If the United States is truly a Christian nation founded on Christian Values

Then it needs to get a moral conscience. And I don't mean the hypocritical one it practises now.

It's been said that the early Christians practised socialism and christianity was a force in the European socialist movements.

 You may want to consider making the First Amendment guarantee of separation of Church and State similar to that of French Laïcité if the concept of Socialism being tied to Christian values bothers you.

 

Cooperatives in Italy: the alternative to monopoly, vulture capitalism

 I posted about these previously here, and just had the experience of visiting one recently on a trip to Italy: La Cooperative di Cortina. 

Not sure if you have a negative connotation of socialism and cooperatives, but this was a rather nice department store in Cortina, Italy, It was on the league of John Lewis Partnership in the UK, or something like a Macy's in the US.

It was a pleasant surprise for me to realise that I was in a cooperative.

And it came after seeing dogs in the stores. Although, I have gotten accustomed to seeing them in restaurants. 

Unfortunately, mine were left at home for various reasons: the major one being this was a ski vacation. We were usually out all day.

Anyway, the quality of the items was great and the prices were reasonable.

But the best part is that the workers, and some customers are members. I'm not sure what my membership with REI  (Recreational Equipment, Inc.) is, but I have belonged since I lived in Washington, DC in the late 1990s. REI brands itself as a consumer cooperative.

So, Cooperatives aren't totally alien to the US. They definitely aren't to the UK. 

On the other hand, dogs everywhere is definitely still alien in the US, but I hope for not much longer.

And here are a couple of happy pups in Cortina. 

I'm tossing in this video about Scotland's Community Wealthbuilding law, which sort of ties into the concept of cooperatives.

We Found A Solution To America's Inequality. It's Not Where You'd Expect.

"Often we accept something because it is part of our culture. They make us think it's the only possible world. The factory is closed and you have to look for another job. The end.

I invite a person who lives in America to try and question their own system, because if we don't question our system, we cannot change our system."

The Rich Get Richer (a coming crash?)

 So, Warren Buffet is selling bank stocks for cash because of an impending crash in business real estate.

Maybe that's not the best way to summarise the situation, but it hits a bunch of fallacies.

First off, once someone gets into the millionaire class, they tend to make more money doing nothing than most people do by working. Especially if they are in the Warren Buffet league.

Next is the dislike of fiat currency for something commodity based, which is loaded with fallacies. First, commodites ARE volatile: just do a search on "economic crash commodities" for an eye opener. The Panics of 1869 and 1893 saw quite a bit of controversy around gold and gold reserves. Fiat currency is based upon the stability of the issuing body (usually national, but the European Central Bank issues the Euro, so multinational and definitely governmental). 

But the bottom line is that currency is basically a tool for commerce. The best example of this comes from Terry Nation's show Survivors from the 1970s, where a man has a suitcase he is very protective of. He dies during the night and we find out that its full of paper money, which is pretty much useless since most people have died from the plague. The world of Survivors is the libertarian's dream.

Seriously, while many people don't like central banks, they do a fairly good job of keeping the economy running along. Of course, any realistic discussion of avoiding crashes requires that we talk of things that the right likes to term "socialistic" because there is governmental intervention in the economy and people are supposed to play by the rules (e.g., competition laws).

AOC DISMANTLED As Just Another Dem | Breaking Points

My question for the people who want to say that the Democratic Party is in anyway "Socialist":

Why didn't they run Bernie Sanders in 2016 (and 2020)?

Seriously. They fact that they went with Hillary Clinton, and, even worse, ran JOE BIDEN should show that the Democratic party is in no way Socialist.

I liked AOC at first since she said she was a Berner, but she went with the Democratic Party. And now she is doing things like this. I'll let this person dissect her and the Democratic party, but the Democratic Party is not in any way a left leaning party.

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Don't like socialism, subsidies, and government regulation? Think about this one!

I wasn't going to comment about this, but watching James Cameron talk about the rescue being a charade: especially after hearing a sound like an implosion. He raises a lot of good points--the main one being qualms about the carbon fibre technology used for the sub. Also, testing the sub's hull for integrity. 

Still, think of all the money wasted on trying to find something which blew up because a bunch of people with more dollars than sense wanted to look at the Titanic. Just think of who is paying the bill for all this.

  

In 2019, OceanGate said it was concerned the certification process could slow down development and act as a drag on innovation. “Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation,” it said.

See this for a more detailed description of why this libertarian bullshit is WRONG! https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/23/titanic-sub-us-navy-james-cameron-detected-likely-implosion-titan-submersible

Big Brother/Sister is watching you and you are giving him everything he/she wants

 You might find this interesting if you believe you support "capitalism":

Time to wake up because Big Tech is running your life.

Time to become a Luddite. This tells you the problem and how to fight it.

BTW,  Facebook's owner Meta Platforms saw its stock market value slump by more than $230bn (£169bn) on Thursday, in a record daily loss for a US firm.

The company's share price slide saw chief executive Mark Zuckerberg's net worth fall by $31bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The drop in Mr Zuckerberg's personal fortune was equivalent to the annual gross domestic product of Estonia.

Analysis of this from the BBC (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60255088):

It's clear that Meta is facing a whirlwind of different problems.

Last year Apple brought in its App Tracking Transparency policy.

It lets people choose whether or not they want to be tracked around the internet by companies, like Meta, who can then sell that information to advertisers.

That is a major problem for Facebook, because finding information out about you and selling it to advertisers is exactly how it makes money.

Its quarterly results showed advertising income falling, partly for this reason.

 Get off of social media since YOU are the product. The Billionaires are getting rich off of YOUR information.

 

Oligarchies are also totaliaraian states.

While someone may not like "collectivist" belief such as socialism or communism, they should start to realise that monopoly capitalism and Oligarchic societies are just as dangerous a proposition. In this case, I am referring to "Big Tech".

I left Fesses de Bouc in late July because I was getting tired of its attempts to control my opinions. I have long disliked Microsoft and Google for various reasons, mostly due to their poor quality products.

Yes, there is an alternative, but I'm not really happy with Ubuntu 20.04. The misspellings this time are due to the fact that the mouse is out of whack in this iteration of Ubuntu. That means the zoom is also.

I am writing on a nearly microscopic screen.

But, that's an aside.

Youtube is censoring various news sources, usually right wing ones. I may not agree with Skynews Australia on most points, but it's one of the only places to get dissenting opinions about the Biden Administration. They have been shutdown from posting for the last few days by Youtube, which is part of Google's empire.

The concept of Free Speech is to allow for dissenting opinions in the marketplace of ideas. Shutting down dissenting opinions, especially ones which aren't commonly held is dangerous to society.

Creepy Joe and Horrible Harris probably wouldn't be in charge of the show had the dirt on them been aired early on. Now, it's looking like there will be a republican party landslide. "Another 1994".

Update: Sky News was banned by Youtube for alleged violation of its Covid-19 policies.
https://www.6pr.com.au/disgusting-sky-news-australia-banned-from-youtube-over-covid-19-misinformation/

Robin Hood revolution

I've not really paid that much attention to The GameStop thing, but it points out something I have been pointing out about how the current "market capitalism" works: Or Las Vegas on Wall Street.

The short form is that a group on reddit decided to invest on GameStop since the Hedge Funds were looking at it. Their purchases were aided by a broker called Robinhood Investing, which offers no fee trades. I have some idea of how hedge funds work and it sounds as if the reddit crowd were doing something which the "big players" have been doing for a while.

The big problem is that it was a group of small investors making money instead of the few, wealthy getting rich(er).

That goes against the rules. The powers that be are upset that people outside their circles are using their methods to make money.

It also highlights that the people in power are the ones who caused the problems with the economy of a while back. And they were the ones who got bailed out: not the little guy. 

The current US political situation is also run by pretty much the usual suspects, which is one of the many reasons why I demexited in 2016. I see the power people circling their wagons to put down the revolution.

Unfortunately, the dam has broken.

The powers that be had their opportunity to make a clean transfer of power, but their bets were on the status quo. Unfortunately the best way to handle a revolution once one gets started is to try and control it. Try to keep the forces of change in control.

The problem is that is an option which is being applied FAR too late in the game. The time for real change was 2016, but the powers that be opted for the status quo.

Now it's going to be hard to blame any of the mess ups on anybody else than the people running the show.

How a USM professor became an Internet meme

Maybe you've seen this already, but  this is a very interesting quotation and one that should indeed be an internet meme. From the University of Southern Maine Free Press:

Reddit

This photo and quote of philosophy professor Jason Read became widely viewed after it was posted on the news aggregator Reddit, and the blog of "Star Trek" actor Wil Wheaton

Posted on January 22, 2012 in News
By Dylan Martin

Two weeks ago, a familiar face from the University of Southern Maine Philosophy Department became something of an Internet star, appearing on the popular news aggregation site Reddit and the blog of Wil Wheaton, an actor best known for his roles on “The Big Bang Theory” and as Wesley Crusher in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

“The whole thing caught me off guard,” professor Jason Read said. “It’s interesting to see how quickly something can take off.”
What brought Read to Internet fame was a photo of him with a quote in which he challenged the description of poor people as parasites, instead criticizing the economic “one percent,” the target of many in the Occupy Wall Street slogan.

“People who dismiss the unemployed and dependent as ‘parasites’ fail to understand economics and parasitism. A successful parasite is one that is not recognized by its host, one that can make its host work for it without appearing as a burden. Such is the ruling class in a capitalist society.”

Although Read has delivered lectures and written an essay about Occupy Wall Street, the source of this particular quote may come as a surprise: from a Facebook status update.
Read said he posted the status update on Dec. 29 as something he found “mildly amusing” and that he wouldn’t typically use that kind of discourse for his lectures. By Jan. 8, a friend of Read lifted the quote and superimposed it onto a photo of him, posting it to his own profile and the Occupy Maine Facebook page.
The image was soon posted to Reddit on Jan. 9 and received 5,430 “upvotes” by the website’s members. The image’s hosting site, imgur, has since recorded 152,272 views as of Jan. 21.  Shortly after the image’s appearance on Reddit, Wil Wheaton posted it to his blog on Tumblr, leading thousands of people to share it on their own blog. As a result of his newfound popularity on the Web, Read said he has since received multiple friend requests from strangers.
The proper term for this phenomenon is an “Internet meme,” a term used to describe a concept that sweeps through the World Wide Web with popularity and swiftness. Popular examples of Internet memes include singer Rebecca Black’s music video for “Friday” and the dramatic chipmunk video, which originated from a Japanese game show.
Hundreds of impassioned Reddit users have since left comments on the image’s submission page. And while some members cheered the sentiment, others debated the issues of economic inequality and the exact nature of a “successful parasite.”
“Mr. Read clearly needs a few lessons in biology,” said one member. “For a parasite (or any other organism for that matter) to be deemed successful, it simply has to do only one thing: survive.”
To clarify, Read said the main point of his statement was that “if people are concerned about those making money without work, then they should look at the top 1 percent.”
On the USM Philosophy Department’s Facebook page, one person was inspired by Read’s words and made a plea to the professor:
“Please come to Ireland, sweet Jebus, we need you, Jason.”

I would also add George Monbiot's post Libertarians are the True Social Parasites, October 23, 2007:

Wherever modern humans, living outside the narrow social mores of the clan, are allowed to pursue their genetic interests without constraint, they will hurt other people. They will grab other people’s resources, they will dump their waste in other people’s habitats, they will cheat, lie, steal and kill. And if they have power and weapons, no one will be able to stop them except those with more power and better weapons. Our genetic inheritance makes us smart enough to see that when the old society breaks down, we should appease those who are more powerful than ourselves, and exploit those who are less powerful. The survival strategies which once ensured cooperation among equals now ensure subservience to those who have broken the social contract.

The democratic challenge, which becomes ever more complex as the scale of human interactions increases, is to mimic the governance system of the small hominid troop. We need a state that rewards us for cooperating and punishes us for cheating and stealing. At the same time we must ensure that the state is also treated like a member of the hominid clan and punished when it acts against the common good. Human welfare, just as it was a million years ago, is guaranteed only by mutual scrutiny and regulation.

I doubt that Dr Ridley would be able to sustain his beliefs in a place where the state has broken down. Unless tax-payers’ money and public services are available to repair the destruction it causes, libertarianism destroys people’s savings, wrecks their lives and trashes their environment. It is the belief system of the free-rider, who is perpetually subsidised by responsible citizens. As biologists we both know what this means. Self-serving as governments might be, the true social parasites are those who demand their dissolution.

 In other words, those who live upon the fruits of other's labout without proper compensation are the true parasites.

Michael Palin's Speech about Socialism from GBH

Of course, it helps to see the series this comes from to get what is going on  here, but:

"socialism is the redistribution not only of wealth, but of care, of concern and of equality, and of decency and belief in mankind."