Objection
@Objection@lemmy.ml
- Comment on You haven't seen enough trans Spider-Woman memes 1 day ago:
Good, fuck off.
- Comment on You haven't seen enough trans Spider-Woman memes 1 day ago:
The words people use tend to vary a great deal depending on your acquaintances and the local culture.
Really? Where are you from, upstate New York? Because I’m from Albany and I’ve never heard anybody refer to hamburgers as “steamed hams.”
You’re stuck in your narrow world view where everyone who doesn’t cite your expected manifesto must be a bad person. It taints how you see everything. Hopefully you grow out of that.
No, I’m just capable of seeing through obvious bullshit and don’t have the patience to entertain something we both know is fake.
- Comment on You haven't seen enough trans Spider-Woman memes 1 day ago:
No, I understand that. It’s still not a fetish in that sense either. It’s literally just a fanart trend. You could call any art trend a “fetish” by that standard. Just don’t expect to have any friends afterwards if you start going around talking about “Picasso’s cubism fetish” or whatnot.
In any case you’re just trying to hide behind that excuse after the fact. The meaning was obvious in the context.
- Comment on You haven't seen enough trans Spider-Woman memes 1 day ago:
That’s still not a fetish in any sense of the word. It’s literally just (SFW) fanart and comics imagining funny or relatable scenes. A lot of it is just imagining J Jonah Jameson reacting to it.
Calling it a fetish says way more about you than anything else.
- Comment on You haven't seen enough trans Spider-Woman memes 1 day ago:
I’m not sure why you felt the need to comment now that you mention it, but moreso I just take issue with calling it a “fetish,” just because a character is imagined with a different identity.
- Comment on You haven't seen enough trans Spider-Woman memes 1 day ago:
Taking a break from my fetish for cis people is all.
- Comment on You haven't seen enough trans Spider-Woman memes 2 days ago:
- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
A sound argument is better than a reasonable one. Don’t use terms you don’t understand.
Relaity is China got out of poverty in spite of CCP not because of it. If they had democracy like Taiwan they’d be more rich AND more free.
Base assertion. Also, completely ignored my question. How did I move the goalposts? Justify the accusation or take it back, otherwise you’re just full of shit.
- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
I’ve made very well reasoned arguments backed by data and sources, you just randomly scream that I’m “moving the goalposts” somehow with absolutely zero explanation for how I’m supposedly doing it and just repeat that and throw insults at me. It’s obvious that you’re just a troll.
- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
Boring troll.
- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
Wtf are you even talking about? My first comment was about this, and that’s all I’ve been saying this entire conversation. The goalpost has always been exactly where it’s at.
It is entirely you and others who have tried to move the goalposts from “This one policy was successful” to “China is the best country in the world,” because it’s easier for you to argue against it.
You’re completely full of shit.
- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
That’s completely absurd. This is the dumbest thing anyone’s said this conversation.
The sample size isn’t “n=1” it’s n=800,000,000. It’s clearly visible from the graph that I posted that the reduction in poverty began just after the reforms, and then continued extremely consistently on an extremely large scale.
You’re just so committed to shitting on every single thing that China does that you’re willing to throw out all reason and logic, completely ignore obvious facts, and throw out any means of evaluating any policy just to avoid the conclusion that China may have done a single thing right.
What other possible explanation even is there?
- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
As we can’t verify this in any meaningful extend due to - as you yourself pointed out - every country and culture being invredibly different. So why are you OK with attributing success to chinese policy but not failure?
I’m so confused by this conversation. Let’s recap.
Originally, OP asked why China has billionaires if it’s aiming to be socialist. I replied that the reforms that allowed billionaires also resulted in 800 million people escaping extreme poverty. WoodScientist randomly started drawing comparisons between the PRC and Taiwan, and I said that it’s apples and oranges, and that I didn’t see the relevance to what I had said. Then you started providing even more reasons why the comparison isn’t really valid, acting as if that contradicted my position in some way, which was even more confusing. You added that you didn’t like looking at other possible routes China could have gone, because it’s untestable.
Now, having established that you don’t like comparing China to other countries (calling it “dick measuring”), and also that you don’t like comparing other historical possibilities (calling them “untestable”) you’re now accusing me of being unwilling to attribute failure to Chinese policy.
First of all, which failure are you talking about? There are plenty which I’m willing to acknowledge. But also, on what basis could you call any policy a success or failure? If we discount comparisons to other places, and also discount comparisons to other possibilities, then what can we look at to determine if a given policy was a success or failure?
I see today how unjust and miserable China is despite what tiktok might paint you.
Do you? What’s your point of reference for that?
- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
I really hate this untestable argument as if we could go back in time and do A|B test to see which framework would have lifted people out of poverty the fastest.
What?? Then why even discuss anything about anything?
If you’re criticizing China’s policies, surely the point of that criticism is that you think different policies would have been more effective.
It’s also not entirely a counterfactual because we can examine every other political faction that had a reasonable chance of controlling China, and see what their leadership looked like in practice.
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The Nationalists did absolutely nothing to help the rural poor, embezzled foreign aid, and were more preoccupied with hunting down their domestic enemies than repelling the genocidal fascist invaders. Chiang Kai-Shek was literally had to be captured by his own bodyguards to be pressured into defending the country. Life expectancy remained completely flat during his rule.
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The fascist, genocidal Japanese invaders weren’t a good option for obvious reason.
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How about having no centralized authority at all? That’s what they had during the warlord period, a time of chaos and conflict that left the country vulnerable and did nothing to improve things for anyone.
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Before that, there was the Qing dynasty, an authoritarian monarchy which was so assured of its superiority that they completely failed to adapt to foreign innovations and technologies, out of pride, even when it was clear that those technologies were superior.
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Then you have the various European powers, carving the country up to divy up the resources between each other, while getting half the country addicted to opium.
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And, returning to how things played out historically, we have the one and only faction that had any intention whatsoever of helping the hundreds of millions of starving farmers, which doubled life expectancy within a generation and then adapted to changing conditions and enacted policies which, again, brought 800 million people out of extreme poverty.
Taiwan is richer and more free than China despite being democratic, so is Japan, South Korea - what now? Which dicks do we measure and do we start at the balls or just the shaft?
I’m the one trying to avoid this pointless dick-measuring contest between countries with vastly different conditions, despite everyone else trying to draw me into it. I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t know why we’re comparing countries. Why don’t you ask WoodScientist who’s dicks we measure, since he’s the one trying to measure dicks?
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- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
Which variables are allowed in the math depends on what the point of the comparison is. And as I said, I’m not really sure what the point of comparing these countries is. It’s pretty apples to oranges and doesn’t really tell us anything about the efficacy of China’s reforms in the context of their specific conditions.
The fact that there’s such a difference in landmass is just another reason why it doesn’t make sense to compare the two. If you want to compare China to another country for some reason, it would probably make sense to compare it to a country with more similar conditions, like India perhaps.
- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
You linked a source repeating your earlier claim about the raw number of people lifted out of poverty. Again, I ask, what about per-capita income?
Yeah, because I didn’t make any claims about per-capita income. That’s how sources work.
China received extensive aid from the USSR.
Lol? That’s a joke right?
You never heard about a little thing called the Sino-Soviet split? Even before that, the Soviets had plenty of their own problems, they were nowhere near as wealthy as the US and were struggling to survive and rebuild from WWII, and again, that much smaller aid for a much shorter period of time was distributed to a much larger population.
Do you understand what “per capita” means?
Yes I know what per capita means.
It would be far more impressive for a country of one million people to lift 950,000 people out of poverty than for a nation of 1 billion people to lift 800 million people out of poverty.
Not really, no.
Why? I see no reason for this.
Because modernization in developing countries is dependent on foreign technologies that have to spread to a much wider area, and that takes time.
It’s the only meaningful way to compare countries.
I don’t really understand why we’re comparing countries.
Otherwise you just end up making brain-dead conclusions like, “the big country has the big number. Therefore it’s better.”
That is not remotely close to anything I’ve said or believe.
- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
The people of Taiwan, despite sharing a common cultural and ethnic history as mainland China, enjoy a substantially higher standard of living than their mainland peers.
This is a ridiculous comparison. Taiwan received substantial foreign aid from the US because of it’s strategic value against the mainland, while the PRC was subject to a massive economic embargo.
Yes, they’ve raised hundreds of millions out of poverty, but that’s been the case throughout East Asia. The whole region saw its standard of living dramatically rise as it industrialized. And the capitalist countries have enjoyed far greater economic success than the communist ones.
Sorry, which countries are we talking about again? There’s not that many countries in East Asia. Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan all benefited from foreign investment and trade, and again, with much smaller populations.
If you’re going to argue that the embargo on China was an inevitable result of its communist policies, well, that’s a big part of why they did the reforms in the 80’s.
The absolute number of people is a red herring. Obviously big countries have more people.
That… what? I don’t follow what you’re saying here at all.
It’s much easier for a small country to modernize in a short period of time, especially with outside help. It’s very difficult to reach all the people in all the rural areas of China, it means more infrastructure has to be built, more people have to be educated, etc.
I’m hoping you’re not one of those .ml folks that acts like a Republican and calls every source they don’t like “Fake News.” But in case you are, can you provide your own sources?
My source is the extremely biased, far-left communist newsletter known as The World Bank.
I would be curious on your thoughts of the per-capita incomes of China vs the capitalist East Asian countries. Can you show that China has performed better than them on a per-capita basis?
I don’t agree that per-capita is the relevent statistic for the above reasons.
- Comment on Why does China have so many multi billionaires if they are aiming to be a communist country? 1 week ago:
They didn’t used to have billionaires, when Mao was in power. Strangely, a lot of Westerners seem to hate what China is now, but also hate what China was before, which seems very strange to me. “The reforms were bad and China should be more Maoist” that is a coherent position, “The reforms were good but should have gone further and become even more capitalist” that is also a coherent position. But “China is bad now because they allow billionaires but they were also bad when they didn’t allow billionaires” isn’t really coherent, it just seems like knee-jerk opposition to whatever they do or don’t do. Anyone who can’t answer the simple question of whether the reforms were good or bad is ideologically bankrupt.
On the off-chance that you actually want a serious answer to the question, let’s start with some history. Before the revolution, China’s average life expectancy was in the 30’s, it experienced frequent famines, had no access to medicine, and had had similarly awful conditions for literally thousands of years with no improvement for the average person. The revolution brought about huge improvements in life expectancy and the basic necessities of life (with the failure of the Great Leap Forward being an exception to this general trend).
However, while central planning works for providing basic necessities because the demand for those necessities is very predictable, it is not the most efficient regarding consumer goods. This was one of the failures that caused the collapse of the USSR, the desire for consumer good and the inability to compete domestically. Furthermore, despite the increases in life expectancy, virtually everyone in China still lived in extreme poverty. The reforms in the 80s were intended to address this, and they were wildly successful at it:
In the words of Deng, it doesn’t matter if the cat is white or black, so long as it catches mice. It doesn’t really matter if a policy is ideologically “pure,” so long as it provides clear material benefits for the common people.
Where I’m standing, the whole point of having any sort of political beliefs at all is to figure out which policies will improve people’s lives. And lifting 800 million people out of extreme poverty over the span of 40 years, can you name a more successful policy, ever, in all of history?
- Comment on Sorcery battle 1 week ago:
- I will provide funding and research to develop tactical and strategic weapons covering a full range of needs so my choices are not limited to “hand to hand combat with swords” and “blow up the planet”.
- Comment on Sorcery battle 1 week ago:
War is very profitable, for certain people. You can look at the enormous cost of conflicts for the minor benefits, but that cost is borne by taxpayers, while the benefiticiaries are almost exclusively the ruling class.
But the ruling class, if they’re same and acting in their own self interest, don’t want to get involved in a peer conflict, where losing doesn’t just mean walking away from a country with whatever they could plunder, but could mean actually having their own necks on the line. They are already on top of the world, so why shake things up?
The biggest danger of a major peer conflict is that, in order to get enough ordinary people on board such that they don’t mind spending enormous sums to line the pockets of the ruling class, we are fed a constant stream of propaganda designed to make us hate and fear foreigners instead. When the ruling class whips people up into such a frenzy, there’s always a chance of losing control, and winding up with some True Believer in the wrong place at the wrong time, like General Ripper from Dr. Strangelove.
Until then, we will be in a constant state of “low-intensity” warfare, of imperialistic aggression against those too weak to fight back. While in the meantime, with so much money being poured into that, things will gradually get worse and worse domestically until we inevitably get either fascism or socialism.
- Comment on She's just defending her country 4 weeks ago:
What’s crazy is that after she killed all these drafted soldiers in a morally grey war, with no hesitation, suddenly there’s this whole moral line drawn about killing someone who’s actively committing war crimes and fully intending to prolong the war and keep making chemical weapons.
- Comment on You can't argue with his logic 1 month ago:
- Comment on Context is for people that read US news 1 month ago:
Then I must be dense. Because you definitely did make up bullshit to assign to me instead of engaging with what I actually said.
- Comment on Context is for people that read US news 1 month ago:
In both cases, you’re just making up bullshit and trying to put it in my mouth. You can quibble over definitions all day long, doesn’t change that.
- Comment on Context is for people that read US news 1 month ago:
I usually find that discussions are more protective when they focus on things people actually said, and not bullshit that you made up and assigned to them. Whether making up bullshit and putting words in other people’s mouths is called “subtext” or “strawmanning” doesn’t really matter, it’s equally unproductive and bad faith either way.
- Comment on Context is for people that read US news 1 month ago:
Oh, I see. When you talk about the left, you’re talking about mainstream media like MSNBC.
- Comment on Context is for people that read US news 1 month ago:
Is it? From who, when?
- Comment on Context is for people that read US news 1 month ago:
Source?
xcancel.com/BenMcCombe/…/1982083117709176945
Clearly you want republicans to hold onto their senate majority…
Let me guess, this is also “subtext.” This is such a neat trick. I really don’t think you should eat babies, like you’re subtextually talking about.
- Comment on Context is for people that read US news 1 month ago:
That’s just fucking disingenuous for you to say, this whole post is about how he supposedly has so many red flags
Having a Nazi tattoo is a red flag, in itself, regardless of whether I can prove that he knew it was a Nazi tattoo when he got it. Obviously, the bigger red flag was that he was a Blackwater mercenary, a killer-for-hire who bragged about firing a mortar at civilian targets.
then I don’t know what to tell you other than he’s been heavily astroturfed and smeared by establishment politicians who are terrified of losing ground to progressives and the DSA.
Sure, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t plenty of legitimate criticism as well.
That’s not a retreat, that’s spelling it out for you in block letters because you can’t seem to glean that from the subtext.
Oh, fascinating, so now it’s “subtext.”
Alright, well the “subtext” that I’ve been picking up from you is that Graham Platner is a divine being who we should all build temples to and worship. So, I’m going to need you to prove Platner’s divinity, or else you’re clearly full of shit.
What a ridiculous tactic. You can’t just strawman me based on nothing and then claim that it’s “subtext.”
Yeah, I mean if he didn’t know what it was when he got it, then what’s your point?
My point is simply that it is, factually, a Nazi tattoo.
People try to use it as justification to call him a nazi. That assumes intent, implying that he knew what he was getting.
Who said that, in this thread? Or is this more of that fascinating “subtext?”
And if you can’t glean that from the context, then you’re either half-blind or being willfully obtuse.
And if someone can’t glean that you’re asking for temples to be erected to worship Platner as a god, you’re either half-blind or willfully obtuse. See, I can say bullshit too.
- Comment on Context is for people that read US news 1 month ago:
You even said that you’d heard the “are we the baddies” quote before, which is frequently accompanied by the screenshot. You also said:
I told them to show me a single screenshot of this symbol appearing in any media that depicts nazis or WWII and they couldn’t provide one, they just kept deflecting and calling me a dumbass.
This is very obviously bullshit. When and where did this supposedly happen? Can you link to it? It’s incredibly hard to believe that nobody on here would have been able to link to the clip I did. Not to mention that any media depicting the SS is going to have it.
Clearly you’re ignoring the context of the conversation
Where in the context was it discussed whether Platner knew what it was when he got it? That’s something you added as part of moving the goalposts.
I see this a lot from you lot. It starts off with, “Nobody would know that symbol” and then when pressed you retreat into “He probably didn’t know what it was when he got it.” Nobody in this conversation said shit about whether he knew what it was when he got it, until you pulled it out of your ass and assigned that position to me, insisting based on nothing that that was the “context.”
