The Politics Megathread

[readingsit]

@Kaldrak
shes not green! you cant have dakka if your not green! i hereby vote to censure you

 

[schlo]

@Tamerlane I find it amusing and kind of sad that given the evidence presented that it is the republicans being talked about. At least they had a mix of guilty and not guilty. Not one of the democrats thought well I'd like to vote guilty, but I just don't see enough to evidence to convince me to find someone guilty and then punish them so I can't do it.

 

[Kaldrak]

@readingsit

Spoiler

 

[M0NST3R]

In regards to the media comments I feel like its important to remember that news companies are companies and therefore about as trustworthy as twitter.

 

[wowfucktron]

@m0nst3r

I dunno man, seems pretty trustworthy to me.

edit: how many pixels do you want? yes.

 

[Kaldrak]

@wowfucktron I mean...leftists have been advocating for breaking up big companies and monopolies for decades, and conservatives and republicans have done nothing but claim that that would be the 'jackboot of the government on the neck of legitimate business.' They've blocked most attempts to regulate them and continuously vote to reduce corporate taxes. So now that big daddy corpo doesn't like them anymore they are whining about being oppressed by big tech. Seems like a "we told you so" problem, to me.

 

[wowfucktron]

@Kaldrak

Seems like a "we told you so" problem, to me.

Ha↗️Ha↘️Ha↗️Ha↘️Ha↗️Ha↘️Ha↗️
No. Republicans have always hated "the media," regardless of era. It's nothing more than a propaganda tool for business and most us hate how it works anyways.
>muh fox news
Go sift through this thread for my rant on the media in general. Only Mobility Scooter Bound Hanako-kuns watch that nonsense.

leftists have been advocating for breaking up big companies and monopolies for decades

Meh, you guys are mega-corporate bailout and love big business if you can use it as bludgeon for shoveling your agendas.
Well...Republicans and Democrats both love big business, those bribes "connections" would make anyone violate their supposedly "strong" morals.

conservatives and republicans have done nothing but claim that that would be the 'jackboot of the government on the neck of legitimate business.

The overwhelming majority of "us" believe that monopolies are the complete opposite of a free market. We want to strangle enormous companies into the ground, but the fallouts of doing so are enormous and not worth spending time chasing stray ducks over.
Competition breeds innovation. Innovation breeds success. Success breeds competition. But some systems can get big enough that, unfortunately, they are too big to fail as there is way too much tied up in them. Banking is one example that should be painfully obvious.

>inb4 reaganomics
Trickle-Down is the most smooth brained interpretation of top down wealth flow. The goddamned neos only liked it at the time because American Thatcher was pushing it.

I implore you to actually stop reading/watching the news, Republicans and Democrats have A LOT in common. The media makes money off of pitting you and I against each other simply because our approaches to cultural and social nonsense are different and its easy to enrage people and profit off of that.


edit: Before anyone inb4s me, I am registered with the Democrats but I have more in common with the Republicans than I do with modern day Democrats.
I really should become an Independent....

 

[Kaldrak]

@wowfucktron I said leftists, not Democrats. Dems don't want to break up big corpo any more than republicans do. And you're right, they DO love big business. Leftists don't.

 

[readingsit]

@schlo
exactly my point when i said:

meanwhile if your a democrat and you attempt to appeal to one conservative and you end up like tusi gabbard, i.e. a 'russian asset'

the republicans felt safe to disagree. even the closest to a moderate democrat, Manchin, did not think that if he voted against impeachment he would be able to keep democrat votes at home. so he voted for it even if he said he was against it behind held in the first place

@Kaldrak
the problem here isnt a monopoly the problem is the collusion of large companies. until they started colluding to shut down their competitors mainstream conservatives were against breaking up these large companies because the idea of competition forming was still there "after all, look at gab, subscribestar, and parler!" but once they were shutdown thats when the argument that these were monopolies started to take hold but now the left only make those argument when they dont have the power to help.
before a regulation i would support on these companies is a simple "your terms of service may not be vague, and whatever isnt vague is your websites law" therefor if they want to ban conservatives they need to be honest about it none of this

"oh we're not shadowbanning you" turns to secretary "*cough*shadowban them*cough*"

nonsense. the reason this one happened isnt even because of establishment politicians, or well it is but in a round-a-bout way, its because the politicians are a bunch of old internet-inept twits whos only connection to the online world is whatever their grandchildren show them on weekends.
one of the politicians actually criticized mark 'totally human' zuckerberg over twitter banning somone
and corporate taxes have literally nothing to do with the problems we have with the companies so of course we're against them.

 

[M0NST3R]

@wowfucktron N E E D S M O R E J P E G

Also, I feel like its important to state that if you were to end government subsidies of any kind and bar foreign firms who receive government subsidies from participating in your economy, you would likely have most major corporations either shrink or flatly go out of business. For the most part major companies are only still alive because they are supplemented with taxpayer dollars.

Think of the good that could come from taking that money from corporations and actually using it for people.

 

[Mr_Detective]

Dems love corporations who give them money and hate those who don't. Same goes for Reps. In politics, money can buy love.

@Kaldrak For what it's worth, I posted this a few days ago.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/democrats-deceptively-edit-impeachment-video

 

[wowfucktron]

@m0nst3r

Think of the good that could come from taking that money from corporations and actually using it for people.

*hissssss* Welfare bad! Suffering good!
You're unintentionally highlighting the horseshoe of communism and corporatism...
You either:
Work for the state and get pennies.
Or work for the boss and get pennies.

Pick your flavor of boot, so to speak.
My mine is money flavored, btw.

Taxation is a self-destructive cycle that everyone seems to ignore:
A weak economy can't support social safety nets. But weak economies need social safety nets.
A strong economy can support social safety nets. But strong economies don't need social safety nets.

A government needs to focus on its economy before it can focus on its people, because without a middle class you cannot collect sufficient taxation to provide the bare necessities for the lower class. This is where the upper class comes in in order to provide a flow of capital into an economy by providing jobs and industry opportunities.

However, what leftists seem to ignore is that the upper class doesn't function via liquid capital. You cannot tax them because they have zero capital to their name, only investments. This is why "Eat the Rich" type stuff ends up destroying economies and countries because it drives out technically poor people and scares away the economic boons they provide by existing.

Conservatives/rightists/WalkingGamerMoments fall into a similar but different hole. They seem to ignore the fact that not everything functions in an ideal system as life isn't a vacuum. It's the same logic as why communism doesn't work, people are greedy and everyone would love to be on top in terms of the social hierarchy.

What you should do is provide competitive incentives via gubmint for industry to compete over as that is the fastest way to whip an economy back into shape.
_{holy shit, I sound like a socialist....}
A theoretically ideal way to turbocharge an economy would be war, but war isn't based and therefore everyone hates it.

And yes, Senator Armstrong was correct.

 

[M0NST3R]

@wowfucktron
I'm trying to get folks to quit sending government money to bitch ass companies like Monsanto, strictly speaking I believe that excess money should be returned and used in individual communities. Decentralize and deregulate welfare if you will.

Hell, I'm fairly certain you would have a much greater effect on poverty if you were to have communities handle their own welfare programs in the first place.

 

[readingsit]

@wowfucktron

A government needs to focus on its economy before it can focus on its people

whenever the government 'focuses on its economy' the economy gets worse. the best thing the government can do is get out of the way

A theoretically ideal way to turbocharge an economy would be war, but war isn't based and therefore everyone hates it.

there is an argument that small-scale conflict does benefit the economy via boosting the buying and usage of many products but full-fledged conflict ala the world wars does not. conflicts on that level force industries that arent connected to war at all to be repurposed for it which harms the economy overall as the economy is repurposed into weaponry

@M0NST3R
privatization of welfare is somthing i support but "strictly speaking I believe that excess money should be returned and used in individual communities"? excess money should be paying off the national debt and that kinda runs contrary to the following statement

 

[wowfucktron]

@readingsit

the best thing the government can do is get out of the way

In an ideal world, yes. But we don't live in an ideal world.
The whole point of government in regards to business should be to:
Genocide monopolies
Consumer protection in regards to predatory business such as Ponzi schemes and the like and high interest loans.

But, again, that's just idealism.
In our non ideal world, the government also needs to bailout banks because banking collapses have world wide economic consequences.

>bu-buh, karndaddy, you no like globalism
The US economy is propped up by foreign money nowadays. I may not like it but I know we are overly dependent on such things.

the world wars does not.

Both world wars shot humanity one hundred years into the future.
Our "golden age" was founded off the backs of both wars. We had no competition because we partook in leveling and looting our wouldbe competition.
Am I advocating for war? No.
What I'm trying to say is that war isn't all bad.
WWI advanced mechanical and communication technology faster than all of the technological progress of the 1800s.
WWII advanced our understandings of just about everything with centuries worth of information gathered in just over six years.
We even learned more than we ever could about the human body as a result of the two biggest atrocities in WWII, Nanking and the Holocaust.
>muh
Yes, extremely wasteful and destructive things can have very minor brightsides.

 

[M0NST3R]

@readingsit Ironically I've become less concerned about the national debt over time. I can get why people are concerned but for my end I just wind up staring at it as more of a weird thing that happens to exist rather than anything positive or negative.

 

[wowfucktron]

@m0nst3r
There are reasons to pay it off, but the positives of us having said debt outweigh the hypothetical negatives.

China owns like sixty percent of our debt but they will never knock on our door to collect so long as:
A) we have the capability to remotely level three quarters of the planet (the US subscribes to applying MAD doctrine for more than military purposes)
B) they become completely independent of us (never happening, no matter how hard they try)
C) they want to self-destruct while taking out the global economy (more likely scenario, but russia will then step on both the US and china...)

Basically, the debt allows us to hold the world hostage in more ways than one if we ever feel like going sicko mode.

The entire global economy revolves around the US and China. There are major incentives for every country on Earth to keep us afloat even if we couldn't raise our debt ceiling any further.

 

[M0NST3R]

Bingo, debt diplomacy has a very toxic effect on the folks loaning the money. That's why China's Belt & Road initiative struck me as a risky move.
All it takes is one country to refuse to pay back and you now have every single person who put in cash wanting a return on investment immediately.

 

[Kaldrak]

@wowfucktron You're an odd one. I misjudged you. Well, you've given me some stuff to think about, at least. Spar with you later.

 

[readingsit]

@wowfucktron
technological advancement is connected to innovation. innovation can be driven by war but i can also be driven by the promise of success. here is a graph illustration my point

Spoiler

what really drove human advancement wasnt the wars it was the economic systems. there were many advancements during those wars but nothing outside the new norm that had been set up around mid 1700-1800. so id say that 'one hundred years into the future' was likly more spread out around 10-20 years into the future due to the sense of urgency

@M0NST3R

Ironically I've become less concerned about the national debt over time

the larger it grows the more you have to pay for goods, the less the money you are payed is worth, and the closer we come to a crash our descendant generations will one day face an economy comparable to Germany circa 1922 or somthing worse