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from the Wait-long-enough-and-sc-fi-always-becomes-sci-fact dept.
In 1951 Isaac Asimov inflicted psychohistory on the world with the Foundation Trilogy. Now, thanks to data sets going back more than 2,500 years, scientists have discovered the rules underlying the rise and fall of civilizations, after examining more than 400 such historical societies crash and burn - or in some cases avoid crashing. More here:
Turchin's approach to history, which uses software to find patterns in massive amounts of historical data, has only become possible recently, thanks to the growth in cheap computing power and the development of large historical datasets. This "big data" approach is now becoming increasingly popular in historical disciplines. Tim Kohler, an archaeologist at Washington State University, believes we are living through "the glory days" of his field, because scholars can pool their research findings with unprecedented ease and extract real knowledge from them. In the future, Turchin believes, historical theories will be tested against large databases, and the ones that do not fit – many of them long-cherished – will be discarded. Our understanding of the past will converge on something approaching an objective truth.
Discuss. Or throw rocks.
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Tuesday November 19 2019, @12:15AM (4 children)
People also still own private property, and are free to start businesses and own the means of production in Canada, so another difference between socialism and communism.
But just look at health care in the USA. Spending more per capital for worse health care outcomes, and medical bills are STILL the #1 cause of bankruptcy. Crazy.
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(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 19 2019, @05:46PM (3 children)
First, I know that communism isn't socialism. Socialism, per Marx, you know, the guy that invented that term?, is the stage between capitalism and communism where the state controls the means of production in order to unwind the social patterns and assumptions of the proletariat that have been oppressed and conditioned to oppression under capitalism. Communism is the utopian end state whereby the state becomes no longer necessary in the means of production because a new communist man has been created. There has never been a communist state on Earth because the whole party stops at socialism, which oppresses and murders millions of people.
Also, Canada is not a socialist country, by definition. The state does not control the means of production. Private property is the rule. What it does have is certain social programs that benefit people who can't pay for them on their own. So, you might want to check your own level of relative knowledge and ignorance, compadre.
My personal take on healthcare, since you raised it, is that we ought to regard it as infrastructure more than a luxury. We don't generally charge people to walk down the sidewalk or drive on a given road or use the sewers to dispose of excrement because the knock-on benefits of having them free to use is far greater than a narrow, per-use fee assessment can deliver. In other words, our need to rely upon each other forms many of the underpinnings of human society, and if we want to pursue an extreme capitalist ideology in a niggardly pursuit of profit maximization then we will find ourselves in a reality as vicious and murderous as a socialist society delivers.
Our best chance for freedom, prosperity, and progress lies in the interstices of tensions between all the parties that think they know exactly what's best for us.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday November 20 2019, @06:28PM (1 child)
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(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 21 2019, @12:22AM
What? Look, comrade, if you don't even understand that the material dialectic is the entire, I mean, the complete, central dynamic of Marxist theory and its government forms of socialism and communism, then you need to be sent back to the camps for re-education.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday November 20 2019, @07:27PM
Sure we do. Municipal taxes. Road taxes on gas and diesel. Special levies for local improvements. Water taxes, taxes to pay for redevelopment, public transit (which also gets users to pay a portion), state and federal taxes, taxes to work (payments into unemployment and pension funds, taxes on earnings), estate taxes when you die, sin taxes, amusement taxes, access taxes on telecommunications services (talk might be cheap but it isn't free), half the economy is sustained by taxes.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.