>it's a far cry from a scientific fact, which it seems like not just this comment, but a lot of us in the west (even mainstream academic economics) sell the idea as.
Centrally planning an economy is an NP complete problem. Marxism is dumb and if any would be socialist on this forum can explain to me how we as a society can retain the benefits yielded by capitalism without the use of capital and how socialism of such a form can exist without a centrally planned economy, I'm all ears.
Marxism has failed and failed and then failed again, and then it also led to the deaths of 100 million.
You seem to have a very wrong idea of what Marxism is, means, and argues. You also seem to have a deep-seated and emotional hatred for it. That's all well and good, but perhaps you should lay off discussing it. You keep getting all worked up here, which you perhaps would be able to avoid if you had a better understanding of what Marxism is, what it means, what it argues, what it predicts. You're continuing to behave in an insulting manner toward people, calling names, and making antagonistic, simplistic, blanket statements that evince no nuance of understanding.
For a concrete example, someone who is interested cannot really respond to you if they wanted to because you're firing in every direction with very little detail or explanation. How is anyone supposed to guess at what you consider to be the "benefits yielded by capitalism"? What socialism "of such a form" do you mean? Why do you seem blind to the many "dumb" parts of capitalism or liberal democracy? Do you study the various alternatives that have been discussed in the history of political science and theory? What specifically do you find dumb about Marxism, particularly as compared with its counterparts in other economic models and interpretations of human history?
On HN, you'll find emotional, knee-jerk reactions receive a swift, negative response. Especially when they're negative emotions, delivered with insults and anger. You can do much better than this, and you'll find interesting conversations coming your way.
Nah, the Cuban revolution is dead. Get ready for A. Further integrations with the capitalist US or B. Fall of the Cuban economy because they are definitely not getting support from venezuela which propped up their economy in the first place.
Cuba is basically an autarky, for all intents and purposes, so they're not going anywhere on that front, and I think Diaz-Canel will help to steer Cuba away from liberalism/revisionism. But I've been wrong before.
Trump won because uneducated white people voted together as a voting block. Do you criticize black people for exercising their power in a similar manner?
But trump over performed with non-whites, and I think lots of people missed this. I think that people going very far into the racial data are on a wild goose chase. The fact is that clearly, voters did not think that stopping trump because he's a jerk was important enough to be the deciding factor. Clinton just campaigned badly. She couldn't credibly articulate a plan of change for America with Obama sitting as president, and made no effort to convince voters that the status quo was worth preserving. She was just running against Donald Trump, and the enthusiasm gap was enough for her to lose.
Did Trump articulate how he would change the US though? I agree that Clinton was mostly campaigning against Trump, but Trump's campaign was even worse in this regard.
Hillary did not have a convincing plan and mostly wanted to continue and see where things go. Trump has promised a lot of fairy tales. It seems to me that the only concrete things that Trump has promised to do is to backpedal on the equality rights.
> Did Trump articulate how he would change the US though
He didn't have to. The amount of vitriol directed at him and his supporters by almost every journalist, academic, intellectual, and establishment politician told the voters everything they needed to know.
This election came down to moral outrage. The duplicity and flat out dishonesty of the media, the simmering anger at Obama's broken promises about health care ("If you like your plan, you can keepy it") and the serious and deep personal flaws of Hillary Clinton was just too much to overcome.
One thing that shouldn't be overlooked either is that while some view Trump's platform as racist, his supporters see him as the exact opposite. He's hard on illegal immigration but otherwise has no particular bias towards Mexicans on a personal level. In fact he has sympathized with them on why so many of them are fleeing for their lives to the USA, something nobody is willing to talk about.
Seriously? He literally accused a judge of prejudice simply because of his Mexican heritage. No supporting evidence. He was not an illegal immigrant. He was born here. There is only one word for that: racism.
Let's look at the data: about 30% of latinos voted for him. This surprised me and I bet it surprised Clinton too. So clearly there's other stuff that they care about more than Trump's racism.
As a sidenote, I catch myself expecting that _all_ minorities should vote 100% for Clinton. This is another example of the kind of complacency that led to this win in the first place. Trump was going on and on about how "democrats feel entitled to black votes without doing anything to help black people". Now, a policy specifically designed to help black people will get waves of criticism from Breitbart, but the point stands, and I think that Democrats shouldn't feel entitled to votes just because they aren't terrible.
Nobody criticizes any plan to help black people based on it's intent. You seem to be confusing intent with desired results, perhaps on purpose. Democrat's intent has been ostensibly to help black people (and certainly rank and file democrats really are altruistic) but the result has been the exact opposite for Black families. It doesn't matter where you go in the country, even in a deep blue city in a deep blue state where evil Republicans are nary to be found, Black people are suffering, and you only have one party to blame. I know to some, just stating this will brand me as a racist but until we can collectively recognize that what we have been trying hasn't worked, we'll never make the corrections we need.
Every single trade agreement has something like ISDS and the entire purpose of these courts is to make sure people follow the agreement as it was written. It's not like you will be invaded if you break the rules of the agreement and ISDS rules against you, you will simply be kicked out if you don't follow the rules. Why do morons spread fear about this shit?
> Every single trade agreement has something like ISDS and the entire purpose of these courts is to make sure people follow the agreement as it was written.
Huh? ISDS isn't about enforcing the trade deal (which might also go to arbitration), it's a separate issue.
That used to happen to me weekly or so, but then I switched the majority of my browser workload from Chrome to Safari, and I haven't had that issue in the several months since.
I don't use a lot of tools that embed Chromium, though, so I'm not entirely sure just a browser switch would keep you from hitting memory pressure warnings.
It took me a good while to read it because it is rather information sparse (lots of puffery and filler content).
It's also setup with more of a story to the situation that shows a biased view of 'how we got here'.
I wonder if that 'storytelling' is something readers expect / prefer in general or if it's a crutch that is commonly used by in depth reporters who should instead be primarily presenting information with a great depth.
Actually, standard of living is pretty heavily tied with gdp per capita, but I'm pretty sure we are talking about which country is richer not standard of living.
How so? If you take a "cake" of 100 units, let 99 people share 1, and give 1 to 1 person. Then most people have 1/99 units. If your cake is 85, and you give everyone an equal share, everyone has a 85/99 units. Now, the situation in Europe is probably more like having 2 people split 60 units out of 85 - but that still leaves "the rest" way a head of those that only get 1/99...
Centrally planning an economy is an NP complete problem. Marxism is dumb and if any would be socialist on this forum can explain to me how we as a society can retain the benefits yielded by capitalism without the use of capital and how socialism of such a form can exist without a centrally planned economy, I'm all ears.
Marxism has failed and failed and then failed again, and then it also led to the deaths of 100 million.