You may be shocked by this, but comrade has been in use since the French Revolution, in fact it doesn't mean "friend" like most think - it quite literally means "fellow party-member", someone who is a member of the same party. You, yourself, are comrades with your fellow party members, even if they are not communist. Even if you go to the root of the word, it's Spanish in origin. It's an egalitarian/gender neutral word similar to 'colleague' or "coworker" but effectively it _just_ means "ally" in modern parlence.
Even if you require the link to communism, 'comrade' in the popular sense _is_ used by _socialists_ to describe one another, not just for communists, communists are just a subset ideology of socialism. Similar to anarchists, progressives, and more on the umbrella of "the left", communists are just another branch on the tree of ideologies, and as a branch, they used their mother's language of comradery to describe their fellow party-members and allies.
You can always admit when you are prejudiced by assumptions, you know, so I hope you take an interest in reading this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comrade
Edit:
> The distinctions between socialism and communism are rather academic and irrelevant in the long run
That's quite literally the biggest difference between socialism and communism, the long run. Communists want a communist society as the end-goal of socialism; Socialists do not have that hope, in fact most are not focused on the end goal as we can't ever ascertain what that would look like - so they focus on the values of socialist ideas right now, what we can do now to ensure equality, freedom, and personal rights by protecting all living beings in health and sickness, success and failure. A society of equals first.
I appreciate that you put a lot of thought into your response but I think you missed the plot. I know damn well what "comrade" means. It's one of those words with a stereotype attached to it. There are lots of words that change meaning in that way. I could call someone "my dear _" and people will assume that I'm talking to a romantic interest, because it's so weird to use the expression now in normal conversation. Likewise, if you shout out "I'm so gay!" the first thought people will have is that you are a homosexual, rather than you are in a good mood.
>That's quite literally the biggest difference between socialism and communism, the long run.
Without getting into a huge discussion on this, books have been written to try to draw a line between these two things. Ultimately they refer to the same thing, a deviation from a free market and society. To support people who have less, they must steal from those who have more. Socialism or socialist policies (such as the type we have in the United States, not the kind that most original socialists were writing about) is like a concerning lump that might turn out to be nothing more than a nuisance. Communism is Stage 4 cancer.
>A society of equals first.
This is easiest to achieve when people have a certain amount in common. But even among the most homogeneous society, differences are ever present and naturally result in different outcomes. The only sense in which we can fairly approach equality is in being equally protected by the law. If you insist on siphoning off the financial resources of those who provide valuable services to benefit others merely for existing, the worse off everyone is going to be. Many books have been written to prove that this is the case. Helping people who have experienced some kind of unforeseen setback is fine, up to a point, but I think that ought to be voluntary too.
I would sleep perfectly soundly if it relied on politicians not wanting the plebs they subjugate to have easier access to machine guns, which is what keeps their value up.
As for current NFA items holder, the constitution requires them to be compensated fair value if they are to be confiscated.
The risk is arguably lower than many single stocks, many of which are bought in retirement portfolio.
NFA firearms have an artificially high value because of the exact set of legal restrictions that the government has put in place: loose enough to not crater legal demand, yet tight enough to restrict legal supply. This market is tied to within US borders.
The government can destroy the assumptions behind this market with a stroke of the pen.
The government can destroy the assumptions on which many businesses are built, that are held as stocks in an investment portfolio. Move the goalposts to relation to international markets, and I will likely find how it applies to some other asset commonly found in investment portfolios, like perhaps the current values of some tax preparation companies.
Your original assertion was "...by buying NFA machine guns knowing the number is capped and the price is likely to only go up"
Later you said lower risk than many individual stocks. Maybe, maybe not depending on how we define things. But I do think it's quite possible for the price to go down.
I think you may have to check the text again? The 5th amendment says you get due process, and requires compensation if something is taken for “public use”.
Passing a law which you can challenge in court that says “machine guns are illegal now, turn them in so we can melt them down for scrap” is not public use.
You can pretty clearly see this isn’t the case. Prior to the reversal of the bump stock ban, owners of bump stocks were required to surrender or destroy them.
That's because the state argued they were unregistered machine guns, thus never legally held property. It is not at all comparable to legal, stamped machine guns then being made illegal.
The EO couldn't have forced an uncompensated surrender of a registered bump stock, were it one existed before the Hughes Amendment.
The case law I’m seeing does not seem to provide that level of certainty.
There’s plenty of flexibility in the case law for what counts as “public use”, but nearly all of it is about individual cases where the government takes a specific person’s specific property, or damages it in some way. There doesn’t appear to be much case law at all for the guardrails if the government declares an object to be illegal to possess writ large for safety purposes and requires owners to destroy or surrender those objects.
I’m not saying there’s no path where the courts would require compensation, but for the level of certainty you’re claiming, I’d expect there to be a more clear line you can draw to existing cases.
It's wild to claim with certainty "clearly see that's not the case" then just claim you're just uncertain here.
My initial claim in any case was that the constitution requires the compensation, not that there is 0% chance the government would violate the constitution.
I’m saying: I am certain the constitution does not guarantee payment in this situation. I am not certain a court couldn’t find a way to connect the takings clause and expand current case law to apply to a case like you’re describing in the future.
None of the above has anything to do with the government violating the constitution.
I mean, I think they’ve proven over the last century that the single thing they’re good at is protecting the regular payment of dividends (and of course buybacks more recently)… One might not be entirely mistaken to compare expecting much more than that from the modern state to expecting Valve to protect your skin investments.
Fair enough but given sparse coverage of the backgrounds of many serial arsonists (the ones that got caught, presumably most of them do not) behind recent California wildfires, people notice that for example, Alexandra Souverneva, was an Environmental Studies major and yoga instructor and speculate on her motive.
Much of that speculation is the direct result of the conspicuously sparse reporting about the backgrounds of these arsonists. There was Maynard, the college professor, there was Eric Michael Smith who may have simply been anti-authoritarian bedwetter type. I mean, it’s a huge list but the coverage, perhaps for noble reasons, focuses almost exclusively on climate change which if you understand the science and notice the vast number of arsonists that do get caught seems almost conspiratorial to those prone to conjecture.
> You will be depressed after your beloved pet dies.
You'll experience *grief* after a pet dies. We've pathologizing grief to a point that it makes it harder for those experiencing both grief and depression, two separate (but sometimes linked) human conditions.
I don’t know… we have radioactive elements with a very long half-life, which I assume would be great for calibration: somewhat safe and low activity, so good match for atmospheric concentrations of common radionuclides
A non-snarky comment is in my experience the LDS church puts a great deal of emphasis on entrepreneurship, wealth, and "excellence in all things" that leads some to do great things and others to shamelessly steal and cheat.
Fraud is an essential subcomponent of entrepreneurship. You cannot have one without the other. If I am trying to get you to invest in something, you have to swap cash today for a vague promise about the future.
This does not make it less wrong but fraud is essential.
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