Exactly what I am talking about along with the immortalized cell lines stolen from minorities. I have no problems with people donating themselves to science or being appropriately compensated with thoroughly informed consent, the advances to science are critical. I just don’t want the biomedical equivalent of OpenAI stealing IP happening to make the 0.1% even richer.

The main concerns I see are if it is actually only individual organs, and things like your rights to your own genetic code/cell lines.

You will never get human trials for anything that hasn’t passed animal testing until we have lab grown human organs/organ systems, but that is a ways out and also somewhat controversial. Coning partial people or parts of people needs a lot of safeguards.

You’re either actively against them, or you’re part of the problem.

I’ll take this whole section generously as a nebulous “you” and not you directly calling me either “one of them or a useful hateful racist”.

Two things can both be wrong, it’s not a zero sum game between open borders and fascist police states. Treating it as such caused the Democrats to lose some amount of support base, and did contribute to Trump getting reelected. The increase in Trump support from Hispanics and other immigrant groups was partially from resentment with treating illegal immigration as equivalent to legal immigration.

Yes, the poem on the Statue of Liberty is wonderful, and should still apply as the US is and should remain a nation of immigrants. That is not the same as having open borders for anyone and everyone, and it never has been.

So who and how many from those hostile countries to we have to kill to stop them from being hostile? Do we do it blitzkrieg style or Gaza style until all the hostiles are gone? Do you have the reeducation camps ready to ensure whatever resulted in the countries becoming hostile in the first place can’t happen again?

I don’t know about you, but this is starting to sound like a lot more work (and maybe a lot more death) than just dealing with borders.

“illegal immigrants” (whatever that’s supposed to mean)

Attempting to violate constitutional law through executive order is vile, and all law enforcement should be in uniform and identifiable (and held to higher standards than non-law enforcement) so I am completely against everything Trump is doing, but let’s not pretend illegal immigration isn’t a thing as a knee jerk in the other direction.

Illegal immigration is crossing the border without legally passing through customs to establish a legal right to be in that country, or overstaying your legal right to be there (Visa). People who are in a country illegally are rightfully subject to deportation back to wherever they are citizens. Pretending otherwise just helps more moderate people buy into the propaganda and let’s the ratchet work more easily.

We are all rightly complaining about Trump violating the law, so how is it also not a problem for people to violate immigration law? This is the problem I have that leaves me stuck in the middle.

Sanctuary cities that flaunt immigration law are, while not just as bad, still bad. When Trump (lies) and says he only wants to target people here illegally who commit crimes, and a sanctuary city prevents law enforcement cooperation with ICE, that just adds to the narrative of felon illegal immigrants and then you have ICE going after those people at home and grabbing everyone around them as by catch. This only helps the Trump.

Removed by mod

The vast and rapid modernization and industrialization of Russia at the start was a success, but my opinion is that Marxist-Leninism stopped in the USSR when Stalin seized the country and turned it into a crony dictatorship. I don’t believe that lasted long enough to be truly called a success, as it immediately fell to the authoritarianism it overthrew from the monarchy.

If you don’t think that Stalinism was the death of Marxist-Leninism in the USSR then the bread lines, famines, forced labor and relocation, imperial expansionism, etc. as broadly reported by those that lived there and lived through it are a product of socialism. I also believe that would count as failures of socialism and not proof of success.

I agree with you that the PRC is still nominally socialist, but believe they also went Stalinist instead of Marxist-Leninist. I would call them Stalinist Communist rather than socialist. I also do not think the juice was worth the squeeze with the number of dead in the revolution and aftermath, but there is no telling what an alternative would have looked like so that is just, like, my opinion man. I personally don’t consider China as a socialist success story, but instead another warning example for how easily Communism can be corrupted/captured from within.

I totally give you that Marxist-Leninism was the defining ideology of the 20th century, but I’d call it the fuse that lead to “Communism” the failed authoritarian ideology. Like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand is to WWI. That is a hell of a lot more than Georgism ever got, to be sure, but would still say there has never been a successful Marxist country because they never remain Marxist for long.

I know I’m going to get downvoted for this, but since the USSR was a historical failure and Marxists claim China isn’t actually Communist but Capitalist, can’t we say the same for Marxism? An interesting historical curiosity, but it was never actually implemented and thus can’t be said to have ever taken off.

Both Georgists and Marxists get to complain about how things would be so much better if someone would actually just do it the right way for once. I say this as a left leaning Georgist Libertarian, to my heart in the right place Marxist cousins.

I literally just had mine too, there’s dozens of us. Dozens! Happy birthday.

Their singing ability was definitely a cost, never let one pick any Bard or Bard adjacent class.

I guarantee you it was, as the only edit I made was to comment on how I somehow got a net 17 downvotes with only you laying out a complete reason for disagreement, even if it was due to a misreading caused misunderstanding apparently. I found it funny that I honestly couldn’t figure out which political party I pissed off to get that many down votes.

I would like to point out that I did 100% say Universal Healthcare, and nowhere did I implay keeping our shitty healthcare system with a UBI. To further clarify, UBI should only replace welfare programs, so stuff like food stamps, WIC, TANIF, state welfare, social security, etc. because those have restrictions and fuck people over almost as many times as they help them.

Social Security probably won’t be solvent in 50 years, food stamps are great until you make a dollar over the max allowable and lose all food assistance, WIC is great until your infant is just a little older and you lose all assistance. SSDI takes years to begin receiving and is, once again, subject to being dropped for any of a variety of reasons.

I will assume that you mean only the 2nd amendment and not that preventing anti-transition and/or anti-abortion legislation would also prevent laws on murder, rape, etc. If I am wrong, I think my response will cover those as well.

The purpose of the government is to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. All those things you listed infringe on the rights and bodily autonomy of others, which falls under justice and general welfare at the very least. What anyone does with and to their own body under their own consent does not, and if thus overreach of the government.

Self defense, whether armed or unarmed, passive or active, is a natural right belonging to any living thing to prevent loss of their autonomy. Guns are tools to enable self defense and even the playing field. They can be and frequently are used without infringing on the rights and autonomy of others.

I also did not include guns under the government not having the right or business to regulate. I think they certainly can, and they have through the 2nd amendment. If you want to change this, you must follow the established and agreed upon rules to do so. If you do not, you weaken all other laws by establishing loopholes where they can be ignored.

Yeah, but you have to take the whole sentence to actually identify the grammar, not just the first 4 words. Beyond what has already been said about well regulated meaning ‘in good functional order’, that is a explanatory preposition to why the rights of the people to keep and bear arms is important. The Federalist papers back this up well enough as well.

If I said “Because being hungry sucks, access to the fridge shall not be restricted”, this does not imply that one must be hungry to have access to the fridge. Maybe it would be better if it were so people couldn’t over eat or eat out of boredom, but you would need to change that sentence to make it mean you had to be hungry to access the fridge.

There is also the fact that under federal law, everyone not serving in the standing military or the national guard (the organized militia) is legally classified as the unorganized militia, but I don’t think that even matters to the reading of the amendment.

I would think that having procedures, medications and other medical costs covered under universal healthcare and having a non-means tested or work gated UBI would be a hell of a lot better than the current Medicaid and SSI disability nightmares.

I include both of these together because currently the overhead expenditures for managing and running both the collective welfare programs at all levels and our for-profit healthcare system run at the behest of and for the profits of health insurance burn a significant amount of both money and time.

Needs may vary a lot, but having hoops to jump through to maintain eligibility for multiple welfare programs and under constant threat of being kicked off of any of them doesn’t seem to be the right answer to me.

Huh, none of that has anything to do with communism. I basically agree with everything except the guns part (I believe that to be a fundamentally incorrect interpretation of the wording of the 2nd amendment), but in a “the government has no business or right to regulate those things” libertarian way.

It’s also not woke because the principle of bodily and personal autonomy is old school “don’t tread on me” libertarianism, and thus “right wing”. I think I agree with Linus about the inability to define those terms, carry on.

I may not be the target audience though as I also totally want socialized healthcare, free education extending into the collegiate level, and a UBI replacing all welfare programs, because those fall under the “General Welfare” set out by the Constitution and those things would cost less than what we have now for far better outcomes.

EDIT Wow, that’s a lot of voting engagement. I am not sure if I pissed off the Left for saying I believe the 2nd amendment as written and intended grants an individual right to guns, the Right for saying universal healthcare and UBI is good and I don’t believe the government can or should legislate abortion/LGBTQ rights/etc, or both sides equally.

I hate shopping at Lowe’s now because they physically removed the regular checkouts and only have a square of self checkouts. They did this so one “cashier” can watch over everything, saving labor on multiple cashiers. They also paired down every other department so it’s just as hard (or possibly harder) to get assistance in a department as at Home Depot. Feels like I’m watch the death spiral in full swing.

Less shoppers means less staff. Less staff means service suffers. Poor service means less shoppers. Rinse and repeat. This is happening at almost every brick and mortar retail business though, not just Lowe’s. It’s like the entire economy has turned into Circuit City trying to keep the lights on.

Eggplant out here catching strays.

Only two ways to find out. Time to fire up universe sandbox, cause I’m fresh out of the ability to delete the sun in the production environment.