Father-daughter talk.... the truth about liberalism

Page 3 of 5 [ 79 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5  Next

Ancalagon
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Dec 2007
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,302

07 May 2009, 2:15 pm

ToadOfSteel wrote:
The simplest solution:

If a corporation dies, let it burn...

In many cases this is the right answer (although bankruptcy laws are there to help control the burning process). However, if you're talking about American car makers, they have lots of other companies in that industry that rely on them, and if you're talking about large banks, they are rather important to the economy as a whole.

There still needs to be accountability, and enormous corporations should not be allowed to think of the government as a giant free insurance corporation, but things are a little more complicated than that.


_________________
"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it." --G. K. Chesterton


MattShizzle
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 May 2009
Age: 50
Gender: Male
Posts: 777

07 May 2009, 2:45 pm

I hate that right-wing delusion that success is due to hard work. 99% of success is due to luck - ie who you know, where and to whom you are born and pure luck itself. Plenty of people work like dogs for next to nothing while others make a lot for sitting on their butt all day.
I'm about as far to the left as you can get on every single issue.



Haliphron
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 28 Jan 2008
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,980

07 May 2009, 6:15 pm

MattShizzle wrote:
I hate that right-wing delusion that success is due to hard work. 99% of success is due to luck - ie who you know, where and to whom you are born and pure luck itself. Plenty of people work like dogs for next to nothing while others make a lot for sitting on their butt all day.
I'm about as far to the left as you can get on every single issue.


I honestly wonder if elitist conservatives truly believe that success is entirely, or even mostly due to hard work. Sounds to me like another myth that is meant to delude the masses into working their butts off while those on the top reap the fruits of their labor. Democracy seems to beget dishonesty; cos when people are free to choose you cant force them to act in your interests so you have to try and manipulate them to go along with you.



Ancalagon
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 25 Dec 2007
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,302

07 May 2009, 7:35 pm

MattShizzle wrote:
I hate that right-wing delusion that success is due to hard work.

What's delusional about that?

Quote:
99% of success is due to luck - ie who you know, where and to whom you are born and pure luck itself.

Luck certainly has a lot to do with it, but it is nowhere near 99%.

Quote:
while others make a lot for sitting on their butt all day.

Very few (other than heiresses) make much from sitting on their butt. Sitting in an office chair does not preclude working your butt off.


_________________
"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it." --G. K. Chesterton


techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,150
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi

07 May 2009, 7:40 pm

Orwell wrote:
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I guess my point is - I don't care really what side your on so much as to say that you don't really want to look at republicans as decisively oppressive, evil, racist, sexist, calculating, money-grubbing people; to do so really is to draw a complete strawman, it falls pray to all the outsider's fallacies, and its ultimately its most destructive where at the very minimum there are a handful of pivotal ideas that they get right, maybe have a unique perspective on, that people who take such an emotional animocity to them would end up throwing everything out the window including what they do correctly, solely because they can't pick who they are or what they really wanted appart in a logical manner.

My perspective, after spending the first nineteen years of my life in one of the most conservative areas of the country:
Most of the conservatives I know are social conservatives- homophobes, single-issue anti-abortionists, racists, xenophobes, pro-torture, with no qualms about letting the government play Big Brother because as long as you "have nothing to hide," there's no reason why you should need civil liberties. In my entire life, I have yet to hear anyone put forward a cogent argument for any of the social conservative positions other than pro-life. The small-government economic conservatives are far rarer among the "common people," and those in the general public who do hold such views often have an absurdly distorted take on them.

The Republican Party as I knew it growing up, in a region that has been represented for years by John Boehner, is an abomination with no redeeming qualities. The Republican Party I know, the one of which virtually everyone in my hometown is a staunch supporter, is the Republican Party that tramples civil liberties, places illegal wiretaps, condones torture, drives the economy into the ground by allowing spending to far outpace revenue and then blames it on the Democrats, openly feels contempt for the plight of the poor, is fine with bombing the hell out of civilians as long as they have funny-sounding names, and alienates anyone who is attracted to the same sex or does not fall into the same fundamentalist born-again Christian sect as them. It is not the Republican party of fiscal sanity, of individual freedom, of the Second Amendment, of keeping the government out of our lives. They want the US government to say "to hell with the rest of the world" and nuke anyone who gets in our way. They don't care if spending is out of control as long as it's a Republican who's signing the spending bill. They want the government to force their own specific, narrow interpretation (or, more accurately, bastardization) of Christianity down everyone's throats. They would gladly go back to the old Mosaic law of stoning gays. They don't care if the government reads your mail and installs cameras in your home, and don't believe that any part of the Bill of Rights is significant enough to be worth defending. To them, civil liberties do nothing but protect criminals from justice. In short, they are monsters.

You can say this is just a strawman or a stereotype, but stereotypes come from somewhere. I grew up in this environment, I have seen it first-hand. My public school teachers have, on multiple occasions, argued frankly and openly in favor of torture and of unlimited government surveillance of everything. Whether you want to admit it or not, cretins like these are the base of the Republican Party.


I think what's made all the difference is that I grew up in a predominantly liberal area - as a conservative. Seems like whatever goes the other way from the majority is in much higher quality for it. A great many of the liberals I've known where I live mirror the conservatives you speak of quite well.

Truthfully though - I have my bounds, that usually starts with people like Laura Schlessinger (you probably know her imfamous speeches about kicking the honors student son/daughter out of the house and grounding their college because they took a hit off a bowl). The low-IQ 'kill anything that abashes conformity for the sake of conformity - that makes me throw up in my mouth, then again I guess as one of the great upsides of living in a largely liberal area; conservatives who are like that barely exist.



Haliphron
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 28 Jan 2008
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,980

07 May 2009, 7:53 pm

Ancalagon wrote:
MattShizzle wrote:
I hate that right-wing delusion that success is due to hard work.

What's delusional about that?


Its the delusion that the world(of people) is "fair". The delusion that most people are earnest and trustworthy and will give back to you if you give to them. It shows a lack of understanding of how people truly operate. In a nutshell: It is EASIER to take than it is to reciprocate! People operate of the principle of taking as much as they can from others and giving back as little as they can get away with. This notion that a person can start on the bottom and work their way up to the top in todays society is laughable. If you want to make it to the top here and now you have to be opportunistic and exceptionally dishonest. Its just NOT realistic to think that if you work hard for someone else you'll get rich some day. If you really wanna be rich you have to have to own Property. Most americans live their lives at the mercy of market forces and as the events of the last 8 months have shown, you run the risk of losing everything to the market EVEN IF you're an honest hard worker. Thats NOT to say that hard work is useless, but to be successful you must work hard for yourself and you HAVE to get the timing right and take advantage of opportunities that come and go in a wink.


Quote:
Quote:
while others make a lot for sitting on their butt all day.

Very few (other than heiresses) make much from sitting on their butt. Sitting in an office chair does not preclude working your butt off.


Of course not! You're being way too literal.



hester386
Toucan
Toucan

User avatar

Joined: 25 Dec 2008
Gender: Male
Posts: 294

07 May 2009, 8:05 pm

Orwell wrote:
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I guess my point is - I don't care really what side your on so much as to say that you don't really want to look at republicans as decisively oppressive, evil, racist, sexist, calculating, money-grubbing people; to do so really is to draw a complete strawman, it falls pray to all the outsider's fallacies, and its ultimately its most destructive where at the very minimum there are a handful of pivotal ideas that they get right, maybe have a unique perspective on, that people who take such an emotional animocity to them would end up throwing everything out the window including what they do correctly, solely because they can't pick who they are or what they really wanted appart in a logical manner.

My perspective, after spending the first nineteen years of my life in one of the most conservative areas of the country:
Most of the conservatives I know are social conservatives- homophobes, single-issue anti-abortionists, racists, xenophobes, pro-torture, with no qualms about letting the government play Big Brother because as long as you "have nothing to hide," there's no reason why you should need civil liberties. In my entire life, I have yet to hear anyone put forward a cogent argument for any of the social conservative positions other than pro-life. The small-government economic conservatives are far rarer among the "common people," and those in the general public who do hold such views often have an absurdly distorted take on them.

The Republican Party as I knew it growing up, in a region that has been represented for years by John Boehner, is an abomination with no redeeming qualities. The Republican Party I know, the one of which virtually everyone in my hometown is a staunch supporter, is the Republican Party that tramples civil liberties, places illegal wiretaps, condones torture, drives the economy into the ground by allowing spending to far outpace revenue and then blames it on the Democrats, openly feels contempt for the plight of the poor, is fine with bombing the hell out of civilians as long as they have funny-sounding names, and alienates anyone who is attracted to the same sex or does not fall into the same fundamentalist born-again Christian sect as them. It is not the Republican party of fiscal sanity, of individual freedom, of the Second Amendment, of keeping the government out of our lives. They want the US government to say "to hell with the rest of the world" and nuke anyone who gets in our way. They don't care if spending is out of control as long as it's a Republican who's signing the spending bill. They want the government to force their own specific, narrow interpretation (or, more accurately, bastardization) of Christianity down everyone's throats. They would gladly go back to the old Mosaic law of stoning gays. They don't care if the government reads your mail and installs cameras in your home, and don't believe that any part of the Bill of Rights is significant enough to be worth defending. To them, civil liberties do nothing but protect criminals from justice. In short, they are monsters.

You can say this is just a strawman or a stereotype, but stereotypes come from somewhere. I grew up in this environment, I have seen it first-hand. My public school teachers have, on multiple occasions, argued frankly and openly in favor of torture and of unlimited government surveillance of everything. Whether you want to admit it or not, cretins like these are the base of the Republican Party.


If you’re talking about Southwest Ohio then I can definitely confirm what you are saying Orwell.



MattShizzle
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 May 2009
Age: 50
Gender: Male
Posts: 777

07 May 2009, 8:15 pm

I personally have a hard time deciding whether capitalism or religion is the worst thing humans ever invented. If I could magically eliminate either from the world I'd have a hard time deciding which.



Orwell
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 8 Aug 2007
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Posts: 12,518
Location: Room 101

07 May 2009, 8:16 pm

hester386 wrote:
If you’re talking about Southwest Ohio then I can definitely confirm what you are saying Orwell.

Ah, another Cincinnatian! Yes, I am speaking of Southwest Ohio. Bloody lunatics all around.


_________________
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH


MattShizzle
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 May 2009
Age: 50
Gender: Male
Posts: 777

07 May 2009, 8:20 pm

The idea that success is from hard work is a delusion because plenty of poor people work hard - usually much harder than those who are not poor. It's used as an excuse to "blame the victim." The reason people are poor is because they are the victim of an unfair system (capitalism.) People are rich due to luck - they were born rich or knew the right people - or due to screwing other people over. I personally think most CEO types should be executed and their money redistributed to the poor.



phil777
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 20 May 2008
Age: 37
Gender: Male
Posts: 4,825
Location: Montreal, Québec

07 May 2009, 8:38 pm

If you haven't read "Nickel and Dimed" by Barbara Ehreinreich, it truely shows that even with two jobs, one cannot obtain a decent living. <.< (the book is somewhere from the start of the decade, and i'd say still pretty actual). There is even a foreign worker who gets screwed out of his wage because he can't speak english.



techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,150
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi

07 May 2009, 8:50 pm

Orwell wrote:
hester386 wrote:
If you’re talking about Southwest Ohio then I can definitely confirm what you are saying Orwell.

Ah, another Cincinnatian! Yes, I am speaking of Southwest Ohio. Bloody lunatics all around.


Yeah, stay way from Cleveland. A visit or vacation may not hurt all that much but living here - it'll shift you farther right.



techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,150
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi

07 May 2009, 8:58 pm

MattShizzle wrote:
The idea that success is from hard work is a delusion because plenty of poor people work hard - usually much harder than those who are not poor. It's used as an excuse to "blame the victim." The reason people are poor is because they are the victim of an unfair system (capitalism.) People are rich due to luck - they were born rich or knew the right people - or due to screwing other people over. I personally think most CEO types should be executed and their money redistributed to the poor.


I can see where people may be taken on their capacities - ie. if they can't hack white collar these days, now that technology has drank up the available good manufacturing jobs, they don't have much hope. Still though, killing CEO's would probably be a nonsequiture, mainly because they're just dips that the board of directors for whatever reason vote in - some of them do make great decisions on a regular basis, we're far more used to hearing about them when they do otherwise.

Also, while you never claimed that you'd use CEO and entrepeneur interchangeably; business owners, partners, strong managers, its something we want lots of because without them - there really are no jobs for people to draw on. We can think we have it rough until we visit places like India, many areas of Africa, it only ends up being some far-fetched allegory when we spend too much time on American soil to have the world outside of our shores in perspective in terms of how little we really suffer in our country. True, we have run-away social heirarchy and narcissism that even on a comfortable living can bleed you punchdrunk by pinprick - that's ulimately the disgusting force that we want to somehow check in our society but, strange enough its not as unique to us as we may think either. Sure, we can lash out at the popular suspects in our culture but it only does good if its at the right times and for the right reasons.



Awesomelyglorious
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 17 Dec 2005
Gender: Male
Posts: 13,157
Location: Omnipresent

07 May 2009, 9:23 pm

MattShizzle wrote:
I personally have a hard time deciding whether capitalism or religion is the worst thing humans ever invented. If I could magically eliminate either from the world I'd have a hard time deciding which.

I would consider it relatively delusional to consider capitalism one of the worst things humans have ever invented. Even if you dislike the workings of the capitalist system, it is hard to claim that it is worse than the preceding systems, and it is hard to claim that the capitalist system isn't intimately linked to progress. You would be hard pressed to find an economist who vehemently opposed capitalism(if you did a survey that is, not if you looked specifically for one using a search engine, because those things can find anything)



MattShizzle
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 May 2009
Age: 50
Gender: Male
Posts: 777

07 May 2009, 10:23 pm

Of course to be an economist they have to have studied it by our fascist financial system funded economics courses and make money through the fascist capitalist system. They should mostly go against the wall too. I'd like to see a maximum wage - where in a company the owner, CEO or whatever the highest paid person couldn't make more than 10 times what the lowest paid person in the company makes. Personally I'd rather see everyone make the same wages no matter what they do. Most rich people should be executed if they had anything to do with exploiting the working people.



techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,150
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi

07 May 2009, 10:27 pm

Awesomelyglorious wrote:
I would consider it relatively delusional to consider capitalism one of the worst things humans have ever invented. Even if you dislike the workings of the capitalist system, it is hard to claim that it is worse than the preceding systems, and it is hard to claim that the capitalist system isn't intimately linked to progress. You would be hard pressed to find an economist who vehemently opposed capitalism(if you did a survey that is, not if you looked specifically for one using a search engine, because those things can find anything)


That's one thing I have at least noticed in this forum, most people are honest enough to admit (in so many words) that by their system of beliefs they'd gladly trade progress or even take lower per capita income all across the board for economic justice if that's what it comes to.