What is "Woke"?

[nanana]

I agree with you BootmanLA that human nature is highly bonding and collectivist and with you NEDenver that taxation ends up benefiting the wealthy the most. To be more precise about my concerns, government typically benefits the loudest and the most conniving the most. I think there are core government functions that most could agree about but the government has strayed massively away from those functions in an unsustainable immoral manner. The farther the government strays from core functions the greater the risk that the conniving and lawyered-up will be subsidized, that large groups of people will be outraged by the programs being supported, etc. The government has long ago stopped being accountable to the people. Every taxpayer would have to pay $175K +/- to pay off the debt. Every citizen has paid terribly via inflation.  I agree about collectivist wishes to reduce societal ills but advocate a more voluntarist method of dealing with them rather that an ever-expanding government taxing and inflating away the poor and middle class. Financialism is hollowing us out. 

[hntnhole]

18 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

I call bullshit.

Or, an entire field-full of bulls that really need to pinch a loaf .... 

[BootmanLA]

7 hours ago, nanana said:

I think there are core government functions that most could agree about but the government has strayed massively away from those functions in an unsustainable immoral manner. 

Here's the thing: you don't get to decide for yourself what's "moral" for everyone else. Sorry, but nobody died and made you king.

7 hours ago, nanana said:

Every taxpayer would have to pay $175K +/- to pay off the debt. Every citizen has paid terribly via inflation.  I agree about collectivist wishes to reduce societal ills but advocate a more voluntarist method of dealing with them rather that an ever-expanding government taxing and inflating away the poor and middle class. Financialism is hollowing us out. 

Every homeowner would have to pay a buttload of money to pay off their mortgages, car notes, and credit card debt, too, but we don't denounce people for buying houses, cars, and other items.

Debt is a tool, and like any tool, whether it's used wisely depends in large measure on what you're using it for. When you use it to finance buying an asset, like a house or car, you're investing in something that returns a benefit, whether it's shelter or the ability to get to work to earn money to pay off the house and car (and to eat, and to buy soap, and whatever else you spend your earnings on).

When government spends money on highways, it's investing in infrastructure. When it spends it on education, it's investing in the future productivity of upcoming generations. When it invests in pollution remediation, it's investing in the health of those future citizens. When it provides health care or food or shelter for those who can't afford it, it's helping protect a workforce to help support future generations. I'm not saying all government spending is wise; I'm saying that just because YOU think it's not a "core function" doesn't mean it's not worthwhile spending.

[NEDenver]

9 hours ago, nanana said:

I agree with you BootmanLA that human nature is highly bonding and collectivist and with you NEDenver that taxation ends up benefiting the wealthy the most. To be more precise about my concerns, government typically benefits the loudest and the most conniving the most. I think there are core government functions that most could agree about but the government has strayed massively away from those functions in an unsustainable immoral manner. The farther the government strays from core functions the greater the risk that the conniving and lawyered-up will be subsidized, that large groups of people will be outraged by the programs being supported, etc. The government has long ago stopped being accountable to the people. Every taxpayer would have to pay $175K +/- to pay off the debt. Every citizen has paid terribly via inflation.  I agree about collectivist wishes to reduce societal ills but advocate a more voluntarist method of dealing with them rather that an ever-expanding government taxing and inflating away the poor and middle class. Financialism is hollowing us out. 

Government always benefits whoever has the most money the most.  Definitely since Reagan.  Every other stakeholder has been pushed aside.

Inflation is mostly because capitalism is working exactly as defined.

Government taxing the poor and middle class isn't the problem.  Inflation has been really low for the last couple decades, especially since the last time the wealthy blew up the economy in 2008.  The problem the poor and middle class have is that all the gains for productivity are going to the top half of one percent, and the top hundredth of one percent even more. 

Someone is feeding you very bad information.  If you want to start with just hard financial data, start with Pikkety's work.  But you can also watch Robert Reich's youtube series that basically follows his freshman class.

[harrysmith26]

On 2/11/2024 at 7:21 PM, viking8x6 said:

Blah blah blah

What's the point of America having so many universities, if you can't ask a lexicographer or a politics professor for a  definition of a word, and you have to ask random strangers on the internet for one?

 

Do you blame "the reality TV president" for the general uselessness of US academia..? Even though he just spent 4 years at a podium calling a bunch of douchey journalists "fake news" and such..? Somehow he also burned everything to the ground despite being a "inconsequential 1 term loser"... he's a nobody and Stan all at the same time, right?

 

(Just joking, you weren't interested in learning anything, the only purpose of the thread was to suggest and allude to the idea that right wingers somehow invented the word "woke" out of nowhere and they "use imaginary words to describe everything", etc.....)

Edited September 9 by harrysmith26

[nanana]

On 9/7/2024 at 4:19 PM, BootmanLA said:

Here's the thing: you don't get to decide for yourself what's "moral" for everyone else. Sorry, but nobody died and made you ki

You just either made my point BootmanLA: the bigger government gets, the more it tries to legislate morality for others. The smaller it is, the less likely it is to impose conservative views and policies on liberals and vice versa. 

To riff off of your point about debt, you may want to go in debt to pay for the leveling of the Gaza Strip but I MOST DEFINITELY DO NOT. Who made someone king over me to take my life’s work and divert it to causes that I think are abominations? On the other hand, a conservative might feel the same way about state funded abortions. The more the government tries to do, the more it tries to be king over people who are forced to fund programs that go against their morality. If government were the only source of funds that would be one thing. But there are countless other voluntary sources of funding that don’t require the theft of someone’s earnings by involuntary means to promote policies they don’t agree with.  There IS NO CONSENSUS on morality so coercive taxation should cover the smallest possible sphere covering areas that engender the greatest support. 

On 9/7/2024 at 6:19 PM, NEDenver said:

Inflation is mostly because capitalism is working exactly as defined.

on that we disagree. Inflation cooks up because Government and its monopolistic, non-capitalistic, financialistic drug-dealer the Federal Reserve invents money from scratch, which is why most Americans don’t understand anything about value or economics and don’t understand the morality of theft. 

On 9/7/2024 at 6:19 PM, NEDenver said:

Someone is feeding you very bad information.  If you want to start with just hard financial data, start with Pikkety's work.  But you can also watch Robert Reich's youtube series that basically follows his freshman class.

I find both Pikety and Reich, and though you didn’t mention him, Paul Krugman, to be very flawed in their philosophical understanding and misguided in their premises and quantifications. Give me Mises and Rothbard and Hayek any day. 

Edited September 9 by nanana
Misattribution

[nanana]

On 9/7/2024 at 4:19 PM, BootmanLA said:

Every homeowner would have to pay a buttload of money to pay off their mortgages, car notes, and credit card debt, too, but we don't denounce people for buying houses, cars, and other items.

Again BootmanLA all of your examples come from personal choices that saddle the person responsible for the debt, not the person AND all of his NEIGHBORS.  This comes across as a very inappropriate analogy unless you want to pay my next car bill ( 🙂 ). 

[NEDenver]

Nanana, you choose to ignore what's actually causing inflation because it doesn't suit the power structures you wish to maintain. You dismiss economic theory rooted in reality in favor of Mises and Hayek's fantasies because they don't suit the power structures you wish to maintain.  Modern Monetary Theory stands up to evidence better than Austrian school economists.

 

[harrysmith26]

1 hour ago, NEDenver said:

Nanana, you choose to ignore what's actually causing inflation

Supporting a country you'd never go to, in a war they can't win?

[hntnhole]

1 hour ago, harrysmith26 said:

Supporting a country you'd never go to, in a war they can't win?

That's not even close to a well-reasoned statement.  

NATO has managed to prevent another major war for decades.  Russia annexed Ukraine under Catherine the Great; hundreds of years ago. 

The fact that Ukrainians have managed to maintain a separate identity (meaning, other than Russian) for that time span means that the citizenry of Ukraine have not accepted the occupation of their lands.  When the Russian empire collapsed in 1991, the Ukrainians formalized their disunion with Russia, and became an independent nation again. That alone stands firmly enough. 

The Western Democracies, knowing full well the centuries-old thirst for Russian domination of as much of Europe as they can control, have united in a Treaty called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, for the sole purpose of resisting the traditional, centuries-old Russian aggression, knowing that there is power in numbers of those resisting that domination.  

 

Merely proposing that certain people (the rest of the civilized world, perhaps) "would never go to" is laughable.  Some of were born in NATO countries, and of course we visited our family members still living in the original homeland.  Some of us are curious, interested in exploring the world, other traditions, and visit all kinds of places to immerse ourselves in that particular culture for a small measure of time.  That makes our understanding of how other nationalities/cultures live their lives, which in turn, allows us a deeper understanding of the World we live in.  There's at least one "definition" of woke-ism for you.

"Your mom's cooter" 

She passed over 20 years ago - you'd probably love it.  

 

Edited September 9 by hntnhole
editing

[NEDenver]

10 hours ago, harrysmith26 said:

Supporting a country you'd never go to, in a war they can't win?

Who lied to you and told you this was causing McDonald's and Kroger and every other corporation in the US to arbitrarily raise their prices just because they could?

[harrysmith26]

12 hours ago, hntnhole said:

She passed over 20 years ago

Sorry were you making a Jewish joke there?

2 hours ago, NEDenver said:

Who lied to you and told you this was causing McDonald's and Kroger an

It's look like you're the only person who's made that suggestion to me actually. So, the answer is you!

[nanana]

19 hours ago, NEDenver said:

Nanana, you choose to ignore what's actually causing inflation because it doesn't suit the power structures you wish to maintain. You dismiss economic theory rooted in reality in favor of Mises and Hayek's fantasies because they don't suit the power structures you wish to maintain.  Modern Monetary Theory stands up to evidence better than Austrian school economists.

 

What a silly thing to write NEDenver. The power structures I wish to maintain? By starving corporations of their biggest bloodsucking customer in favor of freedom for all? Modern Monetary Theory is  the theory of leaches. It’s a values thing. 

[nanana]

NEDenver who lied to you and told you you can invent $35T and not reduce the value of the dollar? Po’ thing. 

[BootmanLA]

With certain responses here, I guess one shorthand way of answering "what is woke" would be "The opposite of all those people saying 'I got mine, fuck the rest of you'".