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They’ve Marginalized Bernie At Every Turn

Socialists and socialism are naturally marginalized in this country. They start out that way. It doesn't take vast conspiracies to marginalize socialists.
 
Renae said:
I wasn't aware corporations were forcing consumers to buy their products.
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If you live in a city and you're not born into wealth, everything for miles around you is owned by other people: Likely some 40% of it by one-hundredth of the population and 93% of it by the top one-fifth.

Private property is a (good and necessary) restriction of other folks' freedom, by definition: You are not allowed to walk, sleep or grow food on property which other people own. And when virtually everything around you is owned by other people, you have absolutely no way of supporting yourself through your own personal efforts. Maybe you could gather your resources and take a week-long hike out to the wilderness, to live off the land. But it's impossible for 300 million people to do that; that would be a 'solution' for only a tiny percent of people, even if everyone wanted to do it.

So overwhelmingly, the only option is to remain in society and surviving by transferring ownership of clothes to wear, places to sleep, food to eat and so on from other people to yourself. The only legal/ethical way of doing that is by buying them. You're not forced to buy from any one particular provider, but whatever you can't personally produce for yourself (which is basically everything, if you're in the bottom 80%) you do have to buy.
 
Mithrae said:
If you live in a city and you're not born into wealth, everything for miles around you is owned by other people: Likely some 40% of it by one-hundredth of the population and 93% of it by the top one-fifth.

Private property is a (good and necessary) restriction of other folks' freedom, by definition: You are not allowed to walk, sleep or grow food on property which other people own. And when virtually everything around you is owned by other people, you have absolutely no way of supporting yourself through your own personal efforts. Maybe you could gather your resources and take a week-long hike out to the wilderness, to live off the land. But it's impossible for 300 million people to do that; that would be a 'solution' for only a tiny percent of people, even if everyone wanted to do it.

So overwhelmingly, the only option is to remain in society and surviving by transferring ownership of clothes to wear, places to sleep, food to eat and so on from other people to yourself. The only legal/ethical way of doing that is by buying them. You're not forced to buy from any one particular provider, but whatever you can't personally produce for yourself (which is basically everything, if you're in the bottom 80%) you do have to buy.
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You have a seriously ****ed up view of the world.
 
Renae said:
You have a seriously ****ed up view of the world.
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I guess when you've got no intelligent response, brainless insults will have to do. But which part exactly do you disagree with?
> That 300 million people cannot all (or even mostly) head into the wilderness and 'live off the land'?
> That absent that, the majority of people have little realistic prospect of producing all or even most of their needs for themselves?
> That it's therefore necessary as a matter of simple survival to buy from others; clothes, a place to sleep, food etc?
> That this necessity not a choice that people generally make, simply a political and economic reality that they're born into?

I realise that this unfortunate thing called reality might not be very suited to the kind of story you'd like to tell - that a world could exist where everyone is perfectly free to do anything they please, if only everyone just stopped thinking differently and voted for your party! The fact however is that that is not and never has been the case for our species. Mature people recognise this, and instead try to ask themselves what kind of system would be the least constrictive and coercive. A totalitarian system of government obviously doesn't fit the bill. A system in which most useful goods and resources are 'owned' by a small fraction of the population - excluding others' access to them - is not quite so bad, but if there are ways in which it could be made even less coercive, they are probably worth considering don't you think?
 
Mithrae said:
I guess when you've got no intelligent response, brainless insults will have to do. But which part exactly do you disagree with?
> That 300 million people cannot all (or even mostly) head into the wilderness and 'live off the land'?
> That absent that, the majority of people have little realistic prospect of producing all or even most of their needs for themselves?
> That it's therefore necessary as a matter of simple survival to buy from others; clothes, a place to sleep, food etc?
> That this necessity not a choice that people generally make, simply a political and economic reality that they're born into?

I realise that this unfortunate thing called reality might not be very suited to the kind of story you'd like to tell - that a world could exist where everyone is perfectly free to do anything they please, if only everyone just stopped thinking differently and voted for your party! The fact however is that that is not and never has been the case for our species. Mature people recognise this, and instead try to ask themselves what kind of system would be the least constrictive and coercive. A totalitarian system of government obviously doesn't fit the bill. A system in which most useful goods and resources are 'owned' by a small fraction of the population - excluding others' access to them - is not quite so bad, but if there are ways in which it could be made even less coercive, they are probably worth considering don't you think?
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No, I don't have the give a **** to bother.

1. You make the strawman that anyone is calling for 300 million people to "live off the land". As if you've made some grand point. It's okay, those who have a weak grasp on reality create their own logial fallacies to fight.

2. Again, who the hell has made this argument of "self sustaining and producing" individuals? No one. You create this silly notion, to make your even sillier conclusion look brilliant.

3. It's called trade, commerce and it's a fact of life. Been that way for pretty much most of recorded history. Even those who did HAVE to live off the land sought out and traded goods and services with others.

4. WTF are you on about? That people are born into reality? Congrats on that most BRILLIANT of observations. Everyone, please come and join me in giving Mithrea a round of a applause for the most Captain Obvious observation of the day.

See you talk about reality, but it's clear you have no grasp on reality. You have constructed a world based on ignorance, envy and greed. One where Government is going to give you stuff and make those you envy pay for not letting you be part of their group.
 
Renae said:
3. It's called trade, commerce and it's a fact of life. Been that way for pretty much most of recorded history.
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Yes, thankyou. You said earlier that you weren't aware corporations were forcing consumers to buy their products. Yet you understand that most people are constrained by the nature of society to purchase goods for their survival and wellbeing. We have some choice about which company to buy from, but for many products no real choice about whether to do so. A constraint exacerbated by concentration of ownership in the top tiers of society.

Call it a minor point if you will, but I think it's worth bearing in mind. I didn't really intend for it to serve as a distraction from Shagg's following point:



shagg said:
I won't argue this never happens, specifically with utilities, I detest government sanctioned monopolies. But if you think that without the FDA and the EPA that corporations wouldn't start looking into new ways to sell us cheap-yet-hazardous products for us to consume and use you've got a set of blinders on yourself. The pursuit of profits will lead some into highly immoral territory quickly without government "interference".
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Mithrae said:
The OP suggests that the 'socialism' of Bernie Sanders is basically that of the Scandinavian countries (which frankly aren't much different from Australia or Canada from what I've seen, and in some ways are less government-oriented; eg. strong unions negating the need for a legislated minimum wage in at least some of them). I don't know what his policies are, but assuming that's the case...

Could you explain how those countries have 'failed'?

Or are they the ones that are 'keeping their heads above water,' but somehow perceptibly(?) failing in a way that the United States is not?
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Scandinavian? Each is a little different and influenced by a variety of differing factors so that it would be work to walk through them. But think about why Finnland and other Europeans are rolling back and restructuring the programs they have been building since ww2. Take Finnland that is experimenting with minimum income with the intent of replacing the present social system and probably the general retire program with a relatively small untested payment. The European system I know best is the German one. There the various social programs have been rolled back and will be more. This has led to major harm to elderly persons insured in the public health insurance system, workers that had paid unemployment insurance found themselves much less well protected after the program was reduced, when the lost their jobs in their 50s and could not find new ones, the public schools have deteriorated and the number of third third generation welfare recipients is growing and the level of health care the public system supplies is deteriorating badly. Right now the fiscal position is quite positive as a result of the Euro crisis, but the effect on the position of the lowest quantile has generally had approximate ppp buying power after transfers in Germany as in the US in spite of the high priority the country has put on social stuff.

I don't know enough about the Australian or Canadian social programs to be able to compare them, but believe to remember that they started later and are less cash flow heavy. This would be important for a comparison as the duration tends to increase the problems for a number of reasons.
 
joG said:
Scandinavian? Each is a little different and influenced by a variety of differing factors so that it would be work to walk through them. But think about why Finnland and other Europeans are rolling back and restructuring the programs they have been building since ww2. Take Finnland that is experimenting with minimum income with the intent of replacing the present social system and probably the general retire program with a relatively small untested payment. The European system I know best is the German one. There the various social programs have been rolled back and will be more. This has led to major harm to elderly persons insured in the public health insurance system, workers that had paid unemployment insurance found themselves much less well protected after the program was reduced, when the lost their jobs in their 50s and could not find new ones, the public schools have deteriorated and the number of third third generation welfare recipients is growing and the level of health care the public system supplies is deteriorating badly. Right now the fiscal position is quite positive as a result of the Euro crisis, but the effect on the position of the lowest quantile has generally had approximate ppp buying power after transfers in Germany as in the US in spite of the high priority the country has put on social stuff.

I don't know enough about the Australian or Canadian social programs to be able to compare them, but believe to remember that they started later and are less cash flow heavy. This would be important for a comparison as the duration tends to increase the problems for a number of reasons.
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A citizen's income would be an expansion of public provisions, not a "Woe is we, our country is failing due to socialism" admission. It's also worth noting that many welfare programs are not examples of socialism in any case, since their large-scale viability as private businesses would be dubious if not impossible. They can hardly be considered social control of the 'means of production' (an outdated, but time-honoured definition) if they're not means of production/commerce! They are simply social safety nets; the plus side of abiding by society's rules, providing protection to those who might otherwise be robbed by starving vagrants as much as to the recipients themselves.

Your claims regarding Germany (not really a Scandinavian country, but probably similarly 'socialist') are hardly examples of a country that is perceptibly failing any worse than the US, either. All countries have their ups and downs, but holding up one of the world's most successful economies as an example of failure isn't really a very convincing argument, I have to say!
 
Mithrae said:
A citizen's income would be an expansion of public provisions, not a "Woe is we, our country is failing due to socialism" admission. It's also worth noting that many welfare programs are not examples of socialism in any case, since their large-scale viability as private businesses would be dubious if not impossible. They can hardly be considered social control of the 'means of production' (an outdated, but time-honoured definition) if they're not means of production/commerce! They are simply social safety nets; the plus side of abiding by society's rules, providing protection to those who might otherwise be robbed by starving vagrants as much as to the recipients themselves.

Your claims regarding Germany (not really a Scandinavian country, but probably similarly 'socialist') are hardly examples of a country that is perceptibly failing any worse than the US, either. All countries have their ups and downs, but holding up one of the world's most successful economies as an example of failure isn't really a very convincing argument, I have to say!
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That is quite right, that large social programs also fill productive functions. Also it is true that they were often started not as socialist measures, but to stabilize society or get things done that society was unable or at least at the time not doing widely enough. This was the case with schools, pensions or unemployment insurance all of which were quite sensible and robust economic ideas and under the limitations of technology only feasible if produced by government. They were virtually public good under the circumstances of the 19th century. This was probably true into the 1950s, when first accumulation and spread of wealth and income and then increasingly the rapid development of technology reducing transaction costs etc became so disruptive of traditional modes of production. In these cases goods that had once been cutting edge public goods that defined success and became the very raison d'etre of powerful bureaucracy, vested interests of large politically dominant groups and were generally accepted as basic cultural icons were becoming inefficient anachronisms of the industrial past. But societies tend to protect their power elites' vested interests.
The simple fact is that disruptive technological progress has made the business models of many of the social programs inefficient.

Also you are quite right about the changes of fortune with its ups and downs. As applied to Germany you might remember the title page of The Economist picturing a big German with the then quite correct Sick Man of Europe title. You will recall that the turnaround was engineered by Schröder of the SPD (social party of germany) with his Agenda 2010, a major cut in the social system that had drained the county dry. The cuts were not really optimal nor were they enough, but enough to make Germany best on an economically sick continent. Nonetheless the cuts were such that the SPD has lost a lot of its earlier power base and voters.
And as I pointed out, there is probably a reason that Finnland, Holland or Switzerland are to different degrees thinking about introducing minimum income to eliminate the old societal technologies present social systems represent.
 
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