Capitalism and Socialism are economic systems, models, or ideologies. Capitalism says that the means of production (whether resources, factories, labour, or companies - literally, what you use to make Stuff) should be privately owned and operated for individual profit. Socialism (/Communism? there are some distinctions but I'm just going to use one word for simplicity) says that they should be owned by society in some way, and that the profit (whether money or products) should also be shared by society. There are other models around - feudalism, for example, where the means of production are restricted to a specific social class, with the lower classes explicitly excluded from owning them. (Compare capitalism, where there is no legal barrier to you or I becoming a billionaire.) But we're talking capitalism and socialism

During the Cold War, these two models became strongly associated with political systems. It's really hard for me to think "capitalism" without thinking "western democracy", just as it's really hard to think of socialism outside of a one-party dictatorship. But Russia, now, is effectively a one-party capitalist society - there's nothing preventing one-party states from operating on a capitalist model!

So when we talk about socialism, we need to avoid getting stuck in the Soviet Union mindset. Most/all socialist states ran under the Soviet model, because the USSR was deliberately exporting it, but there are other ways to do it. The UK has been described as voting in a revolution after WWII - we introduced public ownership of healthcare, transport systems, utilities (electric, water etc) by electing the right government. We kind of mixed socialism (for essential industries) with capitalism (for the rest), and didn't wind up with an uber-rich dictatorship. (In fact most of our self-enriching-politician scandals have been the pro-capitalist right taking and giving handouts from their buddied in industry!)

Which isn't to say it had no problems. Every nationalised industry either overspent or was under-budgeted, depending on your viewpoint. And of course, when the opposition next got voted in, they were free to start dismantling the changes - either directly by running on a privatisation platform, or obliquely by running the industry into the ground and then selling it off. They're still at it today.

So... yeah. No big finish here: just that we all need to remember that our ideas of Capitalism and Socialism were shaped by the Cold War, and that's not the only way those systems can be run.

hS

Yes, there are people have more money than they need.

However, that doesn't mean the government should effectively have the power to decide that they have too much. The government should not be able to tell an individual "You have enough money now, so the rest is ours". Even if Bezos is overpayed for his work, the government didn't do any work.

Second point: the rich will leave. If John Q. Billionaire will be taxed at 90%, what's to stop him from leaving the country before the bill that implements the 90% tax ecomes law? Why should he let the government takes his money?

--Ls thinks American federal taxes should be lowered.

I meant to link to here.

Sorry.

Seriously, what’d you think of VEEL? I need allies in ze fight against ze Regulation.

Jokingly, —Ls

It's less about assigning numeric values to individual organisms, and more about recognizing that Earth, and every organic and non-organic feature of it, is all a single, interconnected unit. For those of us living in developed, "western" countries, where it's become the norm to partition each family away inside a walled structure, to lose sight of just how connected to the natural world we are. But every molecule of oxygen we breathe was exhaled from a leaf or blade of grass. Every nutrient and mineral we consume came either from a fellow life form, or from the literal soil or stone of the planet. Heck, every cell our actual bodily structure is composed of has spent time in other organisms, in the soil, and when our time is spent, it all goes back to the soil, for new organisms to be built up with with.

U.S. society is heavily individualistic, and heavily plasticized in the sense that we spend a lot of our time in sterile, lifeless buildings interacting with inanimate objects. We grow up being socialized to feel that we live "inside," and only go "outside" for special events or activities, for a set time period, before returning inside, where we "belong." And of course, many of us don't grow or hunt our own food any more; food are objects that we retrieve from a grocery store of restaurant. It all creates the illusion that we are something separate from the rest of Earth, something unique and independent and special. It's that undeserved specialness that I was speaking against, because in reality, we are not so aloof and unconnected from the Earth, after all. We're a part of it, and we're dependent on it, and we belong to it.

You specifically brought up a comparison between bacteria and humans. The fact is, without bacteria, there is no human: this 2016 study found that our bodies contain roughly the same number of bacteria as human cells. Human cells are much larger and more complex than bacteria, so by volume, there's still more human than bacteria in there, but by sheer numbers, the teams are even. And those bacteria are critical for human existence: the ones in our mouth attack invasive microorganisms that enter on our food. The ones in our digestive tract assist us in breaking down food that our stomach acids can't, giving us access to a greater variety of nutrients. The ones in and on our skin keep us cleaner by consuming some of the oils we naturally secrete. And that's just the bacteria; our bodies are natural homes for fungi, viruses, tiny, wormlike animals, and archaea (single-celled organisms even less complex than bacteria). "So...humans aren’t superior to, say, bacteria?" We can't be superior to something that's a fundamental part of us. Humans and bacteria need each other to live; we need every part of the Earth to live!

—doctorlit, about to go feed his gut fauna

Of course. It always is. But this time, it's deliberate.

The removal of Plortitical civilisation from the surface of the planet, first to the low orbitals and then by stages to the asteroid habitats, has generally been hailed as a good thing. Space has its dangers, but as the Brass and Mage Wars showed, the greatest danger is always other people. Putting multiple light-minutes between potential enemies has prevented conflicts both large and small.

But sometimes, the urge to resolve disputes by what has come to be called Practical Diplomacy is too great. By the most binding of treaties, the peoples of the Plortitical system do not attack one another's habitats directly - rather, they send their forces down to the planet they once called home, and maneuver against each other in the recovering mountains of Plortitics.

From: 15th Huinesoronic Expeditionary Air-Fleet To: Huinesoron High Command, Asteroid 7219 Dafyddillian

Supreme General, we beg leave to report that we have made groundfall on Plortitics. We touched down west of the Fabled River as planned, but encountered scouts of a nearby Neshomeh landing. As we have not received instructions regarding their support for the Great Regulation, we proceeded with all haste to a more defensible position. We have taken a peak of the central mountains as our base; though it is arid, it is free of rad contamination, and we believe we will be able to hold it against any hostile forces.

Contact with the Regulation's satellite network has been intermittent since groundfall, but we have received reports of a Linstar splashdown in the northern ocean. Despite their ostensible support for the "Let-It-Bes", Linstar have traditionally focussed more on spreading their religious creed, so we would not normally be concerned by their presence; however, one report has them congregating far east of their splashdown site, in the rad-haunted basin of the War-Queen's Sea. If there is any possibility of their recovering mage- or brass-tech from ancient times, we urge an immediate preventative strike upon their position.

Buckle up, gang, we're doing modern warfare.

A quick introduction: a Boarder's marker on the map is positioned and decorated according to their PolitiScales results, and only those results. The value used is the centre of the "neither" percentage on each bar - so if a specific bar read 67% - 23% - 10%, the value would be 78.5% (sometimes I've reversed the bars from the results page). Note that the X and Y axes are linear (hence the huge gap at the top - there is a lot of "Conservative" space nobody in the PPC falls in), while all other values have been calibrated to spread our expected results across the spectrum. If these turn out to be wildly off, I will adjust them later.

As ever, X and Y are the Capitalist-Communist and Conservative-Progressive axes. Height (always a difficult one) is assigned to the Rehabilitation-Punitive axis. The environment around a camp is from the Ecology score; the use of radiation is a hold-over from last time round.

The little people, planes or whatever represent what tech the army brought with them; it's based on Constructivism, on the tenuous justification that "people can reinvent themselves" extends to "people can invent other stuff". Whether the people are shooting, shielding, or surrendering comes from the Revolutionary score - revolutionaries love shooting lasers, right?

Finally, there is the allegiance, shown in the colour of the flagpole. The two sides in this particular conflict are the Great Regulation and the "Let-It-Bes", or Regulation vs. Laissez-faire; it's entirely possible to be in between the two, playing both sides to greater or lesser extent. I've also used Internationalism as how strongly the armies support their position - an intense colour means they're a full member of the alliance, while faded pastel is "I guess they're better".

Finally, since the Political Compass is out as well this year, I've plotted Political Compass scores as the landing point for the armies. We have no idea how well the two compasses correlate, so maybe this will help us find out. Some people may only have a landing site (presumably they either crashed, or went into hiding and haven't been detected since); others may not have a landing site recorded at all (we just found them out there).

All of which will be completely pointless if nobody else takes the quizzes, but eh. ^_~

hS