There was actually an early sect of Christians called the Gnostics. That was sort of their whole thing.
A core belief was that everyone was the child of God, and thus, was God.
They also believed that Jesus asked Judas to go to the Romans.
The early church wiped them out to the last, and we only know what we do thanks to some sparse records and modern archeology.
I’m still hung up on you “economically viable”…
So, because no one would be allowed to exploit the people for profit, it’s not worth making the world a better place?
Even in the current capitalist society we have, a co-op can make money, (which is then shared equally with workers).
If every company and business were, by law, a co-op, without changing any other factor of society, you’d see all of that excess wealth that’s normally hoarded by the few reinvested into making the economy stronger.
Because right now, under capitalism, we’re always on the brink of a massive recession/depression. This is by design. See, the super rich can’t buy up everything on the cheap, if they don’t crash the economy every few years.
And that’s your economically viable. Working more hours for less pay so that a rich asshole can buy yet another vacation home.
I don’t particularly care if one employee doesn’t work as hard as the others, as long as they do their job. Co-opts have already figured out how to fire people for non-performance. It’s a real job, with real responsibilities.
There’s also more than enough abundance produced worldwide, to where everyone could have a comfortable life, regardless of how hard they work. And with more and more automation, work itself need not ever apply again.
As to how broken governments are, the reason why is right wingers working for the last half century in a coordinated manner to actively break government. They call it “starving the beast” when “the beast” was just making sure roads were built and rivers didn’t randomly catch fire.
Ah yes, the lie of “you don’t own things under communism”
I mean, come on, that’s fucking stupid.
No, the only people who would have any property seized are the super rich, and most of them are lucky if they don’t get the guillotine for their crimes.
You cannot have gross excess under communism, because you’ll never be able to exploit your fellows in order to steal what should be shared.
The workers seize the means of production, and then produce. Then the factory shares the wealth created by the factory. You know, like a co-op.
That’s small scale communism. Everyone chips in to work, and everyone gets a piece of the profit because everyone owns a slice of the company.
Anyway Marx and Engels thought that after reaching that point, the government would sort of wither away and everyone would live in fantasy land utopia.
The other way seems better, a one world government where every single person on earth has a vote, because there are some issues where everyone on earth should have a voice.
But that would require a massive change to, well, human nature to start. Making people less tribal or giving the vast majority of the population the ability to sit and consider what’s good for the Earth, five, ten, or even a hundred years in the future, is a bit beyond me. Not something I’m every going to be capable of doing.
They think that when the revolution hits, they can use Peter Theil’s spy tech to crush it, and then they will go full mask off.
Racist woman saying that because Kanye West has adopted what are basically Nazi talking points, Jewish people can use a specific racial slur.
I’m not denying that Finn and Poe had an interesting chemistry, I just think that Poe should have stayed dead.
The lingering question of what could have been would have been a way to deepen Finn’s character.
And if you want to keep the actor, well. When Poe comes in to land after rescuing Finn and the group, his first words to Poe are “why are you wearing my brother’s coat?”
And now you have another interesting character dynamic to explore.
Let’s break down your idea of the “right” because it does need to be analyzed.
You say “more freedom”, but you never actually specify who gets more freedom except in a backhanded way of contrasting your idea of the left, who limit the freedoms of companies.
This is an important point. The Right gives companies and the rich, more freedoms, which in historical context has always meant more freedoms to exploit, or even kill their workers in the name of profit. This conversely means less freedoms for actual people who don’t want to die or be poisoned by some rich asshole who wants to make a buck.
You also say Traditional culture, which has always meant more rights to rich white men and fewer rights to minorities and women. Or maybe you want to couch it by saying a push for more religion, which then means less protections for the people who practice the wrong religion.
But you see how every single point goes back to more power for some people at the expense of everyone else.
This is not a bug, this is a feature. Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre both wrote about how this was the desired outcome, and how democracy was a threat to “traditional values” and how the idea of equality was, in their words, repugnant.
There is a direct through-line from those two bastards to every single conservative thought leader of today, and many of them use the exact same talking points.
You’re completely ignoring the fact that the British followed through on their promises of Zionism.
Or deflecting from it.
As soon as the British took over, in the first two years, more Jewish settlers arrived in Palestine than had in the previous two decades. And those two years were instantly eclipsed by the next two.
This was a deliberate colonization effort, complete with laws that blatantly favored Jewish settlers over the Palestinian natives.
A Jewish settlers could go to the British and simply say that they wanted Palestinian land, and the British would help evict the natives. (Okay, they had to be slightly more creative than that, usually lying about land deals, but everyone knew there was no deal or real land dispute)
Is it any wonder that the Palestinians started fighting back?
Persecuted people, who instantly started killing the natives. 1929 was 9 years into the Zionist colonization. 12 or 13 if you want to speak about Mr Balfour or Mr Sykes. Which just goes to show that you don’t have to be Jewish to be a Zionist piece of shit.
There are 4 books, and yeah, they’re good. A bit darker than the show, but still comedy.
It starts with Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, which is Episodes one and two? Of the show… maybe some more thrown in… It actually starts with Lister on Earth and tells how he ended up on the Dwarf. He got drunk and doesn’t quite remember signing on.
Better than Life and Backwards were both single episodes… But of course expanded for book form.
I don’t remember reading The Last Human…
Anyway, they’re a bit hard to find, and certainly not in ebook format.
Fun fact, the full crew got together last year to film another three episode special. No idea when it will air
There are actually a few books based on the series, written by by the series show runners.
Lister does end up as a human puddle for a time. Which is why Holly brings Rimmer back as a hologram. The one person who can drive Lister insane enough to keep going.
The show sort of touches on this, but the books make it quite clear that Holly could have brought anyone back, and specifically chose Rimmer.
Every time I try to come up with a different metric, it usually boils down to, “where does the ultimate power lie”.
In an ideal democracy, that power comes from the consent of the governed, i.e. the people and their direct vote. But that’s usually untenable on larger scales, so thus power is concentrated. The how of that concentration can lead to all sorts of axis on a chart, but in the end, the other side of the chart is usually some form of direct democracy, i.e. returning power to the people.
The point I’m making is that the trough line has always been, Right-wing concentrated power, Left-wing distributed power.
The fact that certain dictators have pretended to be left-wing, and right-wing jackasses have gone along with it, is where the deliberate confusion was introduced.
Communism as proposed by Marx is a true leftwing ideology, the Totalitarian dictatorship created by Lenin was communist in name only, it had more in common with Feudalism than communism. Mao was just as bad. An out of touch dictator who told farmers to plant their seeds several feet underground, and when that obviously failed, feasted while they starved.
That doesn’t seem anything like what Marx wrote about, or rather it was disturbingly similar to what Marx wrote about capitalism.
But again, right-wingers love to confuse the issue, because it turns out kings are not popular, so you have to lie to get people to bow before one.
Yitzhak Shamir was the second leader of Lehi after Stern was killed, he too was prime minister.
Not a good look when you have multiple terrorist leaders become prime minister.
As to the 1929 massacre, it was bad, but you can sort of understand the urge to fight against colonizers. Which the Jewish population was already starting to become thanks to the Balfour Declaration and the British betrayal of the Arab fighters who served under T.E. Lawrence.
As to the 1947/1948 war… Some Palestinians fought back, but they were out gunned thanks to Poland of all places. Hundreds of Palestinian villages were depopulated, either through outright massacres or threats of massacres, and none of those people were ever allowed to go home. Their land seized by foreign occupiers, who gave it to their friends.
Which has been the story ever since. Zionists, often foreign born, come in, steal some land, kill some people, and face no consequences because they have the backing of foreign military hardware.
“Fringe” groups don’t have their leaders become Prime Minister.
Also, I can find no records of the Haganah fighting the Lehi, even though it was Lehi who assassinated Lord Moyne. The Haganah did attack the Irgun, but the Saison only lasted 4 months and was broadly unpopular with Haganah members. That was also the beginning of the end of the Haganah working with the British. (there was some more cooperation, but there were also Haganah backed terrorist attacks against the British as well, it was a messy time.)
Post 1945, all three militant organizations joined hands to murder Palestinians, and sometimes the British while they still had a presence in Mandatory Palestine. Although there was still some bad blood between the Haganah and Irgun.
That didn’t stop the Haganah from actively helping Irgun and Lehi carry out the Deir Yassin massacre.
Fun fact, the Irgun folded directly into the IDF, and formed Herut, which was the main conservative political party before merging with the remnants of Lehi to form Likud, the current conservative political party led by Netanyahu, sure, it took eight elections for them to gain power, but they did in fact gain power.
Actually, going back to the origins of Left and Right, that fateful vote in the French Assembly just before the Revolution, those on the Right of the Speaker’s podium were in favor of the Monarchy, those on the Left Democracy.
Using the terms correctly, you cannot have Authoritarian Left.
The problem was Lenin, who lied about being of the people when he lost the election. He seized power and then murdered the actual political Left of Russia.
It’s just like the Nazis lied about being socialist. They murdered the socialists first.
Horseshoe theory completely ignores the actual origins of the terms Left and Right in order to push a false narrative that they’re somehow the same.
It’s very simple. The terms Left and Right come from a vote held in the French Assembly just before the Revolution.
The vote was, “should the King have an absolute veto over laws passed by the Assembly?” Those sitting to the Left of the Speaker’s podium said No, those to the Right said Yes.
Knowing the true origin of the terms makes defining them easy, if you are in favor of more power to the people, then you are on the left, if you think power should be concentrated to the few, you’re on the right.
This can apply to social issues as well. If you think minorities deserve protection and representation then you are on the left, if not you’re a horrible person.
The economy, if you think everyone should have a truly fair shake, you’re on the left, if you think money makes some people better than others, you’re on the right.
See how easy that is? Which is why the right wing invented Horseshoe theory. To confuse people.
That and some dictators flat out lied about what they were doing and claimed to be Communist.
Because Lenin betrayed the Revolution after losing the only free and fair election that Russia has ever had.
Pretty sure that they named themselves. So closer to propaganda.