You completely ignored the part where I said some need more financial help to get in college. What doesn't make sense is that those who work harder or are smarter should then be backhanded and substituted for less smart or less hard working people. Another thing that gets me even more angry is that financial aid is entirely dependent on what your parents make and have. What if they don't support you? What if they're irresponsible? What if you've removed yourself from them? These are all questions that have been in my family. We've worked around them via military scholarships, but I'm not allowed to join the military. That door is locked.

The downward equality that comes with comunism just gives all the richness to the Party leaders usually

All communist states features mass programs that aims to improve the livelihoods of the most disadvantaged, including mass literacy movements, sanitary movements, redistribution of land, housing programs, etc... This is coupled with a tightly knit social security web that provides workers and peasants with much needed support. In history, after successful revolutions there were sharp increases in literacy, life expectancy and median income. Generally, such trait is well present in communist states and in socialist-leaning states in the third world(like Tanzania, South Yemen, the Indian state of Kerala...) Go for a web search.

The effect of these popular initiatives can be seen through the decreasing of inequalities in such states. For instance, communist Bulgaria once achieved a gini index of less than 20, which is markedly lowerer than those of any welfare state(at least 25+). The stable low continued until the 1990s, when "liberalization" came with mass privatizations and the formation of a corrupt plutocracy of similar authoritarian vein. Socially speaking, previously marginalized groups like women and minorities found their way into the regime(though the regime core remained rather homogeneous). Female employment was high, and several prominent ethnic Romani took government positions.

Communist forces also played a significant role across the Iron curtain. The PCF, PCI, SKDL among other communist parties were one of the main pushers that led to the establishment of welfare states in Western Europe. workers gained bargaining power through joining trade unions, many of which were associated with communist parties, take CGT for example.

Back to the other side of the curtain, it is undoubted that these governments suffered from authoritarianism, bureaucracy and stagnation, but despite their flaws, they symbolized an attempt to break from the capitalist system.

That takes us to the roots of communist and socialist movements in the 20th century. These "commies" did not come from nowhere and overthrow democratic institutions. Instead, they mostly came to power in underdeveloped states, and the regimes they overthrew (or tried to overthrow) were almost entirely composed of client states ruled by right-wing dictatorships. That list is long, encompassing Batista's Cuba, Franco's Spain, Pinochet's Chile, Salazar's Portugal, Suharto's Indonesia, Mobutu's Zaire, Palevhi's Ian, juntas of Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Dominican Republic of Trujillo, Paraguay... These states had a corrupt elite class that drained its citizens and brutally suppressed them while receiving MILITARY aid from the US used for death squads and aggression. These client states were instrumental in the capitalist system as they provided extremely cheap (and very disposable) labour while selling off the country to the West through privatizations of resources and land. For instance, Guatemala's cultivable land was mostly owned by the United Fruits Company and laboured on by gravely underpaid and maltreated Mayan workers. These states number too much to be some kind of anomaly in the "Free World", so liberal commentators ignore them(while reactionary ones hail their atrocities. Want a helicopter ride?). In reality, they were integral components of the capitalist system. With these populations and territories the West could exploit but bears no responsibilities for, they can harvest resources and talents while transfering the shady part of capitalism to some remote places. So we now see "enclosure movements" and miserable peasants and factory workers in the third world, suffering from what capitalism claims to have grown out of. And the nation state ideology adds to this myth that portrays the West's success as a result of choosing the capitalist model that champions free trade, democracy, freedom, blah blah blah... In reality the capitalist system is a pyramid whre the West dominates the top, while the MAJORITY of the Free World's pupulation live in misery(a tiny portion of local elites are welcomed into the US to show its openess while indoctrinating them). The basis of such system is inherently unequal as it is based on centuries of colonialism that shaped colonies into rudimentary suppliers of resources and the markets of goods-dumping. Free trade only favours the advantaged as they control the rules, and democracy is fragile because any leader that tries to turn the table by "messing with" its Western-controlled resources would only get dumped. The cold war logic was: nationalization-business lobby jumps in-anti-communist hysteria(the target don't have to be real)-coup. Nowadays coups are still commonplace, like in Honduras and in Haiti (against Artiste). So the whole process was one of concentration, not of the common good. With the same amount of resource, a concentrated model obviously has more output than a dispersed one. While capitalism does this concentration through market means, communism brings in the state, under which citizens get more equal distribution through rather administrative ways. And the state (in theory) belongs to the people, so now the people (de jure) control the means of production(and de facto, in certain situations, like in agriculture where farmers are entitled to cultivate land, which functions as if they owned the land, though in principle all lands are nationalized).

So what is it with the nice living standards of Europeans, and with the rise of Japan? The former is influenced by many factors like the centuries of colonial gains(in capital, technology and culture),the welfare state, state intervention in economics... A very short answer would be, because they fought for, and got the bread crumbs of capitalism. Japan had a similar case as its industries statrted the post war recovery through military production (for the wars in indochina and elsewhere), and of course Japan was an industrialized world power, not really a third world state. The third world only gets the bread crumbs of the bread crumbs. So where is the bread? 50% of the world's wealth is controlled by 1 percent of the population and the percentage is increasing fast. The bottom's net wealth is actually dropping.

To draw an analogy, people envy the life of (de facto and de jure) autocratic monarchs, as they can do anything they wish. But that does not justify absolute monarchism because the absolute majority of people can only be miserable serfs producing riches for the monarch but getting none in return. And of course monarchs in history actually can't wield ALL power. So the lives of bread crumb eaters and bread-crumb-of-bread-crum eaters could only be much less enjoyable.

Revolution was the only way of struggle during the cold war as the West kindly sealed off other possibilities. The democratically elected governments(many of which were not socialist, but liberal) of Mossadeigh's Iran, Arauz's Guatemala, Allende's Chile, Lumumba's Congo, Nkrumah's Ghana etc were overthrown by the West through coups carried out by the corrupt elites, but with the West's direct involvement. Refer to the 1973 Chilean coup and the 1953 Iranian coup.

These revolutionaries were the only forces that could bring justice to the people. But even such justice required bloody wars in which the reactionaries were responsible for the absolute majority of heinous abuses. Massacres, genocide(guatemala), arbitrary killings, rape, biological and chemical warfare(agent orange in Vietnam, swine fever in Cuba) were commonplace. But thrid world lives were too cheap for these elites to pay attention to. Only Hollywood-styled tales of (mostly middle class) escapes in pursuits of personal freedom interests them. As for the masses? Exclusion and demonization. Either their stories were completely ignored, or they were portrayed as faceless, nameless henchmen mowed down during some Hollywood-style killing frenzy. If it was not the extreme exploitation and oppression they suffered, the bright promises of an equal world, and the popular strength embedded in their struggle, how could an underdevelped serfdom-transfored USSR, along with third-world former colonies, take on the agglomeration of the most powerful capitalist world powers for a century? Their flaws may be deep, but they were on the side of equality and justice in a world deprived of these qualities, and for such stance they deserve a second look.

nicely said eduord.
in another topic I asked this question a few weeks back, "how many free hong kong"threads will it take to get warzone banned in china. what will be your estimate

The content doesn't get it banned, the influence does. So considering the current situation where this is a website rarely frequented by Hong Kongers, let alone mainland Chinese, I don't think it is possible. To get it banned, it needs to be at least some kind of online news service like the Guardian(still working) or the Independent(down), or some mainstream American news. After that, you need to follow the HK events some months ago and post articles about that. That would probably do the trick.

What doesn't make sense is that those who work harder

Careful, you don't know how hard other people work.

FW: Politics, religion

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note: Please do basic research on topics before making claims about them. My posts get awfully long and unpleasantly pedagogical right now... It's also a weird system when one party just says stuff and the other actually has to look into things else they get accused of "ignoring" or not refuting them.

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Not FDR, Biden takes the prize.

FDR signed 3728 executive orders, at a clip of 1.2 days/order. This is by far the highest of any US president.

Among Presidents in the Sixth Party System (modern political era):
- Donald Trump (R) signed 220 (#13765-#13984), at a clip of 6.6 days/order.
- Barack Obama (D) signed 276 (#13489-13764), at a clip of 10.6 days/order.
- George W. Bush (R) signed 291 (#13198-#13488), at a clip of 10.0 days/order.
- Bill Clinton (D) signed 364 (#12834-#13197), at a clip of 8.0 days/order.
- George H. W. Bush (R) signed 166 (#12668-#12883), at a clip of 8.8 days/order.
- Ronald Reagan (R) signed 381 (#12287-#12667), at a clip of 7.7 days/order.

Joe Biden (D) has, to date, signed 57 executive orders (#13985-14041), at a clip of 4.1 days/order. This is a fast pace by recent standards, but it's likely to slow down over the entirety of his time in office (since presidents, as you realize, don't sign executive orders at a uniform pace).

On aggregate, the Democratic presidents of the Sixth Party System have signed 697 executive orders over 6,079 days in office- that's a clip of 8.7 days/order. The Republican presidents of this era have signed 1,058 orders over 8.766 days in office- a clip of 8.3 days/order.

Between 1981 and 2001, a new executive order got signed about every 8 days. Between 2001 and 2017, the pace slowed to about 10. Now it seems to have quickened since 2017 to about one executive order per week.

The partisan disparity you point to doesn't exist.

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The emotionally fragile and poor mes are the ones who bash other people for their misfortunes and tell their supposed sob stories wanting donations and people to side with them about nonsense. Those who if told no would lash out and make a tantrum because their feelings were hurt.

What makes you associate these people with California, exactly? Given your description, I've met these people all over the place; you seem to be describing out-of-touch cliques in general- the in-groups of every forum or congregation.

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Executive orders are things signed into law without the consent of the public, house, or senate.

Executive orders are not laws in the same sense as laws passed by Congress. Instead, they're a means by which the President, the elected (by the consent of the public) head of the executive branch, sets directives for their branch- e.g., by setting requirements for federal employees or changing the policies of federal agencies.

They're just a product of the separation of powers in our Constitution.

That is exactly what a dictator does.

The President of the United States is a (somewhat indirectly) elected leader subject to the will of the governed- they lose political capital if they enact unpopular policies (see: approval rating swings).

Their decisions are checked by the courts (which can overturn their orders or issue stays) and the legislature (which can remove them and has control over their immediate subordinates). They have to have sufficient popular support to win elections, and they can't win a mandate more than twice.

This is a far cry from authoritarianism or dictatorship.

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You completely ignored the part where I said some need more financial help to get in college.

I did not. I challenged your characterization of grant aid as "help" when in reality it's simply a form of price discrimination. Colleges set a high sticker price and then use their funds, mixed with some government funds, to give you a new price set about as high as you're able to afford. They squeeze as much as they can (because the ROI is still high even if the degree sets you back 300 kilodollars) and then the funds go toward various university initiatives (they gotta build those climbing walls to compete with other universities doing the same thing) and administrative staff.

You're framing the issue in terms of getting aid when in reality the system is functionally a government-enabled mechanism to have everyone pay as much for college as colleges can get away with charging. Once you view it as price discrimination, it all makes sense why you and so many others get taken advantage of.

Of course you get squeezed. If they're not charging you an amount that's a little bit uncomfortable for you to afford, they're leaving money on the table.

What doesn't make sense is that those who work harder or are smarter should then be backhanded and substituted for less smart or less hard working people.

Where is this fabled scholarship for having a low credit score? I can't find one.

Moreover, functionally, the system doesn't substitute students- entry and participation is managed through admissions, not aid. It just admits whoever it likes and charges everyone as much as they can afford (in principle; sometimes there are inefficiencies).

You're almost certainly still going to go to college and pay them what they ask for, even if you have to use one of your workarounds. From the college's perspective, then, the system is working as intended: they got you in and they got you to pay as much as you could.

Another thing that gets me even more angry is that financial aid is entirely dependent on what your parents make and have. What if they don't support you? What if they're irresponsible?

There are mechanisms for filling out financial aid forms without including your parents' income and assets; they just subject you to increased scrutiny (obviously), but if you are in this situation you have some options.

What if you've removed yourself from them?

If you get legally emancipated, then your parents' income and assets typically do not affect your financial aid.

But overall, I agree that the college scholarship system is broken- if you view it as a system of helping people pay for college. Though of course, it's not really that kind of system. It's a system to set prices individually at whatever people can afford to pay.

It's a hard problem to fix because, though the perverse incentives for colleges here are enabled by the government aid system (coupled with limitations on supply and artificial scarcity), you can't just shut off FAFSA overnight. Plus artificial scarcity creates a class of people (myself included) who now have financial incentives to maintain that system; though fixing the scarcity issue would benefit society as a whole, it would increase the relative market leverage associated with our labor (i.e., it would lower our wages). It's like how I now have my incentives aligned with maintaining restrictive housing policies in the SF Bay Area and not building public transportation from places like Sacramento: if we're able to broaden labor mobility, wages on aggregate go up immensely but mine go down.

So you've got logistical and political resistance to contend with. Until you can, the system stays in place.

Going back to the point, though, college scholarships are a poor example of differential returns on taxpayer investment... because college aid isn't actually aid, and (just like with drug prices and hospital costs or the "savings" on your grocery bill because you used a loyalty card) a lot of the numbers are just price manipulation.

44% of grant aid is just institutional grants (i.e., the college adjusting their price). 25% is Pell grants, which are for exceptional financial need (i.e., actually poor people). Another 21% come from private, employer, and veteran/military grants. State grants are just 10% and tend to be concentrated in public universities. (see: http://collegeaffordability.urban.org/financial-aid/grant-aid/#/by_sector ; you can use this to explore grant aid breakdown by income and dependency status, too, and see that federal and state grants are basically negligible).

Plus this is a tiny portion of the federal budget anyway. It's only 10 aircraft carriers or 4 months' worth of r*ral subsidies.

Edited 9/13/2021 02:49:32

Communism and capitalism are the exact same system, if you can't see that then you will never understand history and how the world actually works.

>industry is dominated by a party composed of high-ranking special interest representatives
>the underclass is undercompensated
>education is about socialization and instrumentalizing people to serve the state and/or corporations rather than education
>foreign policy is dominated by the military industrial complex

Yes we all know the dude in the “nationalist” clan knows his history and would understand it’s complexity!

FW: Politics, religion

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RainB00ts actually has a point, although his perspective here is an over-correction imo. But the same underlying political structures create perverse incentives in both capitalism and communism, leading to the emergence of class politics and domination.

Where capitalism shines, though, is in how it manages and de-risks these structures. Liberalism, with its broad interpretations and applications of property rights (including rights to life and liberty), provides strong guardrails that limit adverse scenarios (e.g., the economic mismanagement and political repression of Stalin-era USSR or Mao-era PRC). Excesses become harder to implement in a free-market society, at least under present technological conditions. Markets price in information far better than any other system and, given competition, tend to align individual incentives with general welfare (e.g., there's outside rewards for risk-tolerance and competitive mechanisms in most industries that force suppliers to compete along customer preferences, leading to cycles of disruption).

But the underlying reality exists in either system (and under prior economic arrangements, like manorialism or mercantilism), because it's endemic to human society in general: people face individual incentives that sometimes encourage them to harm the whole, those in power have reasons to want to stay in power, and organized systems have incentives to self-perpetuate. The excesses of the Soviet Union or the political interventions of the United States represent merely a confluence of incentives (Stalin's consolidation of power, pressure from the impoverished citizens, and external security concerns in the former case; domestic economic demand, political currents, and the power dynamics of the US executive in the latter) channeled through the political and economic systems of each society, which themselves emerged from processes of selection.

About 12,000 years ago, our sedentary ancestors displaced hunter-gatherers. Sedentary societies weren't necessarily better to live in; indeed, high concentrations of people living alongside high concentrations of animals introduced novel problems like epidemics, sedentary life in many ways demanded more work for less reward, societal oppression became easier at scale (emergence of states, organized religion, large-scale war), and sedentary humans (likely) traded individual intelligence for social smarts. It wasn't until only a few centuries ago (around industrialization) that sedentary humans had better quality of life (past infant mortality) than the hunter-gatherers we wiped out.

But that didn't matter. Quality of life and choice didn't drive the settling-down of humans. Instead, sedentary societies simply grew faster and displaced hunter-gatherers. One system just propagated itself better than another, regardless of how well it benefit the people living under the system. Not to say that everything is merely evolutionary (certain conditions have to be true for deterministic differential propagation to occur, and the underlying incentives also have to relate to individual objectives, although what we want is also something that societal and biological evolution tend to drive), but it just has a lot of predictive value (and utility- we can apply this model to push our own interests by generating solutions that would succeed within its framework).

The same has been true since. There is a current of history and we merely swim in it. It's in our interest to try to understand the system instead of lazily playing team red vs. team blue, so that we can exercise power within it and try to tweak it to better suit our own interests. Why are liberal democracies able to thrive today? Where do their flaws come from? What would have to remain true in order for liberal democracy to be a viable mode of governance? Why are r*rals still allowed to exist, subsidized and un-eradicated? All worth thinking about.

Edited 9/13/2021 02:49:19

Did someone from here go to one of my non political threads? If so, quit it. Communism and Socialism are different. Communism has the rich elite who control the country. Socialism has a more balanced system of equality. California just has the most emotional people of any other state, as well as the richest. And after some more research, I come to find out there are very mixed views on trade deficits. A few finance people I know and I think it's a bad thing. You think it's a good thing. I don't see how losing money all the time is good. $300+ billion lost every year is actually very bad.

FW: Politics, religion

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California just has the most emotional people of any other state

How do you determine this?

And after some more research, I come to find out there are very mixed views on trade deficits.

Yes, there are some pitfalls, although most of them do not apply in the case of CA. E.g., one concern about trade deficits is that they can result in foreign control of domestic capital, but CA FDI has been reasonable and the bulk of it comes from Europe (https://static.business.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/FINAL-FDI-Report.pdf). Plus we're the a developed post-industrial service economy, not some developing resource-extraction economy where someone else can swoop in and own all our factories.

A few finance people I know and I think it's a bad thing.

Great; however, this is not the consensus among economists. The concern about trade deficits is far more political than it is economic.

You think it's a good thing.

I never said it was good, just that I'd rather have a stronger economy with a trade deficit than a weaker economy with a surplus. The American trade deficit correlates positively with American relative prosperity; importing more than we export is just what makes sense for our post-industrial economy given its present comparative advantages.

In the US case, the trade deficit is arguably great for us because we benefit from increased investments in American capital (e.g., our factories), save consumers money through economic optimization (I'm not paying extra to have my phone inefficiently manufactured by West Virginia r*rals who can't provide competitive labor and demand protectionism instead), and have our stocks go up because of increased buying. When we import, we trade US currency for foreign goods & services. They've got to do something with the US currency, and ultimately it comes back in the form of investment in US assets. Keep in mind that all this trade between countries is just trade between people. It's not the US importing maple syrup and Canada buying US securities; it's US residents choosing to buy Canadian-produced maple syrup instead of that Vermont swill and then Canadian residents yolo'ing on $GME because their socialist school system failed them.

I don't see how losing money all the time is good. $300+ billion lost every year is actually very bad.

It's not "losing" money. We exchange it for goods and services (and get it back in the form of a capital account surplus). Trade deficits simply mean that we import more than we export, not that we're throwing away money.

Here, just read this to get an understanding of what trade deficits are: https://www.cato.org/commentary/are-trade-deficits-really-bad-news (this is Cato, so hopefully a source you'll be willing to take seriously).

As Griswold put it:

America’s trade deficit with the rest of the world is only the sum of the individual choices made by American citizens. Those choices, to buy an import or to sell an export, only take place if both parties to the transaction believe it will make them better off. In this way, the “balance of trade” is always positive.

The only reason the U.S. trade deficit is bad news is that so many people believe it is bad news.

If you would like a reading list for basic macroeconomic concepts, I think Kenghis could point you in the right direction. Barring that, I recommend Mankiw's Macroeconomics.

Here's a concrete example from a lecture around that book (http://class.povertylectures.com/MankiwChapter18InternationalTrade%26CapitalFlows.pdf) that illustrates why getting obsessed with trade deficits is a waste of time:


The wild success of iPhones (on paper) added to our trade deficit. Or as you put it, we "lost" $2B dollars because of iPhones doing so well.

Perhaps you're thrown off by the word "deficit"; a trade deficit is not actually a deficit, and its labeling as a deficit is arbitrary. We get more goods and services from abroad than we send abroad- from that angle, you could call it a surplus. The trade deficit is a deficit only in the balance of trade sense, not in a sense where we lose money or add to our debt.

Or, as Reagan put it:

During the first 100 years of our nation's history, while we were developing from an agricultural colony to the industrial leader of the world, the United States ran a trade deficit. And now, as we're leading a global movement from the industrial age to the information age, we continue to attract investment from around the world. Now, some people call this debt. By that way of thinking, every time a company sold stock it would be a sign of weakness, and it would be much better to be a company nobody wanted to invest in rather than one everybody wanted to invest in…. Historically, fast-growing economies often run deficits in the trade of goods and services, experiencing net capital investment from abroad.

Edited 9/13/2021 02:48:56

Ok, I think I can now understand the economic part better (I'm still going to further research). The first thing, the emotional people, the loudest and most obnoxious ones I hear are going to be the rich ones who have chosen California as the gathering place. New York also has a few, but not to the magnitude of California. The emotional people who aren't rich are spread all over, but there is a large concentration of them in California. Most of the stories I see about the not rich are by people from California. I'm not talking of news, I'm talking of directly written on SM or some other platform.

FW: politics, religion

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The first thing, the emotional people, the loudest and most obnoxious ones I hear are going to be the rich ones who have chosen California as the gathering place.

Where have you heard this? How do you determine this?

Most of the stories I see about the not rich are by people from California. I'm not talking of news, I'm talking of directly written on SM or some other platform.

Which sources?

This is basically just you appealing to your personal experience so there's no way for others to contest it; I suspect you just get these stories because they capture your attention or otherwise fit into your filter bubble, so you just keep hearing about California this, California that because those stories get clicks. But honestly, there's definitely not a blue or West Coast monopoly on emotionally volatile and politics-obsessed aggressive people blaming some group for their woes and asking for help or agreement.

I honestly doubt there's even a concentration here, given that most of those vocal people can't afford to live in coastal California.

Plus, it's such a non-entity. I've never come across these people in person in California. Honestly been more of a Bible Belt small town problem in my experience, where I gotta walk on eggshells and hide my mask and nod my head when they start talking about Biden and immigrants and pressing 1 for English. Also seen it happen in college towns and I just gotta nod along with whatever they say about capitalism or imperialism or the new slur of the month I gotta remember not to use in their company.

Some people just get really into this stuff, but luckily enough most of them live pretty hollow lives and you can just pay a small premium to live somewhere they can't afford. You don't need to worry about weird people, 'cause you can pick your own company.

Edited 9/13/2021 04:19:14

I don't have a feed, and yes, it probably catches my attention because I dislike it so much. In person, I've only had these issues with blue people. All the red people I've known don't talk about how much they're unfortunate and how their lives are ruined by the smallest of details. When you speak of being careful about slurs and speech, that's the first thing I think of when I talk to someone blue. I have to think carefully on what specific words to use so I don't offend them. The red people I talk to don't give a damn about speech, unless it's disrespectful (since I am younger than some, I'm expected to be polite, but the people my age don't care what I say).

FW: politics, religion

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Might have something to do with you sharing more beliefs with one group than the other. Easier to speak unfiltered and not be on your toes when you talk to people who already share your views and values.

I haven't had the same experience as you with people on the right of the American political center, personally. Had to be careful not to offend their sensibilities- you seem to shrug that off as just an expectation of politeness, etc.

We're probably each relatively blind to the policing and norms of our own groups and better at noticing the policing and norms of others.

Knyte, it's just too many words for a risk forum lol.

@Cursona you are a brainless partisan

Well, obviously. You’re the expert!

This topic needs more china. Let's talk about china.

China is for a different thread. If I use any pronoun with the emotional people of liberalism, there is a risk of them being offended. If I use certain words or phrases, blue people get offended, even when I was a friend or volunteering. Project is the most absurd one on my list. How you get offended over the word project when talking about art, I don't know. Despite my strong opinion on the left, I have a few blue friends. After being around them, I still need to think for a bit before I say something because it's so easy to offend. As for your situation, are you talking about the extreme red people, or regular red people? I can't say where I'd be, since my political leanings contradict each other all the time.