During its unveiling, Pope Francis condemned the global arms industry for profiting from human suffering and reiterated his call for an end to all wars, urging the faithful to remember those suffering in the holy land.

Keep on going a bit further…

There’s a good way to prevent industries from profiting on human suffering

If you call people with vaginas women, you now cross the line for trans folks.

No matter how you phrase it, there will always be someone you will offend. In the case of the word “female” this is driven purely by some folks finding ways to use it offensively, despite it being just as neutral as “women”

Don’t assume malicious intent every time someone uses the word “female” - most likely, they have never put any negative connotations to it and possibly never even heard of this word being used in a negative context.

The aforementioned USSR, for example.

The most suffering-free and eco-friendly ring is the one already made, so, you did the best thing!

There are historical examples of completely and actually socialist countries, so it’s not some impossible idealistic notion for me.

The transitory period of New Economic Policy lasted only a few years in USSR, and China under Mao was much closer to actual socialism than later under Deng Xiaoping.

And the trend of expanding government control over the economy only comes alive in the 2020’s, roughly since the COVID-19 outbreak (just a milestone, not saying they are related). Previously, the trend was strongly on privatization of industries, with the share of state-owned enterprises falling from 80% to 30% in the previous decade, and it’s too early to make any conclusions.

This is all true - state intervention and state-owned businesses and funds bring about a positive change for the majority, and they should be there, but seriously calling those economies socialist would be missing the definitional mark, which is what I have highlighted.

I do believe that moving entire economy under public control would be beneficial, and that, actually, will be what can be called “socialism”. Virtually no country, except for heavily sanctioned and blatantly tyrannical North Korea, is currently there.

What we have right now, with heavy state intervention, is certainly better than “free” market economy though, and it reflects in quality of life for the economically disadvantaged - this very intervention leads to these economies following a different path compared to traditional capitalist societies. I do not argue there is no difference between China and, say, US in that regard - the difference is big, it’s just not what it takes to call the economy socialist.

I did not say of a severe crisis, I just highlighted both homelessness and inflated housing prices are a thing. And under the rule of the workers, neither should be true.

Do any of the sources define socialism?

All of this could be true - none of this makes China socialist.

What your data shows is that the share of state in the economy has partially recovered in 2020’s from ~30 to ~50%, after falling from 80% to 30% in the previous decade. Impressive, indeed, and way ahead of most capitalist countries - but China is home to numerous giant private megacorporations, and allows many companies from abroad to build in the country.

“Who holds power” is very abstract and is not part of definition of socialism or capitalism. Even still, we just talked about homelessness - if workers held all the power, would there be homeless? Would there be any poor at all? Would there be overheated markets, including housing, which is one of the craziest in the world? Would there be Tencent, Alibaba, etc.? Would there be billionaires? Etc. etc. What defines “workers holding power” for you?

What is it about some leftists desperately trying to put socialist label on capitalist China - a desperate attempt to demonstrate a mighty socialist economy in the modern world? Socialist countries have lost the Cold War and are mostly not on the map anymore; there are objective reasons to that, including the fact most of the world never moved away from socialism and capitalist forces had greater capital to work with, and this does not mean socialism is bad, but currently, socialism is not represented by any large economy. That’s just the fact.

Capitalism is not defined by how the poor are treated, but by the economic relationships and mode of ownership.

Nordic countries have low poverty and generally good social support. Like it or not, this is achieved with private property on means of production, hence they are capitalist.

China has private property on means of production, hence it too is capitalist.

Both of them feature strong state oversight, which allows them to direct more of the capitalist profits to help the poor - which is good! But this doesn’t make them “socialist”.

Because China is capitalist, despite being formally led by a communist party. It has private property on means of production, and it is defining Chinese economy just like any other capitalist one. Socialism, by definition, requires social ownership of means of production, which is not the case in China; the term was appropriated and wrongfully used by US and several other countries to define economies with more state control and/or social policies, but this is simply not what socialism is.

Interestingly, China has entire ghost towns full of homes ready to accept people in - but, as in any capitalist economy, homes are seen as an investment, and state subsidies are low, pricing out the homeless. They have more than enough homes, they just chose to pursue a system that doesn’t make homes and homeless meet.

Debian one is best:

Anti-Semitism is hatred or discrimination of Jews based on their nationality.

No sane person holds anything against Jews, or supports violence against them. Some actual antisemites do, but they are in the tiny minority.

What people mostly stand against is the violence perpetrated by the Israeli army on the land of Palestine.

Israel has all the capacity to defend its citizens; yet Israeli army went way beyond defence or retaliation, into the territory of indiscriminate razing of everyone and everything, women, children, and sick, homes and hospitals. The state of Israel is accountable for enormous amounts of recorded human rights and law of war violations, and that’s the key reason nearly all of the international community took the side of defending Palestine. Should Palestine have the capacity and will to do the same to Israelis at the same scale, the international opinion would reverse.

However, as Israel has to gain public support, which is hard to do when you’re commiting genocide, the government and its allies (mainly US and UK, both of whom have strategic interests in Israeli expansion) decided to adopt the rhetoric of antisemitism as something that would virtually put you along the lines of Nazis should you try and challenge their notion. No, Nazis were actual antisemites and pursued to eliminate Jews; the international community wants to put an end to the genocide of Palestinian Arabs, while rejecting any hostility directed against Jews.

Wishing to eliminate one nationality to make safer room for the other, as well as “bringing in the correct values” by means of violence is a bloodthirsty and dangerous fantasy historically proven again and again to lead to terrible outcomes while multiplying suffering; yet by some it is understood for the very imagined and unrealistic scenario of falling Israel, but ignored while Palestine is actively razed by a hostile force of a much greater scale, ignoring all international treaties.

Yes, that’s what I use.

It’s just that safety razors are often considered to be a thing of shaving enthusiasts, and if you go through that rabbit hole, you commonly go all the way.

Quite an interesting concept for genuine cartridge aficionados

It seems to depend on your face and skin. For me, single-bladed safety razors deliver a closer shave with less irritation compared to cartridge, and I experimented quite much with both.

Still, the cult of safety razors is sometimes overblown. Just pick what fits you best.

Doesn’t it mean there’s only 1 node NSA has to attack - your VPN?

Kinda renders Tor over it pointless.

Then we should define social left and right and keep it separate, and have one type of left and right as default (probably economic) or always mention it.

Because otherwise there’s a giant field for manipulations.

To my mind, there is nothing wrong with majority of people falling to some range. We can still make sense of it, looking at the levels of distinction that will ever be present.

Otherwise, we risk losing any common anchor, which is very important when we talk any point of statistics or want to trace dynamics and trends of political thought.

Taking some of the extreme examples, in USSR you would be “right-wing” for wishing to open your small business, and in modern US, you would be “left-wing” for wishing to make healthcare more affordable to the poor or have minorities heard. In fact, USSR was just full of people on the left, and US is full of people on the right, driven by propaganda, political technology, media, communications, genuine core beliefs etc.

Updating tools could be about bringing more clarity to some new formations and events, but it shouldn’t be about constantly redefining the base values.

Left and right are primarily economic, and we can only look at one axis at a time.

Otherwise, what you would call, idk, a devout Christian commune where people share everything? Left, because they’re equals, or right, because religion?