“There’s something wrong with communism?”

Nah, and the hundred of millions who have died, literally it numbers over 100 million people in the 20th century alone … nothing wrong with that either.

/s /s /s /s /s /s/ss/s/ss/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s

…. /s

It’s a horrifically broken, evil, inhumane and prone to squashing human rights political system, barely one step away from dictatorship.

Unless you’re being sarcastic, in which case I have it on good authority from people who like to scold me that you should put a /s afterwards. 🙂

“And of course quite a few billionaires have decided, “you know what, this amount of money is obscene, I’m going to stick everything I’m not using into a foundation and do something good with it.”

What number is ‘quite a few?’ Also…. when did Max become a billionaire?

Actually it’s socialism that works great on paper, but it then devolves into communism (or worse, outright fascism, as happened with Nazism), which doesn’t work great on paper or in practice, but I agree with your basic point that the human element makes stuff like communism and socialism inherently flawed.

People actually bring this up with me fairly often when I’m in a political discussion. And I’ve gotten a pretty regular response to that.

1) Switzerland is only socialism within a parliamentary democratic framework. Just like Germany was before the Socialists took over and removed the framework.
2) Switzerland is almost entirely homogenous, and has a very small population. The larger a population gets, the more a socialist system crumbles or corrupts itself as the costs involved in taking care of the population increase.
3) Socialism does not have to be an instantaneous devolution to dictatorship, or an instantaneous crumbling into chaos (It took quite a while with Greece, for example).

“At what point do we agree with Rorschach, and at what point do we start to see Oz’s point of view? ”

Had Dr. Manhattan been able to see the future (Oz’s machine had blocked off this future from him), he would never have killed Rorschach because he would have seen it was doomed to failure as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwu_rilQa1A

“Perhaps because people might question how factual their assertions are:”

No, because it would send the thread off on a tangent.

“2) Switzerland homogenous? It has four national languages, four core ethnic groups (French, German, Italian, Romansch).”

… have you ever BEEN to Switzerland?

“4) Explain to me how population is relevant to liberty? Or Per Capita production? You do understand the advantages of scale in a larger population size?”

Yes, I do. And the smaller a population is, the easier it is to pay for the needs of the populace. The larger a population is, the less money there is to spread around to the populace per person, because the amount of spending soon overtakes the amount taken in from taxes. The amount of people in the entire nation of Switzerland is less than the amount of people in JUST New York City, and across a much wider area of land for Switzerland.

In short, the smaller a population is, the more easily a government can pay for everything without going bankrupt. The more the government can pay for everything without going bankrupt, the more power it’s able to have over its people because they are the gatekeepers.

Um… basic economics?

If a nation’s ability to produce wealth does not expand at the same speed as it spends money, a socialist or communist system fails. Therefore, to slow down the point of failure, you can’t expand your population, so the amount of money being spent does not expand that quickly. You artificially limit your spending by limiting your population growth on which you’ll be spending money.

“a teensy population with a large land area (8 million) while the US has over 325 million”

Swiss population per square mile: 490. US population per square mile: 84. Theoretical advantage US on both efficiencies of scale and available resources.

“And yes, it’s very homogenous, … while the US has … massive
diversity.”

Approximately 37% of the Swiss population was born abroad (2011), in some cantons more people were born abroad than in Switzerland. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Switzerland#Demographics Meanwhile in the US, 13% were born abroad (2013), so Switzerland is around 3 times as diverse as the US.

You keep throwing out assertions that aren’t actually backed by the facts, I’m simply injecting the actual facts into the discussion.

“Perhaps you can use the land where populations actually exist in the US
instead of an average that includes barren desert terrain?”

Well, if I did that, then I’d also have to exclude the Swiss mountains and lakes…. Have you looked at Switzerland recently? It’s kind of lumpy, with big wet patches.

“It’s not that you’re not giving facts. It’s just that you’re giving SKEWED facts that weighted to give an incorrect reality.”

Oddly enough, that’s the problem I have with your posts. You make sweeping assertions that sound like they might be true, in order to confirm your political biases, but if you actually happen to live in or know the places you’re making claims about, then as often as not they bear no relation to reality.

As someone that is actually from western Europe where communist parties where part of the political scene for a while, it works a bit different.
We do not have one single overarching political party take hold over the entire country.
There are many different parties, as much as 17 in my own country as of right now, that are competing to form coalition parties. A party could even only have 2/3% of the total votes and still get one of the many seats in the coalition. Though they would have very little sway in that case.
My country has a system where there is very little chance that one single party gains power alone, so we might have had communist elements in our political scene, we never even got close to true communism or any of the other forms of political standpoints.
The same is so for many countries in western Europe.

Coalition goverments are not a rarity in Europe. There are something like 34 I believe.
And we both know that socialism and communism are not the same type of goverment.

They’re NOT in sole power though. Where are you getting that they’re in sole power. They’re in coalition governments.

I said socialism and communism were related by being on the same end of the political spectrum (more government control, as opposed to less) – they’re both closer to fascism than democracy, republicanism, or libertarianism (classic liberalism as it tends to be in many parliamentary nations). Although when socialist countries get too large, they have to (by design) start taking more control from the people and industry in order to ‘take care’ of its population via spending a smaller and smaller piece of their economic pie (since their intake of treasure is expanding at a slower pace than their spending). That’s what happened in countries that started off as socialist and became fascist or communist, like the USSR, Cuba, and Nazi Germany – to name a few of the more prominent examples.

Don’t look at the label, look at the facts. Do you deny that Naziism emerged from the far right Freikorps? Because you won’t find a single historian specialising in the period who does. The party was explicitly anti-communist from the outset, it flirted with left wing economic ideas, but rapidly dropped them in favour of strong links with capitalist business which were fully established before it gained power.

If Nazism and capitalism weren’t linked, why were the owners and managers of Krupp, IG Farben and Flick prosecuted for war crimes, including crimes against peace/planning an aggressive war, with only the IG Farben contingent being found innocent on that count. Why did prominent financier Wilhelm Keppler, a party member from 1927, found the Freundeskreis des Wirtschaft, later evolving into the Freundeskreis Himmler/Freundeskreis Reichsfuehrer SS, to funnel support directly from financiers to the party via Himmler and strengthen links between business and the party? Why was Albert Speer part of Hitler’s inner circle?

WRT feudalism, the Nazi state saw a concentration of political power into the hands of a handful of ‘barons’ – Himmler and Goering most noticeably – who each used their power to establish powerbases that included both industrial and military/paramilitary elements under their personal control. In the case of Himmler that’s the Deutsche Wirtschaftsbetriebe and the Waffen-SS and in case of Goering it’s Reichswerke Hermann Goering (probably the biggest company in the world in 1942, with half a million employees/forced labourers), and units such as Fallschirmpanzerkorps Hermann Goering* and the Luftwaffe Felddivisionen. It might not be classic feudalism, but warlords ruling private armies and private economies are close enough that it gets the idea across better than most alternatives.

*Yes, Goering’s Luftwaffe had armoured divisions.

I fully understand what you’re saying about the dual axes of left/right and authoritarian/libertarianism, it’s a concept I subscribe to myself. However even within that construct, the Nazi party, except for some early flirtation with populist ideas, was overwhelmingly a rightist/authoritarian party with strong and bidirectional links with the core of German industry/capitalism.

“The key feature of someone who is ‘right wing’ is small, limited government.”

That’s a political concept of “right wing” that holds largely in the US, though gaining some traction in the UK through politicians bought influenced by US right wing think tanks. It’s a facet of modern neoliberalism, not traditional concepts of the right wing. The UK concept of ‘conservative’ is explicitly authoritarian and in its Conservative form explicitly right wing.

“They were following the will of the government!”

So, they were only following orders? Oddly enough that’s not what the court found.

“Not to mention stacked with Nazi supporters”

Demonstrably not true, the management of Krupp, IG Farben and Flick predated the rise of the Nazis and opted to develop strong links with the Party prior to it taking power.

“They didn’t ‘flirt’ with left wing ideology. They came to power with it! ”
Look at the dates! The Nazis came to power in 1933, Keppler was a Party member from 1927 and founded the Freundeskreis des Wirtschaft in 1932 at Hitler’s request. If the Nazis were raving leftists, why were so many bankers and executives queuing up to associate themselves with them before they gained power? And why were they so eager to funnel 1 million marks a year of their own money to the Nazis via Himmler?

“‘Right wing authortarian’ is an oxymoron that doesn’t even make sense.””

You’ve said yourself that left-right economics and libertarian-authoritarianism are separate political axes, therefore right wing AND authoritarian are clearly possible within your own terms.

The Political Compass, https://www.politicalcompass.org/, has been analysing politics in terms of those axes for 15 years. It actually has an ‘authoritarian right’ reading list linked from the front page. And if we look at its findings, every US election has the Republican and Democratic candidates solidly in the Authoritarian Right corner of the graph. In fact most mainstream political parties are Authoritarian Right.

“There are many different forms of communism, but the root concept is common ownership of the means of production.”

No there aren’t. There are different levels of which a communist state will impose its rule over the people and industry, but there are not different forms of communism. There’s never been a ‘perfect example’ of a communist state or a ‘socialist state’ because it simply can’t exist. They even tried it in the American colonies in Jamestown and it failed horribly there as well and almost destroyed the colony.

“The USSR wasn’t a communist state”

Yes it was. Do you mean it wasn’t a PERFECT communist state? Now that’s just arguing semantics. And communism IS an oligarchy. So is socialism.

“Ditto for China and all the rest.”

China is also a communist state. You’re getting into semantics by saying it’s not a pure communist state. The US isnt a pure democracy (in fact it’s not a democracy at all, it’s a republic, but that’s another debate)

The point is each of these nations were striving TOWARDS a pure form of their government, and instead they get quasi-fascist (or outright fascist) states. Communism is a BAD idea, which fails to even remotely meet its ideals when put into practice. Every time.

“Actual communist communities are few and far between, mostly small communes and similar.”

They tried that in Jamestown, a small community colony of about 150 people, and almost all of them died after a year or two of what was basically an experiment in socialism or communist governing (although they didnt call it that). The thing that saved them, funny enough, was starting to use a capitalist structure instead – mainly because capitalism relies on the idea that people ARE going to be greedy, self-interested, and lazy, and makes it profitable for them to NOT be the latter, while getting the first two to work for the community’s benefit while still working for the individual.

“My personal belief is communism probably can’t function above the community level,”

I agree with this, but even at a community level, it doesn’t last long. And a community that cannot grow and evolve is doomed to failure.

“but we shouldn’t confuse the dictatorships that called themselves communist with actual communism, they’re two different political systems.”

Not really. Every single attempt at communism has become indistinguishable from a dictatorship or oligarchical dictatorship. The fact that the pure form has never been realized is because utopia doesn’t exist and pure forms of anything don’t exist. Reality is not perfect. People are not perfect. And government sure as heck is not perfect.

“I feel compelled to give the other side of the debate a fair shake and point out that Capitalism is also a system that works far better on paper than it ever does in practice.”

Actually, quite the opposite. Capitalism is something that, on paper, sounds like it should fall apart, but in practice works oddly well because it RELIES on human failings like greed and self-interest to maintain the system, and human beings almost always manage to do so. It even takes some level of altruism into account.

“In an ideal world you would start a capitalist society with everyone starting with the same amount of wealth.”

The fact that you had to start with an ‘ideal world’ means that you’ve already removed yourself from practice. We do not live in an ideal world, and people do not start with the same amount of wealth. Capitalism takes that into account. You haven’t.

“From there everyone would compete or cooperate depending on which is in their own self-interest and the result would balance out exactly resulting in a “rising water level raises all boats” situation where everyone is more, but still equally, wealthy.”

No again. People do not all work at the same level. People are not all the same intelligence, same strength, same work ethic. People do not all have the same skills, and those skills are not all in the same demand, and people do not all have the same needs, likes, and dislikes. A rising tide may raise all boats in general, but does not do so equally. It just rises them all.

“In practice of course it doesn’t work like that.”

Well, it’s good that you acknowledge that at least. Your initial premise is still wrong though.

“For starters, coming from a feudal society we have never been in a situation where everyone has had an equal share of wealth and even if we had, random chance would probably have resulted in some people benefiting more than others over time.”

We didn’t come from a feudal society. The first society we had in the United States was one based on mercantilism. Even England was no longer feudal by the time the colonies were started. Mercantilism was the theory that trade generates wealth and is stimulated by the accumulation of profitable balances, which the government should encourage. All colonies were expected to make money for the king. Capitalism was a naturally good answer to this. They tried a socialist structure first, in Jamestown, and they almost destroyed the colony with it.

I agree with the last part of your sentence though, partially. Some people would benefit more than others. I disagree that that inequity is going to be random. Sometimes it might be random, but usually it’s based on people’s actions and choices in life.

“The problem is there is no mechanism in pure capitalism offering a “negative feedback loop” to correct the case where more wealthy people exist.”

How’s people becoming wealthy a problem? That seems like it would be a good thing. Even for the poor people in the United States, they often live much better than the middle class people of other countries which don’t engage in capitalism. Do you have heat in your house? Do you have a TV? (98.7 percent of American households have one, and a large number of those who don’t do not voluntarily because they use other methods like streaming. For that matter, a huge portion of even poor people have internet access and phones. The idea that anyone has the chance to BECOME rich, based on their choices in life, is a good thing. Does this mean it’s guaranteed? No. Does this mean that people who start rich are at an atvantage? But if one person becomes a winner in the capitalism game, it doesnt mean another person automatically becomes the loser. It’s actually possible for both sides to win. The answer to getting a bigger piece of the pie is not take more of someone else’s pie necessarily. It’s ‘bake a bigger pie.’ It happens, but it’s short-sighted. Because baking a bigger pie will both help the rich person get even richer than if he or she takes part of the poor person’s pie, with the added benefit that the poor person gets a bigger piece of their pie as well. Which they can then use to buy more stuff from the person with the bigger piece. Is it equal? No. There’s no equality of outcome. In real life, there is no equality of outcome, so capitalism is built around dealing with that.

“Quite the opposite – there are positive feedback mechanisms where such people have additional power and influence and can use them to increase their own wealth at the expense of others. (I realise I’m stating the obvious here!)”

This is true. In a capitalist society, the rich can and often do get richer. And yes, to some extent, it CAN be at the expense of others. It’s not at the expense of the poor though. It’s usually at the expense of other rich, because it makes more sense to increase your own wealth at the expense of someone else wealthy. You’ll get more money that way. There’s a reason the other person is rich – they have access to a market and consumer base that you should want. If you don’t want to compete with another rich person (like… if you’re not rich enough to compete with the rich), the alternative is again not ‘find the poor and crush them’ – it’s find a place where no one is competing at all, or take an existing model and offer something the rich person is NOT offering, and fill that void, because most of the time, you won’t be able to out-quality the person who can afford to pour more money into their business than you can. That’s just how capitalism works.

Does this mean the rich will never exploit the poor? Of course not. They might. There are a-holes everywhere. Would they prefer to exploit other rich people? Yeah. Rich people would rather get more money from other rich people than eliminate the middle and lower class who buy most of their stuff. It’s better for them in the long run.

“About the only thing that has helped historically to an extent is, for example in pre-war US when governments levied 80-90% taxes against millionaires which could be used for public works projects.”

Actually 80-90% taxes on millionaires don’t work, especially not in the long run. it just makes the millionaires move to places where they are not being taxed 80-90%, or create tax shelters so they don’t have to pay anything, or far less than you’d think is normal, because they can afford people who know all the loopholes. The answer? Eliminate all the loopholes. The way to eliminate all loopholes? Make the tax system simpler, so there are less places for loopholes to form. That tends to require lower taxes though. Our highest period of growth was actually after Reagan got the TRA of 1984 passed to reduce the graduated tax from a high of 94 percent down to 35 percent (with the other levels being, I believe, 15 percent and 25 percent, and below 15 percent was zero).

“Unfortunately the conditions no longer seem to exist where any government in the US could come to power with the ability or desire to rain in capitalist excess to any realistic extent.”

Of course there are. There are LOTS of consumer protection groups who do have a good deal of power over capitalism, and who protect the rights of the consumer and there are hundreds of laws on the books to protect workers and consumers from unsafe business practices, monopolies and illegal trusts, and price gouging.

Is it perfect? Definitely not. But that’s because people aren’t perfect. It still manages to work though better than the other systems.

Maybe one day, someone will come up with a system that works perfectly, but I wouldn’t hold my breath, and that system will not be socialism or communism or a dictatorship. The world is doing better now for the poor than it’s done in most of the entire rest of the history of civilization – including, as you mentioned, feudalism.

So if I don’t have free health care, then I’m not as well off as another person in a country that has to ration his or her electricity each day and has no phone, heat, air conditioning, or TV? Because when I was in the Dominican Republic, health care was practically free, but electricity was rationed (and you needed a generator if you wanted more than a very minimal ration of it), no one had AC (and they NEEDED it), I had visited the house of a lawyer there and it was a TINY two room apartment which was comparable to what I had as a college student working as a waitress to afford the rent, and most people didn’t have TVs. Heck, in some places I went to, they didn’t have floors. I would not say they were better off.

“Air-con as a necessary measure of wealth? What a uniquely American view.”

According to my cousin’s family in the DR, they saw it the same way.

“Most of the items you list are luxury items, healthcare and heat are not, they are basic essentials.”

Free healthcare actually IS a luxury item. But my point, of which you are getting off the topic, is that even the poor in the US have a much more luxurious life than the middle class or well-off in many other nations which have free health care. I mean, even the ACA is inherently flawed and is going to go bankrupt in a few years. By next year the prices are going to be skyrocketing, and as is, a lot of people are now paying more than they did before for less, or paying more for stuff which they do not need. In addition, the cost added to businesses is increasing prices and cutting full time workers. It’s just basic economics. And lets not forget that now you have government bureaucrats, not doctors, in a position of telling patients what is and is not worthy of medical treatment, and what type of treatment

“Not from where I’m sitting. Healthcare for all is a basic human right.”

Forcing others to pay for it isn’t.

“Article 25 of the UNCRPD states that health care must be available without discrimination, many disabled people are unable to work, therefore unable to pay for healthcare, therefore there must be provision for free healthcare.”

As we all know the pinnacle of morality that the UN is. Remind me again who they’ve had run the council on human rights? Noble countries known for their human rights such as… Congo, Cuba, China, Qatar, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the UAE, Venezuela? All countries with sublime, clean bills of purity when it comes to determining human rights.

Or the UN ‘peacekeepers’ engaging in slave trades and sex trafficking and rape gangs? Perhaps it’s humane rape gangs and sex trafficking and slavery?

Or the myriad of antisemitic resolutions passed by the UN against Israel? I’m sure that when the nations that keep bringing up these resolutions finish their myriad attempts to ‘push the jews into the sea,’ they will do so quite humanely. Well… as long as they see jews as human. Which most don’t… even in their legal charters.

How about hte UN human rights commissioner Navi Pillay’s report to the UN (A/HRC/25/40, par. 72, citing E/CN.4/2005/72/Add.4) stating, and this is a quote:

“When Palestinean men beat their wives, it’s Israel’s fault.”

Ah yes, the UN – pinnacle of human rights for all. As long as you’re not jewish, a woman, a yizidi, a kurd, a prisoner of war being tortured in violation of the Geneva Convention (unless the accused country is the US or Israel), anyone who wants freedom of speech and/or religion, or Israel in general.

/s

I won’t respond to your reply point-by-point, mostly because I’m supposed to be working 🙂

I live in the UK, so when I say capitalism came from feudalism I meant in Britain (back in Tudor times and before, long before the colonies were formed). Probably should have made that clear.

Naturally it’s a good thing for people to be more wealthy – as long as everyone gets that opportunity. As you suggest the idea that anyone can become rich is a good thing and is the basis of the “american dream”, but unfortunately I consider it to be largely a fallacy. A person cannot in general start off penniless and through dint of hard work alone, become a rich man. It’s certain true that this is a good and mostly successful approach to avoiding starvation in the west, unlike in the third world, and many people do somewhat better than that – but rich? that’s mostly a lottery than only a lucky few win.

I probably mis-stepped when I suggested that everyone should be equally wealthy – that’s obviously not strictly necessary in a capitalist society, but I would argue that no-one should have more power and influence than anyone else as a result of greater wealth – and in particular they shouldn’t have the power to subvert the system (through campaign funding and tax avoidance for example) as a result of greater wealth.

Unfortunately we know that some people (or more commonly corporations) can and do influence government at both state and federal level to give them an unfair advantage over others. While there are indeed organisations that push back on this practice, sometimes successfully, it is a practice that is rife, because politicians quite like being wealthy too!

It’s also true that in many cases people and corporations don’t necessarily set out to “crush the poor”. However by taking every legal and quasi-legal effort to increase their own profit, the poor often ends up being caught in the cross fire.

I never intended to suggest that capitalism is necessarily a bad system, or that some form of socialism would be better. And I absolutely agree that it is better than feudalism! I do maintain that there are some flaws that are at best worrying (and at worst destabalise the whole system) and center around the fact that there are few if any sustainable ways of limiting the overreach by corporations. The system itself encourages organisations to do everything they can possibly get away with to maximise profit, and allows them to buy off and avoid any attempt at oversight of their actions. The results are the sub-prime mortgage scandal as the most obvious example, as well as the “too big to fail” debacle which followed it and didn’t even begin the prevent the problem from reoccurring in another guise somewhere down the line.

“Except it doesn’t. Capitalism came from mercantilism, not from feudalism. This is even well documented historically.”

Global modern capitalism came from mercantilism, but in England at least we had an earlier form of capitalism that Wikipedia calls “Agrarian Capitalism” that pre-dates mercantilism and replaced feudalism. So I think we’re talking at cross-purposes.

As for your list of rich people, you say yourself not all of them started out poor. I agree it is certainly possible for someone to become rich from being poor. I disagree that everyone or even most people have this opportunity though because it’s not usually just a matter of rolling your sleeves up and working hard – there’s usually a fair amount of luck and being in the right place at the right time involved as well. Also bear in mind that if you really are starting from poverty you won’t have had a college education which is the “normal” route to higher paid jobs, which puts you at an obvious disadvantage. The fact that so many people in the US believe in the fallacy that “anyone can become rich with hard work” is what leads to the idea that there shouldn’t be free healthcare (to use an example from a previous post) – “why should we pay for your healthcare, you’re only poor because you’re a lazy b*s*t*d” is a refrain I see on too many forums (happily not this one, at least so far!)

“Of course, if a poor person tries to compete with a large corporation, they’re likely to get crushed in a head-to-head competition”

I don’t understand why you don’t see this as a problem – a poor person (read small company) should be able to compete with a large corporation provided they can genuinely do a better job at providing the same product or service. Sadly this hardly ever happens because corporations play dirty, leveraging massive patent portfolios that small companies cannot hope to match, as just one example.

Having said all that, I get the feeling we’ll have to agree to disagree on most of these points – we should probably start to draw a line under this anyway – we seem to have strayed somewhat from the point of the comic!

“Every single attempt at communism has become indistinguishable from a dictatorship or oligarchical dictatorship.”

The French Communist Party has been part of the French government on 3 occasions, the Italian Communist Party was a significant part of the Italian political scene for many years until evolving into a social democratic party.

Exactly.

So perhaps the problem is not with Communism, but with a one-party state of ANY economic philosophy.

I think you’ll find it’s the other way around. Marxist-Leninism is the one party state version, strict communism should have neither party nor state.

Yeah, kibbutzes/kibbutzim are a perfect level of community-scale communism. Above that, bureaucracy and the difficulty with associating more than a few hundred people with specific faces and people you know would make it difficult to impossible.

Like Izo you’ve missed my point. The ‘communist’ governments we’ve seen to date have been one-party oligarchies, not communist. I don’t think communism will work at the state level, but we’ve yet to see a real example to judge from.

If he wanted money he should have asked for it. He could have said hey I’ll do it but not for free, I want something for my actions. I want 6 billion dollars. And then Allison might have twisted his arm or she might have said I’ll be right back and then her phone would have rang before she could fly off and it would be Patrick on the line “I’ll cover it”.

Yeah, your example about being demanding about cutting the grass is a pretty good one, if only that was anything like the scene where she was asking, because that scene was more like begging him and appealing to his better nature to get him to do something not very much like cutting her grass but very much like helping save the lives of thousands of people. But other than that slight difference, pretty good analogy so I can totally see how it makes sense to do the screw you what do I look like your gardener response. Now it’s true he did do the screw you what do I look like a person who cares if people are dying whom I could easily help at no expense and very little difficulty to me, but that sounds a lot less principled than the whole gardener thing.

I don’t expect that Max would know that she has that kind of money. But it’s a hypothetical, maybe he says an astronomical amount to be a bigger jerk than normal, it is a possible way it might have gone.

But anyway I said if he wanted money he should have asked for it for the simple reason that you seem to think it’s wrong to ask people to work for free even if the thing denoted by the term work in this case is not Max’s principle method of employment and is more like what most people would term ‘a favor’. Of course the real reason why he didn’t ask for money is because he doesn’t need it and is not interested in doing it for money whether or not there is any to be had,

>Based on what – the fact that she already tore up the check? Why are
you >putting the impetus on MAX to do anything when it’s Alison who wants
>something?

Based on Patrick probably monitoring the conversation real-time, reading her mind that she is going to go ask him for money and calling up to spare her the trip. As far as putting the impetus on him to do anything, you were going on about the whole working for free and communism thing, so maybe he should have asked for money if that was what he wanted. He didn’t ask though, because he didn’t want it. So the working for free thing is not really an issue, the issue is working under force. And where that is the case it’s not me putting the impetus on Max to do anything when it’s Allison who wants something; it’s Allison who is putting the impetus on Max to do something because she wants it. It’s just me being totally fine with that because I would do the exact same thing to Max under the circumstance – although probably I would have offered him some money first or asked him what do you want to do it rather than asking him to do something for the good of humanity because he’s already pretty established that he would never care about that.

I agree she should have asked what he wanted, I certainly would have, and it seems sort of a weird telling part of her character that she didn’t. That she didn’t consider it sort of implies that she didn’t really care what Max wants, because well she’s pissed at him for being such a shit and in a way it is very much poetic justice – he dissed Feral, now he must help Feral.

Or maybe she cares too much what Max wants, but in her opinion it had better be only one thing. She wants him to want to help.

I wonder what would have happened if he had said yes, of course I’ll help. Would she have then felt attraction to him again? Was the not offering him compensation because she was angry she had ever felt attraction for him? I mean really she could have gone about any number of ways to get him to do it nicely, she could have called Patrick and asked for his help. Of course she didn’t need to do these things because of her powers, but she could have so as to not run the risk of needing to use force. And she decided not to do anything but ask Max, please be decent. And he wasn’t.

I think essentially this was their second date, and now they really are broken up.

you do realize that I’m just suggesting explanations for why Allison might have gone about the things the way she did, not suggesting the way she went about it was the optimal way to do so. That is to say I think she was emotionally clouded regarding Max, and did it the way she did because she wanted other things from him she didn’t get. In fact those things she could never get by force. She couldn’t force him to be altruistic, but she could force him to help Feral.

Well this seemed to escalate quickly…
Just a few minor clarifications:

The whole “Nazism didn’t grow out of capitalism”:
-Yeah, it didn’t grow out of socialism either. Hitler was NOT a socialist, nor were any of his heinous, long-term associates. Adolf Hitler was a populist, ultra-nationalist, demagogue who put the word’s “socialist” and “worker” into his party name to gain the support of Germany’s disenfranchised working class, and use the revenue from the country’s massive industrial backbone to finance his rise to power. In fact, once he got himself into place, he then jailed every single person, even members of his own political party, who still thought they were going to do this whole silly socialist thing.

“The ACA is more broken than anything was in the past.”:
-I… wow…
“Misinformed” is probably the most polite descriptor I can apply to that sentiment. Let’s not forget that it was the insurance companies’ rampant exploitation of the system that lead to the need for reform in the first place.
They abused their policy holders by taking premiums from them for decades, and then canceled their policy once they developed a crippling major illness. They imposed hidden lifetime caps on the amount of health care any one person could receive. They created “preexisting condition” clauses that made it impossible for millions of Americans to even get coverage. And in response to your remark about bureaucrats determining appropriate health care instead of doctors, I would like to point out how insurance provider’s avoided payments on more expensive treatments by arbitrarily classifying them as “experimental.” These are also the same insurance companies that unilaterally canceled policies that
Now, premiums are set to go up on account of Aetna and other providers pulling out of areas where they have to cover people under the ACA in an attempt to cause the whole system to collapse on itself. Of course they want it to fail. They want it to fail so that they can go right back to the same kinds of exploitation they’ve been doing for the past thirty plus years. Because they know that all of the lawmakers that are pushing so hard for a repeal right now are going to replace the law with nothing. I don’t attribute any of this to malice. Insurance providers are just trying to run a business. But that right there is both the point and the real root of the problem. As long as healthcare is treated like a business it will always be about generating profit first, and helping people second. No decision an insurance company ever makes will be in the general public’s best interest.

But anyway, I really wanted to talk about Alison and Max.

The short version? Alison was wrong. Morally and ethically wrong, and there exists no system of justice in which she was in any way right.

Let me explain:
There exists a concept called bodily integrity (more commonly called bodily autonomy). Basically it states that the physical body is inviolable, and that all human beings have total self-determination over what happens with their own body. It’s why you cannot be compelled to donate organs or other against your will, even when the other person will certainly perish as a result of your inaction. It’s why even touching another person constitutes assault, and why people can do as they see fit with their remains after they die. Any breech of this concept is considered, at minimum, unethical, and in many cases, criminal.

It’s also why comparing what Alison did to Max to rape or burglary is completely legitimate, because in terms of bodily integrity it absolutely was. The concept does not care why the other person was violated. Only that they were. She used her superior physical ability to compel Max to act against his wishes. In a fair and unbiased system of justice, Max is the victim. The circumstances are irrelevant. The only thing that would be in question is what would be what appropriate for Alison’s punishment.

And so far as that goes… Alison has not only demonstrated no remorse for her actions, but in a roundabout way stated that given the same circumstances she would make the same decision again, and DIRECTLY stated that she would take the same course of action in the future should she (and she alone) deem it appropriate.

You tell me how she should be treated.

Well… the truth is the Nazis (Hitler) said they were both enemies to both Socialism, and Capitalism. But the truth is that Nazism at it’s core was what ever Hitler it to be.

Using Nazis in a argument is like throwing mud.