Proletariat

“Freedom” is a concept describing a relationship between the individual and other individuals, characterized by the absence of the latter controlling the former. “Tyranny” is the opposite. These are not my definitions. English is not even my first language, for that matter.

Then you should recognize the implications of your definition. If “freedom” means the absence of others controlling you, then being economically coerced by systems of desperation — pricing structures, debt traps, resource hoarding — also violates freedom. If someone is sick and cannot afford medicine, and the price is set above their reach by a market they had no role in shaping, they are being controlled. Not by a tyrant with a crown, but by conditions engineered to serve someone else’s profit. That’s not liberty — that’s abandonment. “Freedom” in that sense becomes nothing more than the right to suffer alone while others call it voluntary.



You are simply practicing a collectivistic world view in which humans by default own each other. Neutrality and indifference you see as acts of aggression — which is utterly ridiculous, of course, but Christianity and other collectivistic ideologies humanity has come up with have made sure that most people remain blind to the cognitive dissonance here.

No one here is claiming people “own” each other. That’s a strawman. What I argue is that we are responsible to each other — not for each other’s choices, but for ensuring basic survival and dignity in a society we all co-create. You want to separate yourself from that responsibility while continuing to live in the society that enables you to do so — and that’s the real cognitive dissonance.

Indifference may not be violence, but in many cases, it is complicity. If someone is bleeding in the street and you walk by, you didn’t stab them — but you also didn’t stop the bleeding. If your ideology teaches that only direct aggression matters and all else is “neutral,” then it is blind to the ways harm can be passively upheld.



You have ignored the central point I have made regarding your attributions to the collective: that you are free to organize with others and build any mutual aid societies you want. I, in fact, highly encourage it. As long as it is done voluntarily, with consent of everyone involved. That is not what public healthcare constitutes. I am not asked nicely to join this mutual society, but I am thrown in jail if I do not. Screw this version of “solidarity.”

You’re already in a mutual aid society — you just don’t want to admit it. The roads you drive on, the sanitation that prevents plagues, the water that reaches your tap, the schools that taught you, and the emergency services that would come to your door — all exist because people were asked to contribute, not “nicely,” but democratically. You say you weren’t asked. But you were — that’s what elections, laws, and civil society are. You just didn’t like the answer.

And as for being “thrown in jail” for not paying taxes — let’s be honest. You do have the freedom to refuse. People dodge taxes all the time. The rich use loopholes and offshore havens. Some ordinary people go off-grid entirely. What you actually mean is: you want all the benefits without any responsibility. That’s not freedom. That’s entitlement.



What the individual chooses to do in his personal life is his business. There are people who, indeed, do not want to help anyone. Then there are people like me who often go out of their way to help a stranger. A strong freedom-loving individual will do as his conscience tells him and accept that other people might do differently — and a weak tyrant will demand that others do what he wants to be done.

The flaw here is in mistaking voluntary charity for a social system. Yes, helping strangers is admirable. But relying on it — on pure conscience — is how people die. Systems don’t run on individual goodwill alone, because not everyone has it, and even the best of us get tired.

You describe yourself as a “freedom-loving individual,” and yet the only version of tyranny you recognize is one that comes from the collective. When profit dictates the terms of survival, that’s freedom. When democratic consensus says “everyone deserves care,” that’s tyranny? That’s not a consistent moral position — it’s just a rigid rejection of cooperation.



I have not “defended price-gouging.” In all of these examples I have not made a single comment on how an individual “should” act: that is a matter of consciousness, personal values and so on. But I have explained why punishing someone for not sharing his water bottle makes as much sense as punishing a woman for not sharing her body with sexually starved men.

That comparison is not only grotesque — it’s conceptually incoherent. No one is asking you to give up your body. We’re asking you not to charge someone $1,000 for a bottle of water when they will die without it. A body is not a commodity. Water, food, medicine — in emergencies, they are human necessities. To withhold them for profit, to treat desperation as a business opportunity, is coercion. That you don’t “force” someone to buy it doesn’t make it voluntary. It makes it cruel.

And again, you say you don’t impose moral values — but you implicitly defend the right to do something most moral systems condemn. That is a moral stance. You just don’t want to be held accountable for it.



Then, again, for the vast majority of human history wife-beating was a very common practice. Not everyone has graduated from the mentality that caused people to do so.

You’ve just proven my point. Wife-beating only became less common because society — collectively — outlawed it. Not through voluntary individual action, but through democratic enforcement of moral norms. The exact kind of collectivism you call tyranny is what gave women legal protection. Without that “tyranny,” wife-beating would still be normalized. Thank you for making my argument for me.




Final Summary:


Your definition of freedom excludes everything except personal autonomy. But real life is not lived in a vacuum. Every individual depends on shared systems — water, electricity, food distribution, medicine, education, communication. The moment you use those systems but reject contributing to them, you are not defending liberty — you are exploiting it.

You want to organize privately and voluntarily? Good. But then don’t use the roads built by taxes. Don’t drink water regulated for public health. Don’t eat food grown with government subsidies or shipped on publicly funded infrastructure. And don’t complain when public hospitals close and you find yourself alone in the dark with your principles.

You say I want to control others. I say society already exists — it’s not optional. You’re free to leave. But as long as you stay, you are not a victim. You are a participant. Your freedom to opt out ends where your consumption of public goods begins.

And I’ll be the first to admit: no worldview is clean. Mine has contradictions, too. It’s not a utopia. But the key difference is this: I know that. And I accept that to live in society means you must contribute — not because you’re a slave, but because you’re a part of something larger than yourself. In capitalism, you’re forced to work for wages to survive. In a cooperative society, you’re expected to work to support the collective that supports you in turn. One system extracts; the other reciprocates.

And even if you try to live off-grid, building your tools from scratch — the language you speak, the math you use, the values you defend — all came from society. Your very ability to argue here is proof you’re part of a collective project. You just refuse to acknowledge the debt.

So let’s be honest: you’ve already benefited from the very system you claim to reject. The only question now is whether you’ll give back — or just keep taking while calling it freedom.

That’s honestly very interesting, thank you for bringing it up. I’ll have to look into this myself.

Ah this is a good question, and difficult to answer. I cannot say I have a single favorite video game, but there’s a few top contenders, sometimes depending on series.

Final Fantasy 7 and 10, both are epic games with amazing narratives, and leveling/experience mechanics that seem simple at first, but can get complex later on.

The original Ratchet and Clank trilogy, though in particular the first game, for its critiques of consumerism, story, character/level design, and voice acting.

Call of Duty, Saints Row; and Grand Theft Auto are my favorites for just blowing off steam or if I want multiplayer.

I’m a huge fan of Assassin’s Creed because of my love for history, even if they take some liberties.

And games like Oblivion or Fallout 4 for the world building and immersion, how interconnected everything is.

I understand why you’d say that a simple Google search should get you the information you’re looking for. But it’s important to remember that search results aren’t neutral. They’re shaped by your past activity, your location, and even what other people around you are searching—even if you turn off tracking or use incognito mode. That’s the nature of algorithmic filtering. If you’re active on Facebook and surrounded by conservative groups, your search results will lean in that direction. Every link you click fine-tunes the algorithm further.

Even starting from scratch with a fresh Google account doesn’t fix the issue. Results are still geo-targeted and shaped by aggregate local behavior, similar to how ad personalization works. Turn off ad tracking and you’ll still get strange ads—because they’re based on the collective data of people in your area, not just your own.

Beyond personal bias, there’s the institutional one. Search engines like Google have the power to bury certain sources or documents deep in the results. Some information, especially material critical of capitalism or U.S. foreign policy, is effectively hidden unless you already know exactly what to search. For example, try finding the U.S. memorandum explaining that the Cuban embargo’s goal was to impoverish the Cuban people and provoke a revolt against Castro. Unless you already know the name of the file or the phrasing used in it, good luck—it won’t show up easily.

Personally, it took years of deliberately reshaping my media habits before my algorithm started feeding me more leftist, anti-capitalist, or non-Western perspectives. Even then, I still occasionally get pushed back into liberal or conservative content. That’s how persistent and invasive the system is.

Trying to be a leftist online—or even just trying to find reliable leftist information—is hard. Not because the arguments aren’t strong, but because capitalism has so thoroughly colonized the digital landscape that it actively buries, sidelines, or distorts anything that threatens its dominance.

You keep invoking “freedom” as if it’s an objective truth, yet every definition you give centers the individual at the expense of everyone else. But if I may flip your framework on its head — what you’re calling “freedom,” I know as coercion. And what you condemn as “tyranny,” I recognize as solidarity.

Let’s be clear: telling someone they’re free to die if they can’t pay for medicine isn’t liberty — it’s extortion. Telling a person with cancer or a broken limb that they’re free to shop for care — if they can afford it — isn’t freedom. It’s a denial of life disguised as autonomy. What you call “peaceful negotiation” is not a fair trade when one person’s bargaining chip is life or death and the other’s is profit margin.

You’ve said you support voluntary pooling of resources — so do I. The difference is, I believe in expanding that principle beyond your inner circle. When I say “collective,” I’m not talking about a faceless government forcing people into line — I’m talking about communities organizing democratically to protect one another. Mutual aid, workers’ co-ops, community-run clinics, education funds — none of these require a state, but all of them require solidarity. If your definition of freedom excludes that possibility, then your freedom requires my silence, my suffering, or my death. And that’s not freedom — that’s domination.

Now, let’s talk about generosity. You say you believe in helping people, just not being forced to. Would you help a stranger on the side of the road? Someone with a flat tire? Someone bleeding? Then why draw the line at someone with an illness you can’t see, or a debt you don’t feel? And if your generosity truly ends where your familiarity ends, then we don’t share the same values — we just share geography.

You reject “tyranny” when it looks like democratic prioritization of medical need — like a public system treating appendicitis before a toothache. But you don’t call it tyranny when someone is denied that same care outright because they can’t afford it. Why is a wealthy investor deciding who lives and who dies based on credit score not tyranny, but a publicly accountable board making those decisions based on health outcomes is?

You keep invoking “the market” as a neutral system of peaceful trade. But the reality of capitalism is anything but neutral. When you can’t afford to leave your job because losing it means losing healthcare — that’s not freedom. When you can’t pursue education because the only way to fund it is lifelong debt — because grants are reserved for those below a bar set absurdly low by those already in power — that’s not freedom. When you’re working multiple jobs just to keep the lights on and have no time to care for your health, your family, or your future — that’s not a peaceful voluntary exchange. That’s structural servitude.

You say people should just opt out — pool their funds and do it themselves. But that’s what we already did. That’s how we got public roads, public hospitals, universities, water systems, food subsidies, and the entire infrastructure your life runs on. The irony is you already benefit from collective organization — you just don’t want to admit it. If you reject collective obligation, then reject collective benefit. Refuse to drive on the roads, decline any medical treatment from publicly funded research or hospitals, stop eating food grown with USDA-subsidized seed, fertilizer, or farm equipment. Because whether the final product is sold by a private vendor or not, you’ve been supported by public wealth your whole life.

You say you don’t want to pay for others’ bad choices. Neither do I. But the real freeloaders aren’t the poor — their lives are scrutinized to the bone. The real freeloaders are the wealthy, who inherit privilege, dodge taxes, hoard housing, and live off the profits of other people’s labor without lifting a finger. You demand hard work — so do I. But my standard is social contribution, not just survival. I want a world where those who can’t work are cared for, and those who won’t work aren’t allowed to exploit the rest of us.

And no, the answer isn’t more market discipline. Labor is labor — there is no such thing as unskilled work, just underpaid work. We need janitors, garbage collectors, factory workers, care workers, retail clerks, farmhands — none of them are lazy or disposable. They are the ones keeping this whole thing running. And under your system, they get nothing unless they can pay into it first.

Your defense of price-gouging as “peaceful” is chilling. Let’s return to the water bottle example. If you’re dying in the desert, and I’m the only one with a bottle of water, I have two options. I can give it to you because you need it — or I can auction it to the highest bidder. That is the capitalist instinct you champion: sell to the one who wants it most, not the one who needs it most. And if someone richer walks in with more money, you die. That’s not freedom. That’s not moral neutrality. That’s calculated indifference to human life.

What I believe — what we believe — is that the water goes to the one who needs it. Not because some bureaucrat says so, but because the community agrees that no one should die of thirst while someone else sips luxury. That is not tyranny. That is democracy in action. That is freedom.

You say collectivism kills. I say it heals. It educates. It feeds. It uplifts. Every major achievement of humanity — whether going to the moon or eliminating smallpox — was not the act of an individual chasing profit. It was the act of people working together, pooling knowledge and labor, sacrificing ego for progress. There was no profit in space flight. No quarterly return for decoding DNA. These things happened not because of markets — but in spite of them.

Your ideology has a strange definition of tyranny: anything that binds individuals into responsibility for each other. But what is tyranny, really? Is it shared burden? Or is it being forced to compete for survival in a system where billionaires build rockets while diabetics ration insulin? I know which one I find intolerable.

So let’s drop the pretense. Your system is not neutral. It is not peaceful. It is not free. It is just an efficient machine for sorting people by wealth and leaving the rest behind.

My vision is more humane — and more efficient. It removes the profit barrier from healthcare, shortens delays by triaging based on need, and saves billions in administrative waste. It is not about handouts. It is about human dignity and collective power.

We’re not asking you to live in chains. We’re asking you to stop chaining others to your idea of freedom.

Thank you for the detailed response. There’s a lot to unpack here — and it deserves a serious reply, since many of these ideas are popular, even if often self-contradictory.

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Let’s start with morality.

The claim that “morality is subjective” is meant to sound neutral — as if it grants some kind of philosophical immunity. But the very next sentence calls collectivism “tyranny.” That’s a moral statement. So is calling collectivization “banditry,” welfare “disgusting,” and individualism “freedom.” The argument tries to stand above moral claims while constantly making them. But a neutral frame can’t use loaded language to smuggle in its own values. Either the conversation is about ethics, or it’s not — but it can’t switch rules depending on which side is talking.

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Next is the idea of peaceful negotiation vs. coercion.

In theory, a free market is a space of mutual, voluntary exchange. But in practice, that only works when both parties have the power to walk away. In emergency care, cancer treatment, or housing, that’s almost never the case. When one party is desperate and the other controls the resource, the exchange isn’t peaceful — it’s extractive. It’s not a trade between equals. It’s “your money or your life” with paperwork.

Markets don’t break down because of emergencies — they break down in emergencies. That’s why disaster relief, emergency rooms, and fire departments aren’t run like fast food franchises.

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On cancer research and pricing:

Innovation is essential — no argument there. But much of that innovation happens in publicly funded labs, universities, and research hospitals. Many breakthrough drugs are developed with taxpayer funding, then sold back to the public at enormous profit by private firms. This isn’t rewarding genius — it’s socializing the cost, and privatizing the reward.

Charging a fortune for medicine doesn’t make someone a villain. But calling it “peaceful negotiation” while patients ration insulin or die from lack of care feels disconnected from the real-world consequences.

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The Canadian dental example is a good case study.

No system is perfect — and yes, rationing exists in universal systems. But in those systems, prioritization happens based on medical need, not wealth. No one gets turned away for being too poor. No one is handed a $5,000 bill for a tooth extraction. And no one has to set up a GoFundMe to survive. If the tradeoff is waiting longer for an elective procedure, that’s not ideal — but it’s a far cry from bankruptcy.

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The grocery store analogy breaks down under scrutiny.

Refusing to sell someone food isn’t the same as triaging care in a public system. One is a business decision; the other is a judgment of need in a limited-capacity system. If healthcare were just another product, then yes — people who couldn’t afford it wouldn’t get it. But that’s exactly the problem with treating essential care like any other consumer good. A society that sees no difference between food, phones, and open-heart surgery isn’t imagining a future — it’s ignoring reality.

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On mutual responsibility:

The argument suggests that shared obligations — through taxes, welfare, or public services — are new, tyrannical, and unnatural. But mutual aid is as old as human civilization. From tribal societies to modern cities, humans have survived by supporting one another. Roads, schools, sanitation, libraries, power grids — none of these are private, and none would exist in a purely voluntary model.

Rejecting all collective responsibility in favor of radical individualism isn’t a defense of freedom — it’s a rejection of interdependence. But no one lives independently. Even the most self-reliant citizen depends on countless unseen systems to function. The only question is whether those systems are run for the common good, or for maximum private profit.

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About the “slackers” and obesity argument:

It’s a common talking point that public healthcare subsidizes people who make “bad choices.” But most healthcare spending doesn’t go to people who sit around all day. It goes to working families, kids, the elderly, people with disabilities, and yes — sometimes to people struggling with lifestyle diseases. But judgment shouldn’t dictate access to care. A society that withholds help from the “undeserving” becomes one that dehumanizes the poor and rationalizes neglect.

If concern is really about costs, public systems are cheaper per capita. And if concern is about fairness, then subsidizing billionaires through tax breaks and privatized profit off public research is far more unjust.

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Finally, the Black Book of Communism and the “corpse tally.”

This reference gets thrown around a lot. But it’s important to understand what’s actually counted in that book: not just deaths, but also famines caused by war blockades, military casualties killed by Nazis, civilians killed by Nazis, and even missing births from low fertility rates — all labeled as “victims of communism.”

If that’s the metric, then capitalism’s death toll includes colonial genocides, transatlantic slavery, world wars, famines caused by global markets, medical neglect, and preventable deaths due to poverty. The list grows fast.

If the conversation becomes “which system has the longer death list,” everyone loses. It’s a distraction from the real question: which systems let people live longer, healthier, and freer lives today? On that question, the answer is clear: the systems that treat healthcare as a right — not a product.

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In the end:

Capitalism is not inherently evil, nor is collectivism inherently perfect. But it’s clear that some human needs — like healthcare — simply don’t follow the rules of consumer markets. They require planning, solidarity, and yes, public support. That isn’t tyranny. It’s how societies endure.

And recognizing that isn’t naive. It’s how we make sure people don’t die waiting in line — or worse, alone, without one.

Appreciate the thoughtful response—genuinely. You raise some valid concerns, and I want to engage with them seriously because this is the kind of debate we should be having: not about personalities like Musk per se, but about systems and material outcomes.

You mention that the price of modernity is the need for more advanced skills, and that Americans aren’t keeping up. I’d argue that’s part of the problem neoliberalism creates and then blames the victims for. When education becomes privatized, when college is priced out of reach, when vocational training is underfunded, and when lifelong learning is a luxury, we’re setting up an economy where only the privileged can “adapt.” That’s not a skills problem—it’s a systemic design failure.

On healthcare, yes, we have high demand and limited supply. But that’s not a failure of regulation—it’s a consequence of commodifying a human need. We train fewer doctors not because Americans are lazy, but because medical education is astronomically expensive and gatekept. And we don’t regulate prices—we regulate access while letting prices soar. The profit motive drives healthcare decisions more than patient outcomes. Every other OECD nation manages to provide care for less, with better health results. That suggests the system—not the people—is broken.

NIMBYism and zoning absolutely factor into housing costs. But let’s not pretend deregulation alone fixes that. Developers in deregulated markets still build luxury units for maximum profit, not affordable housing. And when public housing is slashed or privatized (a hallmark of neoliberal policy), the market doesn’t “fill the gap”—it exploits it.

On unions—this is where I think people often misunderstand both the problem and the potential. It’s true that many unions today are bureaucratic, out of touch, or even corrupt. That’s a real issue, but it’s not an argument against unionism itself—it’s an argument for greater worker involvement and direct democracy within unions. Whether it’s a traditional union or a workers’ council (which also qualifies as a union by definition), the principle is the same: giving workers collective power to negotiate the terms of their labor, rather than relying on the myth of “individual negotiation” in a capitalist system designed to isolate and exhaust us.

When people say, “just make yourself valuable and you won’t need collective bargaining,” they ignore the fact that under capitalism, even the most valuable worker can still be exploited, underpaid, or replaced the moment they demand more. A single worker has no leverage. But a group of organized, informed, and active workers? That’s real power. Companies rely on labor to function, and when that labor is unified—when it can credibly threaten to withhold work—it becomes a force that has to be respected.

Of course, the system is designed to make this difficult. Burnout, long hours, stress, and fear of retaliation all discourage participation. But that’s exactly why staying involved—attending meetings, raising issues, voting on contracts, and holding leadership accountable—is so vital. It’s not enough to have a union or council in name. It has to be lived. The strength of any workers’ organization depends on the activity and consciousness of its members. If we leave it on autopilot, it becomes just another layer of management. If we engage, it becomes a weapon for real democracy in the workplace.

So no, I don’t romanticize modern unions—but I also don’t dismiss the power of collective action. When organized labor is active and militant, it wins. History proves that. The problem isn’t too much worker power—it’s too little.

Offshoring is a product of globalization, but globalization didn’t fall from the sky—it was deliberately shaped by neoliberal trade agreements that prioritized profit over domestic job security. You can shape trade to protect workers. We just didn’t.

As for debt burdens—yes, spending has outpaced revenue. But who got the money? Endless war, corporate bailouts, and tax cuts for the wealthy account for trillions. Meanwhile, austerity is almost always aimed downward, never at the people who caused the crises. If spending is the issue, let’s talk about where the spending goes—and where it doesn’t.

Lastly, you suggest Musk wants to “do away with” the current hybrid economy. Maybe—but it’s unclear what he wants to replace it with. If it’s even more deregulation, less public accountability, and a society driven by billionaires with pet policies, then it’s still neoliberalism by another name. The problem isn’t the blend of capitalism and socialism—it’s that we’ve socialized risk and privatized reward. If Musk’s vision doesn’t reverse that, it’s not a solution.

In short, if “America Party” is just a reboot of the same pro-corporate, anti-worker policies that got us here, I don’t care how shiny the branding is. A better society isn’t going to come from the top down.

This thread is a case study in what happens when people feel qualified to judge a theory they’ve never studied, never taken seriously, and in most cases, couldn’t summarize if their lives depended on it. Everyone here is performing certainty, not demonstrating understanding.

Let’s run it down.

Marx is called “irrational,” “a utopian,” “detached from reality,” and even compared to a religious cult leader. But if anyone here actually read him — I mean really read Capital, not just YouTube summaries and ideological hit jobs — you’d know Marx despised utopianism. He didn’t sketch dream worlds. He tore apart the material logic of capitalism with surgical precision. And I’m sure a few of you here have read at least some amount of his works, but it feels like a safe bet to state that most of you only have the surface level understanding of Marx and Communist philosophy.

He didn’t say, “Here’s how the world should be.” He said, “Here’s how it is. Here’s how it moves. Here’s who pays the price.”

And he was right.

The cycle of overproduction, crises, layoffs, imperialism, and exploitation isn’t some unlucky accident — it’s baked into capitalism’s DNA. Marx saw it over a century ago. We still live in it. The only thing irrational is pretending this system works for anyone but the owning class.

One post said Marx “never ran a lemonade stand.” No, he was too busy writing Capital — an analysis so detailed it predicted how small producers get crushed by large capital, how profit requires exploitation, and how “entrepreneurship” is usually just middlemen skimming off labor they don’t do. But sure, tell me more about lemonade.

Another post says Marx didn’t understand “human nature.” What a lazy phrase. There’s no single “human nature” — people behave differently depending on the systems they live in. Feudalism created one kind of subject. Capitalism creates another. People adapt to survive. That’s not nature, that’s structure. It is a fact though, that people hate being disconnected from their labor, being on a production line and never seeing the products you produced with your own hands getting used by somebody. They start to feel useless, like just a cog. That’s burnout. That’s alienation. Marx tagged it over a century ago and it’s hitting the US really hard now.

Then there’s the “it’s all just nonsense words” argument — the last resort of people who don’t know what a concept means. Marx’s terms are technical, yes — because he’s doing theory, not writing self-help. If you don’t understand surplus value, dialectical materialism, or the labor theory of value, fine — ask. Learn. But don’t confuse your confusion for proof of a flaw. That’s not critique. That’s intellectual cowardice.

Let’s not even waste time on the post comparing Marxism to “licking shit” — that kind of juvenile filth reveals more about the poster’s need to be edgy than about Marx. When your argument slips into schoolyard vulgarity, you’ve left the realm of debate.

Even the fairer critics here — the ones who call Marx “important but naive” — still miss the mark. Marx never said capitalism would magically evolve into socialism. He said the working class would have to fight for it — and that the ruling class would do everything in its power to stop them. History has proved that, too.

Now, I don’t speak for all Marxists or all communists. There are many schools of thought, debates, disagreements — real ones, not just insults in a forum thread. But I do speak from a place of study, not hearsay. And what I can say with confidence is this: most of what people think they “know” about Marxism has been filtered through a full century of propaganda — in your schools, your media, and even your entertainment.

This isn’t conspiracy theory. It’s public record. The CIA’s Operation Mockingbird openly placed agency assets inside major newsrooms throughout the Cold War to steer coverage against communism. U.S. school textbooks were purged of labor history and rewritten by think tanks funded by capitalist foundations — not to teach, but to protect profit. The very word “socialism” was smeared into meaninglessness by generations of deliberate disinformation.

You were trained to mock Marx before you ever read him. You were shown breadlines without being shown the embargoes that caused them. You were taught capitalism is “freedom,” even as wages stagnate, housing vanishes, and debt chains your future to the profits of the rich. You were told communism “kills,” but never asked how many millions capitalism has killed through war, poverty, hunger, or preventable disease.

So no — you’re not rebelling by mocking Marx. You’re reciting the lines they gave you.

What’s clear is this: none of you would be this hostile if Marx had nothing to say. You don’t froth at the mouth over irrelevant thinkers. You don’t obsess over failed ideas. You hate Marx because he understood your world better than you do, and because he offered the one thing the system fears most — a framework for its overthrow.

So don’t pretend this is about reason vs. irrationality. It’s about class. You’ve chosen yours. I’ve chosen mine.

And the class I stand with is still producing the wealth, still being exploited, still lashing out as our material conditions worsen, and still reading Marx — not because he was a prophet, but because he told the truth you’ve been trained not to hear.

I utterly despise the man, not just for his professional rhetoric in comparison to him as a person, but the way he commentates on topics is awful. It’s easy to get dragged in to whatever he’s saying, in large part because he talks so quickly. Unfortunately, that is a strategy for commentating and debating, by talking so fast, he is able to cover a large bundle of topics quickly, which makes it seem as if he is correct in the matter, but when you go back and pay attention, you find most of his arguments are surface level, lacking substance, and there have been a number of times where the sources he’s citing himself, actually disprove his own argument, as he cherry picks what he uses from the source to prove his point, and hopes his viewers won’t actually look into the sources themselves. Since the ranking only goes to 61 on the hate scale, I’ll have to go with that.

Yeah I largely agree with you. I don’t know what all marvel is about at this point, mainly in terms of chronological story. I’ve seen the first iron man, I’ve seen the Incredible Hulk with the fight club guy, I saw the first Thor, but I honestly can’t think of anything else I’ve seen in their “cinematic universe” other than spider-man no way home, and the only reason I went to see that was because of Toby Maguire. The sci-fi to fantasy part, I can’t really say anything bad about that, because it’s all based on or inspired by the comics, which themselves have however many different universes and timelines. As for the CGI take, it’s mixed with me. I understand where you’re coming from, literally 2-3 people in front of a big green screen and everything is added in post production, but it also takes a lot of effort on graphic designers to create those graphic images, and to have them fit perfectly frame by frame. I find it difficult to say CGI is not film for various reasons, the first and foremost being that animation itself would fall under the category of not being film, when we have many examples of excellent animated movies that have meaning and bring forth emotion. Toy Story is entirely CGI, but I would argue it is indeed a film. Tron was one of the first movies to use computers for its development, and got banned from awards because of it, yet it is also an excellent film, and its sequel, while lacking in my opinion, does manage to have a tear-jerking ending and build the world of Tron much better thanks to CGI. I myself am a fan of practical effects, and I think almost always practical effect works better than CGI, (the Thing is a great example) but CGI is able to pick up the slack when practical can’t meet the demand, such as the scale of something (which can sometimes be done practically with forced perspective) or if it would be considered too costly/dangerous for say, a large explosion in a junk yard. Even the fight at the end of No Way Home around the Statue of Liberty. I’m sure many of scaffolding shots were practical, especially close ups or calm/talking shots, but it’s also impractical to build a scale model of the Statue of Liberty and expect people to swing on cables around it for a 6 man super-powered fight, with the amount of time and resources it would take to produce that in comparison to the budget and production time allotted.

I appreciate the philosophical framing, but the real-world consequences of relying solely on voluntary exchange in healthcare are already well-documented — and deadly.

You’ve built an elegant theory. But healthcare isn’t a theory. It’s a reality — and that reality breaks the market model the moment someone gets hit by a bus, diagnosed with cancer, or priced out of insulin. In theory, voluntary markets protect freedom. In practice, they restrict care to the highest bidder. And that’s not freedom — it’s triage by income.

Let’s start with the foundation of your argument: that coercion (via taxation) is morally worse than any result it produces — even mass suffering. That’s a bold moral claim, and one you haven’t justified. You suggest that as long as no one is forced to participate, the system is just — even if people die preventable deaths or suffer lifelong illness because they were priced out of care. But if a system allows suffering that we could have prevented together, that’s not moral purity — it’s calculated neglect.

You argue this isn’t capitalism because money is collected through taxes. But this ignores what kind of system those taxes are funding. The U.S. has one of the most privatized healthcare markets on Earth. Most government healthcare dollars go to private providers, insurers, and hospitals, with no price controls, fragmented billing, and zero universal coverage. That’s not socialism — it’s capitalism with a bailout. And it’s failing.

You say people should just “shop around” for better care. That doesn’t work in emergencies. It doesn’t work when provider networks are closed. It doesn’t work when patients don’t have price transparency or medical expertise. And it doesn’t work when you can’t afford anything on the shelf. This is not a free market — it’s an exclusion market, where the sickest people are the least profitable and the most expendable.

You invoke your aunt’s wait time in Canada — but ignore the fact that every Canadian is covered, no one goes bankrupt from medical bills, and their outcomes are better across the board: higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality, fewer preventable deaths. If delays in elective procedures are the cost of covering everyone, most people consider that a better deal than a system where people ration insulin or skip chemo because they can’t afford it.

You also compare healthcare to iPhones and candy bars, as if these are morally equivalent. But healthcare isn’t a consumer good — it’s a universal, life-dependent necessity. No one chooses to get cancer. No one shops for ambulance rides. You say it’s “only right” that people pay more when their need is desperate — but that’s not right. That’s exploitation, and we ban it in every other sector where life and safety are at risk. It’s only in healthcare that we normalize it — and call it freedom.

Now, about the garden metaphor. You said capitalism ensures I don’t trample your garden to fix mine. But what happens when your garden is thriving and mine is on fire — and you own all the water? In that case, your right to withhold becomes a death sentencefor others. A system based entirely on consent sounds peaceful — until you realize consent is a luxury that not everyone has the power to exercise. That’s the flaw in your worldview: you’ve mistaken privilege for fairness.

Finally, you said: “Capitalism doesn’t solve problems, people do.” And I agree — but people built these systems. They chose to profit off pain. They chose to let prices rise while coverage shrinks. They chose a model where denying care increases shareholder value. That’s not just an unfortunate side effect. It’s the market logic, applied to human life.

“Putting people over profit” isn’t utopian. It’s been implemented all over the world — and it works better. Countries that treat healthcare as a public good spend less, live longer, and suffer less. The data is clear. The alternative — a market that lets you live only if you can afford it — isn’t just inefficient. It’s inhumane.

So no — this isn’t about crushing your garden. It’s about refusing to live in a society where people watch others burn while insisting the fire hose would violate property rights.

You have to be trolling at this point — it’s hard to take this seriously anymore.

“Debunking” isn’t a magic word you get to declare to end a conversation. That kind of one-word dismissal, repeated over and over, isn’t debate — it’s just a tactic to shut down real discussion. It’s the same strategy Roy Cohn taught Trump: never engage honestly, just repeat yourself louder and claim you’ve won.

I already replied to your first “debunked” with facts, sources, and data. You ignored all of it. That shows this isn’t about engaging — it’s about steering the conversation in a loop where you control when it ends and how it sounds. That’s not productive.

For that reason, I won’t be replying to you further. It doesn’t feel like there’s any genuine engagement here — just repetition, deflection, and an aversion to real dialogue. I’m here for discussion, not performance. As for other individuals, since it seems there is a genuine discussion going on, I will keep responding to them when I have the time.

I will also make it clear right now, I do not support or like liberal sources such as WSJ, CNN, MSNBC, NYT, Fox, Newsmax, or any other mainstream liberal media. Your reaction to these being called liberal will offer me a good way to gauge what kind of community I’m dealing with.

You haven’t debunked anything, and even when I broke down your cherry picked data, your only response was “debunked” which indicates to me that you don’t have much of an argument against me. But I’ll respond to your other comments. The “bloated bureaucracy” and “trained seal” line — classic. But let’s actually unpack the logic, not the slogans.

I appreciate your honesty and the care you’re taking to speak cautiously. That said, I want to gently challenge a few of the ideas you’ve laid out — not to attack you, but to invite reflection and maybe expand the lens a bit.

You mentioned that you don’t see freedom as inherently good — and that’s a serious philosophical position. But if freedom isn’t good, what replaces it? A system where only one set of moral values is permitted? Where dissent is punished in the name of unity or virtue? History shows us what happens when societies go that route — whether under fascist regimes, theocratic states, or absolute monarchies. Without freedom, power doesn’t just guide — it crushes. And it rarely crushes the corrupt first. It crushes the different.

You also talked about tribalism — and I think that’s worth unpacking more deeply. Political scientist Benedict Anderson introduced the concept of imagined communities to describe how large-scale groups like nations and religions function. The idea is that we can feel strong emotional loyalty to a group of people — like a nation — even though we’ll never meet most of them. Saying “I am Italian” or “I am Christian” connects you to millions or even billions of people. That connection feels real, and it has meaning, but it’s also imagined, because it isn’t built on face-to-face relationships — it’s built on shared symbols, narratives, and values.

In contrast, our real communities — the ones we live in and experience daily — are smaller: our families, friends, coworkers, neighbors. These are the people who shape us most directly. But what’s interesting is that there’s an even larger imagined community that almost everyone belongs to, whether they recognize it or not: the working class. That’s not a political slogan — it’s a simple fact. The vast majority of people on Earth live by their labor, not by owning property or extracting profit. Whether you’re a religious man in Europe, a secular woman in Asia, or a family farmer in Africa — chances are you are working to survive under conditions shaped by global capitalism, not your race or your faith.

That shared material condition is a more meaningful connection than many of the identity-based tribes we inherit. You might never meet a factory worker in Mexico or a nurse in Kenya, but you probably share more in common with them — in how you live, work, and struggle — than with any billionaire or political leader who claims to speak for your country, culture, or religion.

So tribalism may feel natural — humans do seek belonging. But the question isn’t whether we feel connected to a tribe. It’s: which tribes help us become more just, more compassionate, more equal — and which ones divide us, isolate us, or encourage cruelty? If nationalism or religious identity leads us to justify oppression or excuse domination, we’ve chosen the wrong tribe. But if we can begin to imagine the working class — not as an enemy of tradition, but as the true global community — we might begin to see solidarity, not suspicion, as the way forward.

Finally, you mentioned Satan as a moral enemy — the source of chaos, deception, and pride. I don’t disagree with the symbolism, but I’d ask this: is it Satanic to question authority? Or is it Satanic to cling to power, demand obedience, and silence others in the name of order? When we reject freedom entirely, we don’t just avoid chaos — we risk becoming the very tyrants we fear. That’s why I believe freedom, while messy, is worth defending — not as an excuse for selfishness, but as the ground where mutual respect and shared dignity can grow.

You’re absolutely right that as a sole proprietor, you’re paying both the employer and employee side of your premiums and taxes. But that doesn’t prove you’re “only paying for yourself” — it actually highlights the exact opposite. The premiums you pay into a private insurance plan still go into a risk pool shared across every other policyholder in that plan. That’s how insurance works — even in a “pure” private capitalist setup, your money is still subsidizing others, and theirs is subsidizing you if and when you need it.

Private health insurance doesn’t hold your premium in a vault with your name on it. You’re not prepaying for future services. You’re participating in a market product that distributes risk across a customer base — and where the company profits by keeping your care costs down, not by giving you everything you paid in. So even when you “pay your own way,” that money still becomes part of a collective structure. That’s not socialism — it’s capitalism, sure — but it still involves other people’s money going toward your care and vice versa.

“My private money still pays for my social security and Medicare, so that is entirely self-funded.”

Again, this is a misunderstanding of how those systems work. Social Security and Medicare are not personal savings accounts. Your FICA taxes don’t get stored away with your name on them. Today’s workers fund today’s retirees and Medicare recipients — that’s a pay-as-you-go system, not individual investment. You paid into a system others benefit from, and others will pay into it for you when you retire. That’s intergenerational redistribution by design — a social contract, not self-funding.

Even the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, acknowledges that Social Security is a transfer program, not a savings program:

“Social Security is not a savings program; your taxes are not put away for you in an account.”
— Cato Institute, 2021

As for Medicare, it is massively subsidized. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average beneficiary receives $3 in Medicare benefits for every $1 they paid in over their working lifetime. That’s not self-funded — that’s publicly funded and deficit-backed.

“Your FICA payments on your paycheck are not a Marxist system, boyo.”

No one said they were. But FICA is a redistributive system — and redistribution of wealth is a feature of socialism. It’s not full socialism, of course, but it’s a far cry from the Ayn Rand version of capitalism people like to romanticize. In fact, the entire foundation of capitalist healthcare — employer-provided insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, VA hospitals, the ACA marketplace subsidies — is a patchwork of market forces blended with government regulation, tax funding, and collective risk.



Bottom line:
You can work hard, own a business, and pay your way — and still be part of a system where your money helps others and others’ money helps you. That’s not an insult to your independence — it’s just how healthcare, taxation, and insurance function. The problem isn’t that we pool resources — the problem is that in the U.S., we pay more than any other country for that pooling and get worse results.

You’re right that the system isn’t Marxist — it’s not even functional capitalism. It’s privatized profit skimming built on the myth of self-reliance. And while you may feel like you’re carrying the full burden yourself, I promise you: when the bill comes due for catastrophic illness, no one truly goes it alone.

The argument that supporting undocumented immigrants is akin to supporting slavery fundamentally misunderstands both history and present reality.

Let’s be clear: Slavery in the United States was not about workers being “allowed” to do jobs or being “relied on” by the economy. It was the legal and violent ownership of human beings. People were bought and sold, denied rights entirely, and worked under the constant threat of torture or death. To compare that with immigrants seeking better lives—who are not owned, are not legally property, and in fact face enormous systemic obstacles—shows a complete disregard for what slavery was.

The irony is that if there’s a modern comparison to slavery in this discussion, it lies with the exploitative labor practices that undocumented immigrants are often subjected to: wage theft, unsafe working conditions, no legal protection, and constant threat of deportation if they speak up. And these conditions don’t exist because they are undocumented—they exist because we choose to make them vulnerable. It’s a system that creates a second-tier labor force to benefit exploitative employers—usually with political support from those very same “tough on immigration” types.

So when Democrats (or anyone else) talk about expanding rights or protections for undocumented immigrants, they’re not arguing for slavery—they’re arguing for freedom: freedom from being trafficked, from being abused by employers, from having families separated, from being used as political scapegoats while quietly enriching industries like agriculture, construction, and domestic labor.

Now, as for the “you wouldn’t be allowed to act like this in Pakistan/Iran/China/Mexico” line—it’s one of the oldest nationalist fallacies out there. It suggests we should base our human rights and legal principles on the most regressive or ethnocentric examples we can find abroad. If your argument is “we should discriminate here because other countries discriminate too,” that’s not a defense of justice or national security—it’s just a call to abandon our own principles of equality, fairness, and democracy. You don’t fight hypocrisy with more hypocrisy—you fight it with consistency.

Also, let’s talk about remittances. Yes, many immigrants send money home to family. That’s not some act of theft—it’s what working people everywhere do: take care of their loved ones. And those same immigrants spend money here, pay rent, buy food, raise kids, and in many cases do pay taxes—billions of dollars into Social Security, for example, that they’ll never collect. The idea that immigrants are a net drain is a myth that’s been debunked by nearly every major economic study. They often do the jobs citizens won’t, under conditions citizens wouldn’t accept, for wages citizens would protest.

If the real concern is that undocumented workers “undermine the labor market,” then the obvious solution is to offer them legal protections and a path to citizenship so they can no longer be exploited by employers. That raises standards for everyone. The people opposing this don’t want a secure, fair economy—they want a vulnerable class they can blame for problems caused by billionaires and corporate lobbyists.

So no, supporting undocumented immigrants is not the same as supporting slavery. It’s the opposite. What’s closer to slavery is denying people basic rights, using them for their labor, and then discarding or deporting them when politically convenient.

And for those who keep saying “but the law!”—laws can be unjust. Slavery was once legal. So was denying women the vote. So was banning interracial marriage. If the only argument someone has is “that’s the law,” they’ve got no moral footing. The question isn’t whether something is legal—the question is whether it’s just.

Honestly, this sounds like a vanity project from a billionaire who still doesn’t understand why his worldview is increasingly unpopular.

The idea of a third party centered on “neoliberalism”—a doctrine of deregulated markets, free trade, budget austerity, and privatization—feels like a political fossil in 2025. Neoliberalism already defines the economic consensus of both major parties. Democrats and Republicans may differ in rhetoric, but both have long upheld the corporate status quo, gutted public spending, favored tax cuts for the wealthy, and presided over decades of wage stagnation and growing inequality. So Musk’s “America Party” isn’t proposing anything new—it’s just rebranding an ideology that’s already been driving U.S. policy for over 40 years.

And let’s be real: if neoliberalism actually delivered for most Americans, we wouldn’t be in this mess. What we’ve seen is a decaying middle class, skyrocketing healthcare and housing costs, offshored jobs, gutted unions, and growing debt burdens. Both parties have failed to fix this, largely because they’re bought into the very economic framework Musk now wants to turn into a political brand.

Musk himself is the worst possible face for a new party. He’s a foreign-born billionaire who’s burned trust with the left through union-busting and platforming far-right voices, and with the right by pushing EVs and green tech. More importantly, he represents everything people don’t trust about politics: concentrated wealth, unaccountable power, and the illusion that the ultra-rich can “fix” democracy from above. If he bankrolls this effort, it’ll only confirm people’s suspicions that the party isn’t about empowering voters—it’s about shielding elites from accountability under a new label.

Lastly, I don’t think most Americans consciously use the word “neoliberal,” but they know what it feels like: closed factories, endless wars, broken healthcare, and being told to “learn to code” when they’re laid off. That anger and alienation are real—and it’s why populist movements have gained so much traction across the spectrum. The public isn’t crying out for more technocrats promising market solutions. They want justice, stability, and control over their own lives—none of which neoliberalism has ever delivered.

So if Musk wants to throw money into a political experiment, fine. But the America Party, as described, isn’t a path forward. It’s just a return to the same top-down economics that got us here. And I think people see through that now more than ever

This is a question that comes up a lot, and I think it’s important to look closely at what Scripture actually says — not just the parts we’ve heard quoted most often. The verse people usually point to is:

“Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.” (Ephesians 5:22)

But just one verse earlier, it says:

“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” (Ephesians 5:21)

That sets the tone for the whole passage: mutual respect and submission — not one-sided obedience.

And then the command to husbands is just as strong, if not more so:

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” (Ephesians 5:25)

That’s not about power — it’s about sacrifice. Christ didn’t dominate the church; he served it, even to the point of laying down his life. That kind of love doesn’t demand obedience — it invites trust and mutual care.

So if we’re following this model seriously, it’s not about one person ruling the other. It’s about two people submitting to each other in love, humility, and selflessness.

You seem to be searching for a label that expresses your desire for spiritual unity, national cohesion, moral order, and an economy not dominated by greed — but without the baggage of historical fascism or Nazism.

But the structure you keep describing — one in which religion is enforced, dissenting beliefs are suppressed, families and communities are shaped by law, and the nation comes before the individual — is authoritarian collectivism. The fact that you oppose genocide or racism doesn’t make it morally neutral. Every authoritarian society needs a “threat” to unify against — and if it’s not race, it becomes “hedonism,” “false faiths,” or “modernism.”

You may be right to criticize capitalist greed, spiritual emptiness, and social decay — many people do. But turning to state-enforced morality or a single “true faith” as the solution doesn’t solve those problems. It just replaces freedom with coercion, and difference with conformity.

Historically, movements that began with “moral order” as their goal — from Franco to the Taliban — ended up crushing the very souls they claimed to save. So while you’re trying to carve out a new label for your beliefs, I’d caution that the content matters more than the name. A rose by any other name is still a system of repression if it denies freedom of belief, association, and identity.