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Two notes: 1) less than half of Americans vote in each election (less than 63% if you restrict to the voting-age population, less than 70% if you apply the scu

Two notes: 1) less than half of Americans vote in each election (less than 63% if you restrict to the voting-age population, less than 70% if you apply the scummy rules that restrict to the voting-eligible population) And 2) it's a false dichotomy to say that US elections have ever been "whatever we have now VS communism". Maybe you could say socialism was on the ballot all those times Eugene Debs ran for the presidency, but there hasn't ever been a communist on the ballot that I'm aware of. Also, it sounds like you would struggle to define communism if pressed. Regarding your second loose point, the US restricts the sale of a lot of products to the public (eg nuclear weapons, biological weapons, raw milk, copyrighted works you don't hold the copyright to, etc). Personally, I think it's pretty reasonable to restrict the sale of some things, even if the potential sellers know a lot about the product.

ben_w 4y ago
> it sounds like you would struggle to define communism if pressed Having read the Communist Manifesto, I think that description of me is both totally fair and would also apply to Karl Marx. Darn thing read like an unhinged run-on blog rant.
- nr2x 4y ago
  It’s literally a manifesto.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    Are you implying that all manifestos read like that?
- modriano 4y ago
  > basically every American literally voted for that by repeatedly saying no to *the alternative* (the communist party) in every American election. I had a good laugh playing with this ridiculous framing, thinking about all of the candidates we've said no to. * "Get out of here Donald Trump! We don't want communism, we want the alternative; Joe Biden!" * "Hit the bricks secret pamphlet-loving marxists John McCain and Mitt Romney, we'll take the singular alternative: Barack Obama" * "We love Jimmy Carter, he's the opposite of communism! Nothing like the alternative, an all-star college football player and rabid communist manifesto adherent named Gerald Ford." * and "We hate Jimmy Carter who must be a communist because of how hard we voted for the movie man." * "Give us Teddy Roosevelt, he'll smash up all of these monopolistic robber barons, because TR is the alternative to Marxism." * "FDR, we love you so much we'll elect you to the Presidency four times! We all thought Herbert Hoover was in the pocket of gilded age capitalists, but when Hoover drove us into the great depression, we realized he must have really been a bolshevik! Thank you so much for the massive welfare state expansion, FDR, you truly earned your nickname 'FDR: cure for the common communism'" Ridiculous. But in all earnestness, the communist manifesto has never been even remotely relevant to any US election ever. And I mean this with no malice, but if you think lobbing the label "communist" at something you don't like is an argument, vary up your media diet and be recognize when you use logical fallacies in arguments so you can slow down and debug your thought process.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    I think you misunderstand; when I said communists, that wasn't a spicy republican hot take about the democrats or whatever, it was literally the communists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA for example, or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party,_USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party,... or even https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Alternative_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Alternative_(United_... I think it's really obvious that Americans don't want those things, so one way to rephrase my original comment could be "the rejection of communism is why rich people get to own and control businesses".
    - modriano 4y ago
      You misunderstand. Saying > "the rejection of communism is why rich people get to own and control businesses". is as wrong as saying "the rejection of [pastafarianism | soccer/futbol | anarchocapitalism | mandatory left-handedness | manual transmission cars | etc] is why rich people get to own and control businesses". Communism and the communist party have never been part of the question. The closest "Communism" came to being part of the political landscape was when a power-hungry alcoholic grifter named Joseph McCarthy won a Senate seat in Wisconsin and then started a paranoid campaign of lobbing unsubstantiated accusations of secret communistic allegiance at academics, civil servants, members of the media, and of anyone he wanted. It whipped up a frenzy of anti-communist protestation, but not because people knew anything about communism, rather people rejected being called "communist" not because they knew anything about the economic theory of communism, but because McCarthyism made that term a career-killer. McCarthy starting attacking leadership of the US military, alleging that they were infested with communists, and organized hearings in the Senate that were essentially modern day witch burnings. From 1946 to 1954, McCarthy whipped up a massive panic while smearing the symbolic label "communism" with so much shit that essentially no one can think clearly about the ideas behind that system of social organization. In 1954, other Senators countered with a campaign to censure McCarthy for his invalid and unwarranted abuse of US Military Generals, culminating in a vote to condemn McCarthy (67 votes to condemn, 22 against condemning). After this humiliation, McCarthy wasn't decent enough to resign his seat and leave voluntarily, but fortunately he died of cirrhosis of the liver about 2 years later at the age of 48. In short, the claim that "the rejection of communism", something no one here spends any time thinking about, "is why rich people get to own and control businesses" is ridiculous and evidence of a broken thought process. I refer you to my prior advice about dealing about slowing down and recognizing when you've built your beliefs on logical fallacies.
nicky0 4y ago
The half that don't bother to vote forfeit their right to be counted.

ben_w 4y ago

> it sounds like you would struggle to define communism if pressed Having read the Communist Manifesto, I think that description of me is both totally fair and would also apply to Karl Marx. Darn thing read like an unhinged run-on blog rant.

nr2x 4y ago
It’s literally a manifesto.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Are you implying that all manifestos read like that?
modriano 4y ago
> basically every American literally voted for that by repeatedly saying no to *the alternative* (the communist party) in every American election. I had a good laugh playing with this ridiculous framing, thinking about all of the candidates we've said no to. * "Get out of here Donald Trump! We don't want communism, we want the alternative; Joe Biden!" * "Hit the bricks secret pamphlet-loving marxists John McCain and Mitt Romney, we'll take the singular alternative: Barack Obama" * "We love Jimmy Carter, he's the opposite of communism! Nothing like the alternative, an all-star college football player and rabid communist manifesto adherent named Gerald Ford." * and "We hate Jimmy Carter who must be a communist because of how hard we voted for the movie man." * "Give us Teddy Roosevelt, he'll smash up all of these monopolistic robber barons, because TR is the alternative to Marxism." * "FDR, we love you so much we'll elect you to the Presidency four times! We all thought Herbert Hoover was in the pocket of gilded age capitalists, but when Hoover drove us into the great depression, we realized he must have really been a bolshevik! Thank you so much for the massive welfare state expansion, FDR, you truly earned your nickname 'FDR: cure for the common communism'" Ridiculous. But in all earnestness, the communist manifesto has never been even remotely relevant to any US election ever. And I mean this with no malice, but if you think lobbing the label "communist" at something you don't like is an argument, vary up your media diet and be recognize when you use logical fallacies in arguments so you can slow down and debug your thought process.
- ben_w 4y ago
  I think you misunderstand; when I said communists, that wasn't a spicy republican hot take about the democrats or whatever, it was literally the communists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA for example, or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party,_USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party,... or even https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Alternative_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Alternative_(United_... I think it's really obvious that Americans don't want those things, so one way to rephrase my original comment could be "the rejection of communism is why rich people get to own and control businesses".
  - modriano 4y ago
    You misunderstand. Saying > "the rejection of communism is why rich people get to own and control businesses". is as wrong as saying "the rejection of [pastafarianism | soccer/futbol | anarchocapitalism | mandatory left-handedness | manual transmission cars | etc] is why rich people get to own and control businesses". Communism and the communist party have never been part of the question. The closest "Communism" came to being part of the political landscape was when a power-hungry alcoholic grifter named Joseph McCarthy won a Senate seat in Wisconsin and then started a paranoid campaign of lobbing unsubstantiated accusations of secret communistic allegiance at academics, civil servants, members of the media, and of anyone he wanted. It whipped up a frenzy of anti-communist protestation, but not because people knew anything about communism, rather people rejected being called "communist" not because they knew anything about the economic theory of communism, but because McCarthyism made that term a career-killer. McCarthy starting attacking leadership of the US military, alleging that they were infested with communists, and organized hearings in the Senate that were essentially modern day witch burnings. From 1946 to 1954, McCarthy whipped up a massive panic while smearing the symbolic label "communism" with so much shit that essentially no one can think clearly about the ideas behind that system of social organization. In 1954, other Senators countered with a campaign to censure McCarthy for his invalid and unwarranted abuse of US Military Generals, culminating in a vote to condemn McCarthy (67 votes to condemn, 22 against condemning). After this humiliation, McCarthy wasn't decent enough to resign his seat and leave voluntarily, but fortunately he died of cirrhosis of the liver about 2 years later at the age of 48. In short, the claim that "the rejection of communism", something no one here spends any time thinking about, "is why rich people get to own and control businesses" is ridiculous and evidence of a broken thought process. I refer you to my prior advice about dealing about slowing down and recognizing when you've built your beliefs on logical fallacies.

nicky0 4y ago

The half that don't bother to vote forfeit their right to be counted.