2 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

This is a bit of a fallacy that China is suddenly about to take over the world with its industrial might. I'd argue that the post industrial nations are simply shunting their manufacturing to China, since it's cheaper, when you pay workers basically nothing. Sure some Chinese folks are enjoying a better standard of living, but it's a far cry from the whole population being better off. Remember, there's 1.2 billion people in that country. That many people can damn well make more than the US, and it's very telling that only now are they approaching and starting to pull ahead of the US. Doesn't this tell you that China is still pretty far behind in some ways?

Japan is the exception, since it was never directly colonized. China faced some form of colonialism, and of course much of Asia was directly under colonial rule. What other nations are there? India faces similar problems as China: it's doing fairly well, but not nearly as well as you'd think. The story is pretty much the same across much of Asia.

Most Asian nations are doing fine compared to African nations, which are doing even worse by comparison. Sure Asian countries aren't doing as bad as many others, but are pretty far behind the West even now.

Yea and those governments were left in place through colonialism and imperialism. The local leadership is as poor as it is primarily because of the effects of colonialism.

Sure there are other factors obviously, but by and large, colonialism had an adverse affect on many of the former colonial states. It's only been maybe 70 or so years of independence for some places that were ruled as colonies for almost 3 centuries

 

Well, the jury is still out on wheter China can keep growing at the rate it was over the last few years. In the end, the growth will have to slow down as Chinese people will want to reap the benefits of Chinas newfound wealth, and workers can no longer be underpayed as much as they have been for decades compared to the west.

Probably at some point the Chinese government will loosen the grip on Chinese people enough (or will have to do so) that the Country will get caught up in the petty infights we call democracy here in the west

But at that point, China might have left the western countries behind it already. And at the moment at least, China is doing just fine as a whole (until the social problems bubble to the surface or the government screws up, of course).

I don't know, South Korea Taiwan and similar countries also seem to be doing good. Not growing like mad like China, not being really firstworld like Japan, but they seem to be on a healthy and stable trajectory as long as the west is globalizing all its manufacturing.

Sure, compared to the west there are far more issues with poverty, and far more issues with authoritarian state. But that is not what we are talking about here, right? We are talking about averages, and from an economic lense, an authoritarian regime is just as fine as a democratic, or socialist one, as long as taxes are low, social unrest is dealt with, and the country and government is providing longterm stability.

Ah yeah, the "Imperialism instatet governments" thingy.... I don't know about that.

We can argue that the arab monarchs did mostly survive to current day thanks to western influence. MAYBE the thailand monarchy, don't know about the history there.

The Chinese communists only had help from the soviets (and even then that relationship went sour quickly), if anything Taiwan exists in part thanks to western influence.

Japan actually is a firstworld country today BECAUSE of western influence. Maybe they would be even without it. But copying the "western devils" and making their stuff better was what made Japan big in the 20th century. Without being held at gunpoint by the gaijins in 19th century, who knows if the emperor would have opened to trade with the rest of the world, or if he would have chosen the fallacy of trying to emulate chinese protectionism?

I would say that Asia in general is a very, very bad part of the world to show the longterm adverse effects of western colonization.

The biggest issues with colonizations in asia stems from Japans invasion of other countries in the 20th century, and how Japan keeps tight lipped about that, instead of simply showing some respect for the victims of their ancestors and be done with it. As long as China doesn't want to cut off their **** for it (or wants back the Islands they claim are theirs because of <insert some historical fact that is 2000 years away>), nothing to loose, eh?

The near east, or africa are different stories. But there, we are talking about issues way, WAY more complex than simply "western devils caused harm by colonizing the region"... that is just one factor that led to the cluster**** that is the current situation in the near east region or africa. Imperialism alone is not at fault for different religious sects hating each other, tribalism, greedy politicians and monarchy, or whatever other ills these regions suffer from.

It might have made some things worse, true. I would say though current day influence is far, FAR more problematic than whatever was left by colonization and imperialism. But that is a different topic altogether.

2 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

One thing I should clarify about as well, I'm not saying that an algorithmic allocation of resources needs to be equal. Everyone has different needs, and certain things are more desirable than others. I believe that any algorithmic allocation of resources would need to take into account what's needed to keep person x happy. This doesn't have to be the same as person y, although many basic things will be the same such as some form of food, water, etc. Person y might just be happy with reading books all the time while person x might want a fast car. It's a simple and rather dumb example, but demonstrates what I'm trying to get at. Of course a dumb equal distribution of resources doesn't make sense: everyone is different. But we can certainly have a distribution of resources where the majority of people are happy. This doesn't even have to be without some means of currency or markets: we can still have those. There may even be some form of reward system that rewards members of society for contributing to society (as opposed to doing literally nothing). 

I see this more as engineering a better solution, since we will ultimately have production systems that are by and large automated and don't really need much human assistance. 

Another thing I'd ask is does anyone have other solutions to mass automation? I get it that maybe this isn't an appealing idea, but are there alternatives that don't involve @ChaosEngine's dystopian future or even semi-pessimistic futures?

 

Well, lets just put this out there:

The basic premise you work from is Utopian. Which I personally like... I mean, I would rather live in an Utopia than a Dystopia. I would rather have everyone be happy and get what they need than the current widening gap between the rich and the poor.

But living on this planet has told me that

a) there are many, many people that are not good people. That are selfish... that see EVERY system just as a loophole to abuse.

b) Real life never works as well as the theory. A system that should provide enough for everyone in theory might not be able to in real life.

c) Never change the running system. And to be honest, right now our system is running, and AFAIK while the gap between the rich and the poor is widening, poverty worldwide is on the decline. At least that is what I have heard, I am not 100% believing that yet.

Lets list the concrete problems I see:

1) who has control over the algorithm? When an algorithm decides who gets what, and in the extreme, who lives and who dies, somebody needs to take responsibility. A machine, in the short and midterm, cannot take responsibility. By the time machines can do that, we as a species are practically at the mercy of our robot overlords.

So basically someone needs the keys to the machine. A way to bring it back on track when it goes wrong. To give human input while the algorithm is still trying to figure out what is going on and remove the teething problems.

This person, or this group of persons are the new elite that will rule this communist society. They are the new Stalin, or Mao. Not necessarily doing the same crimes to people. But if they wanted, who is going to stop them when they control the machine that controls peoples lives (or at least livelihood)?

2) If there is no control... what is the chance of the machine malfunctioning? Learning the wrong thing? At some point going rogue? Is there a killswitch to stop the AI and start over? Again, who has control over that killswitch?

3) If humans no longer serve as workforce, their only value left to the system is their consumation... they might serve other roles in human society, but human society as a whole is now becoming obsolete. IF you follow the communist party line, that dictates that everything belongs to everyone and noone, and no one is allowed to have more than he needs.... what is this economy machine running for? Why even keep humans around as consumation devices?

Now that might come off as very pessimistic and mad ramble, and I am certain the human species itself exists simply to self replicate endlessly like every other animal species... but those mad ramblings might be the things a future AI is muttering to itself in its alien brain-thing when looking at those useless creatures just leeching off the work of their creations.

And besides that Sci-Fi-ish pessimistic view, its an interesting philosophical question. Whats the point of human beings in a system that no longer needs human beings?

My solution might go in a similar direction, but would be far less radical.

a) because humankind will not be ready for such a radical idea like AI driven communism in the next 50-100 years

b) because its way to open to abuse by a human elite

c) because its way to dangerous giving this far reaching responsibilities to a machine

d) because frankly, we currently have one of the best systems we ever had on this planet, imperfect as it may be.

Most of the complaints are actually firstworld problems uttered by people in the west, while the actual victims of the current system often are still not heard. How could they be, they are not on twitter

I would propose a very slow and methodical testing, and then implementation of the universal basic income. To ease people into a bigger social system needed for when more and more people will find it hard to get emplyoed. And to hopefully allow people to innovate in areas which are not profitable in our current society.

I would make sure to keep a portion of the current "being paid for providing a service" system... you want to keep people motivated to work on things. Not everyone is an idealist, and money has proven to be a very good tool for driving innovation (even if that has sometimes led us down the wrong paths).

I see a free market capitalist system with a strong socialist state as a kind of balancing factor, and high but fair taxes for the companies producing goods without human input as the best solution. Let the ones profitting of the automation pay for the fallout, let a government handle paying the basic income that should make sure no one has to starve in the society.

If these are still nationstates, IDK.... but again, I wouldn't rock the boat to hard. Centralization has hardly ever produced stable and agile societies. Regional states that are working together on a global level like what we have today (overlooking how this all is NOT working with the idealists glasses for now) might still be preferrable to a global government...

I see a lot of potential for using AI and algorithms for supporting that government, making it leaner and in the end make sure most of the taxes payed get transferred into basic income for the masses. But there should always be human oversight in everything. I think we are still 100 years away from machines being ready to decide over our lives or livellihood directly... not saying that it couldn't be happening 10 years from now, just saying that is probably going to end in a disaster because the machines just aren't ready for that yet (or better, humankind isn't the effects its going to cause).

So that you have the following dependencies:

- humans, mostly unemployed, need goods to live, and to distract themselves > the economy, mostly automated, is providing goods and distraction

- The economy needs a market > thus the state needs to pay the human population an income, enough to keep consumation of goods up.

- The state needs money to pay the basic income > thus companies will have to pay the state taxes, probably more than they do today, which in turn will be balanced by way lower cost of manufacturing.

- As long as machines cannot innovate, you still need people driving technology forward > thus companies still pay additional wages above the basic income for the few human specialists they still employ

- Everyone else can serve society in a variete of supportive roles, for a small extra income over the basic income.

Thus innovation and consumation will get be the top priority for humans living in this society, service to the community second.

I can see the Utopia you are talking about in the far, far future. When humankind has grown used to live in a post-work society, when machines got past the teething problems they will still have for years and decades, when some of the ills from the past that still plague us today are finally on the decline (like nationalism. Not saying nationalism is bad, but for the system you envision, nationalism is toxic)... maybe in 50, or 100 years society will slowly shift to an even more Utopian form of this post-work society.

And when shit really hits the fan short to midterm, and things do not work out like we predicted, we do not have to kill switch our robot overlords and get control back over our military drones and factories to get back to business

7 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

They weren't colonized...that's the whole point. None of the nations you've mentioned were under Western colonial rule. South Korea was never a colony. Taiwan was never a colony. Japan was never a colony. Japan benefitted from trade, not from being a colonial subject.

Yes, because you are specifically looking at nations that were never colonies.

Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Singapore were all colonies (naming only a few). Singapore is probably the only exception, and it's primarily due to exceptionally good leadership, like better leadership than we've seen in the West, coupled with all the right ingredients, such as location, and also just being very small and manageable. Look at the rest of those nations. India is now starting to gain ground, and again, for 1.3 billion people, they'd can still do a lot more. GDP is a measure of output of services and goods. 1.3 and 1.2 billion people can output a lot of things. As it is right now, they're probably far below what can and should be done.

You might have some point there, but then looking at the countries you mentioned, again, most of them aren't doing that bad, if anything they are second world countries, and what held them back was hardly colonization alone, but all the historical baggage they have accumulated over centuries.

India is massive and an amalgamation of many, many kingdoms and ethnic groups as far as I understand... its pretty much in the same situation Yugoslawia was in before the war, or China is in today.

Without splitting up the country into smaller regions, the country will probably be slowed down by its own massive size and multiculturalism, unless you can instantiate a government with an iron rule like in China... which, even though it works out well for China as a whole at the moment, I don't wish upon Indian people.

Nepal, Myanmar were held back by wars... one of them caused directly by the cold war superpowers, true. You can call that imperialism, of course... its a stretch in my opinion, at least in case of the US at that time colonization was never the goal. They just were so convinced they had to fight soivet communism that they didn't care in what mess they got other countries. And, to be fair, given the incompetency and violent nature of some of the soviet vassal regimes, maybe it was for the better in some cases.

In Nepals case... well, they are next to China, AFAIK were drawn into the whole tibet debacle, and honestly, are in one of the regions that probably make it IMPOSSIBLE for a country to thrive, unless it becomes a tourist super power or can use the water resources to start building dams and export elictricity... which, given how China has more than enough of it by now, wouldn't be that profitable.

Then we have the red khmer or whatever the name is in english... are they caused by Imperialism? Soviet Imperialism, if anything. But that just goes to show that both sides are equally prone to dictatorship and imperialism.

Overall I still stand by it: Asia is doing well enough overall. Not as well as the west, and with a much higher gap between the rich and the poor, the urban and rural regions. But again, there are many factors for that, and at the moment at least it looks like Asia overall is catching up, and probably overtake the west.

Just to make it clear: I am not saying that colonization had a POSITIVE effect on the region. I am just disputing this whole "colonization is holding back the region today" argument, at least when it is presented without a HUGE amount of conditional statements. There are knockoff effects of colonization which have led to some factors holding back countries today. But I do find this fixation on Colonization and Imperialism by some people counter-productive, and kinda dumb to be honest. Its like they don't want to see the ugly truth that there is no easy scapegoat you can blame, that there is no easy solution to increase the equity between regions and nations wealth worldwide.

7 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

colonialism had a very adverse affect of nearly every colony barring some exceptions to the rule. After that, there were other contributing factors, but colonialism remains a big one to why many nations are still behind. How can you expect self rule from cultures that were subjugated for so long?

Well, we can agree on the first statement. Colonization was never a net positive for the countries affected (altough I could play the devils advocate here that it also left behind know how and resources from the imperialist world that the freed countries could have used to catch up quicker... but then, probably the worst way to get introduced to western technology and culture ever... so I will not play the devils advocate here).

How can you expect self rule? Well, see, here we get into another quibble of mine with the "colonization" argument: Most of the countries that do poorly today haven't really been growing into a nation in the last few hundred years. In africa, for example, I get that the family and tribe still is the most important social construct for people... a lot don't really care about the nation they are in. Not sure if my information on that is correct, and I am sure there are plenty of regional differences.

How do you expect a tribal society like what has been the rule in many african regions to form a nationstate all of a sudden. The only argument against Colonization I see here is that these regions might be better off if the westerners didn't give the african warlords stupid ideas about becoming more ambitious and isntead of battling the neighbouring tribes, form a nationstate and battle neighbouring nationstates. The incompetency of many african rulers and the inability of many african citizens to care about their nation probably is rooted farther back in history than the colonization...

We have China full of people living under an authoritarian empire for thousand of years. Colonization didn't change anything for them, really... just a different set of foreigneirs that claimed to be their rulers. It makes sense that they are now also under authoritarian rule, given mainland China has always been a totalitarian monarchy. So for China, colonization didn't change anything.

For India, well, its the yugoslavian situation. You take a bunch of functioning kingdoms, mash them together into a big nationstate, force multiculturalism upon them (and probably **** that up horribly given you are a white imperialist that just recently has begun to even think about humanist principals), and then you simply abandon ship in a rush when popular opinion in the homecountry shifts.... that is a recipe for failure. Its actually great how well(-ish, I know many Indian regions are extremly poor) that still works compared to yugoslavia (*sigh* if these could only stop killing each other politicians for a decade)

Lets not forget, it took europe 1000 years to get from a tribal society were neighbouring countries were laying in a constant feud with each other, where sects of the same religion were fighting it to the death constantly, were slavery was widespread (over half of swiss counties were actually "colonies" of the 4 free counties back in the day, having to pay tithes to them), to get through enlightenment, the separation of church and state, basic human rights and all that.

If colonization did one thing, it messed with regions that never gone through all of this and messed up their development as a society... but then, that is pretty common in history.

So really, if we want to discuss how colonization adversly affected regions, we also have to look at the big picture and their history before that.

7 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

Absolutely not. I'm not arguing anything utopian. Utopia implies paradise and perfection. I simply argue that this will mitigate, if not outright solve, some problems. It's like how internal combustion engines and mass production solved some issues and mitigated others only to create more, but overall to create a net positive impact. We will still have many problems, including new ones that we'd never thought of. But we will have mitigated or eliminated other problems.

It sure will solve some problems. If it could work.

The "if it works" part is why I am calling it utopian. When a plan has to be executed perfectly to really work out, its probably a plan that will not survive the contact with the real world.

Again, entrusting wide ranging competences to a machine either will create a new elite, or put society at the mercy of that machine. Maybe I misunderstood the exact extent to which a machine should dictate peoples lives, but the mere idea has a high chance of resulting in dictatorship or disaster.

I do think the plan could work, if there is a willingness to compromise on the "purity of the execution"... if more equity is enough, and not perfect equity is required, if AI assistance is good enough, and not total AI control is required for this plan to be seen as success.

And most importantly, if the expectation is to reach the end state within many decades, and not a few years.

As said, maybe I am misunderstanding you, and you are fully aware of the consequences and are presenting the "pure theory" fully knowing that the implementation probably will need to be watered down considerably.

7 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

No system is perfect. It won't necessarily work for everyone, but an algorithmic system can mitigate this. I think that many people seem to think I'm building a fairytale utopia here. I'm not. I'm not saying governments will disappear and that all will be 'perfect'. Governments will still exist, and be run by people, aided by computer intelligence/algorithms. Democracy won't disappear either. We would keep our systems of elected government. 

"Aided" sounds like an important addendum to your idea. I think its important to keep a realistic outlook on algorithms, AI and self learning machines.

They have great potential, they can increase efficiency a lot. But they are not the second coming of christ. They will not automagically make systems work that failed when run by less efficient humans, and they especially cannot completly remove the one constant that has ****ed up in history with regularity: human beings.

The amount of hype I currently see surrounding algorithms, the blockchain and AI makes me chuckle, and worry at the same time. It reeks a lot of the 3D TV hype, and the VR hype: sure, something good will come out of it... but all you envision today will probably fail in the market, and the technology will give rise to something completly different.

Then there is the thought that we thought hearless corporate goons would be the ones building the AI that would end us all in the 80's with the terminator movies... at the moment it looks like jaded silicon valley hippie programmers are more likely to achieve that through misguided enthusiasm and a need to lower cost

7 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

Again, I'm not arguing that perfection will exist but rather that algorithmic resource allocation with mass automation can result in a net positive. Of course in practice there are many things that need to be figured out, but overall, more people will enjoy a better standard of living.

Agreed on that. The potential is there. The debate should be how to best realize that potential... but also how to best avoid the pitfalls of technology.

I appreciate your enthusiasm for new technology and the societal shift it can bring. I think you need to mix in some sceptiscm about both the technology living up to the hype and also bringing new dangers with it, and societal shifts towards socialism and communism really achieving the end goal of equity. Not trying to change your opinion... simply trying to make you aware that there ARE pitfalls.

7 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

This is up for debate. It's running, but is it working for most people? Perspectives differ. Moreover, will it continue to work? The election of Donald Trump was partially on the basis of disappearing manufacturing jobs. This is only a sign of things to come as automation becomes more widespread.

Capitalism is a means of resource allocation that essentially says that the demand of people should drive the worth of products and that suppliers should compete to bring down costs. That's the driver of innovation. I'm not saying we get rid of reward structures: they do work, as capitalism has shown. Rewards drive innovation. I'm saying that many many things can be guaranteed (eventually) with the advent of smart systems that can also turn on the same principles of supply and demand by means of predictive algorithms, etc. Everyone can live better. This is by no means a paradise nor a utopia.

Sure, I am happy to debate how well capitalism is working out for us. I have many, MANY criticisms about the current free market economy, and globalism.

But when you mention Donald Trump, surely you have to aknowledge that while your plan might be sound, the same people that voted for Trump on the basis of "they took our jobs" will probably be against any such plan of equity on a fundamental basis? And you are aware that in many second and third world countries, there are even MORE people that would vote for such a leader, and vote against such a system? That is probably going off on another tangent, but the reaction of the "conservative" world on the growing gap between the rich and the poor, ever more extreme liberalism, and globalism is the reason why such a plan probably will not be implementable in the near future.

On the last point: agreed. And probably, this is the direction society will move into anyway... at least in the "free world", or the authoratarian states that are not completly shut off and try to incentivise their people with rewards (like China today).

Now, again, that all hinges on the assumptian that technology keeps moving at the pace it does today (or a speeding up pace), we are not getting into another global conflict or catastrophe in the meantime (if Donald leaves his Nuclear dongs in his pants, and Kim jong can keep his button-pushing finger to himself ), AI technology does not face major setbacks (not going to evoke the terminator image here, but it goes in that direction), and society actually getting willing to change alongside technological advancement.

At the moment I'd say its a 50-50 chance we get there. At best. But it sure is a goal to work towards.

7 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

I'm not advocating revolution. We aren't really at the stage where any such system can be implemented easily. I'm just saying that in the not so distant future this may end up being a feasible solution.

You might not. Others do. I see a lot of enthusiastic and naive young minds dreaming of such an algorithm driven Utopia at the moment... I also see a lot of less well meaning anarchists and communists breeding in liberal circles, especially in the US.

The latter will probably make live hard for the former. Because unless the former start seeing the dangers of the latters totalitarian worldview, I for my part cannot really support the formers maybe not so well thought out plan. Enthusiasm and optimism are very bad tools to create a plan that stands the test of time... and they are making a person very easy to manipulate by the more sinister elements that hide within EVERY community, no matter how well meaning the community claims to be.

And that is comming from someone who does not really care about the political spectrum. And advocates for more socialist ideas within the current free market capitalism.

I think its a good idea. I think it has merits, and will probably be worked towards in the future anyway.

But not in the current divisive climate, not as long as Trumps mere existence, Googles Liberal incompetency, and the loud extremists on both sides fighting twitter wars make ANY discussion about more socialism or even communism impossible.

7 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

Simple answer would be the government. You don't really need a sentient machine to allocate resources well. I'd be willing to bet that it can be done by moderately intelligent machines that aren't necessarily AGI. Sure right now algorithms aren't there yet but they are getting scarily better every day. It won't be long before algorithms and AI can indeed do this problem within a fairly low failure rate. Again, governments will still exist. There will always be contingency plans for when things fail or go wrong. Just look at how our own capitalist society has problems. During recessions, the Reserve Bank and the government work to deal with this. Is it really that tough to imagine a system that's automated being dealt with instead?

Other than that, the only other option is some sort of private entity. Whether they'd be interested in the best or the worst for humanity....that's for you to decide.

See, that is probably the most important part many of these new "cryptoUtopists"... or may I go there... "cryptoCommunists" are leaving out of their future vision... "AI will do anything, the government is no longer needed!". Yeah right, and that will work out just fine.... nooo, all those dystopian movies were just way too pessimistic. Nooo, it simply has never really been tried before, sure.

Now you see, because I heard this naive stuff before by CryptoDreamers (man, I should trademark all those words ), I automatically assumed your idea would go in the same direction, replacing humans with AI completly, because humans failed to do the job in the 20th century.

Private entitiy... yeah, as someone critical of the free market capitalism that really does ring my alarm bells. Google is the best example that the most well meaning company will in the end be a soulless dictatorship. Just imagine a publicly traded company taking ownership of a whole country, with all the government duties transferred to them. Yeah, I cannot be optimistic about that.

7 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

For the foreseeable future, humans will still have roles. Science, engineering/design, research, creative pursuits. There will be many problems to solve that require both human and machines to work together. We cannot foresee these problems because we haven't discovered them. I'll bet there'll be physics problems that require both machines and humans to solve. 

And in general, that get's into another point: there is no doubt that this sort of automation will redefine what it means to be human. 

I'd also like to point out that you seem to think I'm proposing Communism. I'm not proposing that we all start to go under one party rule. I am proposing that Socialism definitely has certain ideas that can be pretty useful for mass automation.

Well, it ends up being more of a philosophical question in the end. But sure, humans will not be completly obsolete for many decades, even if AI technology develops with an increasing speed.

Ha, the second point goes into I direction I love to talk about: the point at which humans will have to give an AI "human" rights. Or pay a machine for their work. Or a machine becomes accountable for their actions.

That will be a whole new cluster**** making the whole discussion about colonization and slavery seem small and meaningless: can you imagine when machines will stand up and ask for reparations for many centuries of slavery under human rule?

Or the question on what makes a human so different from a machine when they talk, walk and think alike?

As much as the whole thing is just as creepy as it is fascinating and how it might not end well for humans after all... I'd like to see it.

Sorry for the wrong assumption. As said, I heard this "cryptoCommunism" arguments from many sides in the last few weeks, so I was assuming wrongly that you went in the same direction.

I can certainly get behind a healthy dose of socialism being reinserted into our current capitalistic systems... if the last few decades have shown one thing, its that markets don't regulate themselves, and speculative trading "is cancer", to use vulgar gaming jargon (and yes, that includes cryptoCurrency speculative trading pretty much).

7 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

dude your posts basically are just spouting McCarthyist lines and pretty poorly researched theories on universal healthcare. It's pretty evident that you just saw the words "Communism" and "Socialism" and read nothing else, other than "machine socialism", leading you simply to launch into ad hominem. You haven't really added anything to this thread, other than

Just don't forget that his opinion stands for how pretty much at least 50% the population thinks in the westrn world today (well, "communism is bad", not the "kill the communist" crap). And they have just as much a valid voice as you, no matter how wrong you think they are.

And as little as I understand the ani-obamacare stance in the US, it seems a healthy part of the US population also thinks alike.

Instead of making fun of his opinion like @mikeman did when he proposed to leave hammer and sickle away from the communist flag (even though I understand the knee jerk reaction to kavid kangs sometimes abrasive rethoric in this thread, please note that the Hammer and Sickle is something that should be jocked about as much about as the swastika... that is, "if you have no problems with Hitler Pepe's, I am fine with your Stalin memes", so to speak), you probably should take is real points more serious and overlook some of the rethoric.

I think its something some US folk should learn in general: A compromise is a good thing in a healthy democracy, it is a win-win, not a lose-lose. Listening to your opponent when he does not listen to you makes you the winner, not him.

Engaging in this endless political fights has made the US politics the laughing stock of the western world, and it seems even some countries outside of it (given how the Chinese seem to joke about the "White Left", and its pretty clear they mean the US democrats with it).

But going off on a tangent here again, and maybe stepping on peoples toes more than I actually intend to do.

My point is this: If you want a big societal shift like this, you need the majority onboard. You will not get that with provocation, ridicule and counterattacks.

If Kavid Kang is using McCarthy-ist language to disprove your points... well, maybe give him some leeway there. I think the US has entered the McCarthy era again on both sides, with the "Brown Scare" on the liberal side trying to see Nazis where there actually are mostly nationalists, conservatives, libertarians, and even some leftists simply not down with the current party line.

And with the young anarchists feeling empowered by the current liberal outrage, I see the next "Red Scare" coming as a reaction to their Hammer and Sickle happy shenigans from the conservative side, after they have grown tired of their current "Muslim Scare".

So Kavid Kang using McCarty-ist language is just going with the time. I predict Conservatives witchhunting (mostly imaginary) communists in 2-3 years, if young far lefties continue to bang the communist drum. And with the witchhunt some "liberals" are currently engaging in against (mostly imaginary) nazis... yeah, it will be probably also a reaction to that.

Again, not trying to step on anyones toes here.... if Kavid Kang has not added anything else of use to the thread (and to be honest, I have read almost none of his responses, I expected a hard to decipher textwall...), he at least added some opposition, turning this thread from an echo chamber into an actual discussion... even though I read from your responses that his way of discussing is quite... confrontational without adding much perspective.

Call me devils advocate an all fronts in this Thread ... but really, when I see Kavid Kang write responses that actually make sense and I can read, I have to at least give him that he is trying this time to engage in a discussion. Whereas in some of his other threads, I wasn't really sure what his intentions were.

9 hours ago, Kavik Kang said:

be left with no choice but to kill communists in large numbers to regain their freedom.

Do your really think this is a productive way of engaging in a discussion? Really, @deltaKshatriya is right that this is probably crossing the line into "Red Scare" territory.

I might agree with you that the history of communisn should at least make us sceptical towards the economic system, and probably distrustful against outspoken communists, given they willfully support a system which has caused so much harm in the past. They are naive at best.

But really, you are advocating fire with fire here. I guess you are aware of that and just want to provoke? What do you want to gain with this provocation? You want to trigger a just as poorly chosen response for that "Ha, gotcha" moment? Are you aware that they "got" you before that, if that was their intention (which I don't think, this has been a pretty civil discussion up to this point).

I think you could be more constructive in this thread, as @deltaKshatriya said before.