AirBNB pays taxes too. They don’t circumvent the system in Barcelona, that was fixed a long time ago. Now they just displace locals because the nightly rate is higher than the monthly rate. Even if it’s empty most of the time. Which is a real shame.
It’s going to hurt small time renters. I stayed in an AirBNB in 2013, it was rented out by a lovely family. It was a fantastic experience, staying in a nice neighborhood off the beaten path. We stayed for a few months, too, and we were respectful, not puking all over the place etc. A lot of locals invested in furnishing rentals for AirBNB. At least, that was the scene 9 years ago. No idea what it’s like now.
If you swim across a river, it is now a river you’ve swum. If you sneak into a room, you have snuck in.
Those are correct but they look and sound wrong.
Perhaps you should talk about how your beliefs have ratcheted towards the right, if that’s what you identify with. Or left. I’m not going to tell you how your beliefs evolved over the past few years or decades. I don’t pretend to know you.
I don’t know what your definition for liberalism is. So far, on Lemmy, “liberalism” seems to be anything to the right of tankie/Stalinist/Maoist. It seems to be just as broad as the right’s definition of it.
America is the arsenal of democracy. That’s as true now as it was when Franklin D Roosevelt said it.
I’d love to see NATO take over that role, or the EU take on a bigger share of it. Especially if they ensured the weapons were solely used in a defensive capacity. That would be great. But someone in “the west” needs to have a major military industrial complex.
And sure, other countries make some weapons. After all, everyone donates weapons to Ukraine. But we all know the majority is coming from the US. Nobody else has the arsenal to stand up to Russia’s USSR stockpile (though diminished) and China’s stockpile. Both Russia and China are hungry for more territory. Russia annexed Georgia, Ukraine, crushed the independence of Chechnya, and is right now trying to conquer enough of Ukraine to make a land bridge so they can go annex parts of Moldova. After that, they’re highly likely to try taking land from one of the Baltics, probably Latvia or Lithuania.
China has invasion in its past (have you already forgotten about Tibet? The Tibetans haven’t forgotten, although forced sterilization, mass famine, and insanely high rates of suicide have decreased the number of them, part of China’s campaign of Han supremacy and cultural genocide) and invasion in its future (started with Taiwan, but they are also eying Vietnam, Kazakhstan, and someday perhaps even Russia).
The world isn’t a safe place. It’s full of conflict.
If you want to see what life is like without the US military industrial complex at your back, keep your eye on Armenia. They’re working as fast as they can to build ties to the US, but I don’t think it’ll come together fast enough to save them from Russian-backed Azerbaijan.
If the whole world disarmed, then disarmament would be a great thing. But preaching disarmament while the “global threat of violence” actually exists is carrying water for the very real authoritarian dictators who currently wish to build an empire at the expense of other people’s freedom and sovereignty.
LOL I know how to spell degrees. I probably hit the wrong key and spellcheck autocorrected it to something random. Welcome to 2024.
Someone drew it. It’s not a screen cap of digital media.
I think someone drew a new one.
Water isn’t the ideal temperature. Everyone knows black tea must be made with water that’s 212-210 degreases Fahrenheit
So when your roommate’s crazy girlfriend shoots him in the face with a shotgun (thereby killing him), what do you do? Accept this happens everyday and continue to go on about your life, with the crazy girlfriend still residing in the blood stained room?
You either agree that it’s justified to murder the entire American middle class, or you don’t. It’s pretty simple.
I don’t really care if you assessed me as being intellectually dishonest by linking someone’s answer to a question I posed. You can call that a flawed point if you want, but they were the ones who -rather shockingly- choose to embrace democide of millions of people - including presumably themselves, their family, and friends - in the name of class warfare.
So yes, the existence of people like that shapes my view of this platform, as does this interaction with you rushing to defend their position (despite the fact that you don’t seem to sold on it yourself, since I’m guessing YOU’RE not prepared to be personally murdered for the sake of global justice and eternal class warfare).
It is a truly rare thing that you get someone actually educated and involved enough with a counter position to engaged in meaningful debate - for you to then betray that here by trying to reduce that entire interaction to your singular misrepresentation of a flawed point that you originated yourself ONLY makes the reader walk away with a deeper consideration of your opponent’s positions and a dismissal of your own assertions.
I don’t consider it a meaningful debate AT ALL.
I consider it a tiresome debate with someone who is truly fucked in the head. Someone who I later identified as suffering from sociopathy, or antisocial personality disorder.
I could have (and possibly should have) dismissed them based on their earlier comments, when they engaged in genocide apologetics, and denied the existence of the Holodomer (actually claiming conditions in the 30s were somehow "pre revolutionary). Especially after that NUT JOB blamed the Holodomer on American yellow journalism, because no number of first person (primary source) statements from Ukrainians WHO WERE ACTUALLY THERE are to be believed.
But I choose to see how they’d respond to my personal litmus test, which was, for me, the final nail in the coffin of communism: The killing of the kulaks. I frame it as the American middle class, because that is the local equivalent of the kulaks. Small time landowners, a few minor landlords, farmers. The American dream involves property ownership, and getting rid of the small time property owners, the somewhat successful peasants whose lives were made worse by communism, was the goal in that particular move.
It is possible to be a communist who believes that dekulikization is a step too far - Trotsky famously was. But that’s not the position “our friend” chose to take.
Personally I consider the killing of the kulaks to be a much more appropriate line than the one used to label tankies - which was the use of tanks in Hungary to quell a COMMUNIST uprising by Hungarians who simply wanted communism without the Soviet occupation. In other words, communists who reject stalinism. Personally I prefer PEOPLE who reject MASS MURDER, and communism had failed that test DECADES before the people in Hungary revolted.
So you have no proposed solution, just a diatribe? Not even arresting perpetrators of crimes when known? And don’t say that never happens, I happen to personally know some people who were victims of ipv whose abusers are now in jail. You have some great model for crime prevention before it happens? Let’s hear it.
Funny, when I opposed the Iraq invasion in 2001 (and 2008 and beyond) I was called a bleeding heart liberal, but now I’m accused of supporting the Iraq war, “enhanced interrogation,” “extraordinary rendition,” “indefinite detention,” Guantanamo Bay, etc for saying there’s nothing wrong with being a liberal.
I really wish the world would pick one definition of liberalism rather than just labeling whatever they don’t like “liberalism.”
I seem to recall that the apex of Republicanism in 2008 was the Tea Party, which I never identified with in the slightest. No, that was 2009. 2008 was when Mitt Romney was campaigning on the idea of strapping the family dog to the roof of the car. Is that what you think liberalism is? A Mitt Romney republican?
It’s a nice idea, but doesn’t it really only work if everyone is cooperative? How do you deal with the John Wayne Gacys of the world without police? Mob violence?
If only that were true. But sadly, no. Here’s a link, I think: https://lemmy.world/comment/10693493
I’ll direct you to the key paragraph:
Yes [the Kulaks did deserve being killed], and if a mob of the third world’s poor rose up and killed middle class Americans (self included) we would very much deserve it too. My recognition of this simple reality is why I’m a communist, and your denial of it is why you cling so tightly to liberalism.
I agree with @[email protected] . You can either try to copy the policing model used in, say, East Germany or the USSR, with it’s delightfully large secret police force, but that’s more from the authoritarian political system rather than the socialist policies. Alternately, you could try to copy the policing model used in democratic socialist countries, the nordic model, which is more influenced by their political system rather than socialist policies. Countries with socialist programs have all kinds of different police systems. There’s no policing model that always goes with socialism. I will say that socialism may or may not get rid of poverty, it really depends on the wealth of the country. If the country is poor, socialism isn’t going to make them rich. Ideally it should reduce inequality, however we see that while it can reduce economic inequality, it does not always adequately address privilege.
Tankie is the pro-authoritarian left. The Stalinists essentially. The ones who think it’s appropriate to send in the tanks to quell a socialist or communist uprising because it has a tint of democracy in it, which may cause their strong leader to lose dictatorial power.
Socialist cops. Because state violence doesn’t matter when the state is leftist.
Just yesterday I had a conversation here with a self-described communist who thought the entire American middle class should be murdered by a mob for being part of a capitalist society that exploits poorer nations.
So I would categorize that as a leftist on Lemmy suggesting death or violence on people. Not only right wing, either.
What do you think of Chekism?
I think people are starting to catch on to that. Maybe I’m overly optimistic though.