They actually turn around and will slash the cost for the uninsured the second you dispute it. They don’t actually expect people to pay that much
It’s a weird dance with insurance companies, they say it’s costs 20k and then insurance says “ok, I’ll pay 7k” and you pay 5k
An uninsured person might get away with paying even less than $5k when it’s all said and done. It’s not a real healthcare system
You’re just doing a whataboutism
This is the wrong place to put in work, we’re already working over here and you’re not helping.
Go find somewhere people aren’t already talking about a genocide, go build unrelated threads about it. Go find someone talking about France
You’re acting like that Republicans right now… No, we don’t want to protect Bill Clinton from the Epstein files, stop bringing him up. We’re talking about Trump right now
No, you fucking organize. Do you think a platform comes for free?
You have to work for it. If you actually cared for the cause, and weren’t bullshitting, you’d put in the work
I was just giving them enough rope to hang themselves with honestly
My positions are real… Cultural genocide is bad, and we should stop it from happening if we can
Is the thing in France happening? Probably not, but if it was I’d want it to stop
That’s the benefit of having real beliefs. When they start dancing around and mudding the waters, you can ignore all that and assert your beliefs proudly
Unfortunately, it also works if you believe in bad things, but luckily tankies (can’t believe they’re self admitted, that’s so rare) have to pretend they believe in good things
No, that’s whataboutism.
When we’re talking about China, I don’t need info on the horrors America has inflicted on the world. Just like when I talk about America’s past, I don’t compare it to Canadian history
Advocate for good things and against bad things. Don’t interrupt people already doing that
I think you just don’t know the difference between what imperialism was like post WW2 and what it looks like today
It is imperialism when you economically colonize other states. It’s not necessarily evil, but you can’t deny the power dynamics that are at play
And public ownership is absolutely something that can and does exist under capitalism. In fact, the US would barely have to make any legal changes at all to do what they do… We’re just allergic to actually doing it
You can stop jumping through hoops if you just look at their system instead of trying to reconcile their word with direct observation
Why would you ever listen to politicians? The CCP lies constantly, obviously, they’re a government
If not imperialist, why imperialism shaped? I don’t care if their ideology is different, they’re doing exactly the same thing! Belts and roads are literally loans and investments, there is nothing you can say that changes that fact
Private ownership? That doesn’t explain away anything!
There are no billionaires without mass explotation. Period.
You’re just describing a flavor of capitalism. China has a system of controlled capitalism. It’s a different flavor, it seems like it’s a better flavor that I’d like to try, but it’s still capitalism
You’re jumping through some crazy hoops there when it’s just not that complicated.
Yes, they have largely stopped doing it, which is good.
No, it’s not good that it’s happening somewhere else. I haven’t heard about that at all. Maybe we should make it an issue so they stop too???
This is not a zero sum game. I don’t care what France is doing when I’m talking about China or vice versa, I just want less bad things in the world
I’m saying it’s religion because how in the world can there be billionaires in the system you’re describing??? To hold those concepts together requires nothing short of belief
I don’t need to read your book list. Smart people can trick themselves into the most wild of mental gymnastics, there is no possible justification for billionaires. At best your book is an explanation of how China has failed to live up to their stated beliefs
Wise people recognize the truth when they see it. Billionaires come from mass exploitation, and only from mass exploitation. There’s simply no other way.
Now, we could talk about the explotation, what China does better than the West and such, but only if you can set down your beliefs about China
I could very easily have that conversation, because I haven’t put China, the US, or any country on a pedestal
They are real places with real people and real problems to me. I can look at them clearly and with minimal bias, because I know I will find humans there if I zoom in, with all the same human problems, but maybe better or worse solutions that I could learn from
And that sounds like religion to me
How many billionaires does China have? The answer would be zero if what you say is true
But it’s not.
I see China clearly. I don’t like their authoritarianism, but at least they’re nation building. They’re a very big county, with lots of problems, but they are at least attempting to address them
I can see both what they do well and what they do poorly. My number one take away from them is how important and achievable it is to reign in corporations
No, imperialism isn’t bad vibes. It’s when you build a factory in Africa, but the owners of the company are a Chinese investment group. It’s where the value doesn’t flow around the community, it’s where it gets sucked up and extracted
And it’s good for a while - the workers are making bank… Until their economy starts to catch up
Then you have an industrialized country, but half of the profits go to China, or pays the interest on debts to China
Belts and roads is China first. It’s Chinese economic imperialism. It’s the same forces, they want to offshore manufacturing and create beneficial trading partners. And they’re not trying to lose money doing it, they’re trying to hand out loans and make investments
It’s the same forces. It’s just a kinder approach to the process, but then everyone does it that way now
Your glasses are broken. Your analytical lens is making you fail to see the world clearly
No, I’m saying your glasses are broken. They’re not helping you see more clearly, they’re blurring reality
That’s why I called it a weird religion.
Imperialism isn’t some shadowy force. It’s just a bad thing being done to others out in the open. On its face, it’s unfair. You don’t have to prepare people to understand why it’s unfair, they just have to believe you when you point at it
Do you think China doesn’t do imperialism? Do you think the USSR was being benevolent when it did the same thing, just a little more fairly and a better message?
If you can understand these examples of imperialism, I’m willing to take back my claim that your glasses are broken
I bet I can describe the mechanisms of imperialism better than you, because I’m not weighed down by a weird religion
I just witnessed something strange while doing a job in the “global south”, and started reading. And kept reading. There was no analytical lens required. It’s all pretty naked and unapologetic
After WW2 the US came in with warships and made deals at gunpoint, but while also “offering” industrialization. Today, the IMF and the world Bank keep nations on debt treadmills to force austerity under threat of being removed from the global trade network, as their natural resources are drained away under those deals
It’s not complex. No further reading required to understand, further reading will just expand on that short paragraph I just wrote. No special analytical lens required to view it, it’s just the uncomfortable truth. It just gets worse as you dig into it
Yeah, I think I can just say yes
You can have causes. You can talk about politics
But if you’re not occasionally making a joke or responding to the puppy girls, why are you actually here?
The experience is very different. It’s like going to the club with a group of people
You’re going to have a lot more positive interactions if you choose wisely, and a lot more negative ones if you don’t. You’re still going to the same place, with all the same people, but it’ll hit different
You’re not categorizing genocides properly
The Uyghurs don’t have their own news agencies, and they’re not being splattered over the streets like Palestinians
It’s a cultural genocide, it was more like what the US did to the natives. Forced education, over surveillance and policing, forced marriages…
They’ve backed off on it, and it’s better than killing people… But it definitely isn’t good
Lmao, I deleted that part of my response, but real political movement don’t have reading lists
Throw out the imperial analysis. It’s not useful. It’s not some bold lens that sees through capitalism - it’s just the observations of a guy. Not an insightful guy like Marx, like… Just like a normal, average academic
You don’t need a fresh analytical lens to look through imperialism. It’s just history. It just happened. You can just study it, it’s not subtle or special
Marxism-Leninism posits that we should create a working class party, study the given conditions of the country we are in (history, contradictions, class struggle) in order to correctly identify the key issues to organize around. In doing so, the working class needs to gradually choose the vanguard party, meaning a vanguard party that fails to do so is no vanguard.
This. This right here. What is the vanguard party? Oh, it’s the party the workers rally behind! We’ll know it because the workers will rally behind it!
Marxism is a useful analytical framework to use when looking at capitalism and alternate systems
Ml is a belief system full of holes plastered over by no true Scottman logic. No part of it is effective in the current day and age as political guidebook, we live in an entirely different era
Marxists do. Ml? It’s like… Unite the workers of the world by teaching then dielectrical materialism!
No… No. That’s not how reality works. You do have to restrict your ideology to reality, I don’t mind if your ideas spill over the sides, but they do have to exist in material reality
How does it break down? It seems like it would work normally, if a little strangely