The only way that could conceivably work out is if everyone collectively protested their student loans together since it’s such a massive problem for so many people. Even then, the government would probably buckle down and try to destroy half the country’s financial viability before they caved and admitted this toxic industry preyed on kids that didn’t know what that debt meant when they signed up for it.

Lmao, unfortunately not. Thanks for catching the typo.

isn’t**

Oh it definitely happens. I’m a young millennial and I have a friend my age who deals with mental issues because he ate lead paint leftover in their old house as a child. Lead was so prevalent at one point that getting rid of it all isn’t as simple as flipping a switch.

Edit: [wasn’t -> isn’t] There does not in fact exist a switch that we can now flip to remove lead. Thanks @Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works.

How a person reacts to being asked about the version of these things most close to them is telling. If they get defensive and deny the event happened, I would hesitate to trust their opinion on other things. Clearly that person bases their opinions on what they want to be true rather than reality. That’s the kind of person whose ideology would likely lead to another event to be ashamed of. If, on the other hand, they admit it was a horrible thing and agree that people should be educated on it and that steps should be taken to prevent it from ever happening again, then I’m more likely to take their opinion seriously and believe that they can be part of the conversations we need to happen to create a better world.

You are just a capitalist that likes welfare. Your ideology has absolutely no desire to change the ruling class or overturn the system that is currently burning the world and leading us to destruction.

I don’t think you help your case arguing this way. I’m not even dissecting socialism when I say that - just your approach to argument. You don’t know my ideology. Creating a strawman of my views isn’t going to convince me or anyone else that you have a good point. Hell, for a long time I did consider myself an actual socialist. I would love to lay out my reasons for my movement away from that, but I’m not sure you’re ready to have that respectful exchange of views.

The liberals obsessed with the “nordic model” still would’ve downvoted it. They don’t like having to wrestle with the reality of climate change. Our options are socialism or extinction.

Beginning an argument with “Your head is up your ass so far that I won’t bother arguing. I’m right no matter what.” is a sure way to have people dismiss your arguments outright. I say this all because I want my opponents to be good at arguing. I want to hear persuasive viewpoints. I don’t believe for a moment that I have all the answers, so I welcome any opposition to the beliefs that I’ve come to possess. If you believe that you have the answers, then I’m genuinely all ears. But unfortunately, arguing isn’t about being right - it’s about persuading other people that you are. The internet has made it easy to lose sight of this and argue with hostility instead of respect. I’m trying to be sincere here. Please consider the purpose of getting into these internet spats. I see so much hostility outright from people on the left and it genuinely sucks. I find that when I try to dig even a little bit into arguments for socialism or communism that I often hit this barrier of hostility. It’s not a good way of selling a viewpoint. And you can say that it’s not your job, but then I ask why we’re even here having this conversation.

Now, I’ll stop patronizing you. I’ll throw my argument out there so you can tear it to pieces. Back to labels - what socialism looks like to you depends on who you are. You say it’s when “the old institutions are thrown out and the new institutions are introduced”. I’ll take that to mean some form of government is in possession of the means of production across the board? My hesitancy towards socialism is mostly centered on my knowledge of history and the repeated trends of powerful institutions decaying into corruption and greed. I think socialism could genuinely work really well as long as the people in charge were kept honest. But my skepticism is towards the long term sustainability of such a system. Time and again we see institutions decay and fall prey to humanity’s worst impulses. The fall of the Roman Republic (and the regular chaos of the Roman Empire for that matter) is my classic go-to for this, but there are plenty of non-western examples as well. The best cases I’ve seen in my studies of various histories seem to be centered around cultures that dispersed their power into many smaller institutions. My problem with socialism is that it inherently says “we’re going to get rid of business corruption and government corruption by combining the two”. I think creating an even smaller, more focused center of power in society is a dangerous proposal - it becomes all the more easy for the wealthy elites to worm their way into that power and take control. Essentially you’re taking all of those wealthy capitalist greedy dirtbags and then moving them into the government.

Capitalism, on the other hand, removes business from government which allows, in theory, for the government to act as a counter-weight to business. Now, you and I both know that that hasn’t stopped wealthy elites from worming their way into capitalism and capturing government interests. But my main point here is that socialism isn’t solving that problem. It’s throwing fuel on the fire by cutting out the one supposed protection we do have, which is a separation of government interests and business interests. Ostensibly, when capitalism is working the way it should, the government is acting as a counterweight to business greed. I think there are better ways to strengthen that counterweight that don’t necessarily fall under the label of “socialism”. I think heavily regulated capitalism is better than outright socialism because in the ideal case the government is still acting as a tool of the people, flexing its power in opposition to businesses. The ideal case in socialism has the government acting as the businesses itself, which I believe would encourage greed and would actually cause even less incentive to address things like climate change.

Yeah. Like saying you believe that companies beyond a certain size should be legally required to seek a vote from their employees before implementing certain types of changes is a real policy to argue about. Call it democratizing business or whatever you want. And then that’s an actual concrete issue we can argue about. Or if you believe in the government buying out businesses beyond a certain size, that’s a specific conversation we can have and we can discuss the hypothetical implementation of that. Call it business seizure or whatever. Just saying “I believe in socialism” doesn’t dig enough into the details of how you perceive socialism or how you would implement it. And frankly, I think it hurts the socialists or communists or whoever is trying to persuade the current culture away from what we have more than anybody else. Ideas grow when you make real, concrete proposals. These exceedingly large scale labels usually end up killing a conversation rather than feeding it. Someone gets mad at a label and then everything shuts down on that sticking point.

I think the way we argue over labels hurts us. If I use heavy regulation and government aid to limit the abuses in a capitalist system, at what point does the label change to “socialism”? I think we do ourselves a disservice to create these strict conceptions of systems like capitalism, socialism, or communism. Then when one fails we get to say “well that wasn’t true x”. And the labels allow people to boogeyman an idea. And worst of all, we eliminate the possibility to take good lessons from multiple different systems and incorporate them into our system. I think we would be better served promoting policies on a case by case basis instead of using these huge words. And to be clear, I’m a bit of a hypocrite here. I’ve been mostly telling people I’m a “social democrat” or that I support “capitalism with heavy regulations”. But even those words can get picked apart and don’t really capture nuance. My main point is that I think this thread is a perfect encapsulation of how these arguments stop us from getting behind good policies when we bicker about the definitions of words that mean different things to different people.

Honestly, I think the way we argue over labels hurts us. If I use heavy regulation and government aid to limit the abuses in a capitalist system, at what point does the label change to “socialism”? I think we do ourselves a disservice to create these strict conceptions of systems like capitalism, socialism, or communism. Then when one fails we get to say “well that wasn’t true x”. And the labels allow people to boogeyman an idea. And worst of all, we eliminate the possibility to take good lessons from multiple different systems and incorporate them into our system. I think we would be better served promoting policies on a case by case basis instead of using these huge words. And to be clear, I’m a bit of a hypocrite here. I’ve been mostly telling people I’m a “social democrat” or that I support “capitalism with heavy regulations”. But even those words can get picked apart and don’t really capture nuance. My main point is that I think this thread is a perfect encapsulation of how these arguments stop us from getting behind good policies when we bicker about the definitions of words that mean different things to different people.

I grew up Catholic, converted to Evangelicalism, and am now an atheist. The one thing I’ll always give the Catholics that at least I grew up around is that they took the “feeding the poor message” pretty strongly to heart. They had a HUGE food pantry and they gave food to the local people in need of it every week. There were always drives happening for food and clothes and whatnot. It was enough of an institution that they had full time staff dedicated to it. I’m sure this isn’t the case for many other Catholic churches, but my anecdotal experience of at least one midwestern Catholic Church was pretty good on feeding the homeless. Now, the transubstantiation (literal bread turning to body, etc) stuff was bullshit and played a key role in my deconversion. People in my community didn’t even know that we believed that and when some of us kids found out, that was a bit of a reckoning 😆

Evangelicals, on the other hand, had their acts of charity but they were weak sauce compared to the Catholics. Occasional Christmas toy drives or whatever. They did free car washes. It was pretty inane compared to what the Catholics had been.

You’re not wrong and I’m happy that piracy communities exist in spaces where access is easily cheap and accessible if only for the days that those industries get greedier. But for now, I’m happy to pay when it’s affordable and easy to access.

I half agree with what Gabe Newell said in regards to piracy being a service issue and not about price. I think it largely is a service issue. Access is the greater problem. Price is secondary as long as it’s somewhat reasonable. I don’t pirate video games because I can get them reasonably, but he is a smidge wrong insofar as I don’t buy the outrageously expensive games. Steam’s major success is having good sales that keep me away from pirating because the possibility of games I want going on discount at some point is realistic. It’s telling that the only time I did dabble in video game piracy was to relive my childhood memories of Nazi Zombies from the Call of Duty video games. I dabbled in it then because Activision is selling their decades old games for outrageous prices considering their age and their “sales” are weak considering the already overinflated price. I refuse to pay for that. And so I sailed the high seas.

The music industry is still affordable and accessible, so I don’t feel that pressure at all. Back when Limewire was around the pressure was there partially because I was a kid and didn’t have much money and hunting down CDs I wanted for the obscure music I liked was challenging. It was mostly an accessibility issue that Spotify fixed. If their prices move beyond my means then that relationship will no longer benefit me and the sails will raise once more.

Yeah, honestly I’m a bit ashamed that I didn’t realize just how stupid that man could be, even after hearing that he leaned over to his new wife while dancing at their wedding and whispered in her ear “I am the alpha”. Like, for a long time I just assumed the guy was an arrogant incel-esque asshole who was visionary about things like electric cars and reusable rockets and stuff. Now I realize he’s just a rich egomaniac who stood on the shoulders of scientists that he hired so that he could act like their work was his own. He’s just another rich fool who gets to cosplay being smart.

And that kid? Guy Fieri.

I love supportive cars

1000% look. Not even a question. Can you imagine how dope it would be if Jar Jar in the movies had a deep ass voice? Like shit, imagine if he was voiced by Samuel L Jackson or some shit. He would be chill as fuck. I’d want to smoke some weed with that funny looking guy. People who pick voice want to hide from this life changing experience, but bro you gotta own it.

I generally align with the left most of the time, but I hate making one label the basis for your entire political opinion. I am very against censorship. My greatest pet issues have to do with censorship and democratic principles. In terms of American politics, I will never vote Republican. If I feel a Democrat has let me down in a big way, I would consider voting third party, but 99% of the time I would vote Democratic. Centrist Democrats piss me off more than leftist ones. My foreign policy stances are probably the least in line with the further left. I am generally pro-NATO with the understanding that NATO isn’t perfect. I just worry way more about a world with China/Russia at the helm given their propensity for censoring opinions that oppose their majority parties.

China and Russia. Thus censoring legitimate western media articles about China. There’s also a lot of anti-NATO bullshit. Here’s the Axios article they banned a user for posting.

All I know is that you should avoid lemmy.ml. In their /c/WorldNews community, an admin gave a four day ban to a user for posting an Axios article about the Chinese succession plan for the reason of “Orientalism”. Those guys are tankie shills. In my experience, lemmy.ca, sh.itjust.works, and lemmy.one seem solid. Obviously I personally went with lemmy.ca. But you should check out the admin profiles before you join any instance. That will tell you most of what you need to know. That and the modlogs (found at the bottom of the page) that will tell you what posts have been taken down and what people have been banned by mods on various communities.