It’s amazing the stories that Americans tell themselves about the American Revolution. They pretend that the “founding fathers” were heroic idealists standing up for honorable values against an evil despotic regime. The truth is much more complicated.

A major goal of the 7 Years War was about controlling the colonies in the Americas. Had the French won those wars, the modern people of North America would probably speak French. Look at how many US places still have French names, and especially are named after the French king: Louisiana, Louisville, St. Louis, Mobile, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Detroit, Lafayette, Arkansas, Illinois, Calumet, Decatur, Boise, Montpelier, etc. But, the French lost the war, so the English took over all that territory. Fighting that war was incredibly expensive, but it was worth it for the English because they now controlled a whole new continent with all its resources. To pay for that war, they levied taxes. The English colonists in the US, who were largely the beneficiaries of that part of the war, decided they didn’t want to pay those taxes, so they rebelled. They got the benefit of a continent won for them by English armies, but without having to pay the bill for that fight. Now, again, it’s complicated. The English armies were integrated with the colonial armies. George Washington was initially an officer in the British army (and was part of starting the French and Indian wars, which became the 7-years-war). The US colonists were part of the force that fought against the French and their native allies.

Anyhow, it was complicated. But, the end result was that after a war that took place both in Europe and in the Americas, the British crown had a huge debt. I have no idea what proportion of that debt was due to the part of the war fought in Europe vs. the part of the war fought in the Americas, but overall there was a big debt and the English crown tried to tax whoever they could to pay for it.

Was the English king a tyrant? Sure. Did the Americans have fair representation in the English parliament? Probably not. But, their main reason for rebelling was the same one that is nearly always the cause of rebellions: the rebels are in an area that’s wealthy for some reason, and they don’t want to have to share that wealth with the rest of the country / empire. In fact, it was suspected that the colonists chose not to send representatives to the colonial assembly partially because they knew that if they did that it would undermine their “without representation” argument, and the real issue was that they simply didn’t want to pay taxes.

As for the English system being tyrannical, the reality is that it has been a very slow, gradual change from an absolute monarchy to a ceremonial one. The English crown is significantly less wealthy than Elon Musk, and arguably has a lot less influence on British politics than Musk does on American politics.

By the letter of the laws, the British system is still more classist and controlled by money than the American system. But, is that true if you look at the actual real way that power is used? It doesn’t seem like it to me.

I heard yesterday about how a lot of Imams in Michigan posed for selfies with him.

Everyone knows where he stands.

I strongly suspect that isn’t true. I think anti-Trump people know where he stands, but I bet a lot of pro-Trump people are about to be in for a big surprise.

What’s interesting is that historically a lot of people never had children. But, by definition, none of your ancestors were among them.

So, even if being a childless femboy slut was incredibly common historically, that’s the one thing none of your ancestors would be able to understand.

On one hand, sure, the British took a lot of things from other places when their empire spanned the globe. And, it sucks for places that had their stuff taken that it is no longer where it was.

On the other hand the British Museum is probably one of the safest places in the world for these things. The museum cares about preservation, knows how to do it, and has the funds to do it. And, while there’s undoubtedly corruption in the UK, there’s a very low chance that any of these things is going to disappear out of the museum and into some powerful person’s private collection.

Mohamed Salah is standing in front of a statue from Egypt, which was taken from Egypt to London. But, the British didn’t manage to take the Buddhas of Bamiyan from Afghanistan to London, and what happened? The Taliban blew them up. The British also didn’t fully loot Iraq when they controlled that territory, which meant that in the 2003 war the museum was looted but not by people who wanted treasures for a public museum. The poorer and less politically stable a country is, the greater the chances that their cultural treasures will be stolen or destroyed.

Despite the repression and corruption, Egypt is now probably stable enough that if any of these items were returned to Egypt, they would probably be well treated and put on display for Egyptians to see. The power of the military in Egypt and the level of corruption probably means a few small items would disappear from the museum, but the most important items would make it. But, is Egypt stable enough that the museum would be safe for another 20, 40, 80 years? I have my doubts. I do think London is probably safe for that long.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think the number one priority should be preserving these things for the future. Displaying them for the public should be a lower priority. If there are items like scrolls or clothing that are too delicate to even display behind a glass case, they should be stored away. I know that’s how they handle things at the Smithsonian, and I assume the British Museum is the same. Because of that, my bias is that the most important cultural items should be in the care of the richest museums in the world, even if it means that they’re not in the places they came from.

It’s a typo for YMCA.

In your imagination I bet people clap when you say things like that.

In your imagination, I bet you have big muscles.

You get to vote in socialist democracies like China, Cuba, USSR, etc

Sure you do, as long as you vote for the candidate that the state prefers. Again, look up “Wir gehen falten”.

It’s easy to be a hero in your own imagination. The real world shows that most people don’t actually do that.

No, I’m saying western democracies are better because you got to vote.

The first paragraph is literally the same “I can’t justify capitalism but the others are worse” argument again.

Which happens to be true. Maybe in the future there will be something better, but so far it hasn’t been found.

The society we live in is an employment based, market fundamentalist society.

Sure, ok. And it’s better than a feudalist society where you’re tied to the land, or a slave-based economy where you’re property.

Instead of lashing out and calling it a silly caricature

I’m not lashing out. I’m just describing it as a silly caricature, which it is. Capitalism is fundamentally about owners of capital competing to make more money by investing in capital and selling goods at a profit. People who don’t own capital have to work in that kind of a system. Similar to how peasants were tied to land they had to work under feudalism, or slaves were required to do whatever their owners demanded in a slave state, but it’s less brutal. Workers can change employers and their bodies are not owned.

Is it fair? Of course not, but no socioeconomic system that has ever existed in reality has ever been fair.

That being said, how much money would it take for you to change your mind about existence being measured in terms of money alone being a silly caricature?

No amount of money would make me change my mind. There would probably be an amount of money where I’d be willing to lie, but what does that prove? You’d lie too if you were offered enough money. That’s human nature, not capitalism. If this were a feudalist system you could be bribed with land. If it were a theocracy you could be bribed by religious titles.

I don’t know what you’re trying to prove. Capitalism is bad, but other systems are worse. There are purely theoretical systems that would be better, but none of them has ever survived an encounter with reality. But, that doesn’t mean we should stop trying. Eventually we’ll find a way to improve on capitalism, just like capitalism improved on feudalism.

we have less than 20 years to take control of our economic system before we all die from climate change

Yeah… sure. “We all die”.

The earth isn’t going to be hit by an asteroid, it’s just going to have more and more catastrophes. If the earth reaches a tipping point with the melting of the polar icecaps, it will still take centuries for them to melt. The tipping point just means that it won’t be possible to stop it. Humanity will survive, because killing off humanity would be as difficult as killing off mosquitoes or cockroaches. What will happen, not suddenly in 20 years, but gradually over the next few centuries, is that life will get more and more unpleasant. There will be more famines, more disasters wiping cities off the map. More wars over resources. But, some humans will keep living, and they’ll have children, and those children will grow up in a terrible world where survival is a struggle. But, humans will survive, though it might be a very brutal, primitive existence.

As for “capitalism”, it’s not “capitalism” that’s at fault here, it’s humanity. It’s not like North Korea is a bastion of carbon-neutral utopian living. Humans are unable to think and act on a global scale. They’re selfish, and always have been. The difference is that now there are billions of humans, and technology has enabled each selfish human to have a massive climate footprint. Human brains were evolved to exist in small groups on the savanna. The thinking that allowed humans to thrive in that environment has meant destruction now that technology has massively amplified the impact each human now has.

The solution isn’t some random change to a different economic system or a different political system. It’s either destroying most technology so that each human can no longer have such a massive impact, or it’s fundamentally altering the human brain so that people use that technology wisely and with a tiny footprint. Neither of those is likely, so we’re almost certainly doomed.

Capitalism and modern western democracy suck. But, life has always sucked for those without power. Life is/was much worse for people under “communism”. It was much worse under fascism. It was much worse under feudalism. It is/was much worse in a theocracy.

Also, this idea that “existence is evaluated in terms of money alone” is a silly caricature of capitalism. People with power have always been the ones to make the rules. It doesn’t matter if that power is in the form of money, or absolute control over anyone who lives on a certain bit of land, or in terms of absolute control due to being the representative on earth of a god’s will.

That’s nice, but the issue was whether they were part of the governing class. The rights the women were given in the GDR didn’t include the right to pass new laws. As for choosing new representatives, look up the term “Wir gehen falten”.

You’re on the right track, but the issue isn’t “the capitalist class”, it’s “humanity”. Slavery existed long before capitalism. Waste existed long before capitalism. Getting rid of capitalism won’t suddenly make people better humans.

There are no rules that say luxury goods couldn’t be produced for consumption

You don’t seem to even understand what a luxury good is. A luxury good isn’t a great bottle of wine, or a designer handbag. A luxury good is something that is rare and expensive and coveted for those reasons. Luxury goods are older than capitalism, they go back millennia. Important people in stone age groups had “luxury goods” that the rest of the people didn’t have access to.

Too much is made, most of it is wasted.

Yes, because it’s extremely hard to figure out what people want. Markets (which are much older than capitalism) are the best way we’ve found to figure out what people want and to meet those needs. You can’t get rid of markets, you can only drive them underground. When the USSR was meeting people’s needs by giving them the goods that the government decided they should have, the black markets were famous because the things people wanted were not the things that the government had decided they needed.

Workers must seize this system and destroy the old structures

If the “workers” are as idiotic as you, they’ll probably die because they simply have no idea how the world works. I’m not defending capitalism, I’m defending markets, which are much, much older than capitalism. An idiot like you thinks that you can magically replace markets with magic, when the fact is that every system that has tried to replace markets since the dawn of time has failed.

We’re not talking about “capitalist systems” though, we’re talking about “the market”.

“The market” existed long before capitalism. It’s an essential feature of human trade. Buyers offer goods for sale, sellers choose what they want to buy. People voting with their dollars, or with their cowrie shells provides a signal for what’s in demand and what producers should make more of.

Every system that has tried to get rid of the market has failed, and the market always pops up anyway, often in the shape of a black market.

But almost everybody wants something different in a home.

If you’re paying rent to a bank, you don’t own your house, at least not yet.

All countries have always been governed by the property owning class. With all its faults, capitalism has resulted in “peons” having the most say they’ve ever had. It’s not a lot, but it’s sure better than under classical democracy, feudalism, monarchy, theocracy, and “communism” at least as practiced in the USSR, Cuba, North Korea and China.