter-nation exploitation to internal exploitations occuring within nations.

That wasn't a derailment, that was my core point.

46 minutes ago, Bobby_2021 said:

You are still doing false equivalence either way.

I am not. I fully acknowledge that the West exploits 3rd world nations. The point is that this exploitation is not the primary cause for their lack of development.

Europeans exploited Native Americans but Native Americans were underdeveloped to begin with. European exploitation did not cause their lack of development.

46 minutes ago, Bobby_2021 said:

Trillions and Billions are not the same no matter how much you try to twist it.

The Saudi Royal family has extracted trillions from their own people.

46 minutes ago, Bobby_2021 said:

This is like saying Hamas scams Gazans while Israel is bombing their kids. There is a small difference I guess.

I would gladly allow myself to get scammed for few dollars in exchange for not getting fucking bombed by IDF.

This does not change my point.

[aurum]

30 minutes ago, Bobby_2021 said:

The difference in scale is so astronomical that it's like saying Andrew Tate is scammer as much as your those locals charging extra from foreign tourists visiting poor countries.

Scale is not the only factor.

And to a certain degree, the scale argument works against you.

The west has been more successful at exploitation because it has things like functioning courts and laws. This allows for scale. Third world country courts are so corrupt in many cases that they cannot scale their exploitation.

30 minutes ago, Bobby_2021 said:

The west has astronomically more devilry from exploiting the global South. It's just a fact of the capitalist machinery. 

False. Devilry takes many forms.

Just because you are a weaker devil doesn't mean you're not a devil.

30 minutes ago, Bobby_2021 said:

What do you want me to say? That both are equally corrupt?

It's not about being equal in some simplistic fashion. There can be differences. 

Just recognize the devilry when it exists. And stop acting like the east is a bunch of saints compared to the west. 

One thing is guaranteed: if there's humans, there's devilry going on. 

30 minutes ago, Bobby_2021 said:

Consider that the world hates west for legit reasons. Just like the world hates Hitler. It's not for no reason.

Well that part is true. There certainly are reasons. 

But also, there is anti-western bias. Both exist.

30 minutes ago, Bobby_2021 said:

Do self introspection on the insane devilry of the west. I am pointing it out for you. 

I have. That's partly how I drifted towards the political left in the US.

The right-wing has historically been too drunk on nationalism and American exceptionalism to take issues of western devilry seriously. 

[Bobby_2021]

12 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

The point is that this exploitation is not the primary cause for their lack of development.

Let's do a few case studies. We are arguing too much in abstractions. Talk about the real world.

1. Do you think overthrowing the democratically elected president of Iran in 1953 by the CIA was the primary reason for the lack of development of Iran today? 

Keep in mind the crippling sanctions imposed on Iran too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_rights_in_Iran#:~:text=In this period%2C women were,political activism to some extent.

We can use women's rights in Iran as a gauge for development.

2. Do you think expanding NATO into Ukraine and selling their land to BlackRock for pennies on the dollar has resulted in their lack of development now?

[ Think about all the crimes that are about to rise, Demographic collapse and widow villages ]

3. Do you think the back to back Invasions of Afganistan has resulted in their stunted devlopment ?

How was Afganistan back before 1979?

Again, use women's rights as a gauge for development. 

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/slideshows/womens-rights-in-afghanistan-a-timeline?slide=2

Keep in mind that women got the right to vote in Afganistan one year before women in the freaking United States of America.

@Leo Gura Take your time and tell me what you think about it. 

[Leo Gura]

14 minutes ago, Bobby_2021 said:

Do you think overthrowing the democratically elected president of Iran in 1953 by the CIA was the primary reason for the lack of development of Iran today? 

Certainly not.

This is the Middle East. Their lack of development is centered around fundamentalist Islamist culture and poor geography.

Development is too serious an issue to blame on any external enemy, no matter how dispicable that enemy was.

Edited July 22 by Leo Gura

[Bobby_2021]

42 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Certainly not.

This is the Middle East. Their lack of development is centered around fundamentalist Islamist culture and poor geography.

Development is too serious an issue to blame on any external enemy, no matter how dispicable that enemy was.

https://imgur.com/gallery/iran-1970s-before-islamic-revolution-pmiVZFM

Please don't come back at me with CIA rhetoric that Islamic revolution did the damage in 1979 as if it happened in a vaccum. Research how the Islamic revolution came to be.

Think about why the middle east has become so destabilized. You are so close. 

Do some research. Ask to Claude 3.5 Sonnet. 

[Raze]

50 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Certainly not.

This is the Middle East. Their lack of development is centered around fundamentalist Islamist culture and poor geography.

Development is too serious an issue to blame on any external enemy, no matter how dispicable that enemy was.

But the Middle East had higher development than the west during the Islamic golden age, and their countries have very valuable resources like oil 

Edited July 22 by Raze

[Leo Gura]

5 minutes ago, Bobby_2021 said:

https://imgur.com/gallery/iran-1970s-before-islamic-revolution-pmiVZFM

Please don't come back at me with CIA rhetoric that Islamic revolution did the damage in 1979 as if it happened in a vaccum. Research how the Islamic revolution came to be.

Think about why the middle east has become so destabilized. You are so close. 

Do some research. Ask to Claude 3.5 Sonnet. 

Look, bro, I know all that. You're not presenting me with any new facts here.

That was an unsustainable thing, and it is not equivalent to solid development level. Development level is a lot deeper than wearing bikinis.

Edited July 22 by Leo Gura

[Raze]

Just now, Leo Gura said:

Look, bro, I know all that. You're not presenting me with any new facts here.

That was an unsustainable thing, and it is not equivalent to solid development level.

Islamic fundamentalism regained popularity in large part because of western interventionism

 

[Yimpa]

Crazy how studying this conversation here reflects my relationship issues I’m facing right now…