SoyViking [he/him]

One would hope work would be significantly less miserable under socialism though

Under capitalism workers have to put up with jobs that makes them miserable. Otherwise they will become unemployed and even more miserable.

This is the best, most efficient and most rational economic system ever.

We have sold the same glass of lemonade back and forth between eachother 8 million times so somehow we both have negative tax rates now!

This is where the idea of “personal responsibility” is useful for liberals. Flatly admitting that they want a desperate underclass is too mask off for them to feel like good people so they invent a way of blaming individual victims rather than the economic system.

The poor has a theoretical opportunity to pull themselves up by the bootstraps so when they don’t do that it’s really their own fault. Of course that theoretical opportunity doesn’t translate into actual opportunity for most people but that’s fine, as there’s enough window dressing of meritocracy to make the opportunity look real if you are careful not to go into too much detail.

This is also the reason why liberals hate discussing real-world examples. Their logic only works in abstract thought experiments where they get to control the variables. Saying that everyone has the opportunity to succeed is a lot easier than saying that Bob, who has a set of very concrete and undeniable material conditions, has the opportunity succeed.

It’s so annoying that being irrationality afraid of nuclear power is simply assumed to be a leftist position where I live, by leftists and non-leftists alike. No thought goes into it, nuclear power is scary because of nuclear bombs and Chernobyl and that’s it.

I once read that when Sweden decided to switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar they didn’t do it all at once, disliking the idea of jumping so many days forwards/backwards (I can’t remember which way the Julian is out of sync). Instead they opted for a plan to move their calendar one single day every year over several decades. I remember the place I read about it saying that it just confused everyone and the plan was scrapped after a few years.

If you can’t use it for porn and you can’t use it to make pictures of powerful people in unflattering situations then what is the use case for AI?

There are plenty of shortcomings of the Scandinavian model of succdem-infested bureaucratic mass unions but they’re still able to pull off something like this and make oligarchs shit their pants.

The lack of a tradition for political interference in labour relations and the large membership makes it much more politically expensive for rulers to intervene in labour disputes.

That’s my experience as well. The food my Pakistani friend cooks is amazing but when I order the same thing at a restaurant it looks delicious but it tastes like poking your tongue out the window. I guess restaurants has to cater to western palates to make money and many westoids have very low spice tolerance.

Korea has lots of big stadiums and the people there seems to like football so why couldn’t they host a world cup?

Don’t they have vegetables in America?

I guess this is one of those YMMW situations. I’m sure Halloween can be fun and cool in America but outside of America it really sucks.

Where I’m from Halloween was not a thing until ten or fifteen years ago when toy stores decided they wanted to use the opportunity to market ugly plastic decorations and shitty costumes. There’s none of the cultural background that gives celebrations like this meaning and it all feels fake, like people are pretending to be Americans rather than taking part in a genuine celebration.

Celebrating Halloween as a non-American also has a tiresome aspect of cultural imperialism in it. Adopting stuff from other cultures is fine but why does it have to be stuff from burgerland every single time? Why can’t we do Dias de los muertos or Chinese New year instead?

My total income tax is around 38%. I reckon that to be less than what burgerlanders pay in income tax, insurance premiums and co-pays.

If you look up the statistics, the US has one of the highest public healthcare expenditures by capita, in addition to also having one of the highest private per capita expenditures.

Americans are being scammed.

In Denmark visits to GP’s, specialists and hospitals are free. Prescription drugs are subsidised on a sliding scale meaning that adults will pay a maximum of USD 640 a year for their prescriptions.

Dental care is not covered though, leading to a huge disparity in dental health between the rich and the poor.

There is a healthy and honest way to appreciate communism, Russia, the CCP and even DPRK.

Please tell us more about those healthy and honest “anti-authoritarian” non-tankie communists. Who are they and what political results have they made?

Fun fact: Some places in Europe “bilingual” is used as an euphemism for students with middle eastern backgrounds. When used like this it carries lots of negative connotations and authorities try to limit the concentration of “bilingual” students at schools as they’re seen as the source of all kinds of trouble.