Biden wants to Appoint Communist to take over Banking: Scary & Unbelievable

[Loren Pechtel]

So now we're talking about lockdowns...

Seriously, we'd already have this pandemic licked if everybody would get their vaccine.

Anti-vaxxers are just perpetuating the process of natural selection.

But they're going to drag a lot of other people down with them.

No--the vaccine doesn't appear to be good enough to stop Delta. We still need masks.

However, vaccine plus proper mask use would stop it. I see more misuse than proper use, though.

 

[barbos]

I am reading her wiki. She is no communist, in the later USSR there were almost no communists among higher ranks, they were all conformists, they turned into capitalists instantly when it no longer suited them. Pretty much all billionaires who are older than 50 in Russia today are former ranking communist operatives. She is no exception. Her thesis is obviously a garbage, but she had to do it.

Reminded me a guy whom I mentioned earlier. A teacher of History of Comunist Party of USSR, mandatory in university. I ignored that shit completely, got zero grade in that class and was formally expelled.
When I came back from the Army service, USSR was near dissolution the fucker was teaching....... history of monarchy. Go figure.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

So now we're talking about lockdowns...

Seriously, we'd already have this pandemic licked if everybody would get their vaccine.

Anti-vaxxers are just perpetuating the process of natural selection.

But they're going to drag a lot of other people down with them.

No--the vaccine doesn't appear to be good enough to stop Delta. We still need masks.

However, vaccine plus proper mask use would stop it. I see more misuse than proper use, though.

I think the vaccine alone WOULD HAVE been enough if everyone had just gotten it. Yes, I understand that, under current conditions, we need the mask, but a city NEAR me has already been able to relax the mask mandate whereas my own city's numbers are still too high. I think that people's refusal to get the vaccine is at least a contributor to the fact that we still have to wear the damn masks.

Fortunately, we have very few anti-maskers in the area, thank Frith.

 

[Bomb#20]

An anarcho-communist does not necessarily call for overthrowing the government as long as the government is able to do something as simple and elementary as staying out of some people's way. Anarcho-communism is not a form of government, but it is a method of organizing people in spite of the government, in absence of the government, or with the tacit support of the government. ...
But when I talk about any philosophy whatsoever, never forget that I am a dragon. We are not even orthodox about being unorthodox. ...

Dragons eat farmers' cows, so farmers acquire a king who offers his daughter in marriage to whichever knight slays the dragon. You can't really expect the dragon to like that. Dragons aren't as unorthodox as they think they are -- as long as there've been farmers working long hours to raise calves into cows so their children can have milk, there've been folks who live by suddenly swooping down on farmers and carrying off full-grown cows, and who tell themselves pretty stories explaining how the farmers deserve it because property is theft, and who miss the old king who stayed out of their way.

 

[Bomb#20]

This is so silly. Look at world growth up to 1800. It's almost a straight line of nothing. Then the Enlightenment thinkers gave us the ideas behind capitalism: property rights, intellectual property rights, patents, free market trade, profit motive and then the line on the graph starts skyrocketing upwards from 1800 to the present.

That's mythology, not history. Property rights have been around since before we split off from chimpanzees. People have been organizing profit-making businesses since ancient times. "Intellectual property" is what Enlightenment thinkers renamed already-existing patents and copyrights in order to keep those mercantilist concepts respectable in the dawning age of capitalism. Patents go back to the middle ages, when the first thing any businessman with an idea for making money did was offer to split his profits with the King in exchange for the King prohibiting anyone from competing with him. Copyrights were invented by Tudor-era bureaucrats for the purpose of censorship and co-opted by publishers to push competing publishers out of business; only hundreds of years later did anyone think of using copyrights to promote authorship. And the skyrocketing growth began back when mercantilism was still in vogue, decades before free trade policies were enacted.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

An anarcho-communist does not necessarily call for overthrowing the government as long as the government is able to do something as simple and elementary as staying out of some people's way. Anarcho-communism is not a form of government, but it is a method of organizing people in spite of the government, in absence of the government, or with the tacit support of the government. ...
But when I talk about any philosophy whatsoever, never forget that I am a dragon. We are not even orthodox about being unorthodox. ...

Dragons eat farmers' cows, so farmers acquire a king who offers his daughter in marriage to whichever knight slays the dragon. You can't really expect the dragon to like that. Dragons aren't as unorthodox as they think they are -- as long as there've been farmers working long hours to raise calves into cows so their children can have milk, there've been folks who live by suddenly swooping down on farmers and carrying off full-grown cows, and who tell themselves pretty stories explaining how the farmers deserve it because property is theft, and who miss the old king who stayed out of their way.

A: I am pescetarian.

B: The common interpretation of that quote is a mischaracterization of Proudhon. I think that the open source community is actually a reasonably not terrible example of Proudhon's concept of mutualism, refined and put into actual practice. He was not advancing the argument that we should go around stealing from people, but he was really advancing a more revolutionary idea. Another good example would be a workers coop, such as the Mondragon Corporation. I honestly wish that Proudhon had not used that kind of language, but in spite of the fact that I love some of his ideas, he could be a bit of a richard.

You have all learned something today. Being an anarcho-communist just means you like worker coops. Cut off the alarms, people.

https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/en/

 

[Bomb#20]

A: I am pescetarian.

B: The common interpretation of that quote is a mischaracterization of Proudhon. I think that the open source community is actually a reasonably not terrible example of Proudhon's concept of mutualism, refined and put into actual practice. He was not advancing the argument that we should go around stealing from people, but he was really advancing a more revolutionary idea. Another good example would be a workers coop, such as the Mondragon Corporation. I honestly wish that Proudhon had not used that kind of language, but in spite of the fact that I love some of his ideas, he could be a bit of a richard.

You have all learned something today. Being an anarcho-communist just means you like worker coops. Cut off the alarms, people.

https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/en/

I.e., you're using the component words of "anarcho-communist" for their penumbras, not for their meanings. The Mondragon Corporation is private property from top to bottom; and the open source community would not exist without the for-profit personal computers they write all that open source source code on. Non-profit computer manufacture would never have made computers so cheap ordinary people could buy them for their own amusement.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

A: I am pescetarian.

B: The common interpretation of that quote is a mischaracterization of Proudhon. I think that the open source community is actually a reasonably not terrible example of Proudhon's concept of mutualism, refined and put into actual practice. He was not advancing the argument that we should go around stealing from people, but he was really advancing a more revolutionary idea. Another good example would be a workers coop, such as the Mondragon Corporation. I honestly wish that Proudhon had not used that kind of language, but in spite of the fact that I love some of his ideas, he could be a bit of a richard.

You have all learned something today. Being an anarcho-communist just means you like worker coops. Cut off the alarms, people.

https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/en/

I.e., you're using the component words of "anarcho-communist" for their penumbras, not for their meanings. The Mondragon Corporation is private property from top to bottom; and the open source community would not exist without the for-profit personal computers they write all that open source source code on. Non-profit computer manufacture would never have made computers so cheap ordinary people could buy them for their own amusement.

The open source community is a perfectly valid use of the concept of mutualism as Proudhon envisioned it, and it constitutes proof that, at least in certain applications, the concept of mutualism is actually applicable. I like the kind of creative community that surrounds open source, and I believe that the concept could eventually be expanded into broader applications. Jimmy Wales implemented a similar theory for Wikipedia, and Wikipedia has been exceedingly popular.

I find those types of creative communities to be intrinsically rewarding. I like them for reasons beyond just the product. It makes me feel very happy and positive about human nature. It gives me a sense of optimism and warmth. I think that I would enjoy feeling that way more often.

If you don't want to acknowledge that Proudhon's ideas were a historical influence on the development of the open source community and of wikis, then I will not pressure you to do so, even though you would be objectively in denial of well-established fact.

 

[Swammerdami]

This debate might lead in several directions, and in this post I turn along a tangent which may have little bearing on the rest of the "debate." Still, when I read this ...

If someone has to go back to a person's college days to find something bad to say about a political opponent, it's a sure indicator they couldn't find anything in their following professional career.

It helps that in this particular instance, Omarova is opposed by people who don't know the definitions of the words they use. They expect the rest of us to cringe at the mention of Karl Marx and communism. After all, if Capitalism is so great, why are they so scared of someone who turned in a college assignment 40 years ago.

This is so silly. Look at world growth up to 1800. It's almost a straight line of nothing. Then the Enlightenment thinkers gave us the ideas behind capitalism: property rights, intellectual property rights, patents, free market trade, profit motive and then the line on the graph starts skyrocketing upwards from 1800 to the present.

I was slightly flabbergasted. @Generation55 — Where in tarnation did you get your ideas about "the Enlightenment"? Sincere question: Do you have a link or definition you would share? Note that I am NOT asking here how these ideas relate to Karl Marx and/or Saule Omarova and/or Lauren Boebert or whoever rings your chimes. I am simply bemused with what seems to be a non-standard view of "the Enlightenment."

The idea of property rights preceded the Enlightenment ... by thousands of years. Jean-Jacques Rousseau viewed property rights as “adroit usurpation” and argued that rights only come into existence when people consent to them through the social contract. The Enlightenment of Rousseau et al is cited as leading directly to the French Revolution. I'm a little fuzzy on that event: Was affirming the ownership rights of the landed gentry one of that Revolution's key goals?

Wikipedia's article on the  History of patent law certainly doesn't link patents' origin to the Enlightenment. England's King Edward III granted a patent to John Kempe and company in 1331, even before 15th-century patents issued in France and Italy. The Greek city of Sybaris issued patents to encourage invention as early as 500 BC. Yes that's 'BC' with a 'B.'

It would be an interesting topic for another thread, but I am also interested in the "straight line of nothing [which] starts skyrocketing upwards from 1800 ..." What are we graphing, and where are our cites? And do you really think the Industrial Revolution owes more to David Hume than to science and technology?

I realize that you are assigning great impact to the writings of Adam Smith, but the right-wing caricature of that thinker is almost as flawed as their caricatures of "communism":

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

...

In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.

...

Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.

Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.

The interest of [businessmen] is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public ... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ... ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined ... with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men ... who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public

Gasp! This great thinker, foe of Karl Marx, Saule Omarova and Lex Luthor, even supported a progressive income tax! Will the Boebert-Hannity ilk desert him?

It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

Richard Stallman is one of the forefathers of the open source community. Here, he explains how the thinking behind it constitutes a synthesis of anarchism, communism, and capitalism.

I mean it might be true that open source software now dominates the mobile market and is present in every aspect of our lives, but if it is a successful idea, are we allowed to call it communism?

People get triggered by the word "communism," and it is stupid that they get triggered. Most people, when they say "communism," what they really mean is something more like "de jure state monopoly" or something similar. That is not what I am thinking when I say "communism."

Communism is really just acting as a community. Let's pretend that Julia, Brianna, and Abby were all growing vegetable gardens. When their crops came to fruition, they simply gave away most of their crops to their friends. Now, let's say that they were all to get together for a potluck dinner, and they were to use Julia's chili peppers, Brianna's potatoes, and Abby's string beans to make three unique dishes, and they all sat around a table and drank a wine that Brianna made out of Abby's grapes from ceramic cups that Julia had made herself.

Now, you do not have to call that communism, but it is communism.

Whenever you point out a successful real world example of communism, you get a "no true Scotsman" argument, but I think that the time has come that we stop avoiding the word "communism" when we are talking about ideas that are quite obviously communist.

In my ideals, though, I am not just an anarcho-communist, but I am really closer to Richard Stallman's way of thinking. I am not just an anarcho-communist, but I also like to sell things I have made. Some people would say that I was more of an "anarcho-capitalist." Well, sometimes, I am. So what? I don't give a damn.

Some people that say they are "anarcho-capitalists" are really implying that they adhere to the mutualistic ideas of Proudhon and Pyotr Kropotkin, which are really "anarcho-communist" but which are considered to be a subset of "anarchism." The "anarchist" component of "anarcho-capitalism" is really collectivist, but people that identify with the philosophy avoid openly acknowledging it because they just get tired of being trolled by people that want to try to make every conversation a so-called debate to try to hold them personally to blame for every sin of Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky.

However, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's "mutualism" is undeniably a left-leaning principle for the organization of society, and even though it is officially "anarchist" and not "anarcho-communist," I believe that Peter Kropotkin's efforts to revive Proudhon's ideas were an important reason behind the continued survival of anarchist philosophy in the 21st Century.

And there is something very queer about anarcho-communism. I mean literally. Thanks to a conversation between Pyotr Kropotkin and Oscar Wilde, Wilde produced a historic essay called "The Heart of Man Under Socialism," which inspired the LGBTQIAA community, in generations that followed, to embrace those ideals as part of their philosophy. Harry Hay, co-founder of the Mattachine Society and founder of the Radical Faeries, was both a socialist and an anarchist, and his interest in paleontology further insinuates that he may have been influenced by the writings of Pyotr Kropotkin, who was also interested in evolution.

If you own an Android device, then you are holding in your hand physical evidence that anarcho-communism is good for something, even though I am not sure it proves that anarcho-communism can necessarily cure all of the ills of this world or provide all solutions to its problems. Even so, if you bought an Android device of any kind, then you must have believed that anarcho-communism was worth something to you, even though you did not know that that was what you were buying.

I am not to blame for the ignorance of others. Communist philosophy is much more broad than just the writings of Karl Marx, and besides, Karl Marx did not even invent the political left. He merely ruined it. Furthermore, the Marxists actually persecuted the followers of Pyotr Kropotkin. The last time, in Russian history, when the followers of Pyotr Kropotkin were allowed to speak openly, it was at Pyotr Kropotkin's state funeral. Before the dirt had even cooled over Kropotkin's grave, the Marxists stabbed them right in the back. They were brutally suppressed thereafter.

There is a world of communist philosophy outside of Marxism, and I believe that Marxism is really the weakest example of communism. I detest authoritarian philosophy. It is repellent to me on an instinctive level.

If there is anybody in the world that sees Richard Stallman as somebody to be afraid of, then they are a fool. He is one of the most caring and decent individuals currently living, and he has helped to change our very way of life in a way that I think most people would see as benevolent. When I say that anarchism and communism are a part of my philosophy, I mean it in the same way that Richard Stallman does. Rather than thinking anarchism and communism in terms of excluding other ideas, I see anarchism and communism as concepts that can enrich other ideas. We cannot enrich our heart by spiting out our liver.

Synthesis ideas are inherently attractive to me. After all, a dragon is nothing more than a synthesis.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Wondering if G55 has ever read any of her writings. I'd bet not. He's happier having propaganda spoon-fed to him.

I see you didn't watch the videos I posted. They confront her over her writings. I was reading what people on th eleft were saying about this and they weren't even mentioning her writings. They just had the standard "The communist boogeyman! LOL!" No critical thought whatsoever. Just bumper sticker politics from the that side of the spectrum.
Republicans had the facts and are grilling her. But of course, communists have to downplay communism taking over. If they were upfront about it, it would be too hard to infiltrate.

Just please use your logic here. Democrats have been wanting a Marxist agenda for a while now. Republicans said that the people behind Biden who want communism will be perfect to take over clueless Joe. Now all of a sudden Biden nominates a known communist to lead banking. If this isn't deliberate, then it's just one big coincidence that Biden is falling right into what the Republicans said was gonna happen. Weird, right?

It's like a right-wing clickbait article generator became sentient.

 

[funinspace]

It would be an interesting topic for another thread, but I am also interested in the "straight line of nothing [which] starts skyrocketing upwards from 1800 ..." What are we graphing, and where are our cites? And do you really think the Industrial Revolution owes more to David Hume than to science and technology?

Without expanding in a detailed argument, I'd say the invention of the printing press, and its follow on improvements ramped up the exchange of knowledge and ideas, which eventually became the industrial revolution. And the steam engine took center stage. Additionally, if one looks at GDP per capita, the rapid growth of GDP doesn't really start screaming higher until mid part of the 20th century in the US. Now parts of Europe, started ramping up fast in the mid 19th century, which makes sense considering that they were more developed than the US at the time.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence

Maddison's estimates of GDP per capita at purchasing power parity in 1990 international dollars for selected European and Asian nations between 1500 and 1950

US GDP per capita:

 

[Canard DuJour]

The paper in question sounds a lot like the Chicago Plan advocated by Irving Fisher, Henry Simons and Milton Friedman (extreme free-market liberals). Private financial institutions would be perfectly free to intermediate between savers, borrowers and investors and would still have access to Fed funds. But the power to create money on Main St would be insulated from the casino banking of Wall St:

"The ability to transfer such benefits from federally backed banks to affiliated securities firms, derivatives dealers, and asset managers is the source of so-called “implicit” public subsidy that (financial holding companies) currently enjoy. While notoriously difficult to quantify, this implicit subsidy has been a crucial driver of the unprecedented consolidation and concentration in the U.S. financial industry since the 1990s. It is also at the very core of the “too big to fail” (“TBTF”) phenomenon that came to symbolize a recurring pattern of privatizing gains and socializing losses of large financial institutions.

Again, none of this means that private finance would be forced to disappear or “shrink into irrelevance.” The proposed reform would simply redefine or restore its proper social function. In effect, it would force private finance to conform to its own self-narrative as the realm of pure “intermediation” between private suppliers and users of “scarce” capital.245 In this sense, the restructuring of the Fed’s balance sheet, envisioned here, would allow for a more transparent, fair, and socially beneficial delineation between the properly “private” and the legitimately “public” spheres in modern finance."

Or as Henry Simons (another the commie rat) put it,

"“in the very nature of the system, banks will flood the economy with money substitutes during booms and perpetuate futile efforts at general liquidation thereafter”


The only losers would be the old boy network of politically connected Wall St banksters - as exemplified by Senator Toomey.

 

[laughing dog]

The paper does advocate moving all transactions accounts from private banks to the Federal Reserve. Regardless of the wisdom of such a policy, the Comptroller of the Currency does not have the authority nor the power to accomplish that goal. It would require federal legislation in the case of federally chartered banks. I am not a constitutional expert, but I doubt that Congress could constitutionally intrude on state chartered banks or other state chartered financial institutions.]

So, it would appear to this observer, that Senator Toomey's concerns are driven by kneejerk ignorance.

 

[Patooka]

You can't win this one. You look foolish arguing against the evidence.

Anyone else appreciate the irony the person most likely to mistake shadow debate arguments and whataboutisms whilst being incredibly thin on facts is the one harping about the virtues of evidence?

Everyone who says they love communism is not banging on the door to Cuba or North Korea. Let me know when you guys put your money where your mouths are and go to your utopian communist paradises.

Sure. The instant you go and live in a free market paradise like Albania or Somalia. Not a lot of socialist programs in those safe spaces of capitalism.

 

[Bomb#20]

The idea of property rights preceded the Enlightenment ... by thousands of years. Jean-Jacques Rousseau viewed property rights as “adroit usurpation” and argued that rights only come into existence when people consent to them through the social contract. The Enlightenment of Rousseau et al is cited as leading directly to the French Revolution. I'm a little fuzzy on that event: Was affirming the ownership rights of the landed gentry one of that Revolution's key goals?

Voltaire was the Enlightenment. "That madman Rousseau" was the grand prophet of the Endarkenment.

 

[TomC]

Everyone who says they love communism is not banging on the door to Cuba or North Korea. Let me know when you guys put your money where your mouths are and go to your utopian communist paradises.

Sure. The instant you go and live in a free market paradise like Albania or Somalia. Not a lot of socialist programs in those safe spaces of capitalism.

Pretty much this.

I prefer a blend of approaches to different social issues. I'm not interested in an ideological "one size fits all" approach.

As an example,
I want a government run health care system. Health care needs are too complex and changing for the majority of people to sort out on their own.

Luxury cars are completely different. Let Mercedes-Benz and Cadillac duke it out for market share with innovative styling and amenities and whatever.

Health care should not be a competitive market. Cars should be a competitive market.
Tom

 

[Ford]

So mainland China - a country which is run by a self-identified "communist" party - is in fact a dirt poor nation which lives in the dark and totally does not have Walmart, Buick, and gleaming cities filled with banks and billionaires.

Got it.

When China was actually communist it was a dirt poor nation. My wife lived through the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward. She has told me enough about that time that I do not ask for more because I do not want to stir up memories.

Modern China is communist pretty much in name only.

Oh, I know. That was just for the benefit of our new buddy who doesn't seem to grasp that the Cold War is over. China is communist like North Korea is a democratic republic, but Gen 55 seems like one of those people who will argue the Nazis were socialist because it was in the name.

China is every bit as authoritarian as ever, and what they're doing in Hong Kong (and what they might do to Taiwan) is very, very worrisome. Maybe if our new member would spend some time reading up on current events instead of trying to relive the Red Scare, we'd get some productive discussions, but that seems unlikely.

 

[funinspace]

China is every bit as authoritarian as ever, and what they're doing in Hong Kong (and what they might do to Taiwan) is very, very worrisome. Maybe if our new member would spend some time reading up on current events instead of trying to relive the Red Scare, we'd get some productive discussions, but that seems unlikely.

Is that before or after he recommends sending a Naval hospital ship to the Taiwan straight, instead of an antiquated Battleship? Too much reading of the Hasbro Guide to Military History? Guess that's better than saying that the Continental Army took over the airports during our revolution...

 

[Ford]

Everyone who says they love communism is not banging on the door to Cuba or North Korea. Let me know when you guys put your money where your mouths are and go to your utopian communist paradises.

Sure. The instant you go and live in a free market paradise like Albania or Somalia. Not a lot of socialist programs in those safe spaces of capitalism.

Pretty much this.

I prefer a blend of approaches to different social issues. I'm not interested in an ideological "one size fits all" approach.

As an example,
I want a government run health care system. Health care needs are too complex and changing for the majority of people to sort out on their own.

Luxury cars are completely different. Let Mercedes-Benz and Cadillac duke it out for market share with innovative styling and amenities and whatever.

Health care should not be a competitive market. Cars should be a competitive market.
Tom

Ah, but no doubt someone will be along shortly to wail about how inefficient and ineffective government-run programs are (while fully supporting throwing as much money at the military as possible and using said military to overthrow nations) and how "the free market" is the only way to go!

Never mind that the solution to "government is bad" would be to...I dunno...fix government, but that's not the right wing way, is it? Starve the beast, bemoan the state of the government, then when you fool enough people to get put in charge, run things even worse than your opponents! Of course the real plan is to divert the trillions the government spends into the coffers of the wealthy who paid for those election victories, so if that means millions suffer due to inadequate (government) or wildly overpriced (private) healthcare, so be it. The "invisible hand" must be given precedence. Ideology over public good. Profits over people.