OT Thinking, learning, wisdom.

This is great, https://fs.blog/2013/05/the-buffett-formula-how-to-get-smarter/

And gives me an excuse for reading more. https://fs.blog/best-articles/

And buying more books!

George H.

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George Herold
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Sorry, Warren, but I want to be a fully automated luxury gay space communist when I grow up.

Reply to
bitrex

bitrex wrote in news:Tj0BE.33555$ snipped-for-privacy@fx06.iad:

I want to go live on the planet Tralfamador.

Reply to
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno

I'd rather be on Omicron Persei 8. I hear the Popplers are great!

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  Rick C. 

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Rick C

Well, if we're into book recommendations, here's my tip:

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It tells about how a fawning, conniving Western media covered up Stalin's systematic starvation of the Kulaks during the 1930s. A timely warning from history as to the how Communism ultimately invariably plays out. A shame it hasn't been reprinted as remaining copies are very hard to find and consequently pretty expensive.

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Reply to
Cursitor Doom

Of course socialist didn't think much of communism when Karl Marx first invented it, and threw him - and the proto-communists - out of the international socialist movement in 1871.

Mikhail Bakunin comment from the period has to be one of the better prophecies around

The problem with communism is that "the leading role of the party" makes it undemocratic and thus totalitarian.

Stalinist communism was a bit too totalitarian for even H G Wells - despite his "Modern Utopia". Bertrand Russell didn't think much of it either.

Malcolm Muggeridge is a rather more light-weight figure. He edited Punch from 1953 to 1957 years. He does get credit for having seen through Stalin, but he wasn't exactly unique in this, and his religiosity in his later years was unattractive.

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Stalin had quite a bit in common with Trump, and people outside the Soviet Union did try to avoid irritating him.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
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Bill Sloman

You are blaming Stalin's insanity on Communism? I never thought anyone would claim politics caused mental illness.

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Rick C

The food is better on Earth.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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Reply to
John Larkin

Save your money. Venezuela and North Korea are happening now.

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Reply to
John Larkin

In politics insanity is a quite normal prerequisite.

Reply to
Sjouke Burry

Wow! You're exhibiting Bill Sloman levels of reasoning ability here.

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Reply to
Cursitor Doom

That's the point. Communism is not about politics. It's about economics, much like socialism. Politics is the barrier to implementing a rational economic system.

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Rick C

/
s

Nobody sees either of them as "socialist paradises". Venezuela is merely a failed state, and North Korea is run a by a criminal gang who pretend to be "socialists" but do it so unconvincingly that only the likes of John Larki n and Cursitor Doom are gullible enough to swallow the story.

In the 1930's the Soviet Union had managed to get a long way towards spread ing electricity supply over the whole country

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Lenin had claimed that "Communism is Soviet government plus the electrifica tion of the whole country." This would have been an impressive achievement if he'd lived long enough to make it happen. The political environment was less impressive. North Korea's acquisition of nuclear weapons and long rang e missiles is perhaps comparably impressive, but it does absolutely nothing for the population of North Korea. Rural electrification was popular in th e US at much the same time, and the Soviet successes in that area got favou rable attention.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
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Bill Sloman

Cursitor Doom flatters Rick C. It only takes regular levels of reasoning ability to recognise that Stalin was nuts. Cursitor Doom can't manage that, but he is severely cognitively challenged.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
Bill Sloman

les/

lin's

ng

.

ne would claim politics caused mental illness.

, much like socialism. Politics is the barrier to implementing a rational economic system.

Unfortunately, communism relies on "leading role of the party" to manage th e politics, and that was recognised as an error back in 1871.

?If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself.?

Mikhail Bakunin died in 1876, which makes the line remarkably prophetic.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
Bill Sloman

And Cuba.

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Imagine a country so screwed up that it depended on *Venezuela* for support.

The universal feature of communism seems to be hunger.

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John Larkin

But the full history of that "fawning, conniving Western media" and the left in general has to be retold and not forgotten, now that they deny they ever denied the genocide, and pretend to be concerned about the Russians etc.

The UN has an official definition of genocide that includes killing people for their race or religion, but not for politics. That's because we stupidly gave Russia and China a say in the UN charter and they wanted to continue killing people for their politics. The western left still thinks like Stalin, so we have retail businesses with signs in the window forbidding Trump supporters. It's illegal to do that on racial or religious grounds.

Reply to
Tom Del Rosso

The universal feature of communism is that 20th century communist nations that last for any length of time are outliers; what usually happens is the CIA assassinates any democratically-elected leaders who get those kind of ideas, and funds right-wing paramilitary groups who execute and torture a few thousand or tens of thousands of the local population who thought it might be worth trying, and install a puppet fascist dictator far more amenable to US corporate interests then any of this "democratically-elected" nonsense.

Reply to
bitrex

It must be really frustrating sometimes being a wingnut; holding the intrinsically contradictory ideas that the left is simultaneously made up of sniveling, weak, limp-wristed snowflakes who are also the most powerful destructive and divisive force there is in the world, on the equal of Stalinist Russia.

In most right-wing philosophies I've looked at that's where the Jews fit in. they're the "brains" of the operation who secretly conspire with malice to give the weak and genetically unfit the level of power they need, above their natural genetic station, to challenge the Aryan race.

Reply to
bitrex

Schrodinger's wingnut - the Left is weak. the Left is incredibly powerful. Well which is it

Reply to
bitrex

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