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Ansem

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I believe more in gun rights, but we still need background checks. There needs to be some degree of bureaucratic barrier to entry done by actors separate from the government.

I'm pretty much considered a left-libertarian and you... definitely aren't a libertarian. You're more of an anarchist.

7 hours ago, Perfect Infinitive Exitus said:

I think the reason america and individual cities like hong kong became such big economic superpowers in the first place, is abolishing regulation and services, except for those, that allow people to work and work freely.

I think you need to read into the history and the economy... and what's causing the current protests. Because abolishing regulations and also not enforcing regulations is part of the issue.

China lifted many out of poverty through taxes on the rich. I don't think you really understand economics outside of your bubble; nobody actually does, but whatever you're suggesting has been demonstrably proved false, until you said "we need to increase public spending towards poorer states."

Although, bringing tech companies in and providing jobs leads to gentrification, so you may want to think more carefully. I'll just spit some white-people rhetoric at some red state / rural areas: "it's a cultural issue." I kinda stopped feeling as bad for them a year or two ago because of how little of a shit this community gave towards the black community when the black community had the same problems and had it blamed on culture.

But that's just an aside. I'm fucking cold about black (and minority) issues for the past few weeks. Probably because I've been telling conservative gun owners for years that their reasoning for defense against the government is bullshit if they're not willing to defend other peoples' rights or... if they're not willing to accept a protest, considering the last few BLM protests got labels of being thugs, so the heavy pro-2A people don't even give a shit or care and even condemn when people use self-defense. You can check this thread for a user named tuvarkz and his tirades against BLM and see exactly what I mean.

Edited by Lord Raven
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Im not against background checks, i think its reasonable

?

i said no such thing as needing to increase public spending, im actively against that, where did i say that? are you reading what i said?

I said "public spending needs to be abolished", especially if you want states with low taxes to be less federally dependant

And i implied, that, if businesses move into areas with low infrastructure, their presence will incentivize that the infrastructure is being expanded on, so that their business flourishes, while bringing jobs in.

Protests are fine but i think if you riot and loot stores, you better watch out for a double barrel shotgun pointing between your eyebrows.

 

Edit: i also don't think gentrification is such a bad thing tbh.

If you don't keep improving yourself, there is no value within you and if you have no value, why keep you around?

Obviously value is a relative thing: in the case of businesses moving into low tax red states, the act of gentrifying is usually a thing of value in those communities, since, if it is the business and jobs that are being valued, the houses and mindsets, that go against those values, disappear as a byproduct; the means by which they disappear are an afterthought.

I think "gentrification" is a special case of environmental adaption to a change, whether or not this kind of adaption is a good thing or not remains to be debated and if it is a bad thing, find solutions to replace the trend, to make sure the 'bad outcome' does not happen.

Edited by Perfect Infinitive Exitus
Response to gentrification
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5 hours ago, Perfect Infinitive Exitus said:

Well, if red states had higher taxes, then they would probably be less federally dependant and if public services would be almost completely abolished, there would be even less dependance on the blue states.

Problem with that is red states are often lacking the infrastructure that blue states possess, which leads to no corporations being stationed there, maybe once people like elon musk move out of cali into a red state the infrastructure would expand and in todays political climate and technological expansion process, this might actually happen.

Building and maintaining infrastructures like roads, schools, and hospitals are part of public services.

With how allergic Republicans are when it comes to spending on critical public services, people will remain poor and people as a whole will have to pay more for things like health care as individuals will have less collective bargaining power to bring down prices. With less overall disposable spending, there is less money around to circulate back into the economy to drive further growth.

40 minutes ago, Perfect Infinitive Exitus said:

Protests are fine but i think if you riot and loot stores, you better watch out for a double barrel shotgun pointing between your eyebrows.

Lumping protesters with rioters and looters is just as stupid as lumping law abiding gun owners with mass shooters.

Most protesters are peaceful, just as most gun owners are not serial killers.

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2 hours ago, Perfect Infinitive Exitus said:

If you don't keep improving yourself, there is no value within you and if you have no value, why keep you around?

Let's pretend I took that attitude to the people on these forums.  What do you think would happen to you?

Now expand that to something far more serious than a virtual conversation spot, where people live and die by such principles.

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I think there is places, where taxpayer money is well invested, which is national security and national economic incentives, anything other than that can be done cheaper and better in a competetive free market; the more options, the better.

Be it infrastructure construction and maintainance, education, healthcare or other, a service independant from the government does well because it relies on the service it provides to stay afloat, while the government can choose to keep the least efficient programs, regulations and workers inside, with little to no cost, cause, who is gonna fire someone who has immunity in the government? Oftentimes those programs, as cancerous as they are give voters a short term feel-good incentive to vote for the candidate who sucks up to the largest demographic the most, often removing their independance and their civil liberties under the guise of "help".

32 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Let's pretend I took that attitude to the people on these forums.  What do you think would happen to you?

Now expand that to something far more serious than a virtual conversation spot, where people live and die by such principles.

I said before, that value is relative. As you value what i do and am differently than others, you have a different perception of what "improving" means; you are free to tell me what you think i shpuld improve on, i would be glad to listen as i think i am not perfect at all, like my way of expressing myself or bad habits surrounding my daily life.

Do you think i have not improved? I stopped using arbitrary attributes of arbitrary people who possess arbitrary traits to express negativity aside from maybe "stupid", if that is not an improvement, i don't know what is... But im digressing

I think as a moderator or "community guideline enforcer" you take that attitude and apply it consciously, those that do not improve their means of conversing according to the code of conduct (which means they don't value it) disappear by means of either being shunned or warmed and eventually even banned, discouraged from acting the way they acted before or simply choosing not to post anymore because their values are not appreciated.

The same is true for the communities which value jobs and business and choose to shape their environment in such a way that it allows for the people who value those things to flourish (which is gentrification), the people who don't, disappear in the same fashion.

It makes sense, right?

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39 minutes ago, Perfect Infinitive Exitus said:

I said before, that value is relative. As you value what i do and am differently than others, you have a different perception of what "improving" means; you are free to tell me what you think i shpuld improve on, i would be glad to listen as i think i am not perfect at all, like my way of expressing myself or bad habits surrounding my daily life.

Do you think i have not improved? I stopped using arbitrary attributes of arbitrary people who possess arbitrary traits to express negativity aside from maybe "stupid", if that is not an improvement, i don't know what is... But im digressing

I think as a moderator or "community guideline enforcer" you take that attitude and apply it consciously, those that do not improve their means of conversing according to the code of conduct (which means they don't value it) disappear by means of either being shunned or warmed and eventually even banned, discouraged from acting the way they acted before or simply choosing not to post anymore because their values are not appreciated.

The same is true for the communities which value jobs and business and choose to shape their environment in such a way that it allows for the people who value those things to flourish (which is gentrification), the people who don't, disappear in the same fashion.

It makes sense, right?

Which means by your very words, I should ban you on the spot. You're producing nothing of value, and the conversation so far is everyone else telling you how wrong you are.  You post stuff like this:

10 hours ago, Perfect Infinitive Exitus said:

Are you assuming people just irresponsibly fire arbitrarily?

There is many cities and states with the gun rights being much freer than in states like new york and these places are basically crime free, probably because everyone has a gun in their home and they don't think about doing anything stupid, when there is potential death at every corner.

which only works if you looked at the two US-centric graphs here and decided that you know more than literally everyone else who has discussed this issue (hint: you don't).

Self-improvement means being able to step back out of yourself and seriously question whether or not your beliefs hold water.  It means admitting that you are wrong about a lot of important things (starting with every single post you've made in this subforum).  Only when you've reduced yourself to nothing can you attempt to rebuild, hopefully for the better.

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3 minutes ago, Perfect Infinitive Exitus said:

I think there is places, where taxpayer money is well invested, which is national security and national economic incentives, anything other than that can be done cheaper and better in a competetive free market; the more options, the better.

Be it infrastructure construction and maintainance, education, healthcare or other, a service independant from the government does well because it relies on the service it provides to stay afloat, while the government can choose to keep the least efficient programs, regulations and workers inside, with little to no cost, cause, who is gonna fire someone who has immunity in the government? Oftentimes those programs, as cancerous as they are give voters a short term feel-good incentive to vote for the candidate who sucks up to the largest demographic the most, often removing their independance and their civil liberties under the guise of "help".

Having more options is not always better. It makes no sense to have multiple utility providers in the same region. While utilities are private companies, they are heavily regulated local monopolies. If you let utility companies have free reign, there will be less utilities, they will be of poorer quality, and the prices will be sky high. People's disposable income will decrease and less spending means less economic growth. People would be economic slaves to utility companies just to have light, water, and be clean.

The goal of having capitalism as the foundation of our economy is not the sake for having capitalism, the goal is to maximize economic freedom and promote national prosperity. If capitalism in certain industries is detrimental to overall national prosperity and hurts overall economic freedom, capitalism should be modified or be completely removed from that particular industry.

Some industries needs to be nationalized or under government control, some should be heavily regulated monopolies, some work better with looser public-private cooperation, and some should be left out of government hands. For most industries, I agree that the government should not mess around with them too much. However, military, transportation, utilities, education, healthcare, and agriculture are critical industries (there are probably a few more, but these are the most prominent ones that come to mind) that should not be left to their own devices.

For obvious reasons, use of military forces should be monopolized by the state, but military research and production can be offloaded to private companies with heavy regulation and government control.

Building roads, highways, bridges, sidewalks, etc. are not something private companies can tackle by themselves, and these are extremely expensive endeavors that needs government direction and support. Public transportation like buses and trains are also better off being handled by the government; the profit generated by these services simply is not enough to warrant private companies to invest in them most of the time, but having public transportation available benefits the overall economy, and that leads to greater economic freedom and prosperity.

While education can be partially privatized, especially for higher education, the backbone of the industry needs to be nationalized or at least be under local government control to set a minimal standard for the benefit of all. If we allow complete privatization, we get dumb shit like Trump's school ripping people off on massive scale and we would be dumbing down our population even further. Americans in general are not known to be bright and intelligent by international standards, and privatizing anymore of it is going to make things worse.

What is true for education is also true for healthcare. We are on the low end of life expectancy compared to other liberal democracies because of how privatized our healthcare is. Americans are fat, unhealthy, and die young, and the population is not able to afford healthcare to better address these issues. Without the bargaining power of a government who has the ability to control the entire demand side of the market, healthcare companies can pick off individual sick patients one by one out of the general population like a pack of wolves.

Agriculture is crucial for food security, which in turn is crucial for national security and stability. While I do not think agriculture needs heavy government management in most cases in this day and age, occasional bailouts and price controls are necessary in my opinion to keep the industry alive and the population fed incase there is a need for an emergency draft.

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3 hours ago, eclipse said:

Which means by your very words, I should ban you on the spot. You're producing nothing of value, and the conversation so far is everyone else telling you how wrong you are.  You post stuff like this:

which only works if you looked at the two US-centric graphs here and decided that you know more than literally everyone else who has discussed this issue (hint: you don't).

Self-improvement means being able to step back out of yourself and seriously question whether or not your beliefs hold water.  It means admitting that you are wrong about a lot of important things (starting with every single post you've made in this subforum).  Only when you've reduced yourself to nothing can you attempt to rebuild, hopefully for the better.


I don't know what youre trying to imply, I don't think im arrogant enough to assume, that i know more than anyone here about anything related to guns, crime and deaths, and i don't think that "knowing more than everyone else" should be a requirement for posting in this thread; like many, im just making a projection based on my beliefs and how that might likely follow through.
I think this table supports the claim i made enough to justify what i said
Of course this table also shows that there are many states and cities, which do have more freedom in giving out guns than new york and that do have more gun related crime associated with them, the reason probably being an environment, in which this relatively simple principle of "death at every corner, which causes you to be shot if you wrong", doesn't work.

These incidents and causes have to be determined on a case by case basis and then a projection has to be made what circumstances would've prevented this outcome; projections which don't take away preexisting civil liberties of the american people. My projection was, that, if some criminal or a group of them is acting unjustly according to law, you might as well have an opportunity to defend yourself instead of being a scared sitting duck, unable to do anything, after all, criminals don't really care about the law, why should they care about gun control? Guns will just make their victims stronger and by the time police arrives, they're gone as fast as they came; therefore equipping every citizen with the ability to defend themselves -and the ones they care about- from bad actors, is the best thing that can be done without taking away any rights.

In my opinion background checks, education and sufficient training help prevent deaths caused by irresponsible behaviour too, along with equipping those individuals with basic fundamental knowledge. This would be a type of public spending i am for and i think this falls under "national security".

Also eclipse, as the judge of the community, why aren't you banning me, if i do indeed not provide any value?
If there is no value in me existing (according to you), then permanently getting rid of me is a net neutral, if not a benefit, because my valuelessness takes away attention from the 'real value', which would've been able to flourish if it wasn't for me existing, that is of course all assuming, that "everyone" "telling me im wrong" and every instance of your and any other individuals interaction with me has produced no value (to you specifically).
I don't really mind getting banned, if it means everyone else has a better time being alive; whether or not that is true for everyone is up to you, you are the mod, it would certainly be true for me.

Saying im wrong about every single post i made seems like an odd thing to say, since most of it is opinion relative to what i value, self improvement falls under the same category, i would like to debate this further but instead of doing it here, i will probably make a new thread, this one is about US Politics after all and i think i digressed too much.

I think the concept of "free healthcare" for example only works decently, if the government makes regulation that prevents or disincentivizes the individual from living unhealthily, that way a lot taxpayer money can be saved on things resulting from an unhealthy lifestyle; Many european countries as well as japan, who is probably the one most successful in doing this, try and succeed with great results. I like, that there are countries that do this and do it successfully, but i think the USA is founded on principles of freedom and self discipline, which allows you to live as unhealthily as you want or not, according to your own value structure/beliefs, at the cost of nobody else but you and the things that care for you.

I agree with standards for education but thats all i agree on, even then, imo there needs to be distinctions made, im less for a SAT, which is all encompassing and more for an SAT for every field, like one for each STEM field, one for each language, one for history, writing, programming, etc, so that you can value an individual based on their ability to do specific things and less with a number assigned to you based on arbitrary things, which many students often don't care for and "will not need in their life", which i personally disagree with but thats their own decision, if they want to specialize in spanish or maths but completely disregard P.E or History, which would otherwise hold them back.
I think government has a decent idea of what public facilities need to be fixed, i just think they completely lack the expertise in planning, which is how a lot of taxpayer money gets lost in the system, combine that with corrupt officials, the employees slacking off and officials running their mouth and you get things like this

Agriculture is fine for the most part, there is just some problems with artificial monopolies and crony capitalism; for example sugar has a huge lobby, one of the things this blobby was responsible for was funding studies that claim sugar to not be bad at all, which over the years trickled down into our education, largely responsible for misinformation, causing the epidemic of bad health; there being some good documentaries exposing the sugar lobby and the things behind it. And of course you can say, that regulations should be set in place to prevent such acts, but the regulations are often funded by the big companies and if they aren't, big companies can usually set lawyers or subsystems in place, which circumvent that regulation via a loophole, while the regular small businesses trying to work under the same thing suffer.

An example is minimum wage work, big companies like amazon loved the proposal, it gave them a reason to replace their workers with machines, while small businesses struggled to get employees for their work and young people miss out on another opportunity to get some real life work experience(which is often more valuable than education), which means that they are incentivized to get into college first, to get a degree or an arbitrary qualification to warrant working for that minimum wage, which actually just gets them into debt and makes them often useless and dependant on government help, when they couldve just worked a job that didnt pay that good but they couldve lived with friends or family for a while longer, till they had enough money to finance their education or work their way up high enough to get into a position that lets them be self sustaining.

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Can you please split your sentenced into multiple sentences? Your last paragraph is a trainwreck because it's like one sentence.

Anyway, your poor formatting is why I'm not responding to that. You might not be intentionally gish galloping, but the points you're making can be worded far more succinctly.

I legitimately do not know what point you're making either. For instance, this:

1 hour ago, Perfect Infinitive Exitus said:

Agriculture is fine for the most part, there is just some problems with artificial monopolies and crony capitalism; for example sugar has a huge lobby, one of the things this blobby was responsible for was funding studies that claim sugar to not be bad at all, which over the years trickled down into our education, largely responsible for misinformation, causing the epidemic of bad health; there being some good documentaries exposing the sugar lobby and the things behind it. And of course you can say, that regulations should be set in place to prevent such acts, but the regulations are often funded by the big companies and if they aren't, big companies can usually set lawyers or subsystems in place, which circumvent that regulation via a loophole, while the regular small businesses trying to work under the same thing suffer.

You're just saying "what's the point if people are gonna break laws." That's basically all I'm reading here, lobbies set regulations and rich businesses break laws. It's not false at all, but the ultimate point is what? We should do away with regulations? Government is useless? We should arm ourselves and destroy the proletariat?

This is why I'm not taking a lot of your posts super seriously. You're just bringing up problems, you're not discussing researched solutions or the solutions at play, and sometimes you're more abstract than contextualizing. We've gone beyond a point where abstract is meaningful, in the context of the US right now, especially since it's pretty clear laws and regulations work when they consistently manage to fuck black people over more than any other race.

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3 hours ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

The MAGA rallies are back and registration requires that attendees do not sue:

Igjw4Xi.png

 

Surprised they didn't already have a clause stating that you couldn't sue the campaign if something went wrong at a rally. Sounds like the kind of scummy thing Trump would do.

3 hours ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

And the following are now being sold by the Trump campaign:

fwBbzMi.jpg

And that is as horrifically culturally ignorant and unaware as I'd expect the campaign to be. I hope to god I never see one of those in person.

1 hour ago, Perfect Infinitive Exitus said:

These incidents and causes have to be determined on a case by case basis and then a projection has to be made what circumstances would've prevented this outcome; projections which don't take away preexisting civil liberties of the american people. My projection was, that, if some criminal or a group of them is acting unjustly according to law, you might as well have an opportunity to defend yourself instead of being a scared sitting duck, unable to do anything, after all, criminals don't really care about the law, why should they care about gun control? Guns will just make their victims stronger and by the time police arrives, they're gone as fast as they came; therefore equipping every citizen with the ability to defend themselves -and the ones they care about- from bad actors, is the best thing that can be done without taking away any rights.

In my opinion background checks, education and sufficient training help prevent deaths caused by irresponsible behavior too, along with equipping those individuals with basic fundamental knowledge. This would be a type of public spending i am for and i think this falls under "national security".

Here's the thing though, criminals need to be able to break the law first in order the break it. This is why stricter gun control will still effect criminals. Closing the loopholes that make it easy for people who shouldn't have weapons to get them will immediately lower the amount of potential criminals with guns. Stricter laws are generally harder to break in big ways.

Wait, so you want to give every able bodied citizen a gun, the proper education about guns, and enough training to efficiently wield them, and you're calling it national security? This also dives into the whole "Good guy with a gun" thing which is something I don't even want to dive into tonight. At what point is the line between national and personal safety drawn for you? Why does individual gun ownership factor into national security?

1 hour ago, Perfect Infinitive Exitus said:

Also eclipse, as the judge of the community, why aren't you banning me, if i do indeed not provide any value?
If there is no value in me existing (according to you), then permanently getting rid of me is a net neutral, if not a benefit, because my valuelessness takes away attention from the 'real value', which would've been able to flourish if it wasn't for me existing, that is of course all assuming, that "everyone" "telling me im wrong" and every instance of your and any other individuals interaction with me has produced no value (to you specifically).
I don't really mind getting banned, if it means everyone else has a better time being alive; whether or not that is true for everyone is up to you, you are the mod, it would certainly be true for me.

Dude, you missed the entire point of what she said. That was a critique of your logic that just went right over your head.

1 hour ago, Perfect Infinitive Exitus said:

I think the concept of "free healthcare" for example only works decently, if the government makes regulation that prevents or disincentivizes the individual from living unhealthily, that way a lot taxpayer money can be saved on things resulting from an unhealthy lifestyle; Many european countries as well as japan, who is probably the one most successful in doing this, try and succeed with great results. I like, that there are countries that do this and do it successfully, but i think the USA is founded on principles of freedom and self discipline, which allows you to live as unhealthily as you want or not, according to your own value structure/beliefs, at the cost of nobody else but you and the things that care for you.

Alright, this is a great start, mostly. But let's think about this more then. So free healthcare works wonders in many other countries, in these countries there is a culture of understand your affect on others as well as generally trying to stay healthy. Meanwhile the U.S. gets caught up in it's own freedom that we ignore this. This much I can agree with you with. Now, to say this is why free healthcare wouldn't work in America is a bit much. I'd say that free healthcare is totally unfeasible in our current American political system, and we'd need to make some massive steps to even potentially have it be feasible, but our culture isn't really something that's too in the way. In fact the implementation of a free healthcare would likely fix this cultural issue in decent time. This is because now there is an economic reason to stay healthy, less taxes, and an economic reason to, for lack of a better term, bully everyone else into being healthy. Essentially, it's "Well my taxes are up because of you, so you better fix that". Is that nice? No, but it is what would likely happen.

1 hour ago, Perfect Infinitive Exitus said:

I agree with standards for education but thats all i agree on, even then, imo there needs to be distinctions made, im less for a SAT, which is all encompassing and more for an SAT for every field, like one for each STEM field, one for each language, one for history, writing, programming, etc, so that you can value an individual based on their ability to do specific things and less with a number assigned to you based on arbitrary things, which many students often don't care for and "will not need in their life", which i personally disagree with but thats their own decision, if they want to specialize in spanish or maths but completely disregard P.E or History, which would otherwise hold them back.

What you exactly just described is basically what the IB (International Baccalaureate) program is. To make a long explanation on what that is short, it's basically an educational program which is designed so people everywhere in schools across the world that have the program ensure the kids that are in the program have the same standardized education. Essentially, it's a very high quality program so gifted minds across the world get similar educations. There are two kinds of programs within IB, a diploma and career path. Diploma is just an enhanced High School experience, except that then you'd take an SAT like test for every class you take. They're not really SATs, but it's close enough. Meanwhile the career program then allows students who know what they want to do to specialize into the specific programs they want to. I went through the Diploma program, I had a lot of friends who went through it with me, and many who did the career path. Frankly it's a system that I think the rest of America should loosely implement, as then it there would be proper standards of education across America that aren't "Here's a dumb test run by a company who has a monopoly on these kinds of test that specifically try to screw you over, and also this basically determines if you get into college or not". If you can't tell, I hate the SAT (And AP testing but that's another issue entirely).

1 hour ago, Perfect Infinitive Exitus said:

Agriculture is fine for the most part, there is just some problems with artificial monopolies and crony capitalism; for example sugar has a huge lobby, one of the things this blobby was responsible for was funding studies that claim sugar to not be bad at all, which over the years trickled down into our education, largely responsible for misinformation, causing the epidemic of bad health; there being some good documentaries exposing the sugar lobby and the things behind it. And of course you can say, that regulations should be set in place to prevent such acts, but the regulations are often funded by the big companies and if they aren't, big companies can usually set lawyers or subsystems in place, which circumvent that regulation via a loophole, while the regular small businesses trying to work under the same thing suffer.

An example is minimum wage work, big companies like amazon loved the proposal, it gave them a reason to replace their workers with machines, while small businesses struggled to get employees for their work and young people miss out on another opportunity to get some real life work experience(which is often more valuable than education), which means that they are incentivized to get into college first, to get a degree or an arbitrary qualification to warrant working for that minimum wage, which actually just gets them into debt and makes them often useless and dependant on government help, when they couldve just worked a job that didnt pay that good but they couldve lived with friends or family for a while longer, till they had enough money to finance their education or work their way up high enough to get into a position that lets them be self sustaining.

Alright there is a stupid amount to unpack here. Artificial monopolies are exactly why we need regulations. The story of the sugar industry is an example of why we generally need to keep money out of politics, however that's more a story of corruption and manipulation, not of regulations failing. And then we come to the minimum wage. First of all, automation is a thing that's gonna happen, but it sure as hell ain't happening right now to the extent that you're saying. Amazon still employs nearly a million people in the United States, and they still treat their employees like shit. Why would they need to automate when they already treat their employees like robots? https://time.com/5629233/amazon-warehouse-employee-treatment-robots/

And I don't even know where to start on the rest of your statements against minimum wage. I presume the statement on business struggling with employees is referring to times before the pandemic, since blaming that on minimum wage now is absurd. Now, the jobs pre-pandemic these kids would get are like, bottom of the barrel shit. Fast food, big brand clothing stores, other small jobs. Maybe in a few cases this is useful to a kid, like if they wanna be cook or some other service job, but to most kids, this "real life work experience" might as well be equally as arbitrary as you consider a degree to be. Also your phrasing is horrible, saying that people who go to college but then get stuck at a low paying job just results in them being saddled with debt and "useless" is incredibly ignorant. If you can see the issues of system, why not try to work for improvement? You can see that college is stupid expensive, and that degrees are necessary for jobs where they aren't necessarily relevant for them. This is not the fault of the individual, this is the fault of the system itself, and how it is self serving. Also, the alternative solution you provided is equally as ignorant. Some people don't have the opportunity to just wait and get a bum job while living with their families. Plus, it isn't even feasible for the average American to just work their way up to a higher position that's self sustaining. You said yourself that it's a job that doesn't pay good. Wow, the guy who was a cashier at Mcdonalds making minimum wage is now a manager at Mcdonalds, making like a dollar more than minimum wage. That's an idea that needs to die, the American spirit of "I'll work my way up" simply is something that modern society doesn't allow. It's a dream we all have, but it ain't gonna happen.

Listen to what Raven says, you bring up problems, but then don't think on them. You don't research solutions beyond a minimum level that slightly supports your views. And like, reread what you write sometimes, see if you've gotten the point across succinctly. If you've written a paragraph long sentence that just rambles, maybe add some punctuation and fix it up instead of just sending it. Sure, this is an opinion forum, but if you're debating, then you put your opinions up to the scrutiny of others. But if you can't properly state and explain your opinions then it's like debating with a random word generator that occasionally puts out a coherent sentence.

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1 hour ago, Perfect Infinitive Exitus said:

I think the concept of "free healthcare" for example only works decently, if the government makes regulation that prevents or disincentivizes the individual from living unhealthily, that way a lot taxpayer money can be saved on things resulting from an unhealthy lifestyle; Many european countries as well as japan, who is probably the one most successful in doing this, try and succeed with great results. I like, that there are countries that do this and do it successfully, but i think the USA is founded on principles of freedom and self discipline, which allows you to live as unhealthily as you want or not, according to your own value structure/beliefs, at the cost of nobody else but you and the things that care for you.

Freedom and self discipline are fine, but having nationalized health care gives more freedom over a greater amount of people in the long run in my opinion. People are less likely to be economically trapped by medical bills and accidents that are of no fault of their own. Having the entire nation setting the price of healthcare means the nation overall will save more money and the people as a whole are more economically free to spend more on what they want.

1 hour ago, Perfect Infinitive Exitus said:

I agree with standards for education but thats all i agree on, even then, imo there needs to be distinctions made, im less for a SAT, which is all encompassing and more for an SAT for every field, like one for each STEM field, one for each language, one for history, writing, programming, etc, so that you can value an individual based on their ability to do specific things and less with a number assigned to you based on arbitrary things, which many students often don't care for and "will not need in their life", which i personally disagree with but thats their own decision, if they want to specialize in spanish or maths but completely disregard P.E or History, which would otherwise hold them back.

Many of the "arbitrary" things we do in lower education are necessary in later adult life. Being an upstanding citizen and informed voter requires a basic foundation of well-rounded knowledge and Americans today are clearly lacking that. The huge discrepancy in historical knowledge, scientific understanding, and basic logic and critical thinking skills between Americans and our international counterparts is appalling.

I do not expect Americans to be geniuses knowing every historical date or math formula by heart, but I do expect my fellow citizens to know how to solve common math problems using a calculator, know how to look up information and which source is trustworthy, and have the humbleness to let experts make decisions and have faith in their decisions instead of being an ignoramus who thinks they know it all.

1 hour ago, Perfect Infinitive Exitus said:

I think government has a decent idea of what public facilities need to be fixed, i just think they completely lack the expertise in planning, which is how a lot of taxpayer money gets lost in the system, combine that with corrupt officials, the employees slacking off and officials running their mouth and you get things like this

That is what government oversight and auditing committees are for, and Republicans have been continuously overriding them or outright getting rid of them lately.

1 hour ago, Perfect Infinitive Exitus said:

An example is minimum wage work, big companies like amazon loved the proposal, it gave them a reason to replace their workers with machines, while small businesses struggled to get employees for their work and young people miss out on another opportunity to get some real life work experience(which is often more valuable than education), which means that they are incentivized to get into college first, to get a degree or an arbitrary qualification to warrant working for that minimum wage, which actually just gets them into debt and makes them often useless and dependant on government help, when they couldve just worked a job that didnt pay that good but they couldve lived with friends or family for a while longer, till they had enough money to finance their education or work their way up high enough to get into a position that lets them be self sustaining.

Students and young people are not really missing out on anything since they can get internships. Small businesses in need of low cost labor to do menial tasks rarely say no to interns. I interned for about a year in New York during my last year of schooling there. The pay sucks since I interned at small businesses, but the hours are relatively flexible and I get to take a look at various aspects of the small businesses since the scale of operations is small.

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44 minutes ago, DarthR0xas said:

Here's the thing though, criminals need to be able to break the law first in order the break it. This is why stricter gun control will still effect criminals. Closing the loopholes that make it easy for people who shouldn't have weapons to get them will immediately lower the amount of potential criminals with guns. Stricter laws are generally harder to break in big ways.

Wait, so you want to give every able bodied citizen a gun, the proper education about guns, and enough training to efficiently wield them, and you're calling it national security? This also dives into the whole "Good guy with a gun" thing which is something I don't even want to dive into tonight. At what point is the line between national and personal safety drawn for you? Why does individual gun ownership factor into national security?

I've recently flipped on gun ownership in that we should be as equipped as our police and our infantry *at minimum.* You have no idea how fucking afraid I was that the military would start shooting before the military revealed that they're not the President's pawns.

Anyway, gun control is a losing battle in today's America. You can't evaluate gun control in a vacuum at all; there's so many guns out there that it's impossible to regulate or control. To assume such a thing is naive and to assume a time when we won't need it (in case of a militia for land invasion, which is essentially what the national guard is but taking it a step further) is naive simply because part of the reason the protests can actually gain steam is because there are many armed people amongst them.

In the end, gun control is black gun control. And poor gun control. I think a lot of the rhetoric is actually hypocritical, but black people have been packing simply because of the amount of bullshit in our society. It truly and sincerely does trickle over, and it "evens the playing field" in the case a security guard or officer starts shooting. The reason we generally haven't seen a need is because white people are like 60-65% of the country and what rights do they even fight for? The right to not get shot by the police?

The tl;dr;

- The groups that gun control targets generally are the ones that need it the most

- White Karens and the NRA are the leading cause of such gun control (and the NRA is a Republican mouthpiece who started up later in response to the Black Panther party)

- There's too many guns to effectively enforce it without some of the extra policing bullshit we're currently going through.

- There's far far more law abiding gun owners

And I generally agree in firearm education earlier in life because it's a part of our culture we're simply unable to escape from. I realized all along that I felt white people's gun control rhetoric was a ton of bullshit because they have no government to fear, but non-whites do. And our generation still will.

 

That and, fuck it, rural areas need to hunt and don't have easy access to 911 to help them in emergencies. We meme on the 50 hogs but if you live in a place where your nearest neighbor is like 300 yards away, the nearest grocery store is like 20 miles away, and the nearest police station is like 30 miles away...  fuck it, hunting is more affordable and you gotta defend yourself.

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22 hours ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

The MAGA rallies are back and registration requires that attendees do not sue:

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And the following are now being sold by the Trump campaign:

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Of course his followers will use this as more justification, oh Covid is overblown, Trump isn't scared he is holding his big rallies.  They will completely forget that fine print saying Trump isn't legally responsible for people who contract the disease as a result of attending the rallies.  

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a32850423/steve-mnuchin-trump-administration-500-million-ppp/

Remember Trump refusing congressional oversight, well now we aren't going to get to know where all our tax money is going to regarding bail out.  So Trump could have given a large amount to his own businesses, or allies.  

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In a move that should surprise no one as to the depths of Trump and his administration’s cruelty, they have reversed policies on protections for transgender in health. Not only during Pride Month, but on the fourth anniversary to the day of the Pulse Nightclub Shooting.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/12/868073068/transgender-health-protections-reversed-by-trump-administration?utm_campaign=npr&utm_medium=social&utm_term=nprnews&utm_source=twitter.com

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20 hours ago, Dai said:

In a move that should surprise no one as to the depths of Trump and his administration’s cruelty, they have reversed policies on protections for transgender in health. Not only during Pride Month, but on the fourth anniversary to the day of the Pulse Nightclub Shooting.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/06/12/868073068/transgender-health-protections-reversed-by-trump-administration?utm_campaign=npr&utm_medium=social&utm_term=nprnews&utm_source=twitter.com

Ugh that's horrible! Why can't people just leave transgender folks alone? I just cannot fathom how these right wingers can be convinced people who represent like 1-2% of the U.S. population along with possessing literally ZERO socio-political power represent some kind of existential threat to America..... 

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It's also to eliminate something else by that dreaded black mongrel, Obama.  

You know what, though his soulless base won't care.  They mostly hate transgenders, so if they can't get healthcare or treatment or insurance and  just die or whatever all the better in their Christian god fearing minds.  I'm sure Jesus would approve.  Jesus was very much against the sick and the poor.  

This is another one of those 'little' things that goes under the radar with all the stupid big stuff Trump says.  Look at all the tyrannical executive orders and other actions he passed/did when no one was looking or people were preoccupied with something else.  

You know what I figured out what would be a line to far for Trump.  He could kill a bunch of innocent people, rape a bunch of women and his followers would still support him.  However if he came out as transgender, even if he was a saint of a person, he would be dropped like yesterday's news.  

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Whoever needs to hear this:

Federal LGBT protections are the floor; not the ceiling.

Trump can’t overrule state-level protections.

If you live in a state (like NJ) with strong state antidiscrimination laws—you’re still protected from discrimination in employment and health services and the like.

Any ignorant bigot healthcare provider who thinks they can refuse you service now because God-Emperor Trump said so is still violating your statutory and civil rights.

And you can still haul them into court + sue them if they try.

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1 hour ago, Shoblongoo said:

Whoever needs to hear this:

Federal LGBT protections are the floor; not the ceiling.

Trump can’t overrule state-level protections.

If you live in a state (like NJ) with strong state antidiscrimination laws—you’re still protected from discrimination in employment and health services and the like.

Any ignorant bigot healthcare provider who thinks they can refuse you service now because God-Emperor Trump said so is still violating your statutory and civil rights.

And you can still haul them into court + sue them if they try.

And if you're in one of those states that can't spell LGBT?

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39 minutes ago, eclipse said:

And if you're in one of those states that can't spell LGBT?

Then Trump just took your rights away by executive fiat.

And remember that the next time a Bernista tells you there’s no difference between a Republican and a Centrist Dem.

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