Philosophical Vegan Forum

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:Can you elaborate on what you mean by that?

Sanders wants a redistribution of wealth, right? The only way to do that is to massively confiscate the property from the rich to give it to the poor (whether or not the poor will actually get that property).

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:I think it's a bit of a stretch to compare it to Mao's Great Leap Forward purely on the basis of them both being mass movements to carry out economic change.

It's not just on that. Both Great Leap Forward and the Green New Deal denied mainstream science. Great Leap Forward was based on the pseudoscientific ideas of Lysenkoism, and the Green New Deal is based on the pseudoscientific ideas against nuclear power and that it's somehow possible to get all our energy from the renewable sources.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:Do you believe that the Republican Party is close to the ideology of the Venezuelan regime?

Well, not so much. Republican Party is slightly more pro-capitalism, pro-free-trade and against regulation than the Democratic Party is.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:I don't see how this shows that Bernie and AOC are closer in ideology to Venezuela than to the Nordic countries as the top personal income tax rate in Venezuela is 34%, which is less than that of Norway, Denmark and Sweden.

Well, presumably that's because all the rich people who were paying the taxes left Venezuela, right?

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:The ways in which there are fewer regulations in the Nordic countries in the United States are in regard to stuff like how easy it is to open a business.

Well, that's precisely the point. In Nordic countries, it's easy to open a business. In the US, it's hard, and it will be even harder if AOC or Sanders come to power.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:In Venezuela, 29% of the economy is publicly owned, whereas in Denmark it is 31.4% and in Norway it is 37.8%.

Where are you getting that from? AFAIK, in Nordic countries, the public sector accounts for something around 50% of GDP (in the US, I believe it's around 20%), which has led to the rise of the conservative parties in recent years (along with the immigration "crisis"). In Venezuela, most of the food production, as well as almost all the legal food distribution, is (mis-)managed by the government.
I'd also note that the percentage of the economy that's privately owned can be rather misleading. During the Great Irish Famine, there was indeed a lot of "privately" owned land, except the laws didn't allow most of the people to buy enough land to grow anything but potato.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:In European countries such as Britain, France and Germany, however, the minimum wage is much higher.

AFAIK, nowhere in the world except in some US states is the minimum wage 15$/hour, yet alone higher.

teo123 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 17, 2019 11:36 pm Sanders wants a redistribution of wealth, right? The only way to do that is to massively confiscate the property from the rich to give it to the poor (whether or not the poor will actually get that property).

Having high rates of taxation in order to redistribute money towards social programs isn't something peculiar to Venezuela. This even happened in the Conservative governments in Britain of Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home and Heath.

It's not just on that. Both Great Leap Forward and the Green New Deal denied mainstream science. Great Leap Forward was based on the pseudoscientific ideas of Lysenkoism, and the Green New Deal is based on the pseudoscientific ideas against nuclear power and that it's somehow possible to get all our energy from the renewable sources.

I think it's still a bit of a stretch to compare the Green New Deal to Mao's Great Leap Forward, and describing it that way could potentially alienate some people which will make it less likely for them to agree with your points about nuclear power.

Well, not so much. Republican Party is slightly more pro-capitalism, pro-free-trade and against regulation than the Democratic Party is.

Do you believe that the Republican Party still has a similar ideology to the Venezuelan regime however, or that the Republican Party (or even the Democratic Party for that matter) is anti-capitalist?

Well, presumably that's because all the rich people who were paying the taxes left Venezuela, right?

What was the taxation rate that forced them to leave the country?

Well, that's precisely the point. In Nordic countries, it's easy to open a business. In the US, it's hard,

Do you believe that the U.S. is closer to the Venezuelan regime than to the Nordic countries?

and it will be even harder if AOC or Sanders come to power.

In what ways will they make it harder to open a business?

Where are you getting that from?

The International Labour Organization

I'd also note that the percentage of the economy that's privately owned can be rather misleading. During the Great Irish Famine, there was indeed a lot of "privately" owned land, except the laws didn't allow most of the people to buy enough land to grow anything but potato.

How does this relate to Venezuela?

AFAIK, nowhere in the world except in some US states is the minimum wage 15$/hour, yet alone higher.

I thought that we were talking about the U.S. in general.

OK, @Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, what do you think is the reason Venezuela turned into a disaster? And it's not just Venezuela, it's almost every country that tries to implement socialism (Yugoslavia wasn't really such a disaster, but that's presumably because small private firms were not illegal there). I understand there are a lot of factors into that story. I understand that fluctuating oil prices played a certain role (though Venezuela isn't the country that's most dependent on oil). I understand the economic sanctions put by US play a certain role (though the sanctions on Iran are much more severe, and people in Iran don't suffer as much as the people in Venezuela do).
And I am not much interested in what the anti-free-trade and anti-capitalist organizations (and the UN is clearly very anti-free-trade and anti-capitalism, WHO even praised Cuban health-care a few times, and WHO also could be a little more pro-vegan) have to say, especially if they don't want to admit socialism is at least partly responsible for what's happening in Venezuela. I am not wasting my time researching how they manipulated the statistics this time.
And, yes, the Republican party is very anti-capitalist and anti-free-trade, regardless of them repeating otherwise.

teo123 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 17, 2019 3:32 am Hey, listen, a few years ago, I argued for some quite crazy stuff on this forum, ridiculous conspiracy theories such as that the Moon is a hologram, that the Earth is flat and that airplanes don't exist (I've later used that as a basis for my parody of the conspiracy theorists).

Well believing conspiracy theories (which are almost always true, like 9/11 or the Moon Landings) is correlated with higher IQ.

I think you've been duped by these sheeple.

Now people here connect whatever I say to those things, even though there is very little in common between what I believe now and what I used to believe a few years ago.

They're just pathetic. They're just projecting their ignorance onto you.

It's instinctual to think the Earth is flat or that airplanes don't exist, but the reason and evidence tell us otherwise.

Come on, you're smarter than that. Instinct is almost always infallible.

Airplanes don't and can't exist anyways. Have you ever seen an airplane? I never have.

On the other hand, it's instinctual to think that a big government can protect the poor and the powerless (as most of the people on this forum appear to believe), but the reason and evidence tell us otherwise.

You got that right! This is one of the times instinct is wrong.

As for my linguistic theories, I don't actually see how they can think there is a connection between them and what I used to believe years ago. If you ask me, it's clear they don't understand what they are talking about, like "Red" apparently insisted that sound laws were somehow not falsifiable, and later it turned out he/she thinks sound laws are some form of laws in the legal sense of the word (seriously!).

I've known Red for 2 years now! This is quite shocking.

Red, can you please explain?

"brimstoneSalad" insisted that the way linguists know which languages are related is that they borrow that knowledge from genetics and then make it look like there is visible evidence for that inside of languages (seriously!). That's quite emotionally abusive and counter-productive, if you ask me.

brimstone is clearly an asshole then! Quite the sophist if you ask me!

Well, he's bothered to do a PhD. I'd never do such a thing.

Who needs a fucking PhD anyways?

Well, they went to a better high-school, I guess. I went to a grammar-school in Donji Miholjac, while most of those on the first few places were attending the high-schools in Zagreb in which they learnt a lot about computer science.

So it was rigged! They did get lucky by going to the better high school.

Well, that's what I am telling them when they tell me I have a terrible track record: that a bad track record may make my opinion even more reliable because I had a chance to learn from my past mistakes.

Exactly! How can you be wrong on anything now?

Well, thanks for the compliment.

You're going to end up being one of the intellectual greats, I can assure you. You'll be in the history textbooks 100 years down the road.

I don't think that's what's going on. Studying some fields, such as physics or philosophy, has a tendency to make people arrogant, to make them feel qualified to speak about stuff they don't have a clue about. It's not that most of the people who have studied physics or philosophy are like that, but some of them are. And my guess is that they actually don't know much about their own field either, that those are people who know just enough to get themselves into trouble. And I think "brimstoneSalad" is one of those.

This 'brimstoneSalad' is one arrogant piece of trash. They know nothing about shit, and probably dropped out of university after the first 2 months. They probably think that since they got a sticker in 2nd grade they're now a polymath.

MittensTheCat wrote: Well believing conspiracy theories (which are almost always true, like 9/11 or the Moon Landings) is correlated with higher IQ.

Unfortunately, a belief being correlated with a high IQ doesn't strongly suggest it's true. Socialists tend to have higher IQ than average, and so do Nazis. Higher IQ probably makes you more susceptible to such beliefs, because it makes it easier for you to imagine that something that doesn't make sense to you actually does make sense because there is something you are being unaware of. Also, people with high IQ aren't necessarily more informed, and the correlation between what makes sense to somebody who is uninformed and what makes sense to somebody who is informed is weak. Quite often, people with high IQ know just enough to get themselves into trouble. So too, people who adhere to the idea that the Earth is flat probably know slightly more about physics than most of the people, but a lot less than physicists do, that is, they know just enough to think they know enough to make some conclusions by themselves, but not enough for those conclusions to really be justified.
From what I know now, the Moon Landing conspiracy is almost impossible to be true, and the 9/11 conspiracy is very unlikely to be true. You might be interested in reading what I wrote about pseudosciences on my website.

MittensTheCat wrote:Airplanes don't and can't exist anyways. Have you ever seen an airplane? I never have.

And I think now you can see why people write obvious nonsense on the Internet forums, because you just did that. To be honest, I feel somewhat insulted by that, and I don't think I'll waste my precious time discussing with you any more. I don't know if anything you write represents what you think, or if you are trying to build some character. If you are serious about this (which is unlikely), read what I wrote at the web-page I linked above, I think it will become obvious why that is undescribably silly.
And, for the record, I've been on an airplane two times by now, travelling from Zagreb to Frankfurt and back.

teo123 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 17, 2019 3:32 am Hey, listen, a few years ago, I argued for some quite crazy stuff on this forum... Now people here connect whatever I say to those things, even though there is very little in common between what I believe now and what I used to believe a few years ago.

First, I'd like to say, "Way t' grow!". If your ideas are wholly consistent over a lifetime, you're stagnant and festering.

You've highlighted one of the key problems in any discussion: the inability to evaluate ideas clearly and distinguish the message from the messenger. Nothing could matter less than your previous position on any subject, since the current idea (just like all others) must be judged upon its own merits.

Our cultural conditioning is toward trust, though many would deny this influence because it's been misrepresented as sound judgement. There is a place for trust (in research, in credentialed experts, etc.) but only when we've exhausted the limits of our ability to judge solely by our own critical process.

For instance, I cannot know from personal experience whether or not a vegan diet actually mitigates disease risk, since no matter how many people I know, it will never be an adequate sample size. So I must marry my own common sense and critical analysis with trust in research I did not perform, and widespread consensus among anecdotal reports provided by others.

Most importantly, I must be aware of the incomplete nature of my "knowledge" on the subject, and be honest about the fact that it's a best guess. Such guesses can range in their proximity to certainty, and the fervency of our argumentation should take this into account. By contrast, the mass media continually implies that the responsible citizen "picks a side" on every subject, forming firm opinions without sufficient knowledge. That's divide-and-conquer 101.

Philosophy yields much, and focusing our thought in a principled way (instead of relying on the credentials of the speaker, for good or ill) will provide solid ground for sound judgement (i.e. wisdom). The topic of this thread is an example of a topic that does not require any particular information from research or experts. Any reasonably intelligent individual can discern the unfounded nature of both carnism and statism, if only they will honestly apply their own critical process. That being said, one's critical ability is subject to atrophy or hypertrophy, as per its usage.

It behooves us to train our brain - it's our natural responsibility as the most intelligent being on the planet, and the consequences of our every choice depend upon it.

BrianBlackwell wrote:There is a place for trust (in research, in credentialed experts, etc.) but only when we've exhausted the limits of our ability to judge solely by our own critical process.

Correct, it's better if you can evaluate the claims about something you research yourself than if you need to trust the experts. Perhaps that's why IT is moving so rapidly: when you read about programming, you don't need to make sure the source you are reading is reliable and well-written, if something you've read is wrong or you've misunderstood something, you will quickly come to know that (your program won't work).
However, we need to make sure that we can actually readily evaluate claims we think we can evaluate. Take the following claim, for example: "The horizon appears to rise with us as we climb, it's always at your eye-level or higher. If the horizon were caused by the Earth being round, it would appear to fall as we climb. Therefore, the horizon can't be caused by the Earth being round.". I thought I could evaluate that claim, and that that claim is true, yet I was wrong.

teo123 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 19, 2019 9:49 am OK, @Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, what do you think is the reason Venezuela turned into a disaster?

As you've said, a whole bunch of factors come into play. I'm not really sure that there's a reason to assume that Venezuela's economy is socialist purely because it is failing. By that metric, we could assume that Thatcher's Britain was socialist because the rates of poverty increased.

As well as that, even if Venezuela's economy were socialist, this would not necessarily mean that the policies of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders are the same as that of Venezuela.

And it's not just Venezuela, it's almost every country that tries to implement socialism (Yugoslavia wasn't really such a disaster, but that's presumably because small private firms were not illegal there).

The countries you are referring to are mostly communist countries in which violent revolutions have happened to establish authoritarian states. This didn't happen in democratic socialist countries such as Britain under Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson or Bolivia under Evo Morales, indicating that gradualist methods towards achieving socialism have been successful in contrast to revolutionary methods.

And I am not much interested in what the anti-free-trade and anti-capitalist organizations (and the UN is clearly very anti-free-trade and anti-capitalism, WHO even praised Cuban health-care a few times, and WHO also could be a little more pro-vegan) have to say, especially if they don't want to admit socialism is at least partly responsible for what's happening in Venezuela. I am not wasting my time researching how they manipulated the statistics this time.

Well you're going to have a hard time convincing anybody that they're manipulated then.

And, yes, the Republican party is very anti-capitalist and anti-free-trade, regardless of them repeating otherwise.

I agree that they are anti-free trade. To claim that they are anti-capitalist would require a distortion of the word "capitalist" from traditional definitions (same with what you said about the UN being anti-capitalist). They might be opposed to the particular brand of capitalism that you support, but I think you'll alienate people from your beliefs if you call the Republican Party anti-capitalist.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:I'm not really sure that there's a reason to assume that Venezuela's economy is socialist purely because it is failing.

OK, then, how about Noam Chomsky praising Venezuela as a good example of socialism back when it wasn't really that of a disaster?

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:this would not necessarily mean that the policies of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders are the same as that of Venezuela.

And yet Bernie Sanders once praised the Soviet Union and said people waiting in long lines for bread was somehow a good thing.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:The countries you are referring to are mostly communist countries in which violent revolutions have happened to establish authoritarian states.

Hitler was democratically elected, while Mussolini came to the power by overthrowing the state. Does that somehow make Hitler better?
Besides, Maduro was also democratically elected.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:Well you're going to have a hard time convincing anybody that they're manipulated then.

It's actually quite easy to prove the UN manipulated statistics to make it look like communism was in some ways (usually including health care) better than capitalism, see what they were doing during the Cold War.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz wrote:To claim that they are anti-capitalist would require a distortion of the word "capitalist" from traditional definitions.

How? Capitalism is defined as a voluntary exchange of goods and services, right? Investing in the military against the will of citizens is then, by definition, anti-capitalist, and that's the core part of the Republican ideology. And the same goes for the regulations Republicans (as well as the Democrats) don't stop pushing, and for the trade war (which is propagated even more by the Republicans than by the Democrats).

teo123 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 11, 2019 12:42 am OK, then, how about Noam Chomsky praising Venezuela as a good example of socialism back when it wasn't really that of a disaster?

He might have praised it as a good example of a government which is ideologically socialist. That doesn't mean that the country itself is socialist.

And yet Bernie Sanders once praised the Soviet Union and said people waiting in long lines for bread was somehow a good thing.

He was talking about Nicaragua, not the Soviet Union. Besides, his comment was more to criticise the policies of the United States rather than to praise Nicaragua.

Hitler was democratically elected,

No he wasn't. He lost the 1932 Presidential election to Hindenburg and was later appointed chancellor and then merged the two offices of president and chancellor into the office of fuehrer after Hindenburg's death.

Does that somehow make Hitler better?

Even if Hitler were democratically elected, that is a misreading of the point I was making. The results of Hitler's policies were far worse than that of Mussolini's. If we lived in an alternate universe where everything remained the same other than Hitler being democratically elected, we could conclude that whether or not a fascist regime came to power democratically, the results would be awful. However, because democratically elected socialist governments have been successful when compared with revolutionary socialist governments, we can conclude that whether or not a socialist government is elected democratically does have an impact on the results.

Besides, Maduro was also democratically elected.

I was referring to the fact that there is a clear distinction to be made between revolutionary socialist countries such as the Soviet Union and Maoist China and democratic socialist countries. I'd say that there is also a clear distinction to be made between Venezuela and other countries with democratically elected socialist governments, such as in regard to their protectionist economic policies

It's actually quite easy to prove the UN manipulated statistics to make it look like communism was in some ways (usually including health care) better than capitalism, see what they were doing during the Cold War.

I don't know whether this is true, but I didn't say that you were going to have a hard time convincing anybody that the UN manipulated statistics to make it look like communism was in some ways (usually including health care) better than capitalism. I said that you were going to have a hard time convincing anybody that they've manipulated statistics to make it appear as though Venezuela is a mixed economy.

How? Capitalism is defined as a voluntary exchange of goods and services, right?

It depends who's defining it. Where are you getting that definition from?

Investing in the military against the will of citizens is then, by definition, anti-capitalist, and that's the core part of the Republican ideology.

Under your definition, the governments of Thatcher, Reagan and Pinochet are anti-capitalist. As I've said, you're going to alienate a lot of people if you use that definition of capitalism.