I think protesting against the vote of the average Joe in a way that affects the average Joe is quite valid. The politicians got voted for their policies, they wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they just shifted their whole position because of a protests that are expressing quite old ideas. The average Joe has to stand up and vote for people that actually want the change we need.

The pressure regarding queer rights was successful because it became a less and less favourable position to be against those same rights in the public view. Being conservative regarding fighting the climate change is still a pretty favourable position so not enough pressure can be built by protests against politicians alone.

And, one aspect that is overlooked in the discussion, at least in my opinion: People are allowed to be angry at the state of the world and the popular opinions, and express that anger publicly and in the face of the general public. This is a valid thing to do.

Maybe I missed it but it seems the average Joe voted for people that are responsible for what’s going on right now instead of trying to change direction drastically right?

Didn’t Munich famously switch back to windows?

That’s not really true. Without some fragmentation there is no need for standards

There’s a difference between wanting to feel pleasure at the result of killing someone and wanting to feel pleasure over the result of killing them?

I’m not sure what the difference between those two options is. But those aren’t the two options I was talking about. There are people that enjoy the process of killing things. There are people that like to eat dead animals but do not enjoy the process of killing the animal. Those are two different things in my mind.

There is a difference between wanting food you think is delicious and killing something for that reason and taking pleasure in the process of killing something. In one scenario the killing is a necessary evil in the other it’s the whole point of the process.

Aside from that the fact that so many people do pay “hitmen” should tell you that they do not enjoy the killing part, because otherwise they’d do it themselves.

Uhm, what 96% of the population actually kills stuff themselves?

Not the person you asked but I’m interested if I’m passing the vibe check

I hate that NATO exists, but I see that it has currently a purpose because other forces would and did overpower countries that aren’t included in a military alliance with mutual support obligations.

I want NATO to be a thing of the past as soon as possible but that doesn’t mean dismantle it and be helpless again. It means we need to get rid of the need for a NATO.

The long term strategy is to destabilise the CDU by forcing them into unfavorable coalitions. Which they have probably achieved this time. If the CDU looks bad enough in 5 years the AfD might get enough votes so that no government can be built without them

Sometimes though a judge has decided that it is factually correct to call the leader of a party a fascist because he is one

Haja wenn’s so isch will I di ned uffhalde

The problem with this specific law is that it isn’t practically enforceable. You’d need to regularly search people entering this zone, which we will certainly not do.

Law’s only matter if you can expect them to be enforced. Raising prices is easily enforced (because it would be done via taxes which are checked for correctness already).

Ey, hasch du au a Lizens für des Messerle?

The average German household has about 160K to their name, total. Not just cash but total, including cars, homes, whatever. The median is going to be even lower, the average is always skewed upwards in these statistics.

Even for people in the median getting an extra 85k is going to drastically improve their lives. Maybe not life-changing. But go to the 25th percentile and this is going to look a lot different. And that’s not the “poorest” in society.

That’s still suggesting they are worth less than other humans based on their opinions

I’m just going to point out that you are the one even bringing communism on the table and I am happy to discuss it. You brought that up as a response to my comment:

I get that being on the winner side is convenient. I am too. I just see that constantly winning seems to lead the world into a pretty bad state overall where, suddenly, noone is a winner anymore.

And all it would take to not get into the disaster scenario would be some redistribution. Doesn’t even mean you can’t be a winner anymore. Just means you get to win less hard.

To which you responded:

I am still not gonna vote for communism and neither socialism. Good luck with that stuff. It’s isolated to niche internet communities for good reasons.

I wasn’t arguing that we just use the magic communism bullet to solve our problems. You just think that I am arguing that. I was and am of the opinion that we can improve the situation massively by increasing redistribution of wealth.

Edit: And I like the idea of communism in a theoretical way because I think it can be helpful to think about stuff that probably won’t be implemented to get ideas on how the current system could be improved. The idea of distributing economical power more evenly is at core of socialism but it doing that in a moderate way doesnt require a revolution, it can be implemented in our current system. /Edit

Any westoids that never knew communism and think it is amazing can go and remove themselves from the gene pool in my book.

Thinking of people as less valuable to “the genepool” because their opinions differ is the kind of thinking that explains why liberals and fascists are so often political friends.

Communism is a system that lacks any motivation to do the work. There is no award. No gratification of ownership, getting higher on the ladder.

Thus it never works and countries starve.

That is just bullshit that assumes people only work if there is a monetary benefit to be achieved. The most common provided reason is “human nature” which is easily disproven. There are many examples of societies where cooperation without this has worked.

What’s funny is that there are no examples of successful communism and thus all the attempts are proclaimed as ‘no true communism’.

There is a wide range of why communist experiments have failed. Most of the time it is because the revolution was compromised leading to authoritarian communism. I’m just going to hint to you that there are other, more desirable forms of communism. Which of them is “true” communism is not for me to decide.

The reason capitalism works is because it utilizes human greed. It needs boundaries and restraints of course because greed is infinite. We get the cream top achievers make and redistribute it to incentivise bottom ladder to climb.

This meritocratic ideology is what is being used to justify the differences between peoples incomes and way more importantly their wealth. Which is weird because the most common way of achieving wealth today is not by working hard but by inheritance, which has decidedly nothing to do with being a “top achiever”.

State protects the vulnerable and minorities and sets boundaries. Upper boundary is the climate one. Lower one is essential necessities one.

The state protects first and foremost the right to ownership, which is not aligned with the desirable goals of protecting minorities and setting boundaries. It is aligned with these goals only so far as it keeps the status quo going, which means maximizing the profits for the few right up to the point where the many do not yet revolt.

And this is the ideal that some countries actually achieved.

I’m going to go ahead and have a laugh right here. What basically every “developed” state on earth has achieved is a system that allows capital to accumulate in the hands of ever few people. This isn’t an opinion by the way, this is a straight up fact and has nothing to do with political views.

Unlike ideal of communism that never got even close. So instead of thinking about some utopias let’s just adopt everywhere the tried and true system.

The tried and true system is currently throwing us all in a climate crisis if the IPCC reports are to be believed. Which I think they can be. The tried and true system is accumulating the global wealth in the hands of very few people. The tried and true system is failing to implement a tax system that would actually allow to redistribute this wealth. Instead this tried and true system is forcing nations into a betting war for ever lower taxes on wealth “to keep production in their country” while the companies go around chasing the lowest taxes further fueling this circle.

Is that good reason that there is a minority that profits greatly from capitalism that has a majority convinced that they might once also be part of that winning team even though that believe isn’t substantiated by any statistics, but the opposite is very much empirical proven?

I get that being on the winner side is convenient. I am too. I just see that constantly winning seems to lead the world into a pretty bad state overall where, suddenly, noone is a winner anymore.

And all it would take to not get into the disaster scenario would be some redistribution. Doesn’t even mean you can’t be a winner anymore. Just means you get to win less hard.

If you have mostly passive income to pay for all that you are actively taking the gains produced by the labour of others that are most likely not as comfortable as you. Are you ok with that, or do you at least get why people get frustrated at that?