Hey kids: Don't be a sucker for socialism

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"Venezuela food shortages leave zoo animals hungry"

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venez ... SKCN1071LT

"Some 50 animals have starved to death in the last six months at one of Venezuela's main zoos, according to a union leader, due to chronic food shortages that have plagued the crisis-stricken South American nation."

The great capitalist wonderland to the north would rather poison its own groundwater, extracting oil and gas from its tarsands, than buy cheap oil from venezuela.
Because we don't buy from socialists.
We ruined cuba, and we can ruin south america, just to prove that capitalism is the only sustem that works, even if it doesn't.

Don't misunderstand me, dictatorship socialism isn't my cup of tea either, but the remaining socialist countries are third and second world countries that got into a trade war with the western world for trying a system that doesn't allow neo-colonization by capitalism. The invisible hand strikes again!

I've never met a person from Austria.

Do you have strong feelings about it?

On a sidenote: has anyone noticed urugay is running on 90+ % renewables now..?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ean-energy

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What do you mean, strong feelings? About austria or US-venezuelan trade relations?
Only insofar as I'm more on the social-democratic side of things. What Sanders was demanding is the state of things in most parts of europe, but the "welfare-state" is being cut and reduced constantly, and for some reason, the argument goes that this would nake us more competitive, and that college tuition fees are good, just look at the US, they are so competitive and they have next to no social security nets and high tuition fees. And as a 30something, I can only shake my head in astonishment.
I'd like to see more left-wards trends inthe world, and sensible market regulations.

But I can see how third world countries can't thrive due to european or US protectionism. And it's just not their fault.
They just aren't given a fair chance and we'd rather buy at a loss than buy from them.

I mean Austria.

It would be interesting to walking around the Ringstrasse of Vienna, where Freud lived at one time.

Is Austria still run on a Social Democratic model?

yes, Austria is still run by a coalition betwen the social democrats and the conservatives, but the country is, by design social democratic. the difference between the parties is mainly in social issues, like LGBTQ rights and immigration, and to some exttent economy, but they both agree on the social democratic model. Even our nationilst far right doesn't disagree with that.
Most of Europe is built on social democracy, really, with socialized healthcare and pensions.

When I see american TV shows in which these issues are debated, I feel like everyone's insane. It's definitely possible for any country of any size to run these kinds of models. The question really is in whether one wants to.
And yes, we do pay more taxes and all that. But we don't save up for college funds. There's no one insane enough to scrap infrastructure maintenance, so potholes get fixed - unlike Kansas.
It feels incredibly trange to see someone actually debte about this, where there's so many other things one could argue about....

I find the use of language in the discourse quite astonishing, in general.

Col. Bernie Sanders had reasonable, social democratic demands, but was called not social democratic, but socialist. And now all of a sudden full on socialism is being debated.
And there's good reasons against that. My reason would be, that it's too far away.
I don't want to have a pointless debate about utopia.
I want a dangerous debate about small steps towards social democracy.
Dangerous because it's a question of political will, not utopianism or revolutionism.

Small steps are indisputable today, because they can lead to actual change. To take away their impact, right wingers are forcing an assiciation with far bigger concepts, which are easier to defeat. Straw-man arguments.

If Sanders is a socialist, Europe is a collection of successful socialist countries.
But that's just changing the names of ideas...

A Socialist Les Miserables in Venezuela

A mob of starving people advanced on the presidential palace chanting, “We want food”. They were met by soldiers and police dispatched by the tyrant from his lavish palace decorated opulently with a golden sun, giant rock crystal mirrors, sparkling chandeliers and towering oil portraits.

The scene wasn’t 19th century France, but 21st century Venezuela.

And if you are wondering why you haven’t seen it on the news, it’s because Venezuela is a Socialist disaster area that was once being used as a model by the left. Now it’s a place where the vast majority of people can’t afford basic food staples and a third are down to two or fewer meals a day....

There are lessons for us here and they are obvious ones. And that is why the media has minimized its coverage of a horrific crisis. The people chanting that they want food are not rebelling against unfeeling corporations, but a government whose economic policies many on the left had viewed as a model.

The popularity of Bernie Sanders is based on many of the same empty promises of freebies for all that made Hugo Chavez such a hit. Venezuela is a model of how well that works out in real life. Socialism is increasingly popular in America. Meanwhile in Latin America, socialism kills babies and drives starving mobs to demand food outside the presidential palace under the guns of the regime’s soldiers.

It’s an old story, but it’s also a new story because when we forget history, then we are forced to repeat it.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2016/06 ... zuela.html

Stating that NK is in any way socialist is as laughable and naive as accepting that it's somehow democratic simply because its acronym claims so.

North Korea is an authoritarian state run by a mentally unstable family. I honestly hope I get to see a united Korea in my lifetime.