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The most foundational concept to America is economic exploitation and cut throat entrepreneurship. Selfishness is more foundational to American conservatives than the church or the state. Trump was openly a selfish asshole. One would think that open disregard for others would disqualify someone from the highest elected office, but the right thought otherwise. Being a bully meant that Trump was strong. A lack of empathy isn’t a vice, but a virtue.

Honestly, steam reviews are far more useful than most review systems. Ign or metacritic are nearly useless in comparison.

Nah fam. Miss me with that nonsense. Why would a tiny nation control the US? They have influence with American interests in many ways, but control it? It makes no sense. The only position that this would make sense from is the same antisemetic cabal bullshit. A small group controls the world alright. The wealthy, most of whom are white Christians. They control things, not Jews.

Unfortunately, normalcy is incoherent screaming from countries when supporting terrible actions for selfish reasons.

All elections, or just elections in liberal democracies? I can’t think of any major Marxist country that didn’t do some form of representational democracy, even if the elections are just a formality. China does it. The Soviet Union did it. They didn’t make elections dissappear, they just kept politicians that disagreed with the party line from running.

In large societies, not every decision can be made through direct democracy, so we need someone to make those decisions. Why not have a legislature? Is a group of unelected decision makers better?

Hamas would do it too if in the IDF’s position, but that’s even more of a reason for us to support Israelis that want lasting peace. Part of sustainable peace would be Israelis supporting anti-Hamas Palestinians. Attacking Gaza doesn’t really threaten Hamas’ power, but IDF reserves protesting Netanyahu did. If Israelis stop harassing Palestinians, Hamas risks getting replaced by a less fascist government. The goal of Hamas isn’t bettering Palestine, but ruling Palestine. Parts of your country being destroyed is preferable to getting overthrown for political entities like Hamas.

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Except the there are only three real ways for Israel to kill Hamas. Getting rid of every Palestinian so the are no Palestinians to get angry and turn to desperate measures. Enforcing an authoritarian state where all civil liberties are taken away from Palestinians. Or firmly rejecting expansion into areas where Palestinians live, harshly prosecuting any who discriminate against Palestinians, letting them self govern, and energizing their economy to lift standards of living drastically. An end to everything Israel does to hurt Palestinians and help themselves that Israel can do. Huge concessions to try and make up for all the shit they’ve done.

The ethnical option will clearly not be chosen by the current government, and the US, obligated by their desire to have allies in the middle east, will help them try to accomplish some combination of the first two options. It’s awful.

Hamas is a monster fed by Israeli antagonism because feeding those trying to coexist peacefully prevents colonization. They build a monster to fight in order to get more support from people who simply want the monster to go away. All the while, they move to accomplish their real goal of getting rid of Palestinians like other evil empires have attempted to do to Jewish people for millenia. It’s a fucking tragedy to see people that should know the pain of discrimination more than anyone, perpetuate the cycle of violence. Theocratic nationalism is a sin against humanity.

To be fair, they aren’t exactly profiting from the current strategy.

Video editing and compositing are the main things. These don’t seem to specialize in those tasks, while Adobe offers too many features and has too many quality 3rd party plugins to really be replaced. Even if there were programs that could compete, learning how to do things you know how to do in another program is a pain in the ass. The way programs work together is also a key thing Adobe can offer because they own multiple programs. Ideally there would be common standards to allow programs from different teams to work together just as well, but I’ve yet to see it.

Bigger thing for me is the Adobe shit. Those fuckers have monopolized creativity tools, and I haven’t heard of good alternatives for Linux.

As much as I like the sentiment, it really isn’t true. There’s way too many theocratic fascists, liberal stooges that sell out their country for power, and combinations of the two in control of most of the world. There are a number of European countries where this is the case, but Europe isn’t the world. Outside of some counties in the global south that have elected socialists through democratic means (only to be ousted by the right), genuine leftist governments get destroyed or coopted most of the time.

Especially with regards to social issues like LGBTQ rights and discrimination of ethnic minorities, the USA is farther along in the conversation than even some of those European countries.

Left in the USA is constrained by the fact that the status quo is extremely right wing, so things like healthcare reforms and limits on corporations that progressives advocate are right wing in relation to all possible positions. However, policies as far right as the GOP’s are common globally.

Well you support a failed model of communism that deteriorated into counter revolutionary nationalism and capitalism, so your opinions on democracy mean less than nothing to me.

And if everyone had a relatively comparable amount of assets under their control? If each person could control a certain amount of stock in the stock market or rights to property? As you became more wealthy in assets, the taxes become higher, while when you become less wealthy in assets, you receive more appropriated assets. The same amount of assets would exist in the economy, realized or unrealized, and if the appropriation equation is tuned well enough, it could provide income for people who can’t work, who might exchange all their assets for cash every time they get them, and limit the accumulation of assets for the very wealthy. There would still be the haves and have nots, but the have nots would have an effective floor, and the haves an effective ceiling.

The government would not make decisions on how the assets are used, only provide the means to even out how the assets are divided. People who work and earn enough to live on that income would be able to accumulate assets in the form of the stocks or property. They would earn assets up until the agreed upon point at which assets are taxed more than the average growth of the economy. This point would be at least enough for an average person to live comfortably and not have to work for a few decades until their assets ran out. Think in the 5 to 15 of million dollar ranges.

The assets would appreciate if profitable, like stocks owned by current stock holders, or depreciate if not. Most people would hire someone to manage their assets for a fee. That person would likely manage many people’s assets in the way requested of them. The safe investor would see their client’s assets grow with the economy, but some investors might value other things.

A person could instruct their investor to manage their assets at an agreed upon slow rate of growth, or even a loss. They might do this to spend on stocks that are less profitable, but are something the person cares about. A person might do this if they enjoy their work and have no plans of retirement unless forced to. They would keep enough assets to retire for a shorter period of time, or for use in the case of emergencies. This would allow people to fund some risky projects that could pay out massively, but keep themselves safe enough to not risk too much.

Other side effects include reducing opulent spending. You could have a huge mansion, but you couldn’t have as much in retirement savings. You could have all of your assets be boats, planes, and apartments for personal use, but you’d have to sacrifice to spend any time off work. The most expensive of properties couldn’t be owned full time by a single person, they’d have to be owned by multiple people and shared amongst themselves.

People who have huge businesses under their sole or family ownership would need to bring in outside investors. Large privately traded companies would have to be completely reworked, and would likely stop existing beyond a certain size. CEOs who own most of a large company would stop existing. Many other effects I’m sure I haven’t thought of.

This idea needs more work, and there’s a good chance constitutions would need to be amended to enable it, but it would solve the problem of the ridiculously wealthy having so much sway on the economy, and provide a social safety net. It would bring power to the hands of the people and democratize the economy, while not having the inefficiencies of planned economies.

Ah, so maybe the best way would be to tax assets or give them to the people that increase their value?

I think he was talking more about the primaries. The sad part is even then the left wing alternatives to Biden were also old. Bernie was old, Warren was old, and none of the other candidates were significantly more left than Biden.

If the Democrats were able to institute their full economic plan, there would be less financial insecurity. It wouldn’t be enough, but it would be a huge boon for less wealthy Americans. Most importantly, it would move the conversation about what’s acceptable policy more to the left.

Not everything is the Republican’s fault. Sometimes the Democrats go along with stupid Republican ideas. There is a crisis at the border, but Republicans are offering solutions that will be far less effective at addressing the issue than what Progressives want. There is some blame on the Democrats for not explaining what would solve the crisis, but the Republican solutions aren’t going to address the problem effectively, and lead to a ton of death and suffering.