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Comment count is 23
Cena_mark - 2014-02-28

I can certainly relate to this. Granted I never claimed to having been liberal in my past. During my college years I was a very socially liberal libertarian, but when I was at my most right wing was during a time where I had a job driving a van for a warehouse and I'd listen to a lot of Neal Boortz. Neal Boortz appealed to me because he claimed to be a libertarian. I didn't hear the hate in his rhetoric at the time, but looking back he spread some vile stuff that I swallowed.
After joining the Coast Guard and having turned towards the left I tried listening to Boortz and could hardly find a word I agreed with.
I have so many relatives on my mom's side of the family who are Fox News junkies. I always say they need to just turn that crap off and just enjoy life.


fedex - 2014-02-28

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH CENA MARK?!?!!!


Ocyrus - 2014-03-01

We are more similar than I previously thought.


infinite zest - 2014-03-01

The closest with me was when we'd visit my grandmother in La Crosse, Wisconsin.. there's probably stuff to do there but for the most part it was just awesome for me because they had cable, something my parents never let us have.. anyway, I can't remember if it was Fox News or not, but it was totally brainwashing material and I started making posters and pictures of Ross Perot in '92 and '96. Granted I was 10 years old and didn't know shit from Shinola, but I knew I liked Perot because the television told me so.

Flash forward to 2000, where I'm 18 and desperately canvassing for Gore, in a city where it was Gore v, Nader, and Bush had nothing to do with it.


Adham Nu'man - 2014-03-01

Cena, I used to think you were trolling us.


Sexy Duck Cop - 2014-03-01

Cena, your arc has been the best of all arcs. I'm a fairly new poster, but I've been here since the POE Red days and I seriously remember your hardcore conservative days. It's genuinely admirable that you're insightful enough to recognize the influences and cognitive biases that have shaped your thinking. Not a lot of people can do that.


Binro the Heretic - 2014-02-28

We have the technology to provide free food, clothing, shelter and even health care for everyone. We could all stop focusing on mere survival and turn our great big brains to the task of making ourselves better, to doing truly great things.

But we never will because too many people can't stand the thought of people other than themselves being provided for. And there are too many people willing to exploit that dark and terrible instinct.

It's not really brainwashing. It's just a matter of knowing which buttons to push.


oddeye - 2014-02-28

Do you mean everyone in the entire world? Cite your sources please.


Adham Nu'man - 2014-02-28

Yeah, see here I have the opposite phenomenon.

I have always been a liberal and my dad was right wing. In his latter years he's become more left wing than me.

Personally, I believe in leftist ideals and rights and freedoms. However, I have come to realize that a society focused on the enforcement and protection of rights costs the states more money, which makes them less competitive on the international market. That's a paradox that is very hard to reconcile.

Still, I'll never be against abortion or accessible medical healthcare for the whole population and gay marriage and stuff like that. But you can't be too naive about the fact that protecting and enforcing rights generally has a financial price attached to it.


ashtar. - 2014-02-28

"protecting and enforcing rights generally has a financial price attached to it."

What. No it doesn't. The opposite, in fact.
Treating people like shit does not make them more productive. Slavery didn't help the southern economy, it just transferred wealth from slaves to slave masters. The same is true of virtually every other form of illiberal oppression.


Adham Nu'man - 2014-03-01

So multinationals outsource their productions to China because the weather there in pleasant and it's super easy to learn the language?


ashtar. - 2014-03-01

What do you mean by "economic cost"?
(The factors that determine the cost of manufacturing stuff around the world are complicated. I'm only talking about the economic impact of "rights" for people here.)
Slave labor (some of China's labor practices count) is not a more efficient way of producing goods. You've got to pay someone to crack the whip rather than do actual work, and people working because they're forced to are not more productive than people working because they're being adequately compensated. Not to mention that you'll have to rely on exports if your domestic workforce isn't being paid enough to buy the goods you're producing. If you're just after a system that will make the most shit possible, this is not the best way to go. In terms of GDP, there's no economic cost to ensuring people are adequately compensated and work under non-horrible conditions. Environmental protections are economically beneficial in the long run because it's more expensive to clean stuff up and deal with health problems.
All that not having to pay your workers (adequately) does is transfer wealth from the people being forced to work to the people forcing them to work. This is why multinationals outsource their production to prison labor in the developing world.
So, there would be an "economic cost" to *Apple* if their workforce had the same rights as their American customers, but this wouldn't hurt either the American or Chinese GDPs.

As far as political and social rights, I'm not sure what you're talking about. It takes an expensive tax-payer funded security apparatus that doesn't produce anything of value to limit people's freedom of expression. Marriage contracts are an economic boon and extending that right to gay people would be mildly beneficial for the economy. I can point you to a Goldman-Sachs report on the economic benefits of women more fully participating in the labor force.


SteamPoweredKleenex - 2014-03-01

"So multinationals outsource their productions to China because the weather there in pleasant and it's super easy to learn the language?"

The laws they bribe politicians to pass giving them huge tax breaks for the burden of relocating, producing, and shipping goods from overseas might have something to do with it.

Many forms of domestic production were decently profitable, and still could be, if Wal-Mart and its ilk would quit this race-to-the-bottom that destroys quality brands and products in favor of cheaply produced items of questionable value (and safety). If a CEO can get an extra ten bucks a year added to already obscene profits, he'll do it, regardless of the cost to his workers.


Adham Nu'man - 2014-03-01

Corporations will (and do) relocate to places where labor is cheaper. Labor can be cheaper for a variety of reasons, but definitely the rights of workers do have an impact on the cost of that labor.

I'm not happy or in favor of this system. It does exist though, and it needs to be taken into account.

"Hey guys you all have a government established minimum salary that guarantees you can live decently on, the right to one month's vacation per year, mandatory tax free thirteenth month salary at the end of every year, three months paid maternity leave, one month paid paternity leave, double pay on all holidays, mandatory insurance sponsored by the employer, pension fund sponsored by the employer, three months pay severance package if you are fired, and while you're at it feel free to unionize however you want" and expect not to entice investors to spend their money elsewhere.

So, while all those rights are good, you need to be able to provide investors some incentive to sticking to an environment where they have all these added costs (and "a happy worker works harder" does not seem to convince investors very much).

Mind you that I think it's a horrible system, but it exists and each country does not live in a vacuum. I live in a small country where a huge middle class can live quite comfortably thanks to foreign investment and that we are an outsourcing hub (something that is bad for the population of the countries these corporations are from, which is mostly America). On one hand, if you let corporations do whatever they want, they'll treat the people like shit, on the other, if you squeeze them too tight and force them to pay too much for the labor, they'll go somewhere else (the main reason they came here in the first place is because they could find cheap skilled labor).


Binro the Heretic - 2014-03-01

All money really means is access to resources. It's our shitty luck to live on a planet dominated by assholes who would rather let resources sit idle or even let them rot rather than letting other people have access to them because it means those people will do just about anything to gain access to some of the few resources allowed to trickle out.

And no, I'm not saying this should all be one big communist society where everybody owns everything and nobody owns anything. But think of how the world would be if we let people just have some of the foreclosed houses that are just sitting empty. "Here it is! It's all yours, free and clear. Keep it repaired. Pay the utilities. If you have the means, we'll charge you some property tax so society can keep running, but if you don't have that much money, just maintain the place and keep your family fed & sheltered."

You want to create jobs? Give people big piles of cash. Don't make them crawl to the banks for a loan. Instead of bailing out Wall Street, we could have taken those billions of dollars and given it out to a shit-ton of individuals to start their own small business or do whatever with it. And don't make them jump through hoops or prove they have a sound business plan, JUST FUCKING GIVE IT TO THEM. Even if they only manage to stay in business a month, that's a full month of employees collecting salaries and supplies being purchased. At least that money is out there IN the economy, being spent and passed around.

Incidentally, that's why the people who say raising the minimum wage will result in fewer jobs are totally stuffed full of the most rank and foul bullshit. If you give the working class more money, they will spend the Hell out of that money. The businesses they patronize will be able to buy more goods and hire more workers. EVERYONE WINS That's how it's always worked in the past.

But no, we've let our world become dominated by evil fuckers who hoard all the goodies while everyone else either starves or barely manages to stay afloat. And they dangle morsels over us promising us that if we're good and do as they tell us, they might...MIGHT, mind you, share a little with us.


Adham Nu'man - 2014-03-02

I agree.


gravelstudios - 2014-02-28

The local gym where my mom goes for physical therapy has Fox News on most of their TVs most of the time, and she comes home really upset over the crazy stuff they say. Then I have to calm her down and remind her that Fox isn't real news. I think she's starting to learn to ignore them.


joelkazoo - 2014-02-28

Buy her an mp3 player with some earbuds and fill it with a bunch of podcasts about stuff she likes. I think she'd appreciate it.


Callamon - 2014-02-28

Then she plays dead and you give her a treat.


Adham Nu'man - 2014-03-01

Show your mom this video: http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=131590


Jet Bin Fever - 2014-03-01

This one hit so close to home. Thankfully, my dad lives hundreds of miles away. But still.


exy - 2014-03-01

Halfway through this went from "relatable anecdotal evidence for the choir" to talking about Ailes' memos etc. Looks good.


That guy - 2014-03-01

Somehow I didn't hear about the Nixon admin. memo until now. 5 for that if nothing else in the trailer.


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