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The part of MLK's activism often omitted

teacake said:
Because of the moon landing stage set?
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I'm sorry, but I can't let that stand. What @Jayson1 poster might be a conspiracy theory, but it one based on historical facts and is not just a crackpot idea like the staged moonlanding. You don't need to agree with his interpretation of history, but that doesn't make it illegitimate or deserving of ridicule.
 
There is definitely something very wrong with Leninism, it always ends up being a corrupt bureaucracy where the bureaucratic caste ends up the "rich" (though not even that rich) and the regular person lives like.. a lower-middle class life by modern standards. But the class distinction is still there, one is upper middle class, the other is lower-middle class. Unless you're modern China and Vietnam, then the bureaucratic caste end up millionares and billionares while the rest of the population, lives again a lower-middle class life. (though even though GDP in Vietnam is lower than Phillipines, Vietnam has far lower poverty, same with Cuba, even arguably North Korea isn't as bad as other parts of Asia in terms of poverty)

Also anytime anybody tries to do Socialism "differently" suddenly Leninists appear and kill them all. See Spain, Ukraine, China etc.

Honestly Marx said Socialism would come around with the Organic Consumption of Capital (Automation, Artificial Intelligence) basically creates a state of affairs that is untenable within Capitalism. Leninists think they can use Capitalism through the state to reach this point faster, but historically they've done a terrible job at it, hell the USSR literally banned Cybernetics and Computer Science at a point.

Capitalism, like Feudalism will collapse when its time comes. Probably within the later half of this century I suspect (Climate Change + mass automation) what comes afterwards may be better, may be much, much worse. Marx later in his life told the little try hard revolutionaries to go away and stop talking to him. Yes, it sucks, you will never see a better world, but even Marx accepted Capitalism will collapse when it's time comes.
 
Interestingly enough, we have all the tools already in place to govern ourselves. Thanks to the internet, we could literally read up on, and directly vote on issues, as they happen, in real time, provided we had a free open pipeline to undistorted information without news agencies and journalists playing "middleman" and injecting their own biases as factual. Of course I don't trust us to be able to do that effectively, as we are such an agenda driven society now with SJWs and the ALT-Right clashing for our hearts and minds. We are our biggest obstacle unfortunately.
 
We want to be woo'd and to feel good. Being raised on advertising makes this seem normal. None of that leads to long term intelligent issues based voting.
 
jamesraykenney said:
You do know that economics is not a zero sum game, right???
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You do realize that in the United States, the top 1% holds 35% of the nation's wealth, correct? You also realize that there isn't an unlimited supply of money, correct? If there are a finite number of dollars, and 1% of the nation's population controls 35% of it, that leaves the other 65% to be divided by the other 99% of the population, correct? Are you also aware that the bottom 40% controls less than 1% of the wealth in the United States?

Short of just printing money and devaluing the currency as a result, there is little for poor people to do. They cannot get capital because they do not have credit. They cannot build credit because they do not have capital. Our economic system is a debt system. The poorer you are, the more debt you have that is a strike against you. The richer you are, the more debt you have is a credit in your favor. Being zero sum has nothing to do with the fact that the ability for the poor to create something of value that is given equity is next to nil.

So yes, I hear "it's not a zero sum game" all of the time, but it doesn't change that the system has made certain it is zero sum in every way except by name. It's like saying everyone has the right to vote for whomever they want, while only offering one choice as a legitimate candidate. Come now, anyone can vote. Why all of the complaining? Just because there's only one candidate doesn't change that we live in a democracy. Right?

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States
https://www.statista.com/statistics/203961/wealth-distribution-for-the-us/
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...great-recession-by-race-ethnicity-and-income/
 
Amaris said:
You do realize that in the United States, the top 1% holds 35% of the nation's wealth, correct? You also realize that there isn't an unlimited supply of money, correct? If there are a finite number of dollars, and 1% of the nation's population controls 35% of it, that leaves the other 65% to be divided by the other 99% of the population, correct? Are you also aware that the bottom 40% controls less than 1% of the wealth in the United States?

Short of just printing money and devaluing the currency as a result, there is little for poor people to do. They cannot get capital because they do not have credit. They cannot build credit because they do not have capital. Our economic system is a debt system. The poorer you are, the more debt you have that is a strike against you. The richer you are, the more debt you have is a credit in your favor. Being zero sum has nothing to do with the fact that the ability for the poor to create something of value that is given equity is next to nil.

So yes, I hear "it's not a zero sum game" all of the time, but it doesn't change that the system has made certain it is zero sum in every way except by name. It's like saying everyone has the right to vote for whomever they want, while only offering one choice as a legitimate candidate. Come now, anyone can vote. Why all of the complaining? Just because there's only one candidate doesn't change that we live in a democracy. Right?

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States
https://www.statista.com/statistics/203961/wealth-distribution-for-the-us/
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...great-recession-by-race-ethnicity-and-income/
Click to expand...

How many dollars you have is not nearly as important as the buying power of that money.
 
What really annoys me about Capitalism is frankly how Neoliberalism has just torn to shreads "progress" in society, in fact, it feels like we're spiralling back to the 19th century in terms of workers and civilian rights.

Why in 2017 do we have a 40 hour work week? (and in fact people are working longer and longer) when really, work weeks should have gone down over time with production. Why when it takes us what, 10 hours today to do the work of someone doing 40 hours 30 years ago, aren't we working at least 10 hours less a week? The 40 hour work week is completely arbitrary and was set in the 19th century and we're still working it despite even Hayek and Keynes etc all said we would be working 15 hour weeks by now.

It shows how skewed redistribution has become. Workers have not seen wage growths in decades (thus actually seen smaller wagers with inflation) and work more hours. While wealth concentrates to levels not seen since the 19th century and Government can't engage in any programs or development that last more than a single financial year.
 
The system is at a point when giving workers slightly higher wages threatens to crash the Dow Jones. Because people having money is apparently bad for the economy. :wtf:
 
Donker said:
What really annoys me about Capitalism is frankly how Neoliberalism has just torn to shreads "progress" in society, in fact, it feels like we're spiralling back to the 19th century in terms of workers and civilian rights.

Why in 2017 do we have a 40 hour work week? (and in fact people are working longer and longer) when really, work weeks should have gone down over time with production. Why when it takes us what, 10 hours today to do the work of someone doing 40 hours 30 years ago, aren't we working at least 10 hours less a week? The 40 hour work week is completely arbitrary and was set in the 19th century and we're still working it despite even Hayek and Keynes etc all said we would be working 15 hour weeks by now.

It shows how skewed redistribution has become. Workers have not seen wage growths in decades (thus actually seen smaller wagers with inflation) and work more hours. While wealth concentrates to levels not seen since the 19th century and Government can't engage in any programs or development that last more than a single financial year.
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"Production" jobs aren't the only jobs that need doing. Administrative work or care work in the medical sector need to have a certain continuity to it to be efficient and helpful. You can't fragment work-time between too many people for the simple fact that you'd lose information between employees and upset people who need qualified care when too many different people "work" on them.

The 40 hour week as a standard works.
 
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