My bad: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&amp%3Btype=pdf&amp%3Bdoi=f1b1f2dfb9c92c8aae42188a9e00ab305ee22085

I don’t think it’s crazy in the slightest and see no reason why it “would never work”, it’s just not a conservative idea. Why did you feel the need to minimize it so?

Not the intention. How would you prefer I had responded?

The argument is when there are more than 2 options a majority of people would not have selected the “winner” over any of the other individual losers. Therefore majority rule is an illusion, democracy is self-contradictory!!!

However, by reducing the options to just 2 you no longer have the same result and “democracy” is more “self-consistent”. You can do this in a fair/Democratic way by “simulating” the pairwise interactions (IE ranked choice voting, pairwise majority rule, etc.) or by establishing a false dichotomy (2 party systems, left v right spectrum, etc.).

This is not ‘not a thing’ but it’s a really old idea and is largely solved (ie. Distributed networks like the social media platform we are currently on, or stuff like this).

However, the claim isn’t entirely misplaced as modern social institutions refuse to implement any of those methods because it would be against their best interests as those in power are deeply unpopular (yes, especially your favourites whoever that may be). So yes almost all “Democratic” systems you interact with on a daily basis are inherently self-contradictory on the most cursory of examinations, but they dont have to be.

Yeah, the longer it takes the worse it gets. That’s one of the points the parent meme is getting across. But that response tells me you missed what I was saying.

Reread and try again.

We’ve been living in an authoritarian right wing country for 25-50 years. Historically the tactic of “we must sacrifice [insert marginalized group here] or it’ll get worse for us all!!!” has been very effective.

I find it very hopeful that this was the year that people were finally very vocally opposed that tactic and think it’s a good sign going forward that things might actually get better. However, that is reliant on people like you waking up to the fact that no amount of time and effort put into reinforcing the sacrificial machine will ever change its fundamental nature and that what you view as “being entitled brats” is often simply refusing to participate in the death, enslavement and marginalization of others.

Is active resistance better? Yes! But token resistance while actively reinforcing the authoritarian right is worse than nothing. The vast majority of those “opportunities to volunteer and donate” are doing just that; a $5 donation to “lesser evil INC.” is still actively funding evil.

Your frustration and anxiety for the future is perfectly valid, and I appreciate that you are at least a little mad about the state of things. But I would ask that you step back, reevaluate, and redirect that rage and start punching up instead of looking for who to punch down at.

1. Get started. Don’t waste both our time with numbers pulled out of your ass and wild speculation. So long as the Soviet Union is our example, how many hours of work did it take to purchase a vehicle? How many hours would you actually need to stand in the “banana line”? Was that even a thing?
2. 5 year plan was a perfect example because it highlights that maybe “productive output” isn’t the best/only metric to judge by ;)
3. Sure, I’d argue that’s a bit different but fair enough. However, you should look into if it was better or worse under communism and whether that was a causative effect or correlative with other events going on at the same time?

1. “Under comunism every one is equal” No. It follows the “from each according to their capabilities, to each according to their needs” idea

2. The “phenomenon” you describe is not the cause nor related to the causes of famines within the Soviet Union or China.

3. Compare “production output” from pre-soviet to Soviet Russia. It was one of the most rapid and dramatic increase in productive output in known history. The first 5 year plan saw gross industrial output increase by 118%.

4. “It also creates parallel economies of bribes and favours because well connected and productive people still want to be above every one else, this gives unfair advantage mafias and criminals.” That very accurately describes the post soviet kleptocracy and modern Russian capitalist state.

5. “In my opinion, no pure system is good if it’s comunusim or capitalism. You have to have a bit of everything” then it stops being communist or capitalist at that point but something else entirely like socialist, syndicalist, communalist, etc. putting every possible form of socioeconomic organization on a capitalist-communist spectrum is extremely reductionist.

Overall wildly inaccurate, uninformed and heavily biased take. Second paragraph shows you have good opinions and solid instincts, you should work on making them a bit more informed.

International history is filled with examples like this. The history of the Russian gulags is probably the most stark example, they were actually pretty decent (comparably) before everything outside went to shit…

Hell, nowadays most major corporations do this. Just nobody uses the scare word “propaganda” to describe it.

Correlation vs. causation.

A lot of things which impact “intelligence” can also have varying impacts on speech/articulation/communication skills. However it is important to note that the correlation isn’t strongly positive or negative (IE savant syndrome).

So while some disorders may have some common correlations with specific speech/articulation patterns they (usually) are not good diagnostic criteria and extremely broad generalizations like the one above are particularly bad.

One look at that website should be pretty obvious it’s an incredibly biased and low effort source. I don’t doubt the general outline of the article as this seems like pretty standard colonizer/empire shit, but it also isn’t the “gotcha” you seem to think it is…

Another aspect to consider is whether you anticipate inflation to exceed interest. With all the threats of major tariff wars it might make sense not to pay them/resist paying for as long as possible for that reason alone.

Walmart, Kroger, etc.'s entire business model is to undercut other local stores to drive them out and become local monopolies. If they exist in a location there likely aren’t many, if any, local stores remaining…

Supreme Court justices are nominated by the president and then the house and Senate approve or deny the nomination. The current justices were nominated by Democrat majorities.

Kamala Harris is actively campaigning with Dick Cheney.

Electoral districts are drawn via bipartisan committee.

This is ultimately the problem with metaphors… What specifically are you looking for to confirm or deny?

Are Democrats holding a gun to your head?

Yes. They are called police, the gun isn’t figurative.

But if you want to change metaphors:

“if you leave him alone with your stuff he’s going to steal it, you better leave me alone with your stuff as I won’t steal it.”

They then invite the other guy over and help them steal it, but blame it on the other guy and say “we tried to stop it”. Who would you be more angry with?

Holding a gun to your head is “not doing anything”?

Yes, dictatorships and monarchies sometimes have a petition process, but they tend only to pay lip service. Not because they care, they will do as they please becaue they have the power-- hence a dictatorship.

You’re so close to getting it…

So if one person is holding you at gunpoint while another rummages through your pockets, you should definitely only be mad at the one going through your pockets right?

The promise is that Harris is essentially a continuation of Biden so with that in mind comparing to your list above:

Similarities ✓ the “Muslim Ban” on air travel, employing white nationalists as staffers, packing the supreme court with extreme conservative justices, giving permanent tax cuts to the rich, expanding the presence of immigrant concentration camps, cozying up to foreign dictators, directly pursuing strikes and assassination attempts against middle-Eastern military generals and diplomats, trying to start a trade war with China, discrediting his chief medical advisor on factual statements about Covid, saying Black Lives Matter protestors were “burning down cities”, wanting to designate Antifa as a terrorist organization, declaring “far left radical lunatics” part of his “enemy from within”, sexually assaulting over a dozen women and underage girls, being a generally abusive sleazebag, also funding a genocide (Israel has always been ethnically displacing Palestinians), also building the wall, also not implementing healthcare reform (and being against what we have), also not protecting abortion rights, and also denigrating anti-genocide protestors (but not as harshly since he wasn’t the one in charge when it happened)

Differences: X Popularizing the idea of the wall in the first place, calling illegal immigrants “murderers and rapists”, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, being an avowed friend of Epstein, stating he wanted generals like Adolf Hitler’s behind closed doors when his own generals refused to nuke North Korea and blame it on someone else, egging on a far-right insurrection attempt, calling climate change a Chinese hoax, calling Covid the “China virus”

They are faaaarrrr more similar than they are different as honestly some of the “differences” I’ve noted are just because the exact quotes aren’t the same, even if some similiarly spirit quotes have been said.