GlyphMar 8
I would never describe myself as a "capitalist" but I do kinda understand the structure and function of markets a little bit, and it's sometimes frustrating chatting with leftists whose entire experience of markets has been watching the enormous trash-fire of post-2008 dysfunctional crime-based capitalism destroy the possibility of them ever owning a home. Like if you really liked trains but lived in a town where 3/4 of the population had been killed by a chemical supply train derailment
Show threadGlyphMar 8

"We should have better public transit!"

"Transit, what do you mean?"

"Like… you know… trains"

"Trains? Those machines that kill your entire family in wracking pain with clouds of poison from a realm beyond nightmares? Why do you want more of those?"

"Yeah but not like that"

Show threadGlyphMar 8
hard to ask someone whose whole body is covered in chemical burn scars to just imagine, for a moment, a train carrying a *different* thing, like maybe some people going to have a good time at a restaurant downtown, instead of the caustic hellfire that they see every time they close their eyes
Show threadGlyphMar 8
and yet… the fact remains… this town really _could_ use a subway
Show threadGlyphMar 8
for those of you stuck on the word “capitalism” here rather than the experience I was trying to relate, you can have the same experience with “leftism” (communism, socialism, or even just any policy vaguely left of center) by trying to have a conversation with an emigrant from a repressive communist regime, i.e. any survivor of the cultural revolution, an experience I have also had, albeit less frequently
Show threadGlyphMar 8

“we should really increase the marginal corporate tax rate to account for the broad array of unadjudicated externalities that profit-seeking inherently inflicts“

“they killed my brother in the street for teaching physics”

“I’m … sorry? I am not sure what that has to do with tax policy.”

“It’s a slippery slope! They beat me so badly my left arm is a centimeter shorter than my right, to this day”

Show threadCarlton GibsonMar 8
@glyph ah, yes, the “But Stalin” argument against Social Democracy.
Show threadNeil KandalgaonkarMar 8
@carlton @glyph I see this more frequently with people from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Southeast Asia, especially from the generation that came from 1970-1990. It’s not so absurd as someone being against Stalin, which today they’d have to get from a history book
Show threadGlyph
@neilk @carlton yep. although stalin did have a pretty impressive body count and we do still have a *few* tankies here and there, a return to hardline stalinism does not seem to be a pressing concern for the modern polity
Mar 8 at 6:46pmToot!
Show threadGlyphMar 8
@neilk @carlton I should also add: it's a very different experience, personally and emotionally, to get the "but Stalin" thing from some clueless college Republican flack, as it is to get this kind of ideological rigidity by someone who has been personally, physically harmed by people wielding "socialist utopia" as a rationalization for doing so