TheDoozer

I appreciate the write-up, thank you! I feel like a lot of this is semantic differences. I've always thought of socialism as any public funds used specifically to help citizens (e.g. social security, medicare, unemployment, UBI, etc) and Communism to be the public owning and running the means of production, and distributing goods thereof, and the stateless, classless, moneyless society to be the ideal utopia it aspired to (similar to Star Trek). From your comment, I see that what I call Communism, you call Socialism (which explains a lot of confusion from discussions in the past with self-described Communists I've known), and the nameless Star Trek post-scarcity system you would call Communism.

Do you think it is possible to slow-roll the transition peacefully, though? If, for example, instead of the government bailing out industries, they bought out industries on the cheap, slowly growing and monopolizing like Google or Amazon have? Or do you think the rich would simply block that from happening?

So I will admit that I am ignorant of a method of attaining Communism that isn't at the end of a rifle, and thus authoritarian by nature (and fully accept that, to a degree, Capitalism is also at the end of a gun, but typically less overt, or often directed without instead of within). The only nations I've seen flying the red flag have appeared highly authoritarian (and I'm not going to get drawn into a "USSR and PRC aren't/weren't authoritarian, and DPRK is actually a utopia!" discussion, so if that's the direction this is going, let me know and I'll politely see my way out).

I've seen in the lower comments that Socialism would be used as a gateway to Communism, but I am unclear about the transition from "everybody's basic needs are met via taxation and distribution" to "personal property is abolished" (as I understand Communism to mean, please correct me if I'm wrong). Plenty of European countries have had (for the west), strong seemingly socialist systems, but they don't seem to be deliberately angling toward Communism, for example.

So I'm curious what this peaceful Capitalist to Communist timeline would look like.

An old buddy of mine commented once on the amount if minor havoc you could wreak with a handful of chain bike locks. Cheap, wrap around some door handles and lock, walk away. Yeah, somebody can bust out a bolt cutter, but for the amount of challenge to remove it, the low cost per use, and the speed of application, it's pretty impressive for minor mischief.

Relatively harmless, too, as long as you aren't doing any additional nefarious shit. Might work for some gated community gates.

BONE!

So ultimately, the punishment for not believing is being destroyed? Like, oblivion?

Shit, this sounds like a win. I have no interest in eternal existence, even supposedly "blissful" existence. I feel like anyone who thinks of eternity on more than a surface level would feel nothing but existential dread.

I thought they accidentally got rid of Black Friday with their anti-DEI measures?

1. Don't carry credit card debt. Save money if you can. Get a handle on basic finances

Credit cards are this weird thing. If you need them, you shouldn't use them (if you can help it). If you make plenty of money and don't need them, they are a very useful financial tool. I have paid interest on one of my credit cards once in the past 3 years, and it was only to have extra available funds for buying a house. But I have accrued well over 100k airline miles and several hundred (far more than the interest I paid) in cash back. I use credit cards exclusively for everything but my mortgage, and have them set to automatically pay the statement balance prior to the due date. If you aren't extremely confident you can do that, you should avoid credit cards.

I definitely ran afoul of credit cards in my youth, so the banks have gotten their pound of flesh from me.

That fuckin moose, man. I'm a dad, and that shit killed me.

Whoa, NFSW tag that!

Leaving before the rush?

That is not the problem. Population declines as countries move to first world status, and I think the people not having kids due to financial constraints are few and far between. Otherwise population would not start and continue diminishing as an area becomes more affluent. People have less (or no) kids because they don't want kids, don't want a bunch of kids, and can reasonably expect the kids they have to survive to adulthood. And access to birth control, education, and other opportunities (mostly for women) makes having less kids (by their own desire) possible.

So bringing capable workers in means they pay into taxes that support the aging and school-age population, and never had to have their school-age years paid for. They're a productive member with half the cost over their lifetime.

It's a no-brainer... as long as you're not worried about changing the... shade or hue... of your population over time.

Our replacement rate has been low for a long time, but our population has stayed relatively steady.... because of immigration.

Low replacement rate is only bad if you're racist/xenophobic. Otherwise there's usually (in a supposedly first-world country) an easy solution.

And if you think this is a dig on specifically the US, it isn't. Japan and South Korea are about to have insane difficulties with a very obvious and simple solution, and the US had that solution and are destroying it in favor of racism and xenophobia.