Ask Lemmy

Non-vague statements that I can actually debate with, thank you.

All money should he removed from politics, including salaries for politicians. It should be a side-gig like it was in the past.

Can you explain what the actual benefits of this would be? The vast majority of our politicians wealth does not come from their salary, it comes from business deals, lobbying(aka legalized bribery) and, well, actual literal bribery in far too many cases. From my point of view, all removing salaries from these positions would do is guarantee that only those that are already independently wealthy could afford to take on these positions, any working class people would be too busy working a normal job just to survive.

Anyone caught accepting bribes should be removed

No arguments here, I agree.

both parties should be imprisoned for corruption

What do you actually mean by both parties? The leadership? Every elected official? Every registered member? I don't have to register with a party to vote in my state, but if I did I would be a registered Democrat; should I be imprisoned for that? Where do you draw the line at? Certainly, there are individuals in both parties that absolutely need to be in prison, but due process still needs to be followed.

Nuclear energy, for the love of all that is holy.

This is kind of vague, but I'm assuming you are in support of nuclear energy. In which case, great news, I am too! It's a fair point, even if you didn't mention it directly, that in the past democrats were largely anti-nuclear, but that rhetoric is mostly dying away in the newer generation of progressive dems. With the relative lack of new blood in congress it will take awhile to truly effect policy making, but it is coming.

We can’t rely on China for all of our rare earth metals forever. They’re going to cut our asses off one of these days, and we’re going to go belly up when they do.

Agreed. Whether you think Biden is following through with his words or not(I have very mixed feelings about him), I think he put it best on where we should be with China: "Competition, not conflict". We should be building up the US's industries so they no longer need to rely so heavily on China. That costs a lot of money in the short term though, even if the benefits are worth it long term. Republican policy on spending money for any reason is very well known(they hate it), and as far as China goes they seem more interested in causing outright conflict with them rather than building the means to out-compete with them.

All gun laws are infringements. Every single one.

Infringements of what? The 2nd amendment? Here is the entirety of the 2nd amendment:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

There are TONS of gun laws you can have while still following this to the letter. A magazine size limit law, or a bump stock law, for example. Neither of those would infringe on the 2nd amendment, those are not "arms", even if they are accessories to them, and thus they absolutely can be regulated. To be clear, I don't agree with those particular examples of gun legislation, but they don't infringe on the 2nd in any way.

Do I want felons to have guns? No, but if they cause a problem, just shoot 'em a little.

So only deal with the problem after they've presumably shot someone, if not multiple people. Swell. An entire police department supposedly trained to deal with active shooters couldn't stop an 18 year old shitstain from murdering 21 people(Uvalde), but we're supposed to expect random joe schmoes with a gun(With no training needed, at that! Firearm safety classes being required would be a gun law, no?) to always save the day? Come off it, man. I like guns too, I'm against outright bans for no reason as are many other leftists(look up the Socialist Rifle Association, if you're interested), but I don't think even most republicans would agree with no gun laws at ALL.

We should destroy the entire concept of health insurance. It’s a scam and has been for a very long time

I wholeheartedly agree. A good universal healthcare system would essentially accomplish this, as there would be very little reason to get private insurance anymore. It's not the right wing trying to accomplish this though, if anything they're trying to bolster the private insurance industry for their own greed. Not all democrats are innocent on this point either, but unlike republicans, they're not ALL guilty of it.

We need to get rid of social security and encourage people to fund their own retirement accounts. If they don’t have the self control to do so, then bummer.

I fundamentally don't agree with this, politics aside I think we have a moral duty to look out for those in need, but I won't get into that. How do you realistically expect people to be ABLE to save for their own retirement with how much wages have stagnated versus inflation? Wages are mostly staying the same(Hell, Walmart recently lowered wages) while the cost of everything keeps going up and up. Republicans are the ones continuously fighting against living wages; they are the ones making it for most a herculean task to afford to just survive, let alone save for retirement.

End the Fed. They’ve become a 4th branch of the government without a constitutional amendment.

By "the Fed", do you mean the Federal Reserve? If so, I won't agree or disagree with you on this point, I'd need to research the topic first. If you didn't mean the Federal Reserve, please elaborate on what you meant.

Stop glorifying gender non-conformity in schools. We’re going to convince kids to go down detrimental rabbit holes during their formative years.

What do you consider "glorifying"? I'm not going to put a boy on a pedestal and shower him with praise for wearing a skirt, but I see no reason to mock him for it or think less of him for it, either. It's a piece of clothing, why should anyone care?

What would you consider as an example of a "detrimental rabbit hole" that this could lead kids to? Why do you think that(whatever "that" is to you) is detrimental?

Stop bailing out corporations. Let them fail, and let the people screwed over by such a failure do whatever they want to those in charge.

I agree with you. Republicans, however, do not. They love nothing more than giving corporations and their rich investors every break under the sun, while raising taxes on the working class.

Politicians shouldn’t be allowed to exempt themselves from the laws they pass. In fact, they should have to eat their own dog food for a year before anyone else is exposed to it.

Agreed. I'd go as far to say that elected officials should be held to a higher standard, and face a harsher punishment for breaking a law than a normal citizen would.

We need major data privacy regulations at the federal level.

Agreed. Frankly, both sides have been absolutely abysmal on this matter for the most part.

Any state or federal agency found to be in continued violation of the bill of rights should be shut down completely and permanently.

That's just plain silly, no offense. There are so many different governmental agencies and pretty much all of them do multiple different important tasks. To completely shut them down over one illegal aspect is just wasting time and money. It is much, much quicker and cheaper to reform an agency and stop the illegal practices than it is to shut it down and then, what, start up a brand new agency to cover the other, non-illegal tasks the former agency did that still will likely need to be done?