ToastedPlanet

Poor is not defined as those who have the least in the economic terms being discussed in this article. That's why there is a poverty line to define what is meant by poor. The poverty line used by the government needs to be updated however.

If people had more than enough to get by then we wouldn't considered them poor even if no one had less money than them. Having the least amount of money isn't the issue. The issue is can a person acquire the goods and services they need to live. If not that's a problem and we've been describing that problem as being poor.

XD

❤️ 🖤

Love the outfit and photo. Fun concept. =D

The answer was to replace capitalism, an extractive economic institution, with socialism, an inclusive economic institution. And yes, it would have taken a lot of political will, which is why I argue it would have been hard, but not impossible. I've been arguing this with several users in parallel. If you want to see my argument in full it's in my comment history.

What's important is, now that the bomb has gone off and we have fascism, we still need to replace capitalism with socialism. But in addition we also have to defeat a fascist dictatorship on top of that. So now it's even harder.

Jesus, if you think Bernie is the progressive candadite that I’m referring to, you just proved my point.

What point? Your argument is a collection of a few short false statements. I was attempting to be generous by assuming you were talking about Bernie even though he's not a progressive, he's a democratic socialist. That example about Bernie and the DNC court ruling is a real event.

Maybe you should stat by researching the progressive parties in the US.

What other parties are you referring to?

The Green Party is a scam that only fields a presidential nominees with no chance of success. Jill Stein is yet another Russian asset who has been seen meeting with Putin.

Again, this is me being generous and assuming good faith to get at an actual discussion about real things. The Green Party is what people usually refer to when they mean a progressive third party. The Green Party and the Libertarian Party are the only third parties worth discussing because they are the only third parties that act as spoiler candidates. The rest don't even manage that. Republicans and Democrats are the only parties that had a chance to win our democracy back when it was still a democracy last year.

What is your position? What are you talking about?

Left Handed Morty

My interest in asking was if you meant nonviolent action or violent action. For your information, Americans are doing nonviolent action currently including some, if not all of the things you listed. We definitely need to do more and thank you for the list.

My concern was derived from the fact that ~~most people~~ it feels like most people on this site mean violent action when they say something like meaningful action. And I didn't want to assume you either were in that camp or didn't know about recent American protests.

For a reference to what I'm talking about here's a recent post. The post itself is fine, but the comment section contains multiple calls to violence.

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/25226675

edit: typos and clarification

Despite your preference for violence; nonviolence works.

Also, I would like to point out that while it is true that those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable, violence is still our least useful tool.

I even wrote this in a comment to you.

Very American to immediately start ranting g about violence while nonviolent campaigns that mobilize large, diverse groups are statistically more effective than violent resistance.

Right, which is is why I brought up the distinction between the two. Especially when people say meaningful change they are usually implying violent change. Also, I'm arguing these exact topics with multiple users. I've written this down in comments to other people. Check my comment history if the comment section is too messy to navigate.

Americans are doing those things. We need to do more and more have been planned.

But you did watch the youtube video with facts and an expert that efficiently explains the concept in a concise video essay that we most certainly need to share with others because defeating neoliberalism is a collective effort, right?

That's a fundamental misunderstanding of political ideologies. These are all different ideologies from fascism. Although neoliberalism and by extension neoconservatism lead to fascism. No one is a classical liberal anymore. Compared to classical liberalism, neoliberalism is fundamentally its own ideology that was developed in the 20th century. Neoconservatism is a more conservative and usually more war hawkish version of neoliberalism.

Here's a useful video about neoliberalism to improve your analysis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zswexNXorOE

It wasn’t fair or free. What part of that can’t you see?

This is a baseless assertion. Our elections have been self-evidently fair and free so far, including the recent Wisconsin and Florida special elections. Musk tried to buy the Wisconsin election and failed to get the candidates he wanted. We'll see what happens with the North Carolina 2024 Supreme Court election, but even that is an attempt to overturn the election results publicly not a secret rigging of the election. If they succeed that makes future fair and free elections even less likely than they are now.

If we fix the democracy,

We also need to people to reject neoliberalism and fascism and accept socialism. Or else we will eventually have to deal with a fascist movement that is so large it is a majority of the population.

We had like 8 parties running, and only 2 very similar parties got the majority of the votes.

We live in a two-party system which is what our first-past-the-post systems trend towards, so that it isn't surprising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

but because progressives are legally denied access

Bernie wasn't legally denied access. He was allowed to run when he wanted to run. The courts regrettably ruled that political parties are private organizations and can run their elections however they want despite the inherent public interest in there being a formal standardized process that political parties should be legally mandated to honor. Especially since the Republicans and Democrats are the only serious vehicles for political platforms in the US.

and violence was used against them when they tried to attend the debates.

This is conspiracism.

That’s neither fair nor free. Its an illusion of choice where the only options support the status quo of oligarchy

The choice between neoliberalism and fascism was a real choice. With neoliberalism we prolong our democracy with the hopes of co-opting the Democratic party with socialist and progressive candidates. With fascism we get progressively efficient death camps until society collapses or everyone is dead. It's worth going into a bit more detail with the fascism choice since that's what we have gone with. In addition to showing the consequences that further establish this was a meaningful choice, it's important to drive home how terrible this choice was.

Now that we are a christo-fascist techno-feudalist dictatorship our ability to change society depends on the failure of that fascist dictatorship. This is not accelerationism, but anti-fascism. The first step to making things better is getting rid of the fascist dictatorship. The fascist dictatorship is both actively making things worse while also blocking attempts to making things better. So if we want to make things better then the fascist dictatorship needs to go.

When it comes to getting rid of the fascist dictatorship, societal collapse, or at least political collapse, is more likely but who knows how long that will take. It's also not clear if it will be caused by internal or external factors. External factors being a foreign military or economic policies aimed at the US. It will probably be more likely be internal factors given the size and capabilities of our military and our leading and foundational role in the modern world economy we created after WWII.

Internal factors could include a whole host of causes. Like disease or famine. Fascist incompetence will probably be what drives whatever the ultimate cause is. We might get infighting when Trump dies of old age or is too debilitated to do anything more than be a figure head. It could also be a revolution that is either peaceful or violent. The peaceful revolution being the statistically more likely to succeed of the two.

It seems like any political violence will result in a civil war at this point. Most of the users on lemmy never spare any thought for the backlash political violence would cause if the MAGA movement had a martyr to justify atrocities. Considering that, it seems unlikely that those advocating for political violence are prepared or even care to fight a protracted and bloody civil war.

None of these possibilities would even be on the table for discussion let alone likely in the immediate term if we had gone with neoliberaism for four more years. We are at the point where we need some kind of a revolution to stop death camps here at home. Our failure to stop a fascist movement that wants to kill the most vulnerable groups of people was a choice. And a clear choice at that.