See this thread.

Literally the only way to act if you don't like the media is to continue the discussion without them.

I also have literally no idea what to make of the **** regarding Russia. My conspiratorial side says, yes, of course Russia makes hacking attempts at key targets, but now headlines are claiming the CIA is preparing for a secret counter attack? How can you make sense of a headline talking about a secret attack? Why would the CIA be doing cyber-anything? I literally have no clue what the role of Russia is in anything, except they're apparently the key enemy of democrat foreign policy?

Does anyone have any clue what's going on?

Thanks NBC, your sources sound alot like an NCIS script, I can't feel myself cynical enough to claim this is a lie, but nothing about it feels true.



Do these people not get how self-contradictory their own statements are?

I do not understand. I do not I do not.

Even though much is still uncertain (and will remain so), I've thought this article a more sober and plausible account of Putin's motivations than anything else I've read in recent days:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/world/europe/syria-russia-putin-kremlin.html?ref=world

Hillary Clinton is a criminal, Bill Clinton is a rapist. Lock them both up. #MAGA

Donald Trump is a criminal and a rapist. Lock him up.

I cut ties with mainstream media several years ago now. Sure, I'll watch clips on YouTube and I have some other sources that would be considered right wing. The point is that you need to stay informed and at least hear an honest discussion of issues and events. There are some scary things going on in the new media, though. Old media has failed to stay relevant. News papers are on life support and their plug will be pulled soon. They've tried to charge for internet access to their content. I will pay for content but not content I can get for free. There are people that watch Alex Jones or The Young Turks and think they're legitimate news sources. There's also this trend of "hot" pro-Republican women. Beck's got that Tomi chick and I've seen that Russia Today has one. Russia Today? Maybe Al-Jazeera should have tried it. Hell, they probably have.



I've heard speculation that this is their new war on us. A cyberwar or, in technical terms, The Cyber. It's really huge and if, look, Isis. Isis and what Trump has done on the internet is really big and a lot of people, I hear it all the time, the system is rigged. The system is rigged and we're going to expose this and, yes, The Cyber is really huge. But I digress. I can see this as Russia just stirring the pot. We're doing all the work. An entire country full of useful idiots. I know many of you will have issue with this but look at what has happened in just the past few years with race relations in this country. At least the LA riots in the early 90's, as inexcusable as they were, were the result of the acquittal of police officer that clearly used excessive force. Now every time an armed black felon is shot we have riots, assaults, and even murders. I really don't see how you turn this around.

The Cyber is huge as ****, this can't be denied by any intellectually honest person.

what is "The Cyber"

Am I missing out because I quit reading the news about two months ago when I got tired of hearing about terrorism, more people dying, and Godzillary's Email Scandal?

It's chapter one. Chapter two is 'the nuclear'.

the internets vs the cyber

cast yr votes

Thought Trump did relatively well (for Trump) throughout most of last night's debate. Still let way to many things get past him and made far too many misstatements. On the plus side (for Trump) I guess he previewed Trump TV via Facebook during the debate.

A new television cable channel in the day of cord-cutting and internet streaming content? Is it just Breitbart?

I imagine it'll be a subscription based Internet channel and a rebranding of Breitbart wouldn't surprise me. That guy has probably spun his corpse half way to China by now.

Yeah, he probably got the bright idea from Sarah Palin's wildly successful attempt at doing the same thing after she gained substantial overnight popularity with all of the worst people in America.

It turned out really well for her, so this ends up seeming like a pretty standard bold Trump idea!

Sarah Palin is exactly the one I was thinking of in regards to this but Trump has certainly eclipsed Palin in terms of popularity with the Deplorables so I think his network might actually stand some sort of a chance. Funny, though, that this has been floating around out there for so long and if it actually comes to fruition the dupes that sign up for it will also be the same ones that were duped that Trump actually wanted to win.

Oh of course he's more popular. I'm not debating that at all. I just think the scheme will stagnate just the same as he is (like Palin) a person who really doesn't have a whole lot to actually say. Sooner or later, even crazy people get tired of hearing the same ten or fifteen sound bytes over and over again.

I mean, do you think he stopped talking about the wall just for the hell of it? If you look at the timeline, as the election has worn on, his talking points become more and more inane. He started off on the stupid-ass wall, and has ended up going on and on about voter fraud and how he's going to imprison his opponent. He's grasping at air at this point with the things he's saying, and there's a problem with that. He's a loud-mouthed jerk who doesn't actually have anything to say, and people aren't going to pay him for his ramblings when they know he'd be saying all the same stuff even if he didn't have some hair-brained internet tv channel.

https://archive.fo/O27uo#selection-463.0-463.79

This article is a very good take on the election and expresses many of my own feelings about the goings-on right now.

Maybe you all have heard this but I've heard ardent Clinton supporters say directly that the jobs lost by NAFTA were fine and were going to be lost anyway, and that white people are doing fine and so forth.

I think it's pretty telling how reactionary Clinton-allied media was to Sanders, who literally suggest the support he had in West Virginia was due to racism.

Western liberalism cannot explain why white working class Americans have a ****ty life, at least racism is a good enough excuse for other races, but white people suffer solely because of capitalism, so they're pretty much disenfranchised, not that they want <meaningful> improvement in the lives of poor minorities.

If it doesn't strike you as completely wrong how the "left-wing" party in America literally tells working-class people to **** off, then well, this is why we need a new left.

I'm not sure what you mean. Every single nation with a first world standard of living runs on capitalism.

Oh yeah, historically speaking life is much better for working people, but western life is also propagated on the virtual slave labor of people in other countries so it's not really sustainable as a world philosophy. But things are trending downwards for working class people in America.

I'm gonna move to Venezuela.

Every single nation with a first world standard of living runs on a mixed market, because capitalism alone is not capable of producing a first world standard of living.



ding ding ding.

The reason things are going so poorly for non-college educated whites, incidentally, is because they don't have enough capital to turn down unreasonable work. Workers are not only exposed directly to an international labor market, but the cost of living (rents) have become so extortionate that labor market participation is truly compulsory. This is the literal definition of slavery.

Capitalism has elevated a billion people out of poverty largely through eating the other 6.

See because I posted this on an Apple iPhone, which was designed and manufactured by a capitalist corporation for profit, in competition with other manufacturers, I shouldn't criticize capitalism. This is where most people usually stop the discussion. But capitalism is a lot more complicated than most people understand.

Apple only exists because of the government. It was founded by the children of Silicon Valley engineers who relocated to work for companies built with generous land use subsidies and funded by Cold War research grants. One of the founders attended a state school under a resident tuition subsidy, and the other was surrendered to the state as a child, which paid for him to live until he was placed with a successful Silicon Valley family. Apple was founded on investment money from an Intel executive, which was founded by Fairchild Semiconductor alums, which did their initial semiconductor research on the DOD's dime.

That DOD money also paid to fund the basic research into the technologies that underpin the phone's hardware. The CPU architecture was created by a British public university spinoff which was bailed out in the early 80s.

Most of the phone's software is derived from BSD, an operating system written by a state funded university, based upon an original design created under a DARPA grant to MIT. The web browser is based on an open source project, which was originally based on research conducted by CERN, under European government grants, which transfers data using a protocol designed under US government grant, on an infrastructure built by private companies on various US state and federal subsidies and guarantees monopolies.

The software and basic design of the phone are protected from duplication and fair competition by various government granted monopolies, including copyright, patents, and trademark protection.

The phone was manufactured with the blessing of the Chinese state corporation using labor subsidies by the Chinese government and Chinese monetary policy. The phone was shipped on a jet designed by a US defence contractor, purchased on state guaranteed loan, which was directed to land at a state operated airport by federal employees, and delivered to my door via government-paved roads.

Capitalism usually isn't.

Capitalists rationally seek the highest returns and lowest risks. The best return for capitalists is to buy out everybody else, producing less at a higher unit price without competition. This is better for the capitalist, who can extract a larger profit from lower costs, but it means much less for everybody. In other words, capitalism naturally causes economic contraction in the long run, not expansion. In order to achieve economic growth, you need to limit the ownership of capital.

Capitalism alone isn't even a thing, except in the minds of crazy anarcho-capitalists. Capitalism just means you have a private sector. Of course you also need a public sector.

It's like saying that you don't really have an engine in your car because you need a drive-train and a chassis for it to go anywhere.

What is that supposed to mean? Are you suggesting a system where working for a living is optional?

The problem, (or one of the problems), is that a lot of people in the US simply don't have skills that justify their vastly higher standard of living compared to many international workers. The service industry can only get so big.

Capitalism is a specific arrangement for the ownership of the means of production by a protected capitalist class, and the inevitable market failures that result (rent seeking behaviour). Capitalism is neither synonymous with a free market nor required to have one; it is a degenerate case of a free market.

What "pure" capitalism would mean is where the government is not allowed (either through budget or edict) to possess or disburse any means of production. That does not preclude a public sector, but it does change how the government would provide services and access to public goods. Imagine a government paying rent to keep Yosemite open, and you're on the right track.

Far from anarcho-capitalism, this is precisely how austerity neoliberals want to see things work. Look at how national postal services have been under attack recently: the idea of any successful or useful public enterprise is religiously offensive to these people.



I am suggesting that accepting a job offer should be as optional for the applicant as offering it was for the employer. That is not the case for the vast majority of workers.

I think Jon`C has hit the mark perfectly. The quality of life for the working class in America will continue to trend downwards, and the only thing you can expect from any future president is a marginally slowing down of this or a significant increase in rate.

At the end of the day, we will have to eat the rich.

There's not enough rich to go around.

But once they're gone, maybe we'll be able to roll back the clock just enough so that life can improve for one or two generations.

This is a facile statement. For starters, it's not saying anything: of course it's impossible for everyone to be considered rich, because rich is relative to the average. More importantly though, it is grossly misrepresenting the argument for wealth redistribution and capital ownership restrictions ("eating the rich"). You've incorrectly assumed that the point of these measures is to make the average person 'rich'. The real point is to prevent civilization-ending destructive effects of capital concentration.

History shows a clear trend: as capital concentration increases, economic growth decreases, technological development decreases, and economic efficiency decreases. The 20th century saw a historically unprecedented explosion of quality of life and personal freedoms, which only happened because the entrenched super-rich capitalists got eaten between 1870 and 1945 through capital destruction and expropriation by former colonies. The American middle class owes itself to this virtual 'reset button' on global capital ownership, which let workers for the first time in history capture of a share of capital was it was being reformed. However, those conditions are rapidly ending, and we are returning to historically normal economic growth (= population growth, which right now is slightly negative).

So basically, if you at all value the American Dream, you should support limitations on capital ownership or imposed capital destruction. Capital ownership limitations would mean a return to conditions where, among other things, there exists a middle class which can afford to acquire and operate small amounts of productive capital (i.e. a healthy petite bourgeoisie, a social class which is rapidly going extinct in America, and FYI are turning to Trump/fascism for survival).

If you at all value American principles, you should also support an orderly imposition of limitations on capital ownership, even if you might otherwise disagree that it's necessary. Because history also shows that the alternative is eventual violent revolution, ethnic purges, or global total war. Because this is what happened every other time in history capital ownership becomes highly concentrated. (Trump supporters, I am looking at you.)

Also literally the only argument in defense of extremely concentrated wealth is that, wealthy people also spend more which drives the economy just fine. Except this is absolutely, unequivocally untrue, because people who accumulate billions aren't spending billions, they don't need to, their cup of tea is a pathological obsession with seeing numbers get bigger.

Which is why a tax on sitting wealth should be implemented.

Also, extreme capital concentration is literally the same thing as Soviet-style command economies. You cannot credibly support terminal-stage capitalism while opposing central planning, because they are literally identical in every way and any argument against command economies is also an argument against capitalism in the long run.

That certainly gives "we tried communism and it didn't work" an interesting twist, now with the new lemma, "we tried the capitalism and we got communism".

As it turns out, letting less people control more of society is bad.

Except that's not the accepted definition.




There are usually several options, but none of them are good. Of course, that's what happens when too much of a first world population has nothing at all to offer beyond the abilities of a larger third world population who is used to a much lower standard of living. It's not a matter of companies using a monopoly to offer far below what a market would command, it has everything to do with companies having no need or desire for anything close to that level of unskilled laborers in a first world country.

America has large public works that need to be completed, they just don't get done. It's not profitable. Profitability is antithetical to having things be less ****ty for people.

The very idea of profit is itself in contradiction to people having a nice life. For a company to return profits for it's shareholders, it by necessity is squeezing more value out of its workers than they recieve. Waged labor rips people off and give it to people doing nothing at all.

The "accepted" definition of capitalism is a political definition.

I'm not sure how you are qualified to dictate what the accepted definition is. Modern practicing economists use the term to non-judgementally refer to a particular condition and type of free market economy, a definition which hasn't changed much since the Marxists invented the term to refer to the market failure that causes the middle class to turn to fascism. I personally find the definition which is given by professional economists more acceptable than the incorrect colloquial definition you believe in only because you were deliberately taught basic economics wrong.

Monopsony. A monopoly is selling goods or labor, it's called a monopsony when it is a purchaser.

This problem is a lot bigger than e.g. the neoliberal fan favourite "skills gap" you've alluded to, where American workers just plain aren't competitive against foreign workers.

The Chinese government actually price fixes labor below the clearing price in order to drive foreign manufacturing and mining companies out of business, so it doesn't really matter how productive American workers are, because there is a superpower with no compunctions about running its economy at a loss just to keep them unemployed. China is like OPEC for low skill labor.

Besides that, for a lot of different reasons (which Id love to discuss but don't ant to type on a phone), companies have been getting progressively larger in the US while competition has been declining. This has created a true labor market oligopsony, where in some markets you may have a choice of jobs, but all working for the same corporation (e.g. their farm, their packaging plant, their warehouse, their distribution subsidiary, etc.). Like how monopolies artificially increase prices and artificially constrain demand, labor market monopsonies naturally employ fewer people at lower wages.

These effects are both much stronger than any real productivity gap.

For a vivid example, take the winning strategy in Monopoly: the way you're supposed to win the game is by building houses, but never building hotels. That way one player has a monopoly on houses, and the other players are denied property upgrades entirely and are quickly be driven to bankruptcy. Like real life, if the players make a good faith effort to improve and invest in their properties, everybody is better off. But also like real life, it is often in a single capitalist's best interests to make the world a worse place.

American students are deliberately taught economics and capitalism wrong. The American discourse on economics used to be much more nuanced before the Cold War.