+5. My parents had a healthy relationship and didn’t divorce until well after I moved out. We were lower middle class, but in the first world that means you have a pretty good life. I’m an autist so social life was a nightmare, and while I didn’t think adults were going to abuse me I did think their authority and institutions were illegitimate which caused some conflict.

Sure, this event on the other side of the world is tragic or whatever, but isn’t the real story here that my political opponents are bad people?

This is so sad. Even weirdos deserve to farm those sweet, sweet, totally legitimate 1,900% yields

Grove Street is for life homie, are you down?

Moral judgements about individual choices and behavior are not necessary here. The fact is that the behavior of problem drivers, however it came to occur, threatens public safety and must be discouraged if we want to protect the lives of innocent people. I will readily admit that it is a moral judgement that public safety is more important that the convenience of a relative few, you’ve got me there.

I suppose it’s not ideal that discouraging dangerous driving has to take the form of punishment but I’m not sure how else this important goal could be accomplished. Is there anywhere in the world that has successfully addressed this problem using other methods? For better or for worse people respond to these incentives, and in the absence of better alternatives we have to accept this reality if we want government to be effective.

It’s not ideal that wealthier people are discouraged less by monetary fines, but the province of Ontario does also impose non-monetary demerit points that will eventually lead to license suspension regardless of the ability to pay.

I don’t expect you to take my word or anyone else’s for this, feel free to look up a TTC system map and review some of the schedules if you want to have a better idea of just how much coverage the TTC provides in Toronto, all with prices much lower than the total cost of ownership of a private vehicle.

I’m not suggesting that the moral character of the individual is in any way relevant here, and I’m glad driver’s licenses are not issued or revoked on that basis. This is instead a straightforward question of public safety - anyone who consistently demonstrates that they are unable or unwilling to safely operate a motor vehicle on public roads according to the clearly posted and non-negotiable law should not permitted to risk the lives of others, and will be subject to escalating sanctions in order to accomplish that. There is definitely room for improvement in the system but it is fundamentally reasonable and sound. Yes, essentially anyone who lives in Toronto can get by without a car. Even if someone is severely physically disabled and confined to a wheelchair they can still use not only the fully accessible bus and subway system but also a separate disabled-specific transit system that provides door-to-door service using the same fee scale as the broader system. Toronto may not be a perfect utopia but it has gotten pretty close to solving this particular problem.

I lived in Toronto for 15 years and I never owned a car, no you very much do not need one to get to your job, go shopping, and participate in society, especially not at Dufferin south of frickin’ Bloor. People who get caught speeding so often that they can’t afford to keep driving can… just stop driving and take transit, which is what most people there do. The idea that they literally have no other choice and will be forced into prison is just absurd.

2, with socks, in the tropics, directly under a ceiling fan

Yeah I don’t really understand that part either, but it has happened

They’re highly motivated. Because they believe in a wrathful god they know whatever is waiting for them on the other side is going to be unpleasant

If deflation was persistent, couldn’t debt have a very low or even negative interest rate?

Taking senseless risks for little or no reward, terrible attitudes toward health & safety

And that pervert who looked at one and though ‘I should hit that and start a global pandemic’

Borrow it from NewEgg, then return it

Look at me. I am the reddit now.

Yeah absolutely, I’ll be happy if I get 4 years out of boots costing twice that much

When was the Soviet Union invaded? Other than the Nazi betrayal of the plan to divide Europe between them and the Soviets, which happened years after the end of the Holodomor, the USSR was the one on the offensive during this period, for example in Afghanistan, China, Finland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia.

Gosh, I wonder why someone whose only crime was being a bit more successful than the average peasant might have been angry about seeing their friends and family murdered, having their livelihood taken away, or watching some aparatchik experiment on their society with some economic system he’s only ever read about. Yes, that one’s a real mystery to me.

China was indeed quite backwards and devastated by the Japanese invasion and the civil war, but somehow severe famine didn’t occur until after the communist victory and a decade of reconstruction. It was caused by Mao’s Great Leap Forward, imposed from above by people who had clearly read extensively about political philosophy and never agriculture.

Subsistence farming in sub-saharan Africa has very little to do with capitalism. Where are the capitalists? There is essentially no capital! Feudal warlordism is a bad system, but trying to use it to criticize something completely different is nonsense. The food situation in America could hardly be more different, even during severe recessions essentially nobody starves, and in fact one of the biggest public health challenges they’re facing is that even relatively poor people have access to so much cheap, appetizing, calorie-dense food that without taking steps to avoid it they become severely obese.

Countries fight wars of conquest independent of their economic system, essentially any country strong enough to impose their will on others will almost certainly do so sooner or later, as we’ve seen throughout all of human history under a variety of economic and political systems. Trying to somehow tie the crimes of Israel and and Nazi Germany to their economic system while ignoring all other factors shows how weak your argument is - you are unable to criticize capitalism directly so you instead take a stab at guilt by association. Perhaps the problem is having too much power concentrated in the hands of leaders? Nope, it’s definitely because businesses are privately owned. Surely Palestinian Nationalists and Zionists would get along if only there were bread lines.

Ignorance is when your opponent reads history, bad faith is when he refuses to accept your twisted interpretation of it. Thank you for enlightening me. You would have to be willfully blind to still believe Marxism offers real solutions and that actual existing communism is preferable to capitalist democracy, even with its many shortcomings, after having witnessed the events of the 20th century.

Football fields were the compromise

The Holodomor happened years before the second world war started, The Great Leap Forward was over a decade after it had ended. Both of these were man-made famines inflicted during peacetime by communist governments upon their own people. Millions of people do not starve every year under capitalism, that’s just ridiculous.

Why would we talk about how empires treat their conquered subjects? That has nothing to do with capitalism and communism, you’re just trying to change the subject. I’m defending empires, war and conquest are terrible no matter who’s doing it.

Ignorance and bad faith? Every accusation is a confession.

The Soviet Union and Maoist China both had central authorities and millions of people starved to death because of collectivization. Do you think they just weren’t trying hard enough?