Agreed, we are like minded in many ways. Thanks for the kind and long response. I believe your earlier comments were being taken by myself and others as fuck everyone I’ll get/I’ve got mine. Sorry I don’t mince words at the moment.

Thanks for your long replies, I read each twice. I am still unconvinced that communism could be everyone’s goal even when it’s obviously in everyone’s best interest, due to psychology.

I live in a state that voted for Trump by a 30% margin. I know how to code switch and talk to the rednecks on their issues, trying to turn them away from the cult. I talk about taking things back with unions like our grandfathers did. I remind them that we were bombed by the Army for striking for fair wage. Literally bombed from the air on American soil.

West Virginia is a strange place. A black guy can be best friends with a white guy and they’ll both deny white privilege exists. Of course all our black population is in the cities such as they are. Black folk don’t do well up a holler IYKYK.

But fuck that, I want to switch places with you for a week. You could live in my neighborhood, it’s walkable if you don’t mind a half mile up or down wild ass sidewalks. You could go to all kinds of bars, restaurants, barbers, tattoo places, and it’s all extremely local. You could get to know all kind folk. I fucking dare you. My house is pretty small but nice and you could drive my sweet Challenger. I do have four cats and a wife but I could convince her. I swear I’ll do it if I can.

Edit: in the interest of being real I tried to read the introduction of your link and I feel so much. I hated college classes. I hate overly flowery mid century glop. I need a fucking readme.txt overview for ADHD.

I do believe it could possibly work.

On the other hand it’s been about 20 years since I read the work of Marx and Weber. I had classes on social stratification, feminism, materialism, and conflict theory. I’m pretty rusty.

You make good points and ask great questions that I don’t have the answers to. Where I tend to focus in your post is at the end, where you rightly state that class society arose from the Neolithic revolution (agriculture basically)

How do we put the genie back in the bottle when we released it so very long ago? Let’s try looking at children. Education would certainly help, but can you teach empathy without the help of the parent(s)? Even if the parental figures teach empathy and structured education enforces these teachings, we come to secondary groups. This would be groups like the child’s friends or peers.They are considered more important to childhood development after a certain age (12? Not the same for everyone of course maybe an average). If the members of these secondary groups do not value empathy, the child who was taught it by their parental figures and enforced by education will begin to value it less.

I don’t know the answers. Believe me I want fully automated post-scarcity space communism. I really want it. I just can’t see the way there.

I’m the wrong person to ask these questions, I’m a socialist. I despise what capitalism has caused.

I’m not the original commenter but I agree with them and I see it like this: Under communism, you need people in power to make sure everything is “fair”, but human nature will lead many of these people to selfishly abuse their position.

Maybe it was at a certain time, but how many people are realistically getting introduced to the internet as an adult at this point in developed countries.

As many as 16% of US adults may be considered functionality illiterate in English. A further 26% have serious difficulty gaining understanding from what they read in English. From a department of education study.

Essentially a third of the country can’t read much beyond the cat in the hat, if even that.

You made a perfect example of the original question there. Emoting in italics like an old geeky chat. I’d bet you’re no younger than 35.

One of my coworkers is 43 and he’s on tiktok every day. The olds have come for the kids platform just like they/we always do.

I am a xennial as well and that was dangerously close to using lol as punctuation which will lose you that sweet xennial cred.

Seriously though I’m happy to be from this microgeneration. Analog childhood/digital adulthood makes for cool people.

Ever watch a kid who grew up after smartphones try to type?

Add to your knowledge- they are ellipses. A single … is an ellipsis. Many words that end in “is” are pluralized as “es”

This is pronounced like iss versus eeze.

Could anyone persuade you to vote on what’s better for most people instead of what’s better for yourself? Maybe it’s the same policies maybe not.

I’m 40 and it seems like I can continually look back at myself from five years ago and think damn I was an idiot back then. I wonder how I will feel in five years…

That was really interesting. I had a friend who’s brother killed himself when he was a young teen. If things didn’t go his way or he was overly irritated, especially when he was drunk, he reacted by destroying things like a pubescent boy might. He also came from a wealthy family so I always thought that contributed as well, like not caring if he breaks something just buy a new one. But he didn’t just break his own things. I had to end the friendship when he drunkenly threatened a woman who lived in my building with a gun. I hope he’s ok.

Get yourself a danish or something if you’re going to eat dessert for breakfast. Damn kids.

👴🤝👴

Damn that’s crazy. I knew federation could be slow but eight days is nuts.

I agree with you. Do you think people become more conservative with age or is it society becoming more progressive and leaving them behind? Obviously ignoring the current regressive times of the last eight+ years there.

To contribute an answer to the original question I offer this post as evidence of age- thinking about how much has changed during my life may have come through above.

Source on this? I was young but I remember that election. Perot seemed to be like some kind of ultracapitalist “run the country like a business” moron that people respected because he was rich. My grandpa loved him and I rarely heard him talk politics. He was also only educated to the sixth grade for what that’s worth.

Seems like the kind of guy to take a bite out of the conservative vote.

I’m gonna fix my ignorance and go look him up right now though.

Edit-- I’m back, learned a lot. I love that he supported electronic direct democracy way back in 1992. He was in favor of gun control and money for AIDS research. Openly supported gay rights in 1996 but notably not until his second campaign when he really had no chance.

He didn’t believe trickle down economics worked. Was a billionaire who spoke against greed which is really strange. But me calling him an ultracapitalist is probably misplaced. Also not a moron. He was into taxing the wealthy, starting to like this guy, but balancing the budget by cutting social programs, nevermind do not like.

He opposed outsourcing factory jobs and favored environmental protection. He wanted to decrease the budgets of both the military and NASA. Wanted to cancel the space station.

Quite the complicated guy. I love some of his policies and hate others. Seems like a weird mix when viewed through a modern lens. I think I’d have considered voting for him if I was ten years older in '92. Probably would have voted for Clinton though who notably achieved one of Perot’s primary goals, which was to balance the budget.

So I ended up researching Clinton’s campaign and it was straight up racist against black people. He also pledged to end welfare “as we know it”. I think I actually would have voted for Perot! Maybe there’s something to what you’re saying about reducing Clinton’s margin of victory.