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Why socialists need capitalism: best explanation so far

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By Oleg Atbashian | First published in the American Thinker


Image Have you heard of the shocking and terrifying diaper gap that is now dividing this nation? It is said to be so dire that the White House is urging immediate government assistance to buy baby diapers. Philosophically, this puts disposable plastic consumer products in the category of inalienable rights guaranteed by the government: among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Diapers.

When I lived in the USSR, our Soviet Constitution also guaranteed that our basic needs be provided to us by the caring socialist government. As a result, most basic items were in shortage, let alone such luxury items as coffee or toilet paper. Needless to say, we never even heard of disposable diapers. For our three children, we used pieces of cloth which we washed regularly. We didn't complain or feel disadvantaged because -- I repeat -- we had no idea there was such a thing as disposable diapers. Those only existed in the decadent West, where greedy corporations created such a product to boost their capitalist profits. But we were blocked from this information by the Iron Curtain, and what we didn't know couldn't hurt us.

Now I live in America, where the decadent capitalist diapers are about to become a basic "human right" guaranteed by the federal government.

About twenty years ago no one used cell phones because they hadn't yet been created by greedy capitalist corporations, who have since covered the planet with a network of cellular towers. Now free cell phones -- known as Obamaphones -- have become a "human right" guaranteed by the government.

Internet service didn't exist either, until greedy capitalist corporations surrounded the world with cables and satellites. Now Internet service has become a "human right" provided by the U.S. government to the needy.

Condoms, birth control pills, and other modern contraceptives also didn't exist until they were invented, researched, and mass-produced by greedy capitalist corporations. Now they have become a basic "human right" guaranteed and provided by the government.

Vaccines for Ebola and other exotic diseases didn't exist until they were developed by greedy capitalist corporations and almost immediately declared a "human right" for anyone in the Third World.

Healthcare with all its modern diagnostic equipment, appliances, treatments, and a vast array of pharmaceuticals, from Tylenol to Viagra, also didn't exist until greedy capitalist corporations...

And so on and so forth.

Capitalism just keeps churning out all these new products, which our increasingly socialist government then declares "human rights" and taxes these very producers in order to provide their products to the people for free.

Some call it harmonious coexistence, but there's a catch. The more the socialist government expands its functions by guaranteeing an ever expanding number of "human rights," the more it needs to tax capitalist producers, which undercuts their ability to develop, manufacture, and market new products. Once they reach a tipping point when capitalism is no longer viable, this will also end the propagation of "human rights" in the form of new goods and services.

Socialism conserves the stage in which the society existed at the time it was overtaken. Cubans still drive American cars from the 1950s, North Koreans still dress in the fashions of the same bygone era, and in the USSR I grew up in a government-owned house that was taken from the rich and given to the needy in 1920s and remained without indoor plumbing or running water and with ancient electrical wiring until it was condemned and demolished in 1986.

A planned economy is mostly focused оn providing the basic needs that have already been declared "human rights," and even then it struggles to keep up with the demand. The USSR had smart inventors and brilliant scientists, but the first personal computer was built in a Californian garage and not in a Siberian one -- because America had free enterprise and the USSR didn't. In the absence of free markets and competition, innovation becomes an almost insurmountable task. There is no time nor money for new products and services; that way it's also easier for the government to run the economy. And when the people don't know what they are missing, there's no reason to be unhappy.

That, however, works best when the rest of the world no longer has competing capitalist economies and no nation lives better than the rest. For example, if it weren't for capitalist America and Western Europe with their never ending innovation and higher living standards, it would have been a lot easier for Soviet citizens to remain content with their socialist government and thus the USSR would probably still exist.

But wouldn't it be great if the entire world lived like one socialist village -- even if it conserved some ancient technology -- and people wouldn't be missing any consumer products they knew nothing about anyway? Absolutely not -- and for a reason that is allegedly dear to every socialist in the West: environmental protection. Centrally planned economies of the Eastern Bloc, China, and other socialist states inevitably became some of the world's worst polluters.

On the one hand they were stuck with outdated technologies, and on the other they had no budgets for cleanup. Their grimy and polluting state-run factories had to meet their production quotas at any cost, for the glory of the Motherland -- even if it meant the destruction of the Motherland's environment and endangering the health of workers and local residents. Complaining to the state about the actions of the state would be pointless and often more dangerous than breathing bad air and drinking polluted water.

Having the entire world adhering to this model would have resulted in an environmental apocalypse and there would be no Greenpeace to bemoan it because that would mean economic sabotage and the activists would by default become enemies of the state.

Whatever innovations the Soviet planned economy introduced came from the West. The Soviet planners also learned from the West about the real cost of things in the modern world, since their own pricing mechanisms had been removed decades ago with the elimination of free markets.

Thus, socialists are better off with capitalism to invent new products that will be later declared "human rights," allowing expansion of government functions to new areas, as well as to generate wealth that pays for socialist programs. Likewise, socialists are better off having the rich to subsidize the creation and mass production of new goods and services, and later to pay taxes so that the government can provide these goods and services to others for free.

This leads us to the following conclusions, which socialists can't refute because it correlates with their own logic:

  1. The longer socialists wait to take over the power, the more technologically advanced society they will get to conserve.
  2. It is more beneficial for the people of all classes, including socialists, to delay the socialist revolution indefinitely.
  3. To delay the socialist takeover is also better for the environment because only capitalism has the power of innovation and the resources to create less polluting technologies, materials, and alternative energy sources. To impose socialism right away would mean to put the planet at risk of never resolving the environmental problems we face today.
  4. Since capitalism generates goods and services that socialists later designate as "human rights," it is also in the interest of human rights to keep capitalism around indefinitely.

Socialists often describe the world as if it has always been as it exists today, leaving out the dimension of time. But time is a major factor because the world has never been static -- and that includes nations, cultures, ethnicities, technologies, sciences, and popular perceptions, such as human rights. The main question that needs to be answered, therefore, is not as much who, where, and how -- but "when?"

For example, switching to socialism directly from feudalism would have conserved the society at an early stage, without the host of various "human rights" that were unheard of at the time. According to Marx, humanity needed to go through the stage of capitalism in order to develop the necessary wealth, technologies, and educated populations before the socialists could take over.

But how do we know when the time is right for such a takeover? According to Marx and Lenin, a revolutionary situation exists when the upper classes no longer can, and the lower classes no longer want, to preserve the system, plus there exists a strong revolutionary party that can organize the masses.

Such a party, or rather a conglomerate of radical leftist movements, already exists -- and it has been flexing its muscles in Ferguson, Baltimore, and most recently in Chicago, disrupting capitalist Donald Trump's voter rally. But the first two preconditions for a socialist revolution in America simply do not exist because this country has never had natural static classes, such as the capitalist oppressors ruling over the oppressed workers and peasants. American society has always been dynamic, with unprecedented rates of upward mobility.

Socialists have been trying to update the Marxist formula by redefining "capitalist oppressors" as "hetero-normative patriarchy" and "oppressed workers and peasants" as "sexual, racial, ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities," but all their efforts to artificially polarize and destabilize the system have failed to create a revolutionary situation, despite all the tangible damage they have done to the country and to the minds of the growing generation.

Showing the lack of delayed gratification, socialists chant, "When do we want it? Now!" But if they had taken over, for instance, in the 1960s, Americans would have never been able to enjoy such "human rights" as free Internet, free cell phones, or free disposable diapers. Americans would be living today the way we lived in the USSR around the 1980s. There would be no affordable personal computers, tablets, eBooks, iTunes, Google, YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter.

Now that all these capitalist wonders exist, is it finally time? What if we miss the next life-changing technological development that will happen in a year or two? What if it will be a new cheap and clean energy source that will make fossil fuels obsolete? What if it will become a new "human right" that will make all the previous "human rights" pale in comparison?

Speaking of which, how do we know when is a good time to declare the next consumer product a "human right"? If we are serious about it, there has to be a mathematical formula that allows us to calculate with precision the exact time when any given product is no longer a novelty but a "human right."

This is how the process happens today, time-wise.

  1. When capitalist entrepreneurs create a new product or service, it is usually expensive and is only available to the rich.
  2. Once rich customers have parted with enough money to buy the new product, the entrepreneurs have accumulated enough capital to send it to mass production, making it affordable to the middle class.
  3. Once the market is saturated, the government steps in, declares the product a "human right," and provides it to the needy for free. All the costs are covered by the taxes extracted from the entrepreneurs who invented the product and from the rich who already paid for its mass production.

Therefore, THR (Time for Human Rights) = ?

I'm not a mathematician, so I will rely on the readers to help me create a sensible equation that includes timing, cost, saturation, taxation, etc. From this equation our politicians can derive time (T) when someone's consumer product (CP) becomes everyone's human right (HR).

Bernie Sanders recently declared categorically that healthcare is a "human right." He didn't mention when exactly it became a human right: at the dawn of civilization (when no one lived over thirty), during feudalism (when the village blacksmith was also the tooth surgeon), during the industrial revolution (when everything was treated with leeches), or just recently, when capital investments in R&D produced lasers and the MRI?

Is Bernie in possession of the above THR formula, which he won't share with the toiling masses? If not, we can only conclude that he simply throws around words without knowing what they really mean, whenever he feels like it.

Without a foolproof THR formula to calculate the exact time when a consumer product becomes a "human right," one can easily embarrass himself. Imagine if in the past the White House had expanded "human rights" to include the ownership of top hats, horse buggies, eight-track players, or VCRs. The only ones benefitting from it today would be standup comedians.

But judging by my Soviet experience, socialists are also in possession of a formula telling them when government-created "human rights" are due to expire -- which always happens as soon as they gain total control of any country.

Any government powerful enough to give the people all that they want (e.g., free phones, Internet, or disposable diapers) is also powerful enough to take from the people all that they have.

And that is no laughing matter.

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The American Thinker post has many great comments, but no one has offered a scientific equation to derive time (T) when someone's consumer product (CP) becomes everyone's human right (HR).

THR (Time for Human Rights) = ?

It may have to wait for some of our mathematically inclined members to step in.

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<off>

I'm no math geek, but if I may contribute to the Director's works, we must proceed by realizing that the formula is incomplete until we factor in how HR (Human Rights) is divided by the quantity of OPM (Other People's Money), and that finite variable quantity collected must be raised to some undetermined exponential notation because of Government oversight.

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I'm already drunk from celebrating my first "mother page" post, but a friend from the Creative Accounting Army of the Eurocracy gave me some help. Feel free to add or detract from the formula, it's a raw sketch.

PCm = Number of media outlets that are fully korrektified with Politikal Korrektnes
PCp = Number of people in society that are korrektified with Politikal Korrektnes
(Media outlets that are completely neutral are not counted)

MAm =Number of media outlets that say "PC bullshit My Ass"
MAp = Number of people in society that say "PC bullshit My Ass"
(People who are completely neutral not counted)

Korrektness Ratio K of the media = Km = PCm/MAm
Korrektness Ratio K of the people = Kp = PCp / MAp
Average human lifetime = AHL= 85 yrs

Time to Human Right = THR = average human lifetime divided by the product of Korrektness factor of the media and Korrektness factor of the people = AHL / (Km x Kp)


Example in Europe:

PCm = Number of media outlets that are fully korrektified with Politikal Korrektness
=900

PCp = Number of people in society that are korrektified with Politikal Korrektness
100.000.000

MAm =Number of media outlets that say "PC bullshit My Ass"
=100
MAp = Number of people in society that say "PC bullshit My Ass"
=50.000.000

Korrektness Ratio K of the media = Km = PCm/MAm = 9
Korrektness Ratio K of the people = Kp = PCp / MAp = 2
Average human lifetime = AHL= 85 yrs

Time to Human Right = AHL / (Km x Kp) = 85 / (9 x 2 ) = 4.7

If you invent a toilet paper that automatically wipes your ass, within 4.7 years the EU Kommissariat will probably declare it a 'human right'.

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Excellent calculation, comrade Minitrue!

I didn't think about the Korrektness factor of the media and Korrektness factor of the people - but it's very important.

Only I don't understand why do we factor in some individual's life span? What it individual life compared to the Common Good? As all socialists know, individual is nothing; state is everything! Perhaps that factor can be replaced with certain election cycles? Or how many brainwashed generations it takes to fundamentally transform a capitalist nation towards socialism?

Just brainstorming, comrade!

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Copy+paste of my comment to this article that was originally on the "free diaper" thread. Edited somewhat to clarify:

[OFF]

Great, great, great, great, great!

I came across a BBC Four documentary titled "Children of Chernobyl". If you want to see what truly "free" healthcare actually looks like and become even more disgusted of the Soviet Union, I recommend watching this film. I'd also like to see every aspiring young communist to see it, to see what their pride and joy truly produces. Not the fantasies of shiny things for all, but the reality of shiny things for the government, and dirty things for everyone else. And to see that not everybody is happy and free to pursue pot smoking and sitar playing under Communism, that they have to work so that they won't be punished and commit theft in the government's eyes just so they can live.

Obama's "you didn't build that" is a perfect illustration of the Socialist & Communist scheme. Get the Capitalists to build the infrastructure, the houses, the stores, the equipment, etc, and then sweep the rug out from under them, claim those creations of Capitalism as yours, and furthermore declare them to be Glorious Socialist-Created Kollektivist-Built Products of Communism. And there's a reason why this is so, and that's because Socialism & Communism can't create, they can only destroy. Just look to their inventions. Many products were cheap copies of American ones that spies had gathered intelligence on. They eventually got so good at imitating America that they managed to make a clone of the Space Shuttle called the Buran.

The luxury of supporting socialism is paid for by the effort of capitalism. Socialists who wish to "cast off their chains" are like a hospital patient wishing to cast off the IV drip and various devices that keep them alive.

I believe that the government secretly wants to give everything away for free. It just makes the population more dependent of the government so that they can be controlled more easily. "Hey you! Don't say anything bad about the President or you get no power for a week!" It's just that they need the disguise of "human rights" so that their causes can seem noble rather than nefarious.

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Minitrue wrote:I'm already drunk from celebrating my first "mother page" post, but a friend from the Creative Accounting Army of the Eurocracy gave me some help. Feel free to add or detract from the formula, it's a raw sketch.

PCm = Number of media outlets that are fully korrektified with Politikal Korrektnes
PCp = Number of people in society that are korrektified with Politikal Korrektnes
(Media outlets that are completely neutral are not counted)

MAm =Number of media outlets that say "PC bullshit My Ass"
MAp = Number of people in society that say "PC bullshit My Ass"
(People who are completely neutral not counted)

Korrektness Ratio K of the media = Km = PCm/MAm
Korrektness Ratio K of the people = Kp = PCp / MAp
Average human lifetime = AHL= 85 yrs

Time to Human Right = THR = average human lifetime divided by the product of Korrektness factor of the media and Korrektness factor of the people = AHL / (Km x Kp)


Example in Europe:

PCm = Number of media outlets that are fully korrektified with Politikal Korrektness
=900

PCp = Number of people in society that are korrektified with Politikal Korrektness
100.000.000

MAm =Number of media outlets that say "PC bullshit My Ass"
=100
MAp = Number of people in society that say "PC bullshit My Ass"
=50.000.000

Korrektness Ratio K of the media = Km = PCm/MAm = 9
Korrektness Ratio K of the people = Kp = PCp / MAp = 2
Average human lifetime = AHL= 85 yrs

Time to Human Right = AHL / (Km x Kp) = 85 / (9 x 2 ) = 4.7

If you invent a toilet paper that wipes your own ass, within 4.7 years the EU Kommissariat will probably declare it a 'human right'.

All I have to add to this wonderful mathematical proof is this:

Quod Erat Demonstrandum

[OFF]

I've got a simpler formula:

PC= Political Correctness
BS= Bullshit

PC=BS

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Red Square wrote:Is Bernie in possession of the above THR formula, which he won't share with the toiling masses? If not, we can only conclude that he simply throws around words without knowing what they really mean, whenever he feels like it.

Just as a real Socialist has such keen insight that he can transcend all class consciousness that blinds all the rest of humanity except himself so that he can poke his head outside the stream of History and get the big picture, such a Marx did, such a person doesn't need no stinking mathematical calculations to know when the time is ripe for anything. Bernie sees what you cannot. That's why we need HIM. HE WILL TELL US, obviously. His mental vision has transcended all the class forces that impel everyone else to think and behave the way we do and he sees what we can't see, just as Marx was able to do in order to write something like Das Capital.

Red Square wrote:Showing the lack of delayed gratification, socialists chant, "When do we want it? Now!" But if they had taken over, for instance, in the 1960s, Americans would have never been able to enjoy such "human rights" as free Internet, free cell phones, or free disposable diapers. Americans would be living today the way we lived in the USSR around the 1980s. There would be no affordable personal computers, tablets, eBooks, iTunes, Google, YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter.

And if the Progressive era had begun one hundred years earlier in the early nineteenth century rather than institutionalizing the major industries of energy and transportation that free-enterprise had developed up to the beginning of early twentieth and then froze in Statist amber we would have a nation crisscrossed with canals and enjoying the very best in personal steam powered boats because no money would be invested in anything better or different that those industries because the government as the buyer and builder of such things only buys for what has been already institutionalized.

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We just has an email exchange with a friend, a radio talk show host from Colorado, who had a question after reading this article:

Ross: dude, is this true about diapers while raising your kids?

Oleg: Every word of it. Washed by hand, too. Then dried them on the heating radiators in the winter or on the balcony in the summer. They were all permanently stained. of course, but they went inside the onesies, so no one saw them except me and my wife. That's what everybody else in the USSR did - it was normal, and the only way to do it. I suspect that was also what Americans did before disposable diapers. When did they first appear? Ask your parents if they had them.

We also never heard of dishwashers, microwaves, thermostats, remote controls, dental floss, or even KY. Neither did we have a car and I only learned to drive when I moved to the US. But I'm sure it has all changed now and those things are pretty common today, after the former Soviet republics opened themselves to free markets. There's still plenty of corruption there, and it's mostly crony capitalism, but at least people now have access to the same consumer products as in the West, even if those are cheaper versions made in China.

The whole China phenomenon also proves my point, but that's a story for another day...

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mjs-karl-t.-hellerman_obit_3.jpg

Here's an early pioneer of cloth diaper laundering service here in the USSA. I wonder what KARL T. HELLERMAN would think of appearing in a TPC thread?

JSonline Obituaries:

For many years, the diaper service stopped at each customer's house three times a week, later reduced to twice and then once a week. The company continued even through cotton-rationing during World War II.

"You couldn't get regular cotton diapers during the war," said their son. "They used sugar and flour sacks for makeshift diapers."

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"Socialism conserves the stage in which the society existed at the time it was overtaken."

What a brilliant and precise point. GREAT Article.

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Am I wrong to think that only in America there could be such a thing as a diaper laundry and delivery service?

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Red Square wrote:Am I wrong to think that only in America there could be such a thing as a diaper laundry and delivery service?

When human ingenuity confronts seemingly insurmountable obstacles unimaginable solutions are often discovered. It's just another reason why the socialist parasite seeks out and attaches itself to a capitalist host - survival.

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(This will be my first post to this Glorious People's site, so I'll try to make it worth of the Kollektive thoughts)

As an exiled, er… I mean non commissioned appointee to the little Communist country south of Comrade Obama's USS of A, let me share the local Politburo's perspective about how to get anything turned into a human right (and when they say anything, that means ANYTHING), the equation is quite simple:

$R / (SJA + PeX + mO2) – CS = CAv

Where: $R is Valuable Capitalist Resource; SJA is Social Justice Advocate requiring the Humanrightition of the resource; PeX is Political Exploitation capability of the Guv'ment representatives; mO2 is Media Outcry squared by their perceived need of the Human Right; CS is Common Sense, the constant of the equation, equal to 0 (Zero); and CAv is Velocity of the Constitutional Amendment.

As an example, let's take the recent inception of the Digital Television (DTV) system. As it is happening with other countries, this January the old Analog TV system got shut down, leaving the DTV signal as the only way for people around here to watch Telenovelas and soccer for free at home, provided by two State-approved commercial networks and a third one that pretends to be a news outlet (along with more than a few public broadcasting channels that clearly don't need to earn any kind of revenue… or to be entertaining for that matter) that pushed for the “analog blackout”. Oddly enough, and in a fortunate twist of fate, the private licensees also own some of the largest home appliances retailers in the country. Sadly, the economy in a Siberian gulag tends to be more lucrative for poor people than will ever be around here and some organized socially conscious citizens realized that for the destitute to manage a new flat screen TV with digital capability to replace their current black and white receivers was a blatant capitalist attempt to keep the impoverished masses from being properly informed about the current situation in Myanmar (or to find out if the poor girl married the rich guy). Enter the Guv'ment… So let's use our equation:

(2+1/4+800) / (X+9,500,000+24/7)-0= 8

Or

(2 main commercial TV Networks PLUS One fourth of a TV network PLUS 800 or so State Sponsored TV Channels) DIVIDED BY (The usual suspects advocating on behalf of others PLUS 9.5 million TV sets provided by the government to families that couldn't afford a new flat screen PLUS Around the clock ads and “opinion leaders” telling people that it had to happen no matter what or else) MINUS a Darwin Awardee's understanding about logical thinking EQUALS 8 articles in the constitution amended that guarantee that the underprivileged populace get free TV sets via social programs and if you blinked, you missed it.

It's worth mentioning that for the Party Leaders, there's a reduced form, AKA The Gnome Principle:

Step One + Step Two + ??? = Profit (Social Profit, of course)

Now, after the barrel of oil, key money maker for the State, went from a cool 100 to less than 30 bucks last year, some may say that they didn't think this thing through, but then again in a Motherland that has a list of 30 something constitutionally certified human rights, everything is done with the money that the “Taco Fairy” puts in the guv'ment coffers every night.

By the way, some of these constitutional rights include The Right as an “informal” immigrant to get subsidized by the State as they go from the south border to the northern one with the intention to enter another country illegally unhindered in any way shape or form, The Right to an un-“climate changed” environment, to Internet, reparations, culture, THE TRUTH, so on and so forth plus any other that the Party deem necessary this week. Sounds like a Social Equality paradise, right?

Maybe now you'll understand why this country's new national anthem should be “Dos tequilas, por favor…”

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Our new Comrade seems to be comfortable with mathematicals. This bears watching, as usually it's the infiltrated Rethuglikkkan spies who try to use nonsense like facts and numbers. Let's watch how the beet quota gets met first before any invitations to Tractor Barn #2 for "political discourse" and singing of the marching and shovelling songs...

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Ivan the Stakhanovets wrote:Our new Comrade seems to be comfortable with mathematicals. This bears watching, as usually it's the infiltrated Rethuglikkkan spies who try to use nonsense like facts and numbers. Let's watch how the beet quota gets met first before any invitations to Tractor Barn #2 for "political discourse" and singing of the marching and shovelling songs...
Well, Comrade, If it's little old me the new Comrade the one you are talking about, I'll consider myself lucky if I don't get the "Lavrenti Guntap" on my neck before a week's time, thing that would be a great honor for me, of course... But, as a token of my commitment to the People & the Party, here's the poster for my new movie, called to be the Battleship Potemkin of this generation and coming this summer at a college campus near you... And it's also a Human Right.
CJW_01-1.jpg
https://goo.gl/photos/4gLZsxhUs6RWMsw2A

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NikitaTransCyberskaya wrote:Well, Comrade, If it's little old me the new Comrade the one you are talking about, I'll consider myself lucky if I don't get the "Lavrenti Guntap" on my neck before a week's time, thing that would be a great honor for me, of course... But, as a token of my commitment to the People & the Party, here's the poster for my new movie, called to be the Battleship Potemkin of this generation and coming this summer at a college campus near you... And it's also a Human Right.
CJW_01-1.jpg
https://goo.gl/photos/4gLZsxhUs6RWMsw2A

Hola, comrade Nikita. Máximo igual avatar.

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Hammer and Loupe wrote:Hola, comrade Nikita. Máximo igual avatar.
Hola back and muchos gracious, Comrade Hammer, nice to be as equal as you, and as the native say goes around here: "Tu Madre es uno Burro ™"

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Why do I not see Common Core math being used in this thread?

Red Square wrote:We just has an email exchange with a friend, a radio talk show host from Colorado, who had a question after reading this article:

Ross: dude, is this true about diapers while raising your kids?

Oleg: Every word of it. Washed by hand, too. Then dried them on the heating radiators in the winter or on the balcony in the summer. They were all permanently stained. of course, but they went inside the onesies, so no one saw them except me and my wife. That's what everybody else in the USSR did - it was normal, and the only way to do it. I suspect that was also what Americans did before disposable diapers. When did they first appear? Ask your parents if they had them.


My mother used cloth diapers. This was in the 1960's. The baby wore plastic pants with elasticized openings—mother called them “diaper covers” that presumably kept the cloth diapers from leaking. Today's disposable diapers are really just the two items combined—except you toss them after use.

Mother put soiled cloth diapers in a plastic “diaper pail” with a lid, separate from all other laundry. We had a washer/dryer so she didn't use a so-called service. My understanding is the diaper service was very expensive, and I don't know if it was even available in the small town where I grew up.

The earliest disposable diapers were similar to the pads they put under patients in hospital beds. They were pretty useless for a baby. The disposable diapers we know today evolved during the Reagan decade of greed, and were instantly popular.

Yes, they were expensive, but very handy. I didn't have my own washer/dryer with the first baby. I had to use the laundromat in our apartment complex, which meant hoarding quarters and hoping machines were available when I needed them. (Doesn't that last sentence sound like a whiny complaint compared to Red Square's situation? Put me on the cover of Poor Me magazine!)

Mother thought disposable diapers were a terrible waste of money (I think she just resented the fact that I had access to a convenience she never knew). Yet we managed to afford them, even on one income with the first two children born fourteen months apart. Not once did it ever occur to us that the government or anyone else should be paying for this convenience. To us, this was all part of having babies—along with sleepless nights. Where's the government program for THAT? Isn't a night of uninterrupted sleep a human right? Bernie? Bueller?

Likewise, naysayers condemned them for what they would do to the planet. “It takes 500 years for those things to disintegrate!” I've always wondered how anyone can know that for certain. The outside of the 1980-90's diaper was very plastic in texture, whereas today's disposable diaper feels more like cloth and is as close to regular underwear as you can get. Maybe that's why the socialists waited this long to demand someone else start paying for them. Gee, whatever happened to saving the planet?

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Comrade Otis wrote:And if the Progressive era had begun one hundred years earlier in the early nineteenth century rather than institutionalizing the major industries of energy and transportation that free-enterprise had developed up to the beginning of early twentieth and then froze in Statist amber we would have a nation crisscrossed with canals and enjoying the very best in personal steam powered boats

Well! That would make the Steampunk crowd happy, wouldn't it?

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Mikhail Lysenkomann wrote:Well! That would make the Steampunk crowd happy, wouldn't it?

They wouldn't be steampunks, they would be water-wheel punks.

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Comrade Otis wrote:
Mikhail Lysenkomann wrote:Well! That would make the Steampunk crowd happy, wouldn't it?
They wouldn't be steampunks, they would be water-wheel punks.
Iran_Deal_Kerry.jpg
Dear Leader (PBUH) in the bounty of his wisdom is bringing steam-powered water wheels (which may or may not be operated by punks) into the nuclear era.

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Old 1970's joke:

A Russian is talking to an American.

Russian: What is this "nuke food" you Americans talk of?

American: That's just food that's specially made to be cooked in a microwave oven.

Russian: Oh. What is "microwave oven" you talk of?

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Comrade,

I offer a crude effort to establish your desired THR function.

I toil in the basement of an ivory towered labor camp contributing my statistical expertise to varying medical experiments on humans, animals, and the helpless cells in a petri dish. It sounds to me like your THR variable is a time to event, i.e. from creation to declaration of human right. These things are often measured as a hazard ratio (HR) [google bathtub hazard curve], and in this case, is a measure of the instantaneous risk that a CP is declared a human right.

The risk varies depending on the chosen covariates (via COX PH regression). I will offer a few variables for demonstration purposes:

- desirability (D) of said CP;
- proportion of households (H) with sufficient disposable income to purchase CP;
- proportion of ‘H' who are registered democratic voters (RDV);
- dollars donated to correct political parties ($$) by CP manufacturer (this one may be tricky).

I'm sure there are many potentially important factors (e.g. reluctance to work and therefore, pay, for CP), but you get the idea.

Results of such a model may be:

1) A tripling of your donation ($$) cuts the risk of human right declaration in half for the CP (or does it? I didn't attend the back room meeting).

2) a RDV proportion <10% increases the risk 10 fold, etc. etc. and so on and so forth.

So, never is there a prediction of time with absolute certainty, only the likelihood relative to other reference conditions.

The perfect and most important thing about this model is that at no time is the risk ever equal to zero, hence, the CP may be declared a human right at any time under any combination of the above parameters.

If the unwashed masses protest long enough and hard enough, a new human right is established. Progressives need this flexibility.

Kidding aside, with some effort you could come up with some hard numbers for this problem.

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Thank you so much, comrades Stimulus Maximus and NikitaTransCyberskaya (welcome to the Cube, comrade Nikita)!

This problem is getting curioser and curioser. I suspect we may need to write a government grant to fund the research of the formula with all its multiple variables, which will allow us to hire sizable staff including secretaries in miniskirts to bring us coffee.

And last but not least, somehow I knew, when I came up with the idea, that our Cubists will deliver!

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And Commissarka Pinkie - thank you too for the diaper story clarification. Who would have thought that it could be a fascinating subject?

Most importantly - Happy Birthday!

Happy_Birthday_Pinkie.jpg

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Computing the probability of a "Birthday Cease-fire" for Pinkies Shovel....

Not looking good for the home team.

(Off)

Happy day, Commisarka!

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Judicial Watch wrote about this from their angle -

$10 Mil to End “Diaper Disparity” after Free Diaper Laws Fail Twice in Congress

There's also a really nice review of my article in Gates of Vienna.

Diapers Are a Human “Right”. Really.

I liked a comment there that went to the heart of the matter:

Time travel is a human right.

Rabble Rouser: What do we want?
Rabble: Time travel!
Rabble Rouser: When do we want it?
Rabble: [confused muttering]

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Great Glorious Comrades,

The big problem is that the communist take-over happened too late! If lenin would have lived in the time when Humans, Galgameks and unicorns lived happily together the world would have looked like this:

unicorn.jpg

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Red Square wrote:And Commissarka Pinkie - thank you too for the diaper story clarification. Who would have thought that it could be a fascinating subject?

Most importantly - Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday, comrade lady. For you I give world's most best shovel. Bigger better best. Let your year be as wonderful and beautiful as this people's shovel:

Image

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Good points made...It seems that the problem, either be with "Diaper Disparity", Internet, safe spaces, double-mocha lattes, education, housing, jobs, retirement funds or any kind of private enterprise, is the misrepresentation by KKKapitalist pigs that any individual effort not regulated by the state deserves some reward. The true progressive way to achieve an equal society is to accept the fact that if something is not available for everyone, no one should have it... With the exception of our glorious leaders, after all they are entitled for saving the masses from the historical exploitation of individual liberties.
Red Square wrote:Thank you so much, comrades Stimulus Maximus and NikitaTransCyberskaya (welcome to the Cube, comrade Nikita)!
I'm humbled and thank your kind welcome, O'Fearless Leader, I'll make sure to double my coal digging quota to make this collective proud (And I'll throw all that filthy planet killing fossil fuel into the sea to keep us all safe, of course). And a toast with beet vodka for the Commissarka Pinkie from a newcomer...

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New Comrade Nikita,

Welcome to the Kollecktive. Beet quota is monitored closely, don't fall behind. Regarding Pinkie, if she's around, look busy and don't make eye contact. Try to stay several shovel-lengths away, and beware the golden shovel of righteousness and correction.

Oh, if there is any left on your vodka ration card from the indoctrination center, we can have that balance transferred to my personal our People's common account...

Red Square wrote:
We also never heard of dishwashers, microwaves, thermostats, remote controls, dental floss, or even KY.
May I quietly ask what KY is? I quickly asked my gf and she told me it's a new lipstick.Is that correct komrades?

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droid1 wrote:
Red Square wrote:
We also never heard of dishwashers, microwaves, thermostats, remote controls, dental floss, or even KY.
May I quietly ask what KY is? I quickly asked my gf and she told me it's a new lipstick.Is that correct komrades?

Yes, it's a clear lipstick that makes eating easier. Say you buy a hot dog from Mr. Jones at the corner of 4th and Elm. Well, normally you'd have to take 3, maybe even 5 bites of the hot dog to get it down, but with KY, the entire thing will go in really slick.

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Ivan the Stakhanovets wrote:New Comrade Nikita,

Welcome to the Kollecktive. Beet quota is monitored closely, don't fall behind. Regarding Pinkie, if she's around, look busy and don't make eye contact. Try to stay several shovel-lengths away, and beware the golden shovel of righteousness and correction.

Oh, if there is any left on your vodka ration card from the indoctrination center, we can have that balance transferred to my personal our People's common account...
I thank and honor your welcome and motivational words, Comrade Ivan, thanks for the advise, my Social Justice shield will be at hand all the time then. As for the remaining vodka ration card, a constitutional amendment by the MexiComm Politburo has named it as a Human Right and it has been distributed accordingly, but when the next "Informal" immigrants' train leave for Texazistan I'll make sure to send some cactus vodka with them... They leave every 5 minutes after all.

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droid1 wrote:May I quietly ask what KY is? I quickly asked my gf and she told me it's a new lipstick.Is that correct komrades?
That's a kind of Kentucky Jelly that doesn't taste good at all on a peanut butter sandwich.

Speaking of which, we didn't have peanut butter either, and we didn't have toasters (there were toaster ovens, though).

I know, it's beginning to sound like a comedy routine, but it's true. There were no coffee makers, either. If you were lucky to get half a kilo of ground coffee, you brewed it on the stove in a special small metal pot, the way they did it before coffee makers. Frankly, I don't even like coffee makers and make my coffee using French press.

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My Dearest, Reddest, Squarest People's Director--thank you for the birthday card! Five guys in red hats, one for every year of the Plan! I hope you toiled all day on it!

And you, Comrade Otis--thank you for the giant shovel. Just look at all that fancy scrimshaw work on it! Was that once a tree, or is it the bone of a whale killed for the sake of 19th century energy? (Praise Lenin our fellow travelers in Greenpeace put those whalers out of work so Hillary wouldn't have to!)

But I really need to know what the shovel is made of, because if it's one or the other, then I'm bringing the whole thing down on your head.

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I have been on the road and incommunicado for a couple of days, and missed the celebration of Pinkie's advent. Happy Birthday, m'dear. Many happy returns of the day.

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NikitaTransCyberskaya wrote:
Hammer and Loupe wrote:Hola, comrade Nikita. Máximo igual avatar.
Hola back and muchos gracious, Comrade Hammer, nice to be as equal as you, and as the native say goes around here: "Tu Madre es uno Burro ™"
Great quote! I will use that if I get a date. Here in in the USSA, we have a saying too, "Somos nietos de Hillary." It is really popular in the Partido Político de El Burro, also known as Democrat Party.

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Hammer and Loupe wrote:Great quote! I will use that if I get a date. Here in in the USSA, we have a saying too, "Somos nietos de Hillary." It is really popular in the Partido Político de El Burro, also known as Democrat Party.

Oh, the infamous "Abuela Hillary" ads... But being fair to her, after 15 years of exile deployment at this post, I'm quite sure that mexicans love condescension... just ask the Pope.

And don't worry, that quote is instant success in five words, been using it for years myself, and every single time I say it out loud, at the top of my lungs mind you, I get all the eyes in the room (street, shopping mall, public square, etc.) on me... And I'm sure it's not just for my good looks or my dulcet tones.

Who is John Galt? Besides cloth diaper services recycle 100%. That removed from the cloth is reconstructed into leftist politicians.


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In related news -

Ohio Women Demand Refund for ‘Discriminatory' Sales Tax on Tampons

Women in Cleveland, Ohio, have sued the Ohio Department of Taxation for the “discriminatory” sales tax on feminine products.

The lawsuit demands a “refund of at least $11 million per year to female customers.”

“These are not luxury items and should not be taxed,” said state Rep. Kristin Boggs. “This is another tax that they have to pay that there's no similar association for men that have to pay it.”

The claim insists the tax “violates the equal protection clauses of both the United States and Ohio constitutions.”
This isn't exactly a "human right" because it's only a tax issue, but it's getting close and creates a precedent.

Before corporations developed such a product as "tampon," women weren't tax excessively. Women just used rags and washed them every day, with no extra taxation. So it's capitalism's fault. Before tampons, there was no discrimination.

We can say the same about men's products: shavers, shaving creams, aftershaves, deodorants, various athlete foot products, and prostate treatments. Should we expect a similar class action suit from men?

I DO question toilet paper tax. It's a clear luxury item. Ask Medieval folks.

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I just received an email from a reader, who makes a great point:

Andrew Carnegie said the goal of capitalism is to make luxuries into necessities. The effect of socialism is making necessities into luxuries.

M84
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Red Square wrote:I just received an email from a reader, who makes a great point:

Andrew Carnegie said the goal of capitalism is to make luxuries into necessities. The effect of socialism is making necessities into luxuries.
[img]/images/clipart/Prog_Off.gif[/img]
21st century socialism also seems hellbent on turning all luxuries pertaining to sex into "rights."

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I'm, frankly, shocked to hear of that strange tribe of NoBeMaReDiaps
(Non-Believers-In-Lowtech-Manual-Recycling-One-And-The-Same-Diaper-Til-It-Turns-Full-Gauzy).
Among other oddities, they seem totally unaware of the Power Of Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO)!

And then those cults of :
Red Square wrote:... dishwashers, microwaves, thermostats, remote controls, dental floss, ... even KY.
[Ed. not Kentucky]
Seems to me, the NoBeMaReDiaps are interbred with the tribe of Nacirema1, all strange implications included.

Yet the material included in this thread here - verbal testimonies first - appears to suggest that the NoBeMaReDiaps evolved out of ancient BeMaDihydMonoxReDiaps, a signal of hope concerning the gene pool of contemporary Nacirema-NoBeMaReDiaps (who, I hear it being said, are underway to mutate into GeWi-Nacirema ; GeWi apparently a shortcut for "Generation Wimp").


1 For Nacirema basics see this.
The scientifically inclined may wish to make a beeline right korrekt to the source.

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Ed. A question seems hovering in the room :

vait, vait Genosse, halt, uno momento — you transmit "vrom dse Dshermani", at the foot of Alps, and you "vant tu maik us beliif" that you are a Lowtech Dihydrogen-Monoxidic Diaper Recycler? in the Mercedes & Porsche land?? hah???

Goot kvashtshn, ant hier dse answer(s), minus Germlish :

1. Of course Germany is (still, ah) a high-tech land ; in terms of living standard we are top-West1 ; and it's all disposable diapers here, and washing machines2, too.

1a. Both Krautland and Amiland are (broadly) poisoned by PC and Green insanity ; for Krauts it's (broadly) Green first, PC next (for Amis it's the converse) ; given Krautland's Green lunacy, I wouldn't be shocked if there was a return to those tired, old non-disposable diapers — this time not by necessity or Weltkrieg, but all for Gaia.

2. now, "me Diaper Recycler" : see, half my life (half++, indeed) I spent in Soviet Orbit ; we (wifey, 2 kiddies, me) came to Germany a good handful of years before Ostblock - the Eastern bloc - started its final rattle ; technically escapees, with bombproof Deutsch credentials (and both kiddies, huh, already out of diapers).


1 I would love to see a sense of individuality and self-reliance as broadly present in my folks here as I (ah, the whole world, brain cells assumed) can see it in, vell, dse Amerikan volks.

2 ... at the same time our people grumbled for more nylons and washing machines ... sorry, folks - can't stand that temptation :

just see the opening 30 seconds — with extra dedication to our Benevolent Leader Red Square :


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Inspired by an earlier comment above:

Capitalism vs. Socialism meme: luxuries and necessities


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And a grungier version. Because capitalism is all about choice.

Image

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RU.1989.(Немкова).Die Agrarpolitik der Partei ist die Gewähr unserer Erfolge.jpg
Аграрная политика партии - залог наших успехов
Agrarian policy of the Party - key to our success


(of course post-Soviet (of 1989), graphically A1)

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Joe Biden has just unwittingly confirmed the main point of this article:

As Democrats ponder their future, Joe Biden makes a plea for a focus on the middle class

LA Times wrote:“What are the arguments we're hearing? ‘Well, we've got to be more progressive.' I'm not saying we should be less progressive,” he said, adding that he would “stack my progressive credentials against anyone” in the party.

“We should be proud of where the hell we are, and not yield an inch. But,” he added, “in the meantime, you can't eat equality. You know?”
Thus, allow a little capitalist renewal so that the middle class can grow a little more fat and forget how disastrous the socialist policies are, and then bamboozle them with the same "equality" claptrap and grab the power.

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A good summation of the above article.

[img]/images/various_uploads/Socialism_Capitalism.jpg[/img]

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Q: Why didn't Walmart-style self-checkout exist in Soviet stores?

A: It only works with honest people, but under socialism everyone was presumed to be a cheater.

Quite ironically, the Marxist theory expected socialism to be a transitional stage preparing people for conscientious life under communism. As it turns out, conscientious self-control is rather a product of capitalism.

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Red Square wrote:Q: Why didn't Walmart-style self-checkout exist in Soviet stores?

A: It only works with honest people, but under socialism everyone was presumed to be a cheater.

Quite ironically, the Marxist theory expected socialism to be a transitional stage preparing people for conscientious life under communism. [highlight=#FFFF99]As it turns out, conscientious self-control is rather a product of capitalism[/highlight].

And Jackalopelipsky forelock tugs before adding that self-control is a Creator formed government with some fixed rules. Or as Jackalopelipsky brings to conversations down here in Texazistan, there's some LAWS around here ain't nobody payin' any attention to...as we mo-jo over the parking lot speed bumps at warp speed.

Remember the Running AGWONT: Wayfair Boston AGOWNT employees participating in the walk-out blathered about everyone deserving a home that they LOVE (hug)...which is why they wanted overtired illegal toddlers to not have a nice Wayfair youth bed, sheets, and pillows at night. Those overtired illegal toddlers can just have a second helping of NOTHING from Wayfair's GWONT employees because OrangeManBad. So ...THERE!

Just mo-jo'in' over that fixed moral parkin' lot speed bump at warp speed...most probably will cause major rim damage and rapid deflation of moral high ground.

Jackalopelipsky
#BR 549

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The Eternal Circle of Human Folly: under capitalism people want socialism, and under socialism people want capitalism.

[img]/images/Hand_Draw_Hand_Escher_Hammer_Dollar.jpg[/img]

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Promise your voters a prosperous economy, and they'll forget you once the goal is attained.

Promise them the unattainable income equality, and it'll feed you for life.

That's why politicians love socialism.

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I was browsing through a collection of Tory party propaganda posters. They weren't playing around when they came up with this one:

SocialismScrewsYouUpTories.jpg


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When there's no food in the house, Russians say "a mouse hanged itself in the fridge" (out of despair). Living with food shortages for most of the 20th century, they coped by joking about socialism.

And now we have a photographic evidence.

[img]/images/Socialism_Fridge_Mouse_Hung_Itself.jpg[/img]

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Red Square wrote:When there's no food in the house, Russians say "a mouse hanged itself in the fridge" (out of despair). Living with food shortages for most of the 20th century, they coped by joking about socialism.

In California they don't have the electricity to have the fridge to see with the light that "a mouse has hanged itself."

The USSR had one up on California.

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Margaret wrote:
Red Square wrote:When there's no food in the house, Russians say "a mouse hanged itself in the fridge" (out of despair). [highlight=#ffff00]Living with food shortages for most of the 20th century, they coped by joking about socialism.[/highlight]
In California they don't have the electricity to have the fridge to see with the light that "a mouse has hanged itself."

The USSR [highlight=#ffff00]had one up[/highlight] on California.

Living with energy outages, Californians cope by joking about kkkapitalizm (thereby compensating USSR's "one up" on The Golden State).

(hahahahaha, which exposes yet another reason why socialists need kkkapitalizm!)

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Q: Why does socialism need capitalism?

A: A parasite needs a host.

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Comrade Stierlitz wrote:"Hey you! Don't say anything bad about the President or you get no power for a week!"

Oh, you've been to California recently?

- SK

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Komissar al-Blogunov wrote:Q: Why does socialism need capitalism?

A: A parasite needs a host.

Rudimentary idea for a short story:

The Swamp Shrugged

A satire based on Atlas Shrugged.

Who are the most essential people in the country? The deep state bureaucrats who make everything in the country work. Who does everyone hate and despise? The deep state bureaucrats.

They are the brains that make the country work; but they are vilified and increasingly forced to confine their work to very specific legal and constitutional constraints and a worrisome growing call for more accountability.

But what if they all disappeared? What if the deep state went on strike? What if the deep state vanished without a trace to some secret location so remote and hidden not even a leak is known of it's existence?

This is the story of what happens to the country when the deep state disappears in a pique of self-righteous indignation.

The Swamp gets fed up with people trying to tie the hands of statism and goes on strike. The strike of the betters!

The deep state bureaucrats think they are essential and once they disappear everyone will be sorry and beg them to come back.

Things don't turn out that way.

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Margaret wrote:Rudimentary idea for a short story:

The Swamp Shrugged

Posted here with some edits:

The Swamp Shrugged

[img]/images/Swamp_Shrugged_600.jpg[/img]

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I've been reading Robert Tracinski's new book So Who Is John Galt, Anyway which I heartily recommend. So Atlas Shrugged has been on my mind lately.

Tracinski's book is a must read. The chapter relating Vaclav Havel's The Power of the Powerless with Atlas Shrugged is worth the price of admission right there.


 
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