Politics Discussion Thread January 2013

OrphanWilde

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

As Multiheaded added, "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also may belong here.

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

As Multiheaded added, "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also may belong here.

And yes, I'm specifically claiming that on net people like the latter three have a much larger negative impact than the positive impact of people like the former three.

...Then I don't understand how your words are at all an objection to my description of emancipatory/socially radical politics. You do understand that, for example, MLK was a radically minded avowed socialist who led a partial social revolution in the US without either violence or "explicit political power"? If you don't find yourself "horrified" by this, then we don't seem to have a problem.

Your use of the word overpriced and affluent leads me to believe you attach moral significance to parting idiots with their money for baubles. Why?

It's not nearly so narrow; I see no point in manufacturing tons of useless shiny stuff and pushing fake desires onto people to sell it so that the cycle can continue - and this wasteful nonsense is a mandatory imperative for 1st world capitalism. If we could agree on a different mechanism of distribution (not necessarily state planning), we could be using our industrial might to kickstart poor countries instead - while 1st world people could be working less, consuming less, wasting less, draining less resources, enjoying more leisure and giving more attention to the non-monetary things in society.

Example: why the hell do we buy personal cars for driving in cities? What good does it do us at all? And have we even considered the myriad costs? How is this not a ridiculous failure of the "pragmatic" capitalist mode of distribution AND its ideology?

Multi,

I've read this conversation, and I literally don't understand what you are talking about. I agree with you that left-of-mainstream views would be valuable in this community. But I think you and RomeoStevens are only talking past each other. That's not really a victory for rationalism.

1RomeoStevens13y

Wait so unless I'm horrified by it 100% of the time my point gets thrown out? There's no room for saying something has plusses and minuses and the minuses outweigh the plusses? [...] Sorry but you don't get to decide which preferences are real. You are angry that more resources aren't devoted towards things you value, welcome to the club.

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Politics Discussion Thread January 2013

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Politics Discussion Thread January 2013

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