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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 [pasta

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.

ben_w 4y ago
You're arguing against an imaginary totem instead of what I actually wrote. > Communism and the communist party have never been part of the question De facto/de jure. Nobody wants it (de facto), I've demonstrated by linking to the actual parties that de jure it's totally been an option. Those parties I linked, you could have voted for, but y'all didn't. Given I've explicitly said I'm not talking about dem/rep culture war nonsense, your over-detailed rant about McCarthy (who, you may be surprised to learn, was sufficiently relevant to your politics that his actions are well known on the other side of the Atlantic and his name is likewise used as a derogatory term) was a waste of your own time. I am specifically and literally referring the idea of private ownership of the means of production, which is in the actual literal Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei as written by Karl Marx in 1848. Which I have in fact read. Section 2, English translation, has the following passage: """ The proletariat will use its political supremacy, to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i. e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible. """ - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Manifesto_of_the_Communist_Party/2 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Manifesto_of_the_Communist_Pa... That, right there, is why not having Communism in the USA means that rich people get to keep their stuff out of public hands. Now, do you know some other political ideology besides communism that wants to remove control of factories from their owners? Because that would be an additional option beyond the dozen or so communist parties of the USA coming 7th-25th in a two-horse race, and the complaint being made against OpenAI is that it's not letting users do whatever with the tools that OpenAI made and own. So far as I am aware, none of > the rejection of [pastafarianism | soccer/futbol | anarchocapitalism | mandatory left-handedness | manual transmission cars | etc] Have any causal connection to > why rich people get to own and control businesses (Maybe anarchocapitalism?) But that's the specific point of communism. Which you as a nation reject, even though they're a thing you're not, AFAIK, banned from voting for. I mean, reading what you've written, you and I definitely agree 100% that communists are not politically viable in the USA. I'm just saying that the logical consequences of their non-viability includes "rich people can own and control businesses".
- modriano 4y ago
  > Those parties I linked, you could have voted for, but y'all didn't. I've voted in every national election (primary and general) in the past 15 years, and those parties have never been on the ballot. It takes a massive amount of money to run successful campaigns, and political donors make a big difference in choosing which candidates (and therefore which platforms) people get to vote on. This significantly biases the ideological space and makes it invalid to look at the outcomes of elections and draw conclusions about vague ideas that were nowhere near making it onto any major party candidate's platform. I'm not a proponent of communism; I'm a big fan of property rights, but in any case, my core allegiance is to the scientific method and to seeing reality clearly. You really want to reach a specific conclusion but the claims you're using to build your path to that conclusion are not factual. You should start from a close inspection of the actual processes and behaviors of systems, rather than starting with your conclusion and trying to cobble together a case for your conclusion.

ben_w 4y ago

You're arguing against an imaginary totem instead of what I actually wrote. > Communism and the communist party have never been part of the question De facto/de jure. Nobody wants it (de facto), I've demonstrated by linking to the actual parties that de jure it's totally been an option. Those parties I linked, you could have voted for, but y'all didn't. Given I've explicitly said I'm not talking about dem/rep culture war nonsense, your over-detailed rant about McCarthy (who, you may be surprised to learn, was sufficiently relevant to your politics that his actions are well known on the other side of the Atlantic and his name is likewise used as a derogatory term) was a waste of your own time. I am specifically and literally referring the idea of private ownership of the means of production, which is in the actual literal Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei as written by Karl Marx in 1848. Which I have in fact read. Section 2, English translation, has the following passage: """ The proletariat will use its political supremacy, to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i. e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible. """ - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Manifesto_of_the_Communist_Party/2 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Manifesto_of_the_Communist_Pa... That, right there, is why not having Communism in the USA means that rich people get to keep their stuff out of public hands. Now, do you know some other political ideology besides communism that wants to remove control of factories from their owners? Because that would be an additional option beyond the dozen or so communist parties of the USA coming 7th-25th in a two-horse race, and the complaint being made against OpenAI is that it's not letting users do whatever with the tools that OpenAI made and own. So far as I am aware, none of > the rejection of [pastafarianism | soccer/futbol | anarchocapitalism | mandatory left-handedness | manual transmission cars | etc] Have any causal connection to > why rich people get to own and control businesses (Maybe anarchocapitalism?) But that's the specific point of communism. Which you as a nation reject, even though they're a thing you're not, AFAIK, banned from voting for. I mean, reading what you've written, you and I definitely agree 100% that communists are not politically viable in the USA. I'm just saying that the logical consequences of their non-viability includes "rich people can own and control businesses".

modriano 4y ago
> Those parties I linked, you could have voted for, but y'all didn't. I've voted in every national election (primary and general) in the past 15 years, and those parties have never been on the ballot. It takes a massive amount of money to run successful campaigns, and political donors make a big difference in choosing which candidates (and therefore which platforms) people get to vote on. This significantly biases the ideological space and makes it invalid to look at the outcomes of elections and draw conclusions about vague ideas that were nowhere near making it onto any major party candidate's platform. I'm not a proponent of communism; I'm a big fan of property rights, but in any case, my core allegiance is to the scientific method and to seeing reality clearly. You really want to reach a specific conclusion but the claims you're using to build your path to that conclusion are not factual. You should start from a close inspection of the actual processes and behaviors of systems, rather than starting with your conclusion and trying to cobble together a case for your conclusion.