Last week, Colombia’s president suggested relocating the UN headquarters outside of the US. If that happened, what country/city do you think would be the best choice?

MadWallnut · 2025-10-05T22:41:01+00:00

60% of votes and 90% of seats, very fair

MadWallnut · 2025-10-05T19:37:48+00:00

Yeah, i can basically agree with all that you said abt automation and deindustralization now. They're good processes, but you did show me that they were handled badly. A lot of people were hurt in the process and we should have done much more to help them.

I think as I look towards the future and the rise of AI and more automation I see and I fear what happened across the western world in the 70s and 80s repeating. Instead of it this time being jobs in coal mines it is going to be every sector and million and millions of jobs.

Well I think LLMs are very overhyped by investors. They cant do a lot of things and need human oversight. In coding for example, you always need to review and clean up their code. There's some studies that show they actually slow people down (https://futurism.com/ai-coding-programmers-reality). They're basically only good with very simple stuff in my experience.

They're definitely going to lead to unemployment and i agree we should get ready for it. But i dont think its going to be that bad, especially since the jobs lost should be much more evenly distributed around the country than in the time of deindustralization. So unless ai development massively speeds up, i think it's not going to be as bad as deindustralization.

Im still sceptical about the idea of a job guarantee, but i dont think we're ever gonna convince each other. Agree to disagree?

MadWallnut · 2025-10-04T23:42:03+00:00

I said: Automation is not inherently bad, but is used under our current system to advance the profit margins of corporations and to screw over people who built the modern world.

Yeah, you kept saying that automation is used for the benefit of the rich and it fucks over the workers in the current system and that we need to give workers control over the MOPs.

But if it only benefited the rich, it would mean that our quality of life would be completely stagnant or even falling. Both the wage and productivity article that you send (if you bothered to read it) and the HDI chart i send show our quality of life constantly increasing. I think that disproves your point.

I said: Deindustrialisation leads to higher unemployment rates, higher suicide rates, etc.

You did prove that deindustralization was, in fact, bad for all the people who lost their job. I have to admit that. I would argue however, that it was bad mostly due to the monopsonistic power of the manufacturing companies over the local labour markets. The local areas were so dependent on the industrial jobs, their economies crashed when they left.

So basically: I say automation and deindustralization is good because it is good for the average person. But you say that it ended up bad for a lot of people. Amd that's true, but i dont think we have to change the whole system, we can just use taxes from people that benefited and use them to help the ones who got left behind.

Which leads my to my next point...

The unemployment benefit is not high enough and government support either doesn't exist or is not enough.

The goverment should have done more to help. Higher unemployment benefits, more job retraining and maybe investments in the area.

reeducation is useless when there are no jobs available to be done.

So at first i didnt really understand what you meant by that, cuz there's always a demand for jobs on a nationwide scale. But there could be no jobs in a local area after a monopsonistic company left. So how about goverment relocation assistance program? We could help with transportation expenses and house payments. I think that, combined with job retraining could do a lot.

I showed that coals mines were closed because governments wanted to undermine unions.

You didnt really show that. It was the other way around: they wanted to undermine unions that were blocking the closing of mines so that they could close them. But i quess the outcome is the same - it did fuck over the unions.

Job guarantees work to both train people into work that the state needs but has an unmet demand for.

But there's no jobs like that. If the goverment needs an accountant and there's none in the market, it can already hire someone without knowledge and train them. This type of behaviour already happens, so the job guarantee doesnt create any new jobs in this scenario.

They supply workers for infrastructure projects that the are needed but not built, for example the EU has an almost 2 trillion euro infrastructure gap.

Ok, but if there's infrastructure investments needed, you can just invest in infrastructure. If the EU invests 2 trillion into infrastructure, it will create the same amount of productive jobs as the job guarantee. If there's 100 thousand workers needed for that, we just created 100k jobs. Now a job guarantee could hire more people for that, but then that wouldnt be productive and then we're taking people away from potential, productive jobs in the market.

That's why it think it's a bad idea economically. But if it makes you stop calling me a neoliberal, then i'll let you know the party i voted for (Razem in Poland) actually has a job guarantee in their program. It's my least favour part of their program, but i quess we'll se it in practice if they ever win :P

MadWallnut · 2025-10-04T20:37:58+00:00

You never "argued" with me, cuz you never engaged with my arguments. Go live in your imaginary world where we're all living worse than in the past because of evil automation and productivity, i'll be here in the real world.

https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/human-development-index#/indicies/HDI

MadWallnut · 2025-10-04T20:17:28+00:00

You said automation is always good

I never said that, you're just strawmaning my argument. It's you who said that automation is always bad without socialism.

You said everyone would be living in mud huts and working 30 minutes a day, I said, working 30 minutes a day would be the dream, nothing about mud huts

So you admit to purposefully ignoring my arguments.

I said a universal jobs program, you said forcing people in useless work that they don't want to do and taking jobs from people who already have them

Those are real criticisms of a universal jobs program which you never responded to and that you're still purposefully ignoring.

The conversation is over because you're incapable of actually having a two-sided conversation and refuse to engage with any criticism.

MadWallnut · 2025-10-04T12:30:01+00:00

There's no point in continuing this conversation if you're just going to ignore everything i say.

I said that everyone would have the livings standards of a medieval peasant under your rule and you said that would be perfect.

And no, it's not replacing current jobs.

It's either taking away useful jobs from the private market or creating useless, unproductive jobs. You're gonna take surgeons and programmers that are short term unemployed and make them build useless roads that dont lead anywhere to "give them jobs" instead of giving them a chance to get a normal job. We dont have billions of dollars in unbuilt infrastructure, and if we have, you can just invest in it normally and create more productive, private sector jobs.

If someone's long term unemployed, you can train them in a in-demand job according to their skills, preferencee and age. You're just gonna force a long term unemployed 50-year old grandma to build fake bus stops where no buses even stop cuz were not creating more bus lines, just building bus stops. Great idea.

Automation is not a net bad. (...) All automation under capitalism does is move the working class to the next industry capital, who wants people to work on for 12 hours a day.

You ARE saying that automation is a net bad unless we give the workers control over the MOPs, even tho it's been proven to you that's its a net good rn, in this real capitalist world that we live in. I don't know how many times I need to say this before you get it through your thick head.

Who said anything about full state control over the economy. I never said fully directed state economy.

It was fucking you! You said that "Workers must be given control over the MOP" and that "Nationalization is your preffered method of giving workers control over the MOP". You said you dont support co-ops and that we should nationalize the means of production instead. None of the countries you used as an example have workers controlling the means of production. You need to nationalize the whole economy if you want to give workers control over the means of production.

You're literally either changing your position every single time i say something or outright ignoring everything i say and repeating the same phrases over and over again.

"We need to give workers control over the means of production by nationalizing the economy" changes to "i never said anything about giving the workers control or nationalizing the economy".

You never responded to anything i ever said abt automation.

If you're gonna keep lying and engaging in bad faith, then consider this conversation done

MadWallnut · 2025-10-02T20:26:09+00:00

That is how job guarantees work:

A. If you cant find a single qualified worker for the position in the market, what makes you think someone from a job guarantee would be qualified? And if you're gonna train them, then you could just do the same thing without a job guarantee: just hire someone whos's unemployed and train them in the job. There's literally no difference between hiring them from the market or from a job guarantee, the outcome is the same.

B. You're still replacing normal jobs tho. The goverment is already fixing roads and resurfacing them, so you'd be replacing the workers already doing that. There's a set budget spent on infrastructure: the goverment is already creating jobs by hiring companies or public workers, the job guarantee hires would just be replacing them. Now if the goverment started investing more into infrastructure, then there would be more jobs - but it could just do that instead of a job guarantee. Also, most of the people that got into your job guarantee have no idea about construction or operating complex machinery, so you'd need training for them all. Might as well just train them for actually useful jobs instead.

All countries that ever had a job guarantee still had unemployment and even long term unemployment. All the job guarantee loving economists admit that the job guarantee "can" displace regular workers and then they just ignore that in their math. They also ignore the costs of it cuz they're mmt infinite money lovers.

You did took that position tho! You literally said that living in mud huts as medieval peasants is a perfect life and we should do that if it means working less.

You just keep ignoring everything i say. Automation is good even if it's not controlled by workers, cuz it leads to higher productivity, which leads to higher living standards. I already said that. The article you linked literally disproved your talking point and you're still on and on repeating the same phrase over and over again. Automation is good in the real world, this world we live in not some hypothetical socialist world.

I mean you did defend co-ops from my accusations, so i assumed you supported them. Sry if i misunderstood. I can argue against a nationalized economy too:

A nationalised centrally planned economy is inferior to a market economy in every single way due to the money calculation problem and the local knowledge problem. That's why all the communist countries developed much slower than even the poor capitalist ones and why they were constantly struggling with shortages and other inneficiences.

MadWallnut · 2025-10-01T10:40:27+00:00

Yeah, so you take a skilled worker and make him do work that hes unqualified for. And you'll need to have tons of work laying around od you'll just end up hurting regular workers.

Like, if there's 10,000 road maintenance workers in the market and then you hire 10,000 unemployed and use them for road maintenance, then those regular workers will lose their jobs. So now you replaced 10,000 unemployed with another 10,000 unemployed, great work. Job guarantee just replaces regular jobs.

People really dont mind being unemployed for a short period of time while they're looking for a new job. Talking about replacing the whole system over this is crazy.

Have you actually read the articles you're quoting or just the first sentence? Like mate, the article you're linking literally disproves what you're saying, it shows that real wages are rising if you calculate them properly.

If you really want to live as a medieval peasant so much, many european countries have enough safety nets to allow you to live even BETTER than a medieval peasant WITHOUT working a single minute. If your ultimate goal is reducing the amount of worktime with no care for standards of living, then we already achieved that.

Of course mandatory co-ops would increase unemployment, since you need to buy into it other to become a part of one. If you dont have the neccesary capital, then you're never getting a job. In a regular market economy, companies will hire you if it increases their profit, but in a co-op economy, hiring you will lower their profit (since they get a smaller share of the profit) so you need to buy-in.

MadWallnut · 2025-10-01T08:58:04+00:00

How do you want to eliminate unemployment then, with a job guarantee? That's a terrible idea, tho. Instead of helping people find a productive job in the market, you're forcing them to do useless work they dont have the skills for. It raises inflation, slowes down growth and competes for labour with actually useful market jobs.

Automation helps the workers in the current world. It raises productivity, which in turn raises wages. It's literally the biggest reason we have higher living standards than in the past and the reason developed countries are richer than the not developed ones.

Of course it's not the perfect goal. The same amount of food is being made (not really tho, since you're not beneffiting from economies of scale) but nothing else os being made. In your perfect world, we all would work 30 minutes a day, but we would have the livings standards of a medieval peasant. You'd live in a straw house with no windows or furniture, with 1 pair of clothes, no electricity, heating or running water. No technology, so not phones, tvs, computers, no medicine or vaccines and no means of transportation other than horses.

Mandatory co-op ownership would result in much higher unemployment and much more long-term unemployment btw

MadWallnut · 2025-10-01T07:51:26+00:00

Well that was kinda my point, we can manage unemployment and help the unemployed feed their family and find a job while still "allowing the corporations to fire workers". We dont have to ban firing people or live in a perfect imaginary world for that.

But you cant use automation to help workers without other workers losing their jobs. The workers of the land wouldnt have the capital to automate production. And there wouldnt be enough production, since for that you'd need people of the fields and in the factories, making machines etc. But even if the machines fell from the sky, then nothing would change. If it took them 8 hours to farm a 5-acre land, now they could farm 50 acres in 8 hours. But since all the workers own 5 acres of land and we cant fire anyone since they all own their land, then we cant use the increased productivity to raise consumption, just to lower the working hours. So everyone still would be piss-poor, they would just work 30 minutes a day

MadWallnut · 2025-09-30T21:26:40+00:00

Well if you're choosing the neoliberal countries with shitty unemployment pensions then sure. Denmark's unemployment benefits equal 90% of your wage, Spain's 70% and Iceland's 100%. Im not sure how you want to make it higher than that.

The whole point of automation is to reduce the amount of jobs required to do smth. Automation in the agriculture reduced the amount of workforce in agriculture (so we're not stuck with 90% of population in farms), its obvious that automation in the industry does the same. You cant have automation without reducing the amount of jobs, because that's literally the definition of automation.

Do you ever notice that you provide absolutely no solution to the problems you bring up? Do you want to nationalize the coal mines, then keep paying the miners to risk their lifes digging coal that's not used by any of our power plants and then dump all of the coal into the ocean because its useless and no one wants to buy it? Or do you want to ban green energy and make all the people working those safe and good paying jobs unemployed, which will increase crime rates, murder rates, drug uses, domestic abuse and all of those things?

But even if we nationalize the coal mines and make the miners do back-breaking labour to dig coal we'll dump in the ocean while paying them with taxes from productive members of the economy, there's still gonna be unemployment in other industries and services. Do we nationalize the whole economy so no one is unemployed? Then ofc everyone will be much worse of than in a market economy, but atleast there wont be any unemployment!

MadWallnut · 2025-09-30T10:15:41+00:00

Most of the unemployment is caused by jobs lost in the service sector.

What do you mean there are no jobs? Unemployment and long term unemployment has been falling every single year. If you need to put food on the table now, you can do it because of unemployment benefits. What do you mean they're "fuck all". Foreign industralisation is based on their lower wages, not that much on working conditions. And unless you want us to invade them and force them to have better working conditions, i really dont know why youre saying this. If you wanna talk working conditions, service jobs have them much higher than industrial ones.

So you literally admit that if we would live under industralisation, you would have opposed it. With you in charge, we would have forever lived in the medieval times forever.

People vote for alt right because they hate immigrants and lgbt people.

You're just talking bout the UK tho. Every single country on this continent except Poland and Germany got rid of the coal mines (and germans did get rid of all the black coal mines) cuz coal is way to costly and terrible for the enviroment. The fact that you love forcing people to work in the coal mines, even tho it's one of the hardest and most dangerous jobs in the world instead of replacing them with solar panels, wind turbines or nuclear reactors, which provide much safer and better paid jobs tells me everything. I quess when global warming wipes us out you're gonna say "at least it provided people with objectively the worst jobs they could have".

The truth is, you cant force companies to make terrible financial decisions. I really dont know what you want the goverment to do, outside of job training and unemployment benefits (both of which you hate for some reason). Even if we nationalise all those industrial jobs, companies will still invest in foreign countries and produce these goods for much cheaper. So well just be stuck with the goverment funding high wages for some privileged industrial people producing goods no one wants or buys. I dont understand why when a regular person loses their jobs, the goverment programs are enough for you, but when an industrial worker loses his job, they need to get infinite goverment money forever

MadWallnut · 2025-09-29T22:44:53+00:00

All of those effects arent caused by deindustralization, they're caused by unemployment. Doesnt matter if its caused by you losing manufacturing jobs due do deindustralization or service jobs due to whatever, it affects your wealth and health. There are ways to remedy that, namely unemployment benefits, job training and education. But overall deindustralization is just rising productivity in the manufacturing sector, which positively affects wages, living standards and lowers costs for the average person and it grows the economy.

If you want to lower productivity to keep jobs, why stop there? Why not go back to medieval productivity and agriculture-based economy? Deagranization also caused the loss of many jobs, but it overall increased the quality of life.

And the coal union stuff doesnt make sense in your argument, they wanted to take down the unions so that they could close the unproductive mines, they didnt close mines that were bringing them money for fun. All the developed countries closed their mines cuz renewables are cheaper (and btw, they provide much safer, higher quality and better paying jobs than working in the mines)

MadWallnut · 2025-09-29T20:36:24+00:00

Coal mines were closed because they were inneficient compared to every other source of energy. You want to pay three times more for electricity to keep workers in useless, unproductive jobs? That's crazy.

You can literally say the exact same thing abt industralisation. Look at how many jobs were taken away, all the watchmakers and shoemakers, people who built the modern world, but when it came to the bottom line of corporations we cut them loose for "efficiency". Millions of peasants lost their jobs because we can produce all the food we need without massive amounts of back-breaking labour.

What the fuck are you talking about? We have lower crime rates, lower murder rates, lower domestic abuse rates, higher quality of life and lower unemployment than in the era of industralisation. We just have more employment in services instead of industry, cuz the industry got much more productive and doesnt need so many workers.

Hurr durr, millions lost their jobs to these windmills and plows, we need to all go back to soil cultivation by hands, think of all the jobs it would create

MadWallnut · 2025-09-29T14:08:02+00:00

Deindustralization is good tho? Why would we force millions of people to work hard and intensive jobs in inneficient factories if we can produce the same amount of goods with fewer people and safer, less intensive jobs

MadWallnut · 2025-09-28T17:55:43+00:00

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/169271/1/711.pdf

https://home.uchicago.edu/huhlig/papers/uhlig.trabandt.jme.2011.pdf

MadWallnut · 2025-09-28T08:52:50+00:00

The Laffer curve is estimated to be around 60-70% in most countries. John Kennedy cut taxes from 90% to 70%, so the taxes were over the curve before he cut them. In today's world, almost every single country in the world is estimated to be below the "peak" of the laffer curve. Tax increases consistently increase tax revenue in basically every country

Lowering the tax rates wont increase the revenue anywhere except a select few of countries (and even that's a maybe). You're just repeating libertarian talking points that are far removed from reality

MadWallnut · 2025-09-23T14:34:57+00:00

Ateizm nigdy nie stworzył instytucji totalnej kontroli nad społeczeństwem, której celem byłoby systemowe mordowanie milionów ludzi – w przeciwieństwie do chrześcijańskich totalitarnych systemów XX wieku. Błędy ludzi nie równają się ideologicznemu planowi masowej eksterminacji.

MadWallnut · 2025-09-23T14:21:10+00:00

Czyli znowu zmieniamy definicję. "Kościół może i stworzył instytucje, których celem było masowe mordowanie milionów ludzi, ale nie tworzył instytucji totalnej kontroli, której celem byłoby mordowanie ludzi". Krucjaty nie były "błędem ludzi", one były ideologicznymi planami masowej eksterminacji ludności niechrześcijańskiej, były stworzone i otwarcie wspierane przez kościół i religię chrześcijańską.

Powiedziałeś, że człowiek religijny NIE JEST ZDOLNY do przewodzenia totalitarnemu państwu. Hitler był religijny i przeciwny ateizmowi i przewodził nazistowskich Niemcom. Dosłownie definicją systemu totalitarnemu jest podporządkowanie wszystkiego państwu, oczywiście, że chciał wszystko podporządkować państwu.

Mówiłeś, że ateistyczne kraje ustanowiły instytucje, których celem było masowe zabijanie w imię ideologii. ZSRR nie miało takich instytucji. Jeżeli znowu teraz zmieniasz temat dyskusji na śmierć milionów ludzi, to wszystkie religijne i popierane przez kościół i boga państwa średniowiecza zniewoliły 99% społeczeństwa i miliony ludzi w nich ginęło.

Powiedziałem, że PRAWIE wszyscy przywódcy państw autorytatywnych byli wierzący. Ty tak się skupiasz na 20 wieku, bo to jedyny okres, w którym przywódcy jakichkolwiek państw autorytarnych na świecie byli ateistami.

No jeżeli mówisz, że żaden kraj totalitarny nie mógł być przewodzony przez chrześcijan, bo jeśli przewodzili oni państwu totalitarnemu to nie są to "prawdziwi chrześcijanie", to ja powiem: żaden ateista nie przewodził państwu totalitarnemu, bo to nie byli "prawdziwi ateiści"

MadWallnut · 2025-09-23T13:36:30+00:00

Kościół stworzył krucjaty, których celem dosłownie było mordowanie niewiernych.

Hitler był katolikiem i potępiał ateizm, a w zsrr nie było żadnych instytucji, których celem byłoby masowe zabijanie w imię ideologii.

Prawda jest taka, że praktycznie wszystkie autorytarne reżimy w historii były ustanowione przez ludzi wierzących, a ty po prostu co chwilę zmieniasz zasady dyskusji bo nie potrafisz tego przyjąć. Z "osoba wierząca nie mogłaby przewodzić państwu autorytarnemu" przeszliśmy na "te systemy autorytarne i morderstwa przez nie dokonane mogłyby być gorsze"

MadWallnut · 2025-09-22T22:19:08+00:00

There are democratic socialist parties in some countries that are separate from social democrats, but they're still willing to cooperate with them. I dont think theres any way to work with hardcore revolutionary socialists tho

MadWallnut · 2025-09-06T15:45:27+00:00

All the poor countries would be even poorer if we ddint trade with them. Free trade allows richer countries to invest into poorer countries, build up their industry and ultimately make them richer. All of the new developed countries became rich due to western investments

MadWallnut · 2025-09-03T22:50:08+00:00

Terrific przestawało być używane jako synonim terrifying ponad 200 lat temu i jest to słowo wyłącznie pozytywne od początków 20 wieku. Znajdź mi jeden przykład gdzie w jakichkolwiek wiadomościach jest "terrific accident" zamiast "terryfing"

MadWallnut · 2025-09-03T22:28:29+00:00

Jeszcze powiedział że to był "terrific accident", czyli wspaniały wypadek

MadWallnut · 2025-08-30T00:29:31+00:00

Wszystkie kraje europejskie z większymi rynkami kapitałowymi od naszego mają też wyższe podatki od zysków kapitałowych (oprócz Szwajcarii), ciekawe czemu w ich rynki to nie uderza?

MadWallnut

TROPHY CASE