It was also unpopular within the republican party. Even within MAGA it had only 30% support. It wasn’t pushed out of the media to pull undecided or centrists. It was pushed out to not drive away the non-MAGA republicans. You can also compare the October poll to one of the first poll as it shows a clear trend where the more people found out about Project 2025 the less they liked it.

Maybe now (for whatever reason) republicans are more in favor of Project 2025 but during the campaign Project 2025 was quickly swept under the rug, because GOP probably knew it was so unpopular it might cost them the election.

No, it will not stay the same. That’s the point of taxation.

If you own a chair today how does that change when tomorrow some tax is applied to your “capital”?

This just shows how bad faith all of your arguments are. I clearly do not mean competition and profit are necessary, just that they lead to capital accumulation, which is what you denied.

I guess it depends on how you define capital accumulation. If we take the standard capitalist understanding of capital, then yes it leads to capital accumulation and I’m not denying that because adding labor power inevitably leads to an increase of capital.

However, you argued that the profit motive and competition lead to production efficiencies and then added that without " an expectation of profit, private property, etc" this doesn’t work at all. I denied that you need a profit motive or competition to reach better efficiency. We’ve had at least 2 millenia of increasing production efficiency a real need for profit or competition. Capitalism is not a necessity for production efficiency. Believing we couldn’t be efficient without capitalism is just capitalist propaganda.

A market compels economic agents to act a certain way, as they are driven by profit, and markets provide information on what is in demand/profitable. Within a market framework, establishing a monopoly is highly profitable and makes a lot of sense. Which is why your accusation of incompetence you made in a previous comment falls apart, since while that, which is profitable is not the same as that which is good for society(governments should try to make sure the markets exist in contexts that make them beneficial)

Do you even understand what you’re saying? You pretty much just said that capitalism is not good for society. And your original argument about the wealthy needing their wealth is one that wants to perpetuate capitalism. You’re pretty much arguing against yourself here.

And just as an FYI, markets are not unique to capitalism. Market socialism is also a thing.

If you do not accept this, I see no point in talking to you any longer. You are thinking in one line slogans and do not see the context of what I, or you for that matter, are saying.

What am I supposed to accept? That we should put profits over what is good for the society? If you want me to accept that then I also don’t see a point in talking with you. If you want me to accept that capital accumulation is something that happens, I can accept that (though I definitely have a different option on what should be done with that “capital” we keep producing).

So you think there is a distinction between investment capital and some other capital I do not know about?

Ookay… So what’s the issue with taxing them? It’s not like the office chair they own suddenly becomes useless if they get taxed. Their capital in the most general sense will stay the same.

Yes it does. If there is not an expectation of profit, private property, etc this does not work at all. If there are, it will lead to capital accumulation.

Ah yes, we were all hunter gatherers until capitalism was invented. We didn’t improve our production methods, we didn’t improve our tools, we didn’t educate ourselves. No offense but that’s an absolutely moronic argument.

Creating a monopoly is not an example of unreasonable decitions. What?

So we don’t need a market economy? Because a monopoly destroys the market.

Google has a lot of money, and experimenting with possible products is not what I would call an example of stupid decisions.

I never said it was a stupid decision. You said they need to allocate resources correctly, they don’t because because they’re probably making more money they can spend. They don’t feel any pressure to make correct decisions.

Bying a competitor is a terrific idea.

I’m sorry, I thought competition in the market is the reason companies make great decisions. So it’s a terrific idea to get rid of the very thing that forces you to make great decisions?

Well, you’re not wrong. Capitalism loves when it can just buy itself into a monopoly and churn out shitty products because people have no other option.

The wall street did not crash because of individual mistake of investors, but because of market tendencies. This is completely unrelated.

Those market tendencies were all reckless financial actions from orders that came top to bottom. The capital owners were squeezing everything they could out of the people, until it all came crashing down. And then they got bailed out by the government.

“The more they slave the more profitable they will be” is, of course, true in a sense that paying less can increase profit margins amd you can force the workers to work more, but this is not always possible as there are usually regulations that protect workers, unions, and some positions are highly competitive.

So capitalism is okay because the non-capitalist things are supposed to keep it in check?

I do not know what is the case in America, but here government jobs pay less than private sector. Often a lot less. Goverment workers are as likely to overwork because they are understaffed. They are still less efficient. There is no research that reflects what you are saying. This is just your opinion.

Okay, so provide sources proving otherwise you saying the government is less efficient is also JUST YOUR OPINION.

You said the govenment ahould decide how capital is allocated, and not capitalists. What is it if not central planning?

I assume it’s implied we’re talking about investment capital considering you said taxing the rich would reduce their ability to invest and I talked exclusively about investing.

Competition and profit motive create incentives to decrease production costs, increase production, look for new markets and lower the price(not always, do not tell me about when this is not the case, I know).

None of those things have anything to do with the existence of wealthy people.

And both capitalists and upper management exist in a very pressured environment. Capitalists have to allocate resources correctly, because they own them. For that reason, they are careful when investing, and only do economically sensible things(if they themselves are sensible, and if they are not they will see their capital diminish)

Maybe 50-100 years ago. Do you really think Google, Amazon, Meta and anything Elon Musk touches exists in a pressured environment? Google has so much money they can create new tech for a new product and then 2-3 years later throw the tech with the product into the dumpster. Amazon has deliberately attritioned out an entire market (by undercutting everyone) to create a monopolistic empire. Meta “expansions” into other markets have been exclusively through buying out a potential competitor, because they just have that much money. And Musk blew away 42 billion to run one of the biggest social media sites into the ground. They don’t feel pressure. They don’t need to allocate resources correctly. Mega corporations have so much capital they don’t even know what to do with it. They probably could torch half their market value and their closest competitor still wouldn’t be competition to them.

Or did you mean the time wall street literally crashed the economy so hard the government had to bail them out? When it comes to the wealthy there are no risks.

This is the system that made America the largest economy in the world.

And for what purpose? Who benefits from having the largest economy in the world? It’s clearly not the American people.

The same can not be said about government owned firms. I said nearly unlimited, and this is more or less the case. Governments throw money at the problem until it is solved, since there is no profit motive, no pressure to perform, costs are higher, performance is worse, etc. Of course, they try to optimise, but history shows that they are almost always less efficient than private firms.

You’re trying to say China isn’t on the verge of beating the US in the economic game? It has nothing to do with who controls the company, it’s about how much you make your employees slave away. The more they slave the more profitable you’ll be. Government entities tend to be “less efficient” because there’s higher scrutiny towards slaving away (they can still end up slaving away because they’re usually underfunded so one person has to fulfill multiple roles, but that’s because there’s not enough taxation coming in due to us not properly taxing the rich).

I don’t feel like writing an essay so I’ll approach it a bit differently.

Governments invest in some things, but they can’t effectively manage the entire economy. It is too complex, and markets provide information that will simply not be available under central planning.

I’m not sure why you brought up central planning. That didn’t even cross my mind when I made my comment. I don’t think there’s anything else to address here because most of what you said seems to be in the context of central planning.

The government is getting ripped of by private contractors

Why do you think the wealthy aren’t getting ripped off? What are they doing that the government cannot do?

as they can’t control the complexities of production

And the wealthy can? And by wealthy I mean the wealthy individual, not the companies they own.

have nearly unlimited resources, so they do not optimise

unlimited resources is clearly hyperbolic because if they did have unlimited resources then who cares if they’re getting ripped or and are extremely inefficient, as long as the things get done. As for “optimizing”, optimizing for what? Should the government optimize for profit the same way companies do?

and a lot of asinine decisions are made because nobody cares enough.

Do you think companies don’t make asinine decisions? COVID showed that work from home is perfectly viable. It’s also an obvious cost cutting method because you don’t need to rent or own a huge office space, you get to downsize and save money. Most companies chose the more expensive option. For what?

Look at how bloated the military funding is in the US for example.

How do you think the military industrial complex came to be? Modern MIL came into existence during and after WW2 when private enterprises saw a huge market in war. The very people you claim should be making the decisions about capital allocation are the people who played an integral role in bloating the US military funding.

fuck off with that neoliberal bullshit.

I am not opposed to inreasing taxes necessarily, but people need to understand that the income of wealthy individuals is not used purely for the fulfilment of their needs and wishes. Rich people play a rather important role in allocating and managing resourses(capital) in society, and increasing the taxes will decrease the capability of rich people to invest, which is not ideal.

Governments already do “investing”. Elon Musk is the wealthiest man in the world thanks to the US government subsidizing Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink. Your tax money is already going into allocating and managing capital in society, so how about instead of letting wealthy individuals choose how capital gets invested we let the government decide that? It’s neoliberal brainrot that wealthy capitalists, without any real oversight, should be the ones to dictate how capital is used.

Also, if the tax increase is percieved to be unfair, rich people can just leave and go to Monaco or Switzerland or any other “rich friendly” country. They are pretty much free to do so and they do it all the time. So increasing taxes will not necessarily lead to more tax revenue if they are increased above what is reasonable.

And let them go. The wealthy can go wherever they want but most their wealth is tied to their businesses and moving those businesses elsewhere is extremely expensive. The can take their wealth with them only if they spend an insane amount to transfer all their businesses out of the country or if they cash out their businesses. Both come with a significant drop in wealth, so they’re not going to do that. You’ve been fed bullshit propaganda.

I think to answer his question precisely (if I’m understanding your correctly) is that yes, it would wipe out the COVID immunity for the COVID variant that you used to be immune to. But it doesn’t matter because COVID keeps mutating into new variants and the immunity to the older variant won’t help you.

Also bold of him to assume the democratic party is capable of change.

The numbers are all public but the post is misrepresenting then because a) total number of voters doesn’t matter due to the stupidity that is the electoral college and b) I don’t think there has ever been a US president who actually got more than 50% of the entire population.

The post is pure “not my president” cope.

There are upsides and downsides to everything. Open votes means it’s harder to manufacture consent. That’s something someone on Reddit could do, where they bot vote their own content to the top of the feed and nobody would be none the wiser because you don’t know how and when someone voted. And it’s not really a “could do”, it’s something that (at least a few years ago) happened regularly.

But on Lemmy voting is open so if someone starts up a bot farm to push their content to the top it is (relatively) easy to discover.

Brain worms: not even once.

You need to be more specific than “a child” considering he mentally already seems to be at the intellectual capacity of a 15-16 year old (except without any of the capacity to learn).

“You would be right if we did things the right way, but because we’re doing things the wrong way you are also wrong.”

I guess I can’t argue that.

Just because the electoral college is a stupid thing doesn’t mean I’m not right. Had it been a popular vote those non-votes would’ve mattered.

Yeah, they’re the non-vote parties. FPTP voting always devolves down to 2 parties, see Duverger’s Law. Even if by some miracle a 3rd party wins (and continues winning) they will eventually kick one of the previous 2 parties out and take their place as the new party in the 2 party system. In practice if my memory doesn’t fail me voting 3rd party hasn’t mattered for over a century because the 2 main parties are so entrenched, so voting for 3rd party is more or less throwing away your vote.

Yes, political discussions are not as limited in options as voting and there absolutely should be a political discussion about the Democratic party. They suck, have sucked and will continue to suck, unless they change.

And I agree that there’s no contradiction. I’d even go as far as to say there was no contradiction in voting for Harris and then tweeting “the democratic candidate sucks”, because you have to vote for someone and Trump (clearly) was the worse option.

My point was rather that if you dislike a party and you don’t vote for them then you are in support of the other party, even if you don’t vote at all. The nuances get kicked out when it comes to voting.

Sorry, that just reeks of propaganda to me. Donezk has a distinct national identity from before it was declared to be a part of Ukraine. Additionally, the region came under economic pressure through the talks between Kiew and Europe, which would explain why there would be protests erupting in 2014. Stating that these protestors were paid is a highly spuriops claim without sources.

This is the bare minimum I’m going to do. You can find references to protesters being paid on the wiki page

When was that supposed to happen? Back in 2022, Selensky spoke at the Greek parliament, accompanied by the Azov battalion. Since you accuse me of spouting propaganda: this claim seems like propaganda to me, as well.

Another Russian talking point. Feel free to show me how Azov was still an ultranationalist entity in 2022.

Russia wants to assert its status as a super power in a world where the US don’t allow for other super powers beside them. I thought it was well established that Russia has imperialistic interests, wasn’t it?

I guess you’re capable of telling the difference between Russia’s and Putins imperialistic interest, right? I’m going to stick with it’s Putins imperialistic interest, not Russian. And he’s doing a fabulous job by showing how his army was incapable of doing large scale invasions and his high tech arsenal can’t beat decades old western tech, all an excellent showing how the only super power Russia has is its insane amount people they can throw in the grinder.

Ignoring the fact that what you’re going to hear from Ukrainian soldiers will be heavily filtered by Ukraine’s department of defense: AFAIK, That’s not (or no longer) Russia’s strategy. They’re currently very slow and methodical in kettling in their military targets. Ukraine is currently the one who puts their soldiers in the meat grinder by not evacuating Russia’s targets after they are considered to be lost.

I’m not ignoring that fact. I know that anything making Ukraine look bad won’t come through the Ukrainian filter. I have no reason to think they’d filter Russia doing something incredibly stupid. Also source on Russia no longer putting their soldiers in the meat grinder (I guess technically they’re not, they’re now throwing Koreans into the grinder) and source Ukraine putting their soldiers in the meat grinder?

Yeah, that’s a good deterrent for war. So why do you think the war is still going? Because Putin is evil? I just don’t buy that childish logic which goes against any serious political analysis of anything.

So why is the war still going on?

BTW: Every state considers it justified to send outsits population into a war to secure its status as a sovereign.

Okay, that’s justification for Ukraine to send its people into war considering their sovereignty is in danger. Whats the justification for Russia considering Ukraine isn’t interest in taking over Russia?

Maybe, if you consider my point on the Ukrainian people (that should only give you context why I’m skeptical of Selensky). But the fact that the “good guys” are no angels definetly has something to do why “Putin just won’t stop”.

You just justified Ukraine using its people defending the sovereignty of Ukraine so your point about the Ukrainian people is moot because they wouldn’t be needed to throw their lives away if there wasn’t a war.

Ukraine has beefed up their military substantially between 2014 and 2020. That didn’t happen without the west’s help.

Which ONCE AGAIN wouldn’t have been necessary if not for Russian meddling. For fuck sake how many times do I need to repeat this same point over and over and over.

And NATO is no stranger in involving itself outside its stated goals as a “defense treaty” (See: Kosovo war).

And Kosovo was bullshit thing to use NATO for.

I also don’t get how Sweden’s and Finland’s joining of NATO has anything to to with whether or not NATO provoked Russia.

That is an example of NATO not expanding when NATO wants to expand, which is usually the kind of bullshit argument Russian trolls make when they talk about NATO saber-rattling.

It is however a great example how NATO is used as an imperialist tool by its members, when you look at what Erdogan got out of Sweden joining NATO.

Example of imperialism? The great imperialist nation of Turkey? That’s not an example of NATO being used as imperialist tool. Do you even know what imperialism means? fuck it, I’m not commenting more on that, that’s just beyond my capacity to handle stupidity.

You’re accusing me of repeating Russia’s propaganda, I’m accusing you of repeating NATO’s propaganda. But at least I know that you shouldn’t trust either imperialist.

Kinda a weird accusation considering you have literally given zero examples of me using NATO propaganda, unless you think everything I say is NATO propaganda. Also weird to claim you know to not trust either imperialistic entity but literally present Russian propaganda as your argument.

In a two party system, especially when there’s no clear “I don’t like either” option then yes, nothing else exists. When you don’t vote you’re not saying “I don’t like either party” you’re saying “I don’t care which party wins”. If you don’t care which party wins then you’re in support of both parties.

I disagree. I’m far from an expert on Euromaidan, but from what I gathered, the perspective of the Donbas is widely ignored by most western media. I only managed to find articles in German, so you’ll have to excuse me, but if you’re interested, you’ll probably find a way to translate those:

I’m not ignoring the counter-protests in the east. To my knowledge most of the ones that happened during Euromaidan either had people paid to “protest” or they could barely get people together to protest. Most of the eastern protests happened after Euromaidan and considering how quickly Russia jumped into those regions I wouldn’t be surprised if they were a front to destabilize those regions.

Those articles suggest that the Euromaidan was not only a “pro EU” thing, but can be understood as an attempt of ultranationalist Ukrainians to infiltrate the Ukrainian government. The same journalist said in an interview (sorry, in German as well) that she interviewed pro Maidan activists in 2014 and that she can’t imagine that the rebellion was this coordinated without the possibility of outside forces supplying training and resources to the combatants.

I’m also not ignoring the influence of nationalists and ultranationalists in Euromaidan, however it doesn’t change the nature of the protest because it started as protest against not signing the EU deal and it ended with a pro-EU government (and not an ultranationalist government). The ultranationalists actually started losing popularity the moment Euromaidan ended and over the years they’ve been slowly been rooted out from where-ever they dug into.

Sorry if I failed to make my point clear. My point isn’t that Putin isn’t an autocrat. My point is that Putin is acting as a state’s sovereign. He’s not acting out of his private interest, but out of the interest of a nation.

When you have an autocratic leader the state becomes an extension of their will. They can use the state for the interest of the nation or they can use the state for their own interests. I don’t consider myself so well versed in Putinomics to know when Putin is acting out of self-interest and when Putin is acting in the interest of the Russian nation. If you can somehow tell the difference, good for you. I personally don’t see how the war is in the interest of Russia (the nation). Sending your young people into the meat grinder is not in the interest of the nation (Ukranians on the front will tell you that Russia just keeps sending troops wave after wave straight into machinegun fire). Not retrieving your wounded is not in the interest of the nation. People struggling to put food on the table is not in the interest of the nation. I could keep going on about things that don’t affect the average Russian but I think I’ve made my point how this war is by no means in the interest of the nation, Russian people are also suffering because of this senseless war that Putin could end at any moment.

Yeah, the independence of the Ukrainian state. I don’t think that the interests of the Ukrainian state align with the Ukrainian people. Especially considering that the latter are currently dying in the name of the former. And if the former gets its “independence”, it will have done so at an incredible cost of human lives. And I doubt that all the debt from military aid (those aren’t “presents” from the west) will lead to fulfilling lives for Ukraine’s population in the future.

Yes, the “bad guys” are bad. But the “good guys” don’t act out of the kindness of their hearts, either.

A completely irrelevant point considering this discussion started with the statement that this war wouldn’t even happen if not for Russia. People wouldn’t be losing their lives if Russia never invaded in the first place. Military aid wouldn’t be necessary because there would be nobody to defend from. It all comes down to the fact that none of this would have happened if Russia hadn’t started it.

Their “pawn-ness” started way before 2022, when NATO did their sable-rattling in Ukraine. They can’t afford a neutral position. Just like Taiwan can’t and Vietnam or Cuba couldn’t.

I’ve been giving you the benefit of the doubt up to this point, but this is where I’m just going to call you a Russian propagandist because you’re either deliberately or ignorantly presenting Russian talking points. There is no NATO saber-rattling. NATO does not expand unless the country in question wants NATO to expand. Finland and Sweden are prime examples. NATO would’ve loved for those 2 countries to join, especially during the cold war. Bases literally in striking distance from Leningrad and Moscow? If it was up to NATO that’s 100% expansion. But it wasn’t. Finland had Finlandization and Sweden didn’t join out of solidarity for Finland. Even after the cold war Finland and Sweden didn’t want to join NATO until Russia invaded Ukraine.

As for Ukraine. You can look up the polls, Ukraine didn’t want to join NATO until Russia annexed Crimea, then within a matter of months the sentiment went from “I don’t want to join NATO” to “I want to join NATO”.

And for NATO itself, NATO was probably on the verge of dissolution before the Russian invasion. When Trump started talking about stepping out of NATO other countries started questioning if NATO is even necessary anymore. Russian invasion is what has reinvigorated NATO. As with the last two points, it always ends up coming back to Russia being a fucking shithead to its neighbors.

And if we get back to 2014, when all of this started, it didn’t start because Ukraine wanted to join NATO. It started because Ukraine wanted to join the EU. So NATO isn’t even the reason this is happening.

Now, feel free to take your Russian talking points and fuck off.