The "give yourself a treat after" type of advice is pretty shit. I know the guy who hands out the treats, and we're on pretty good terms. I'm pretty sure I can get him to give me a treat without doing the task. Heck I'll probably give myself two treats.

Do you want to read a terrible joke?

A trillionaire and the richest man in the world walk into a bar. Bartender says: "what will it be mr Musk?"

I'm not saying they're not socialists. I was just asking why rockslayer used the term radlib to refer to them. I don't think they know what the term means.

You see similar patterns in western european countries. It's nice when empirical reality lines up with theory.

What we want: henry cavill in the exact outfit on the left

What we got: henry cavill in the normal superman outfit

Not pictured: an AI rendering of the above, because do we really need to spend resources on that?

Terrorist is a politicized, meaningless term, and always has been. Its only use is propaganda. The fact that the word snuck into legislation is incredibly frightening. In the UK, you cannot support a terrorist group. What defines a terrorist group? Whatever the fuck the home security office wants.

The most twisted part about this is that at least immigrants create jobs as well. Just like you and me, they need housing, groceries, doctors, entertainment, and so on and so forth. The idea that an immigrant is a net negative for the job market is exactly as stupid as getting upset at people for having more children because it will have a negative effect on the job market.

when public opinion on the Mujahideen, APLA, IRA etc. started to change and flip

Seems like a reversal of cause and effect. I think the usage of the term "terrorist" for these groups was a deliberate choice of the consent factory to flip public opinion.

I think you have an oversized confidence in our international justice system. When the good guys commit genocide or war crimes, no one goes to the Hague. Cases in point: Indonesia (twice over), Guatemala, the war on "terror".

Nothing ambiguous about it. Insert family guy skin color swatches meme. You might be looking for the term "hypocrisy" instead.

I think that capitalism as we have it, but with a solid welfare state as you describe, is pretty close to my ideal society. But when I think about how such a system evolves over time in the presence of privately owned businesses, it seems to me that it is an unstable equilibrium. That is, it has an inherent tendency to break down the welfare state. I'll sketch the argument.

The first ingredient is that the owning class has an outsized influence on politics. This happens through a number of means, including:

• threat of capital flight ("if you pass this bill I don't like, I will take my gizmo factory abroad")
• direct bribes / lobbying ("if you pass this bill I like, I'll give you a nice cushy job at my gizmo factory", and also campaign donations)
• ownership of the media that completely shape the opinions of the electorate

Through these means they can influence politicians to pass laws that benefit the owning class. Note that it is not beneficial to politicians to do something about this. This is their bread and butter.

The next ingredient is that the welfare state as you and I would like to see it (UHC, UBI, and so on) is detrimental to the owning class. A solid welfare state means that workers have a much stronger position to negotiate from. Without UHC, refusing a crappy offer is much riskier since your health is at stake, for example. That is to say, the welfare state drives up operating costs for the owning class. As such, it is in their best interest to fight tooth and nail against the welfare state.

Combine these two ingredients, and you see that in the presence of privately owned businesses, you eventually lose whatever kind of welfare state you had. A similar argument shows that moving towards such a welfare state from our current system is very unlikely.

Radlib is a term for someone who holds socially progressive views and adopts leftist and radical esthetics, but supports free market capitalism. The picture I have in my head is someone wearing a pussy hat and blue hair celebrating Meloni was elected because she's a woman. Is this how you mean it?

EDIT: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/radlib If you disagree with me and have a wiktionary account, you might want to edit this page.

Which version of capitalism would you prefer? Does it still involve the private ownership of the means of production?

You don't need capitalism to have the concept of currency. It predates capitalism, and has existed in systems alongside capitalism.

Same here, in a country that's near the bottom. They've killed millions over the past half century, and people just don't care. Then again, I don't know what "views unfavorably" really means.

Ah yeah my bad. I confused it for what we have/had in Europe, like nordic model type stuff. But I guess that's socdems then. You have to admit the naming is confusing.

Also, they're not enslaving the Palestinians.

Needs a fouth column, british flag, every entry "oh actually hamas" or something.

Kind of splitting hairs at this point, but if the defining feature of capitalism is the private ownership of business, then I'd say demsocs would still qualify as capitalists. But maybe we have different notions of capitalism.

Any chance you could share which of his politics you find disagreeable? Is it his views on the genocide that pissrael is comitting in Palestine?