Does anyone watch Steve Shives' videos? 😂

I just watched one of him telling me not only that "not caring is not an option," but also exactly what I should believe, and if I don't subscribe to his beliefs I'm part of the problem and will be politically brow-beaten. Steady on there, Genghis Shives! 😆

That video really reveals the authoritarian collectivist mindset of self-righteous moralists like him.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49582852

Is there *anywhere* the cretinous BBC won't go to push a progressive agenda?

Fuck's sake...

Yeah, I didn't think even they would stoop to anti-white racism over 9/11, though.

Curse me for actually having a little faith left in humanity.

Did we just get rekt by activist judges?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-49795808

The major concern for me is if Boros can survive a vote of no confidence, which seems likely to happen now.

Will he? The Tories have said they won't ally with the Brexit Party, so it could be a disaster if Labour and the Lib Dems co-ordinate.

Hmm

I don't know; this all seems to be hanging on a knife-edge.

Either way, I think they're going to get destroyed at the next election; that's why Corbyn refused an election. If I was a Remainer, my objective now would be to depose Boris and get another Theresa May-style Remainer in as leader of the Tories.

What would be hilarious is if Johnson et al dissolve the Conservative Party as an entity completely, and they all join the Brexit party. 😄

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-50367870

Results in.

Vox doubled its seats, apparently.

Doesn't look like the political deadlock is going to be broken, though: nobody has a majority.

Not any more, apparently.

Yeah, right wing has most votes combined.

The Guardian...

<:thisisfine:378719407981199363>

Oh, it's actually just a dataset.

I was expecting something insufferable.

Been playing this politics game too long...

I don't know much about the Spanish parties.

I know more about Italy, thanks to Dr. Steve Turley mostly.

@Capitán Alatriste Thanks

It looks like there's no realistic majority for either side.

Holy shit, I'm watching the Vaush vs. Sargon debate, and I'm stunned at Vaush's complete misunderstanding of that an *argumentum ab auctoritate* is. 🤦‍♂️

"The appeal to authority is only a fallacy if the person's authority is not relevant," WTF is this shit?

So a physicist with a PhD in physics comes and says gravity doesn't exist (for whatever reason), and suddenly it must be accepted as correct because he's a bona-fide physicist with a PhD certificate? 😂

Uh....no.

Complete bollocks.

Oh, and then he just *ad hominems* Sargon, too.

lol

They're both getting really hung up over this concept as to why a country should be democratic, and business not.

The simple answer is the because the aims and objectives of a nation state are not the same as those of a privately-owned company.

And so a different power structure is appropriate to accomplishing the goal for each, efficiently.

Of course, you can argue what those aims and objectives should be, but if we presuppose that the aim of a country is, "To provide a fair and free place for its citizenry to live," and the aim of a business is to "Generate return on investment for its shareholders," this is easy to explain.

Vaush's position here seems to be that the primary aim of a business should be to provide happiness to its workers, and therefore democracy is an appropriate methodology by which to deliver this.

This is complete bollocks, of course, because if you did that, all the lowest-end, most common workers would vote more money to themselves, the investors would lose all their money and stop investing, and nobody would produce anything. You'd just end up with Soviet-style empty supermarket shelves. This is why communism never works.

Personal opinion point: I dislike how Vaush tries to pigeonhole Sargon's answers by not allowing him to expand on his points, demanding yes/no answers. That's a bad-faith strategy for making your opponent look bad.

Regarding worker-owned co-ops, it's entirely possible that they haven't become more prevalent because of social change and business methodology changing so slowly. However, the data Vaush cited came from a questionable, biased source, so there's not really anything of substance here without a closer look at the data and further testing.

Vaush is wrong when he accuses Sargon of perpetuating a conspiracy theory, though. When Sargon says "the evil capitalists are keeping them (the worker co-opers) down", he's obviously referring to ultra-rich large corporation owners acting in self-interest to maintain their business model. Vaush trying to acribe this intent as "conspiracy" to Sargon is stupid.

A group of people can act apparently in concert as a result of what might be considered the incentive equivalent of convergent evolution without resorting to a need for conspiracy. Vaush is taking the backest interpretation of Sargon's comments imaginable, here.

But I'm not surprised a socialist is acting in bad faith.

"Backpedalling Carl"? He never even opposed the idea of worker co-ops! 😂

He merely asked why, if they were universally superior to traditional business models, they hadn't taken over the market.

We're onto the Marxist theory now: Vaush is mis-conflating wealth inequality with real-terms value.

Marx's theory was that the poor would get objectively poorer under capitalism; this is incorrect.

It's true that wealth inequality has increased, but that's not the point.

At least not in this particular argument.

Vaush is actually correct on the second point: the stratification of wealth *is* concentrating in the top 1%.

Sargon's point that "there are more billionaires than ever" is irrelevent. All that shows is that overall productivity is increasing. That doesn't speak to wealth inequality.

Inflation might also account for some of that figure.

Agreed.

The real question here is what's important: is it okay for wealth inequality to increase, as long as everyone (even the poorest) are getting richer?

Marxists say no; equity outcome and reduction of inequality is paramount.

Capitalists would say overall wealth and productivity is the most important factor.

Insofar as the *de facto* implementations of socialism have gone so far, I agree Nordhand.

The problem with Marx's theory is that it doesn't incentivise productivity.

And so it may (if remaining relatively uncorrupt) reduce inequality, but it also makes everyone, on average, poorer.

I think that's the critical flaw in Marx's theory.

A failure to understand human nature and the response to incentives.

Combined with corruption breaking key links in central planning.

Like when Zimbabwe starved because Mugabe replaced all the white farmers with government cronies, and the "Breadbasket of Africa" went fallow.

!rank

Yeah, so the fatal mistake Vaush is making here is presuming that, if collective ownership of the means of the production occurred, productivity would remain the same or increase. As all implementations of communism have shown us throughout history, the opposite of this occurs. Productivity occurs because a small subset of highly-driven individuals (entrepreneurs) drive forward productivity, as shown by the Pareto Principle.

@galesteppes I didn't, but it doesn't really matter.

Philosophical discussion is philosophical discussion, wherever it is, and this seems like a good forum for it.

Warner Bros. blocked Sargon's Demolition Man video on copyright grounds... <:pepehands:378719408367075333>

Sargon's putting it on BitChute soon.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-49368842

BBC unwittingly proving the effects of cultural degeneration.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51195059

Sargon will be so disappointed. <:pepehands:378719408367075333>

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-51248684

TERF gets death-threats from crazed trans-rights activists. <:thisisfine:378719407981199363>