Connecticut (et al)

[Gallstones]

Gallstones.
What is the point of this video?
We have discussed pretty much everything that guy said already. I did not pick up a single point that really means anything in relation to the gun control discussion that we have not already covered.

How convenient to you and your obsessive and erroneous agenda.
Maybe you are discomforted by certain facts?

[Gallstones]

I am quite happy to accept that violent crimes rates are different in different countries, and the suggestion that England/Wales have a violent crime rate per capita three times that of the USA is probably not accurate, but also probably not too far off the beam either.

Where the video goes, not just wrong, but into glaring misrepresentation and total dishonesty, is the suggestion that the difference in murder rate is due to different amounts of large metropolitan area. The narrator says that the USA has six times the large metropolitan areas. What he fails to note is that it also has approximately six times the population of England and Wales. So on a per capita basis, the percentage in large metropolitan areas is close enough to the same.

Yet England/Wales has, on the same per capita basis, a quarter of the murder rate. The only real difference is guns, and especially hand guns, plus a pathological gun culture.

Uh-huh.

[laklak]

I had my gun culture checked by a doctor, it's wasn't pathological. Whew.

[Blind groper]

Maybe you are discomforted by certain facts?

Perhaps you might like to let me know what these facts might be?

[Hermit]

It makes it just a bit harder for gingers to be rounded up, when a higher concept is codified strongly that people deserve equal protection of the law

...and that is precisely what people tend to do no matter whether they live in a democracy or want to attain one. It's called enlightened selfishness, and that motivation is perhaps best expressed by an opponent of the third reich, Martin Niemöller with these words:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

[mistermack]

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

He didn't give a toss about the jews then.

Anyway, it's a false argument. There is no evidence that "speaking out" has the desired effect. It's usually too late, by the time people are aware of what's going on. And where's the evidence that the communists, socialists and trade unionists would have "spoken out" for him anyway?

[MrJonno]

Always thought the meaning of that poem again that it wasnt the government failings but his personal (and the people are a whole) that allowed this to happen. As in we all stand together and look out for each other not every man for themselves

[Hermit]

He didn't give a toss about the jews then.

Correct. He did not. Nor was he even vaguely cognisant of the role of women in society. I don't see what you are driving at.

There is no evidence that "speaking out" has the desired effect. It's usually too late, by the time people are aware of what's going on.

Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela - among others - were wasting their breath?

And where's the evidence that the communists, socialists and trade unionists would have "spoken out" for him anyway?

There is none. Yet, people speak out and strive for a higher codified concept that encompasses, but is not limited to equality before the law, precisely in the hope that this will protect them - each individually - because it applies to all.

Of course major failures have happened, and more of them will occur. For example, I mentioned Edmund Barton's defence of the White Australia Policy elsewhere: "The doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman."

You might think it's all futile, but humanity keeps muddling along trying to find better ways of governing, and progress has been made. I definitely prefer to live in today's democracies rather than yesterday's feudalism. I also think that somewhere beyond my lifetime democratic socialism may be more pervasive, successful, popular and common than democratic capitalism is now.

[Blind groper]

Actually, I see more socialism as an inevitability, even in the USA.
The thing is that both computing and robotics are getting more and more sophisticated. We are at the beginning of a robotics revolution. Within 10 years, lots of new cars and trucks will be self drive, and many governments are ready to formulate new laws to permit self drive cars on the road. I imagine that self drive will rapidly make all commercial truck drivers redundant.

Other robots will rapidly displace human workers. They will work harder, 24 hours a day, and be more precise in doing their jobs. No employer will want a human where a robot is better. Since most humans are not especially smart or skilled, that means, within a couple decades, most people will be unable to find a job.

What alternative is there, beside socialism?

[pErvinalia]

I've actually heard it said that highly skilled workers, in for example IT, will be increasingly replaced by intelligent systems. You are right. Governments/societies are going to have to work out how they want to deal with this phenomenon.

[JimC]

I've actually heard it said that highly skilled workers, in for example IT, will be increasingly replaced by intelligent systems. You are right. Governments/societies are going to have to work out how they want to deal with this phenomenon.

There is talk of schools disappearing, with all education moving on-line...

I'll be retired by then, I suppose...

[Hermit]

Other robots will rapidly displace human workers. They will work harder, 24 hours a day, and be more precise in doing their jobs. No employer will want a human where a robot is better. Since most humans are not especially smart or skilled, that means, within a couple decades, most people will be unable to find a job.

And whom will the owners of the means of production sell their goods to then? That is the fatal flaw inherent in capitalism. The trend to replace human labour with technology is ancient, and over the centuries it has vastly improved our standard of living, but taken to its logical conclusion, there will be no market for the owners of the means of production to sell their goods to. Without employees there just won't be a mass market for those mass produced goodies that generate profits. Capitalism will collapse due to its own internal, structural contradiction.

What will follow is anybody's guess. I'm hoping for democratic socialism, but that hope is just that - hope.

[JimC]

Other robots will rapidly displace human workers. They will work harder, 24 hours a day, and be more precise in doing their jobs. No employer will want a human where a robot is better. Since most humans are not especially smart or skilled, that means, within a couple decades, most people will be unable to find a job.

And whom will the owners of the means of production sell their goods to then? That is the fatal flaw inherent in capitalism. The trend to replace human labour with technology is ancient, and over the centuries it has vastly improved our standard of living, but taken to its logical conclusion, there will be no market for the owners of the means of production to sell their goods to. Without employees there just won't be a mass market for those mass produced goodies that generate profits. Capitalism will collapse due to its own internal, structural contradiction.

What will follow is anybody's guess. I'm hoping for democratic socialism, but that hope is just that - hope.

sandinista is certain that the inevitable replacement will be the one, true Marxism, its hour come round at last...

[pErvinalia]

It's a good point Hermit makes. I'd be interested in hearing from some committed capitalists on this point.

[JimC]

It's a good point Hermit makes. I'd be interested in hearing from some committed capitalists on this point.

Well, I'm no "committed capitalist", but the value of individual enterprise remains, whatever system we have. The trick is to reward it, without letting it become a monster that demands profit in ever increasing amounts...

Neither Marx, nor his natural enemies, the 19th century robber baron capitalists, ever needed to consider the real limits to natural resources, or the exponential technological expansion potentially making human labour, in the sense we know it now, redundant. So answers to future problems are unlikely to be found either in Das Capital or the Wall Street Journal...