You mean aside from all the founding fathers in jars?

Hey now, it was slightly more than a third, not half!

Isn’t the implication that he’s saying Tesla will fail if America fails, not that America will fail if Tesla fails? He’s basically saying he has tied his fortunes to America’s future, not necessarily the other way around.

Analyzing it is complex, but the behavior itself is more instinctual. I think Kevin feels the difference, but doesn’t think about it rationally.

I do think categorizing Steve’s comments as “wrong” vastly oversimplified the exchange, though. He’s pulling the emotional argument Kevin is making into a rational one, which is the point of the exchange.

Well it’s made up of four distinct islands in a sort of stretched out chain whereas Germany is more a big block of land in the middle of a continent (depending on your preferred definition of what that is).

Yet you support capitalism, which is a dictatorship of capital over people.

No, just suggesting that people take charge of their future instead of just assuming that the system will work itself out. The best system is the one that encourages people to not only look out for each other, but also criticize and question each other. And do so freely without the need for financial backing to do so.

That only happens when people decide to work together for their goals, even if they occasionally have to work towards someone else’s instead of their own. Which is entirely possible, no matter how dim a view of others one might have.

So don’t support dictators :)

All arguments are semantic arguments if you’re pedantic enough.

But your “fair and balanced” puts all the onus of clean up on the next person. Kind of like how parking far to one side of a parking spot puts all onus of creating enough space for people to get out of their car on the next person.

It’s passing the buck because you can’t be bothered to clean up after yourself.

To be fair 🤓 since it’s mostly theoretical, any definition of communism is going to be in flux as it has not achieved a shelf-stable real life application yet.

It’s slowness is it’s most effective and insidious trait. It ingrains itself into a society, with promises of “this is healthy if we just let it be”. Which is clearly not the case.

If most positives from it involve it having to be shackled entirely by regulation to constrain its most definable traits, it is not a good thing. It is just exploitable.

You’re the kind of person who parks all the way on the passenger side of a parking spot, aren’t you?

As someone who used to take care of office supplies (I was in accounting, btw) because everyone in the office is lazy and doesn’t wanna deal with complex things like grounds and filters.

Tobias getting around.

Like a fine wine.

States don’t aspire to Communism, people do. States aspire to use a watered down form of Communism to trick populations into giving them power.

Anarchism, as a whole concept, doesn’t put equality first. It can divide power and resources equally, but it doesn’t have to.

With Communism there is a specific emphasis on power (and resources) and responsibility being equally shared amongst the populace.

These concepts often have overlap, they do not exist in vacuums unto themselves.

A system where there is no central authority and everyone has an equal share of both responsibility and power? Somehow I don’t think they’d find that particularly enthralling.

Life is unfair, but unless we acknowledge our own failings it will never get better.

You want to walk through life blaming everyone else for everything that goes wrong in your life and take no responsibility for your own actions? Feel free. But just know nothing will ever get better for you.

I even acknowledge, multiple times, that it is not solely the fault of the person. But that does not mean they have no will of their own, no ability to change their circumstances. Sometimes that freedom is not enough, but unless you do something to take charge of your own life, again, nothing will ever change.