A friend of mine has a farm and adopts the occasional "free-range" chicken (which just means there is some outside part accessible from the cage). They are so heavily bred that they kept falling over because their breasts were too large, so they wouldn't move much. This is always what I think about when I read free range. Basically a chicken too fat to move that can look outside an open window.
Your first point is literally why I went vegetarian. I tried getting meat out of sources that I could ethically comply with but gave up after a while. If you live in a city it is practically impossible.
I say vegetarian, because I eat the occasional egg if I personally know the chickens and their living conditions.
China has the 2nd most billionaires in the world and they are tied to "state owned companies". And you try to tell me it's a socialist country. Billionaires should not exist in a socialist country. If the economic gains of labour land in the hands of a few billionaires, this makes them bourgeoisie. Even though they claim to be socialist. But you seem to be as blinded by their propaganda as you claim the western people to be of capitalist propaganda because you can't seem to grasp what's wrong with these so called socialist countries.
Funny how you just disregard the information without actually going into it at all.
Coming off as someone blindly following another form of oppression by a bourgeoise elite claiming to be proletarian.
I was hoping for some actual insights.
What are you trying to say with this graph? That distribution of wealth is better when it is distributed amongst less than 1% of the population of they call themselves proletarian? Or that it is somehow better if standard of living goes down for everyone just because the then nonexistent ressources are shared equally?
In a perfect world a whole cake is shared equally by all 8 people. But if you smash half the cake, give a quarter to one person and the remaining quarter to the remaining 7 it is not better than 2 ppl having half a cake and letting the other 6 have the other half. Maybe not the best example but I hope you get my point.
If not having equal but good standard of living, what is it we are strivong for?
I suggest this link as a good read. Because I think just strictly defending the existing socialist countries is actually hindering progress towards a both fair and high quality of life society.
https://queer-bolshevik.medium.com/the-aes-doctrine-wrong-then-wrong-now-a8666de371da
Have you ever visited any of the AES Countries? They have a few rich and powerful families running everything and sucking up to daddy china. I have visited Laos and Vietnam and talked to the working people. They are suffering, barely making ends meed and are fed up with the people in power taking everything for themselves and living in luxury. And if they talk too much about it they get "visitors". These people in power over there are not working class. There is also absolutely no basic healthcare. If you get sick you die. I am sorry but for me a socialist country does not have an elite living on luxury and it doesn't have people dying of poverty and lack of healthcare.
I agree with a lot you are saying. No state can stay stable without some form of control and censorship as soon as it starts threatening the stability of the system. Capitalism does this as well. And they have a very effective propaganda machine.
I feel like capitalist propaganda is so effective because it resonates so well with the basic human instincts and the part of humans that wants to be better than others and is greedy. The monkey brain is competitive and hierarchical. Socialism requires a level of empathy and intelligence a lot of people don't have. They not only reject it because of media but also because they wanna climb that social ladder. No fun, if it doesn't exist.
The leaders of most socialist countries though, seemed to not stop at the anti socialist critics. Even other socialist voices that they didn't agree with got silenced (Mao, Pol Port, Xi Jing Ping making all his ministers disappear).
Also please don't misunderstand me. I am not arguing against socialism. I am trying to find a form of socialist society that relies on as few authority and violence as possible. I always wondered why the socialist countries struggle so much with keeping their people in, while most refugees try to get into the capitalist societies.
In theory yes. In reality all socialist systems had surprisingly few changes of leadership after one guy rose to power of the "socialist" movement or party. And they don't really seem to trust their citizens to be socialist without a lot of fear, censorship, spying, silencing critics...
It's almost as if the majority of humans reject socialism. Which is weird but true.
Honestly I think China will be the only country actually reaching their carbon emissionsl targets set in Paris. All these preaching democratic nations are failing theirs year after year.
How do you plan to take power? And if you manage, how do you plan to stay in power long enough? The average voter is a moron being fed propaganda for years. You will not take power democratically. And you will not stay in power democratically.
Imo there is an issue if you do nothing but increase minimum wage. You also need to limit price inflation and make sure the companies don't just return the increased cost to the consumer. Then you'll have gained nothing. Example. Burger grill pays their workers 10$/hr - burger costs 4$. Now you force the burger grill to pay workers 15$/hr, a 50% increase and they go, alright, burgers now cost 6$. Most places do this and the worker, even though they now earn 50% more, can't actually buy more because cost of living has increased equally. We need regulations on how companies operate their profit or actually get back to a point where competition would punish pricing like that. But somehow with only a handful owning everything that is kinda fucked.
Geheimtipp: Aufhören in Hotels zu gehen. Besonders die mit Animateuren. Geh in Unterkünfte, die von locals geführt werden. Und Besuch die Gegenden richtig. Dann lernst du die Menschen auch wirklich kennen.
The solution is a Multi-Party system with coalition and then compromise out of a position of power. We need to accept that in almost all societies the real left are a minority. Humans don't like the socialist ideas even if it benefited then Right now because they dream of escaping poverty and to then be better than others. If we destroyed the class system they'd have no chance to some day be better than other people. I believe this drive to get ahead is part of human nature and only few are able to fight it and think in the benefit of the whole.
So there are 2 options:
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Is a revolution, violent and ends in establishing an authoritarian government forcing your beliefs on the majority of people which kinda goes against my democratic beliefs and the right of freedom
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Go into politics. In europe it would be voting very left and gain enough votes to join a coalition to make the centrists enable more and more socialist policies. This worked very well in some countries like early Germany, netherlands and a big portion of Scandinavian countries. In America basically the only option would be to join the democratic party and advocate socialist policies from within like Bernie sanders is trying for example. Vote more left in the primaries to try and gain influence.
After that when it comes down to voting either of the 2 parties though you probably need to accept the current majority in the democratic party in order to not enable far right.
The time to go more left is between big elections and from within. In big elections like the upcoming its time to set differences aside and unify for the lesser evil.
Never forget that a democracy is a rule of the majority of the population and not a rule of the best policies from your perspective. If you think: Fuck the majority, this is how the country should be run, you are not democratic.
This of course disregards the influence powerful people take in politics which is another topic and way more complicated.
"I respect christians who don't force their views on me"
No, you don't. You just prefer not to be reminded that you're living in sin.
Everybody preaching thinks, everyone must adhere to their personal moral beliefs. They don't.
And we are not advocating veganism by antagonizing people. That just makes YOU feel better about yourself and doesnt help the animals at all. If you actually care about animal well-being you will set your ego aside and try to actually convince the carnivores by being a good example and adapting your arguments.
I always point out that I will not discuss the morals of killing animals because it's difficult for a lot of people. I will go on the level how our society treats the animals before killing them. Almost noone is arguing about that. And I've convinced a lot of people that way to at least drastically reduce their meat consumption. The rest will come later.
Isn't it about reducing animal suffering in the world in total? It should be. Making everyone be vegan in no time at all is unrealistic. We are reducing global meat consumption by emphatically making people question their choices and not by antagonizing them. They'll just get defensive and mock us.
Just look around here. Most of the people here are part of the hate club. Constantly you see posts wishing the worst and horrible deaths on the people they disagree with or who commit crimes/do horrible shit/are rich, and they are being celebrated. ACAB, Trump should off himself, eat the rich, celebrating people drowning on their yachts... But hey, it's not hate speech if you are on a moral high ground right? Most people here probably agree, that prisons are for suffering, just that so often the wrong people are suffering.
America needs a functioning justice system and people abusing their power is horrible. But you need to fight it by enforcing a system and punishments according to a set of laws. There is no emotion or revenge in justice.
The US will never stop supporting Israel. They are too dependent on it geopolitically. I believe we may see some more inner political movement against Netanjahu supported by certain US agencies. He will not survive this conflict as prime minister. This will of course not help Palestinians in the long run but it may help with a ceasefire and as a result help the democrats in the upcoming election which would be the main goal right now.
The idea of this super moderated availability of books sounds super great when you write it out like that. But there aren't even enough teachers around to teach the bare minimum. I don't know how you imagine that would be manageable.
Side point. If Mein Kampf should be accessible, do you think so should all the hate speech and misinformation everyone tries to ban from social media ?