Edward Cree @soundnfury@schelling.pt

@Catsandcatsandcats Someone has to work in order for there to be roofs. And capitalism's system for arranging this — where employers must to some extent compete for labour — is far more just than communism, where the power is placed in the hands of the State, an organisation which faces *no* competition.
I strongly recommend you read _Time Will Run Back_ by Henry Hazlitt, to understand where power *truly* lies under capitalism (hint: it's not with your boss, nor 'the rich').

@Catsandcatsandcats Maybe 401ks are fucked-up in ways that the British equivalent isn't. I must concede that I am not an expert on US investment markets or law.
But I agree that defined-benefit plans are a bad idea, precisely because of their risk profile. A defined-contribution plan would have just lost some value (and perhaps not that much if it'd been bond-heavy late in life) rather than collapsing entirely.

@Catsandcatsandcats dude, Marx's whole schtick was that the capitalist class, defined by receiving income from capital, were exploiting the proletarian class, defined by receiving income from labour. How does that work when the proletariat own capital too? And what do you think long-term pension funds are investing in, if not the means of production?

@georgespolitzer You know, if you had actual arguments, you wouldn't need to (a) throw playground insults (b) accuse me of racism on zero evidence (c) accuse me of purposely misgendering you, rather than *not caring about your fucking gender because the only people for whom the contents of your pants are relevant are your lover and your doctor*.

@georgespolitzer I didn't mention climate. But since you bring it up: economic estimates of the likely net impact of the level of warming predicted by the latest IPCC report *have confidence intervals that cross zero*. That is, we can't even reliably determine whether the warming across the 21st century will be a good or a bad thing for humanity.

@georgespolitzer In my native dialect, 'he' has a secondary use as a gender-neutral pronoun, correctly used when gender is unknown and irrelevant (a situation in which some other dialects would use singular 'they'). I didn't know and don't care what your pronoun is. If you want to call that a 'microaggression' then you do you, but I'll keep speaking my language.
I was using the third person *for rhetorical effect*, to frame that remark as an aside to the audience rather than directed at you.

@georgespolitzer I never even at any point *suspected* you were coloured, nor even considered whether you might me. So please explain to me how your race could have — hah — coloured my opinion of you?

@georgespolitzer Oh great, he's brought out the racism card. Here's a hint: you're not stupid 'cos you're coloured. You're stupid 'cos you're *you*. Until you just mentioned it I had no idea what colour your skin was, so how could anything I say about you be racist?

@georgespolitzer Chileans who studied at Chicago are not "basically everyone in the chicago school of economics".

@georgespolitzer OK, we've reached the "you ascribing beliefs to me that I do not hold" phase of this. I do not in fact "think class is purely how much income you make". Rather, income is one of the factors that determines your ability to enter some classes, but is generally neither necessary or sufficient.
You are essentialising and oversimplifying.

@georgespolitzer Not euphemistic, no; just historically illiterate. Goes well with your economic illiteracy tbh.
(1) Pinochet's règime, while totalitarian, was not fascist.
(2) Chile following the writings of the Chicago school does not equal them being 'recruited' by Pinochet. (Where are you getting this notion from, Nancy bloody McLean?)

@georgespolitzer So you're saying I'm saying a thing that I'm not saying 'cos it's the opposite of what I'm saying, and when I say that's not what I'm saying you say I'm wrong to say that because you weren't saying I was saying that you were just saying that was basically what I was saying? WTH are you trying to say?

@georgespolitzer "Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’." — George Orwell.

@georgespolitzer wait, you think I think the political class are *Jews*? The group *most* famed for being merchants and capitalists (and widely hated and persecuted by socialists down to the present day for just that reason)?

@georgespolitzer bro do you even Hayek?
Still waiting to see any communist even begin to answer how they'd solve the Calculation Problem.

@georgespolitzer Share ownership is accessible to people well below the median salary even while maintaining a lifestyle that would seem luxurious to people of Marx's time. Not capitalism's fault if most of them choose to instead take still greater consumption in the moment.
Also, most workers today have a private pension, which (at least while they're young) has a large equities component.

@georgespolitzer hardly anyone in the West now joins anything historically recognisable as the working class. We are all bourgeois now.
Once the 'iron law of wages' turned out to actually be flimsy plastic the main rationale for socialism disappeared.
Which is why its advocates now have to manufacture ever more outlandish theories of why 'class struggle' is real, while ignoring the only real exploitative class (the political class) as that's the one they themselves want to join.