I would say the fuck-up is much broader than that, tbf. Checks and balances have been borked for… quite some time now. The GOP ignored checks and balances because the Dems were too chickenshit to stop them (or, if one is feeling generous, because the crybully tactics of the GOP would have resulted in backlash against the Dems by the ‘independents’ who swing elections).

Snooggums is right that systems fail when they’re ignored - even the best-structured system must have a society which is cultivated to value and perpetuate it. If not, all the well-laid out rules in the world won’t save it.

Socialism is incompatible with democracy and freedom. That’s a fact proven over and over again throughout history.

Soviet systems are incompatible with democracy and freedom. “Socialism” is an extremely broad term.

What about your singing animal friends, and your singing LSD lab?

For now we do.

More generally, I meant simply that government regulation is proven as a workable solution, conceptually, to restrain third-parties. The only remaining questions are tied up in ‘how to regulate the details’ and ‘how to maintain the regulatory body’, both of which we are currently experiencing… deep imperfections in the current implementation.

Oh, I imagine there would need to be quite a few regulations and regulatory bodies to oversee such matters. Even if they were operating with the best of intentions, which are often in short supply, the behavior of entities with narrow goals must be regulated to ensure harmony with the broader goals of the population (like “Living in a society where the rivers don’t catch on fire if you drop a match in them”).

Power corrupts, and all that jazz - for workers as much as bureaucrats and private parties. Only by ensuring that there are numerous power bases with the ability to effectively restrain one-another, and relatively free entry/advancement in each, can a free equilibrium be maintained in a society.

Of course, we have quite a few regulations and regulatory bodies nowadays, so the only real question is in the details of it, rather than the general concept. The concept is obviously workable.

Yeah, my position is certainly influenced by socialist thought.

Something like that.

The exact number is negotiable, but my thinking is based in sympathy for obsessive artisans who want to maintain control over their work, but can’t do it all themselves, or subcontract it all. If John Metalworker hires 3 assistants to help him make chainmail, because chainmail is his passion, and then his 3 assistants vote for the firm to swap production to the more-profitable chain-fence industry, that’s a bit of a shit situation. If the terms are clear from the outset, small firms should be allowed to maintain different methods of control than worker-ran co-ops.

Representative democracy with all corporations above a certain size or value to be worker-owned and run.

Is called socialism

Social democracy. There’s a difference.

I can’t think of any that I’d be particularly surprised by at this point.

My mother chose my father. Toxic relationship, divorced in two years.

My mother chose my stepfather. Wholesome relationship, still married some dozen years later.

When Luigi Mangione ALLEGEDLY did a good deed for the benefit of all of society, you mean?

My grandfather’s dog tags from Vietnam. He always kept them swinging from his rear-view mirror. Swore they kept him safe.

Also swore up and down that he wasn’t superstitious, lol.

23. Back when I was whole of body.

Currently 30.

Honestly can’t think of any that aren’t already here.

Why not? I hear dying in a plane crash is a fairly quick way to go.

… Time?

Aluminium

Don’t make me get the baseball bat, tea drinker

Luckily, the family member I’m closest to, my mother, is religiously fundamentalist and nationalist in a way that vaccinated her against MAGA, bizarrely. So talking to her is like having a 10+ year window into the past.

But yeah, for the rest, oof.

I know I’m not really who’s being asked, but as an American, I can’t help but butt in anyway.

As an American with a very nonstandard accent who had to practice to be able to sometimes eke out an approximation of an American accent, a ‘standard’ Midwestern accent is like talking out out of the side of your mouth, rounding out all the vowels while trying to hit every consonant with an aluminum baseball bat, especially the ‘s’ sound.