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merc

@ merc @sh.itjust.works

Posts
10
Comments
3681
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Apparently Canadians are notorius cheaters in the sport of Curling

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  • There's a middle ground between "completely innocent" and "massive cheats". I think it's possible that the Canadians have all trained in a technique where they release the rock and then point, and the Swedes use a different release technique. When the Canadians do it, it could lead to them sometimes accidentally brushing the rock with their fingers. If it happens it might mean that they broke the rules and that that rock should be removed (or whatever it is they do), but it doesn't mean that they're intentionally cheating.

    It really looks like they're poking the rock with their fingers, why else would they point like that? But, I've seen enough people talking about the biomechanics of sports that I know that sometimes something that seems dumb like pointing might just be how they ensure that their bodies are aligned exactly the same way every time. It's like how the Olympic pistol shooters have this weird posture with their hands in their pockets.

  • Beware

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  • Yeah, these days you don't need the base OS much anymore. That's why I like the Atomic distros. I'm running Bazzite and it's great. Someone else handles the upgrades of the base image, and I just run flatpaks or containers.

  • Borrowing money against their stuff to get more stuff to borrow money...

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  • Capitalism doesn't "kill 18 million per year".

  • Borrowing money against their stuff to get more stuff to borrow money...

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  • Every other challenge? Are you sure? Seems mighty convenient.

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  • Well, the Americans did incorporate the slavery part of the Athenian system. But, they weren't complete idiots and they picked and chose parts of it that they thought would make sense in the modern world. Really, the American system was closer to 90% British, with a bit of Athenian democracy mixed in. But, they had a previous system to go by where people were allowed to vote and senators were not born into their position, but elected.

  • Borrowing money against their stuff to get more stuff to borrow money...

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  • I'm confident that if we allowed communism to enter our democracies it would be for the best.

    Because it worked so well for...?

    Because, for once, the government would start taking care of its people and its workers instead of the corporate leeches.

    Because that happened in...?

  • Borrowing money against their stuff to get more stuff to borrow money...

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  • Ah, good point. So, you're right. It goes from a sad scenario where you have to sell your $500 card to pay an absurd $100 wealth tax, to a happy one where you end up with $350 plus your favourite card just one month later.

  • Borrowing money against their stuff to get more stuff to borrow money...

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  • I think we can now say that Marx didn't know how people actually behaved in real life.

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  • Who said I lived in a communist country?

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  • How many died under feudalism? How many did Pol Pot kill?

    Every system is going to have issues. So far, every other system has resulted in much more death and misery than capitalism.

  • Beware

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  • Yeah, I have the same issue with my 1080. I haven't installed Debian in decades because everything in "stable" is so incredibly outdated. It's supposed to lead to a stable system, and in some ways it does. But, in other ways because everything is so out of date, people often have to install from source or find alternate packages, so it becomes possibly even more unstable.

  • Borrowing money against their stuff to get more stuff to borrow money...

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  • The idealogues of the right talk a lot of shit, but capitalism doesn't work without controls

    If you read the writings of people like Adam Smith, they expected the government to have a lot of control. Their idea of capitalism involved a lot of government supervision. The core idea of capitalism that everyone would benefit because of competition. Competition leads to winners, but if the winners get too big then they can squeeze out their competitors. That's why capitalism only works if there's a government to step in and keep the "winner" from getting too big so it can dominate.

    When a lot of people say they hate capitalism, what they really hate is the winner-take-all part, which isn't supposed to happen if the government is doing its job. 10 companies all trying to win your business by offering the best product for your needs at the best price they can manage is great. One company that operates at a choke point in your world and squeezes as much money out of you as possible sucks.

    You could argue that communism is also supposed to work if the government does its job and ensures that everybody's needs are met and that everybody is equal. IMO the difference is that capitalism at least sort-of works in practice, not just in theory. Yes, there's a lot of corruption, regulatory capture, etc. in a capitalist system, which isn't supposed to happen. But, you still can get upstart businesses displacing old and dominant companies that fail to innovate. Meanwhile, supposedly "communist" governments very quickly collapse into authoritarian systems with an elite class that siphons off the wealth of everyone else. It's a great system in theory, but in practice it just doesn't seem compatible with actual fallible, corruptible people. Maybe capitalism is more successful because it accepts that people are flawed and greedy and tries to channel that in ways that benefit the public. Communism seems to believe that people don't have those flaws. As a result, there doesn't seem to be part of the communist approach that allows people to channel their competitive and greedy impulses. So, instead, they just corrupt the system and establish themselves as a ruling class.

  • We live in the future!

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  • I'm glad you at least tried.

  • Borrowing money against their stuff to get more stuff to borrow money...

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  • Capitalism works a lot better than communism. At least countries that are vaguely capitalist still exist and can realistically be described as capitalist today. Countries that claim to be communist are authoritarian, or authoritarian plus capitalist.

  • Borrowing money against their stuff to get more stuff to borrow money...

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  • The reason the rich borrow money is to take advantage of tax loopholes

    Ok, what tax loopholes?

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  • No, it's my own eyes. You don't need the capitalists to interpret it for you when you can just look for yourself and see that communism never works.

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  • That's what success looks like. But, you don't know if you're going to be successful when you take out the loan. If there's a market downturn you're on the hook for the loan and your portfolio has crashed. If you sold a few stocks instead of taking out a loan, you're insulated from that possibility.

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  • Why is "permanent utopia" the criterion? I don't know of any political system that claims there will be a "permanent utopia", except maybe dreams of what communism might one day be like.

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  • In what ways is Vietnam a communist country?

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  • That's so far because either a elite group gets in power and turns it into feudalism again

    If it always collapses into feudalism / authoritarianism, it's not a workable system.

    We didn't throw away democracy just because the french revolution failed at first.

    The French and the Americans had historical working versions of democracy to consider, like the Athenian system. Communism just fails over and over again every time it's tried.