The only way that could conceivably work out is if everyone collectively protested their student loans together since it's such a massive problem for so many people. Even then, the government would probably buckle down and try to destroy half the country's financial viability before they caved and admitted this toxic industry preyed on kids that didn't know what that debt meant when they signed up for it.

How a person reacts to being asked about the version of these things most close to them is telling. If they get defensive and deny the event happened, I would hesitate to trust their opinion on other things. Clearly that person bases their opinions on what they want to be true rather than reality. That’s the kind of person whose ideology would likely lead to another event to be ashamed of. If, on the other hand, they admit it was a horrible thing and agree that people should be educated on it and that steps should be taken to prevent it from ever happening again, then I’m more likely to take their opinion seriously and believe that they can be part of the conversations we need to happen to create a better world.

Unfortunately, steeply here doesn’t really capture the size disparity between Lemmy and Reddit. Lemmy has 60k active monthly users. Reddit has 450 million active monthly users. We have a looong way to go before we can really compete. But we just have to keep pushing. Now that we exist and have a sustainable userbase, the next time Reddit does something idiotic we’ll be here to attract disgruntled users. Something good that we can be doing is showing up to the threads on Reddit about the terrible things Reddit does and advertising Lemmy to people.

Does this mean that Canada is always expanding?

You are just a capitalist that likes welfare. Your ideology has absolutely no desire to change the ruling class or overturn the system that is currently burning the world and leading us to destruction.

I don’t think you help your case arguing this way. I’m not even dissecting socialism when I say that - just your approach to argument. You don’t know my ideology. Creating a strawman of my views isn’t going to convince me or anyone else that you have a good point. Hell, for a long time I did consider myself an actual socialist. I would love to lay out my reasons for my movement away from that, but I’m not sure you’re ready to have that respectful exchange of views.

The liberals obsessed with the “nordic model” still would’ve downvoted it. They don’t like having to wrestle with the reality of climate change. Our options are socialism or extinction.

Beginning an argument with “Your head is up your ass so far that I won’t bother arguing. I’m right no matter what.” is a sure way to have people dismiss your arguments outright. I say this all because I want my opponents to be good at arguing. I want to hear persuasive viewpoints. I don’t believe for a moment that I have all the answers, so I welcome any opposition to the beliefs that I’ve come to possess. If you believe that you have the answers, then I’m genuinely all ears. But unfortunately, arguing isn’t about being right - it’s about persuading other people that you are. The internet has made it easy to lose sight of this and argue with hostility instead of respect. I’m trying to be sincere here. Please consider the purpose of getting into these internet spats. I see so much hostility outright from people on the left and it genuinely sucks. I find that when I try to dig even a little bit into arguments for socialism or communism that I often hit this barrier of hostility. It’s not a good way of selling a viewpoint. And you can say that it’s not your job, but then I ask why we’re even here having this conversation.

Now, I’ll stop patronizing you. I’ll throw my argument out there so you can tear it to pieces. Back to labels - what socialism looks like to you depends on who you are. You say it’s when “the old institutions are thrown out and the new institutions are introduced”. I’ll take that to mean some form of government is in possession of the means of production across the board? My hesitancy towards socialism is mostly centered on my knowledge of history and the repeated trends of powerful institutions decaying into corruption and greed. I think socialism could genuinely work really well as long as the people in charge were kept honest. But my skepticism is towards the long term sustainability of such a system. Time and again we see institutions decay and fall prey to humanity’s worst impulses. The fall of the Roman Republic (and the regular chaos of the Roman Empire for that matter) is my classic go-to for this, but there are plenty of non-western examples as well. The best cases I’ve seen in my studies of various histories seem to be centered around cultures that dispersed their power into many smaller institutions. My problem with socialism is that it inherently says “we’re going to get rid of business corruption and government corruption by combining the two”. I think creating an even smaller, more focused center of power in society is a dangerous proposal - it becomes all the more easy for the wealthy elites to worm their way into that power and take control. Essentially you’re taking all of those wealthy capitalist greedy dirtbags and then moving them into the government.

Capitalism, on the other hand, removes business from government which allows, in theory, for the government to act as a counter-weight to business. Now, you and I both know that that hasn’t stopped wealthy elites from worming their way into capitalism and capturing government interests. But my main point here is that socialism isn’t solving that problem. It’s throwing fuel on the fire by cutting out the one supposed protection we do have, which is a separation of government interests and business interests. Ostensibly, when capitalism is working the way it should, the government is acting as a counterweight to business greed. I think there are better ways to strengthen that counterweight that don’t necessarily fall under the label of “socialism”. I think heavily regulated capitalism is better than outright socialism because in the ideal case the government is still acting as a tool of the people, flexing its power in opposition to businesses. The ideal case in socialism has the government acting as the businesses itself, which I believe would encourage greed and would actually cause even less incentive to address things like climate change.

Yeah. Like saying you believe that companies beyond a certain size should be legally required to seek a vote from their employees before implementing certain types of changes is a real policy to argue about. Call it democratizing business or whatever you want. And then that’s an actual concrete issue we can argue about. Or if you believe in the government buying out businesses beyond a certain size, that’s a specific conversation we can have and we can discuss the hypothetical implementation of that. Call it business seizure or whatever. Just saying “I believe in socialism” doesn’t dig enough into the details of how you perceive socialism or how you would implement it. And frankly, I think it hurts the socialists or communists or whoever is trying to persuade the current culture away from what we have more than anybody else. Ideas grow when you make real, concrete proposals. These exceedingly large scale labels usually end up killing a conversation rather than feeding it. Someone gets mad at a label and then everything shuts down on that sticking point.

I think the way we argue over labels hurts us. If I use heavy regulation and government aid to limit the abuses in a capitalist system, at what point does the label change to “socialism”? I think we do ourselves a disservice to create these strict conceptions of systems like capitalism, socialism, or communism. Then when one fails we get to say “well that wasn’t true x”. And the labels allow people to boogeyman an idea. And worst of all, we eliminate the possibility to take good lessons from multiple different systems and incorporate them into our system. I think we would be better served promoting policies on a case by case basis instead of using these huge words. And to be clear, I’m a bit of a hypocrite here. I’ve been mostly telling people I’m a “social democrat” or that I support “capitalism with heavy regulations”. But even those words can get picked apart and don’t really capture nuance. My main point is that I think this thread is a perfect encapsulation of how these arguments stop us from getting behind good policies when we bicker about the definitions of words that mean different things to different people.

Honestly, I think the way we argue over labels hurts us. If I use heavy regulation and government aid to limit the abuses in a capitalist system, at what point does the label change to “socialism”? I think we do ourselves a disservice to create these strict conceptions of systems like capitalism, socialism, or communism. Then when one fails we get to say “well that wasn’t true x”. And the labels allow people to boogeyman an idea. And worst of all, we eliminate the possibility to take good lessons from multiple different systems and incorporate them into our system. I think we would be better served promoting policies on a case by case basis instead of using these huge words. And to be clear, I’m a bit of a hypocrite here. I’ve been mostly telling people I’m a “social democrat” or that I support “capitalism with heavy regulations”. But even those words can get picked apart and don’t really capture nuance. My main point is that I think this thread is a perfect encapsulation of how these arguments stop us from getting behind good policies when we bicker about the definitions of words that mean different things to different people.

My wife went to school for English lit and is a professional writer. I cannot get a plot twist past her notice. It sucks so much. There was a video game that featured a serial killer (no spoilers, so no title) and I NEVER would have guessed who it was. I played it and I was shocked at the twist. Then I had my wife play it and in the first five minutes of the game she was like “That man is evil and I don’t trust him” and I was like WTF!!! He’s like nice and friendly and stuff. How the fuck does she do it. I spent hours having to gaslight her about how correct her prediction was. She also always knows when someone is going to die. I have to tell her not to comment predictions about movies because she’s correct at least 70% of the time.

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you lima bean? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Beans, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Adzuki, and I have over 300 confirmed bowls cooked. I am trained in garbanzo warfare and I’m the top cook in the entire US bean forces. You are nothing to me but just another customer. I will feed you beans with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fava. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of bean providers across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, marrowfat. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your lentils. You’re fucking cooked, kidney bean. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can feed you over seven hundred different recipes, and that’s just with my black beans. Not only am I extensively trained in pinto combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the Great Northern Bean Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little split pea. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have prepared your fucking mouth. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn soybean. I will shit beans all over you and you will drown in them. You’re gonna be fucking full, baked bean.