The ILA’s president, Harold Daggett, brings in nearly $1 million a year ($902,000) in salary

Wow… I didn’t know that, but that’s kind of disgusting, too.

I think one of the best solutions for this is to offer some sort of retraining for the workers who will be displaced by automation.

The problem with retraining being the only consideration given is that unless they’re maintaining the same level of pay in whatever position they’re being retrained for, it’s not equitable. A possible improvement would be for workers displaced by automation to continue to receive salaries from their old positions for a period of time, with the percentage of their original pay rate decreasing over that time. This needn’t just be dockworkers; there’s plenty of difficult, demanding or menial jobs that could be automated, if we didn’t have this misguided sense that everyone has to have a job, no matter how unnecessary it is for a human to be doing it.

I do agree with you that automation should be the end-goal, though. We just need a better system to support anyone whose jobs are made redundant by it.

This is really frustrating. Not because there’s possibly another strike coming up (which I fully support their right to plan), but because automation of a dangerous, labor-intensive and manual industry, which should be something that benefits us all, has to be a point of contention like this. That we have to fight against what should be progress, because progress benefits only a select group of already-rich individuals and means loss of jobs and income for everyone else. It’s fucking disgusting.

At least while I was going to school there, my high school’s football team never won a single game.

It sounds like he’s a legitimate danger to others on the road. I wouldn’t let that go unreported. Think about it like this: If you do nothing, and then later read that he hit someone and hurt or killed them, will you feel guilty about not saying anything?

Criminal criminal defense lawyer. If you suspect you might be victimized by one, you can hire a criminal criminal defense defense lawyer to protect you.

Maybe it’s just for the catharsis.

This is actually an interesting question. How is age handled in a space-age civilization? Someone born on one planet could be 10 while on a different planet they’d be 50 in the same timeframe. What if you spend part of your life on one and the rest on another? It’d be inconvenient to use one planet’s ‘day’ as the standard, as they’d all be different lengths…

The app I was using was making it look like everything I was replying to was from the same poster, when in fact it was not. I’ve already apologized for that error.

The only circumstance under which I would support a revolution is if the government simply ceases to function (which it may, now, under Trump - who knows? But I don’t wish to bank on that possibility, nor do I wish to cause a non-functioning government simply to justify a revolution; that’s no better than Republicans grinding everything to a standstill then claiming that their ability to do so is evidence that the government isn’t working.) The pragmatic stance is to vote for the better of the candidates who can reasonably win elections while directing effort towards changing the reasons why we only have two candidates to choose from.

Revolution that isn’t supported by the majority of people is simply imposing a viewpoint on people who do not want it, and even if it would ultimately be better for them in the long run, it’s no better than Christian Nationalists trying to impose their viewpoint on everyone else.

If it is supported by the majority of people, it should be able to be resolved via the democratic process. What’s stopping that right now is the two-party system that we’re stuck in, and that can’t be resolved without voting reform, so that’s where I’m choosing to direct my efforts. It’s not that it will single-handedly change society, but it’s the first step in a process that will, theoretically, allow new, more progressive and left-leaning parties to rise to relevance.

There have been multiple states that have had ranked-choice voting on their ballots (including mine), but they largely haven’t passed, so I would argue that yes, it is feasible to achieve it without revolution, but thus far it seems that people don’t understand why it’s needed (and therefore it’s a matter of getting the word out and raising awareness), or they simply disagree with it and want to maintain the status quo (and if that’s honestly the majority opinion, and it’s not just a perception or information problem, then so be it - that just means that we’re in a minority and we shouldn’t be forcing the majority to bend to our viewpoint any more than they should be forcing us to bend to theirs.).

Look, I think we agree on a lot of things. I support many socialist views; capitalism is an awful system, corporate greed and income inequality and money in politics are some of the biggest problems with society and some of the biggest inhibitors to change. However, I don’t think communism is a viable solution. In my opinion, the ideal solution would still allow accumulation of personal wealth, but would distribute wealth based on how much good a person has brought to society, rather than on how much of a sociopath they’re willing to be to get it. I believe most people are greedy and I believe most people are motivated by personal gain moreso than anything else. Not everyone, obviously, but most people, and I think the only way we’re going to get people to abandon the ‘Fuck you, got mine’ attitude is by rewarding behaviors we want to reinforce, which capitalism obviously does not do.

I said I wasn’t going to reply again, and I’m going to mostly stick to that, but I do want to issue a self-correction for one thing.

I was reading this thread on an app that doesn’t do a good job of differentiating different posters, and I was replying to a few different people and (incorrectly) attributing some of the more inflammatory things I was reading to you. Now that I’m looking at it on a PC, I can see that it was actually multiple people, so I apologize for that. Of the people I was replying to, you were the least objectionable, but we still have fundamental differences of opinion that we will not be able to resolve here.

Your ‘plan’ is not a plan so much as a general set of vague guidelines. My ‘plan’, with the same degree of validity, is to (continue to) support my local community, work towards conversions to better voting systems, and try to weather the next four years while continuing to take a pragmatist’s stance on political candidates.

What I find insufferable about you and the majority of the vocal folk who share your views are that you don’t seem interested in actually having a conversation about your views. You’re all quite ready to put words in other peoples’ mouths and adopt a holier-than-thou attitude towards everyone, while not considering that many of us might share a lot of your views if you weren’t so damn militant about everything. We probably have quite a lot in common, but painting everyone who isn’t a marxist as a capitalist / fascist isn’t helping your cause, not in the slightest.

This will be the last thing I say here, so feel free to get your last word in.

The first time someone shoots one down, they’re going to make it so that downing a drone has the same criminal penalty as attacking an officer. Mark my words.

This type of rhetoric is why I and many others just cannot take you folks or your views seriously.

I don’t care if they did or didn’t; I find them to be completely insufferable and have no desire to engage with them further.

I didn’t get Trump elected, lol.

And this right here is our unresolvable ideological difference. You refuse to consider that by not voting for the better option, you’re partially responsible for what we have now. Good luck with your revolution, I guess. We have nothing else to discuss.

What’s your plan B?

What’s yours? Since letting Trump get elected was apparently Step 1, what’s Step 2? Where are we going now? Come on, fill us in.

Or, alternately, stop putting words in other peoples’ mouths and consider that what we have now is worse for everyone than the alternative would have been.

This wasn’t the Democrats being failed, it was the whole country being failed. It wasn’t about voting for the Democrats, it was about voting against Donald Trump, and there was only one way to effectively do that. Everyone who refused to do that got exactly what they voted for with Trump, whatever ends up happening, but rather than accepting that maybe this was the worst option, they’re just posting memes about how everyone didn’t push back against the democrats hard enough, so I doubt it’ll sink in.

Man, Gameboys had a backlight in the Pokemon universe? We got cheated.

Augusta, Maine. They have one actual city in the state. It isn’t Augusta, it’s Portland. However, Portland wasn’t central enough, so Augusta got the crown. Being centrally located is its only noteworthy feature.

If his lashing starts to threaten Republicans, they might consider ousting him before he can start doing things they consider to be real damage. We can hope.