DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus 2020 Dems part 4

no need for a PM

how many times do you think the phrase "the military isnt a social experiment", or something along those lines has been used?

say.....since atleast the civil war? was it a failed social experiment when freed and escaped slaves were aloud to fight in the union army? how about during WW1 and WW2? were the Tuskegee airmen a failed social experiment? what about women joining the military because of their sense of duty?

i can also put it this way: do you know what the non-PC phrase for "the military isnt a social experiment" is?

- blacks arent good enough to serve in the army. its for white people.

- women shouldnt serve in the military, its for men.

- LBGT shouldnt serve in the military, its for straight people.

- muslims shouldnt serve in the military, its for christians.

^^^^ do you agree with any of those 4 points above, oober? why or why not?

those are, after all, the non PC version of saying "the military isnt a social experiment", seeing as a variation of those 4 points (or more) is exactly what people mean when they utter that phrase.

the US military is the most successful social experiment in the world.

why?

because the military takes people from ALL backgrounds, ALL cultures, ALL races, ALL genders, puts them all together and makes it work. they have historically taken diversity it literally made it the strength of our country. When i went into basic in feb 2006, i was a military brat/inner city kid who ended up in a platoon with white guys from the deep south alabama. guys who would openly say they have never been surrounded by this many blacks and latinos in their lives (whites still outnumber the total minority population in the military). we all get a battle buddy in basic. the guy you bunk with. my battle buddy? a guy from rural kansas, a guy who didnt meet one black guy in his life until we got to basic training in ft sill, oklahoma.

him and i are damn near best friends til this day. put in a situation where we wouldnt have ever ran into each other in any other environment, nevermind actually have to get to know one another. and there's literally millions of examples of that happening REPEATEDLY in our military's history.

some of the most bad asses of soldiers i ever knew were gay women. in my third deployment running convoy security, half the gunners were women. and they were the first ones to let that .50 cal ROCK when we got ambushed on convoys.

was that a failed social experiment?

the military has their own issues just like any other organization, from racism to sexism and everywhere in between. but by in large, it all works.

the military took a bunch of people from all over the country -some citizens some not - breaks us down, and builds us back up into a team with one goal in mind: the mission. you cant tell me we arent a social experiment when we have whites, blacks, latinos, asians, middle easterns, christians, hindus, muslims, jews, atheist, communist, anarchist, conservatives, liberals, progressives, right wingers, gay, straight, transgender, and everything in between within our ranks EVERY SINGLE DAY.

i have served with every last one of them, because everybody who was in the military at the time i was ALSO served with every last one them. and we make it work. we go on road trips together, BBQ together, die for each other, etc. and those are a bunch of people who would otherwise NOT interact with each other if it wasnt for the military.

the military has always been progressive when it comes to who is brought into the ranks. the military has always been bold even when the outside was completely against it (IE, blacks in the military, women in the military, LBGT in the military).

so when people use the phrase "the military isnt a social experiment", i laugh my ass off because its clear they have absolutely no idea what theyre talking about. not only is the military an ACTIVE social experiment, its a successful one, a military that unlike other militaries around the world, is completely filled with people who VOLUNTEERED to join.

This may or may not surprise you but I don't disagree with you.

Not sure capitalism has failed the majority but I will concede that it has not met the immediate needs of many people.

There is a book called Conscious Capitalism that you should read. The problem with Capitalism is that through globalization it has become very impersonal and the mechanisms that are supposed to keep capitalism in check don't work any more.

Capitalism could save itself by voluntarily pushing more money from the C-suite and the shareholders back down to the workers but I doubt they will until it's too late. So regardless of what you think of me, I don't agree with most of it but I do understand WHY the trends to socialism are happening.. and I don't think it's just because people are lazy and want free stuff (even though I have made that joke before)


Exhibit A in mechanisms to control capitalism that no longer work. For capitalism to work, companies or entire industries have to be able to fail. The problem is that when large companies or entire industries fail, entire communities suffer, states suffer, segments of the economy suffer.. and this suffering can go on for years until the capitalist system corrects itself... and we aren't prepared to let anybody suffer... at least not to that level or for that long.

My fear of socialism is that once socialism gets off the rails, entire nations go down. I'm not here to have the Norway vs Venezuela debate... lets just say that in my mind, both are possible outcomes and my trust in our government to get it right isn't very high. And countries like Norway and Sweden are about 60-80 years into their experiment with democratic socialism? It's working for them so far but that's really only about 3 generations...


Capitalism vs socialism isn't an either or.. it's a paradox to manage where elements of both are necessary for a thriving economy... Again, not going to argue the "do we needs roads and fire departments" either. The Norwegian state owns over 40% of all of the assets on their stock exchange.. it's not hard to see how just one rogue government could turn Norway into a much different story than the success that is often touted here.


The agriculture industry is a bit unique and I won't claim to fully understand it... but I do understand that a big part of farm subsidies is to keep food prices stable.. so a poor person doesn't walk into the grocery store and pay $2 for a loaf of bread and then have that same loaf be $7 a few months later because conditions have changed, which is what could happen if left up to capitalism.. food imports and exports are also highly volatile for the same reasons.. overall I think most people appreciate having a reasonable expectation of what a trip to the grocery store is going to cost.


Republicans used to embrace a lot of things, or at least they said they did, that they no longer embrace...

Just understand, when I talk about healthcare, education, energy, housing, etc... and I have my opinions, it is not now, nor ever, my desire to make any of those things just for the wealthy or to deny people a decent standard of living.. it is almost always purely a distrust of government to run them... I've seen the things our government has control over, other than the military, I haven't been impressed... and the only reason the military functions better is because it is given an ungodly amount of money... and we can't throw that level of money at all of the things they want government to control.

Peace.

i distrustful of the government running everything as well. there's a reason i push back on bernie, after all.

but while i distrust the government, i also distrust the private sector, because they're both corrupt as far as i'm concerned. i lean toward government only because we can atleast vote them out. we cant vote out CEO's or anybody else on the corporate board.

i do very much prefer balance. but we arent anywhere near balance right now. we are too heavily leaned toward capitalism, and need to move further left (right? i dunno what the spectrum is) in order for things to be more fair.

and i dont mean fair as in everybody gets paid the same. i mean fair from the standpoint that people get paid correctly for their work.

productivity in our labor force has skyrocketed while wages have not. i wish somebody could post the link, but ive seen multiple times that if you actually adjusted minimum wage for inflation the last 20-30 years, the federal minimum should be in the 20's.

and yet we now live in a country where corporations want people to put in 50+ hours for a 10/hour wage. and its only getting worse.

the government cant save everybody, but at a minimum, they can most certainly save us from corporations exploiting the population. i say it all the time, if these companies could get away with indentured servitude, they absolutely would. thats not capitalism, thats oppression. while it will NEVER happen (im not an alarmist), these are parellels to how the french revolution happened. the wealthy took and took and took until theyre heads ended up on pikes.

Is this your method for promoting discrimination? If so it's not a very good one.

Good post Swish..

I'm not sure when it happened but somewhere along the line, corporate America and political America became one and the same.. that's why it feels like we have no balance, they are on the same side of the scale.. we are the only thing holding down the other side.


I've seen the graph about minimum wage and yes, if adjusted for inflation it would now be in the low $20s/hour.

I'm torn on this bro, I really am. We can't pay everybody $20/hour and expect to have any chance at all to compete on an international playing field. That means a more skilled worker has to be making $40-50/hour ($50/hour is $104,000/year), which sounds great but no way is Toyota or Mazda building factories here if they have to meet those wages, they would just go back to building them overseas and shipping them, it would be cheaper. And GM and Ford might as well just close up.

Then you have the McDonalds and Walmarts of the world who are already well on their way to automation... those low paying jobs will just disappear completely... These places already basically say, "Sure, we have a couple cashiers but it's so easy we trust you to do it yourself with no training." How do you justify paying somebody $20/hour to do something we can all do with no training? Just don't know.


Many of them already do, they just don't do it here.. they do it in India, Thailand, Philippines, etc.. *looking at you Nike, Apple, et. al.*


There are parallels to almost every great civilization that has collapsed (or gone through war to avoid collapse)... the wealth gap expands, the wealthy lose all sense of morals and community, they begin living obnoxiously lavish lifestyles.... while the poor struggle on for many years until their numbers get big enough and eventually they hit their breaking point and have had enough.... at some point in there either somebody conquers them from the outside because the wealthy are too fat and lazy to defend themselves and the poor refuse to fight... or the poor go at the wealthy...

It's gonna happen bro, just not sure when. Governments sole goal seems to be to stay on the right side of business so as not to tick them off so they don't leave (or stop making those nice campaign donations) while throwing token scraps to the poor just to keep them fed enough to not revolt

I feel that you have very accurately described why people who are moderates get their ideas rejected. Capitalism is not some evil concept. It's a very sound model. The problem is, that no matter the system you are governed by, checks and balances must be in place to keep it from going to the extreme.

Business has taken over our government. It controls the policies we are governed by. Things have been skewed so far in their favor that the people react in an opposite direction. Seeing something is totally broken tends to lead people to the other extreme. And that's exactly what we are seeing now.

I know that you and I do not agree on some policies. But we do however agree that there needs to be a correction how things work that have put us in the position we are in now. When the poor were mostly people who didn't work or only worked part time, this wasn't near the issue it is today. But once the majority of the poor are people working full time jobs, you see the situation we are in now.

I understand what you're saying about the wage scale. It's a lot more complicated situation than those on either side are willing to admit. What I do think we both agree on is that things like sanctions and trade wars are more talking points than actual solutions. They will not solve the problem.

There was a time when capitalism had more checks and balances. A time when our people were suited for jobs that supported a family. Both of those things have changed. Until we start investing in our own people, this will certainly not change. Until our politicians are willing to look ahead at where the job market is going and have our population prepared for those changes, this will be a continuing problem.

Once again, having a moderate position on some things doesn't seem popular to most people on either side and I'm fine with that. Usually I find that if both extremes disagree with me, I'm in my own comfort zone. As such, I believe investing in education is the key to bringing back the middle class to the strength it once was. People try to say that's a liberal idea. But living in a heavily red state that provides two free years of community college is evidence that's simply not true. Tennessee sees this as an investment to attract high paying jobs of the future.

Now I'm not a free college for all guy. That tends to upset liberals. But two years of free community college is not that expensive of an investment for a better, long term economy. Beyond that, bringing college loans down to the prime interest rate and capping tuition at state colleges, which receive tax money to supplement them, would go a very long way at reducing student debt.

When you combine that with regulations that help keep capitalism in check, we could be well on our way back to Americans making a better living. We agree that you can't have a federal minimum wage at 20 dollars and hour. What we may or may not agree on is that you also can't keep it artificially deflated at $7.25 either. Once again, there is a middle gound to be found.