that would be stupid then in the same way it's stupid for Greece to pay that huge debt

So the rest of the European Union should have to put up with Greece's shit because it's previous government thought it was a good idea to go fucking nuts when it could get credit at the same interest rate as Germany?

Your government failed, and the taxpayers are going to have to pick up the debt. Is that fair? Of course not, it's politics. But it's a hell of a lot better than any other country having to pick up the tab.

Demanding reparations for World War Two bigger than their current bailout deal.

Greece has demanded nearly €279bn in reparations from Germany, more than the value of its current bail-out, as the cash-strapped country continues to pursue compensation for crimes carried out by the Third Reich.

A parliamentary committee established by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras put an official number on the claim, which includes the cost of a forced Nazi loan made by the Bank of Greece and the return of archaeological treasures.

Greece suffered a brutal occupation at the hands of the Third Reich in 1941, with over 40,000 people starving to death in Athens alone.

Previous Greek calculations for the cost of the country's occupation have stood at around €160bn. The revised figures however amount to nearly 10pc of Germany's GDP.

Mr Tsipras has called the reparations question a "moral and ethical" issue for his country, repeating his demands during a visit to Berlin last month.

Greek ministers have also touted the idea of seizing German assets in the country to compensate the families of victims of Nazi war crimes.

A poll carried for Greek radio found more than 80pc of Greeks agreed with the pusuit of Nazi war debt claims.

Berlin moved to quickly to reject the fresh claims. Vice chancellor Sigmar Gabriel described the proposal as "dumb" and said it risked conflating Greece's current debt problems with historical grievances.

“If you bring two areas that have nothing to do with one another, both heavily burdened issues politically, into a single context, then you make it damned easy for those from whom you want something simply to exit the debate and say ‘you can’t do that’,” said Mr Gabriel.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has also resisted re-opening old wounds, insisting Berlin has honoured its obligations during a compensatory accord signed in 1960.

In a further sign of a hardening in attitudes towards their creditors, Greek lawmakers also voted to establish a committee examining the circumstances of its 2010 bail-out by eurozone creditors and the IMF to the tune of €240bn.

"After five years of parliamentary silence on the major issues that caused the bailout catastrophe, today we commence a procedure that will give answers to the questions concerning the Greek people," Mr Tsipras said to parliamentarians on Tuesday.

Finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has claimed the economy was unfairly lumbered with the liabilities that it is now struggling to pay off as its coffers run empty.

Mr Varoufakis has claimed Europe dealt with his country's bankruptcy by "loading the largest loan in human history on the weakest of shoulders - the Greek taxpayer."

Oh, Greece.

Quote from: Meta Cognition on April 07, 2015, 10:22:15 AM

Quote from: Mad Max on April 07, 2015, 09:59:58 AM

It's in their best interests to pay employees as little as possible.

Which isn't true, since everybody selling their own labour would be on the minimum wage. . .

Forgive my economic ignorance, but this sentence just doesn't make any sense to me. Selling their own labor?

Working for a wage. People who work via commission or some other payment method can obviously fall short of the mandated minimum wage.

But the point is that abolishing the minimum wage would only really affect the people at the very bottom who are currently working for the minimum wage, and even then not as badly as you think; wages are sticky, and incredibly difficult to cut. The solution to this, however, is to overhaul the welfare system along the lines of a guaranteed basic income for people earning nothing with a wage subsidy like the EITC for people earning below an acceptable amount.

That way, everybody's incentivised to work and nobody has to suffer from either exceptionally shitty wages or poverty traps.

It's a stupid decision by the school, but trying to shoehorn identity politics into this is even stupid. There's nothing sexist about this.

I bet you're the same dude who balks at raising the minimum wage, huh?

Everybody should.

The mistake you're making is thinking that those contemporary "college communists" are looking for another red revolution. There's an actual communist political party in the country and several of my friends (who are in or just out of college) are such communists, and none of them would want another communist revolution. They support its ideals and want to make some of them more of a part of our society and political landscape, but you're wrong in thinking that they'd support another stalinist revolution and regime.

>communism
>no money, no state and no classes
>communist political party

Why come up with a pretentiously gay term instead of saying you're insecure, you fat British fuckface

Because I'm probably the least insecure person I know.

...yeah.

I went apeshit and said some things I shouldn't have said. I tainted this whole thread. I should have just let it go when I had the chance.

*sigh*

Eh, happens to the best of us.

One would think that a humanitarian effort would make an effective attempt at minimizing any potential consequences (or, you know, be humanitarian from the outset). At what point do the consequences outweigh the benefits?

The point at which the Iraqis are clearly worse-off as a result of the Coalition's intervention.

Look, I'm starting to agree that this conversation is becoming redundant. I think it's best if we just leave it here in the best possible spirits, because at this point I think we're just talking past each other.

https://soundcloud.com/zmcd/mark-mark-mark

jesus christ it's almost been a year

the best thing about it is that's good dubstep

Because they're the same thing?

This conversation is over.

Quote from: challengerX on April 04, 2015, 06:40:48 PM

Quote from: Sprungli on April 04, 2015, 06:38:08 PM

Has it ever occurred to you that  most people in this country don't give a single shit what other people believe?

Has it ever occurred to you these people aren't playing around and act on their violent beliefs?

There's an argument to be made that if you suppress them even more, you're magnifying the problem and increasing the result.

While I don't think we should suppress them, I haven't seen any literature which supports the idea. All the research I've read point to one really weird thing about Islamic militants: they're surprisingly normal.

When I think of Meta, I imagine Eggsy from Kingsman.

That's funny, I always imagined Meta more like this:

+1 for Camile Paglia.

If I were to ever describe myself as a feminist, then it could only ever be in the likeness of Paglia.

The problem with this idea of the patriarchy is that it's an altogether nebulous and yet omnipresent which, seemingly, everything can be blamed on. If you want to take a restrictive view of "patriarchy", it's very easy to knock down. For instance, women hold 60pc of all wealth and 51pc of all stocks, and run 40pc of all private businesses. And, of course, women control the household finances too. The fact simply is that society seems to be altogether lacking in systemic, institutionalised “glass ceilings” against women—the number of Fortune 500 CEOs who are women is at a historic high, and (controlling for exit rates and background) women are paid more and promoted more aggressively—doesn’t bode well for this orthodox definition, either.

So, in order to find a more agreeable definition of "patriarchy", we turn to Wikipedia: "Feminist theory defines patriarchy as an unjust social system that enforces gender roles and is oppressive to both men and women."

So, at least now we know what we're talking about. The (subtly) coercive enforcement of gender roles. Yet, this utterly fails to account for the fact that in more gender egalitarian countries like the Netherlands there is still a significant deviation in risk-tolerance between men and women. Actually, there is a general trend for more gender egalitarian countries to have a higher degree of auto-segregated professions. And indeed, we've seen the same data from the US as well, where differing degrees of competitiveness between individuals goes a long way in explaining the disparity. In fact, personality differences are central. Women and men differ all across the globe, but most of all in egalitarian, developed societies.

But, let's actually look at the gender roles the "patriarchy" is supposed to be enforcing in one way or another. Using Planned Parenthood, we get these lists of traits. Masculinity: independent, non-emotional, aggressive, tough-skinned, competitive, clumsy, experienced, strong, active, self-confident, hard, sexually aggressive, rebellious. And for femininity: dependent, emotional, passive, sensitive, quiet, graceful, innocent, weak, flirtatious, nurturing, self-critical, soft, sexually submissive, accepting.

So let me introduce you to Camile Paglia, a passionate feminist who celebrates freedom, opportunity and individuality while acknowledging the idea that gender roles spring from basic truths about the human condition. She decries the "whiney", white, middle-class feminism for going off-track and not sticking to the message of independence, self-reliance and responsibility. And what do those words signify? A good person. A responsible person. One of her most inflammatory statements is that were Western civilisation left originally in the hands of women, we would still be living in grass huts. And the few matriarchal societies on Earth, like the Khasi people, actually support this perspective.

And yet, the personal ideals that Paglia support are commensurate with the masculine traits that Planned Parenthood listed: independence, competitiveness, self-confidence. . . But this isn't about masculinity and femininity. It's about prosperity, and the general well-being of society. Society is ultimately a meritocracy, and the ideals that feminists have set themselves against essentially define this meritocracy. They are complaining about a system which allows those with the correct personal traits to rise to the top, where they fucking belong. It may be true that men are more pre-disposed to the traits which bring success, regardless of gender "oppression" or coercion (as the sources I've provided would suggest), but the truth of the matter is that people with this capacity will have a greater propensity for success.

If you want to call this capacity "masculinity", then go ahead. But you're twisting the nature of society to fit your ideology. If feminists want to try and complain that they're being "oppressed" because of societies enforced "gender roles", it is really nothing more than a function of "masculine" traits to produce results and the likelihood of the people with such traits to rise to the top.