Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

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There was a nursing home event like that in Kirkland, Washington iirc.

What the hell is the point of beating around the bush...so many people do that and nothing comes of it. I'm a socialist and I'm damn proud of it, I see nothing wrong with wealth distribution and I think everyone should get healthcare with no insurance companies. If people have a problem with it so be it....but I say f**k health insurance companies and we should not have a system that supports them. Like apparently hospitals are trying to f**k over their workers if they complain about having not enough equipment or face masks. LIke threatening to fire workers if they mention their shoddy work conditions that seems like a bunch of BS floating around to me...like what the hell punishing health-care workers for showing info that their work places aren't sanitary. LIke the workers are people to if they aren't getting the right equipment that is a huge problem nurses are dying because the don't have proper protection and hospitals still try to exploit them. So many nurses dying because they can't get proper protection...Its freaking disgusting.

When I was 11 or 12 I came up with the idea of socialism without knowing about socialism. However I have since discovered through its history that socialism has always created dystopia rather than the utopia it was supposed to bring about.

Socialism has a pretty broad definition, and I've noticed a lot of people who like to use talking points like that are also the sort who will define social democracy or any state with a substantial social safety net into the category of socialism when it suits them, but then retreat from that definition when it doesn't suit them.

I don't believe social democrats have a long history of creating dystopia in their wake. Totalitarians on the other hand have a pretty long track record of doing so whether or not socialism was ever a motivation on their agenda.

When I told a teacher my ideas he replied saying either "that's socialism" or "that's communism". I think it might have been the latter. And he was right, that is what I had come up with.

Was it the 'top-down paternalistic' variety, or just the 'why doesn't everyone share everything' variety?

Both. I felt that everybody should be on an equal footing but that would have to be enforced.

Ah.

It's interesting how many historic proto-socialist ideas were proposed. It really doesn't seem like a radical idea in the sense of 'i bet no one's ever imagined this' sense of the word radical. Marx kind of scored a huge propaganda win by describing his ideas as 'scientific socialism' and everyone else as 'utopian', it basically made everyone who came before get viewed as irrelevant as forerunners or influences. It also made it easy to make anything similar just sound like another version of the MarxLenin franchise.

Ironically, what Marx used to define his system as 'scientific' is really at odds with how actual science works, basically Marx views history the same as Whigs do with a different outcome, that his system wins instead of theirs.

Idealistically it would be great if it was share and share alike world. If instead of Jeff Bezos accumulating 150 billion dollars, the wealth was distributed evenly. But in order for that to actually work it would have to be regulated through the government. Those I have seen in favor of socialism are in favor of government regulation. Wanting what people say, think, do, eat etc regulated and enforced. Political correctness being enforced. Many seem to be vegans and want that enforced and meat banned. One reason for such a ban is saying that livestock are destroying the climate. It's like this perfect society construct, but it is something that has to be created and maintained though banning this that and that and everything else being tightly regulated. Which of course makes one think of such works as 1984, A Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451.

To some extent I believe that certain ideologies tend to attract do-gooder types who will stack several of them, but I'd be very surprised if vegans represented a majority of socialists. A lot of people with fairly negative views of vegans are leftists who aren't vegan, since if you're ideologically adjacent you're more likely to deal with constant prodding on the issue. People get tired of being preached to regardless of what they believe overall.

Further, the whole free speech thing is varied, it's wasn't the left trying to sue record labels and rock bands in the 80s over content. It isn't the left suing schools and libraries to ensure kids aren't exposed to books that normalize lifestyles besides heterosexual ones. Both the left and right (and even different subsets within each) have certain 'decency standards' which amount to political correctness and within them have people who feel varying degrees of willingness to use the state to enforce those boundaries.

Believing that the state should have some role in regulating some factors of the economy isn't a predictor of whether or not one wishes to regulate speech, further, it isn't as though the concept of regulation is some modern socialist concept, it's one of the few roles a state has always been expected to engage in. Drawing up rules for 'fair play' in trade has always been a role the state has engaged in and it's a power that historically monarchs or other actors who don't have enough power to qualify as states still would often expect to exercise.

NEWS FLASH!

Trump attacks W.H.O.

(About bloody time. )

I'm waiting for the libs to now start defending the WHO.

Trump has put a hold on the funds given.
America is the biggest contributor and the ccp is in control.
What a fracking joke.

Of course in the real world there's always a reason why Trump does anything....and it's always about him
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/us/p ... p-who.html

NY Times. Real world.

IHME predictions (Guardian)

Disputed by governments in-house team of analysts (noted and quoted in article).