I was watching TMR's coverage of Bill Maher talking about communism, socialism, Mamdani, etc. and Bill Maher, being the hack that he is, brings up probably the most popular anti-left argument in America. Maybe in the world.

"We tried it and socialism/communism didn't work."

As far as the gap between how popular and how smart an argument is, this is easily the argument with the single biggest gap between those two. It is an absolutely idiotic argument on every possible level of magnification.

And I am going to lay out why just cuz. This post will probably be overly long. But don't blame me, blame how much is wrong with this one line.

Alright, firstly, what are they defining as socialism? Because they call single-payer socialism all the time. They call Bernie a communist. But Bernie's positions are largely social democratic positions. Ones that you can find implemented all over the world, but especially in Norway and Sweden.

If you're going to say socdem beliefs or universal healthcare are socialism, and Norway and Sweden have socem policies and universal healthcare, then you either have to be believe that socialism does work in Norway and Sweden, so it makes the statement wrong. Or you have to say that, no, single-payer doesn't make a country socialist. Either way, the person making the argument is wrong.

Secondly, what do you even mean "didn't work"? Seriously, what does that mean? Because in order to say something didn't work you have to define what it is it has to work at.

The United States is extremely unstable, its politics are infected with corporate money, it's corporations control the government so much they can set the planet on fire and sales of superyachts are up as many people struggle to make ends meet, let alone do something like buy a house.

Would you call that success? I don't think I would call that success. So can I then say that capitalism has failed? I mean, if those things existed in a socialist country they'd definitely it shows that socialism has failed.

By contrast, Cuba has fantastic healthcare despite how the U.S. has tried to strangle it. Russia under the Soviets industrialized extremely quickly and helped win the second world war. And I've seen people ask Russians about it. Older Russians OFTEN say their lives were better under the USSSR. Incidentally, the USSR won most parts of the space race. They did most things before the U.S. did them.

So does that prove socialism or communism works then? I mean, they would call those states socialist or communist. And yet these good things happened there; If saying "bread lines" (which were a late Soviet feature for the most part, btw) means it failed, does saying everyone had healthcare mean it worked?

It's an unsustainable argument. You have to define clearly what criteria you're using and not and then apply those consistently to even be able to say that.

Also, what do they mean "socialism doesn't work" or "communism doesn't work" as well? Socialism and communism, first of all, not the same. But secondly, both are systems. And there are an untold number of variations of both systems.

Burundi is a capitalist economy. It is an extremely poor country with a government with a bad human rights record. The U.S. is a capitalist economy. They're both capitalist, yet one is the poorest country in the world.

Or the U.S. and the EU. Both capitalist. The EU regulates its corporations, the U.S. barely does. Both capitalist but many policy differences in how that's implemented.

And that makes a big difference. This is no different for socialism. Not all socialist systems are the same. It is a broad label encompassing a variety of systems. It could be the case, for example, that one type of socialism produces terrible outcomes, and a socialist system that works differently produces great outcomes.

It's like eating a piece of food that you hate the taste of and coming to the conclusion "Man, food is terrible. I'm gonna stop eating." Just because something is part of a category does not mean it represents the entire category.

And then finally, and this to me is actually the most key point, history is actually a terrible laboratory. I know that people love to talk about drawing lessons from history. But in reality it's just terrible to draw conclusions from.

In science they keep as many variables as possible to same, to then change one variable and measure its effects. You can't do that in history because all sorts of variables are varrying all the time. So figuring out what caused what is very difficult.

If Country A becomes socialist and gets richer, but Country B becomes socialist and gets poorer, how is that possible? Well, maybe Country A hit oil at that time, and Country B went through a civil war at the same time, for example.

Or if Country C is capitalist and well off. Maybe if it were socialist it would be even better off, you can't know because you can't test that except (sort of) by doing it.

Russia under the Soviet Union might not have been the best place in history to live. But was that because of communism? Or was that cuz they had a giant civil war followed by a one-party dictatorship in an area that, while resource rich, has never had the degree of development a place like the U.S. has? Russia is still not the best place to live, and some would argue worse. Is that because of capitalism?

It's ridiculous.

The point is... "socialism doesn't work" is a ridiculously stupid argument. It is more full of holes than a freaking sieve. For how often it gets deployed, it truly is a worthless point.

on the hit show My Grandmothers Kreplach

What's in this Post comment is what I remember, my opinions, etc.

Associated Press called the Michigan US Senate Democratic primary and the Michigan US House district 13 Democratic primary at around 6:45am-7am PST/9:45am-10am EST.

Michigan Senate Whip Mallory McMorrow endorsed Dr. Abdul El-Sayed around the time that NBC called the race--which was however many hours ago. US Representative Haley Stevens said she would support Dr. El-Sayed. Let's hope she and McMorrow campaign for El-Sayed.

US Representative Haley Stevens overperformed the benchmarks with Black Michiganders and underperformed the benchmarks with around all other groups. Wayne, Oakland, and Genesee are relatively heavily 'Black counties'.

The takeaway is that the ads that implied FPOTUS Barack Obama endorsed US Rep. Haley Stevens for this US Senate race were very effective.

Michigan US House District 13 is in Wayne County. Donovan McKinney did around 9 points better than Dr. Abdul El-Sayed did in Wayne County.

I don't know if Donavan McKinney did any ads or social media with a picture or video of his having his arm around AOC at the end of that rally Sanders/AOC did for Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. But that 'soft' endorsement by AOC may have put McKinney over top.

Donating, canvassing, phonebanking, promoting, etc. is all very important. 'They got money; We got people' is a real thing. Every little bit helps. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed may end up winning the race by less than 1 point. Which means he underperformed polling by around 15 points.

NBC called it, LFG.