Here come the UK SWAF teams!

[Seth]

You deserve nothing but ridicule. Lift your game and people might start treating you like an adult.

Neener, neener, neener...you smell and you're ugly!

And regarding your previous post... I don't "believe in Socialism". I'm a pragmatist who advocates for the good bits out of anarchism (libertarian socialism), socialism, and communism, where it is appropriate in today's world.

Pragmatist...socialist...communist...Marxist. All describe the same mindset, which is that the individual is less important than the collective and therefore the collective rules the individual. That's diametrically opposed to Libertarianism.

Regarding you and Marxism, you haven't got a fucking clue what Marxism is.

Actually, I know exactly what Marxism. I've read Marx's fucking ponderous tome on capital, and his Communist Manifesto, and most of his other works as well, so I'm intimately familiar with what Marxism is. You just don't like it when I identify Marxism in the real world, where it often appears disguised and masked as something else, like "Progressivism" or "Liberalism" or "Socialism." But it's Marxists all the way down chum.

You also don't seem to realise that a lot of socialists hate Marxists.

Socialists are Marxism's useful idiots, so that doesn't surprise me at all.

In short, your an isolated nutbag who has very little clue about anything outside his own narrow existence.

Takes one to know one...

[Seth]

Merry Christmas, by the way...

And a Happy New Year to you!

I'm looking to make a pretty packet driving NYE drunks around tomorrow night.

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, the biggest night of the year for cabbies and equivalents. I drove a 15 hour shift one new years eve. Made a fucking shitload! Bloody tired after it, though. It was non stop for 15 hours. The funny thing was leaving the Valley (the big nightlife centre in Brisbane) with fares and all the drunks who couldn't get a cab coz the lines and wait times were huge would be all running out of the footpaths on to the road trying to hail you down not knowing you had a passenger in the car. It was like a scene out of some zombie movie! All these uncoordinated and incoherent maniacs all charging at your car trying to get you to stop.

[Hermit]

Pragmatist...socialist...communist...Marxist. All describe the same mindset, which is that the individual is less important than the collective and therefore the collective rules the individual. That's diametrically opposed to Libertarianism.

No middle path at all?

[pErvinalia]

Not for a true ideologue. But that way lies madness. Even if someone could get an extreme ideology like libboism up and running against the currents of society, it would never work, just like probably all pure ideologies.

[Hermit]

You, I and JimC are also true ideologues. In fact, I can't think of anyone with political, social and other opinions who is not an ideologue.

[pErvinalia]

Not really, as we don't have set prescriptions and a wide ranging set of fundamental principles. We take bits and pieces from here and there, and what works in one situation might not be favoured for another situation.

[Hermit]

Ideology: A system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.

[MrJonno]

Ideology: A system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.

They don't tend to work well in 21st century complex societies, that's any ideology bar 'if it works'

[Blind groper]

I have started a new thread on Marxism and socialism, since this discussion is a derail from this thread topic.

[JimC]

Yes, societies usually do benefit from enslaving the individual to the will of the majority

Which in the end of the day is the only thing that matters.

Freedom and 'liberty' are nothing more than ideas that sometimes can benefit society , when they don't fuck freedom

Sounds like you would be a perfect fit as a worker in an ant colony, Jonno.

Sure, we know that Seth goes a little crazy in his rejection of almost every control exerted by society on the individual, but it is also disturbingly easy for societies to drift in the other direction. There needs to be a dynamic balance between the needs of society and the rights of individuals, and people need to be able to fight hard to protect individual liberties, even when conceding the need to accept a certain, judicious amount of legal constraints imposed by a democratic society.

[klr]

Yes, societies usually do benefit from enslaving the individual to the will of the majority

Which in the end of the day is the only thing that matters.

Freedom and 'liberty' are nothing more than ideas that sometimes can benefit society , when they don't fuck freedom

Sounds like you would be a perfect fit as a worker in an ant colony, Jonno.

Sure, we know that Seth goes a little crazy in his rejection of almost every control exerted by society on the individual, but it is also disturbingly easy for societies to drift in the other direction. There needs to be a dynamic balance between the needs of society and the rights of individuals, and people need to be able to fight hard to protect individual liberties, even when conceding the need to accept a certain, judicious amount of legal constraints imposed by a democratic society.

The keyword here is dynamic. As the factors affecting a society change over time, the balance between individual rights v. society as a whole ought to change along with them.

[JimC]

You, I and JimC are also true ideologues. In fact, I can't think of anyone with political, social and other opinions who is not an ideologue.

I think that is misusing the true meaning of the word "ideologue". I know that you mean to say that everybody has some form of political framework from which they perceive society, but an ideologue is someone who works from a single, well developed political ideology, and does not go beyond those particular boundaries. It implies a rigidity of political thought, and it usually eschews a pragmatic, case-by-case decision making process, instead insisting on applying some form of party line, or economic theory.

[pErvinalia]

Ideology: A system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.

Yeah, but unless you call "not being fussed what works" a "system of ideas and ideals" then, no. An ideological purist says things have to be done a certain way regardless of outcome. That's definitely not you me or Jim. It's not actually Seth either (as he's purely about himself), but he professes he is ideological.

[pErvinalia]

I have started a new thread on Marxism and socialism, since this discussion is a derail from this thread topic.

Why did you have to do that?? Now we're just going to get a thread full of Seth calling everyone and everything that isn't a Libertarian, a Marxist. May as well bin that thread now.