Yes, because it is never comes at their own expense through self-sacrifice. True leaders eat last, not first.

The difference is that for the people dying under capitalism, the system is working as intended, and for the people dying under communism, it is not. In both cases, the leaders don’t really care, because it works for them.

I do what I always do: run to the trolley, then jump up and pull the emergency stop because I hate false dilemmas.

Yes. I think people are wise to the fact that the simple potential of facing charges is the threat that is supposed to intimidate and suppress opposition. Tying someone’s life up in a trial that has no chance of seeing a guilty verdict is the actual punishment they are aiming for because they know they have no legal standing.

Death from unnatural causes aside, there are so many potentially fatal complications involved with an organ transplant, and even if you dodge all those bullets, there is the simple fact that we degenerate at a cellular level. None of us are on this Earth for long: rich, poor, president or janitor, death will not discriminate.

We should keep in mind that thousands of people work at large corporations like Microsoft and many of them do not agree with company policy and positions, including people in senior roles.

Scott Hanselman is a VP at Microsoft who has given some of the best presentations on AI from a social, ethical, and technical demonstration standpoint that I have seen. I have been spreading his NDC London talk around to everyone I can: https://youtu.be/kYUicaho5k8

It is worth the watch.

The early Church is recorded as living that way:

"44 And all that believed were together, and had all things common; 45 And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. 46 ¶And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, " ( Acts 2:44-46 KJV).

However, tearing a political philosophy away from its associated worldview leads to trouble.

This is one of the things I find strange about the political parties in the U.S. the Republican party, which seems to claim the majority of members who claim to be Christians, largely espouse a capitalist economic system. Capitalism is much more congruent with a Darwinist world view than a Christian one.

Meanwhile, the Democrat party, at least the more progressive wing, espouse more of a socialist system but seemingly oppose Christianity and claim a world view more congruent with a capitalist system.

A rational argument is an argument that follows some sort of logical thought process, it has nothing to do with whether the conclusion is correct or not.

This is a rational argument:

• Premise 1: The Earth is a planet.
• Premise 2: The Earth is flat.
• Premise 3: All flat planets have edges.
• Conclusion: The Earth has edges.

Premise 2 is false, and premise 3 is unknown, so the conclusion is false, but it follows a logical thought process and isn’t nonsense.

This is nonsense and irrational:

• Premise 1: Apples are round.
• Premise 2: Pyramids exist.
• Premise 3: Unicorns have horns.
• Conclusion: Aliens!

There is no discernible logic or rational thought process. It is just apparently random statements with no connection.

• https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reason
• https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nonsense
• https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_false_premises
• https://thelogicofscience.com/2017/03/27/the-fallacy-fallacy-reject-the-argument-not-the-conclusion/

Again, since we can’t even agree on commonly accepted definitions for basic concepts, we just aren’t going to be able to have any kind of productive conversation.

Good day.

I think it’s rather chauvanistic to try to say it’s better to live imprisoned in a developed country than non-imprisoned in a developing country

That’s not what I said. I said it is better to live imprisoned in the U.S. than to starve to death.

Nah, I don’t retract my statement

Ok, well if you aren’t even going to concede that a rational argument, as incorrect as it might be, isn’t nonsense, then I don’t think we will be able to have any meaningful discourse.

I wish you well. Good luck with your Marxist endeavors.

Had the original post simply pointed out that America’s incarceration rate is horrible, I would have no disagreement with it, but instead it chose to make a direct comparison between present-day America and China during the Cultural Revolution.

My primary disagreement with this comparison is not with that fact that present-day America has a higher reported incarceration rate than China during the Cultural Revolution, it is the fact that to an audience that may not study history, it helps craft the narrative that China during the 1960s was a much nicer place to live than present-day America because the incarceration rate was significantly lower. I thought it was worth mentioning that, regardless of why it happened, or if anyone was at fault, one of the largest famines in human history occurred in China immediately preceding this time period, which made it not a very nice place to live. There are things worse than incarceration, and most people, myself included, would choose life in a U.S. prison over starvation. Not that either choice is a good once.

My secondary disagreement was with the implication that I don’t know how basic statistics work. I suggested that a massive removal of poor-people from a population could have reduced the overall incarceration rate. You said that this was “nonsense”. Not that there is insufficient data, or that it wouldn’t be a very significant change. My burden of proof is not, probable, or possible, it is just above the level of nonsense. Or do you retract your previous statement that I made a nonsensical argument?

I never said it would make it equal. In fact, I’m confident that it would not.

The whole reason we started this argument is because you made a condescending comment implying either that I can’t read, or that I don’t understand what rate per-100,000 means. I understand what per-100,000 means, but I also understand that not all groups of 100,000 people are the same; removing a large sub-population of people that doesn’t exactly match the overall population’s average will result in a change to the overall population average.

If you have a total population (T), and you are measuring the rate of an event (E), then E / T gives your average event rate for the total population, which you can then normalize to a per-X number. For example: T = 1000 people E = 10 incarcerations. 10 / 1000 = .01, normalized to per 100 capita would be 1 per 100 people on average, from the total population.

If you have a sub-demographic in that population (Ts), and it has a different rate of an event (Es) then its rate is also Es / Ts. For example: Ts = 100 poor-people Es = 5 incarcerations. 5 / 100 = .05, normalized to a per 100 capita would be 5 people per 100 on average, for that sub-population.

If you suddenly remove that sub-population, what happens to the rate of the overall population? That’s easy to calculate: (E - Es) / (T - Ts) (10 - 5) / (1000 - 100) = 5 / 900 = .0055, normalized to a per 100 capita would be .55.

Suggesting that a sub-demographic doesn’t perfectly match the per-capita average of an entire population and that removing them would change the overall per-capita rate isn’t nonsense.

the idea that the CPC didn’t incarcerate as many people per capita is because of the famine. This is nonsense.

How is that nonsense? What was the per-capita incarceration rate of the population who died in the famine? What was the per-capita incarceration rate of the population that didn’t die in the famine?

There is probably no data for that, so we can’t know for sure, but I showed that in the U.S. a large famine would result in a lower incarceration rate because poor people would starve at a disproportionate rate, and poor people are also incarerated at a disproportnate rate, so that would reduce the overall rate per capita. This doesn’t necessarily apply to the situation in China, but I don’t think it is nonsense with no foundation in logic.

It’s the system that determines how its run, not the people at the top.

That is the catch. It only determines how it is run if the people at the top are following the system. The system is supposed to determine that, but if everyone in positions of power decide to disregard what the system is supposed to be, then suddenly the system that a government used to have or advertises as having, no longer represents the actual state of affairs.

Responsibility means owning an outcome. If I take responsibility for the safety of your children and a meteorite literally falls out of the sky and kills them, I am still responsible. I’m not going to try to make excuses and make sure you know it wasn’t my fault and there wasn’t anything I could have done. I was responsible. Your kids are dead. The buck stops with me. That’s what actual leaders do, they own the outcome.

To be perfectly clear, I don’t subscribe to the notion that communism is bad and capitalism is good. I think every socio-economic system has pros and cons and are prone different forms of degredation and usurption.

I think the people leading a country and the people that comprise its society have a larger impact on life than their system of government.

With that said, a government is ultimately responsible for the safety and well-being of its people.

There was famine in China from natural causes

From: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

It is widely regarded as the deadliest famine and one of the greatest man-made disasters in human history

(Emphasis mine.)

Also, regardless of the reason my other points stand: having millions of poor people starve to death will reduce you incarceration rate, and people might choose to live in a country with a higher incarceration rate if it means they don’t starve to death.

Let me address a few things. First, I didn’t post my response because I think the incarceration rate in the U. S. is OK. It’s not. Incarceration of non-violent criminals is especially aggregeous. Private for profit prisons are a horrible idea.

I responded because the OP posted an image comparing the incarceration rates of the CCP’s cultural revolution to the current U.S. incarceratiom rate. The implication is that because the per-capita incarceration rate was lower in China during that time, it was a nicer place to live than current-day America. That ignores the part where the Chinese government starved to death 15,000,000 - 55,000,000 people, or put in Americanized terms: somewhere between the entire population of Pennsylvania to the entire populations of California AND Pennsylvania.

Claiming that a per-capita measurement normalizes all factors, makes a sampling error based on survivorship bias. It is highly unlikely that the overlap of people who starved to death during the CCP’s famine had the same incarceration rate of those who did not. I’m guessing rich and party aligned individuals had a much lower rate of both starvation and incarceration.

This would certainly be true in the U.S; Incarceration rates are much higher for low-income individuals: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/income.html. Low income individuals are also more likely to starve to death in a famine* (*citation needed). Now imagine if the United States government starved to death the poorest 10,000,000 people in the U.S. and then started bragging about how much it’s per-capita incarceration rates have improved!

This happened right before the cultural revolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine might have helped cut down the potential prison population…

Edit, digging this up from 5 threads deep:

…I understand what per-100,000 means, but I also understand that not all groups of 100,000 people are the same; removing a large sub-population of people that doesn’t exactly match the overall population’s average will result in a change to the overall population average.

If you have a total population (T), and you are measuring the rate of an event (E), then E / T gives your average event rate for the total population, which you can then normalize to a per-X number. For example: T = 1000 people E = 10 incarcerations. 10 / 1000 = .01, normalized to per 100 capita would be 1 per 100 people on average, from the total population.

If you have a sub-demographic in that population (Ts), and it has a different rate of an event (Es) then its rate is also Es / Ts. For example: Ts = 100 poor-people Es = 5 incarcerations. 5 / 100 = .05, normalized to a per 100 capita would be 5 people per 100 on average, for that sub-population.

If you suddenly remove that sub-population, what happens to the rate of the overall population? That’s easy to calculate: (E - Es) / (T - Ts) (10 - 5) / (1000 - 100) = 5 / 900 = .0055, normalized to a per 100 capita would be .55.

Suggesting that a sub-demographic doesn’t perfectly match the per-capita average of an entire population and that removing them would change the overall per-capita rate isn’t nonsense.

To be clear, aside from the part I quoted, I agreed with everything else in your post and thought it was an interesting take, but again I have to take issue with this:

as far as I’m aware, they don’t carry the clinical state-sponsored efficiency that is a hallmark of the Holocaust.

I’m not going to analyze every single atrocity since 1945, but the Cambodian genocide was certainly state-sponsored, efficient, and horrific:

“20,000 people passed through the Security Prison 21, one of the 196 prisons the Khmer Rouge operated,[4][28] and only seven adults survived.[29]”

"The executed were buried in mass graves. In order to save ammunition, the executions were often carried out using poison or improvised weapons such as sharpened bamboo sticks, hammers, machetes and axes.[6] … In some cases the children and infants of adult victims were killed by having their heads bashed against the trunks of Chankiri trees, and then were thrown into the pits alongside their parents. The rationale was “to stop them growing up and taking revenge for their parents’ deaths.”

“People were imprisoned and tortured merely on suspicion of opposing the regime or because other prisoners gave their names under torture. Whole families (including women and children) ended up in prisons and were tortured because the Khmer Rouge feared that if they did not do this, their intended victims’ relatives would seek revenge. Pol Pot said, “if you want to kill the grass, you also have to kill the roots”.[169]”

"There are many accounts of torture in both the Security Prison 21 records and the documents of the trial; as told by the survivor Bou Meng in his book (written by Huy Vannak), tortures were so atrocious and heinous that the prisoners tried in every way to commit suicide, even using spoons, and their hands were constantly tied behind their back to prevent them from committing suicide "

“all medical experiments were systematically conducted without proper anesthetics.[173] A medic who worked inside S-21 said that a 17-year-old girl had her throat slit and her abdomen pierced before being beaten and put into water for an entire night. This procedure was repeated many times and carried out without anesthetics.[174] In a hospital of Kampong Cham province, child medics cut out the intestines of a living non-consenting person and joined their ends to study the healing process. The patient died after three days due to the “operation”.[173]”

“Twenty-six-year-old John D. Dewhirst, a British tourist, was one of the youngest foreigners to die in the prison.[17] He was sailing with his New Zealand companion, Kerry Hamill, and their Canadian friend Stuart Glass when their boat drifted into Cambodian territory and was intercepted by Khmer patrol boats on August 13, 1978. Glass was killed during the arrest, while Dewhirst and Hamill were captured, blindfolded, and taken to shore. Both were executed after having been tortured for several months at Tuol Sleng. Witnesses reported that a foreigner was burned alive; initially, it was suggested that this might have been John Dewhirst, but a survivor would later identify Kerry Hamill as the victim of this particular act of brutality.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuol_Sleng_Genocide_Museum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Fields

Israel is suddenly the state committing the closest thing we’ve seen to the Holocaust since the actual Holocaust.

I don’t say this to excuse anything Israel is doing, but this is gross recency bias that is glossing over numerous genocides that have occurred since the Holocaust, including:

• 2020-2022: Tigray Genocide in Ethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide_in_Tigray (Est. 162,000 - 600,000 killed)
• 2003-2005: Darfur Genocide in Sudan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_genocide (Est. 98.000 - 500,000 killed)
• 1996-1997: Hutu Genocide in Zaire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Hutus_during_the_First_Congo_War (Est. 200,000 - 233,000 killed)
• 1994: Tutsi Genocide in Rwanda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide (Est. 491,000 - 800,000 killed)
• 1987-1989: Isaaq Genocide in Somolia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaaq_genocide (Est. 50,000 - 200,000 killed)
• 1986-1989: Genocide in Kurdistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anfal_campaign (Est. 50.000 - 182,000 killed)
• 1975-1979 Cambodian Genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide (Est. 1,386,734 - 3,000,000 killed)
• 1971-1979 Uganda Genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Republic_of_Uganda (Est. 100,000 - 500,000 killed)
• 1972 Ikiza Geneocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikiza (Est. 80.000 - 300,000 killed)
• 1971 Bangladesh Genocide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_genocide (Est. 300,000 - 3,000,000 killed)

Not technically genocides, but also worth mentioning in the same vein:

• 1959-1961 Chinese Famine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine (Est. 15,000,000 - 55,000,000 killed)
• 1930-1953 Soviet Gulag: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag (Est. 1,500,000 - 1,700,000 killed)

So ya, other than those events, this is the closest thing to the Holocaust since the actual Holocaust.

They certainly don’t have to work as much, or at all really. I recognize that there is an enormous gap between someone struggling to put food on the table and a billionaire, but it is also very easy to focus on work and increasing financial stability/independence at the detriment of more important things. It reminds of the song Cat’s In The Cradle: https://youtu.be/5u-KWa3tL-0?list=RD5u-KWa3tL-0 (especially appropriate on Father’s day weekend). My dad worked long hours when I was growing up, and I slept in a hallway/laundry room because he couldn’t afford to rent a larger place, but he still made time for me and my siblings, and I wouldn’t trade my childhood for literally all the money in the world.

Does that mean that people who are struggling to feed their family don’t really need the money? No. Would it have been easier if my family had more money? Sure. But I have also noticed that peoples’ lifestyles seem to grow to match their incomes, and it never seems like it is quite enough. There is always that next job or promotion or opportunity that will put you in a slightly better position and then finally it will be enough. Once basic needs met (air, water, food, shelter), I believe that money can start creating more problems for people than it solves. With tons of money comes tons of distractions, and temptations; there aren’t any poor people on the Epstein list. Its easy for me to say they are horrible people and I would never engage in activities like that, but it also isn’t an option for me. I can’t honestly claim virtue for avoiding an evil that my situation in life doesn’t allow for. Life seems much easier when nobody stops you from getting what you want, but I have to wonder if sometimes it is a blessing in disguise when they do…