You know we have a dedicated area of the forum for political ranting ... right?

Politics

My issue is that over the 10 post back and forth we've had, I've provided a significant number of real-world examples that either demonstrate flaws in your assertions or provide evidence that runs entirely contrary to what you assert we should be seeing. You have engaged with a sum total of zero of those examples. This doesn't make for a tenable discussion.

Stating that you believe your position is one of common sense and that you "believe that eventually common sense will prevail" is not an evidence based position. It's what one might call truthiness and while it's fine for you to believe in, again, it makes for pretty poor discussion fodder. It's the intellectual equivalent of a devout Christian citing faith in god, imo.



While there may no longer be a Berlin wall, there's plenty of other problems and suffering. In fact, that's been my point through much of this discussion. What you call a "perfectly normal European city" is still predicated on environmental devastation and human exploitation. That insanity is ongoing and shows no signs of abating, as far as I can tell.

Claiming insanity is temporary strikes me as a pretty empty assertion. Everything is temporary. One day the sun will burn out and we won't have to worry about life in this galaxy, let alone the piddly little situations on earth, but that hardly yields cogent social analysis/critique.

Yea, but GreatArc explicitly said he was looking for social/political discussion in his intro

The accusation of truthiness is not realy fair, i think. It's not that i just say something like 'unicorns exist' and then refuse to defend the proposition, simply by saying that it is only common sense.

The reason why i didn't try to explain why my points of view are common sense, is that i thought that would be a bit tedious and boring, as explaining common sense arguments usually are. let's not get into boring stuff.

If you realy, realy insist i will do it. But let me just say first that as a reaction to my first post, you immediately refered to 'the golden rule', wich i think is an indication that you are familiar with these ideas of what would constitute a fair deal. So at least you do seem to recognize that the idea is pretty common.

I tried to argue that, if you would want to change the way the debate about socio-economic issues is being held, the fact that the vast majority of people is familiar with the idea and actually subscribes to it, is an advantage. (whether people Always act in accordance with what they claim to believe in, is a different matter. But not very crucial to the argument, as this problem would apply just as much to any alternative idea or concept)

I'm not asking you to clarify what you mean by common sense. I apologize if I've been unclear in that.

My point through this entire discussion is that while you keep claiming these things are "common sense", the logic of really-existing-capitalism does not adhere to "common sense."

I don't believe it comes down to how these thing are talked about/debated, precisely because capitalism is set up in a way that incentivizes people to act against their own self-interests (see: massive paychecks to and from industry execs and politicians to act in ways that fundamentally increase ecological degradation and ignore the realities of climate change).

So when you say, it's common sense to not turn the environment into a cesspit (which I agree with wholeheartedly!), and I point to how the logic of capitalism results in turning the environment into a cesspit, through the actual mechanisms/institutions/systems that are currently in place in the real world, we are left with evidence that clearly demonstrates that capitalism, as it functions in the real world, does not result in common sense outcomes, but rather places money over everything (shorthand for a much more nuanced set of intricately linked actors/systems/institutions).

So, my point is that capitalism, as actually practiced, doesn't result in common sense/logical actions/outcomes. And IF you are asserting that common sense/logical actions/outcomes ARE realistic/viable/expectable within this current system/structure, the burden is on you to demonstrate the hows/whys of that, especially in the face of the overwhelming evidence as to how regulatory/supervisory agencies are routinely bought out and there is a revolving door between industry and government.

So, for example, if you wanted to claim that ecological devastation is not the expected outcome of the intersection of industrial civilization and capitalism, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, you would need to actually demonstrate how, within the current framework of capitalism, such a thing could actually manifest. Instead, it appears to me that you are just continuously re-asserting that it's illogical to destroy the environment (a point that I fundamentally agree with) or engage in other insane actions that we literally see happening every day under the logic of capitalism.