Asklemmy

My only issue with that is taking from regular people to fund it. Tax solely corporations, many of them view increased profits at any cost as the only objective, which means they have more to spare. If you take it from the people who take all the risk by investing their own money, I don't see that as fair. If I work hard to make a living, invest what I can to improve my life and future that shouldn't be touched by any tax. Where I'm from, we have capital gains tax of something assured, like 55%+. I don't see how that is fair. If I go bust, I don't get a hand out or do over, but if I succeed, I have to fork over more than half...

That the dense city movement, of building up, instead of out, is ultimately ceding a huge proportion of our lives (our dwelling sizes and layouts, their materiality and designs, how the public space between them looks and feels, their maintenance and upkeep, etc. etc.) to soulless corporations trying to extract every dollar possible from us.

When we build out, people tend to have more say in the design and build of their own home, often being able to fully build it however they want because at a fundamental level a single person or couple can afford the materials it takes to build a home, and after it's built they can afford to pay a local contractor who lives nearby to make modifications to it.

What they don't have, is the up front resources to build a 20 story condo building. So instead they can buy a portion of a building that someone else has already built, which leaves them with no say in what is actually built in the first place. Ongoing possible changes and customizations are very limited by the constraints of the building itself, and the maintenance and repairs have to be farmed out to a nother corporation with the specialty knowledge and service staff to keep building systems running 24/7.

Yes, this is more efficient from an operating standpoint, but it's also more brittle, with less personal ownership, less room for individuality and beautification, and more inherent dependence on larger organizing bodies which always end up being private companies (which usually means people are being exploited).

In addition, when you expand outwards, all the space between the homes is controlled by the municipalities and your elected government, and you end up with pleasant streets and sidewalks, but when you build up with condos, you just have the tiniest dingiest never ending hallways with no soul.

And condos are the instance where you actually at least kind of own your home. In the case of many cities that densify, you end up tearing down or converting relatively dense single family homes into multi apartment units where you again put a landlord in charge, sucking as many resources out of the residents as possible. In the case of larger apartment buildings, you've effectively fully ceded a huge portion of the 'last mile' of municipal responsibilities to private corporations.

Yes, I understand all the grander environmental reasons about why we should densify, and places like Habitat 67 prove that density does not inherently have to be miserable and soulless, however, the act of densifying without changing our home ownership and development systems to be coop or publicly owned, is a huge pressure increasing the corporatization of housing.

I don't seem to have a political creed anymore.

I believe in honesty and being honourable.

This question is difficult to correctly answer, as anyone can define their own political boundaries. They can be wrong about those boundaries and they can define many different ones that are all valid. Is my "political creed" to be a communist? Which subset might that mean? Am I friendly with certain subsets despite disagreeing with them (yes) and if so would they potentially count as the majority? Am I a (de)famed Western leftist or part of a worldwide effort in terms of having a less popular view of a subject?

I would say that among the people with whom I have the most general agreement, my least popular opinion is the potential for imperial core workers to become radicalized and organized for the left. A very large amount of organized resources is constantly poured into efforts to prevent this from happening, including those that reinforce settler, white supremacist, and chauvinist attitudes that permeate our cultures. That means that our struggle is very challenging right now but also means that if those flows are ever cut off or undermined, there will be immense opportunity and we have to be ready to channel the inevitable accompaniment to the conditions (austerity) that got us to that place away from neoliberal fascistic movements.

Basically, there is a common pathway in understanding that goes from hope for revolution from within the imperial core (no successful precedents) to attempts to understand this and explain why it's least likely to happen there. This can lead to a self-defeating cynicism towards all imperial core organizing or to curb vision. But I think it is our duty to continually reformulate as needed to discovery organizable enclaves, to grow with current and upcoming conditions. We owe that to each other.

Necessities should be free for all.

The animals we create are morally entitled to the exact same unconditional love and protection as our own children. Leftists practice tolerance but they're not really willing to go as far as actual compassion, empathy, and mercy. A lot of the things they tolerate, they should not.

Strong advocate for people under 25 and over 75 not having the vote.

Abortion is sometimes the less monstrous alternative in a horrible situation, and it should never be seen as less than that.
Women should have enough social safety nets that abortion would never even cross their minds.
It is mostly Capitalism with its focus on productivity and selling youth and beauty that pressures women into it, women are "freeing" themselves into Capitalistic slavery.

From: "leftist" privileged cis het white guy, feel free to ignore or bash me

Voting is an important tool to help contain fascism in liberal democracies while building serious social movements. (Socialist - but hopefully this isn't actually unpopular with most socialists).

The phrase "we aren't free until we're all free" applies to animals as much as humans, and thinking otherwise is straight up bigotry. That so few extend leftist thought to the rest of the living world is a travesty, if you've managed to come around to leftist thinking then you've absolutely been capable of challenging your pre-conceived biases and this is just another step in that process.

All that said, I'm not one to judge people for not agreeing with this. It took me an exceptionally long time and the right circumstances to finally reassess my reasoning and to realise it was absurdly flawed, hypocritical and informed by propaganda.

The concept of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater"

There's no nuance from the left. The left polices itself like the radical right thinks they (the party of law and order) do.

Had a podcaster get dropped by their long time partner because there were lewd text messages sent.

I'm tired of the reactionary bullshit, currently Dawkins and Gaiman are being dropped, and I understand not wanting to associate/support Dawkins' current views, the guy wrote very persuasive works that shouldn't lose value because he lost his empathy.

I still read and enjoy enders game despite knowing what a tool Card turned into, how is it so difficult to separate art from the artist?