Roger Abbott

Ah yes, that makes sense. Thank you.

Brexit was ages ago, I cant even remember what happened there.

Laws change often, I wouldn't go by legal/illegal.

I always thought Iran and Qatar were friends?

The UK is a place where people go to prison for tweets, I dont have much confidence in their support for free expression.

This decision will make deportations easier, if anything.

Thats probably true

Hello Bluesky, I've been told this app has become the place to go for common sense political discussion and analysis. So I'm thrilled to be here to engage with all of you.

True

Trump is very persuasive, I'll give him that!

I dont see BlueSky as an 'alternative' to X, its just a simple social media platform that has appropriated the X model, but it can't even remotely be compared (anything more than Ladas and Ferraris are both cars, sort of thing).

Fair.

That's a fair point.

Let me Google that on my work laptop for you

I always get confused about which way around these apply, thank you for the useful summary!

If you are freelancing, but a majority of your work and fees always come from a single client, take advice on status risk.

The Hunter Biden presidential pardon is mainly to protect Joe Biden's corruption overseas and must not be taken to mean you can avoid paying your own Federal taxes. Speak to your CPA about tax penalties.

I am convinced Biden knows smarter people than a corrupt junkie.

Thank you, thats probably because I'm a Nazi. Why are you mainly following paedophilic accounts? You know having sex with children is illegal right?

Agreed, I think they're not strict enough categories, on either side. Taxation as a concept could be said to be socialist (ie contribute according to means to fund central services according to need) and that exists everywhere. I just take a more 'classical' view, I guess.

This is all true and valid criticisms.

However, socialism's solution to all this is the deliberate concentration of ownership in the hands of a few unaccountable political elites, who not influenced, but made the laws/ controlled the army. It's like, how is that solving any of the initial problems?

Although I am tempted to break into an essay of my own - what I always found odd was that the founding criticism of capitalism was that private ownership led to concentrations wealth/power among a few rich people who disproportionately influenced politics/laws, and huge inequality.

I guess I could have short-cut all of my ramblings by saying - distinction comes down, at its most fundamental, to the balance of ownership rights between (1) the individual and (2) the collective, ie the state, which purports to represent the collective.

But I guess this ownership structure isn't state mandated/ it's the free choice of the people. Eg behind the iron curtain, there was no private ownership (well, v restricted, and limited to those with some connections to power) not even 'private collectives'. The state owned all houses and leased.

That's a very strong indicator that it is not a socialist system, because it doesn't require state ownership, allows private ownership (doubtless protects private ownership rights against the state) etc?

Its tongue-in-cheek, not literal - its what makes it a joke ;-)

that its not socialist/collectivist.

As I say, I am sure there are plenty of people in College writing about this type of thing, they're not strict categories, but I dont see Denmark/France/Finlad, despite high government spending, having the drivers that socialism does.