Look, you started hot in this thread but tired after a few comments. They adjusted, you didn’t, and you got rocked; it happens. Hit the showers and we’ll get after it early tomorrow with some film.

If you ever had any doubt that there are brain dead, LLM commie bots vomiting nonsense on Lemmy, just read the previous comment again. Slowly.

It was a joke actually, I’m not that invested in this thread lol

📽

I mean, I should have known you’d regurgitate the propaganda, but it’s always a disappointment anyway. Such a stupid response, too. That’s basically a non-sequitur. For one, there being two evils does not necessitate siding with the lesser. You can acknowledge there are no good guys, and instead pick the position most likely to lead to the least amount of suffering over all. That is and will always be peace, but you blood thirsty natoids just can’t imagine that. Your response is also dumb as hell given that modern Russia is a capitalist state, not the USSR lmao. Bringing up Gulags is a bit like bringing up slave plantations in the USA… except the USSR is actually completely dissolved so its even less relevant. For the record, the US still legally permits slavery in the instance of criminal conviction. Say, sure would be wild if the US disproportionately policed and convicted black and brown people, wouldn’t it? That’d seem like a loophole legitimizing slavery over time! But that’s just whatabouttism so feel free to ignore it like a good little natoid. You’re grossly ignorant regarding tiananmen square as well, but I won’t bother citing anything since you’ll just dismiss it out of hand.

Instead, I’ll ask what are your thoughts on the repression of Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, Ireland Independence, French Yellow Vests/Public Benefits/Police Racism, and so on and so forth in “Free” and “Democratic” countries? What about the United States having the highest incarceration rate in the world, largely filled with black and brown people subjected to forced labor while in prison? What would happen if your “protest” did more than carry signs in publicly designated and permitted areas? Wouldn’t you be beaten, arrested, and convicted under the fullest extent of the law? So sorry that you’re so cucked you can’t imagine doing more than asking your leaders nicely for change and politely going home when they say no, but real protest is certainly illegal in “Free” Western countries, and if you ever actually engaged in it you’d see exactly how brutal those governments can be.

Principled communists aren’t unapologetic supporters of every single thing socialist countries do/have done, but we take issue with the nakedly hypocritical framing from Western powers. The atomic unit of propaganda is emphasis. You ignorantly reduce entire foreign countries to a single word/event while myopically ignoring the conditions before and after, but hem and haw and whine about nuance and procedure and the necessity of the barbarity around us every day… When you’re not ignoring it outright that is. That’s what makes you a useful idiot to our own system of oppression. It’s an embarrassment.

Yeah there’s some risk associated with protesting in the US but at least I don’t have to worry about the going to the gulag

Good thing protestors in the US and UK don’t get arrested on flimsy charges or crippled or murdered by cops

Snowden, Assange, manning, dozens of maimed protestors and the largest prison system in the world would like a word with you after seeing what you just posted here.

Axiom 2: one must first make a ppb comment in order for someone to reply with ppb.

We were all libs once. Except me. I’m the one true socialist.

You claim to know something about Marx, ok let’s test that knowledge of yours with the simplest possible question

According to Marx what are the sources of capitalist profit?

But anthropology doesn’t have the nice graphics and the math that doesn’t really have any empirical data behind it, anthropology isn’t a real science unlike neoclassical economics!

It literally has handed power down from father to son twice.

It has had sons win elections and then hold the office twice. We can call it dynastic in a sense similar to US political dynasties, but that’s different from being literally hereditary.

As the citizens cannot advocate for a change in leaders, a change in direction of the party or an entirely new political system

Citation needed

You’re still not getting it lol. Neoclassical economics is theoretically standing out way over a cliff and simply refusing to look down like Wiley coyote. Your appeal to mathematics is unintentionally hilarious, because it was physics envy and the chasing of mathematical models over real life evidence/coherent theory that led the field astray to begin with lmao. You can come up with all kinds of fancy models and as much mathematics as you like, but none of it matters if you’re basing it on incorrect axioms.

“Functioning in the real world” - oh yeah for sure. Burning the environment down and cooking the biosphere while forever chemicals and microplastics permanently saturate the ecosystem. Liberal societies are “Functioning” in so far as they’re not actively failed states this very moment, but that is accomplished on the back of neo-imperialism, unequal exchange with the global south, and unresolvable contradictions inherent to neo-liberalism/capitalism. A car driving 80 mph towards a cliff is working, sure, but is that a desirable state of affairs?

Also take a quick look around my guy. We’re not in a laboratory. I’m calling you an idiot on the internet. Not every conversation is the platonic ideal of scientific pursuit you nerd.

Why are you presuming liberals are dumb?

There are several incredible replies to you in this thread that have completely gone unappreciated or over your head or both.

I’m a biologist, but my college offered a few humanities courses, so I took an introductory course in economics.

The maths was fine; it was mostly linear equations and differentiation. But the priors seemed to defy all logic and common sense. It was like a physicist assuming that there was no friction. The impression I got was that economists put too much effort into mathematical rigour and too little into empirical verification.

Now there are biologists who study animal societies and their ‘economic systems’. But they care more for experiments than for theory, and this seems to me to be the more reasonable approach.

Fun fact: Everyone has an ideology. Just yelling “I abandon my ideology” doesn’t change that. Go ask an anthropologist they’ll explain it too you.

You really need to look into the concept of cultural hegemony. Your ignorance as you speak with authority is embarrassing but it isnt an innate quality you have and can be corrected.