Yep, I set 2 for public trackers. I’m not very good at holding onto stuff for long periods of time, but I just got my first seedbox on Saturday so that may change. I am also kicking myself for not getting a seedbox years ago, it’s so good… and holy hell the speeds are amazing.
Lol, european here from country that got buttsexed by ussr back in the day. Fuck off with communism. Period.
However. Socialism is something hella important and should baselined across the world. People need safety net in their lives.
Funny thing is, if you say “socialism” where I live a lot of people will bare they fangs at a commie. But shorten it to social and all people think of is said safety net. Suddenly no problem. Heh.
You do realise your aversion to communism is just the same as Americans, right? Like the USSR has more in common with the Nazis than any actual implementation of a classless, hierarchical less, stateless system.
Shit, like the name is literally the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
To quote Stalin himself from a 1936 interview with Roy Howard
Our Soviet society is socialist society, because the private ownership of the factories, works, the land, the banks and the transport system has been abolished and public ownership put in its place.
[…]
Yes , you are right, we have not yet built communist society. It is not so easy to build such a society.
Re-think your fear of the word communism and wonder why you’re fine with socialism despite it literally being what the country you rightfully dislike called and viewed itself as.
It’s similiar, not the same. From what I recall, Americans didn’t have their country violently buttfucked behind a curtain, something that is still visible where I live - thankfully less so in the country itself, but it’s still embedded into people. And I don’t fear communism. I despise it. I do admit, maybe unjustly. Hard to feel otherwise though, seeing effects of one of the greatest, or at least highest scale shots at it’s implementation.
However, yeah, my definition of socialism must be fucked, will educate myself further before making fool out of myself again. :|
Why is it bad for people to want more in Communism? Do you think once a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society would be reached, people would want to regress?
This is an aspect I’m genuinely curious about (as someone who is relatively uneducated on this subject) because my answer would be that yes, there will definitely be people who want to regress. There have always been individuals who are willing to sacrifice absolutely anything to obtain more material wealth or power. They’re a minority, but their existence has to be assumed and accounted for. For all of capitalism’s failings, one of its strengths is that it does give these people a path to follow that produces (some) benefit to society. How does a fully-implemented communist society deal with these individuals without them subverting and corrupting the system?
I think a big misconception on your own part is that Communism would put a ceiling on people. It would, perhaps, in the sense that it wouldn’t let people lord over others, but it would absolutely not prevent people from working to improve their own material conditions. In fact, that’s one of the base assumptions made by Marx when proposing a Communist system!
The goal is a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society, where you can get what you need from what you can give. It isn’t a society where everyone lives in a 700 Sq ft 2 bedroom apartment made of concrete, it’s a complex system meant to be built up towards, that would allow people to work on whatever they want and get whatever they want by working for it, as long as what they want isn’t a business to lord over people.
Thanks, I guess it’s the “get whatever they want” part that doesn’t make much sense to me. What if what I want is astronomical, and I want to get it by doing as little work as possible? Who says whether I can or can’t have it?
What’s an example? A gigantic mansion? You’d probably have to build that yourself, society likely can’t prop up everyone who wants a mansion, but if you build it yourself it would probably be seen as fine.
Again, Communism is an extremely democratic form of economic organization, so if the community deems it necessary to give you a mansion and has the Means to do so, then it can happen.
Communism is a far-future society, however, which is why Socialism is more known about and defined. Socialism however still has issues like having a state at all, so it’s not the end of history either.
Interesting, thanks. I guess a major element in how feasible that would be is in the administrative structure a community would use in deciding who gets what materials. Obviously if it’s a representative democracy, there’s huge incentive for corruption of the representatives if they have absolute control of who gets what. Wouldn’t this be considered a state, though? I guess statelessness is another aspect that doesn’t make much sense to me.
It can’t just poof into existence. The job of a Socialist state would be to build up the productive forces and create the frameworks for such a society to use after the state whithers away, so to speak.
Among Socialists, yes. Among Anarchists, no, as they seek to directly implement their goal from ground zero. Marxists tend to disagree with this as impractical, but there is a ton of developed Anarchist theory, specifically Anarcho-Communist theory, that goes over how society would be laid out. Usually via networks of Mutual Aid and Direct Democracy.
I see, thanks. That’s something I’ll have to look into further, because it seems to me that it’s really a prerequisite for a functioning society. I appreciate you going over all of that!
No problem! Both Marxism and Anarchism have developed online resources you can use for free reading, Marxists.org and theanarchistlibrary.org are both fantastic sources.
That’s not how human nature works. You really think you can sit there and tell me that someone who did 10 years of school and has the knowledge to operate and save people should be getting the same as someone who’s job is to cook you fast food? You live in a fantasy land where the Star Trek replicators exists. No one is going to do more work for the same amount as someone who does less. Society doesn’t work this way.
That’s not what Communism is, though. Even Marx says that Skilled labor is represented in value by that which labor power is required to recreate it, ie training adds value to labor.
Cool, so what is that value then? Bigger home? More land? Larger car? You see where I’m going with this right? Cause if you’re not going to reward someone for doing more, then they’ll just do the least…and if you do reward them, then isn’t that just capitalism with more steps?
In earlier stages of Communism, they can receive more labor Vouchers as representative to the value they create, ie in comparison to Socially Necessary Labor Time. In higher stages, the effect of training is more diminished as production must be even higher to reach such a status in the first place.
Either way, you hint at thinking Capitalism is when people are paid wages, which is incredibly wrong.
Capitalism is a Mode of Production by which individual Capitalists buy and sell Capital, and pay Workers wages to use said Capital to create commodities. It is not the only form of economy where people can be paid, it’s a specific model that arose alongside the Industrial Revolution.
People get paid in Worker Co-operatives, yet those are Socialist entities. You don’t need a Capitalist to be paid to work.
Not trying to be rude, it’s just a huge misconception here.
You’re first paragraph just described basically capitalism though, just instead of money it’s work vouchers. The other issue is you’ve now just told that doctor he has to work even harder to get slightly more than the guy who flips burgers.
It doesn’t. Capitalism is a specific mode of productuon with individual Capital Owners, if Workers share ownership it’s Socialist. Secondly, who says it would be slightly more? You? Why?
Again, you assume a doctor will want to be paid the same for his hard work as someone who flips burgers. Or what about a heavy equipment operator or a brick layer? The reason communism never can work is because people do not want to do something without the appropriate returns for it. This isn’t some magical formula it’s human nature.
I don’t assume that, you are, lmao. You can get higher returns for different labor, as labor has different value given by that which is required to replicate it (in other words, training increases value).
I really think you should just read Marx at this point, it’s clear that you don’t understand what we are even talking about so this conversation is useless.
You’re entire argument (and communism)hinges on people willing to work harder than others and receive the same benefits as someone who does not work as hard. It’s literally what you have stated just in this talks. Communism works on paper, and in a world where star trek replicators exists, but not in reality.
That’s the whole point of communism is for everyone to be equal, and for everyone to own everything and not own anything at the same time. That’s the entire foundation.
Our mutual value is for us the value of our mutual objects. Hence for us man himself is mutually of no value.
Communism assumes all men are equal, and all labor is equal. All things belong to everyone and no one.
This doesn’t work in reality, people want to get more than others if they work harder.
No, the point of Communism is not for everyone to be equal and own nothing at the same time, holy shit that’s the literal opposite of what it’s about. This is a long section of Critique of the Gotha Programme, and its critical that you read it.
“But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.
But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
Marx is not saying that everyone is equal, he’s advocating for improving the productive forces so that Communism can eventually be achieved. You’re trying to critique higher stage Communism on the problems faced by lower stage Socialism, which is extremely frustrating to see when you’ve been repeating the same wrong statements over and over.
To be quite honest, it seems to me - and I can be wrong - that it simply substituted power of wealth for power of position. Where I live I know that during occupation people were deemed as important based on where they worked - because where they worked dictated what they could steal obtain, be it items, access or favors.
There always will be someone on top, one way or the other. In capitalist society, it’s the guy who has the most money. In co- … socialist…? society it’s the guy with most connections.
The problem is that people point to the problems of the USSR and say it’s because of communism, but when the USA does similar things, it’s just them fucking up, not because they’re capitalist. It’s a double standard hinted at by OP.
The problem with the USSR was not that they were communist. I think that communism worked well for them, which magnified both their successes (beating nazis, reducing poverty, increasing literacy, getting to space, etc), but also magnified their mistakes (suppressing religion, art, etc).
It fit USSR interests to say that they were the standard bearer of communism back in the day. It fit US interests to say exactly the same. Neither had any reason to think about how the word was used prior to the USSR and if it actually applies at all.
It’s no wonder that people who lived behind the Iron Curtain have just as bad an understanding of communism as people in the US. The USSR certainly didn’t want you reading theory outside of Marxist-Leninist material.
So it’s actually a pretty interesting read but I think this paragraph gets the idea across pretty well:
(Obv out of context)
Most current antisemitism in Eastern Europe is closely related to these debates, as nationalists strive to “fix” their nations’ collaboration (or in the case of the Baltics and Ukraine, participation) in the Holocaust with revised paradigms that equal everything out. One of the poisons of ultranationalism is the perceived need to construct a perfect history (no country on the planet has one of those). Another is hatred of local Jewish communities who have memory, or family, or collective memory, of nationalist neighbors turning viciously on their neighbors in 1941, and of the Soviets being responsible for their own grandparents or parents being saved from the Holocaust. In America, this would be akin to someone hating African Americans for having a different opinion of Washington or Jefferson because they were slaveholders.
Believing that the Nazis, who systematically gassed millions as a part of their ideology, is at all akin to any of the atrocities committed under the Soviet Union is historical revisionism in order to downplay the crimes of the fascists and, what you can clearly see in this thread already, foster anti communist sentiment with barely a reason why.
A Jewish linguist/historian/activist talking about how equating the Soviets and the Nazis is rhetoric used to justify current and past antisemitism including holocaust collaboration.
You don’t know a lot of the history of bourgeois democracies if you think you can’t compare the worst the USSR has done with what bourgeois democracies have done.
Maybe you’d want to do it to stop taking part in holocaust trivialization, but you also insulted the Dovid Katz essay so IDK.
Maybe you want to drop the fud and trying to inject the holocaust into a comparison as means to discredit a point when it was never made in the first place. There’s no defending the USSR or ML, so I’m not going to bite and engage in an argument designed to downplay the evils of it.
And that essay was utter wank filled with needlessly gratuitous language that languished on for countless paragraphs. It easily could have been condensed into a paragraph or two with some historical examples thrown in to justify the argument.
There’s no defending the USSR or ML, so I’m not going to bite and engage in an argument designed to downplay the evils of it.
Lol, yes there is, and it is a very simple argument:
A transitional state moving towards communism is less violent than a capitalist state.
All large anarchist attempts at governing were basically the same as the USSR under war socialism(Catalonia, which started much more industrialized, and lost, because of, among other things, anarchist organizational failure) or worse (free state of Ukraine, which led to a wave of pogroms because they refused to suppress reactionary elements))
Socialism is not “Social Safety Nets,” and if you were knowledgeable about what you were talking about, you would say Socialism and attempts at Communism. Socialism is Worker Ownership of the Means of Production, and the USSR was a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Communist party had stated goals of reaching Communism, a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society, by using Socialism. They never made it to Communism.
The USSR of course isn’t the only form of Socialism, and isn’t the only method to achieve Communism, but what you just said makes absolutely no sense.
Do you think that maybe people begin to understand what you’re talking about if you refer to Social Safety Nets as Social, not Socialism, because Social Safety Nets are not in fact Socialism?
As a side note: terrible choice to use rape as a casual term for doing something bad. Be more empathetic.
In particular, I’ve noticed how the pro-capitalist people don’t seem to realize that we’re not living in a pure capitalist system. Instead we’re living in a mixed economy where key elements are socialist: road building, firefighting, postal services, food and drug safety testing, old age pensions, even ambulances (except for one minor exception).
A 100% socialist (a.k.a. communist) system might not be possible (at least not yet) due to human nature. The few times that it has been tried, at least in theory, it has quickly become an authoritarian system instead. But, AFAIK, it’s so obvious that 100% capitalist would fail completely that no society has even bothered to try it. Hundreds of years ago there were brief experiments with things like capitalist fire services, and Pinkertons as police, but they failed so spectacularly that nobody even thinks of going back.
So, instead we quibble about “capitalist” vs “socialist” when we’re really just arguing about whether the mix should be 80% capitalist, 20% socialist or 60% capitalist, 40% socialist.
What part of that goes against sharing tools, rather than letting wealthy people hold dictatorial control over them? Doesn’t your point mean that we shouldn’t have Capitalism at all?
Exactly, this argument is so weird, even if the assumption was true. “People are naturally greedy so we should have a system that allows them to do as much damage as possible”
In any society, some people will be leaders, some will be followers, this is natural. You cannot have a society without someone organizing the work and setting the course.
Of those who are naturally leaders, some will be much greedier than most. Some will also be ambitious, corrupt, two faced etc.
These people will do their best to gather wealth and power for themselves, be it in a capitalist or communist system. In the capitalist system they’ll become entrepreneurs if they also have good business acumen. In the communist system they’ll become managers and state officials if they can also navigate politics well.
At the end of the day, the same people will get to power and will hold dictatorial control over the means of production. In communist countries a literal dictatorship seems inevitable, while capitalist ones usually favor democracy (can be better for business) but they can also descend into dictatorship.
If you disagree, show me an example where all this is not the case. I’m honestly curious
Capitalism is the opposite of democracy. In a capitalist firm, the managers are not accountable to the governed (i.e. workers). The employer is not a delegate of the workers. They manage the company in their own name not in the workers' name. Managers do not have to have dictatorial control. It is entirely possible to have management be democratically accountable to the workers they govern as in a worker cooperative.
Capitalism v. Communism is a false dilemma. There are other options.
Secondly, you are just tying Socialism and Communism with dictatorship without proving why you think it’s necessary. It’s purely vibes for you.
Tell me this: why do you think a system where Workers have no say, only Capitalists do and serve as mini dictators, is more democratic than a system where Workers vote on how to run production?
Why do chimps kill chimps from other groups that come into their territory? Why do some chimps use aggression against other chimps to manipulate them, while other chimps use grooming?
A certain degree of sharing is part of our human / animal nature, but so is a certain degree of claiming ownership over things, and certain individuals have more sway over decisions than others. Flat hierarchies with nobody in command seem to work in theory, but in practice it’s different.
That’s the Naturalistic fallacy at work, though. We aren’t chimps, nor is doing what humans did in the past necessarily better than what we do now. By that chain, you would be an Anarcho-primitivist.
We could study what various apes do, and try to use that to guess at possible human behaviour - or we could literally just look at human behaviour directly. Surely the direct observations of what humans do is going to give us a more accurate and useful model of human behaviour compared to observations of other species.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what socialism and capitalism are. Simplified it’s who owns the means of production, that is basically the “capital” in the name “capitalism”, in socialism these means of production have a shared ownership. Now you can have a discussion of what that means, if state ownership counts or whatever but as long as individuals own the means of production it’s not socialism no matter how much you tax them(it would still be an improvement to tax them more it’s just not socialism)
Is the US socialist because nVidia is a public company, therefore the shares are owned by the public? Is it a socialist country because most workers have 401(k) plans containing index funds, so they own a tiny portion of every major company? The ownership of the company is shared, so it must be socialism, right? I’d say no, because it’s not shared evenly.
What if a single individual owns a single “mean” of production, but everything else is owned by the state, is that whole system capitalist? To me, it’s clearly not. You could argue that it’s mixed, but I’d say if it’s 99.9% not capitalist, it’s not capitalist.
Modern economies are mixes of socialism and capitalism. The people (through the government) own certain things, and individuals own other things.
Is the US socialist because nVidia is a public company, therefore the shares are owned by the public? […] The ownership of the company is shared, so it must be socialism, right? I’d say no, because it’s not shared evenly.
How did you mess up this badly? A “public company” [sic, the correct term is “publicly traded company”] is a regular private company where the owners are hundreds or even thousands of individuals. A publicly owned company is one where every single citizen owns the company simply by being alive or every single worker owns the company simply by working there.
What if a single individual owns a single “mean” of production, but everything else is owned by the state
I don’t even understand what you mean by this…
Modern economies are mixes of socialism and capitalism. The people (through the government) own certain things, and individuals own other things.
No, they’re not, and this shows a very serious hole in your knowledge of economic and social systems. While, informally, it’s sometimes said to be the case, that’s strictly an oversimplification to communicate a different idea. Countries like the US simply use a government-assisted capitalist model. Places like the Nordic countries have a more transitional system, but are ultimately still just capitalist.
Of course they are. How can you be so confused. Countries like the US are a mix of socialist and capitalist systems. Some things are owned and run by the government (socialism), other things are owned and run by private individuals (capitalism). No society has ever worked where it was 100% socialist or 100% capitalist.
Ah, so you can’t find a flaw in my argument, instead you tell me to “grow up”, as if you’re an adult and I’m not. It’s pretty clear you have no idea what you’re talking about since you can’t argue your point.
This understanding of capitalism is a misunderstanding that both Marxists and neoclassical types share. It is not capital ownership that gives the employer the right to appropriate a firm's whole product. The employment contract is what gives them that right. Sure, capital ownership affects bargaining power, but the root cause is that contract. Abolishing the employment contract while still having individual ownership is possible (i.e. a market economy of worker coops)
Socialism is not when the government does stuff, so those institutions are not examples of socialism. Anti-capitalists are arguing for the complete abolition of exploitative capitalist property relations that violate workers' human rights.
This is a false dilemma. There are other alternatives to capitalism besides communism. It is entirely possible to have a non-capitalist non-communist system (e.g. an economy where every firm is democratically-controlled by the people that work in it)
Socialism is when the “means of production” are owned by the people as a whole rather than individuals. Capitalism is when the “means of production” are owned by individuals. Every modern state contains a mix of both.
If the US is 100% capitalist, then explain how the fire department is a capitalist institution.
Capitalism is not just when the means of production are owned by individuals. For example, in an economy where all firms are democratically-controlled by the people that work in them, the means of production can be owned by individuals, but such an economy is not capitalist because exploitative property relations associated with capitalism are abolished
Pinkertons as police, but they failed so spectacularly
uhh you might want to brush up on your history there, the pinkertons are still around, still quite closely tied to the government, and still being used (among other things) to suppress union organizing at places like amazon and starbucks! Kinda ridiculous to hear that our government is somehow ‘socialist’ when it does stuff like this.
In advocating for privately owning and operating a business without excessive state interference, you highlight a core tenet of capitalism. This economic system champions individual freedom and autonomy, allowing entrepreneurs in a free-market environment to introduce innovative products, with relative ease and without burdensome regulatory approval.
However, concerns about state intervention under socialism introduce a nuanced perspective. While socialism aims to address issues of inequality and social welfare, it often involves more centralized control over economic activities. This centralized approach could potentially impact the entrepreneurial freedom to choose what products to sell and how to manage a business.
This dichotomy underscores an ongoing debate, weighing the advantages of a free-market capitalist system that fosters entrepreneurial independence against the goals of socialism, which seeks to address social and economic inequalities through collective decision-making and regulation. It prompts consideration of the trade-offs between individual liberty and the pursuit of societal equality and welfare.
Moreover, criticisms of socialism often include the potential for increased economic inequality. Centralized control might lead to bureaucratic inefficiencies and disparities in resource allocation. Additionally, concerns about AI companies taking advantage of stringent regulations add complexity, as the regulatory landscape could inadvertently favor larger corporations, potentially exacerbating economic imbalances and hindering smaller businesses, including startups in emerging fields like AI, from thriving and innovating. The multifaceted nature of these concerns contributes to the ongoing dialogue about the merits and drawbacks of different economic systems.
Your understanding of regulation only considers freedom on the side of business and not the freedoms of everyone those regulations protect from corporate malfeasance. You don’t get that “socialism” includes things like worker cooperatives that should be the ideal of market commerce. Your concept of freedom seems to exclude the concept of positive freedoms. Your idea of capitalism ignores the coersive reality that workers without the means of production live under. I could go on but I’m not sure I could ever stop finding new issues, which is quite amazing.
In short, your comment contains nothing that isn’t straight up corporate propaganda from someone with not enough curiosity about the world and privileges that have allowed you to remain ignorant.
Nah I wanna keep all the money I make from my private business and I don’t want state approval to sell product or following some burdensome bullshit regulation. Socialism is dog shit compared to capitalism, I wouldn’t want to give up any of my individual freedoms. If you don’t like the system, simply go move to another country that has it. No need to get all upset.
LOL, that’s not anger. At best it’s exhaustion, which has become my typical reaction to people taking a dump on a thread and demanding answers to tired old bullshit that’s been answered a thousand ways before.
There was this whole thing called the Soviet Union then there was like a missile crisis
And there was like a group that called themselves National Socialists and they did a genocide and tried to take over a bunch of land by force
We also had to fight a bunch of talking trees that dug tunnels because military industrial complex and heroin
It’s definitely many layers of propaganda but as an American I definitely understand WHERE it comes from, I understand why most people here flinch at the word.
You also gotta understand we had multiple generations in a row huffing lead gasoline so while younger millennials aren’t impacted as bad, MOST Americans are legitimately lead brained.
It wasn’t just leaded gasoline. I was busy getting hot boxed with cigarettes in my grandparent’s leaded gasoline car before burning some asbestos, plastic cutlery, and batteries in the living room fireplace.
Forget no seatbelts or bicycle helmets. Our chemical exposure would probably send a younger person without a built up tolerance into instant seizure.
I also remember crimping down lead shot sinkers on my fishing line with my teeth. Good times. Good times indeed.
The Nazis were literally IN Europe. The USSR literally built a WALL here splitting the continent. And you’re saying that explains why America is the one with socialism PTSD???
Ain’t nothing more American than making everything about you I guess.
I guess you can’t fucking read lol, the comment I’m replying to was TALKING ABOUT AMERICANS. I didn’t make it about Americans the fucking European did.
But European don’t panic at the mention of socialism (what the comment you’re replying to was talking about) yet the Europeans have suffered FAR MORE from your examples of “socialism” than Americans. You can’t explain away how American politics differ from European politics by appropriating European tragedies.
You are so shoved up your own ass it’s insane. Firstly, really bad reading skills. I never justified the response, just that I understand the origins. For fucks sake use your brain a little before attacking someone and sounding like a dunce for it.
But it DOES NOT explain the origins. The USSR and the Nazis are not CAUSES. They CAN’T BE because otherwise Europe would never integrated elements of socialism!
I think we actually agree on that, it’s just semantics at this point. Whatever.
Also watch your aggressiveness. I didn’t call you names and I expect the same in return.
It’s not even semantics if you’re actively misunderstanding the definitions of words, but okay illiterate.
Don’t tell someone to watch their aggressiveness AFTER you started being a cunt. I expect you not to be a cunt to begin with, so why am I beholden to YOUR levels of response? Ridiculous to assume you set the bar when you already fucked right on past it to begin with.
The fucking ego on this guy, ffs
Also, “it can’t be the right answer because a different place with different culture did a different thing!”. Seriously? Did I not explain the lead brain and the propaganda? Or did you not read that? Oh wait, borderline illiterate yeah. Like I’m not justifying the response IM EXPLAINING THE ORIGIN OF IT.
If you can’t follow along then stop replying altogether here
Maybe I just suck at the research, but from what I can tell getting a permanent residence visa is not easy for Americans. If I’m wrong I would absolutely love to know.
France seems to be relatively easy to gain permanent residence and even citizenship, but they do expect you to learn fluent French. Most of the EU requires birthright citizenship. A few will grant it to the decedents of immigrants, like Ireland, though they only do it for two generations out.
Passports are $400+ USD, then there are the plane tickets, which are hundreds of dollars. Then to top it off you need to have room and board while looking for a job and someplace to live.
Another thing I’ve heard is fear of leaving the known and family.
Pretty much the only time we need passports is if we travel outside the U.S. and territories. Those that take cruises or cross borders to other countries would, but generally speaking a majority of Americans don’t have passports.
Eh for me it’s a lot of things. For one just roots, family and friends. Then next is work, I’d have to find a new job over there (doubtful my current one would let me work abroad), and I’d need to see if visas would let me work over there, and for how long. I would probably make less over there, but cost of living is lower too, so I’d have to do finances. Most countries don’t let you own property unless you’re a citizen, and I wouldn’t be, so I’d have to rent for a while. Path to citizenship would then be difficult, and I would have to pay taxes for both countries. Then just pure logistics of what do I do with everything here, would have to basically start all over. It’d be much easier if I was in my early 20s, but I’m nearing 40 which makes it much more difficult.
There is usually something like needing $250K in the bank to be considered for permanent residency. Then the paperwork costs money, so most Americans will have to wait until they get refugee status.
Several things keep Americans from moving to Europe.
First, immigration laws of the country one is moving to. If one is not able to get a passport from an EU or EEA county based on ancestry, you basically need to be sponsored for a work visa by a company in the country you want to move to, which can be quite difficult. And even then, you have to be employed in that country for long enough to qualify for permanent residency, then citizenship, which can take up to 7 or 8 years in some countries.
If one is lucky enough to have parents or grandparents who emigrated to the US from a European country and can claim citizenship based on that, it’s a lot of work to get all of the paperwork together and verified and accepted by that government’s consulate (at least it is for Germany, but German bureaucracy is … special).
Second, the US is one of the only countries in the world that double taxes its citizens. If someone was born in the United States, they will have to file taxes reporting income to the US government every single year until they die, and PAY taxes to the US government on any income over a certain amount every year until they die, regardless of the source of that income, and regardless of the fact that taxes on the same income need to be paid to the host country.
While I have zero respect for the snivelling shitgibbon name Boris Johnson, he was born in New York and had to renounce his US citizenship to escape the IRS. You also have to PAY the US government $2350 (in cash) for the privilege of giving up your citizenship, which is also…unique.
Sometimes there are tax treaties that can take most of the sting out of the double taxation issue (Norway’s is decent for US citizens), but it depends on the country.
Finally, it just never occurs to many Americans that leaving is even a possibility.
In all fairness, we panic and reach for our guns at the mention of just about anything. Right this very moment, I’m pooping on company time, scared out of my wits, a nine millimeter at the ready atop my presently ankle adorning boxers.
And they wonder why we get all these migrants at our southern border. Maybe if they hadn’t destabilized the entire region to the south people wouldn’t be trying to escape those places.
This story is so wrong ….cuzz the battle that ends with every 100th 1 eyed man is the battle with the last Macedonian Tzar Samoil….The son of the last Bulgarian Tzar actually was one of the Judas that betrayed Samoil before that battle.
…i am confident you don’t know shit. I say this with respect, tho it doesn’t sound respectful.
Because the way you replied to the barest possibility that you are ignorant or misled is to post “no i’m not” instead of being curious and searching for what you might have missed. If you’re not curious, and you don’t consider yourself propagandized you are exactly this meme, whererever you may be from.
Yes. You see, if most of the profits aren’t taken from all the people making them and given to like, just a few people to keep for themselves, we’d have mass hysteria!
I shudder to think of what the workers might get up to if they had more of the money they created, or more of a voice in their workplace. They might start doing dangerous things that benefitted themselves instead of the stonks, and that idea is just disgusting to me
When they’re talking about big pharma and other companies controlling peoples lives and how the people that control them conspire to keep the rest of us in line… Then start talking about Jews…
He more talked about Judaism and Christianity, but it was relatively minor compared to actual class analysis and additionally was most famously brought up as a response to antisemetic bullshit that supported the false idea that Jewish people were controlling all of the banks and all of the money and were the source of all problems.
Marx spoke of Religion as a component of classism, not as a replacement for it, unlike what modern anti-semites do.
Read Marx’s On the Jewish Question. It’s a response to the extremely anti-semetic The Jewish Question, and Marx basically goes through all of its bullshit and concludes that while religion is used by Capitalism to reinforce itself, he advocates for emancipation of religious people themselves. He was an atheist of Jewish descent.
There are tons of antisemitic leftists. I’ve had to heavily curate my social media because of them, and I’m lucky because that’s all I’ve had to do (eg, I’m not being chased across college campuses or doxxed for belonging to a synagogue or have people waiting outside of my door to hound me immediately).
But there are tons of leftists who aren’t as well.
Leftism has become co-opted as way for people to virtue signal and rationalize things they want to believe. The right is definitely seizing on this strife. But historically, there’s nobody the left likes to fight more than other leftists.
And the meme at the top about immigrants… that isn’t new. The USSR was famous for establishing ethnostates and it carries over to modern day. Sure, you could immigrate. But it isn’t like workers held hands and ignored the differences. The pressure was there, but perhaps not the wage pressure. Out groups were still blamed for things like shortages and service degradation, just like today. Nor a defense of anti immigration, but people seem to think the problem exists in uneducated or unenlightened people close to be leftwing. Nope, it’s our cohort. We are watching it in real time right now.
Shit was so bad, that the US didn’t need to run any covert operations to subvert, discredit, arrest, jail, or even, allegedly, assassinate the prominent figures and leaders of progressive, socialist, and communist movements – I mean, if they did, they certainly wouldn’t have called it COINTELPRO. It’d be a dumb name anyway.
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