Poll of the Day > Does Bernie Sanders have too many fringe opinions to actually win the election?

(+) Yeah! (+)

In the end, it doesnt matter when it comes to Fox viewers. Theyll call the guy a socialist and a communist and theyll be like this woman:

https://youtu.be/2E87gciwebw

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HornedLion posted...

In the end, it doesnt matter when it comes to Fox viewers. Theyll call the guy a socialist and a communist and theyll be like this woman:

that woman is every old conservative relative I have united in one final form

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Mead posted...

that woman is every old conservative relative I have united in one final form

Do you say that with confidence because you studied them out?

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Mead posted...

Dude we have had tons of socialist programs in the US for decades and the news pundits never shut up about how great the economy is booming along. You have no idea what you are talking about.

Capitalism cannot exist without limits because endless growth is in no way sustainable and it eventually becomes detrimental to the populace the system is intended to serve.

Mmmm... Not true. Like, none of that is true. Capitalism requires competition to sustain itself. The issue with capitalism comes not from some hypothetical 'limit' but, rather, the monopoly, government, or other such restrictions that end up stifling said competition.

For example, World of Warcraft is an exceedingly OLD MMO. However it's still considered the king. Why? Because anyone can make an MMO and, thusly, WoW needs to keep releasing new content and games in order to compete. When games come along like FFXIV that can pose a serious threat to WoW it's because said games offer something that WoW does not. One day, likely soon, WoW will falter and a new MMO (likely XIV) will take over as the top MMO until it too one day fails. However, even despite the titans slugging it out you have ample supplies of other MMO's. Nothing is stopping people from playing things like EVE online and a game like EVE can survive successfully without concern.

However, if a monopoly would form, you'd end up with a situation similar to what's going on with games like FIFA and similar sports titles. Almost no one else even produces sports games anymore and if someone tried the copy-write laws and legal issues means that they could not utilize the real-life players. At least not easily. As a result there is no competition and they can literally release the same game every year with an updated roster. They have a captive audience in the form of sports fans whom have no choice but to play the games and, as a result, the company can enact devastating lootbox mechanics to soak and exploit players with no fear of repercussions from the fans. They aren't being capitalistic. Their monopoly has effectively killed any form of capitalism and replaced it with an unchanging and harmful monopoly.

Also, I wonder what socialist policies you seem to think have taken root in America? Don't tell me you think something like a police force falls in the same category as, say, a healthcare system owned by the government with no capability for competition.

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The idea that the US healthcare system in any way fosters competition is a joke opinion. It has done the opposite.

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Unbridled9 posted...

Also, I wonder what socialist policies you seem to think have taken root in America?

Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schools, housing programs, federally funded job training, foster care and adoption assistance, consolidated health centers, maternal care, pellgrants, farmer subsidies.

The list goes on and on.

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blu posted...

Other countries can do it doesnt mean were able to implement the system when already having a wildly different system already implemented. It would be much more complex than transitioning to using the metric system.

If they can do it, the richest country on the planet can too.

And the metric system wouldn't save lives.

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Mead posted...

Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schools, housing programs, federally funded job training, foster care and adoption assistance, consolidated health centers, maternal care, pellgrants, farmer subsidies.

The list goes on and on.

Wow... You might want to rethink that list since a lot of those either have competition from the private sector (like public schools), are considered necessary for the modern society to function, or have shown themselves to have large problems; typically highly related to the fact that there is no competition for them.

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Unbridled9 posted...

copy-write laws

this mf said copy-write lol

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Capitalism in reality doesn't work. It's a game, a compeitition. You can win games. We've had to keep breaking the rules of the game to say "no, you can't do that or the game would end". Real capitalism doesn't do anything to stop monopolies or insider trading and companies have countinually found ways to annihilate any real chance of competition.

Look at fox and CNN. They both benefit from the appearance of competition. The back and forth, the lashing out, that's content, that keeps people watching. Rather than make their news channel the best most accurate most balanced, it's more effective to try and increase the number of people watching the news and playing to win isn't how you do that.

It's been a long time since capitalism worked the way you insinuate. Where companies compete for the benefit of the consumer. They've found ways to make the consumers life too difficult to make informed decisions, they've found very sketchy ways to keep out competition.

Look no further than ISPs. Plenty of places in the US you have them charging high prices for pitiful speeds compared to the rest of the world because they can. They have competition in these areas but the competition just chooses to split the pie and offers similarly awful rates. They've made sure being an ISP takes a massive entry cost that the unsatisfied end consumer can't possibly compete with and even smaller businesses have to go through so much red tape and deals they can't effectively compete. Who can compete? Mega corperations. Google fiber comes out in a few areas to show the US "hey, it's actually totally reasonable to pay like 100 bucks for gigabit internet speeds" which was literally more than 1000% better than comcast and charter.

So, what happens? Do comcast and charter with their bullshit psuedo monopoly call off their shit and offer competitive prices? Well, kinda, but only where they were actually forced to. They offered competing prices with google fiber in the areas google fiber was in and kept the old ridiculous rates in other areas. In those fiber areas, they lost tons of money, partly from splitting with another company but mostly because theres less money in the pot so to speak. The overall internet spending in those areas went down because it was cheaper. In fact, google would have made more money if they just offered the same service at the same bullshit price as comcast.

Competing on either cost or efficiency reduces the total wealth in that industry and thats just not as effective as sharing price gouged industries with a few other corporations. Providing the best, cheapest, most convenient product has no benefit to a company.

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Unbridled9 posted...

Wow... You might want to rethink that list since a lot of those either have competition from the private sector (like public schools), are considered necessary for the modern society to function, or have shown themselves to have large problems; typically highly related to the fact that there is no competition for them.

Socialist programs can still exist while having competition from the private sector.

You really have no idea what you are talking about.

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Mead posted...

Socialist programs can still exist while having competition from the private sector.

You really have no idea what you are talking about.

But for many of those necessities, having a group that profiteers them is a negative.

It's the Chinese rice scenario.

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SunWuKung420 posted...

But for many of those necessities, having a group that profiteers them is a negative.

It's the Chinese rice scenario.

But america has an entirely socialist military... I mean, no one has to buy their own tank

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Lokarin posted...

But america has an entirely socialist military... I mean, no one has to buy their own tank

Yes I do!

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Socialism should never start delving into optional luxuries like healthcare

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Blighboy posted...

Socialism should never start delving into optional luxuries like healthcare

There's no reason to live forever!

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Lokarin posted...

But america has an entirely socialist military... I mean, no one has to buy their own tank

There are actually people who buy their own tank for civilian use. IIRC you basically have to replace the treads with street-viable alternatives and it's weapons have to be non-functional, but otherwise you could legally drive a tank. I mean, the price would be bonkers and I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but you could.

Anyways, a military is not something socialist. It's one of the basic needs of a nation to allow for the protection of their borders and for them to project international power. Without a military basically any hostile nation could invade a defenseless nation with ease and either turn them into a puppet/subjugated state or just flat-out conquer them.

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Unbridled9 posted...

Anyways, a military is not something socialist. It's one of the basic needs of a nation to allow for the protection of their borders and for them to project international power.

that doesnt make our military a non-socialist institution

private militaries exist

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Unbridled9 posted...

Anyways, a military is not something socialist.

The modern military definitely is. You don't have a ruling monarch/marshal going town to town levying troops in times of need, and there are places in the world where that still is the case.

Your mandatory military contribution isn't your presence, but your taxes.

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Mead posted...

Socialist programs can still exist while having competition from the private sector.

You really have no idea what you are talking about.

The socialist model doesn't work if input doesn't equal output. When private and public options are both on the table, there will exist a constant ebb and flow between the two, in terms of the benefits they provide, vs the risks. This creates instability in the public sector during any times in which private input exceeds public input, thus rendering the socialist model useless. Socialism is a system in which only public options exist because as soon as a private option appears more lucrative or beneficial than the public, the socialist model breaks down.

Public programs do not equal socialism. They're public programs. Public programs are still governed by the same mathematics and economics as private programs, but the output is duly limited. This is the reason why medicare has its "donut hole" in which medicare stops paying for prescription drugs for its recipients. Some people need more output than others, which leads to unfairness. If every American were given $X annually for prescription drugs, that could be considered fair, until you get to the guy who needs $1.5X annually for drugs that bring him to the same functional baseline as everyone else. This makes the previous statement seem unfair unless he is given the extra 50% output he needs. This could also be considered fair, but that makes it unfair to the other people who aren't in need of the same expensive medicine, who are getting less. If this goes on too long, people turn to the private sector for better options.

Bottom line: No matter how you try to spin it, you can't get blood from a stone and 1+1 cannot be greater than 2.

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Gunsandredroses posted...

Public programs do not equal socialism. They're public programs.

Cool so then Medicare for all can be called a public program and not socialism

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@YoukaiSlayer

That was magnificent.

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I know many people today would argue this woman into the ground, but there's an interesting quote from Margaret Thatcher (previous British Prime Minister) on socialism:

"Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other peoples money. Its quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalise everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalisation, and theyre now trying to control everything by other means. Theyre progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people."

-Margaret Thatcher (1976 Interview)

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Even if Bernie cloned himself and filled all of the government's positions with his clones, we still wouldn't have a socialist government.

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shipwreckers posted...

I know many people today would argue this woman into the ground, but there's an interesting quote from Margaret Thatcher (previous British Prime Minister) on socialism:

"Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other peoples money. Its quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalise everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalisation, and theyre now trying to control everything by other means. Theyre progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people."

-Margaret Thatcher (1976 Interview)

It's not like Donald Trump hasn't been running massive deficits

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Margaret Thatcher.

Imagine taking anything that creep said about economics seriously. Austerity is crippling nations all over the world.

But I'll bite. Hey Thatcher. THAT'S NOT HOW MONEY WORKS IN A COUNTRY THAT ISSUES ITS OWN CURRENCY. But you already knew that, didn't you? Yes, you did. You lying cretin.

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Not to mention that even a right wing think tank has concluded that Medicare for all will save the US money compared to our current stupid ass system

https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/484301-22-studies-agree-medicare-for-all-saves-money

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I mean, there is value in that to a degree. Money for social programs have to come from somewhere. We can't both do more and tax less and raising taxes has diminishing returns after a certain point so theres a hard limit to how much the government can do. Thats why I think efficiency is the way to go. The more I see of the systems in place, the more I realize just how inefficient everything is from medicine, to school, to the legal system to politics. That wastes time and money. There's basically a ton of money the US has thats being wasted. Enough that if we could make things run much more smoothly we could afford a lot more social programs and eventually these costs would actually go away.

Medicine for instance is a solvable problem. As an extreme, 500 years from now, if society hasn't been destroyed, medicine will have long since been finished. There won't be a doctor to go to or pharmaceutical companies. We will have cured everything and understand 100% of the human body and cell functionality so that even IF something pops up, it's trivial to design an organism to counter it in a matter of seconds, probably handled automatically by a computer program.

We could probably already be here if the system wasn't so absolutely shit. It's like 1% efficient right now. Research is poorly done, and massively underfunded and disorganized. You have teams spending 20 years trying to do something made invalid by someone else 5 years ago. You have people spending so much time testing drugs because they can be sold, not because they might actually work. It's atrocious. Anyone who dies from this point on died because the medical industry is broken.

As far as government goes though, thats an expense that will actually just disappear at a certain point.

Homelessness is also a problem that could be all but fully solved at a certain level of investment. You just need to build cheapo homes and give the homeless transportation to those places, and free food. At that point it costs some for security and some for food which is a fairly low investment to just not have anymore homeless people. The US is big as hell and we have plenty of land thats practically just sitting there that could become charity housing.

School is something that eventually pays for itself so theres really no reason aside from very short term financial loss. If schools are free but it's known to be a normal thing to give back decent money to your college if you do really well, it'll happen. It's also an extra incentive for schools to do well for their students so they can get high paying jobs and donate a lot. After a 10 or so year period, you'd see schools ending up with more money than they have now (it'd effectively come from the corporations holding onto student debt). Give schools a minimum government grant to run if they don't have enough money otherwise but you'd pretty quickly see that even 1 successful person a year will end up giving more money than all the tuition from that entire year would have given so only schools that fail literally all of their students will struggle.

I just don't get it. These things are so obvious and make the rich either richer or immortal so why isn't this already happening?

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Good grief, Bernie. Are you TRYING to lose voters??? Now people are flaming him for praising Castro's "literacy program," which is indeed a true statement.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/feb/24/bernie-sanders/sanders-correct-cuba-literacy-campaign-skimps-prop/

Granted, he was trying to make the point that even bad people can do good things. But, politically, that's just suicide. Saying ANYTHING positive about a brutal authoritarian, brainwashing tyrant is about the dumbest thing you can do (especially considering the well-known fact that Castro USED his "literacy program" to forcefully indoctrinate people / while executing people who failed to comply via firing squad).

Bernie might as well have praised Hitler for his highly effective "German Economic Recovery Program."

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Theres nothing wrong with what he said about Cuba

A lot of people were wrongly imprisoned or killed and thats horrible. At the the same time a lot of people got a better education and healthcare which is great.

Its important to view history clearly so we can learn from both the good and the bad.

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Obama praises Castros education system as well

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Yes he does. Sanders should've stuck with just UHC as a policy point, no one sane wants the rest of his policies.
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The funny thing is that leftist voters are so whacked out that praising trump would cause more outrage than a literal brutal dictator

shipwreckers posted...

Granted, he was trying to make the point that even bad people can do good things. But, politically, that's just suicide. Saying ANYTHING positive about a brutal authoritarian, brainwashing tyrant is about the dumbest thing you can do (especially considering the well-known fact that Castro USED his "literacy program" to forcefully indoctrinate people / while executing people who failed to comply via firing squad).

Somebody want to get a list of how many tyrants the current President has praised?

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Hop103 posted...

Yes he does. Sanders should've stuck with just UHC as a policy point, no one sane wants the rest of his policies.

no one huh?

https://youtu.be/4FBmW2dnFZc

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Blighboy posted...

Somebody want to get a list of how many tyrants the current President has praised?

@OhhhJa #rekt son

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DirtBasedSoap posted...

@OhhhJa #rekt son

Oh wait you guys got the impression that I care whether or not either one of these guys praised a dictator. I'm simply pointing out the irony that Bernie's voters would be more angry if he praised trump

Also Blighboy coming in hot with the whataboutism

OhhhJa posted...

Oh wait you guys got the impression that I care whether or not either one of these guys praised a dictator. I'm simply pointing out the irony that Bernie's voters would be more angry if he praised trump

Also Blighboy coming in hot with the whataboutism

I'm just proving it's obviously not something most give a shit about. Your first paragraph is more whataboutism than what I said.

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LOL @ Buttigieg being Buttihurt after losing Nevada and ranting against sanders now.

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Blighboy posted...

Somebody want to get a list of how many tyrants the current President has praised?

At least Trump waited until AFTER getting elected to say stupid shit about other leaders. Same with Obama's praise of Castro's "good" accomplishments.

Bernie ain't waitin, though. If nothing else, he's got balls.

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wolfy42 posted...

LOL @ Buttigieg being Buttihurt after losing Nevada and ranting against sanders now.

yeah, hes a bitch.



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HornedLion posted...

Theyll call the guy a socialist

Know who also calls Bernie a socialist? Bernie. -_-

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shipwreckers posted...

At least Trump waited until AFTER getting elected to say stupid shit about other leaders.

He said stupid shit about obama throughout his campaign.

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SunWuKung420 posted...

He said stupid shit about obama throughout his campaign.

Sorry, you missed the context. I should have said TYRANNICAL leaders. Obama wasn't a tyrant.

That's one of the downsides to Gamefaqs' new quote system (where you can't see the whole conversation / context).

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Zeus posted...

Know who also calls Bernie a socialist? Bernie. -_-

Yup. Fun fact. He only added the democratic preface to it fairly recently at the advice of his PR

Well, I guess this reiterates what I said back in the OP. Trump doesn't even HAVE to bash Bernie. Bernie's own party is doing the work for him.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/25/democratic-debate-2020-highlights-key-moments-117540

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shipwreckers posted...

Well, I guess this reiterates what I said back in the OP. Trump doesn't even HAVE to bash Bernie. Bernie's own party is doing the work for him.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/25/democratic-debate-2020-highlights-key-moments-117540

Once again, calling the Democrats Bernie's party is a bit of a stretch since Bernie only joins them when running for president. Odds are if he gets elected, he'll immediately change to independent again because he's a self-serving asshole who's just gaming the party.

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Zeus posted...

Once again, calling the Democrats Bernie's party is a bit of a stretch since Bernie only joins them when running for president. Odds are if he gets elected, he'll immediately change to independent again because he's a self-serving asshole who's just gaming the party.

Fair enough, regarding his party affiliation (the same thing happens with republicans, aka "RINO's" / I guess there are "DINO's" out there too).

Looks like one of his biggest challenges is more basic than parties and opponents. Voter Turnout is stacked against him from the get-go.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/25/21152538/bernie-sanders-electability-president-moderates-data

Let's face it. He appeals the MOST to people who do the LEAST (which includes voting).

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I mentioned this in another topic, but Bernie was in my hometown just a couple evenings ago (speaking at church less than 10 minutes from my house). He drew a decent crowd (mostly African Americans, given the church / community demographic there). But, I live in NC, so it's hard to tell where loyalty lies in these parts.

I'm really anxious to see how NC swings in the democratic primaries. NC is a long-ass state, with MANY diverse political cliques (from mountain country, to hyper-progressive academic country, to beach bum coastal country). We have just about every ideology imaginable represented in this state. (Not as diverse as the likes of, say..., California, but still...)

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*grumbles*

The left is its own worst enemy, I swear.

Today is the day in South Carolina. Time to see if Bernie can beat Biden. I think he has a good shot at doing so.

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