this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2024
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And I think social democracy (which we need to fix) is the answer to that.
I think a lot of people like to LARP they're the rebel alliance that're going to defeat the evil empire and the ewoks will celebrate, not remembering the last few times the ewoks ended up first on the trains (purges, holodomor, GLP/CR, Khmer Rouge).
At the end of the day, in power structures, without a firm mechanism to counter, the most evil people generally rise to the top. Very familiar with this in my actual life experience which I'm going to guess most MLs don't have.
For instance, after the McD merger, marketing and finance execs slowly displaced engineers at the top and steered the companies away from doing their jobs and towards what you could call "ideological purity", ie short-term cash at any cost. Intel was similar, as was the USSR and PRC.
In the west, those companies are a smaller part of a whole, and if things go properly, they fail, an example is made, hopefully new management is brought in to replace them and recover the company.
In an authoritarian regime the whole country sinks or swims, hence NK is screwed. Russia actually had a great renaissance under Khrushchev, who helped recover most of the worst damage wrought by Stalin, until the idiot Brezhnev struck for ideological purity again and destroyed all that work. Gorbachev looked to be trying to fix that, but it was far too late.
Communists fail because they demand all eggs be under one basket, and as Rome showed us, you can have good Emperors, you can't have unlimited good emperors, sooner or later you'll get a political moron like Brezhnev or Xi and everything will fall to pieces.
It's why capitalists go on and on and on about "diversifying your portfolio" so no one bet ever kills you.
Most of Europe has a social democracy. Let's just say: it's not going too well. Especially when considering the rise of far right talking points (Looks at France, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Austria, Hungary, ...).
I'm brown and live in Europe and America, it's going fine, a hell of a lot better than anywhere else, particularly the shithole that is CCP's China.
Taiwan is doing pretty well though.
Austria is on the brink of going Hungary and the "progressive" coalition in Germany is gladly copying the far right's homework.
I also don't like China's governmet. Not sure why you bring it up.
The far right keeps trying to take over, and keeps collapsing into its own incompetence immediately after.
They know longer know how to rule and modern parliamentary systems make them much less able to govern.
Germany will be a disaster, their economy is finished for at least a decade, but that's ... not terribly serious, they'll re-form after a while, hopefully after we've fixed the EU.
Yeah that latter one is a bit fantastic, but considering how much room there is for change right now we actually could have some things get better.
Austria has been flirting with the far-right my whole life, the strain runs REALLY deep.
If America goes Trump then things could get very dark, but otherwise I'm pretty sure we'll manage to figure things out over the next decade, things are still vastly better in both Europe and America than anywhere else and while people don't like it, they'll be less happy with the alternatives.
I'm sorry, but you're deluding yourself if you don't think that the gurrent system won't collapse under climate change if we don't have fundamental changes.
Meh, I think we can adjust.
I think most other systems would be worse, and the system itself is entirely irrelevant.
The only thing that will save us is science, climate change probably doesn't work the way you think it does, it's complex and we have room to work if the assholes get off our backs.
As I said. Deluding yourself.
We went from learning from books to having access to the entire sum knowledge of humanity in my pocket instantly in my lifetime.
Science is truly powerful, and I can say that because I'm literally arguing with you over it.
Geoengineering is basic science, the only thing blocking us from doing it are all the morons who don't understand how it works and believe "ONLY GAWD" is in charge of the weather, and the other group of morons who don't understand how it works and thing we should all run back to live in caves.
Read Malthus, we should never have made it this far.
Yes, it's complicated, you know what else is a complex system? The human body. Better not ever take any medicine or anything really.
We predicted climate change, we can use the same techniques to stop it.
I like how geo-engineering is snake oil, while instead losing 3/4 of the population and having the rest live like cavemen is somehow the rational and safe choice.
We can't sustain the current population on the planet, so either we figure out how to fix that problem, or we get rid of a lot of population, you're welcome to volunteer.
You clearly do not understand what eugenics is, and I was literally arguing against that, as that is the only logical conclusion to keep the planet at its natural human carrying capacity.
Have you not thought through the consequences of your beliefs? Do you not realize reducing human industry and agriculture to "sustainable levels" means dramatically reducing human population because we cannot remotely sustain what we have now?
Do you know where the fertilizer used to make the majority of our food from otherwise marginally arable land comes from?
Don't you high-horse me. You're arguing in fa-our of a system that's literally grouing and growing and growing. Further destroying the biosphere and therefore destroying the foundation of what we need to survive. You don't destroy the biosphere for so-called "progress" that's sells us fake-solution (electric vehicles that are unsupportable at the scale they're marketed after fake solution (AI, that's driving up the energy requirements needed for the transition to a more sustainable power grid) only to deepen the titanian rift between the poor and the filthy rich.
You're the worst kind of eugenicist. The one who claims they have moral high-ground. "We never should have come that far"
That 'system' is called human reproduction, our population is the reason for that growth, and the consumption of resources to fulfill it.
Your way results in harsh restrictions in reproduction, which might not be a bad Idea, but is definitely an unpopular one with moral concerns.
Otherwise we have to have an economy to sustain our population, I don't even understand how you can try to bring morality into it, human reproduction has the morality of the virus, we don't care what we destroy to reproduce, your parents didn't, that's sadly how life works.
The avalanche has already begun, it is too late for the pebbles to vote, the only rational thing (ie not throwing a childish tantrum that has no effect on reality) is to mitigate the damage.
Your religion is sad, guilt does not fix anything and there is no prize for the biggest victim.
Again, no other way to reply for you than to straw-man me and spout your eugenicist nonsense.
I'm not arguing for an end of reproduction, I'm arguing for the end of capitalism, before it kills us. If you don't even acknowledge the existence of systems and lack the creativity of imagining anything else than the self-destructive uath our species is on, I pity you.
But don't claim you're basing your views on science if you literally ignore scientific consensus. You're like a COVID-denier.