Politics and Science

            There are two fallacies about capitalism that I think are common. The first goes like this. Communism is collective ownership. The opposite of collective ownership is private ownership. Communism is bad. Therefore, entirely private ownership is good. This is obviously a false conclusion. Because one thing is bad, therefore we cannot conclude that opposite of that thing is good. This is used to justify privatization of services run by the government, but sometimes public services are preferable to private services.             The second argument goes like this: capitalism outlasted communism. So, capitalism will go on forever. Alternatively, capitalism outlasted communism and communism was flawed, therefore capitalism is perfect. Both of these arguments are similarly misguided. Just because capitalism outlasted communism, does not mean that capitalism will go on forever. Despite capitalism being more effective than communism, capitalism is not perfect.

Electability is on the mind of every Democrat. The Democratic party wants to win in 2020. Voters want to win in 2020, and ideology (from moderate and progressive) is taking a backseat to electability.             But electability is fickle. Trying to calculate who is electable is like trying to calculate whether the stock market will be up or down and by how much a year from now. If anyone knew who would win an election, we wouldn’t need to vote. There are too many variables in play to know who will win an election. Demographics matter, the economy matters, the mood of the country matters, immigration, and voter registration- any of these factors can affect the outcome of any election. People sometimes use polls as a substitute for electability, but the details of a poll matters a great deal, and as we know from 2016, they often are not representative. I support Senator Cory Booker for many reasons. One of them is his electability. He can excite the progressive ba