What's your political affiliation?

[Great Sage]

fixed :)

No. A fetus in utero leeches nutrients from the mother automatically, while a newborn can only leech nutrients if the mother allows it to breastfeed.

 

[Deck Knight]

A FETUS IN UTERO IS NOT A BABY

THANKS FOR YOUR TIME

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

PHYSICAL PHENOMENA OBSERVABLE THROUGH AN ULTRASOUND ARE AN ILLUSION. SHOWING PICTURES OF THIS REALITY ARE AN EMOTIONAL DISTRACTION (Distraction: Dis - trac - tion, anything [usu. facts] that does not help the Presidential aspirations of Barack Obama).

Also, we should use the cost or inconvenience of something to determine the value of their life. Remember: it's a choice, not an infant/toddler/adolescent/teenager/college student/adult/geriatric.

Remember folks, enchiladas aren't really taco variants because they aren't pronounced in English, just like fetuses aren't really little ones because they aren't pronounced in Latin.

 

[akuchi]

lol dude that didn't even make sense

 

[Iraff]

Everyone here seems to be set in stone in their opinions when it comes to abortion, and so this conversation can only get worse. Perhaps it's foolish to think that heated discussions won't come up in a political thread, however, I think that abortion-wise, we have kind of made our opinions clear enough to move on.

 

[DM]

DO NOT MAKE THIS ANOTHER ABORTION DEBATE. THANKS FOR YOUR TIME.

And, DM, that sounds nothing short of wonderful; but please, when we go to bed at night let me serve you a nightcap of the finest bourbon with a side order of fellatio?

I think it's official. You're the woman of my dreams.

 

[God.]

Between the Great Leap Forward, (up to 43 million dead from famine), the Cultural Revolution (essentially purging China of intellectual talent and destroying its cultural heritage), widespread cannibalism, widespread political persecution, I'd say that's a big improvement in living standards (especially when you consider that Republican China was fairly awful too, at least until they took over Taiwan.)

http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/5952/maorulezwk5.gif
With the increases of life expectancy, decrease of average death rates, the numbers probably skew in Communist China's favor towards saving more people than it killed.

I am not going to assume you're a total idiot, so I'm going to assume that you lied because you're fucking obsessed with a failed system that has been a failure everywhere it's been tried, so you gloss over historical facts and blame "capitalists" for everything, while at the same time constantly making excuses for why socialism failed so hard everywhere its been tried, where free-market capitalism (which is not really what we have now, it's more like a cross betweeen free-market capitalism and corporate mercantilism) has been successful almost everywhere. (and if you say "any country in Africa" I will mention that most African countries were more or less socialist for most of their history).

Capitalism is built on death and exploitation sorry. If you call increases in life expectancy and literacy 'failing', while at the same time calling The Scramble for Africa and China blocking aid to Darfur because PetroChina has a nice oil deal with the Sudanese 'wroking' ... then okay. No socialist society has been as much as it could be so far in our history(perhaps a bit because Capitalist nations try to destroy them because they want to go back to exploiting their natural resources) but they have caused much less death and destruction than Capitalism has. If you think Capitalism works because living standards for some classes in the home country improves, you are not looking at the whole picture.

I mean seriously - in big bad USA a family at the poverty line probably has as much buying power as the family making median income in China, and they kick the shit out of a median-income family in Cuba or North Korea. But oh right "capitalist exploitation" - it's like a magic word that explains everything - just say "capitalist exploitation" and it ends the argument for a socialist.

this statement seems highly irrelevent

Whatever though, keep on believing that we can steal money from people and violate basic economic principles - when you actually have to make your own money, or at least understand the basic workings of making your own money, you might see things differently.

yeah, you have to make your OWN money in capitalist countries! thats why economic mobility in them is so good am i right lol

 

[Ancien Régime]

http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/5952/maorulezwk5.gif
With the increases of life expectancy, decrease of average death rates, the numbers probably skew in Communist China's favor towards saving more people than it killed.

um but you conveniently forgot to show the pre-Communist China birth/death rates lol, also remember that the pre-Communist guys are the same people running Taiwan, and they're doing prettty well amirite

i also don't know how you count anything after 1976 at the latest, and even around 1970, seeing that it was around then that China started moving away from their full-blown socialist experiment (oh btw, that's when they had that unsightly 24.5 life expectancy)[/quote]

Capitalism is built on death and exploitation sorry. If you call increases in life expectancy and literacy 'failing', while at the same time calling The Scramble for Africa and China blocking aid to Darfur because PetroChina has a nice oil deal with the Sudanese 'wroking' ... then okay. No socialist society has been as much as it could be so far in our history(perhaps a bit because Capitalist nations try to destroy them because they want to go back to exploiting their natural resources) but they have caused much less death and destruction than Capitalism has. If you think Capitalism works because living standards for some classes in the home country improves, you are not looking at the whole picture.

Er, that's not an example of free markets, that's more mercantilism than anything (a state providing access to resources in exchange for political concessions - mercantilism =/= capitalism).

yeah, you have to make your OWN money in capitalist countries! thats why economic mobility in them is so good am i right lol

Socialist economies in theory have zero economic mobility, as everyone is supposed to have an equal amount of wealth am i right lol

And you only consider "economic mobility" in regards to the artificial notion of "class" - yes, some people get richer at a faster rate than others, but in general, under capitalist economies, everyone becomes progressively more "wealthy" (see the steady rise of living standards in America v.s. the steady decline in living standards in the U.S.S.R)

btw, people point to Scandinavia as an example of "socialism working" but they're actually not socialist at all; their corporate taxes are quite low, (their high taxes are really just the government making you pay for services in advance, - as a libertarian I don't like that but they're not socialist)

 

[silenthill]

I agree that for most of China's history between 1949 to present, "Maoist" policies such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution generally resulted in economic crises. However, that is not an argument against socialism. During 1950 - 1958, it is widely recognized that China managed to recover its economy and achieve high growth rates using the Soviet model of socialism. Similarly, the Soviet Union during the late 1920s to 1930s achieved high rates of growth, albeit under great repression.

What destroyed both the Soviet Union and China was a failing in political, not economic, thinking. Furthermore, they failed to reform their economies, such as the way Roosevelt reformed the economy after the Great Depression. In the Soviet Union's case, they continued the Stalinist model after the destruction of World War II, and failed to raise their standards of living as a result. In China, Maoist political factional struggles was what undermined the high growths of the socialist economy. (You'll realize that between the gaps 1949-1958, 1962-1965, when there wasn't massive social upheavals, the economy grew quickly.)

Also, socialism isn't just North Korea and Cuba. North Korea, by the way, had a great economy (much better than the South) until the 1960s or 1970s (I forgot), when North Korean leaders started to develop some crackpot shit economic theory that places the military first. Socialism is most simply a progressive tax system, with greater benefits to the people (health care, education), and less income inequality, etc. This does not mean equal wealth for all; a person who doesn't work hard, for example, will get basic education and health care for free, but won't enjoy a lot of money to buy consumable goods. Hard-workers can enjoy some extra profit to enjoy some consumable goods.

Capitalism is not "working". To say capitalism is a good system plainly based on the world's current GDP growth is insane. Slave economies historically have grown equally fast; does that mean we should all start using slaves? Stalinist Russia grew at massive rates during the 1930s; does that mean purging and repression is the way to go?

Whatever though, keep on believing that we can steal money from people and violate basic economic principles - when you actually have to make your own money, or at least understand the basic workings of making your own money, you might see things differently.

Capitalism, admittedly, is not as simple as 'exploiting' money from poorer people, as many lesser socialists might argue. However, it is undeniable that a degree of imperialism is attached to capitalism. The U.S.A is a great example．（ｗｈａｔ　ｗｉｔｈ　Ｓｏｕｔｈ　ａｎｄ　Ｃｅｎｔｒａｌ　Ａｍｅｒｉｃａ，　ｅｘｐｌｏｉｔｓ　ｉｎ　ｔｈｅ　Ｍｉｄｄｌｅ　Ｅａｓｔ，　Ｓｏｕｔｈｅａｓｔ　Ａｓｉａ，ａｎｄ　Ｉ＇ｍ　ｐｒｏｂａｂｌｙ　ｆｏｒｇｅｔｔｉｎｇ　ｓｏｍｅｔｈｉｎｇ）　

 

[DDangelo]

From akuchi's test.

Economic Left/Right: 2.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 2.92

Proclaiming my love for Deck Knight itt.