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.

I must find my fainting couch

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.

One supposes they wanted to get the fat stacks but maintain control via PR.

Unfortunately for them, PR has a dollar value to corporations, and once the cost of PR exceeds its value, it is no longer an effective barrier to action.

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.

“Because the cruelty is the point”?

Nah, we were giving names to unnamed extras long before there were any attempted sequels/prequels/whatever the fuck is going on now.

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.

Aw, is Roberts furrowing his brows really intensely?

lmao, no, not even, he’s looking ashamed and doing less than the bare minimum, just like at the impeachment proceedings.

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.

The Houthis possess over plan B: flatten all Saudi oil reserves and refineries and collapse the global economy.

Fucking lmao.

But I think I liked it better when they did an empty gesture in support of gay rights rather than against them

Just one of those things. Means nothing about the companies themselves, but means everything about where society in general is at.