Brand New Sentence

the memes made on kirk made it impossible for me to take them seriously.

Its not the poors getting a better outcome that they are against, its the fact the 1% will no longer exist.

people will never say it but understand perfectly

I think you're vastly overestimating what people understand.

lol this was a perfect opportunity for the school to teach about the dangers of populist liars but they bottled it

Something like this happened in my school. We had surplus budget so we all got to write in suggestions on how to use it and vote on them. EVERYONE wanted the skatepark to be upgraded, like across social groups and ages, we all loved the skate park even though it was a shitty little corner of the parking lot with a tiny ramp and concrete blocks. We just wanted like, one ramp and a grind bar.

When it came time to vote, a lot of the suggestions were obviously not from students and skate park upgrades weren't on the list, so we conspired and wrote it in as an extra option anyway.

Guess what won? Fancy new concrete garbage cans. We broke them out of spite.

They've never loved free speech and have to be reminded that minors still have civil/constitutional rights from time to time.

What, exactly, is wrong with socialism?

It's... it's... it's SOCIALISM!!!

The thing that's wrong with socialism is that we've spent almost 100 years teaching everyone's uncle that it's bad to give him a conversation topic that was tangentially related to WW2.

It's not the problem with socialism, but communism which most popular version came from USSR, came with authoritarianism and extreme corruption, but so does fascism.

I think social democracy, like we see in Nordic countries is much better. They seem to put a lot of effort fighting corruption.

IMO strength of institutions (whether the society is ruled by law) and amount of corruption is what decides whether the system is good for citizens or not.

What, exactly, is wrong with socialism?

Literally and figuratively: "everyone else." It's not the ideology, it's the implementation. Let me explain.

I'm of the opinion that the idea of everyone living on an even playing field, without the capitalistic intent to "exploit and extract", is noble and worthwhile. On paper, it works brilliantly - just like every other model for government. The problem comes in where it meets the real world, specifically around cultural values and psychology.

Right now, the biggest problems the US has boil down to a lot of people acting in an "my group vs your group" mentality. This is the biggest hurdle to overcome and really kills this whole thing in the cradle. Sometimes the dividing line is ideological, economical, geographical, political, or just plain bigotry of some flavor. No matter how you slice it, this behavior is anathema to socialism. You can't get people to organize in a manner that helps everyone, if a huge chunk of that group insists that's not right because it's fair. Without that kind of organization, you're left to force those values on people, which will be quite obvious and not without blow-back. Not to mention, doing so requires a governmental body strong enough to act out of unchecked corruption, which usually creates new problems.

Meanwhile, being a stupidly rich country means it's absolutely worthwhile for our home-grown billionaires to keep a death-grip on the levers of power. In the same way you or I aren't likely to vote against self-interest, the architects of corruption aren't likely to let action take place that loosens their grip. I'm not saying the economy needs to take a nose dive to put this engine fire out, but I'm at a loss to describe a way to end this particular part of our collective waking nightmare.

So you can't just "do a socialism" because of everyone else, and how those people will cite that everyone else is why that's not a good idea. And the people with the most power right now won't let it happen because there goes their meal/yacht ticket. So basically, "everyone else".

I think it's possible to get there, but there's no getting there in one big leap. Gradual change and a long period (a century?) of a hybrid model, where we have a little bit of everything going on until "being fair to everyone" wins out.

No, no, not a capitalist dictatorship, socialism with [insert name of high school] characteristics.

This is Brand New Sentence. The brand new sentence goes in the title.

Provided you don't get de-platformed (e.g. not invited to political debates), this is a proven strategy. For example, Vermin Supreme is doing this from the other end of the spectrum. Although, he has a run for his money these days.

https://www.youtube.com/@VerminSupremeOfficial