United States Politics Thread 47

[Travis B.]

Did you read the part in italics? Forcing people to follow religious laws definitely counts as imposing one's religion on others, something to which I am deeply opposed.

This seems naive. Social pressure is a real thing. Religious people can say "everyone is free" while passively denying economic benefits to nonconformists. However, if society is secular, then it's fine for adults to be religious.

I am very much opposed to socially excluding people based on their religious views with the exception of excluding people for attempting to impose their religious views on others.

And even when I said that people have a right to raise their children in a given language, culture, and religion, I believe that the children have a definite right to reject such if they so see fit.

Sounds self-contradictory. Do the parents have the right to impose the hijab or do the kids have the right to reject it?

To me parents have a right to attempt to raise a child to wear the hijab but have no right to force it upon their child, who has a right to reject it.

That said, you seem blind to the fact that you indeed want to deny people the right to have a religion and culture of their choice. It is one thing to say that you do not want to live in an Islamic society -- it is perfectly within your rights to reject Islam as you so see fit, regardless of what Muslims may happen to think or what Islamic law says. It is another thing to say that you do not want others to be Islamic even when they are not imposing such on others -- attempting to force secularism on others is forcing something on people even if it is not a particular religion per se.

Everyone else being superstitious and deferential to tradition affects me in many ways. It retards social development and keeps everyone in the society in a subservient position, opening it to exploitation by global capital. This is how global capitalism abuses the language of rights to push its agenda.

It is one thing to oppose the outward social structures that religions attempt to impose, which to me is completely valid and necessary, it is another thing to attempt to deny others the right to personally practice their religious beliefs, which to me is in itself seeking to impose a set of beliefs.

At the same time, I fully affirm people's right to practice their traditions. Nazrul, despite being irreligious, translated the divan of Hafez into Bengali and composed entire books of religious songs and poems in both Islam and Vaishnavite Hinduism. He just didn't believe a word of it.

Kind of like atheist Anglican priests.

This focus on practice is more in line with Islamic tradition. The state of one's soul is a Christian and Western concern. Unlike the Christian practice of confession, Islam advises sinners to repent and never mention their sins to anyone. It even advises people to hide each other's sins unless they keep doing it.

To me it is fine if people outwardly practice their religious beliefs (e.g. by dressing up in an Arsenal-themed kurta for Eid) as long as they do not seek to impose it on others.

[Travis B.]

I support the left insofar as it fights for economic justice, not cultural conservatism.

I see some parts of your post as over the top, but I completely agree with this part.

The thing one should remember is what makes cultural conservatism bad is what it attempts to impose on others, how it seeks to deny people freedom and equality, not personal religious beliefs that some may label as "cultural conservatism".

[Torco]

social democracy is still capitalism. like, social democratic countries are more pleasant to live in than, say, the US, but they're still capitalist in almost all significant respects. and we can't have a global capitalism where all countries are social democratic, where would the cheap raw materials and labour come from? it's not an accident that the US and other imperialist countries insist on keeping the third world poor, undeveloped and laissez-faire. for every norway you need a paraguay.

I think you imply social democracy relies on cheap raw materials and labour; that's not really how I see it.

yup, not only on cheap raw materials and labour, but also on stunted economies in the third world which sell those cheap raw materials and cheap labour and buy your high-value-added stuff. in a word, it relies on a specific kind of international division of labour whereby you have a core and a periphery, such that the core syphons value from the periphery, which is kept artificially underdeveloped and laissez faire: underdeveloped so they have to buy fancy stuff from the core, and laissez-faire so that said syphoning can take place through most of the raw material extraction and commercialization being in the hands of foregin capital.

All in all, I still think the best approach that has been tried so far is socialist parties getting in power through democratic elections, and weeding out poor leaders through the electoral process. That actually and measurably improved life for everyone where it could be tried.

we tried that here, and we got CIA regimechanged as a result. chile is by no means unique in this respect. I know you don't ignore the chilean coup, but still.

I think that, given the historical conditions, there probably was no possible path for China except autocracy, alas. I don't think it excuses the CCP leadership at any point. They were and are sociopathic bastards in a situation that rewarded and still rewards sociopathic bastards; that explains why they're there but doesn't make them any better.

well there was another: subservience to the west as a whole. the chinese process, with all its sins, is probably the quickest and most intense process of overcoming poverty in the history of the species. had the nationalists won, china would almost certainly look more like africa, india or south america, and a billion people would be much worse off.

Fundamentally, what is needed is a way of baking socialism into the system without privileging a Party in power. One way of doing this is by bringing about direct worker ownership and self-management of capital while legally entrenching it (e.g. making it very illegal to attempt to dispossess workers of their capital, including by legislative action, at a constitutional level). Then rightists can be legally prosecuted for attempting to 'turn back the clock' without handing a Party absolute power.

wouldn't that be nice. i'm not convinced you can do it, but it'd absolutely be much better than single-party rule. I don't think it can work because, well... *points vaguely at world*

[zompist]

the chinese process, with all its sins, is probably the quickest and most intense process of overcoming poverty in the history of the species. had the nationalists won, china would almost certainly look more like africa, india or south america, and a billion people would be much worse off.

True except for the superlative. Japan went from feudalism to defeating Russia in 50 years, which is faster. South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan have also done very well. I'd also bring up Botswana, which went from being one of the poorest to one of the most well-off African nations, without ever falling into dictatorship or civil war.

China did a lot despite Mao, who imposed stupid ideas like killing all the sparrows (it turns out birds eat insects, so killing them is bad for the crops), backyard steel mills (turning useful tools into near-useless pig iron), and killing tens of millions of people with misguided industrial policies.

Mao was a formidable military strategist, though it's worth noting that all he had to do was be better than Chiang. But he was a pretty terrible leader; the country only prospered when he let others (Zhou, Liu, Deng, Chen) run the country.

The real shift to major power came under Deng, who introduced, I'm sorry to say, capitalism. Not laissez-faire, but capitalism is far more state-directed in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan... and France. Deng was always happiest when out of the spotlight, but he, not Mao, is the architect of China's modern success.

[Torco]

what i mean by the superlative is something like the raw amount of people lifted out of misery per unit time. of course mao made mistakes, plenty of them, some quite dumb, but results are results.

an interesting thing about south korea, singapore and taiwan is that they all did a lot of dirigisme. not socialism, of course, but i think they suggest that at least the sort of laissez faire the yanks and IMF constantly endorse is not what, in fact, makes countries stop being underdeveloped and poor. botswana is something of a counterexample, though, following more of the type of program economists often prescribe.

if the xiaoping reforms introduced capitalism, it's a strange kind of capitalism. you know, five year plans, party control over production, and all the rest of it. i'm afraid you may here be falling in the old right wing notion that capitalism is when selling and buying things, which... it isn't? the romans and medieval bohemians all sold and bought things, but what we mean by capitalism is narrower than this. more interesting than are things bought and sold i think is who *controls* production. it seems that in china it is more the party that does so, as opposed to capitalists, as in more conventionally capitalist countries.

[zompist]

what i mean by the superlative is something like the raw amount of people lifted out of misery per unit time. of course mao made mistakes, plenty of them, some quite dumb, but results are results.

By raw numbers, sure, China did very well. India has done pretty well too. It's so diverse and messy that its progress is easy to overlook, but the conventional wisdom before independence was that India was starving-poor and always would be, and that is no longer the case.

an interesting thing about south korea, singapore and taiwan is that they all did a lot of dirigisme. not socialism, of course, but i think they suggest that at least the sort of laissez faire the yanks and IMF constantly endorse is not what, in fact, makes countries stop being underdeveloped and poor.

You're preaching to the choir on this one, pal.

botswana is something of a counterexample, though, following more of the type of program economists often prescribe.

No, I don't think so, or every Latin American and African country would be prosperous.

Botswana's economy is based on resource extraction— but dozens of countries have resources, and the people gain little or nothing from it. Its wealth is based on reinvesting the export income into infrastructure, healthcare, and education, rather than filling the pockets of the elite. This in turn depends on a stable, non-corrupt democratic government.

if the xiaoping reforms introduced capitalism, it's a strange kind of capitalism. you know, five year plans, party control over production, and all the rest of it. i'm afraid you may here be falling in the old right wing notion that capitalism is when selling and buying things, which... it isn't? the romans and medieval bohemians all sold and bought things, but what we mean by capitalism is narrower than this. more interesting than are things bought and sold i think is who *controls* production. it seems that in china it is more the party that does so, as opposed to capitalists, as in more conventionally capitalist countries.

Well, I think you're falling into the old tankie notion that a one-party dictatorship is "socialism". One-party dictatorships are a dime a dozen, and not even worth that.

Also, I think you're still romanticizing the Party, not looking at how enterprises actually work in China. China didn't get ahead by Party Boss A dictating policy to Megacorp Boss B. It got ahead by creating a huge mass of low-level businesses, e.g. in Shenzhen, a chaotic web that can create a new product in days. And to a large extent, not by being governed by socialists, but by being governed by engineers.

(BTW, you do know Deng is the family name, right?)

[Travis B.]

what i mean by the superlative is something like the raw amount of people lifted out of misery per unit time. of course mao made mistakes, plenty of them, some quite dumb, but results are results.

By raw numbers, sure, China did very well. India has done pretty well too. It's so diverse and messy that its progress is easy to overlook, but the conventional wisdom before independence was that India was starving-poor and always would be, and that is no longer the case.

And of course, whose fault was it that India was starving-poor? India had not always been that way, either; consider that during the Early Modern period, prior to European colonialism, it was one of the wealthiest regions of the world all things considered.

if the xiaoping reforms introduced capitalism, it's a strange kind of capitalism. you know, five year plans, party control over production, and all the rest of it. i'm afraid you may here be falling in the old right wing notion that capitalism is when selling and buying things, which... it isn't? the romans and medieval bohemians all sold and bought things, but what we mean by capitalism is narrower than this. more interesting than are things bought and sold i think is who *controls* production. it seems that in china it is more the party that does so, as opposed to capitalists, as in more conventionally capitalist countries.

Well, I think you're falling into the old tankie notion that a one-party dictatorship is "socialism". One-party dictatorships are a dime a dozen, and not even worth that.

And look at what one-party "socialism", i.e. state capitalism, has gotten us -- certainly not the freedom and equality that socialism promises, and when it has had successes it's been in spite of one-party dictatorship, not because of it.

Also, I think you're still romanticizing the Party, not looking at how enterprises actually work in China. China didn't get ahead by Party Boss A dictating policy to Megacorp Boss B. It got ahead by creating a huge mass of low-level businesses, e.g. in Shenzhen, a chaotic web that can create a new product in days. And to a large extent, not by being governed by socialists, but by being governed by engineers.

The present-day Chinese economy is much closer to being laissez-faire than tankies would like to admit, and where it has been successful has not been because of the Party's rule but because the Party has deliberately decided to be hands-off.

(Man, I sound uncomfortably like a big-L Libertarian there...)

(BTW, you do know Deng is the family name, right?)

Yeah, in Chinese names the surname comes first, and it is not customary in English to swap around the name order of Chinese names, unlike with Japanese or Hungarian names. Another clue is that Chinese surnames are almost always monosyllabic, whereas disyllabic Chinese given names are extremely common today, so it is easy to tell one from the other without any other information.

[Torco]

botswana is something of a counterexample, though, following more of the type of program economists often prescribe.

No, I don't think so, or every Latin American and African country would be prosperous.

Botswana's economy is based on resource extraction— but dozens of countries have resources, and the people gain little or nothing from it. Its wealth is based on reinvesting the export income into infrastructure, healthcare, and education, rather than filling the pockets of the elite. This in turn depends on a stable, non-corrupt democratic government.

this is true, botswana didn't do a full laissez faire austerity blabla, but its program is more amenable to economists, i think, than that of the others, though maybe not by such a big margin.

Well, I think you're falling into the old tankie notion that a one-party dictatorship is "socialism". One-party dictatorships are a dime a dozen, and not even worth that.

Also, I think you're still romanticizing the Party, not looking at how enterprises actually work in China. China didn't get ahead by Party Boss A dictating policy to Megacorp Boss B. It got ahead by creating a huge mass of low-level businesses, e.g. in Shenzhen, a chaotic web that can create a new product in days. And to a large extent, not by being governed by socialists, but by being governed by engineers.

one party dictatorship is not socialism itself, but it is certainly a central tenet of marxism-leninism, and the people governing are not just engineers, they're socialist engineers. remember, we're talking about whether china is capitalist; one party dictatorship is literally in the explicit marxist leninist program.

as for why it got ahead, i think party boss A telling megacorp boss B what to do was definitely part of it. or, well, rather, the five year plans definitely had something to do with it. when you basically know where the economy is going to go for the next couple of years you reduce a lot of uncertainty: say you have like a little screw factory and you're doing well, doesn't matter if "you" here means a private company or a coop or a state owned factory, you still have the choice of what machines do you invest in next, right? what kind of steel product is gonna be in demand next year, two years, four years. okay, if you're chinese you can check the five year plan and find that, behold, we're still doing green stuff. okay, then it's fairly likely there's gonna be a loooot of demand for solar panels. what kind of screws are most often used in solar panels? we build those ones, that's a fair bet so lets buy that machine.

if you're american, you don't get those signals. that's a lot of why capitalist companies are so into hype: five year plans give you very detailed info into what's gonna be in demand in future, so you don't have to go convince your investors and creditors of some AI screw harebrained scheme, you can just tell 'em, look, this is the plan, this is how we fit into the plan, everyone else is going to be following the plan, we're a safe bet don't panic.

(BTW, you do know Deng is the family name, right?)
it's just he's a buddy of mine, we're on first name terms... but seriously yeah, my bad

And of course, whose fault was it that India was starving-poor? India had not always been that way, either; consider that during the Early Modern period, prior to European colonialism, it was one of the wealthiest regions of the world all things considered.

i think it was a lot of organizations with "company" in their name, no?

The present-day Chinese economy is much closer to being laissez-faire than tankies would like to admit, and where it has been successful has not been because of the Party's rule but because the Party has deliberately decided to be hands-off.

(Man, I sound uncomfortably like a big-L Libertarian there...)

yeah you do lmao. also, nah, hands off? my brother in christ, in every big company there's like a literal party cell, with an office and stuff, official, and the party guys sit on the meetings of the board. *plus* the party controls land and the banks and all the regulatory agencies... from the perspective of a company, that's probably the most hands-on a government can be without outright nationalizing you. can you imagine? if you're a CEO of anything and you're in the shit with the party for whatever reason -such as you not falling in line with the five year plan- your company is toast.

an example that i know of but don't deeply understand is the edtech thing a few years ago, right? far as i know it went like this: the gaokao was famously competitve, and so like in japan, for example, there was a lot of like prep schools and so on, a sort of parallel education system, right? chile has preuniversitarios, japan has special schools that prepare you for the tokio university exam in art or whatever (there's some cool anime about that). anyway this puts tremendous pressure on students and parents and was deemed undesirable by the party. or by xi. or by both, who knows, the CPC famously doesn't publish its minutes. however the decision is made, wait a few months and poof, an entire sector, however many millions of jobs, poof, gone, in months. hardly hands-off.

apparently they also don't micromanage a lot, the party doesn't that is, but even without micromanagement that is very, very hands on.

[malloc]

Sorry to interrupt the latest debate over socialism versus capitalism, but what does everyone think of Graham Platner and his recent primary win. I assumed he was finished after facing a wave of scandals over the past few months, yet instead he won the primary in a landslide. Despite that, the scandals remain and many people I know are rather disappointed with his nomination.

[jcb]

Sorry to interrupt the latest debate over socialism versus capitalism, but what does everyone think of Graham Platner and his recent primary win. I assumed he was finished after facing a wave of scandals over the past few months, yet instead he won the primary in a landslide. Despite that, the scandals remain and many people I know are rather disappointed with his nomination.

I don't think his extramarital sexting scandal is going to have much effect, because it's not even recent; It's from 2023 and seems resolved. Also, if the Repubs are going to make a fuss about it, they just open the field up to more questions about Trump's far greater and numerous sexual sins and his relationship with Epstein.

As for the Nazi tattoo, it's obviously bad, and I guess we'll see in November if it was too much.

Do I wish there was a better candidate than Platner? Yes. But is he still a better choice than Susan Collins? (the Republican senator that he's challenging). Also yes.

[Raphael]

I've seen people who don't like Platner (for the record, I can't stand him myself) say that it's a bit like Trump 2016: people keep saying that this will certainly be the thing that ends the campaign, but it never is. So I guess he'll end up in the Senate. I just hope that if he runs for President, his campaign doesn't get far. Makes it all the more important that there's some strong progressive in the race.

Looking a bit further ahead, I'd say there's a fairly high chance that in and after February 2029, the Republicans will have come around to an anti-Israel stance. And I've got the impression that right now, the Trump Administration's pro-Israel stance is the main thing keeping Platner from being a Republican. So you got to wonder how Senator Platner will act over the last two thirds of his first term.

[jcb]

Looking a bit further ahead, I'd say there's a fairly high chance that in and after February 2029, the Republicans will have come around to an anti-Israel stance. And I've got the impression that right now, the Trump Administration's pro-Israel stance is the main thing keeping Platner from being a Republican. So you got to wonder how Senator Platner will act over the last two thirds of his first term.

What makes you think he's close to being a Republican?

[zompist]

Looking a bit further ahead, I'd say there's a fairly high chance that in and after February 2029, the Republicans will have come around to an anti-Israel stance.

Why? The Evangelicals are fanatically pro-Israel, and Netanyahu thinks like Trump: all aggression all the time.

A recent poll found 80% of Democrats had an unfavorable view of Israel, only 41% of Republicans.

[Raphael]

What makes you think he's close to being a Republican?

He's clearly from that whole white power/white pride crowd. No, not because of one tattoo, but because of a whole number of things. Though people only seem to be talking about the tattoo, because all too many people reporting or commenting on politics are apparently unable to pay attention to more than one thing at the same time in the same context. When you've got a pattern, you might be able to explain away every individual part of it, but in that case, the very fact that you have to explain away so many different things is quite telling.

And the white power/white pride crowd, while it has traditionally disliked both major parties in the USA, is usually a lot closer to the Republicans. So I think it's reasonable to assume that the main reason why he's running as a Democrat at all is that the country currently has a Republican President who, most of the time, is best buddies with Netanyahu. Which means that, if that factor goes away...

zompist: I'm pretty sure that 41 percent is a good deal higher than what it used to be. The next nominee might well be Tucker Carlson.

[malloc]

It really horrifies me that Elon Musk is about to become the first trillionaire. That kind of power is simply too much for one person, particularly an outright fascist like him. You can point to all the dead sparrows and rotten pig iron all you like, but you cannot convince me that giving fascists trillions of dollars while people like me cannot even afford basic health care is a rational or benevolent economic system.

[rotting bones]

Sorry to interrupt the latest debate over socialism versus capitalism, but what does everyone think of Graham Platner and his recent primary win. I assumed he was finished after facing a wave of scandals over the past few months, yet instead he won the primary in a landslide. Despite that, the scandals remain and many people I know are rather disappointed with his nomination.

Black socialists are crashing out over the nigh universal acclaim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8bE13OJ_es

It really horrifies me that Elon Musk is about to become the first trillionaire.

Money is valuable mainly because the government asks for taxes to be paid in it. However, the fundamentalism that makes societies believe in the intrinsic value of money is unfortunately very real.

That kind of power is simply too much for one person, particularly an outright fascist like him. You can point to all the dead sparrows and rotten pig iron all you like, but you cannot convince me that giving fascists trillions of dollars while people like me cannot even afford basic health care is a rational or benevolent economic system.

Marx never advised people to kill sparrows or produce backyard pig iron. These capitalist arguments are non sequiturs unless specifically directed against Maoist policies.

[jcb]

What makes you think he's close to being a Republican?

He's clearly from that whole white power/white pride crowd. No, not because of one tattoo, but because of a whole number of things. Though people only seem to be talking about the tattoo, because all too many people reporting or commenting on politics are apparently unable to pay attention to more than one thing at the same time in the same context. When you've got a pattern, you might be able to explain away every individual part of it, but in that case, the very fact that you have to explain away so many different things is quite telling.

And the white power/white pride crowd, while it has traditionally disliked both major parties in the USA, is usually a lot closer to the Republicans. So I think it's reasonable to assume that the main reason why he's running as a Democrat at all is that the country currently has a Republican President who, most of the time, is best buddies with Netanyahu. Which means that, if that factor goes away...

zompist: I'm pretty sure that 41 percent is a good deal higher than what it used to be. The next nominee might well be Tucker Carlson.

Please explain the "whole number of things" more.

[rotting bones]

What makes you think he's close to being a Republican?

He's clearly from that whole white power/white pride crowd. No, not because of one tattoo, but because of a whole number of things. Though people only seem to be talking about the tattoo, because all too many people reporting or commenting on politics are apparently unable to pay attention to more than one thing at the same time in the same context. When you've got a pattern, you might be able to explain away every individual part of it, but in that case, the very fact that you have to explain away so many different things is quite telling.

And the white power/white pride crowd, while it has traditionally disliked both major parties in the USA, is usually a lot closer to the Republicans. So I think it's reasonable to assume that the main reason why he's running as a Democrat at all is that the country currently has a Republican President who, most of the time, is best buddies with Netanyahu. Which means that, if that factor goes away...

zompist: I'm pretty sure that 41 percent is a good deal higher than what it used to be. The next nominee might well be Tucker Carlson.

Please explain the "whole number of things" more.

I'm also curious.

[zompist]

Marx never advised people to kill sparrows or produce backyard pig iron. These capitalist arguments are non sequiturs unless specifically directed against Maoist policies.

No, Marx didn't, Mao did. It's not a "capitalist argument" to point out Mao's self-destructive policies. Socialism is not advanced by trying to slander or shut up anyone daring to criticize its historical mistakes.

[rotting bones]

Marx never advised people to kill sparrows or produce backyard pig iron. These capitalist arguments are non sequiturs unless specifically directed against Maoist policies.

No, Marx didn't, Mao did. It's not a "capitalist argument" to point out Mao's self-destructive policies. Socialism is not advanced by trying to slander or shut up anyone daring to criticize its historical mistakes.

The framing is specifically:

You can point to all the dead sparrows and rotten pig iron all you like, but you cannot convince me that giving fascists trillions of dollars while people like me cannot even afford basic health care is a rational or benevolent economic system.

As written, such arguments make no sense. They are also fairly common.

I would also accept pointing to these as a criticism of dictatorship. Or a criticism of a lack of education in science and math.

The criticism of capitalism was not original to Mao. IIRC even in China, the original leader of the Chinese Communists was killed. Mao was a fallback option.