maybe he didn't know about it
i doubt this will be productive, but here we go:
1. Cubierto: of course i know about it; you're the one that brought it up, which was
in response to me posting about cubierto. i gave a full reasoning for why i think it's bullshit, why it feels scammy as an
extranjero, and how very few parts of the world do this. i feel the same about cover charges at clubs/bars in the USA that force you to pay $40 USD to get in. those places are in the minority, so i don't go, whereas a massive number of restaurants all over CABA force
cubierto on you, and then
don't even give you what the law requires them to give you (water, bread, salt...and just consent would be nice, rather than finding out about it on my
cuenta at the very end). so you make no sense - how would i not know about
cubierto when i'm the one complaining about it, providing the law, giving my opinion about its scammy feel, offering actionable solutions, and warning others to boycott the scammers that abuse it as a sort of Gringo-tax. do you pay 1400 Pesos for
cubierto when you sit down and eat,
@Che Vos ?
2. "Sides": it shouldn't matter if i was 'on your side' for getting a free expensive dinner (PS - i don't think i've ever paid $300 for a meal in my life, FYI, and i'm middle-class
estadounidense. i'd guess i've paid maximum 100 bucks for one person's worth at a Michelin Star restaurant in Europe and Peru a few years back, and maybe 80 bucks per person at a nice steakhouse in the States. i don't like fine dining.) - what should matter is the
content of my character, and what i contribute to this Expat community and the world. you continue to criticize people and take the victim approach,
yet you offer no concrete suggestions or offer to understand 'the other side' in a nuanced way. of course life is expensive for locals in CABA; communists (the end goal of socialism/Marxism is communism, so these are all the same words, 'democratic socialism' or otherwise) have been destoying the economy for what, 100 years? look at Venezuela - vast oil reserves, natural resources, cheap labor, potential to be a global powerhouse...add a little communism and poof, you have people starving. it happened in Ukraine when the Soviets starved them. it happened in China with Mao's great leap forward. it happens every time the government (AKA a small number of elites practicing nepotism) imposes restrictions on free trade and private property and communication. that being said, there are still tons of Argentines with fuckaround money all over CABA and the other provinces. how did they escape poverty? is it because they're corrupt? maybe some, and maybe some got money from daddy. but
most people who retain their wealth are hard-working regular people with families that provide services/products to other people, and make daily choices to live within their means and save/invest for the future. you have the ability to become a millionaire in the next 10 years; the only thing stopping you from doing that is your own mind! please read Kiyosaki's
Rich Dad, Poor Dad before anything else...it truly changed my life. you have people on this forum giving you great ideas and international perspectives, wanting to invest in Argentina to mutually benefit the locals as well as themselves. instead of complaining, why not offer to help them, and become someone who advises and gets a sneak-peek into how wealth is created and maintained? you could spend your days as a mentee of someone with street cred like earlyretirement and make your own empire someday, then spend your wealth on something that matters (i would love to make a billion dollars so i can dig wells in Africa like Mr Beast does).
3. Peronism=Communism: you voted for Massa, which means you like his economic policies, which means you have been tricked like half of CABA into thinking there are elites who want what's best for you. AOC is a prime example: she ran on being a Classical Liberal and now she has millions of dollars, gets kickbacks from Boeing and other weapon manufacturers, and
she votes for war. every. single. time. time will tell if Javier Milei is as Libertarian as he claims, but if he's an actor, he's the best we've seen so far. Trump never pardoned Snowden or Assange in 4 years, never decriminalized cannabis federally, never exited Afghanistan, bombed Syria a sovereign nation, and spent more than Obama. Milei has already deleted agencies that were quite literally sucking the wealth out of Argentina, by allowing workers to collect paychecks for nothing. Milei blocked the outgoing douche's attempt to spend millions on Secret Service protections while he flees the country. actions speak louder than words, so we shall see! but to say you aren't a communist, when you literally just voted for Peronism mere days ago is confusing; are you not aware that it's the same thing?
Peron may have claimed that Peronism was something separate from Capitalism or Communism or Fascism, but just because he made a claim doesn't mean it has any basis in reality. Joe Biden thinks his son Hunter Biden is the smartest man he's met - yet Hunter Biden has sex with underage girls, smokes crack cocaine, and makes fake companies to launder money around the world using his father's influence. does that sound smart to you? not in the definition of smart i use, but maybe smart in a use-your-power-to-dominate-others-and-live-in-decadence way. Mussolini thought he wasn't a Communist, but what is the difference between Fascism and Communism, when you look at how their real-world implementations develop? Wikipedia (very biased, but i'll use it) says:
"Ideologically populist, [Peronism] has been described by some as a Latin American form of fascism. Others have criticized this as one-dimensional for having negative connotations, as it also includes a form of national-populism and nationalist socialism. Peronism was also described as socialist by some political scientists, who classified it as nationalist socialism, non-Marxist socialism, and Christian socialism. Other scholars evaluate Peronism as a paternalistic conservative ideology, and with a mixture of militant laborism and traditional conservatism. Supporters of Peronism see it as socially progressive. The main Peronist party is the Justicialist Party The policies of Peronist presidents have differed greatly but has been described as 'a vague blend of nationalism and labourism' or populism."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peronism
it's pretty easy...there are 2 kinds of governments: ones that put the Individual in front of the State, and the ones that place the State in front of the Individual. this was the entire point of the Enlightenment, French/American Revolutions, and today's Limited-Government mindsets of people like Ron Paul, the leader of Liechtenstein, and Javier Milei...as
V For Vendetta said, governments should be afraid of their people, not the other way around. there can only be long-lasting inequality when supported by a Big Government program, whether it's congressionally-voted or dictated by the Executive branch.
Communism, Naziism, Maoism, Socialism, Fascism, Peronism all place individual freedoms subservient to the decisions of the State (though they use different wording to make it happen, and trick voters into thinking the money is flowing into 'public works' instead of into offshore bank accounts and special-interest groups).
a good History section of Reddit makes this a bit clearer: "the 'United Officers Group' that spearheaded
the [Peronist] 1943 coup was composed of right-wing military men who were acting out of a declared admiration of, and in support of, German and Italian fascism. Peron was one of these officers, and while he may not have been the mustachio twirling Nazi portrayed in the movie
Evita, nevertheless admired Mussolini especially and had strong personal ties to Nazi Germany (modern-day Peronists still reject these claims). So, Peron was ostensibly a hard-right military man at the beginning of his career, and maintained some level of fascist sympathies for the whole of his life."
ideologically, Peronism just aims to maintain control, just like in Orwell's
1984. an example: "
Peronism has no clear ideology (not even under Perón), it's just a 'the leader is good, obey the leader' kind of herd mentality, and as such Peronists in power can do whatever they like and generally keep the favor of the Peronist majority. Many of their policies tend to be awful and very destructive for the long-term well-being of the country, and they're also pretty much always very corrupt. I grant you, non-Peronist politicians can and have been very corrupt in Argentina too, but
only Peronists can be openly corrupt and still be regarded as heroes of the people."
Peronism's goal is to convince you that paying 100+% import taxes is normal, so that 'something-something public good' - but the oligarchs in power have offshore bank accounts in USD, pay no taxes, and get special favors like royalty, as they award government contracts to the companies their buddies control. this is worldwide, and not specific to Argentina. back to
1984, which if you haven't read, is short and one of the greatest books, here is the best scene:
O'Brien villian, torturing the protagonist: "'The rule of the Party is forever. Make that the starting-point of your thoughts. [...] You understand well enough HOW the Party maintains itself in power.
Now tell me WHY we cling to power. What is our motive? Why should we want power? Go on, speak,'
he added as Winston remained silent. [...] He knew in advance what O'Brien would say. That the Party did not seek power for its own ends, but only for the good of the majority. That it sought power because men in the mass were frail, cowardly creatures who could not endure liberty or face the truth, and must be ruled over and systematically deceived by others who were stronger than themselves. That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better. That the party was the eternal guardian of the weak, a dedicated sect doing evil that good might come, sacrificing its own happiness to that of others. The terrible thing, thought Winston, the terrible thing was that when O'Brien said this he would believe it. You could see it in his face. O'Brien knew everything. A thousand times better than Winston he knew what the world was really like, in what degradation the mass of human beings lived and by what lies and barbarities the Party kept them there. He had understood it all, weighed it all, and it made no difference: all was justified by the ultimate purpose. What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?
'Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this.
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.
The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.
They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end.
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?'"
https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt
much like Orwell's description of using Populist revolutions (violent like Peron's, or using representative democracy to give the State unlimited power), look at this propaganda for kids, trying to make people vote for Peronists for life.
https://librosperonistas.com/privilegiados/paginas-20-21.html
(i genuinely hope that isn't your path, and you instead consider individual liberty over self-enslavement to the State
False Dichotomy of Left vs Right: the claim of "Left" and "Right" is quite stupid. there is only Big Government or Enlightenment Liberty. that's all. here's why Left vs Right is silly, and just the Elites' way of tricking us that the Crony Corporatism/Lobbying of the USA is any different than the Peronism of Argentina's past century:
"In classes on Government and Political Science, with few exceptions, students in both high school and college are taught that
the so-called 'political spectrum' (or 'political/economic' spectrum) looks like this: Communism and Socialism reside on the Left, Capitalism and Fascism dwell on the Right. Various mixtures of those things lie somewhere in between:
This is not only false and misleading, it is also idiocy. Toss it into the trash bin and demand a refund from the teacher who presented it as fact, or as any kind of insightful educational tool. [...] If you insist on using the conventional spectrum as depicted in Sketch 1, you are deceiving yourself as to the differences between Communism and Fascism. They both belong firmly on the socialist Left. Actual differences amounted to minimalist window-dressing. Even their primary implementers said so. Instead of deploying flawed and simplistic spectrum charts, let us judge political and economic systems by who they empower—the State or the individual. That makes things a lot clearer."
https://fee.org/articles/the-big-pr...ical-spectrum-children-are-taught-in-schools/
-----------------------
A better spectrum would be:
Authoritarian Right = Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Peronist Argentina, CCP/Maoist China, Soviet Communism, today's USA House/Senate voting to continue FISA/NDAA spying on American citizens against the Fourth Amendment.
Liberty Left = explicitly-limited government, decentralized to the lowest levels possible, representative government, State/Province rights like Switzerland (instead of Federal supremacy), and allowing people to live harmless lives in different ways than you, without wanting to take their money/stuff, hurt them, or censor them for the 'Common Good' or 'Social Contract' lies.
so, now that i've written an, um, small
😛 amount of these claims and this evidence, tell me,
how is Peronism and its modern form of Massa-ism fundamentally different than Communism? i genuinely want to hear true-believers' mindsets. note that i am passionate, but not ad-hominem-attacking; i was only defensive here when accused of false things, or replied-to with political claims that made no sense, or called an insulting name like "fanboi" whatever that means (yes, i am a fan of Banking the Unbanked and liberating the oppressed from their corporate overlords who want them to Own Nothing And Be Happy.
guilty.) - if you post an opinion, or make a claim about reality, my response with a different opinion and evidence that debunks your claim isn't me being hateful or angry. likewise, i'll be happy to read varying opinions and read other evidence posted in response to this. as long as we remember to Be Excellent To Each Other
😀
