Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy. (Politics General)

marinus18

I would like to see games that take a serious stab at politics. Not like a token black character but that they really build the plot around it. Most of the best and most memorable stories have had strong political and social commentary. The problem is that corporations usually want a generic story to not alienate anyone yet also want to be “woke” so they shoehorn in some out-of-place representation at the last minute.

Maybe a strategy game about a conflict between the government of earth and the rebellious corporate policies. That the earth was left a barren hellscape by corporate greed who when it was deemed uninhabitable fled to the colonies. However new governments were formed based on socialism and started to rebuild. When the rebuilding was starting to get underway the corporate lords of the colonies claimed that all the debts were still valid but the earth government refuses.

Movies like Bladerunner and even Aliens always had an anti-corporate element to them. It was just better woven into the narrative rather than shoehorned in.

Posted 2 months ago Report

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marinus18

@Dustcan
Im gonna be real I fail to see how the Biden admin would’ve been less progressive than a hypothetical Bernie one

He was probably the most anti trust president since Theodore Roosevelt, helped unions much more than Obama, kept Trump’s tariffs to placate workers who despised outsourcing

It’s not like he could create a public healthcare system out of thin air or institute a $15 minimum wage, he was bound by decorum and rules of the legislature, for better or worse

Once again, it’s fucking inflation, there’s literal exit polls showing inflation to be the main issue here

The top three reasons not to vote for Kamala ranked by voters are

Inflation

High immigration

She focuses too much on cultural issues like trans issues instead of helping the middle class

The last point does not bode well for the future direction of the Democratic Party

All this indicates is that the future Democratic Party is likely to 1) prioritise inflation over unemployment 2) become far harsher on immigration and 3) ignore trans issues or just abandon them entirely

Biden’s admin was not the problem, he himself was. Bernie might have the exact same policies but he would have the credibility to sell them. He would have the credibility to make it clear the inflation was due to corporate price gauging and not democrat policy.
Biden was just too much a part of the “establishment” kind of like Hillary was. With Bernie Sanders it would have been far more difficult to paint him as a member of the “establishment”. That is Trump’s main appeal after all, putting up the middle finger to the establishment.

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Wiimeiser

(Foil Hat)

@marinus18
I’m thinking of making such a game, myself. Involving aliens and ancient artifacts.

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Background Pony #1D40

@Wiimeiser, @The Smiling Pony
It doesn’t help that there are competing definitions of socialism.

Socialism is when government does stuff to help people, especially those most in need. For example, forcing employers to provide paid leave or redistributing money as welfare. Think social democracy.
Socialism is a system whose goal is to establish communism. Think Soviet Union.

So for one person, a typical European country is socialist, for another it’s the opposite of socialist. People talk past each other.

On top of that, there are also silly definitions like “socialism is everything other than anarcho-capitalism”, “socialism is when government has a lot of power over its citizens”, or “socialism is what people I don’t like do”.

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marinus18

@Background Pony #1D40
The problem is that universal basic income rather directly or via free services is needed for capitalism to function. The maker of Ronald Reagan’s neo-liberalism actually was a big proponent of a UBI. After all if capitalists want to make money people need to have it.
It’s just not possible to have an economy grow fast enough to keep up with the upwards transfer of wealth of capitalism indefinitely. So if growth slows down you need to have some kind of way to recycle wealth. Capitalism is an upwards transfer of wealth via rent and profit and so if all the wealth is at the top the system collapses. You can’t make any money from people that don’t have any.

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Commune

🚙

@marinus18
Price ceilings are a good policy if you wish to cause mass shortages of goods

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marinus18

@Commune
That’s quite an assumption to make cause prices would still be profitable and corporations would be not as willing to let sales go.
Price controls are a bad thing long term but are a good temporary measure when you have an economy in transition. The US enacted price controls right after WW2 as the economy was transitioning out of war production and in 1973 to stem the inflation caused by the oil crisis.
Price controls does mean essentially freezing your economy and preventing growth but short term that can be the right move. The Nazi’s also used price controls very successfully to revive the German economy though they implimented wage controls too. Then to ensure growth they did massive government spending on infastructure and weapons.

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Zaknel

Mods-Ezekiel 33:11

@marinus18
Grocery stores already do not turn a very high profit, despite what some people seem to think. Price controls will affect them sooner rather than later.

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marinus18

@Zaknel
You claim that and I have some doubts. In 1946 and 1973 corporate taxes were about 3 times higher than they are today and price controls had no real detrimental effect. Also anti price gauging laws already exist on a state level. It’s just that they only apply to those states and so aren’t really effective on megacorps that operate in many states.

I don’t see why I should believe that Wallmarkt needs to increase it’s profits after just receiving massive subsidies and having a flood of customers. I think enacting price control to make sure they don’t take advantage of the situation is warranted.

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marinus18

@marinus18
Grocery stores already do not turn a very high profit, despite what some people seem to think. Price controls will affect them sooner rather than later.

Also again you want inflation to be reduced or not? It’s the part that is so frustrating. The right keeps talking about “inflation” but any attempt to adress it is shot down.
The idea that it’s general inflation makes no sense to me as wages haven’t increased by inflation at all. The government has an interest in high wages and low prices as wage taxes are considerable higher than sales or profit taxes. Low prices also mean more is sold which means GDP is higher. The ones who have an interest with low wages and high prices are the corporations themselves.

There seems to be this idea that the prices that corporations are demanding is something they have no responsibility for and all responsibility is on the government. That’s just stupid in a capitalist economy, unless proven otherwise corporations are responsible for their prices. They get the gains of society so they should take the responsibility too.

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MethidMan

Also again you want inflation to be reduced or not? It’s the part that is so frustrating. The right keeps talking about “inflation” but any attempt to adress it is shot down.

They shoot them down whenever a democrat is president; no matter how beneficial a policy is, they don’t want democrats scoring points. Just look at what happened with the Build Back Better plan.

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marinus18

@MethidMan
Build-back-better was mainly sabotaged by corporate democrats.

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Zaknel

Mods-Ezekiel 33:11

@marinus18
Inflation, despite what people here think, is not caused by corporate greed. It is caused by an excess of money in relation to GDP. If you want inflation down, we need to stop printing money and taking on debt.

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Dustcan

Dogs

Biden only started getting down to business in the last 2 years in office. Bernie would’ve been working from the start, leading to more tangible benefits.

Likewise Bernie has always been on the point narratively. Biden got the economy to recover, then sat on his laurels. Whenever someone brought up working class struggles their response was to let them eat cake. Bernie would’ve been direct to the point that yeah, there’s more to be done and we are going to do it.

Therein lies the difference. While Biden and his ilk was all about settling at “good enough” Bernie has always been striving for “good”. Half-measures vs committing to the bit.

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ᎶㄖҜㄩ乃ㄥ卂匚Ҝ

ZAMASU

@Zaknel
Republicans often increase police and military spending while making cuts to everything else. They don’t seem to care about reducing the national debt, despite their rhetoric.

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Zaknel

Mods-Ezekiel 33:11

@ᎶㄖҜㄩ乃ㄥ卂匚Ҝ
Oh, I know. I know. I hate it.

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Dustcan

Dogs

Well yeah, making the printers go brr is one cause of inflation. But it’s an extremely simplified, Economics 101 understanding. Like saying standing in the rain makes you sick.

Also, I’ve got some really bad news on who printed more money than who. With a TL;DR graph.

Unsurprising considering Trump is a retard who on multiple occasions told people you can get rid of the debt by just printing money. So that’s what he did. Because what else was going to happen, someone telling Trump “No”, or Trump admitting he was wrong?

There’s also been several studies showing that yeah, the main cause is in fact corporate price gouging. Many companies used the threat of inflation to jack up their prices, basically making a self fulfilling prophecy. The result was that corporate profits exploded higher than what the inflation numbers actually indicated.

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SleepySteve

Apples and Pears

If I were to do a Star Wars analogy with US politics today, imo Trump is less like Palpatine and more like Nute Gunray. Palpatine is more like the collective billionaire class in that they manipulate Trump every step of the way.

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Vivace

“ShimSham my GlimGlams”

@SleepySteve
Well, who’ll be the billionaires’ Vader to dispose of the Separatists?

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SleepySteve

Apples and Pears

Elon Musk probably.

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Commune

🚙

@Dustcan
Can you address the survey that states that the main issues voters had were inflation and high illegal immigration

Like Chief I don’t know what Bernie was supposed to handle in that regard

With the cultural issues, maybe Bernie would’ve done a bit better than Harris as it would be harder to pin the “Harris is for they/them, Trump is for you” ad on him(that ad reportedly was incredibly successful, unfortunate for trans people) as he wouldn’t have a soundbite of him supporting trans surgeries for illegal immigrants in jail(it’s the correct policy mind you but most voters hate that idea and furthermore, thought she was focusing her campaign on it) but Bernie would’ve still lost

@SleepySteve
Please stop with the media comparisons, especially the Star Wars comparisons

George Lucas’s schizo fantasies about his Glup Shittos are not relevant to discussing Donald Trump

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Dustcan

Dogs

Bernie’s entire shtick is cracking down on corporate greed and Greedflation is the recognized cause for inflation behind Covid. It’s pretty straightforward on that point.

As for immigration, Bernie’s been pretty Bush-era esque on the matter. He wants to strengthen the border to clamp down on future undocumented immigrants, but at the same time create an easier path to citizen for the ones already here.

There was a survey pre-election about American’s feelings on the matter, and to put it bluntly it was schizophrenic. People interviewed would in one breath support mass deportations while a few moments later say we need to take care and make citizenship easier for immigrants. Bernie’s view on the matter is basically a more coherent version of that, and would’ve likely massively appealed to these median voter.

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SleepySteve

Apples and Pears

Everyone thinks the median American has a Nazi-like view on immigration but really they’re to the left of many other liberal democracies, especially those in Europe…

And in Eastern Europe even mentioning immigrants positively would get you hate mail.

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Dark Vessel

@Dustcan
re greedflation:
It’s almost as if raising profits in an environment of high inflation… don’t actually raise that fast.
£1 in 2020 is worth £1.33 today
“business profits rose by 30% among UK-listed firms”
Gee, so in real terms, business profits… remained stable. Maybe lowered a bit.

Greedflation is never the answer tbh. Looks like profits kept pace-ish with inflation, but wages haven’t. And that won’t be sustainable.
People just want to pretend the economy is doing amazingly! It’s not.

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Dustcan

Dogs

Yes, corporations will raise prices to offset production cost increases rather than eat the loss. That’s to be expected. The problem is apparent when companies then go on to profit at higher margins than what the national inflation rate, meaning that they are increasing prices higher than the rate of what it costs to produce. IE price gouging.

By my understanding, the average inflation rate since the pandemic was around 4.8% - ranging from a high of 8% to a low of 2.4%. But in that same period.

Meanwhile corporations saw an enormous 50-ish% increase in profits in that same time frame. An initial jump from the start of the pandemic, while a consistent 3.9-ish% increase in the following years.

Basically, corporations consistently made more profit in spite of inflation, an act only possible if they increased prices higher than the rate of inflation. Otherwise they’d have lost profit or just break even in the year over year reporting.

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