So, this Amazon union vote crap.

[meiam]

Being anti-immigration has nothing to do with being racist. You also can't sustain a welfare state while letting everyone in. Neither is islam a 'race' but an anti-democratic, misogynistic, anti-feminist, anti-minority, anti-secular religion that spits on liberalism that you so apologetically approve of.

You're really muddling your point by phrasing it this way.

Religion itself doesn't matters, people following the religion do. What islam says is irrelevant, what matters is how people of certain country decide to follow it. It's perfectly true that a majority of people in poor islamic country agree with statement like "It's okay for a husband to beat his wife", but the key word here is "poor" not "islamic", they'd agree just as much if they were following another religion or even no religious. Poor country make for poor culture which makes for poor people. Muslim that grew up in richer country tend to disagree with the statement, the longer they'd been in the richer country and the richer they are, the more likely they'll disagree.

It's also true that immigration can collapse a welfare system, think what would happen if the entirety of the sub sahara population was teleported to Germany overnight. But some level of immigration are perfectly sustainable and alternative exist. One alternative is to levee higher tax on immigrant until they pay back a certain amount, another is to have a multi tier welfare system. Immigrant don't go to certain country for welfare, they mostly move because their country is a terrible place to live in and they just want to be somewhere where they don't have to worry for their security everyday.

 

[Agema]

It was conducted by one particular researcher from the university

In a sense, barely even that.

The report has four authors. The lead author appears to be a statistician and cultural anthropologist attached to "The Renaissance Institute", which is the in-house think tank for the populist right-wing party Forum for Democracy; his standing with the University of Amsterdam (UoA) appears to be a "visiting researcher". (I'm a "visiting researcher" at a UK university, actually: it basically means I have an ID card to come and go, and can do some experiments there.) The rest are basically economists; two are probably best described as private sector professionals, the last one an emeritus professor of UoA. So although the report has been published with the support of and under the aegis of the UoA, none of the authors are conventionally "on the payroll". It is more practically a think tank report with a sprinkling of academic glitter: essentially it has given the UoA a grant for its own pet researcher to do stuff with them. I have no objections to this: universities should open-mindedly support research, and as long as the finances and allegiances are clear in publications and the university is happy to sell its reputation to bidders, so be it. I just think that calling it a "University of Amsterdam study" is hiding a lot of important information that can be used to mischievously mislead the casual reader.

I might note that The Renaissance Institute has also been encouraging students to report lefty academics at universities in the Netherlands who they think might be a bit too "woke". They're just going to keep a list, mind: what could be the harm in that? So that's Jan van der Beek for you: happy to borrow UoA's name when it suits him to put out his own politically charged material, but frothing with rage when its academics of other political stripes say their piece.

 

[Agema]

It's also true that immigration can collapse a welfare system, think what would happen if the entirety of the sub sahara population was teleported to Germany overnight. But some level of immigration are perfectly sustainable and alternative exist. One alternative is to levee higher tax on immigrant until they pay back a certain amount, another is to have a multi tier welfare system. Immigrant don't go to certain country for welfare, they mostly move because their country is a terrible place to live in and they just want to be somewhere where they don't have to worry for their security everyday.

I also think there's an important question here in terms of how the value of immigrants is calculated.

So, let's take the assumption (common in many countries) that the bottom 50% of earners - immigrants or not - receive more money from the government than they give to it across their lifetimes. As relatively low skill immigrants are almost certainly going to tend to end in the bottom 50% of earners, it makes perfect sense that they will cost the government more than they give back.

But...

What about all the money they make that doesn't go to the government? The tax burden on a low earner will vary by state, but to take a relatively low-tax nation like the UK, for instance, it's about 30%. So what's happening with that other 70%? Well, they're spending it. And thus the money is filtering through the national economy into the hands of everyone else. Buy your food at the supermarket, you've just helped pay the salary of the cashiers, admin staff, hauliers, and the dividend of the supermarket's shareholders, etc. They've all become slightly richer.

So in this scenario, to deny access to the immigrant is to relieve a burden on the state finances, but to make the economy poorer. So perhaps the tax burden needs to be increased from 40% to 41% to cope with welfare, education etc. for immigrants. But if the whole economy has increased 3% per capita because of their extra work it's actually a win, because the population have gained more from a general increase in income / wealth than they have lost in tax rises.

The people don't necessarily feel this, however. What they see are tax rises, and them taking home proportionally less money than they used to. The addition to their wealth from the same policy that has required the tax hike is however effectively imperceptible, so they will not consider it. The other issue of course is distribution of wealth. If the distribution of wealth in a society is crocked, the nation as a whole gets richer but some of the population won't be seeing any of it: in which case putting a tax rise on them is just a loss to them.

The argument "we can't pay for this immigration welfare" is thus nearly always false, certainly at the level of immigration we've seen at the last 20 years. We assuredly can. The issue is that the true functioning of the economy is not seen or understood by many people, so they vote for a mirage. Or as is frequently the case, they just vote against people with darker skin and different cultures because they are disgusted by difference. The economic argument is just whatever they need to say instead of "I hate X people".

 

[stroopwafel]

You're really muddling your point by phrasing it this way.

Religion itself doesn't matters, people following the religion do. What islam says is irrelevant, what matters is how people of certain country decide to follow it. It's perfectly true that a majority of people in poor islamic country agree with statement like "It's okay for a husband to beat his wife", but the key word here is "poor" not "islamic", they'd agree just as much if they were following another religion or even no religious. Poor country make for poor culture which makes for poor people. Muslim that grew up in richer country tend to disagree with the statement, the longer they'd been in the richer country and the richer they are, the more likely they'll disagree.

It's also true that immigration can collapse a welfare system, think what would happen if the entirety of the sub sahara population was teleported to Germany overnight. But some level of immigration are perfectly sustainable and alternative exist. One alternative is to levee higher tax on immigrant until they pay back a certain amount, another is to have a multi tier welfare system. Immigrant don't go to certain country for welfare, they mostly move because their country is a terrible place to live in and they just want to be somewhere where they don't have to worry for their security everyday.

This kind of reasoning denies the structural problems islam have with integrating into European society or the complete lack of minority rights, the lack of equality between men and women or the theocratic rule in islamic countries themselves. That, incidentally, lead to similar outcomes of oppression and conflict. It's a part of the religion that considers it's beliefs absolute with a purpose to aggressively expand. The entire idea of a 'euro islam' is a pipe dream. More women are carrying a head scarf now than in the nineties. In many ways segregation increased and integration regressed. Their economic problems are a result of the dogmatic beliefs from their religion, not the other way around.

In a sense, barely even that.

The report has four authors. The lead author appears to be a statistician and cultural anthropologist attached to "The Renaissance Institute", which is the in-house think tank for the populist right-wing party Forum for Democracy; his standing with the University of Amsterdam (UoA) appears to be a "visiting researcher". (I'm a "visiting researcher" at a UK university, actually: it basically means I have an ID card to come and go, and can do some experiments there.) The rest are basically economists; two are probably best described as private sector professionals, the last one an emeritus professor of UoA. So although the report has been published with the support of and under the aegis of the UoA, none of the authors are conventionally "on the payroll". It is more practically a think tank report with a sprinkling of academic glitter: essentially it has given the UoA a grant for its own pet researcher to do stuff with them. I have no objections to this: universities should open-mindedly support research, and as long as the finances and allegiances are clear in publications and the university is happy to sell its reputation to bidders, so be it. I just think that calling it a "University of Amsterdam study" is hiding a lot of important information that can be used to mischievously mislead the casual reader.

I might note that The Renaissance Institute has also been encouraging students to report lefty academics at universities in the Netherlands who they think might be a bit too "woke". They're just going to keep a list, mind: what could be the harm in that? So that's Jan van der Beek for you: happy to borrow UoA's name when it suits him to put out his own politically charged material, but frothing with rage when its academics of other political stripes say their piece.

You scapegoat the persons who conducted the research but you can easily turn it around; why was such research never conducted by woke career academics just for clarity sake?

I also think there's an important question here in terms of how the value of immigrants is calculated.

So, let's take the assumption (common in many countries) that the bottom 50% of earners - immigrants or not - receive more money from the government than they give to it across their lifetimes. As relatively low skill immigrants are almost certainly going to tend to end in the bottom 50% of earners, it makes perfect sense that they will cost the government more than they give back.

But...

What about all the money they make that doesn't go to the government? The tax burden on a low earner will vary by state, but to take a relatively low-tax nation like the UK, for instance, it's about 30%. So what's happening with that other 70%? Well, they're spending it. And thus the money is filtering through the national economy into the hands of everyone else. Buy your food at the supermarket, you've just helped pay the salary of the cashiers, admin staff, hauliers, and the dividend of the supermarket's shareholders, etc. They've all become slightly richer.

So in this scenario, to deny access to the immigrant is to relieve a burden on the state finances, but to make the economy poorer. So perhaps the tax burden needs to be increased from 40% to 41% to cope with welfare, education etc. for immigrants. But if the whole economy has increased 3% per capita because of their extra work it's actually a win, because the population have gained more from a general increase in income / wealth than they have lost in tax rises.

The people don't necessarily feel this, however. What they see are tax rises, and them taking home proportionally less money than they used to. The addition to their wealth from the same policy that has required the tax hike is however effectively imperceptible, so they will not consider it. The other issue of course is distribution of wealth. If the distribution of wealth in a society is crocked, the nation as a whole gets richer but some of the population won't be seeing any of it: in which case putting a tax rise on them is just a loss to them.

The argument "we can't pay for this immigration welfare" is thus nearly always false, certainly at the level of immigration we've seen at the last 20 years. We assuredly can. The issue is that the true functioning of the economy is not seen or understood by many people, so they vote for a mirage. Or as is frequently the case, they just vote against people with darker skin and different cultures because they are disgusted by difference. The economic argument is just whatever they need to say instead of "I hate X people".

This is just a bogus comparison. At the current rate of immigration there was a nett negative of 40 billion euros and your proposition that you can compensate for this by increasing the tax rate is just ridiculous. Mind that that the Netherlands already have very high income tax. Your belligerent ''plebs don't have the sophisticated understanding of the economy that I do'' makes it even worse.

 

[Buyetyen]

You scapegoat the persons who conducted the research but you can easily turn it around; why was such research never conducted by woke career academics just for clarity sake?

Which is a bit like asking why no research has ever been done on Holocaust denial theory, the flat earth, vaccines causing autism and the fake moon landing for clarity's sake. Why do you think the scientific community is obligated to indulge you?

 

[Specter Von Baren]

There's a world of difference between an elected organiser who "rules" by consent, and an unelected organiser who rules by force.

No argument there.

Secondly, I think you are confusing organisation and hierarchy. Organisation does not require hierarchy. And even where there is hierarchy, it doesn't need to be a formalised structure.

Give me an example of a human organization that does not have hierarchy of some kind.

No, the socialist objection to capitalist factory ownership is that it puts excessive power in the hands of owners to exploit workers as an inherent design feature, not "corruption".

I feel like what I'm saying is not coming through clear. I had asked earlier how unions were an invention of socialism if they do not lead to the ownership of, say, a factory, by the workers. I received about four replies explaining it, one of which was from you. You had no objection to my description of socialist goals then but now you do?

The overall breakdown here seems to be the same that happens when I discuss socialism with all but one socialist on this site (Eacaraxe), a refusal to except that there is a difference between desires and results. I am constantly having to figure out what a socialist says they want vs what they actually want (note that I do not assume deliberate attempts to lie in all or even most instances that this occurs), and what actions a socialist wants to implement to achieve their goals vs what those actions ACTUALLY achieve. In this case it was explained to me that socialism created unions to achieve x result and I followed up on that by pointing out that even if that was the original intent, we have over 100 years of evidence that says they do not actually achieve x result but y result and gave a few examples of how even if they DID achieve x result that it would not last long due to various realities of how factories and organization works.

 

[stroopwafel]

Which is a bit like asking why no research has ever been done on Holocaust denial theory, the flat earth, vaccines causing autism and the fake moon landing for clarity's sake. Why do you think the scientific community is obligated to indulge you?

Maybe b/c this data can actually be verified? Just to have the facts straight?

 

[Buyetyen]

Maybe b/c this data can actually be verified? Just to have the facts straight?

Haha, no, seriously. Why are they obligated to waste their time indulging every crank with an axe to grind? I mean after all, we have all the data needed to convince these people they're wrong and they still insist that the evidence is on their side.

 

[Silvanus]

You scapegoat the persons who conducted the research but you can easily turn it around; why was such research never conducted by woke career academics just for clarity sake?

Research is frequently done on the fiscal impact of immigration, and can quite easily be found in Google Scholar.

If you're asking why the Dutch government specifically didn't sponsor or conduct this research, it's probably because existing research consistently finds the impact to be minimal: plus-or-minus 1% of GDP.

But this is all quite besides the point. The last several posts have demonstrated quite clearly that the fiscal impact isn't your primary concern. This is culture war bullshit again.

 

[Gergar12]

We are closer and closer to a dystopian world, and I would argue we are very close to it already if not already there. Think about it. Who controls your internet: your ISP, who controls your search engine: Google, who hosts the websites you go to: A host of companies including AWS, who controls your operating system on your computer: Microsoft, and Apple? And above that is the US government that can sanction all those things. Granted China is not good either due to their privacy issues, but if the US wins the corporations will take over, it’s that simple. (Oh, and if China wins the CCP/A government controls the internet, as you know I am not the biggest fan of that either)

It goes like this…
Operating system -> ISP -> search engine -> website hosting service
At any point, this chain could be disrupted…

The right and far-right wants to control the internet for themselves, the centrist wants to control the internet themselves, the liberals and progressives want to control the internet selves, the communist, and fascist to want control. No one except a few on the fringes of society wants information to be free.

When Bernie Sanders tried to upend the system, the former president of the United State teamed up with Rep. Jim Clyburn and torpedo his candidacy. That is how you know he was a threat to the system. You can’t even fight back in this system with the tools they allow you to fight back.

My question is where the hell is the civil libertarians, the hacker- anarchists, anonymous. We need 2012 to happen again. And that’s not the end of it they have been going hard against independent YouTubers recently, those that haven’t been brought like Secular Talk are getting their views plummeted. And the progressive think-tank would isn’t better, progressives are being used as pawns to fight other corporations. The progressive Google think tanks hate Amazon, but not Google, and vice-versa.

Yes, Amazon is a threat to progressivism, but so is Google, your ISP, Apple, Microsoft, and so fore. I hate to say this, but whatever remains of the people in good faith who don’t like censorship on the left, and the right need to team up to fight this.

I could go on, and on with my observations, but we are rapidly approaching a corporate-controlled world, and the public has been dead silent.

 

[Gordon_4]

We are closer and closer to a dystopian world, and I would argue we are very close to it already if not already there. Think about it. Who controls your internet: your ISP, who controls your search engine: Google, who hosts the websites you go to: A host of companies including AWS, who controls your operating system on your computer: Microsoft, and Apple? And above that is the US government that can sanction all those things. Granted China is not good either due to their privacy issues, but if the US wins the corporations will take over, it’s that simple. (Oh, and if China wins the CCP/A government controls the internet, as you know I am not the biggest fan of that either)

It goes like this…
Operating system -> ISP -> search engine -> website hosting service
At any point, this chain could be disrupted…

The right and far-right wants to control the internet for themselves, the centrist wants to control the internet themselves, the liberals and progressives want to control the internet selves, the communist, and fascist to want control. No one except a few on the fringes of society wants information to be free.

When Bernie Sanders tried to upend the system, the former president of the United State teamed up with Rep. Jim Clyburn and torpedo his candidacy. That is how you know he was a threat to the system. You can’t even fight back in this system with the tools they allow you to fight back.

My question is where the hell is the civil libertarians, the hacker- anarchists, anonymous. We need 2012 to happen again. And that’s not the end of it they have been going hard against independent YouTubers recently, those that haven’t been brought like Secular Talk are getting their views plummeted. And the progressive think-tank would isn’t better, progressives are being used as pawns to fight other corporations. The progressive Google think tanks hate Amazon, but not Google, and vice-versa.

Yes, Amazon is a threat to progressivism, but so is Google, your ISP, Apple, Microsoft, and so fore. I hate to say this, but whatever remains of the people in good faith who don’t like censorship on the left, and the right need to team up to fight this.

I could go on, and on with my observations, but we are rapidly approaching a corporate-controlled world, and the public has been dead silent.

Information may or may not be free, but infrastructure is not. Either you allow competing enterprises to maintain it or it goes full utility under government regulation. Pick one; because I’m telling you now that Johnny Fartknocker the Fortnite streamer and Sadie ASMRartist are incapable of doing it.

 

[Gergar12]

Information may or may not be free, but infrastructure is not. Either you allow competing enterprises to maintain it or it goes full utility under government regulation. Pick one; because I’m telling you now that Johnny Fartknocker the Fortnite streamer and Sadie ASMRartist are incapable of doing it.

The second one.

 

[Agema]

You scapegoat the persons who conducted the research but you can easily turn it around; why was such research never conducted by woke career academics just for clarity sake?

"Scapegoat"? I don't think that's the word you mean.

Studies are studies. They all live and they all die on their own merits. It doesn't matter whether some gritty researcher has fought through a mountain of sewage for twenty years to get his study done, if the study's junk then it's junk.

The quality of this study is an unknown. It may be good or it may not - it's not been subjected to sufficient analysis for anyone to say. In the meantime, the political affiliations of its financial backers and authors cannot help but demand we treat it with reasonable caution.

This is just a bogus comparison.

No, it's not. It represents an important part of the issue.

There is a vast amount of literature on the economic impact of immigration. The Netherlands is definitely not so unique that the concepts of what is occurring in other countries don't apply to it too. It is not hard to find a mass of studies that demonstrate a net benefit from immigration.

At the current rate of immigration there was a nett negative of 40 billion euros and your proposition that you can compensate for this by increasing the tax rate is just ridiculous.

I'm not sure where you get that from.

The study suggests NL paid 200 billion for immigration 2010-2019, so an average of 20 billion a year. With an economy of ~800 billion Euros today, that means 2.5% GDP. The study suggests NL will need to pay 600 billion Euros for immigration between 2020 and 2040, an average of 30 billion Euros a year. Let's assume a linear increase. However, by 2040, assuming 2% GDP growth a year the Dutch economy will be ~1200 billion Euros. which means 40 billion Euros would be 3% GDP in 2040. An increase in the tax burden from 39% to 39.5% would barely matter at all.

Mind that that the Netherlands already have very high income tax.

The total tax burden of the Netherlands is 39%. The EU average is 40%; the EU minus the newer eastern European admissions is over 41%. It is not a high tax country by the standard of its peers. It is considerably higher than the UK and USA, though.

Your belligerent ''plebs don't have the sophisticated understanding of the economy that I do'' makes it even worse.

I don't have a sophisticated understanding of the economy. I just have an understanding of the economy which is slightly better than the total bullshit most of the population have. In the kingdom of the blind, a one-eyed man with severe myopia is at least a minor noble.

 

[Gergar12]

I am about to put my Amazon prime at risk but fuck you Amazon. When you started out selling books your CEO was a normal guy. Now he’s in a mid-life crisis, and he’s literally one of the worst people on the face of the planet besides maybe the dictators in terms of aggregate harm.

For one, every time these shit-eaters go into an area they depress wages for nearly warehouse workers. Thanks to them people are having to pick between rent, or food for their children fuck Amazon. For two this company literally undercuts small business by selling products like theirs on their website oftentimes with higher priority. For three they treat their warehouse workers like indentured servants timing their fucking bathroom breaks, and rather than being safe, they will literally have ambulances outside in case of emergencies instead of having AC. Also, they brought the Washington Post which has run endless fucking attack pieces on Sanders. Fuck that old Jewish guy for wanting to improve this awful world caused by YOUR greed. Their running of Twitch is even worst, they discriminate against small content creators like YouTube, and pay many people starvation wages.

That’s why it drives me batshit crazy why people don’t treat Jeff Bezos like Xi, like Trump like Putin, like Assad like the criminal he is.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Now he’s in a mid-life crisis, and he’s literally one of the worst people on the face of the planet besides maybe the dictators in terms of aggregate harm.

Oh, definitely worse than them. But mostly because of scope as far as I'm aware. Like how every automobile accident put together is worse than every plane crash.

 

[stroopwafel]

I am about to put my Amazon prime at risk but fuck you Amazon. When you started out selling books your CEO was a normal guy. Now he’s in a mid-life crisis, and he’s literally one of the worst people on the face of the planet besides maybe the dictators in terms of aggregate harm.

For one, every time these shit-eaters go into an area they depress wages for nearly warehouse workers. Thanks to them people are having to pick between rent, or food for their children fuck Amazon. For two this company literally undercuts small business by selling products like theirs on their website oftentimes with higher priority. For three they treat their warehouse workers like indentured servants timing their fucking bathroom breaks, and rather than being safe, they will literally have ambulances outside in case of emergencies instead of having AC. Also, they brought the Washington Post which has run endless fucking attack pieces on Sanders. Fuck that old Jewish guy for wanting to improve this awful world caused by YOUR greed. Their running of Twitch is even worst, they discriminate against small content creators like YouTube, and pay many people starvation wages.

That’s why it drives me batshit crazy why people don’t treat Jeff Bezos like Xi, like Trump like Putin, like Assad like the criminal he is.

 

[bluegate]

I am about to put my Amazon prime at risk but fuck you Amazon.

Amazon is not monitoring this site

 

[Kae]

Sure. But much less so than Joe Bloggs down the pub.

Sure maybe the guy at the pub doesn't know all that much, but I assure that the fisher's know more about what could be done to improve conditions for the fishers, same as the farmers and factory workers, and in their understanding of these things they are far more qualified than the bourgeois clowns any government currently has appointed that care more for the monetary gain of themselves and their corporate overlords than the well-being of the people and the functioning of society, a very old example is that farmers objected to the massive industrial farms we currently have as pests propagate faster around more uniform crops and they proposed than rather than having such massive uniform fields instead they were of varied vegetables and or fruits, instead companies went for uniform crops and pesticides which seemed to address both problems, but ended up generating a third problem which is the environmental devastation these pesticides cause and in some cases that some of the pesticides being used poisoned the farmers, by which I mean, do not underestimate the worker they know far more than people give them credit for.

No need to remind me; though I would remind you that the voting American public chose who to represent them.

The fact that you seem to think that there was an actual choice is pretty funny, sure the people get to choose from a list of candidates but who curated that list?
Who told them which people were eligible to receive votes?
Anyways, a garbage argument if I ever heard one.

Had the system of direct democracy been in place, of course, there never would have been a court appearance in the first place, because most people are totally unaware that Facebook was involved in the data harvesting and sale of private information.

Maybe so, maybe not, it's hard to imagine as what I and most people arguing for direct democracy includes the dismantling of Capitalism as corporations are basically dictatorships and completely opposite to the concept of Democracy, so I have a hard time imagining a direct democracy in which Facebook exists to begin with.

Care =/= knowledge of a topic. There's almost no connection between them, or even an inverse in some regards; note that most people who feel most strongly against immigration in the UK tend to come from places with the lowest experiences of immigration.

But working there does, if we have the people that actually do the physical and intellectual work having an actually relevant role in making the choice and focus the propaganda of these issues in heightening their voices we'll have better results than leaving it to some supposedly smarter people that don't know jack shit.

Hence safeguards and public education. The US is not a paragon of a functional representative democracy.

And what is?
I really don't think one exists to be honest.

I'm not at all afraid of change, and I despise the American status quo; that doesn't mean I have to endorse change in (what I consider) a regressive direction.

You can say that all you want, it doesn't ring particularly true when you're advocating that has done nothing but fail despite existing for centuries, I'd argue what's regressive is doing the same shit over and over again and expecting different results.

 

[Kae]

So as humans have a tendency to corruption, so will all human institutions have a tendency to corruption.

This isn't going to magically disappear even in an anarchist commune with theoretically no formal institutions, because humans with all their grubby vices are still going to be there leveraging what they can, lying, manipulating, amassing power and influence, etc. In the end, an anarchist commune is like as not to cease to be anarchist, because in the end it will be corrupted into something different by people who perceive gain from doing so and have the ability to make it happen. This is the way of the world: the only options are vigilance, transparency and accountability, but you can absolutely guarantee they will be permanently tested and occasionally fail.

Oh an appeal to human nature, the argument of the lazy, one I cannot fundamentally take seriously particularly from suburbanites that don't know what being in life or death conditions are and as such don't truly understand human nature, but I'm not sick anymore and I've decided I'll humour it just this once, even if it's vapid at best.

Human nature is complex and doesn't tend to anything in particular other than mainly self-preservation first and the easiest way to achieve it second, meaning they will try to survive by taking the path of least resistance and as such adapt and act differently depending on circumstances, this is actually why statistically poor people tend to be kinder and more charitable than rich or working class people with higher income, because we understand that for us the path of least resistance is mutual aid as otherwise you may not be able to survive, it's the reason why my neighbour who's single was making sure I had food and wasn't dying while I was sick these past few days, under the understanding that when he's in a similar position I will do the same, well anyone on the building would do the same to be precise, because it's our best bet to survive, it's why we share food all the time, to encourage everyone to share food that way when someone doesn't have food it's fine because someone else was going to share it anyways, because it's what we do, it isn't really a particularly hard concept to understand, and growing up in this culture of sharing and mutual aid makes poor people consider giving what they can to help other people more than the other economic classes, but on the flip-side it's the same reason poor people are more likely to turn to crime as if for whatever reason they aren't a part of a little community that engages on mutual aid or if that community is unable to meet their needs they will take the path of least resistance and succumb to a life of crime.

As such, if human nature is malleable we must examine why people choose to be selfish and abuse power every time, and the answer is simple, people will try to survive by taking the path of least resistance, so if you can get more by being corrupt you're likely to do it, as such the best way to handle this fundamental human impulse would be by getting rid of this pathetic system that encourages a selfish everyone's on their own attitude and change it for one that discourages it, that way less people will take that path and as such we will achieve a better society, would it be perfect?

No, no way in hell, progress would never be over and there will always be problems left to solve as such a thing as a Utopia doesn't exist, but the point is establishing a system that at the very least will try to address these problems of human impulse and nature, rather than lazily claim "It is what it is" and just give up on it.

 

[Silvanus]

Sure maybe the guy at the pub doesn't know all that much, but I assure that the fisher's know more about what could be done to improve conditions for the fishers, same as the farmers and factory workers, and in their understanding of these things they are far more qualified than the bourgeois clowns any government currently has appointed that care more for the monetary gain of themselves and their corporate overlords than the well-being of the people and the functioning of society, a very old example is that farmers objected to the massive industrial farms we currently have as pests propagate faster around more uniform crops and they proposed than rather than having such massive uniform fields instead they were of varied vegetables and or fruits, instead companies went for uniform crops and pesticides which seemed to address both problems, but ended up generating a third problem which is the environmental devastation these pesticides cause and in some cases that some of the pesticides being used poisoned the farmers, by which I mean, do not underestimate the worker they know far more than people give them credit for.

OK, an example: UK fishermen. Before the fishing limits imposed by the EEC, British fishermen had almost wiped out the species they rely on for income. It was a close run thing. Had they had their way in the 70s, they would have decimated the stock in order to keep selling at the same levels they were accustomed to... and thus destroyed the longterm feasibility of their own profession and community. Sustainability limits imposed by those bourgeois clowns, against the wishes of British fishermen, are the only reason British fishermen are still in business and the British aquatic ecosystem hasn't totally collapsed.

The fact that you seem to think that there was an actual choice is pretty funny, sure the people get to choose from a list of candidates but who curated that list?
Who told them which people were eligible to receive votes?
Anyways, a garbage argument if I ever heard one.

No, I'm afraid you can't fully absolve the electorate of responsibility for the elected representatives they've ultimately chosen.

But working there does, if we have the people that actually do the physical and intellectual work having an actually relevant role in making the choice and focus the propaganda of these issues in heightening their voices we'll have better results than leaving it to some supposedly smarter people that don't know jack shit.

Heightening the voices of experts hasn't always worked, now, has it? People choose to listen to whoever emotive testimony they like, or whatever confirms existing prejudices or assumptions. And you cannot decide to "focus the propaganda" on what you like unless you have a governing body. You want direct democracy, then that's not up to you, that's up to a plebiscite.

You can say that all you want, it doesn't ring particularly true when you're advocating that has done nothing but fail despite existing for centuries, I'd argue what's regressive is doing the same shit over and over again and expecting different results.

Representative Democracy has done "nothing but fail"? Its the only form of government that's come even remotely close to achieving a functional nation state without devolving into despotism.