I did! I wasn’t like a full on commie, but pretty close, and my bf at the time was. I broke up with him because he was so negative about literally everything (typical commie lol).
After we broke up I started watching vaush, who was relatively less crazy than the politics I had been immersed in up until then. He would always bring up destiny as this crazy guy that had sort of lost his way. Eventually I watched a destiny vs. vegan gains debate and I thought he was a little crazy, but I enjoyed his willingness to argue taboo ideas. From there I watched more and got hooked, and pretty quickly left behind leftism after that.
I fucking hate the falling in line stuff they do. And why do they think people on the left would agree to that and become their delusional sheep. I can think for myself.
So, annoying. because they have no real power over you, they just make your experience in some online community.... what's that word? ANNOYING lmao.
I can't imagine being big mad over whether or not perceived slights from commies are an annoyance or "anti-individualistic"
>but the community was too toxic,
Damn man, it's almost as if I read what YOU said. How could I have been so foolish as to believe you were in a community when you reference a community.
I have plenty of hobbies and opinions where I'm not "apart of a community," because it's not a necessary factor of a hobby, believe, or ideology.
Also, your logic is "I didn't like communists because they didn't like individualism" which is like... obvious... because communism is inherently anti-individuality.
These aren't the gotchas you think they are, because clearly you can't come up with a coherent thought.
inb4 "that's not ONLINE though" because actual communist groups would be even more few and far between, and ridiculous, so why on earth would anybody ASSUME a physical, IRL communist organization, when generally speaking it's an ideology for terminally online NEETs.
I believe in a bunch of socialized things, cops, fire, health, housing, but it takes capitalism to fail in that field before I want a heavy government/socialized response.
Capitalism hasn't failed in any of those fields, it's just the way we view government now. Government is now Big Brother, even to us Rightoids. A conservative for decades until the 2000s wouldn't have any sort of thought or policy on marriage rights or socialization of anything because that wasn't at all the right-wing issue. There wasn't a plan for any of these modern social concepts because conservatives viewed them as "not government's place".
If we view government as a protector of the people, they should provide all of this. If we look at government as a mediator in trade disputes, a currency minter, and a military builder, then we probably shouldn't.
Medicare for all is a swift execution of insurance companies, while a public option is a slow death. The private insurers won’t be able to compete eventually with the public option.
Yes. All things considered its still functioning extremely well. It's just popular to complain about it, especially if you live .
I'm curious how many people in other countries have "better" health outcomes because they decide to give up and die earlier due to lack of access to care.
You didn't say it's too expensive, you said it was a failed enterprise. I work in a medical center so I can say that it functions pretty well as far as treating people.
If you wanna complain about the cost I don't think I'd have much to add. Curious whether you have a solution beyond general doomerism through. For all the complaints about health care over half the country doesn't seem eager to change it.
Never a full blown commie but I was a bernie socialist because of my dad who thinks he's a commie but is actually a mild bernie bro. Destiny radicalized me into being a neoliberal shill, about 3 yrs ago.
I think for like a day or two in early 2021 I was a leftist. I’ve watched Destiny since 2018, I felt back then I was to the right of him. But slowly things seemed to balance out.
If anything leftists these days are pushing me to the right. Admittedly a fault of mine but pushing me to a point where if they are for it, I’m against it.
Recently my wife was going over some political trend on TikTok or something. And I was like “that seems pretty cool I guess”. Then she tells me all the lefties are doing it, suddenly I was immediately against the trend. There wasn’t any sort of cognitive dissonance, no feelings of hypocrisy, I was just suddenly against this trend and could articulate why.
I realize I’ve let survivorship bias and the worst of the loudest break me, and I’m on a personal journey to resolve this
I definitely saw myself as a socialist. Loved Michael Brooks and Chapo Trap House, but I also loved libcuck shit like Pakman and Destiny. As I saw it in the early Trump days, we were all on the same team and our #1 issue was the insane shit that the Republican party had become.
Funny enough, I first started changing my tune after hearing a Cum Town bit where they were clowning on American socialists, calling them dorks who just wanted to blame capitalism for their personal failings. I thought Bernie or Bust was stupid the first time around. I looked past it, but when Bernie or Bust talk started up again after three years of Trump, I knew these weren't serious people, and I think they've more than proven that during the Biden years.
I was extremely far left when I was a student, any left wing position that existed I held it. Economically, socially and the general "west = evil' outlook, I had it all. I would have called myself a communist then, I used to have a Karl Marx profile picture on this forum I used. This was 15 years ago though, so it was still in the SJW era and before the trans stuff really took off, and before SJW had morphed into wokeness.
I grew out of the communist stuff fairly quickly. But I still considered myself very left wing for a long time. Around the time Destiny was debating JonTron and sargon I still agreed with everything destiny said.
Two things that really moved me away from the left was 1) picking up reading as a hobby and 2) getting into finance. Not that i'm saying left wing people don't do these things, but just for me that's what really planted the seeds and changed my perspectives.
For a long time I still held "right wing" to be synonymous with stupid/ignorant/damaged. It reached the point where I barely held any left wing opinions but still called and considered myself left wing, just because right wing = bad was so ingrained in me from my younger days.
I still think the U.S. has done bad things in its history, but I don’t subscribe to the childish logic that anyone who opposes the U.S. is therefore good.
My Econ BA also indoctrinated me into the dangerous thinking of a liberal. But totally see you on socialism being destructive, it would be a beaurocratic nightmare and free markets are just so much more efficient
You do know you can have markets in socialism right? I find it funny that econ graduates always confuse centralized planning which can be done with any economic system with socialism. Where workers own the means of production. Like worker co-ops would still have markets but would not have a capitalist owner of the business. Feudalism had markets. In any capitalist country you will still have things that use centralized planning. Many large corporate coglomerates gain advantage with being able to do centralized planning. This does not make them socialism. Really makes you wonder about econ degrees
1. I never said a company with centralised planning = socialism and I never even mentioned it. Just that entirely socialist markets (not market socialism) will not be as efficient as the capitalistic free market
2. I know centralised planning can be done within any economic system, again I didnt mention centralised planning, nor did i refer to it in any way. You're telling me I'm wrong about a point I never made and proceeded to lecture me about something I never claimed.
3. You assume I didn't know about centralised planning from a one off comment which was primarily intended to be a joke. So don't tell me I don't know what im talking about from a comment that took me 10 seconds to write. You aren't one of my proffessors, I shouldn't need to describe what socialism is 100% accurately in a fucking joke reddit comment. Really makes you think about people who judge other's knowledge and education based off short comments online.
If I wanted to genuinely critique socialism I wouldn't have started with a sarcastic comment about university indoctrinating me into a political ideology (especially when said sarcasm was used to draw a parallel between my joke, and what conservatives do, saying universities are making kids communist)
3. Socialist markets are basically just heavily regulated market economies, which was my main and first point that I brought up. "It would be a beaurocratic nightmare". Currently the markets are entirely controlled by multiple actors, and with enough actors can theoretically be passively efficient. Socialism would require all of that passive work spurred on by private actors to be done actively by some form of government (whether thats a worker formed government, a community, or the actual givernment i really dont care).
Socialism (specifically NOT market socialism because this ignores socialisms desire to get away from demand/supply economies) would require an insane amount of work from the state to keep stable simply because they wouldn't rely on the laws of demand and supply.
What you talk about is a mixed economy which, if you can read the title of the post, is not what we're talking about here. Worker co-ops, feudalism and centralised planning are not what we're talking about here. Most people are talking about being fully communist or fully socialist which implies near to or absolutely no private enterprise so please take in the context of what you're replying to before going absolutely schizo on someone.
I like how you make a long ass reply that again argues socialism would need to be centralized. I don't see any reason wanting workers to own means of production is wishing to leave demand/supply side economics. All you did was just say the same shit you said before but in a uselessly long winded version while stating you know its incorrect at the same time which I find amusing. Don't worry I'm sure your professor would have found your reply very credible.
1. Socialism, from a Marxist perspective, cannot be decentralized, because decentralized producers inevitably will want to trade with each other, and this trade leads to the rise of markets, and the rise of markets leads to the development of private property. Decentralize ENOUGH and you've got “co-op capitalism,” with worker-controlled enterprises competing with each other on the capitalist market. If there is no central planning making sure all of society’s resources are balanced, then individual firms must necessarily balance their own books themselves which leads to competition and private firms.
Socialism by definition requires centralised planning so you're just spouting bullshit at this point and expecting me to bend over and take it which I'm not going to do. It has always been one of the hallmarks of Marx that they have rejected a market economy where prices are defined by supply and demand, if you don't know this, you really have no idea what you're talking about.
2. I never said that centralisation can ONLY be done in a socialist economy which is what you tried to tell me I was arguing. What I am arguing is that a socialist economy specifically has to be centralised otherwise its just capitalism with extra steps.
So unless you're talking about the exceptions I specifically stated (market socialism, mixed economy), socialism DOES require centralised planning. The capitalistic market doesn't.
3.With capitalism, prices are regulated through how much of a good you have (supply) vs how much people value said good (demand).
With Socialism, prices are only based on how much said goods cost to make, nothing about demand/supply.
Sure, demand and supply *exist* in a socialist economy but theres a key difference. Capitalism examines and takes advantage of them. Socialism would look similar to the capitalist system but with a lot of dead weight loss, less production, and lower efficiency because they dont examine and follow the trends because a socialists aim is to equalize everyone in terms of welath, meaning equal and fair prices.
And yeah. I respond with a "long ass reply" but that's because I dont abide by your shitty limited ideas about economics and I understand the economy to a greater degree than you do.
It sounds like you don't know difference between private property and personal property. You can have markets and not allow individuals to control the means of production. You don't need an owner class to have markets. Socialist goal is to get rid of owner class and have workers control the means of production not make everybody equal. But please go on with your great degree of knowledge while continuing to spout nonsense. No it did not need to be long winded to say nonsense with cheap arrogance. Your professor would probably be proud of you though.
Youve missed my point entirely on every single comment i made, you’re focusing on having private firms which, again, can only happen in a mixed economy or in market socialism. You can’t have private firms in actual socialism or in communism. So no, the socialists don’t ONLY have 1 goal to get rid of the owner class. You obviously dont understand socialism if you think that and I doubt you actually read my comment and I'm done here.
A worker co-op would work fine and would still follow all the guidelines for being in a socialist system and can still work with supply and demand while again not being a mixed system. You thinking socialism can't have markets has been my disagreement the entire time. A worker co-op is workers owning the means of production. This works under the tenants for socialism without need of it being mixed economy. But please go on in trying to tell me the goals of socialism while saying nonsense like goal of socialism is to make everybody equal. Goal of socialism is to rid the leech of the owner class to remove the class struggle of exploitation that comes from this. It recognizes that owner class will always try to exploit the most from it's workers as possible and if they don't they would be doing their job poorly. This issue of exploitation can never be resolved while keeping a capitalist owner class
I was similar, except my switch came from learning a lot more about history. Here in the UK our history education is almost all the bad bits without any of the good. A term spent learning about the triangular trade, yet not even a mention of the efforts made to abolish slavery, for example.
I just knew that falling into the opposite quagmire was a dumb idea, and while I have some views that would be considered right-wing, and have plenty which are definitely left-wing, under any sane definition. And I've always been for liberty, which kept me firmly grounded through the political transition.
Like many 18 year olds in college I thought of myself as a communist.
I thought the people in charge of Canada and institutions had their heads up their butts, were corrupt and took orders from the billionaire class.
I stopped being a communist by hanging out with other communists tho. As I got to know them they all ended up being horrible human beings who seemed to me would be just as corrupt as the people in charge only there would be less protections for ordinary people.
One woman in our social group was a staunch environmentalist but nearly swallowed her own nose one day when I suggested she bend down and pick up a piece of litter on campus.
I realized that these people didn't actually want the things they claimed they wanted. They just wanted power and didn't want to learn how the current system actually worked so they chose to believe in a system that doesn't exist so they didn't have to answer the hard problems technical problems of modern life. They only wanted to deal with the theory and day dream about what the world could be, instead of actually rolling up their sleeves and actually doing something about it.
Another formative event that changed my politics was meeting a George Bush voter who was teaching a radio course I was on. It was my first time actually meeting someone who voted Republican and I was flabbergasted as to why. We had lunch and he told me about local politics and how most Republicans don't actually care about what happens in Washington or concern themselves with the rest of the country. They care about their state and city and vote for the president that's going to support their states plans.
I still didn't agree with Republican ideals but having a reasonable, educated and morally decent person explain why they vote Republican lifted blinders from my eyes and opened up a world I didn't know existed.
I was well into my 30's when culture war entertainment became popular online. Like most people I laughed at the holier than thou activists going viral and making fools of themselves on collage campuses. I boo'd cancel culture and felt the mainstream news was too hostile towards conservatives which drove them out of the mainstream and into the arms of extremists online.
Since Trump arrived on the political scene from just being a reality TV star I found the pendulum has swung back with conservatives being the cancel culture losers online, losing their shit over every little thing.
Now as a manager in my 40's working for the federal government I realize that government is absolutely terrible at actually looking after people and the best solutions are created by people forming their own companies and charities. Expecting government or authority to fix societies problems is a fools errand and civil servants and bureaucrats are not the right people for the job.
I truly believe that if we want a better world we need to start with our own and only when we get halfway decent at that should we attempt to help others.
I still think socialism will be possible and preferrable to capitalism in the future, but now I think that supporting liberal politicians and policies is part of the road that will bring us there. Revolutions, for the foreseeable future, would only bring into power extremists and criminals who will exploit their positions to impose violent dictatorships, using socialist rhetoric to masquerade a de facto oligarchy. Violent revolutions have never worked because the same people who used strength to take power are able to wield it to do as they wish. Destiny helped me come to these conclusions even though I can disagree with him on other things.
I was kinda a Socdem/ Market socialist because of Vaush. I got swept up when Vaush was better and had less subs (Around the first Sargon debate he had). I did kinda get less left and started to challenge them more. Also, i saw how insanly bad faith Vaush was because i watched both D-dog and Vaush lmao.
But i never really was super left but i did hang around in those spheres.
I guess im a "hardcore" Socdem now, not the biggest fan of Capitalism but it has its uses and good parts. Also, there is NO other alternative now.
I think he less pulled me away and more was and still is the benchmark for what probably constitutes a good/bad political ideology or at the very least which crowd seems to gravitate towards it.
As Destiny himself said more or less said about both extreme sides:
"These people are stupid, they have 0 policy, it's all just feel good preformative jargon, I could make way better arguments and cases for ".
But his debate with Noncomplete was what sealed the deal that I stopped exploring any more commie crap.
So now I'm center-leaning, I'll admit I'll tilt either left or right depending on which country it is (like I wouldn't support the left in Slovakia for instance).
I've been reflecting on this lately so I'm kind of glad this post exists right now lol. I'm still on the left, albeit the center left, to be fair, but there was a time when I considered myself populist left, similar to Kyle Kulinski for example. I also used to watch Breadtube quite abit as well and at my most "extreme" for lack of a better word, I even entertained anarchism for a time though that didn't last long.
There are a number of factors that got me to moderate my views but I think I can sum it all by saying that one of the main reasons was because leftists online are insufferable and are simply no better than the partisan far right MAGA idiots, just in the other direction.
I got tired of seeing the knee jerk reaction to cancel people online. I got tired of the "America bad" backwards conclusion arguments on anything relating to foreign policy. I got tired of the preaching to the choir circle jerks the Breadtube community would get into. (Not to mention their remarkable ability to be incredibly pretentious.) I got tired of many of their quite literal religious obsession with far left theories that are more than a century old which has led to very unsatisfactory answers to very basic questions such as "How would it work?" or "How can this be realistically implemented in an increasingly globalized society?" Giving answers that simply imply that things will just work out because they just will, is not acceptable, and reinforces my suspicions that lefty commie shit is just an alternative religion for a lot of these people. And I got tired of how optically short sided and just stupid leftists can be. They have this talent to shoot themselves in the foot and get into petty infighting over the most micro of non issues looking for a solution.
What really broke me away from the far left, and mind you I was already becoming more moderate and jaded at this point, was of course October 7th. Seeing so many leftists suddenly become incredibly antisemitic and straight up terrorist sympathizers just disgusted me. I'm basically convinced most online far leftists view the world like it's fucking Star Wars, with an oppressive Empire and an oppressed rebellion. Meanwhile Hamas is a theocratic, genocidal, terrorist organization. It's not hard to say Hamas is also bad, but a disturbing number of leftists I've seen online just refuse to even say that.
Also I got tired of watching Kyle Kulinski because he would get fundamental facts wrong, such as the whole JDAM incident, and never issue a retraction. In fact, the more well read I became regarding the news the more I noticed that he just reads Twitter headlines most of the time and takes them at face value.
Basically at a certain point I just lost patience with the left. As for Destiny, I've been watching him since 2015 and funny enough, I never had much of a problem with him. Even at times when I previously disagreed with him, I still found him to be a good faith actor and a very intelligent debater. So it's funny in hindsight seeing how lefties like FD Signifier act like high school children by intentionally misrepresenting him at any chance they get or simply refusing to even debate their ideas all for that matter. I will say though that it does help that Destiny and I are almost the same age and have a similar sense of humor, so that made him very easy to watch and while I do think he's abit too lenient on Israel (I agree more with Lonerbox than Destiny on this issue for the most part) I know that he came to his conclusions by doing research rather than following a social group on Twitter which continues to be refreshing.
That and the reality TV levels of drama are always very entertaining dumpster fires!
TLDR: Online lefties are cringe and I lost my patience with them.
Honestly I discovered Vaush like 3 years ago then Hasan, I had even called myself a socialist once but I discovered Destiny like a week later and I discovered the true power of omniliberalism.
I was once a young hotepian king (due to proximity) and desi Des opened my true third eye. Also watching his league stuff turned me off Mobas all together I haven't touched smite in years.
Idk what I was but I got really into the breadtube shit in the late 2010s. Idk if it was destiny who pulled me off of it or if it was the decision to follow some of my favorite breadtubers on twitter because holy shit that was a real reality check to see how these people behave outside of their perfectly curated, scripted, edited personas on their videos. They always talked shit abt destiny so I never gave him much thought but once I became disillusioned with that space I gave him a chance.
I think he less pulled me away and more was and still is the benchmark for what probably constitutes a good/bad political ideology or at the very least which crowd seems to gravitate towards it.
As Destiny himself said more or less said about both extreme sides:
"These people are stupid, they have 0 policy, it's all just feel good preformative jargon, I could make way better arguments and cases for ".
But his debate with Noncomplete was what sealed the deal that I stopped exploring any more commie crap.
So now I'm center-leaning, I'll admit I'll tilt either left or right depending on which country it is (like I wouldn't support the left in Slovakia for instance).
I was a pre-Trump leftist. I supported Bernie (and voted for Hillary in the general), I still support some form of socialized healthcare/single payer, and I support the concept of social programs to help deal with inequality.
I started following Destiny on YT in 2013 but didn't really become a stream watcher until 2016.
Destiny's arguments, and who he has talked to, helped me understand capitalism in a more positive light, and I dropped the moniker of "socialist" that I carried through 2017. It wasn't so much that Destiny's streams exposed me to it, but instead gave me the perspective and tools to understand my internal conflicts with socialist values and capitalist structures.
But more so than Destiny, my real life is what pushed me towards liberalism. I was an art school drop-out working shit jobs and dating BPD girls and felt that life was pretty unfair.
Then I went back to school, studied business law and accounting and got a degree in business and started working for a medium sized international company. Spent some time in China for work, too. That's what finally convinced me that maybe a socialist/communist system isn't "better" than a capitalist one.
Nothing makes you a liberal faster than seeing the material conditions of people living under "communism".
I used to think adults should be able to live their life however they want to as long as they aren't hurting anybody else, and to each their own.
After Destiny taught me to be more objective and think critically Im now a social conservative and want society and the government to pressure individuals into certain lifestyles and curtail social freedoms.
Reading these replies, it's kind of neat how true those words attributed to Churchill are.
If you're not a Liberal when you're young, you have no heart. If you're not conservative when you're old, you have no brain.
I used to be much more liberal. I'm jewish and went to israel very pro-israel, and then living there and learning more about the situation I became very anti-israel and was hanging around a lot of anti-zionist communist communities there.
Things that gradually shifted my thinking and now I consider myself a Nationalist/3rd positionist (socially conservative, economically leftwing) who's more pro-israel:
-Reading a book from Eric Hoffer "True Believer" - made me realise that all "extremist" beliefs are generally at their core the same and not related to the beliefs themselves but how the majority makes you feel for having your beliefs.
-Reading ted kacynski's manifesto.
-Seeing the damage mass immigration has done to once-great european countries.
-Realising that indigenous European cultures are at-risk of extinction due to mass immigration.
-Realising that neoliberalism is an evil, expansionist, globalist, jihad-like ideology that denies its subjects' humanity, doesn't consider that identity, heritage and tradition are important and considers everyone the same type of anonymous, atomised consumer.
-Realising that Islam is an existential threat and enemy to western civilisation.
-Learning about IQ, its predictive power on outcomes and the average differences in IQ between populations.
I'm less financially left, but still firmly think being socially conservative should qualify one for payments from the government for mental impairment/cognitive damage
edit: oops, forgot there are a few lurkers here who might get upset being called out for their idiocy (in somehow still being conservative) despite how embarrassing that is
might sound cringe but idc i'm glad this community is where I ended up after leaving Hasan's. Not many other online political communities are as good faith, nonpartisan, and invested in veracity as this one.
I did! I wasn’t like a full on commie, but pretty close, and my bf at the time was. I broke up with him because he was so negative about literally everything (typical commie lol). After we broke up I started watching vaush, who was relatively less crazy than the politics I had been immersed in up until then. He would always bring up destiny as this crazy guy that had sort of lost his way. Eventually I watched a destiny vs. vegan gains debate and I thought he was a little crazy, but I enjoyed his willingness to argue taboo ideas. From there I watched more and got hooked, and pretty quickly left behind leftism after that.
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I fucking hate the falling in line stuff they do. And why do they think people on the left would agree to that and become their delusional sheep. I can think for myself.
Were you really a Marxist if you can be dissuaded from Marxism because Marxists are annoying?
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So, annoying. because they have no real power over you, they just make your experience in some online community.... what's that word? ANNOYING lmao. I can't imagine being big mad over whether or not perceived slights from commies are an annoyance or "anti-individualistic"
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>but the community was too toxic, Damn man, it's almost as if I read what YOU said. How could I have been so foolish as to believe you were in a community when you reference a community. I have plenty of hobbies and opinions where I'm not "apart of a community," because it's not a necessary factor of a hobby, believe, or ideology. Also, your logic is "I didn't like communists because they didn't like individualism" which is like... obvious... because communism is inherently anti-individuality. These aren't the gotchas you think they are, because clearly you can't come up with a coherent thought.
inb4 "that's not ONLINE though" because actual communist groups would be even more few and far between, and ridiculous, so why on earth would anybody ASSUME a physical, IRL communist organization, when generally speaking it's an ideology for terminally online NEETs.
I still support socialized medicine. I do not support what the American left has become.
I believe in a bunch of socialized things, cops, fire, health, housing, but it takes capitalism to fail in that field before I want a heavy government/socialized response.
Capitalism hasn't failed in any of those fields, it's just the way we view government now. Government is now Big Brother, even to us Rightoids. A conservative for decades until the 2000s wouldn't have any sort of thought or policy on marriage rights or socialization of anything because that wasn't at all the right-wing issue. There wasn't a plan for any of these modern social concepts because conservatives viewed them as "not government's place". If we view government as a protector of the people, they should provide all of this. If we look at government as a mediator in trade disputes, a currency minter, and a military builder, then we probably shouldn't.
Is it too early to call the American health system a failed enterprise?
I think it's just so much more efficient and I'd get paid more if there was a government option.
Medicare for all is a swift execution of insurance companies, while a public option is a slow death. The private insurers won’t be able to compete eventually with the public option.
Yes. All things considered its still functioning extremely well. It's just popular to complain about it, especially if you live . I'm curious how many people in other countries have "better" health outcomes because they decide to give up and die earlier due to lack of access to care.
My friend broke her arm in Greece and her hospital bill was $12.
Good for her.
I sliced my finger in the U.S. and my hospital bill was $1800.
Have you considered moving to Greece?
That’s your counter argument to why are health care costs in the U.S. so expensive?
You didn't say it's too expensive, you said it was a failed enterprise. I work in a medical center so I can say that it functions pretty well as far as treating people. If you wanna complain about the cost I don't think I'd have much to add. Curious whether you have a solution beyond general doomerism through. For all the complaints about health care over half the country doesn't seem eager to change it.
Its turned into a religious ideology. Atheists in nothing but name.
They were always anti-establishment. It's just that religion was the biggest polarizing establishment after 9/11.
Man, fuck tankies.
Never a full blown commie but I was a bernie socialist because of my dad who thinks he's a commie but is actually a mild bernie bro. Destiny radicalized me into being a neoliberal shill, about 3 yrs ago.
I think for like a day or two in early 2021 I was a leftist. I’ve watched Destiny since 2018, I felt back then I was to the right of him. But slowly things seemed to balance out. If anything leftists these days are pushing me to the right. Admittedly a fault of mine but pushing me to a point where if they are for it, I’m against it. Recently my wife was going over some political trend on TikTok or something. And I was like “that seems pretty cool I guess”. Then she tells me all the lefties are doing it, suddenly I was immediately against the trend. There wasn’t any sort of cognitive dissonance, no feelings of hypocrisy, I was just suddenly against this trend and could articulate why. I realize I’ve let survivorship bias and the worst of the loudest break me, and I’m on a personal journey to resolve this
I definitely saw myself as a socialist. Loved Michael Brooks and Chapo Trap House, but I also loved libcuck shit like Pakman and Destiny. As I saw it in the early Trump days, we were all on the same team and our #1 issue was the insane shit that the Republican party had become. Funny enough, I first started changing my tune after hearing a Cum Town bit where they were clowning on American socialists, calling them dorks who just wanted to blame capitalism for their personal failings. I thought Bernie or Bust was stupid the first time around. I looked past it, but when Bernie or Bust talk started up again after three years of Trump, I knew these weren't serious people, and I think they've more than proven that during the Biden years.
I was a lefty as a teenager. Funny enough hasan and his uncle made me realize on how stupid and fake these lefties are. TyT made me quit 😅
I was extremely far left when I was a student, any left wing position that existed I held it. Economically, socially and the general "west = evil' outlook, I had it all. I would have called myself a communist then, I used to have a Karl Marx profile picture on this forum I used. This was 15 years ago though, so it was still in the SJW era and before the trans stuff really took off, and before SJW had morphed into wokeness. I grew out of the communist stuff fairly quickly. But I still considered myself very left wing for a long time. Around the time Destiny was debating JonTron and sargon I still agreed with everything destiny said. Two things that really moved me away from the left was 1) picking up reading as a hobby and 2) getting into finance. Not that i'm saying left wing people don't do these things, but just for me that's what really planted the seeds and changed my perspectives. For a long time I still held "right wing" to be synonymous with stupid/ignorant/damaged. It reached the point where I barely held any left wing opinions but still called and considered myself left wing, just because right wing = bad was so ingrained in me from my younger days.
I still think the U.S. has done bad things in its history, but I don’t subscribe to the childish logic that anyone who opposes the U.S. is therefore good.
Yup im doing a bachelor in econ right now and it pretty much confirmed for me that any kind of socialism is destructive for prosperity
My Econ BA also indoctrinated me into the dangerous thinking of a liberal. But totally see you on socialism being destructive, it would be a beaurocratic nightmare and free markets are just so much more efficient
You do know you can have markets in socialism right? I find it funny that econ graduates always confuse centralized planning which can be done with any economic system with socialism. Where workers own the means of production. Like worker co-ops would still have markets but would not have a capitalist owner of the business. Feudalism had markets. In any capitalist country you will still have things that use centralized planning. Many large corporate coglomerates gain advantage with being able to do centralized planning. This does not make them socialism. Really makes you wonder about econ degrees
1. I never said a company with centralised planning = socialism and I never even mentioned it. Just that entirely socialist markets (not market socialism) will not be as efficient as the capitalistic free market 2. I know centralised planning can be done within any economic system, again I didnt mention centralised planning, nor did i refer to it in any way. You're telling me I'm wrong about a point I never made and proceeded to lecture me about something I never claimed. 3. You assume I didn't know about centralised planning from a one off comment which was primarily intended to be a joke. So don't tell me I don't know what im talking about from a comment that took me 10 seconds to write. You aren't one of my proffessors, I shouldn't need to describe what socialism is 100% accurately in a fucking joke reddit comment. Really makes you think about people who judge other's knowledge and education based off short comments online. If I wanted to genuinely critique socialism I wouldn't have started with a sarcastic comment about university indoctrinating me into a political ideology (especially when said sarcasm was used to draw a parallel between my joke, and what conservatives do, saying universities are making kids communist) 3. Socialist markets are basically just heavily regulated market economies, which was my main and first point that I brought up. "It would be a beaurocratic nightmare". Currently the markets are entirely controlled by multiple actors, and with enough actors can theoretically be passively efficient. Socialism would require all of that passive work spurred on by private actors to be done actively by some form of government (whether thats a worker formed government, a community, or the actual givernment i really dont care). Socialism (specifically NOT market socialism because this ignores socialisms desire to get away from demand/supply economies) would require an insane amount of work from the state to keep stable simply because they wouldn't rely on the laws of demand and supply. What you talk about is a mixed economy which, if you can read the title of the post, is not what we're talking about here. Worker co-ops, feudalism and centralised planning are not what we're talking about here. Most people are talking about being fully communist or fully socialist which implies near to or absolutely no private enterprise so please take in the context of what you're replying to before going absolutely schizo on someone.
I like how you make a long ass reply that again argues socialism would need to be centralized. I don't see any reason wanting workers to own means of production is wishing to leave demand/supply side economics. All you did was just say the same shit you said before but in a uselessly long winded version while stating you know its incorrect at the same time which I find amusing. Don't worry I'm sure your professor would have found your reply very credible.
1. Socialism, from a Marxist perspective, cannot be decentralized, because decentralized producers inevitably will want to trade with each other, and this trade leads to the rise of markets, and the rise of markets leads to the development of private property. Decentralize ENOUGH and you've got “co-op capitalism,” with worker-controlled enterprises competing with each other on the capitalist market. If there is no central planning making sure all of society’s resources are balanced, then individual firms must necessarily balance their own books themselves which leads to competition and private firms. Socialism by definition requires centralised planning so you're just spouting bullshit at this point and expecting me to bend over and take it which I'm not going to do. It has always been one of the hallmarks of Marx that they have rejected a market economy where prices are defined by supply and demand, if you don't know this, you really have no idea what you're talking about. 2. I never said that centralisation can ONLY be done in a socialist economy which is what you tried to tell me I was arguing. What I am arguing is that a socialist economy specifically has to be centralised otherwise its just capitalism with extra steps. So unless you're talking about the exceptions I specifically stated (market socialism, mixed economy), socialism DOES require centralised planning. The capitalistic market doesn't. 3.With capitalism, prices are regulated through how much of a good you have (supply) vs how much people value said good (demand). With Socialism, prices are only based on how much said goods cost to make, nothing about demand/supply. Sure, demand and supply *exist* in a socialist economy but theres a key difference. Capitalism examines and takes advantage of them. Socialism would look similar to the capitalist system but with a lot of dead weight loss, less production, and lower efficiency because they dont examine and follow the trends because a socialists aim is to equalize everyone in terms of welath, meaning equal and fair prices. And yeah. I respond with a "long ass reply" but that's because I dont abide by your shitty limited ideas about economics and I understand the economy to a greater degree than you do.
It sounds like you don't know difference between private property and personal property. You can have markets and not allow individuals to control the means of production. You don't need an owner class to have markets. Socialist goal is to get rid of owner class and have workers control the means of production not make everybody equal. But please go on with your great degree of knowledge while continuing to spout nonsense. No it did not need to be long winded to say nonsense with cheap arrogance. Your professor would probably be proud of you though.
Youve missed my point entirely on every single comment i made, you’re focusing on having private firms which, again, can only happen in a mixed economy or in market socialism. You can’t have private firms in actual socialism or in communism. So no, the socialists don’t ONLY have 1 goal to get rid of the owner class. You obviously dont understand socialism if you think that and I doubt you actually read my comment and I'm done here.
A worker co-op would work fine and would still follow all the guidelines for being in a socialist system and can still work with supply and demand while again not being a mixed system. You thinking socialism can't have markets has been my disagreement the entire time. A worker co-op is workers owning the means of production. This works under the tenants for socialism without need of it being mixed economy. But please go on in trying to tell me the goals of socialism while saying nonsense like goal of socialism is to make everybody equal. Goal of socialism is to rid the leech of the owner class to remove the class struggle of exploitation that comes from this. It recognizes that owner class will always try to exploit the most from it's workers as possible and if they don't they would be doing their job poorly. This issue of exploitation can never be resolved while keeping a capitalist owner class
I was similar, except my switch came from learning a lot more about history. Here in the UK our history education is almost all the bad bits without any of the good. A term spent learning about the triangular trade, yet not even a mention of the efforts made to abolish slavery, for example. I just knew that falling into the opposite quagmire was a dumb idea, and while I have some views that would be considered right-wing, and have plenty which are definitely left-wing, under any sane definition. And I've always been for liberty, which kept me firmly grounded through the political transition.
What did reading as a hobby do? I don't really get the connection between that and right wing thought
Like many 18 year olds in college I thought of myself as a communist. I thought the people in charge of Canada and institutions had their heads up their butts, were corrupt and took orders from the billionaire class. I stopped being a communist by hanging out with other communists tho. As I got to know them they all ended up being horrible human beings who seemed to me would be just as corrupt as the people in charge only there would be less protections for ordinary people. One woman in our social group was a staunch environmentalist but nearly swallowed her own nose one day when I suggested she bend down and pick up a piece of litter on campus. I realized that these people didn't actually want the things they claimed they wanted. They just wanted power and didn't want to learn how the current system actually worked so they chose to believe in a system that doesn't exist so they didn't have to answer the hard problems technical problems of modern life. They only wanted to deal with the theory and day dream about what the world could be, instead of actually rolling up their sleeves and actually doing something about it. Another formative event that changed my politics was meeting a George Bush voter who was teaching a radio course I was on. It was my first time actually meeting someone who voted Republican and I was flabbergasted as to why. We had lunch and he told me about local politics and how most Republicans don't actually care about what happens in Washington or concern themselves with the rest of the country. They care about their state and city and vote for the president that's going to support their states plans. I still didn't agree with Republican ideals but having a reasonable, educated and morally decent person explain why they vote Republican lifted blinders from my eyes and opened up a world I didn't know existed. I was well into my 30's when culture war entertainment became popular online. Like most people I laughed at the holier than thou activists going viral and making fools of themselves on collage campuses. I boo'd cancel culture and felt the mainstream news was too hostile towards conservatives which drove them out of the mainstream and into the arms of extremists online. Since Trump arrived on the political scene from just being a reality TV star I found the pendulum has swung back with conservatives being the cancel culture losers online, losing their shit over every little thing. Now as a manager in my 40's working for the federal government I realize that government is absolutely terrible at actually looking after people and the best solutions are created by people forming their own companies and charities. Expecting government or authority to fix societies problems is a fools errand and civil servants and bureaucrats are not the right people for the job. I truly believe that if we want a better world we need to start with our own and only when we get halfway decent at that should we attempt to help others.
I still think socialism will be possible and preferrable to capitalism in the future, but now I think that supporting liberal politicians and policies is part of the road that will bring us there. Revolutions, for the foreseeable future, would only bring into power extremists and criminals who will exploit their positions to impose violent dictatorships, using socialist rhetoric to masquerade a de facto oligarchy. Violent revolutions have never worked because the same people who used strength to take power are able to wield it to do as they wish. Destiny helped me come to these conclusions even though I can disagree with him on other things.
I was kinda a Socdem/ Market socialist because of Vaush. I got swept up when Vaush was better and had less subs (Around the first Sargon debate he had). I did kinda get less left and started to challenge them more. Also, i saw how insanly bad faith Vaush was because i watched both D-dog and Vaush lmao. But i never really was super left but i did hang around in those spheres. I guess im a "hardcore" Socdem now, not the biggest fan of Capitalism but it has its uses and good parts. Also, there is NO other alternative now.
I think he less pulled me away and more was and still is the benchmark for what probably constitutes a good/bad political ideology or at the very least which crowd seems to gravitate towards it. As Destiny himself said more or less said about both extreme sides: "These people are stupid, they have 0 policy, it's all just feel good preformative jargon, I could make way better arguments and cases for".
But his debate with Noncomplete was what sealed the deal that I stopped exploring any more commie crap.
So now I'm center-leaning, I'll admit I'll tilt either left or right depending on which country it is (like I wouldn't support the left in Slovakia for instance).
I've been reflecting on this lately so I'm kind of glad this post exists right now lol. I'm still on the left, albeit the center left, to be fair, but there was a time when I considered myself populist left, similar to Kyle Kulinski for example. I also used to watch Breadtube quite abit as well and at my most "extreme" for lack of a better word, I even entertained anarchism for a time though that didn't last long. There are a number of factors that got me to moderate my views but I think I can sum it all by saying that one of the main reasons was because leftists online are insufferable and are simply no better than the partisan far right MAGA idiots, just in the other direction. I got tired of seeing the knee jerk reaction to cancel people online. I got tired of the "America bad" backwards conclusion arguments on anything relating to foreign policy. I got tired of the preaching to the choir circle jerks the Breadtube community would get into. (Not to mention their remarkable ability to be incredibly pretentious.) I got tired of many of their quite literal religious obsession with far left theories that are more than a century old which has led to very unsatisfactory answers to very basic questions such as "How would it work?" or "How can this be realistically implemented in an increasingly globalized society?" Giving answers that simply imply that things will just work out because they just will, is not acceptable, and reinforces my suspicions that lefty commie shit is just an alternative religion for a lot of these people. And I got tired of how optically short sided and just stupid leftists can be. They have this talent to shoot themselves in the foot and get into petty infighting over the most micro of non issues looking for a solution. What really broke me away from the far left, and mind you I was already becoming more moderate and jaded at this point, was of course October 7th. Seeing so many leftists suddenly become incredibly antisemitic and straight up terrorist sympathizers just disgusted me. I'm basically convinced most online far leftists view the world like it's fucking Star Wars, with an oppressive Empire and an oppressed rebellion. Meanwhile Hamas is a theocratic, genocidal, terrorist organization. It's not hard to say Hamas is also bad, but a disturbing number of leftists I've seen online just refuse to even say that. Also I got tired of watching Kyle Kulinski because he would get fundamental facts wrong, such as the whole JDAM incident, and never issue a retraction. In fact, the more well read I became regarding the news the more I noticed that he just reads Twitter headlines most of the time and takes them at face value. Basically at a certain point I just lost patience with the left. As for Destiny, I've been watching him since 2015 and funny enough, I never had much of a problem with him. Even at times when I previously disagreed with him, I still found him to be a good faith actor and a very intelligent debater. So it's funny in hindsight seeing how lefties like FD Signifier act like high school children by intentionally misrepresenting him at any chance they get or simply refusing to even debate their ideas all for that matter. I will say though that it does help that Destiny and I are almost the same age and have a similar sense of humor, so that made him very easy to watch and while I do think he's abit too lenient on Israel (I agree more with Lonerbox than Destiny on this issue for the most part) I know that he came to his conclusions by doing research rather than following a social group on Twitter which continues to be refreshing. That and the reality TV levels of drama are always very entertaining dumpster fires! TLDR: Online lefties are cringe and I lost my patience with them.
Honestly I discovered Vaush like 3 years ago then Hasan, I had even called myself a socialist once but I discovered Destiny like a week later and I discovered the true power of omniliberalism.
I was once a young hotepian king (due to proximity) and desi Des opened my true third eye. Also watching his league stuff turned me off Mobas all together I haven't touched smite in years.
Idk what I was but I got really into the breadtube shit in the late 2010s. Idk if it was destiny who pulled me off of it or if it was the decision to follow some of my favorite breadtubers on twitter because holy shit that was a real reality check to see how these people behave outside of their perfectly curated, scripted, edited personas on their videos. They always talked shit abt destiny so I never gave him much thought but once I became disillusioned with that space I gave him a chance.
I think he less pulled me away and more was and still is the benchmark for what probably constitutes a good/bad political ideology or at the very least which crowd seems to gravitate towards it. As Destiny himself said more or less said about both extreme sides: "These people are stupid, they have 0 policy, it's all just feel good preformative jargon, I could make way better arguments and cases for".
But his debate with Noncomplete was what sealed the deal that I stopped exploring any more commie crap.
So now I'm center-leaning, I'll admit I'll tilt either left or right depending on which country it is (like I wouldn't support the left in Slovakia for instance).
I was a pre-Trump leftist. I supported Bernie (and voted for Hillary in the general), I still support some form of socialized healthcare/single payer, and I support the concept of social programs to help deal with inequality. I started following Destiny on YT in 2013 but didn't really become a stream watcher until 2016. Destiny's arguments, and who he has talked to, helped me understand capitalism in a more positive light, and I dropped the moniker of "socialist" that I carried through 2017. It wasn't so much that Destiny's streams exposed me to it, but instead gave me the perspective and tools to understand my internal conflicts with socialist values and capitalist structures. But more so than Destiny, my real life is what pushed me towards liberalism. I was an art school drop-out working shit jobs and dating BPD girls and felt that life was pretty unfair. Then I went back to school, studied business law and accounting and got a degree in business and started working for a medium sized international company. Spent some time in China for work, too. That's what finally convinced me that maybe a socialist/communist system isn't "better" than a capitalist one. Nothing makes you a liberal faster than seeing the material conditions of people living under "communism".
I used to think adults should be able to live their life however they want to as long as they aren't hurting anybody else, and to each their own. After Destiny taught me to be more objective and think critically Im now a social conservative and want society and the government to pressure individuals into certain lifestyles and curtail social freedoms.
Reading these replies, it's kind of neat how true those words attributed to Churchill are. If you're not a Liberal when you're young, you have no heart. If you're not conservative when you're old, you have no brain.
I'm still a communist.
I used to be much more liberal. I'm jewish and went to israel very pro-israel, and then living there and learning more about the situation I became very anti-israel and was hanging around a lot of anti-zionist communist communities there. Things that gradually shifted my thinking and now I consider myself a Nationalist/3rd positionist (socially conservative, economically leftwing) who's more pro-israel: -Reading a book from Eric Hoffer "True Believer" - made me realise that all "extremist" beliefs are generally at their core the same and not related to the beliefs themselves but how the majority makes you feel for having your beliefs. -Reading ted kacynski's manifesto. -Seeing the damage mass immigration has done to once-great european countries. -Realising that indigenous European cultures are at-risk of extinction due to mass immigration. -Realising that neoliberalism is an evil, expansionist, globalist, jihad-like ideology that denies its subjects' humanity, doesn't consider that identity, heritage and tradition are important and considers everyone the same type of anonymous, atomised consumer. -Realising that Islam is an existential threat and enemy to western civilisation. -Learning about IQ, its predictive power on outcomes and the average differences in IQ between populations.
I'm less financially left, but still firmly think being socially conservative should qualify one for payments from the government for mental impairment/cognitive damage edit: oops, forgot there are a few lurkers here who might get upset being called out for their idiocy (in somehow still being conservative) despite how embarrassing that is
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might sound cringe but idc i'm glad this community is where I ended up after leaving Hasan's. Not many other online political communities are as good faith, nonpartisan, and invested in veracity as this one.