I'm against socialism, apparently I'm an idiot. Ask me nothing.

originally posted by: Konduit
a reply to: dukeofjive696969

Like I said never go full Socialist. All these countries in your top 10 list have free markets and democratic elections. Hello?

When you become so salty that you need to resort to personal attacks I already know you have nothing of value to add to the debate.

Oh now where moving the goal post, you should follow your own advice, never go full retard.

a reply to: dukeofjive696969

Thanks for proving my point. Do you ever provide any useful information to the topic, or do you always throw a tantrum like your on Twitter?

originally posted by: Konduit
a reply to: strongfp

Big Pharma has a monopoly in Canada because of the fact that it's health care is socialized, which means that people DO NOT get to choose which medications the state pays for. If they want an alternative, they need to pay out of their own pocket.

Obamacare is the closest thing to socialized health care America has ever had... and who is making the most money?

wat?

I am sorry, but big pharma do not have a monopoly here in Canada. Where are you getting this information from?
It's government regulated, but it's not forced.

a reply to: DBCowboy

Can one person, on all of ats, including yourself link me a post showing me someone getting more than one star, while advocating for socialism?

Socialism - a way of organizing a society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies

I've never once seen that advocated for, other than for medicine.

A socialistic component does not equate to a full blown socialistic society.

Venezuela is more full blown, and it's terrible.

Most of Europe, Canada and such are not full blown, just mix components of democracy, capitalism, socialism, with some regulations but not a fully controlled market.. They represent the highest quality of life in the world.

And they are not practicing socialism.

They're using a combination of different ideologies just like we have been for decades.

Can you please explain what you're against, exactly?

Even most liberals I've talked to are against full blown socialism, and communism.

a reply to: strongfp

Who do you think the Canadian government contracts to get its pharmaceuticals?

Pharmaceutical companies of Canada

originally posted by: Konduit
a reply to: strongfp

Who do you think the Canadian government contracts to get its pharmaceuticals?

Pharmaceutical companies of Canada

Where else are they going to get drugs from?
At least the government has a say in it. Unlike the US where they have sales pitchmen forcing money down doctors throats to push for harmful addictive opium based drugs.
Link doesn't work BTW.

originally posted by: Konduit
a reply to: [post=20723590]dukeofjive696969[/

Your somekind of special, you start threads and post on threads crying and complaining, and you call me salty and i have tantrums.

Its ok your team sucks, and they keep on losing, at least you get a stars for trying real hard.

edit on 14-5-2016 by dukeofjive696969 because: (no reason given)

edit on 14-5-2016 by dukeofjive696969 because: (no reason given)

a reply to: dukeofjive696969

Dude your throwing a tantrum right now... you can't even edit your posts correctly. You haven't added anything to the topic and all you can talk about is "your team sucks derp".

Your either a troll or your just angry and out of ideas to support your argument.

a reply to: DBCowboy

How exactly are some members silencing you...?

For all you guys complaining about working 5+ days a week. There used to be a thing called "part time job" and we used to be able survive on them. Now, Forget it. Your talking about corporate slavery right now. Over work and over creation, not enough time to teach. Soon we are going to be all replaced with robots for jobs. They are cheaper to run the empire.

a reply to: Konduit
What? Basically everything in Canada is covered, aside from optional or extremely specialized procedures. If someone wants something special they can pay extra. The system still results in paying far, far less than anyone would have to out of pocket - yet even the very poor are taken care of.

a reply to: SargonThrall

Canada also has some of the highest taxes in the world to help cover that fee. You could say the same thing about insurance companies in the US, but at least you can choose to take your business to a different company.

Good morning! Thanks again for all the replies to a frustrating post!

Even the people I disagree with, you guys are great!

a reply to: DBCowboy

No, you are right. You never did. But an early poster did and that is to what I was referring.

Work 60 hours a week, get your paycheck and on the way home stop by your local crack house (even the best neighborhoods have at least one). Go in and hand most all of your paycheck to the person of your choice, smile, tell them to have a nice day and go home.

Ride by every day on your way home from working your arse off with the simple joy of knowing that you helped crack head stay high for a bit longer.

Now, as I read it through again I see that it does not call socialists crack heads but in subtle terms suggests that socialists support crackheads. Talking about working 60 hours a week and then driving by 'your local crack house" and handing over your pay check sounds just like what a crack head would do.
You replied to this one reference in my reply when it was nothing more than an example of my main impression of the OP. You say you are old man and disappointed with the level of discourse, well I am too, and, I am likely older than you.

My original reply to you was to suggest that your OP was disingenuous. Claiming that favoring anti-socialism on this site is taboo, I wondered how you came to this conclusion. I have been reading threads here now for a while and have found that if anything, the bias against the accepted notion of socialism is shunned by the majority. Sure there are those who favor socialism, and if you say, you have received negative messages, I don't know. But taboo? Hardly. And now as I look back the next morning, the collection of stars garnered by the more rabid anti-socialist replies support my observation.

You say you are disappointed with the level of discourse. And DC, that is why I was replying to your OP. I was disappointed in it. Your innuendo's as to the nature of socialism seemed cheap and tawdry. Tax your dog 500%. Beat your neighbor in a state that will give you more cheese next time you are in line. These are shallow stereotypes , but ones that are easily accepted by many in thrall to the strong conservative memes that are re-enforced daily around here.

You concluded with the disclaimer of hoping you were not infringing on anyone's 'safe space". This 'safe space' concept might be akin to your not wanting to receive private messages denouncing your anti-socialist opinions might it not? Yet you claim infringement then turn and use that phrase (which we all know by now is code for thin skinned liberals).

Well, I do not know if my level of discourse is of interest to you DC. I can only try.

a reply to: DBCowboy

I just had to register to reply to this.

Society is socialism. Public property (roads, dams, power plants, railway, anything built or paid for by local, state or federal government), public services, the commons are all socialism. Not to mention things like labour law / code, maternity leave, the 40 hour work week, mandatory holidays etc. Even insurance (even for profit insurance, so long as it settles legitimate claims) is socialism.

I think most people like who hate socialism, such as you apparently do, do because they labour under misapprehension and prejudice borne out of intensive, systematic, strident indoctrination and propaganda you've been exposed to all your lives. Possibly ignorance as well.

The (relatively near) future will be socialism or it will be an utter dystopia. Of course, one man's dystopia can be another man's utopia. It's a question of moral values and ethics.

Why will that be? Because of lots of things but primarily technological unemployment.

Capitalism needs a perpetually geometrically growing money supply or else there is nowhere for businesses' expenses to come from, let alone profits (which is why the money supply has been growing since the 16th or 17th century and why everyone drops the gold standard although it's not always obvious immediately). For the money supply to grow, people and businesses need to take out loans. Or the government needs to do deficit spending.

For people to take out loans, they need incomes to theoretically be able to pay back the loan in installments in order to qualify. To have incomes people generally need jobs. However, the need for human labour (especially low skilled or semi-skilled) is growing thinner by the year, due to automation. People are being replaced by machines and software. So they can't earn a living. So they can't purchase the cheap abundance automation would otherwise provide.

Which is where subprime lending came in to prop-up the system and delay the inevitable reckoning.

Businesses will only borrow if they see the demand growing beyond what they can handle or foresee that happen.

That only leaves the government. But the right wing (the people you probably vote for and support) oppose deficit spending because they think money somehow disappears from existence if it's deficit spending. As if money wasn't created ex nihilo, at basically no cost, in the first place.

Or as if all debts couldn't be paid in an hour if the state just took back from the banks what belonged to it in the first place (the exclusive privilege of issuing the nation's money, with no debt to pay it back to the issuer who issued it out of nothing, let alone with interest). However, that's another thing right wingers oppose.

They think it will create inflation, as if the money supply hasn't been expanding geometrically for century upon century already.

It's generally people who think money has (or should have) intrinsic value that believe this utter tripe. That is to say, people who simply are not able to wrap their minds around the concept of money and can only wrap their minds around the concept of commodities or barter. Unfortunately, they are the vast majority today. Like I always say, you need either ignorance... obtuseness or malice to belong to the right.

No matter, right wingers will have their comeuppance in the following decades, with 50% or higher unemployment or underemployment, 3rd world wages, tent cities and homelessness, malnutrition and lack of access to healthcare or medicine, unsanitary living conditions etc.

Oh wait... all of that is pretty much already happening. Except the right blames the left and socialism for it instead of employing reason and logic to reach the unavoidable conclusion that the current socio-economic model is unsustainable and deeply outdated, primitive and inhuman.

Of course, most people prefer to pretend poverty and destitution under capitalism is totally ok and totally not the equivalent of bread lines under supposed socialism. And anyone who dies in a supposed socialist country is obviously the victim of socialism whereas anyone who dies in a capitalist country (for instance, due to not being able to afford necessary health care) is obviously not the victim of capitalism.

Like having to wait in a line for bread in a socialist country under assault by capitalist countries seeking to make an example out of it somehow was worse than the same person not being able to afford bread at all in a capitalist country.

Because you need double standards to ascribe to a right wing worldview and values.

The irony is, socialist countries fail in the first place because of being sabotaged by neighbouring capitalist countries or worldwide capitalist hegemons and imperialists who place trade embargoes and economic sanctions on them (which would rightly be viewed as an act of war if anyone else did that to the hegemon themselves), conduct regime change by proxy or outright invade and destroy the country.

It's all public knowledge. One just needs to overcome their programming and indoctrination to see it.

Let me say this : people who advocate against socialism today will be remembered by future generations as the people who opposed emancipation or equal suffrage are remembered today.

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Most Americans and most people posting on forums in general are usually right wing. However, most people on ATS are quite heavily slanted towards the right in their world view and moral values and ethics. This is abundantly clear to an outside observer from another continent.

a reply to: Kangaruex4Ewe

Pray tell how... HOW does my saying that a socialist should hand their paycheck over to a crack head equate socialists as being crack heads???

Simply. However, now, reading your post again, I catch the larger suggestion that you believe that socialists just turn their hard earned money over to any and all low life scum of society, not just crackheads. But what individual is going to work 60 hours and then turn their money over to a crack head. Either a crack head, or some fool who you equate with socialism. Your comment could be read either way. I allowed myself to read it one way and find objection to your words, while others could easily read it the same way and find complete agreement with that association, that socialists are crackheads. I guess I was put off by that grossly overexerted example of social programs

a reply to: Fishy

I disagree - you'll see a proportionate amount of sanders and trump followers. You'll see plenty of gun rights threads and plenty of Marijuana usage threads.

Ats is a mix of things really. I would actually call it in the middle.. because more people than average here seem to be okay with Marijuana usage, gay marriage, plenty are sanders fans, etc. Yet we like our gun rights,... abortion, drugs, Trans issues are contested, etc.

a reply to: Fishy

ATS has always been considered very left leaning, but recently it feels like it's more in the middle.

I think the pendulum is starting to swing back the other way in society as a whole. The Progressives have had control of media and education for over 20 years and the PC culture has started to become unhinged. The rise of Trump being a great example of the push in the other direction.

a reply to: Fishy

That's a hell of a first post. Kudos, and welcome to ats membership.