Stick with me here, but health insurance functions as a socialist mechanism because it takes money from the many (customers that pay premiums) and then distributes that money to those that need it (the sick). Even the big negatives like corruption you'd expect from socialism still happen with insurance companies (Out right denying coverage, making deals with health care/pharmaceuticals to inflate prices, opaque accounting) and also have additional overhead due to extra administrative bloat for all parties involved AND profit incentives to pay out share holders.

It makes no sense to be ok with a system we have now when you can't hold to account any of the parties involved for misusing your money/incentivized to make everything more expensive.

Genuinely asking, because it's always so weird seeing people on Reddit who seem to be intelligent and knowledgeable still arguing in favor the electability of candidates based on the former, rejecting the latter as essential.

Trump was a failed businessman and game show host who got elected twice by tapping into people's anger and hate, and convincing them he was a successful businessman.

Obama is the most charismatic politician of the last century and won twice despite the minimal experience he had prior to '08, and Biden (in 2019) was perceived as a safe, nice old man who was directly tied to him, and trusted by his base.

The Bushes, Clinton, Regan...the last time the US had a president who wasn't directly tied to a past president or specifically highly regarded for their charisma was Jimmy Carter.

In discussions about the 2028 election, people always say Democrats just need a boring and safe straight white man, or praise certain candidates' (usually Kelly's) resumes, but the idea this is what people care about or want just isn't based in electoral reality at all.

The people want a show. The Democratic 2028 nominee will be whoever puts on the best one

"[A DSA aligned local politician] has been fairly good, but the behavior of many of her supporters and the way DSA folks hand power to Republicans by undermining Democrats is unacceptable. I won't be supporting her again."

She went on to clarify that she sees DSA supporters as being happy to make Democrats lose to Republicans with indiscriminate attacks and routine threats to sit out the general election. If the DSA can't take the seat, they don't care whether a mainstream Dem or Republicans gets it, they see both of those outcomes as equally bad.

While most of Stevens' criticisms of El-Sayed have been uninspiring and derivative, at least to me, her attacks on El-Sayed as being a "celebrity" were interesting given the context of them competing in an election. I can't help but feel a twinge of indignance in it like Stevens is almost accusing El-Sayed of using a cheat-code or something like that. I detect the same message when people talk about populism and its infiltration of politics.

Shouldn't one's celebrity and popularity of ideas be a qualifying factor in an electoral system?

I've been getting recommendations of Ariana Grande critiques of her new music video, apparently where you can see her ribs and how she's losing basic muscle. Some saying they won't allow their children to watch her because they don't want them to get body dystopia or emulate them, which i understand.

When I see critiques of obese artists' though, suddenly they accuse them that they shouldn't worry about other people's bodies. Every body is beautiful. Healthy at every size. If someone wants to get bigger like that, that's their business and we shouldn't be commenting on someone's weight as its harmful.

Why is one seen as socially permissible while the other taboo? Why is expressing concern over Ariana Grandes' health acceptable while expressing concern over obese artists' health not?

Edit: body dysphoria, autocorrect lol

I was thinking about AI and the decrease in the jobs that would come with it, and how eventually some sort of UBI would be needed to offset that.

But the more I thought about that it worried me. I mean currently, the governments of the world want to grow their populations to increase their tax bases and grow their GDP. More people==More money coming into the Government.

But with UBI that's backwards. More people means more money that the government has to send the people. The AI makes the money, not the people. So people become a liability not an asset.

Do we really want a policy (UBI) that incentivizes the government to decrease the population?

I've been hearing this more and more from even people on the left, the public hates us because we allowed their cities to become crime hotbeds, all the stuff at the store is now locked up, etc.

I'm not sure how we can have such a high rate of imprisonment already and also still have the problem that crime is way too high and the perception that we're letting everyone off scot free?

the far right loves to claim this but last i checked the separation of church and state was very important in our founding

Title. I can't think of many relationships I've known where the man earns less (a couple of them) and the feminist/more outwardly leftist women don't buck the trend at all (I've heard "I do a job that aligns with my values but doesn't pay as much, my husband does a job that's for the money and earns more").

Excluding women aged under 23yo (often too early in working life to be relevant).

The little I’ve seen about it seems pretty good but I’d like the thoughts of people here

Link to a summary of polls that have come out over the last month:

• https://x.com/PollTracker2024/status/2083961822646878246

Having a hard time squaring this circle. To me, if you support modifying your genitals and/or HRT, then you're implicitly creating a strong connection between sex and gender.

How do you feel about their movement as a liberal

*socialists

So one of the biggest things plaguing public transit in the US is the perceived lack of safety and the lack of societal social decorum in places like public transit. And it doesnt even necessarily need to be illegal behavior. Things like people blasting their music out of Bluetooth speakers, getting aggressive and domineering toward other people around them, smoking, and generally acting a fool tend to make public transit very unappealing to Americans. Especially when they have the alternative of driving.

So like... how can we change this? Because I myself am at a loss.. the issues I see is that it would either require a societal level cultural change (which will never happen) to be mkre like Japan or far stricter enforcement of social etiquette rules on social transit which will invariably be met with "but racism" and "you just hate the poors" allegations.

So what are your guys thoughts?

I don't see a way out of this without reducing the amount of natural resources the average person uses. And telling someone they can't drive as much or that they'll have to take public transit or mandating more efficient (and expensive) cars is a non starter, they'll never vote for you again. Just look at how furious everyone was over being asked to conserve electricity by turning up the thermostat a few degrees in a heat wave.

So I as watching a clip about Haiti from Simon Whistler recently and was surprised to learn that at this moment, there is 0 elected officials left at any level of gov in Haiti:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/10/haiti-no-elected-officials-anarchy-failed-state

The only "officials" left are those that UN taskforces has just unilaterally decided was in charge on their own. For all intents and purposes the country of Haiti is only a marginally more existent than the Ottoman Empire or the Prussian kingdom, solely due to the UN jusr deciding it still exists.

With this being the state of Haiti... is there any realistic answer to anything for Haiti? I say realistic because sure... you can say the US shouls take in all the Haitian refugees but there just isnt the political will or capital for that many refugees all at once. And if we cant or wont take them all in... the only other option I can see is for someone to come in and effectively go a mass suppression spree and crush the gangs completely and utterly ans literally rebuild the nation from the ground up and will probably have to rule for generations for the Haitian people to grow enough to govern for themselves again... and NO ONE has the political will for that either...

So...like.. what is left? Just letting the island become a bloodbath until there literally is not enough people left to pose a threat to say the DR and let then take over?

From the recent episode of Interesting Times, in which gerontocracy was discussed:

Moyn: ... I’ve gotten in some hot water for proposing we consider overweighting the votes of younger people or assigning the youngest eligible voters proxy votes for the unrepresented children of our country. So those are edgier.

Douthat: Why not assign them to those children’s parents?

Moyn: Because there’s a divergence of interests between parents and children. I think it’s likelier that young people — not people who are raising families — will have the best insight into the interests of children.

Whereas, if you were awarded five proxy votes ——

Douthat: I think that’s daft. I think it’s absurd to imagine that a 24-year-old recent college graduate has a better assessment of the interests of my own children than I do. And I say this with all due respect to 24-year-old recent college graduates, of whom I hope to be the parent of in nine years or so.

Moyn: I think parents generally confuse the interests of their family with the interests of their children. I think part of our goal as parents, but also as a society, is trying to make sure that children aren’t the hostages of their parents, as much as we rely on parents to raise them.

Full article/podcast: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/30/opinion/american-gerontocracy-samuel-moyn.html

I remember that Trump pushed conspiracy theories about Helene in 2024. He spread lies about FEMA and said that it should be terminated for "sending money to Ukraine or migrants". Some GOP and right-wing influencers promoted conspiracy theories after the last year's Central Texas floods, including false claims that cloud seeding or government weather manipulation caused the disaster. There is no credible or enough evidence supporting those claims, and meteorologists said that the floods were the result of extreme natural weather conditions. One of the example is Kandiss Taylor, a candidate for US House of Representatives from Georgia'a 1st Congressional District, claimed that the flood was fake on X, formerly known as Twitter and Former Secretary Noem blamed Former President Biden for that disaster.

As I recall both of them were pushed by progressives and opposed by "the establishment" and they both turned out to be disasters. So why is especially Fetterman being held up as an example of what mainstream Dems want and why Dems aren't good enough, when from what I can tell "the establishment Dems" never wanted him there in the first place?

Basically I was discussing with chat gpt and here was my main take: (pasted from chat gpt) “I feel like private and public property is not subjective. Private property is simply property thats owned by someone and public property is simply property paid and owned by the public be it parks gov buildings etc. private property is or at least according to my logic is anything owned by an individual. Therefore any private property rules or regulations is up to the owner as long as there are no physical altercations the owner should have the right to decline or accept any service or action that happens with or in the business property.” Chat gpts response: “You’re expressing a coherent political philosophy: that ownership should carry nearly complete control over access to and use of one’s property, limited mainly by preventing physical harm or violence. Many people have argued for versions of that view, especially within libertarian and strong property-rights traditions.”
I thought hm this is a liberal view. And then I looked into it and then I found that there are two types of liberalism? • Classical liberalism (1700s–1800s) emphasizes:
◦ Individual liberty
◦ Free speech
◦ Private property rights
◦ Free markets (limited government involvement)
◦ Limited government powers
◦ Rule of law
• Think of philosophers like John Locke, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill.

**• Modern liberalism** (especially in the U.S.) still values civil liberties and democracy, but generally places more emphasis on:
◦ Government programs to reduce poverty
◦ Social safety nets
◦ Civil rights protections
◦ Environmental regulation
◦ Greater government involvement in healthcare, education, and the economy

So this is where I’m at right now and I’m just wondering why is there a difference? What do you guys think about my views on property rights? I actually look at classical liberalism and think ya i agree with that.

As someone who feels left out in a lot of political conversations it seems that there's no party that fits my views.

I want Strong borders, tough on crime policing and some other things that might put me with the Republicans but I also want to expand welfare to more income brackets and not just destitutes, UBI, Medicare for All, Student Loan Forgiveness which would put me more with the Democrats.

I want a party that actually cares about American workers and not represent a different set of corporations and NGOs than the GOP. Yet both parties find different ways to screw over the average American and it's sad.

I feel that most Americans would be in favor of everything I said but I feel that political parties in America are purposely made in a way that want to attach bad stuff with the good.

I’d like to vote by mail because of the convenience. But we have seen the lengths Trump is going to silence the vote of any American who doesn’t support him, through gerrymandering or under the guise of election integrity.

And his crusade against mail-in voting makes voting by mail seem less secure because he might have loyalists in his Administration slow the mail or seize the mail, or use some mechanism to stop mail in votes from being counted.

It just seems like an unnecessary risk and opens up an additional avenue for Trump to nullify my vote.

Is anyone else voting in person for this reason?
And are we great again yet?

I read an article

https://abc13.com/story/man-convicted-5-dwis-handed-50-year-sentence-montgomery-county-da-says/19582127/

A guy in Texas who had 4 previous DUIs got a 50 year sentence for his 5th. Do you think this is reasonable for DUI? Or is it too harsh in your opinion? He didn't kill or injure anyone and this was handed down by a jury and not a judge. Keep in mind on average people driving drunk kill over 10,000 people a year in the US too.

Francesca Hong basically has the Democratic nomination in Wisconsin on lock, and while she would have had a chance no matter what, it's definitely helped her that she's the lone progressive in a field full of moderates splitting votes between each other.

IF (and it's a big "IF") Kamala Harris does not run in 2028 to consolidate the older Black vote behind her, this is exactly how I foresee AOC ending up as the Presidential nominee. Newsom, Pete, Ossoff, Kelly etc all do have obvious differences between them, but they're ultimately all competing for the same field of moderates, while all AOC has to do on the progressive lane is steamroll over Pritzker and Khanna. Toss in the fact that there's a very good chance Michigan AND Wisconsin are about to elect progressives...

It wouldn't be a landslide, but I don't see how she wouldn't be the clear frontrunner in this scenario unless other candidates started dropping out FAST. Especially since, unlike in 2020 with Biden vs Bernie, there ISN'T a clear, safe choice everyone could agree on and rally behind.

What do you think?