random fan

Are they a fan?

It’s pretty easy: is there conclusive evidence? Corollary: can you successfully eliminate conclusive evidence?

That almost works, except critics of western propaganda exist everywhere especially in academia & intelligentsia. The west doesn’t try to suppress them. So why out of everyone, those guys with a salient agenda over the critics without a discernable one?

According to these guys, they’re a CIA strawman operation.

Other than that, it may have started with “I’m 13 and this is deep” and persisted with ideological thinking. 🤷

The common denominator of liberalism is the core liberal philosophy of universal individual rights & liberties, consent of the governed (governments exist for the people who have a right to change & replace them, & authority is legitimate only when it protects those liberties), political & legal equality. US modern liberalism primarily refers to social liberalism & progressivism. Liberalism elsewhere often refers to classical liberalism which more closely corresponds to US libertarianism.

American versus European usage of liberalism

Colloquially, liberalism is used differently, in its primary use in different countries. In the United States the general term liberalism almost always refers to modern liberalism. There are some parties in Europe which nominally appeal to social liberalism, with the Beveridge Group faction within the Liberal Democrats, the Danish Social Liberal Party, the Democratic Movement, and the Italian Republican Party. One of the greatest contrasts is between the usage in the United States and usage in Europe and Latin America. According to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (writing in 1956), “[l]iberalism in the American usage has little in common with the word as used in the politics of any European country, save possibly Britain.” In Europe, liberalism usually means what is sometimes called classical liberalism, a commitment to limited government, laissez-faire economics. This classical liberalism sometimes more closely corresponds to the American definition of libertarianism, although some distinguish between classical liberalism and libertarianism.

Liberalism worldwide

What constitutes a liberal party is highly debatable. In the list below, it is defined as a political party that adheres to the basic principles of political liberalism. This is a broad political current, including left-wing, centrist and right-wing elements. All liberal parties emphasise individual rights, but they differ in their opinion on an active role for the state. This list includes parties of different character, ranging from classical liberalism to social liberalism, conservative liberalism to national liberalism.

Several conservative and/or Christian-democratic parties, such as the British Conservative Party, Germany’s Christian Democratic Union and Spain’s People’s Party, are also considered to be neoliberal leaning or have strong liberal conservative and/or classical liberal factions, whereas some conservative parties, such as Poland’s Law and Justice and Hungary’s Fidesz, favour more state intervention but also support free-market solutions. Conversely, some social-democratic parties, such as the British Labour Party and the Italian Democratic Party, include liberal elements. Social liberalism and social conservatism are not mutually exclusive, and some parties espouse socially liberal economic policies, while maintaining more socially conservative or traditionalist views on society: examples of this include Finland’s Centre Party (see also Nordic agrarian parties) and Ireland’s Fianna Fáil, both members of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party (ALDE Party). In the United States, the two major political forces, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, are to some extent, liberal (see Liberalism in the United States and Modern liberalism in the United States).

⁝

Not all the parties using the “Liberal” or “Freedom” labels are actually liberal. Moreover, some parties, such as the Freedom Party of Austria, were originally liberal, but have since tilted toward a populist direction and abandoned most of the tenets of liberalism. Finally, some parties, such as the United States Republican Party, Australia’s Liberal Party or Norway’s Progress Party are liberal mainly from an economic point of view rather than a social point of view (see economic liberalism, libertarianism and right-libertarianism).

The reason forests are still being cut down and CO2 is still being emitted isn’t because industrial civilization requires it, but because capitalism requires it.

Weird to pin a general economic issue on capitalism when it’s more of a general issue with economic growth as history corroborates. Production functions—the dependence on factors of production including natural resources to produce output—work the same regardless of economic system: more is needed to produce more.

Central planning economies can be as or more destructive than the more capitalist ones: type of economy seems to have little bearing there. The USSR aggressively industrialized & would consistently pursue economic growth (to raise standards of living). It comes up in the Soviet constitution of 1977:

• labor, free from exploitation, as the source of growth
• continuous improvement of their living standards (art. 39)
• steady growth of the productive forces (art. 40).

Despite their command economy, their pollution was disproportionately worse than the US’s

Total emissions in the USSR in 1988 were about 79% of the US total. Considering that the Soviet GNP was only some 54% of that of the USA, this means that the Soviet Union generated 1.5 times more pollution than the USA per unit of GNP.

Their planners considered pollution control

unnecessary hindrance to economic development and industrialization

and

By the 1990s, 40% of Russia’s territory began demonstrating symptoms of significant ecological stress, largely due to a diverse number of environmental issues, including deforestation, energy irresponsibility, pollution, and nuclear waste.

And this generously glosses over the extent of water contamination, hazardous dumping of toxic & nuclear waste into oceans, etc.

The dependence on natural resources, capacity for environmental destruction, and demand for economic growth are not particular to any type of economy: they’re general. Wherever an economy recklessly grows without environmental protections, the environment is ruined.

It was implied by the parent comment they were responding to when it brought up trading non-monetary things. Is the lack of reading comprehension (here & here) willful?

Are you arguing against a medium of exchange? Bartering is just less efficient trading.

A medium of exchange is entirely unrelated to profit that bartering still enables.

Post needs text alternative.

So, are tankies a CIA operation?

They call them breast cancer awareness walks/runs, not support campaigns or fundraisers. Campaigns for the latter would be a good idea as soon as they nail down awareness. 🙃

nope

This is solved by raising awareness and education

Not sure that’s possible. Despite decades of trying, they continue running marathons everywhere for raising awareness of breast cancer, because apparently people still aren’t aware. If it hasn’t worked for breast cancer, then how will it work for water? Giving up on humanity might be the best move here.

People from the US agree with you. Lemmy is just overrun with irrationals who’ve never learned guilt by association, genetic fallacy, and other irrelevance fallacies are illogical & who’ve also never figured out that such irrationality is the root of many injustices. They’re small minded & contemptible.

Some of that is dumbfuckism. Constitutional republics are democracies, for example.

Some of those sentiments have always existed & come across as though you were born yesterday.

While socialism is a broad term, communism usually refers to communist states, which are authoritarian regimes that even in theory reject universal individual rights/liberties. Non-authoritarian socialism is something else.

People have a duty to beneficence. However, plenty of people lazily toss empathy around as an argument from outrage fallacy instead of bothering to build a more credible & persuasive argument. Listeners get sick of that fast & don’t mind if you think of them as monsters: they certainly don’t care about your poorly argued opinions.

So, that could be deprogramming or it could be ineffective discussion breakdowns. I don’t think empathy requires programming. I’d think its rejection require reprogramming.

Individualism doesn’t necessarily mean selfishness. As pointed out elsewhere, collectivism can also lead to oppressive injustices.

Somehow, I feel you’re not a rigorous scholar on economics.

Humanism & liberalism.

The ideas that the human is the measure of all things, and that moral & political philosophy claiming individuals have inherent liberties & are fundamentally equal, government exists for the people, authority is legitimate only when it protects those inherent liberties—the entire point of that was to reject as illegitimate any system of authority of unequal, exclusive power & privileges such as divine right to rule & exclusive hereditary privileges associated with feudalism.

The influence of these philosophies can be found in the history from the Renaissance through the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, American & French revolutions, and trend toward constitutional republics & liberal democracies. Humanism backed challenges to the authority of the church in the Reformation by favoring plurality. During the Enlightenment, it argued that rationality could replace deism, promoted secular separation of church & state.

Humanism influenced the liberalism of the American & French revolutions ending the authority of monarchs & feudal traditions. The French revolution spread liberal democratic ideals throughout Europe while stimulating nationalist movements. Liberalism gradually eroded the authority of monarchs in constitutional monarchies like England’s until they became figureheads of liberal democracies.

My understanding is that the content is essentially self-hosted, so content removed from relays still exists on the posting user’s client

The relays are the hosts, not the clients. The only data the user carries is their unique public-cryptographic key to identify themselves & sign their messages. It’s independent of client or relay, so they can use any at will.

Curation/moderation doesn’t require relays. It can be done via the proposals/features mentioned before, which is distributed independent of relay.

most forums before Digg and Reddit did have rules

Usenet certainly didn’t, nor does the web in the grand scale. Enforcement was weak.

would remain technically on the systems you are referring to

Nope, it would have to be removed just like always. True of new systems, too.