So you got your taste, touch, smell, sight, hearing, and thermoception? Assuming we’re treating it differently from touch.

Huh that’s neat!

It makes sense that it is the touch sensing the heat, but it’s not like a physical touch against an object so that’s the only reason I thought it could be treated differently for the purpose of this shower thought.

I think it could be worth doing a class on the text of the Quran at some point. I’m aware of some small things such as a deeper focus on the rituals of prayer and worship, but I’m not aware of the specifics of the text.

They really should be, those writings attributed to Paul really go off base from what Jesus was teaching.

Adam was made XY sex. Adam then chose to be male. Sorry for the confusion there.

And it’s been woke the whole time! Lol

That makes a lot of sense; I’m curious now what are some of the big differences between the Orthodox and Catholic versions of the Bible. I agree that the Bible can be viewed as a living document. Personally I believe more books could have been added on over the past 2,000 years.

That makes sense as well. Take the King James Version for example which removed references of criticism about the monarchy and papal authority. Although surprisingly was still centered on presenting the Bible without a religious or political lean one way or another.

Even the Bible has been slightly altered by man though. For instance, a few of the books written in Paul’s name we know now were actually written by some of people under him from within the early church.

So the sections written about women not holding authority within the church may have been put in there to centralize power and make the church have a patriarchal structure.

There’s also the different translations of the Bible which can affect the meaning for some of the text. For instance the Adam and Eve story. Adam means earth in Hebrew, it was not a name. So the person we know as Adam, was created male and then personally chose to identify as male, rather than being given his gender by God. The same for Eve as well being the first woman, although IIRC Eve was her name. Still she chose to identity as the first woman.

I disagree that you can’t have those reforms be done that way. I agree with you that the changes are not in-line with unchecked capitalism, but the whole concept of the “invisible hand” is just for show anyways.

To give some accessible examples; you can’t house homeless people or give people healthcare and higher education because homelessness and debt is a whip to keep the workers working for whatever wage and conditions are offered by a capital owner.

Corporations and bought politicians may try to prevent the help from trickling down, but help can actually reach people in areas that care about helping more than just extracting wealth.

I think the problem is that issues are pretty complex and always involve money being spent to address or fix the problems. The core issue is people have been hesitant to individually fund the solutions since it’s easier to spread the costs out among everyone (e.g., individual states understandably didn’t want to bear the burden alone and wanted the federal government to bear the costs). At this point in time though, that looks to be not an option blue states can count on anymore. Blue States need to individually fund these programs to help people in their state, and only afterwards could those help options scale to help people federally.

You can’t deconstruct racism because it was invented in the first place to keep the working class at war with itself rather than struggling against the conditions set by the ruling class.

I agree with you that racism isn’t something that will go away any time soon unfortunately. I believe social media has only made issues worse regarding this with all the bots and bad actors trying to stoke some people’s racism and hatred.

If those people have something/someone else they can blame for their problems then it’s another way of getting around people’s racial biases. Bernie Sanders for instance has been having success recently among people living in rural West Virginia to direct their frustration towards the billionaires causing their problems rather than towards working-class people.

You can’t stop imperialism because infinite growth requires infinite and unrestricted expansion into new territories.

The big corporations are more or less starting to hit that wall now where they can’t really expand too much more. Foreign markets have become more and more saturated with existing businesses which make it harder for these conglomerates to get a foothold. They’ve been underpaying about as much as they can get away with and cost cutting about as much as they can as well. They’ve big corporations have more or less sent themselves into a downward spiral where pretty soon no one is going to be able to afford their garbage. When a majority of people’s income is going forward their bare necessities rather than on things they want it doesn’t bode well for the corporations who have nothing left to fleece away.

The system of capitalism manufactures its own required conditions through cruelty and social inequality (and yet, it’s these very things that lead to resistance), and without those necessary components the whole system collapses. The ruling class will not allow this to happen, because this system serves their material interests, and thus fundamental change cannot happen until the working class; whose material interests are directly opposed to those of the ruling class; is in power.

The billionaires and big corporations have gotten a bit too greedy lately, the bubble they created where people are just comfortable enough not to care about how rich these people are is very close to popping. The fact that working class people can’t even afford to buy a home is a bad sign for these corporations, just where are they expecting working class people to have families after all?

The interests of working class people to have their needs met is growing by the day. If inflation keeps soaring as we have seen, then progressive change is going to be demanded from our representatives. I believe Blue states should be the focus for that since any corporate politician paying lip service can be primaried with an actual progressive willing to fund programs to help people.

The ruling class will pay lip service and the occasional half-measure in order to obscure this reality and make “reformism” seem possible, but 1) that is all they will do especially in the absence of a real threat to their power and 2) they will always eventually claw back even the smallest and hardest-fought of crumbs. Crumbs are good and all but there comes a point where our energy is better spent fighting for the whole cake.

The game is close to being up for the corporate leaders where they actually will need to do their jobs; people are needing these programs now more than ever since wages have not kept up with inflation. The demand is they either help their constituents or they lose their jobs at this point. They can try to push things back and try to keep getting their donor money, but people have caught on. The cake can be owned if we primary any Blue state congressperson that isn’t willing to pass progressive programs. If we wanted to make it even easier to primary people, then we could also vote in an alternative voting system in Blue states.

I do think it’s possible at the state level to have the government step in to have a more hands on role for real estate among other things. Federally I think that’s a long shot, unless other states see how successful the progressive programs are in Blue states.

I don’t disagree that UBI is in many ways a band-aid. I see it as not too complex for your average person to understand though. The rent problem to me is one that needs to be tackled at the same time that UBI gets implemented.

People still get their freedom of spending their UBI as they desire, although some of their existing expenses could be deducted before they receive UBI payment (e.g., child care payments). From a policy selling perspective UBI looks very attractive, especially when you start receiving payments of it for a while. So much so that people would not stand it going away.

So if you’re working and get a UBI on top of your pay, then you have more money to invest in better versions of the things you have. If you’re living on the street, suddenly you have a government that cares about helping you to get off the ground and help put food on your table.

I don’t think specific help programs should go away mind you; I hear that sometimes but I disagree with that perspective. Maybe some of the UBI could be in a currency that’s only spendable on food (like food stamps), so in those rare cases the money potentially still goes to buying food.

I disagree that inflation hits billionaires harder, they invest their money in the stock market which outpaces the rate of inflation Year over Year. Meanwhile, your total buying power drops tremendously because of inflation’s increase each year. If most of your money isn’t in the stock market then the worth of your money continues to be less. If you don’t get a wage increase at your job, then you’re making less money each year rather than the same amount as well.

I do agree that UBI is good for workers though, mainly because it also puts power back in the hands of workers since they become not dependent on their employers to survive. Workers instead would be coming into work because they want to thrive.

Those people should be taxed more really. Personally, I believe every dollar over $1 billion should be taxed at 90+%. I would set the threshold for scaling those tax brackets much lower than that though.

Billionaires should be banned from using their stocks as collateral for loans as well.

The government really needs to either implement rent controls or buy up many of the private apartments to turn into public housing. It really doesn’t make a ton of sense for the product being leased for profit to be … property? In what world does it make sense for where you live to be a for-profit venture for someone else? Nah, the government could own it and rent out units at more reasonable rates/subsidizing the costs.

UBI is still great imo, but it’s not the end step like you said. We should have Universal Healthcare and public transit as well. I feel that UBI could pay for groceries, but grocery stores/food producers should have more regulations on the fillers and junk they put into these ‘food’ items they sell. I believe education K thru College should be free. It just makes sense for society to subsidize the education costs for the people that will help create value to our economy through their higher education.

UBI can be done at the state level too, but states may have to go into debt to get it going. Blue States should raise the taxes on bigger corporations to help fund the program, possibly even creating corporate tax brackets.

I think states should try to implement UBI at the state level, since it could be many years now before we have the votes to pass it federally. In the meantime, residents in Blue states could have a huge bump in their quality-of-life and it might even sell Purple and Red states to implement some of these progressive programs.

I could see something like what you are saying working Federally for funding such a program. We could implement Federal tax brackets on businesses as well to help fund the programs year after year if we really needed that.

How though? There’s no mechanism in UBI to increase production to match the increased demand. If anything its could decrease production / supply as less people work and choose to just live off UBI.

UBI gives a lot of leverage to workers to have over their employers.

Some people will do as you have said, where they will opt to not work and live off UBI. We see that currently though with some of these people living on the streets. People work for many reasons ultimately. For some, it’s to have their basic needs met, but many people work to have a higher quality of life and to have their wants met as well.

With a UBI you ideally could have a small apartment, amenities, pay for public transportation, and not have to worry about putting food on your table each day. Let me just say you have Universal Healthcare too since if we managed to get UBI implemented, then there likely are other progressive programs we could implement at the same time.

Increasing the amount of cash in the market doesn’t increase productivity/ supply, otherwise printing money would work.

The thing about UBI is that money is backed by the US government, they’re not printing new dollars, so they’re not devaluing the money in the marketplace.

Actually printing money in bulk is bad, because those printed dollars are not backed by assets, thus devaluing that currency as a whole. The US does print more money occasionally, but we devalue our dollar a little each time that we do.

Increasing aggregate demand / money without increasing aggregate supply / productivity just leads to inflation. This is what I mean by its myopic focus on consumption, production also needs to be considered. Everyone wants to focus on the “to each according to their needs” part and not the “from each according to their ability”

I agree that if our demand outpaced our production it would lead to higher inflation. Currently though, we produce much, much more than is demanded. So much so that we have billions in waste each year, that’s billions in weight too! So, realistically, people would be able to afford more food, but people only need/want so much food so spending habits on food should not change so much as to leave shelves consistently empty.

The same thing applies to clothing as well, where we toss tons, upon tons of new clothes each year.

Yeah certain industries can scale up relatively cheaply to match this increased demand but things like housing which have a limited supply that expands relatively slowly will just see price increases. You said this could cause increased competition for landlords but it will also cause increased competition for housing.

Housing is purposefully kept at low supply. If houses and apartments were allowed to be scaled up to meet demand, then housing prices would go down. The thing is, that all the Not In My Backyard (NIMBYs) people will not stand for having the price of their house going down, especially if the price could ever drop to be lower than they are paying for their mortgage. Development is slowed down for similar reasons since if there is an abundance of available housing then housing prices could drop.

If there are 4 houses and 5 households and before UBI 4 households made enough to afford $1,000 in rent and they got the 4 houses, after UBI of $1,000 the landlord can use the threat of renting to the homeless person to raise the rent until that homeless person is priced out again. If you increase the amount of money people have without increasing supply then the people will use that money to bid up prices until you’re back to the old distribution of resources.

The government could step in to buy up many private apartments up to turn into public housing or they could implement rent controls to prevent rampant greed from landlords. I don’t think UBI would be enough for most people currently living on the streets to afford to live downtown, but it could help them keep a small apartment in one of the less busy cities or in the lower cost neighborhoods.

The alternative to UBI that the left has been pushing forever, especially the African American left, has been a universal jobs guarantee. Anyone can go into a government office and they’ll give you a job with decent pay. Since you’re putting people to work you can actually increase productivity and supply to match the new demand. You still get all the guarantees of income and the benefits that entails of getting out of bad situations but you also are able to pressure employers for better labor standards. If the government is offering a living wage for 3 days a week then other employers will have to match that. It’s also more politically viable, trying to convince middle America that “free money” is a good thing will be a lot harder then convincing them that a jobs guarantee is good.

Personally, I’m in favor of more government jobs that pay a living wage. I don’t think it has to be mutually exclusive, mind you, we could have UBI and more government jobs. UBI gives more flexibility to a lot of people out there, for instance single parents can more easily work part-time and still put food on the table or university students could focus more on their education rather than needing to balance a part-time job and their schoolwork.

I agree that convincing ‘everyone’ of a UBI would be hard, but if Blue states implemented it and it saw success, then I’m sure people living in Purple/Red states could be convinced as well. I think you’re spot on though that we should still try to sell Universal Job Guarantee at the federal level as it could be sold right now with no further elaboration.

I think it’s still worth implementing UBI, most of the fears are something that can be tackled independently.

For instance, the why not have the government buy up most of the private apartments and turn them into public housing? Or at the least set rate increase limits on rent.

I don’t believe most things would face much noticeable inflation if a UBI were to be implemented, aside from luxury/high quality goods. A little inflation is baked into our economy anyway, as a little inflation is a good thing to prevent deflation.

I agree with you, people fear mongering about UBI being used to control people, when bosses could do that currently with a paycheck. UBI usually means no strings attached, although I’m sure there could be other incentive programs out there on top of UBI to reward people.

If we really want UBI to be less likely to be taken over by bad actors, I feel it makes sense to have each state implementing their own UBI programs. It would be great if this was a federal program that helped everyone, but even getting it passed federally is looking like an uphill climb. It makes way more sense to pass UBI in progressive states, and try to sell purple and red states on the idea as well.

I mean, Alaska has a Basic Income at the least, so in theory we already see one state mildly seeing the benefit of a Universal Basic Income.

I wouldn’t say those three things are inherently logically incompatible, but there would be a lot of grey areas.

The power structure of the federal government doesn’t make it any easier to actually exercise the federal government to accomplish helpful objectives, but making things worse is a relatively easy exercise.

The focus on state level politics seems much more meaningful to actually accomplish any goals, since at least there is not as big of a hurdle where land and money have more power/representation than real people.

For the record, I said several authoritarians, I didn’t say every one was one. I would say your reading of my comment was uncharitable at best and rude at worst.

Marxism itself wasn’t necessarily tainted, but his ideas of socialism and communism definitely had a social stain associated with them. So by association it had a black mark.

I think it’s pretty clear that we haven’t seen it for what it was supposed to be, when it was weaponized by authoritarians and then attacked by capitalists. It’s supposed to be a grand thing of the people coming together, not stained in blood.

I think you may have misread what I said there about the reformist part. His ideas were revolutionary for the time, but many of the ideas could be applied by reformist.

I think his ideas can reform a capitalist system. It’s probably one of many ways his ideas get off the ground. The big thing was changing the system, it’s not necessarily all about how you get there.

What do you mean? A reformed and reforged system is a new system.

I could give you a multi-hour long breakdown of my views but something tells you’re not interested in a long-form dialogue here.