So socialism

[Hygro]

I appreciate the time the OP took to make the thread, so I'm opting for the non-nuclear approach


We're discussing, effectively, competing systems here. So a relative advantage is directly portrayed (and has been, throughout the thread) as a categorical advantage that defines the result of the competition.

I don't think we agree on this, no. It only seems arguable if we ignore the people outside the wall entirely, which I find difficult (because that's the entire point of the wall in the US context). And even then, walling your population off from the rest of the world has allegories a thousand times over in fiction. It doesn't tend to present it as a good thing. We even point to real-world localised examples of this happening as bad things with regularity (cults, extremist communes, etc). It's only "good" for as long as you can sell the impression that people are better off by themselves with no outside aid, influence, relations, etc.

It's difficult to understand that, over time, a country with an isolationist wall is good for the people inside it, when every model at a smaller scale ends up with a Bad Ending. My only guess here is because we haven't given the at-scale model (i.e. reality) enough time yet for the collapse to realised.

This tells me walls are bad, but it doesn’t compare prison walls from town walls. Like medieval town walls were a tool to keep the local warlord from imposing his personal violence, so that’s basically good on the balance, a necessary evil of sorts.

We know we can differentiate among walls, and abstractly, walls by your captor to keep you in oppress you more than do your walls to keep captors out.

In any event the evilness of the defensive wall is unidirectional, but the evilness of a Berlin Wall is bidirectional, which is why in the abstract it’s a pretty easy agreement one should be worse than the other.

 

[Narz]

I'm not making a case for communism or for the USSR, I'm commenting on a double standard that I see: the bad things the US has done don't make the US evil, but the bad things the USSR did make the USSR totally evil. Why?

I don't see anyone arguing these things so not sure why you're asking me.

Ussr and US governments both did evil things

 

[Gorbles]

Meh. Start a thread about red you shouldn't be surprised if people talk about purple, pink and maroon too.

So whataboutism is okay if you think it's okay, gotcha lol.

This tells me walls are bad, but it doesn’t compare prison walls from town walls. Like medieval town walls were a tool to keep the local warlord from imposing his personal violence, so that’s basically good on the balance, a necessary evil of sorts.

We know we can differentiate among walls, and abstractly, walls by your captor to keep you in oppress you more than do your walls to keep captors out.

In any event the evilness of the defensive wall is unidirectional, but the evilness of a Berlin Wall is bidirectional, which is why in the abstract it’s a pretty easy agreement one should be worse than the other.

Turning border control policy into a literal generic wall just to turn move the goalposts to prison walls, or medieval fiefdoms, strikes me as either you simply don't get it. Best case.

So, I'm not sure I can do justice to a good enough explanation. I've tried, and this is where we are. You keep repeating how you perceive one type of wall as being better than the other but you don't consider the other side of the defensive wall. You're positing that that defensive a wall's purpose is inherently valid.

 

[Narz]

African chattel slavery (and Native American slavery in Latin America) was justified throughout on the basis that these populations were lower beings who *needed* to be civilized, christianized, or protected by white masters. White slaveowners frequently saw their role as fundamentally paternalistic, as providing moral guidance and structure to people whom they viewed as children otherwise incapable to self-directed activity

Native American populations were treated similarly- as a lazy people prone to idleness who needed to be corrected for their own good in order to become productive members of society. Even into the 20th century, the residential schools and forced rehousing of indigenous children was seen as a way of disabusing them of their layabout, drunken regressive culture and instilling instead good Christian values.

And this is all of course inherently tied into liberal and capitalist ideology: that productive activity and full utilization of all available resources is a good in-itself, that history progresses linearly upwards and consequently anybody standing in the way of this progress is damaging humanity overall, that the accumulation of wealth irrespective of sustainability or equitable distribution is an inherent good, and ultimately that it is a moral imperative for the weak and “unproductive” so-defined, to give way to the strong and more-profitable who are thereby rendered by-definition more deserving of the spspace

I don't deny any of this but it's a thin veneer that people didn't really believe they just tell themselves and others that to justify horrific behavior (like a parent who beats the hell out of their kid and says it's for their own good)

I don't think Hitler really thought jews were lesser beings either he just wanted dominance. People make up stories so they don't have to face the reality of their actions

 

[Kyriakos]

But there's a different country on the other side. Surely the meaning of having a society is to be formed by and (ideally, not the terrible current state) for the citizens of that society.
It's random that one is born there, but in that respect it's not like others forced them to be born elsewhere.

As for the US wall, the US is already unstable with or without a wall (assuming it works). With current tech, there is no stability in a country of hundreds of millions of people, and so you see massive schisms forming. Given the cultural aversion to totalitariansm in the US, it is possible that in the future it will split to two countries - as it did already in the not so distant past. Then again, maybe advancements will negate this possibility, or world war will.

 

[Hygro]

Don’t get what? That the USA would need to be more evil to need and build a Berlin purposed wall than a border wall? (Obviously, yes………)

Because that’s where this comes back to and I’m throwing soft balls here.

 

[Narz]

So whataboutism is okay if you think it's okay, gotcha lol

? You don't know what words mean bro

 

[Gorbles]

? You don't know what words mean bro

You said objected to whataboutism, I gave you an example of it that you didn't. Simple as.

You don't think it's whataboutism because you think the things are related. This applies to things you consider whataboutism. It's an easy word to throw around, and it does have a use. But less than you'd think.

Don’t get what? That the USA would need to be more evil to need and build a Berlin purposed wall than a border wall? (Obviously, yes………)

Because that’s where this comes back to and I’m throwing soft balls here.

You don't seem to get the importance / significance of "more evil" including the phrase "evil".

Also, I'm also not sure you understand the impact of the US border wall conservatives want. It would, quite literally, be comparable. It would, ideally (note: in the eyes of those that consider it ideal), empower people to shoot on sight. Have you been following anything of the border patrols in recent years?

This all comes back to trying to rank things as "good" and "not good". You use the phrase "more evil" here, but your argument has been one of justification throughout.

There are plenty of times where degrees of grey are important. I genuinely, humbly submit the conservative-driven anti-immigration policy in the US to not be one of those things. The closed garden is harmful, and I don't think it's necessarily beneficial for those inside it either.

(sorry for all the edits, on my phone and the touch typing is worse than usual)

 

[Kyriakos]

Don’t get what? That the USA would need to be more evil to need and build a Berlin purposed wall than a border wall? (Obviously, yes………)

Because that’s where this comes back to and I’m throwing soft balls here.

Tbf, Berlin had fallen to Russia. It only had a wall because western powers went there months later and insisted that it should be special. The rest of east Germany was in the soviet sphere.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I think that an AI could still do it better than humans. I mean, did you ever see how people like Ghadaffi or Nicolae Ceaușescu tried economic planning?

those are not high bars to clear in terms of managing a country. you can do better than them and still make life very miserable.

problem with ai is that a poorly aligned ai could (and experimentally, less sophisticated/easier to create ai right now frequently do this) have something different than a human conception of "good management" as its goal. at which point, it might very well optimize for something that results in greater catastrophe than ghadaffi could imagine, let alone implement. it's apparently not an easy problem, even for people a lot smarter than we are. that doesn't mean it's impossible, but giving the ai keys to policy before solving it would nevertheless be a really bad idea.

on the scale of nations i think the concept of borders wrt restricting peoples movement is pretty shtinky

you sure? consider this hypothetical: people from nation a cross borders into nation b. there are 300,000 said people, and every single one of them is in uniform, holding a rifle. still don't want to restrict movement?

that's an obviously extreme example to prove the point: some control over who does and does not enter a country is probably a good idea. the question then becomes "who do you let in, and why".

countries have an incentive to screen people out who will be net negative (aka harmful to the country, albeit less so than a hostile military), and an incentive to let people who will make the country better in. figuring out who is in each category without bias or corruption is non-trivial.

 

[Birdjaguar]

As for the US wall, the US is already unstable with or without a wall (assuming it works). With current tech, there is no stability in a country of hundreds of millions of people, and so you see massive schisms forming. Given the cultural aversion to totalitariansm in the US, it is possible that in the future it will split to two countries - as it did already in the not so distant past. Then again, maybe advancements will negate this possibility, or world war will.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

 

[Kyriakos]

No, it's just that you can't identify what is written. Too bad for the bone.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You have no idea what you are talking about.

usa is less stable than 50 years ago, but another easy north/south or east/west style split a la the 1800s is pure fantasy. much of the political divide is urban vs rural. otherwise it's a patchwork of gerrmander'd hell. outright government collapse into independent states is darned unlikely, but more likely than a ~half and half split civil war style...i don't think the latter is even possible in usa as it is right now, while the former is just vastly unlikely.

i expect a more rome-style pattern of parties one-upping themselves in terms of ignoring checks and balances until it comes to a head and we either get a new constitution or a dictator, and that such a process has a good chance (though not a guarantee) of taking longer to happen than any of us will be alive.

 

[EvaDK]

Perhaps change the title of this thread, since most posters here seem committed to discussing things that have very little to do with Socialism..?

 

[Kyriakos]

Perhaps change the title of this thread, since most posters here seem committed to discussing things that have very little to do with Socialism..?

Would you say that any nordic societies have a form of socialism? Maybe Norway? (due to general oily affluence).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Perhaps change the title of this thread, since most posters here seem committed to discussing things that have very little to do with Socialism..?

even the usa sub discussion is tangentially related - socialism is a big part of the platform on one side of the instability, and there's history in using it to derail stabilizing us cultural institutions. reductive to sum it up this way, but imo it's not really out of place per se'. usa and other western countries all use some degree of social programs. the question is how much is too much or too little, and why/what actually leads to better outcomes rather than worse outcomes.

 

[Kyriakos]

It wasn't always a bad word though, afaik US used to have a socialist party. Even Franz Kafka mentions it once ^^

 

[Birdjaguar]

usa is less stable than 50 years ago, but another easy north/south or east/west style split a la the 1800s is pure fantasy. much of the political divide is urban vs rural. otherwise it's a patchwork of gerrmander'd hell. outright government collapse into independent states is darned unlikely, but more likely than a ~half and half split civil war style...i don't think the latter is even possible in usa as it is right now, while the former is just vastly unlikely.

i expect a more rome-style pattern of parties one-upping themselves in terms of ignoring checks and balances until it comes to a head and we either get a new constitution or a dictator, and that such a process has a good chance (though not a guarantee) of taking longer to happen than any of us will be alive.

The tools and manner of expressing one's unhappiness with others (and politician) have changed dramatically in 50 years. Radical voices are louder and more reckless. Societal changes have provided more minority groups (of every sort) reason to complain and demand change. Change is speeding up and those who don't like it are getting more vocal because they can. There is more confusion about what the future looks like. Turmoil can bring progress.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Perhaps change the title of this thread, since most posters here seem committed to discussing things that have very little to do with Socialism..?

What do you suggest?

 

[sophie]

It wasn't always a bad word though, afaik US used to have a socialist party. Even Franz Kafka mentions it once ^^

Briefly, though the possibility of any kind of socialist establishment as a viable and persistent third party died when they jailed Debbs in 1919. (And deported, jailed and/or murdered all the prominent IWW anarchists).

Also the blackballing of communist labor leaders, and the gutting of union power in the 40s and 50s, followed by the systematic assassination and jailing of the black nationalist movement in the 60s and 70s foreclosed any kind of communist resurgence. We’ve been doomed to irrelevance ever since.

(Also the Comintern’s control over the CPUSA REALLY did not help things)