BartsBigBugBag @ BartsBigBugBag @lemmy.tf

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70

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716

Joined

2 yr. ago

Yes, centralized planning is significantly more efficient both materially and in terms of labor. Thus why most modern mega corporations are run as planned economies within themselves. There’s entire books about it, if you care to read them. The first one I read on the subject is called “The Peoples Republic of Wal-Mart”.

You’re right, it requires people! It’s too bad there’s not an army of people underemployed in exploitative jobs that do not meet their basic needs along with an army of unemployed and often even unhoused people... We could just… pay them living wages to farm… there’s an idea!

Lmaoo. Mass starvation happens in this world under capitalism The Israelis are purposefully inflicting it upon Palestinians. The US is purposefully attempting to inflict it upon Cuba. So when starvation is the intended outcome, it’s okay? But when it is an accidental consequence of industrializing a nation of uneducated peasants with a less than 30 year life expectancy, and is followed by decades of life expectancy increases and increases in quality of life and equality of rights, that’s not okay?

I get it, suffering is okay if it’s the status quo, but if it happens in service of doing better, that’s not okay, so we should just be happy with the status quo, where the vast majority suffer daily indignities and violences, and are forced into exploitation by coercive structures.

You benefit from the current system, so the suffering of the many NOW is less real to you than the potential suffering of yourself in a situation that when enacted had objectively raised the quality of life for the vast majority of people who live in the societies where it was enacted, by all objective measures. Is that it?

Yea yeah no true Scotsman. Where is this “true capitalism” in existence? Or is this another “homo economicus “ that definitively can never exist?

Large scale socialism has worked, multiple times. Do you not think industrializing a peasant society, more than doubling lifespan, cutting working hours in half, I could go on but I’ll leave it there, are things successful countries do? What determines success?

In a way, I can see that. But, his use of free market ideology reflects a vast gap between our actual messaging. “Free markets” inevitably result in monopolization. It’s not just critical industries, every industry is inevitably drawn towards monopolization under capitalist economics.

We can fight it off temporarily with reforms and regulations, but those too, inevitably will be co-opted by the monopolies and used to their advantage. (And then it’s not a free market…)

If a person would rather allow land to go fallow purely because of profit incentive, and that fallow land will result in the suffering of others, the only moral thing to do is dispossess them of that land. They weren’t using it anyway apparently, in this hypothetical.

This sounds like some right libertarian capitalism apologia, is that what it is meant to be?

That makes sense, thanks. It’s been a couple decades since I’ve set foot anywhere Christian, and I hope to continue that streak for a few more, so I’d rather ask you than a Christian 😂

Isn’t that in the Torah? I have never met a Christian who didn’t mix meat with dairy, that’s Judaism. Imagine Christian America if you told them they can’t eat cheeseburgers lmao. Actually, I think that might be the best way to beat religion in America. Ban cheeseburgers on religious grounds. Fat white balding men the nation over will revolt, once their arteries clear up from not eating burgers, that is.

Because Israel cut all power and water to Gaza.

Everything we have heard from released hostages is that they were treated well, fed, given medical attention, and not harmed in any way.

Ah man I was just telling my little brother about payphones. It really made it hit how much of a different world I live in now than when I was a kid.

How do we do it anonymously? I definitely could see Israel retaliating against activists who do so.

I can provide documents from both western and eastern sources that verify what I said about China. Harvard University itself found well over 90% approval by the people of the Chinese government. If we want to talk about appeasement, we can talk about how the USSR tried to form a three way defense pact over Poland with Britain and France, but instead the western nations refused. It was only after that that they signed a non-aggression pact, and that pact only lasted long enough for them to build up their industry to prepare for the inevitable invasion by the Nazis. You can read the letters between Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Hitler, they’re available online. You can see how western leaders preferred appeasement to defense. You can see how many western leaders not only didn’t dislike the Nazis or Mussolinis fascists, but admired them for their privatization and suppression of working class movements. If Hitler would have kept his genocide to Germany, the west would never have cared. They really didn’t even care about it during either, as evidenced by the wests refusal to take Jewish refugees, a large majority of which were taken in by the Soviet Union.

The SPD used the Proto-fascists to murder their enemies. This is undebatable. It happened.

No I feel you entirely. I think what you’re missing is that a country is a product of its material conditions. The Chinese government isn’t forcing anti gay laws onto the Chinese people. It’s reacting to the citizens, who are homophobic and transphobic. China also doesn’t pave over dissent, they have one of the most robust protest movements in the world. There are literally nearly constantly protests taking place in China. Hell, it literally only took TWO weeks of protest to entirely end Zero-Covid(which has lead to thousands of excess deaths, but if the people prefer that over zero-covid, that is their right). What I would give to have protest movements succeed in two weeks haha. We had the largest protests in the history of the world after George Floyd, and an absolute majority of the population supported defunding the police, and yet both the federal and local governments put record amounts of funding into police. We are not the constituency of the Us government. We are merely the cattle used to feed their real constituency, corporations and oligarchs.

I appreciate your info on Audre Lorde, that all jives with what I know about her also. I just thought it was a great quote, and I like to share quotes when I post here :)

Also, I agree, fascists must die. Trying to play respectability politics while they’re rigging the game won’t kill them though, and it seems that’s all the non-fascist elements of our government are capable of doing.

How do you have private ownership of enterprise and the means of production without then allowing those individuals to make What should be collective decisions? The factory owner, unregulated, polluted. With regulations under a capitalist system, he still pollutes, but he has to put a muffler, and the area where his factory is has been designated a sacrifice zone and those living there less important than the profits of the owner.

Where do the rights of the people fit in when you give property itself rights? How do you maintain private property without violent enforcement? How do you then prevent those with private property from co-opting the very violent enforcers for their own means (such as the regular use of police to bust union activity), or purchasing the regulators and regulatory bodies and using them to create regulations that don’t restrict them, but instead raise the bar for entry into the market?

There’s not yet been a capitalist society invulnerable to market and regulatory capture. In fact, there’s entire books that show, with the math to prove it, that this is an inevitable outcome of the system, and that all our regulations and reforms do is stave off the inevitable for a short while longer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostalgia_for_the_Soviet_Union

In 2011, a poll conducted by Pew Research Center found that 82% of Ukrainians, 61% of Russians and 56% of Lithuanians believed the standard of living in their countries had fallen since the Soviet dissolution, respectively.[11] It also found that a further 34% of Ukrainians, 42% of Russians and 45% of Lithuanians approved of the change from the Soviet command economy to a market economy.[12]

A poll in 2013 conducted by Gallup found that a relative majority of respondents in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Russia, Tajikistan, Moldova and Belarus agreed that the Soviet dissolution harmed rather than benefited their countries.[13] Additionally, 33% of Georgians and 31% of Azerbaijanis also agreed with this sentiment.[13] Only 24% of respondents in the post-Soviet states surveyed by Gallup agreed that the Soviet dissolution benefited their countries.

In 2017, another poll conducted by Pew Research Center found that 69% of Russians, 54% of Belarusians, 70% of Moldovans and 79% of Armenians claimed that the breakup of the Soviet Union was a bad thing for their country.[15] With the exception of Estonia, the percentage of people who agreed with the statement was higher amongst people aged 35 or over.[15] 57% of Georgians and 58% of Russians also said that Joseph Stalin played a very/mostly positive role in history.[15]

Polling cited by the Harvard Political Review in 2022 showed that 66% of Armenians, 61% of Kyrgyz, 56% of Tajikistanis, and 42% of Moldovans regretted the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

China was pretty fucking awesome, I’m not gonna lie. In fact, I’m going back multiple times next year. And probably again the year after that if we’re not at war with them. It’s not perfect, but man, for a country that has only been developing for 80 years or so, they’ve already surpassed most of the world in many ways. It’s crazy coming back the U.S. and seeing our crumbling infrastructure and ugly concrete cities after seeing so much new and beautiful, and USEFUL cities there. Fifteen minute cities aren’t a dream for the future, they’re a reality in China. I can literally stay at my girlfriends apartment and walk to anything I need within 15m. Food, markets, services, everything. And she doesn’t even live in a tier 1 city. It’s crazy, everyone should go at least once.

I’ve not yet been to Cuba, but I’ve never heard a bad word about it from anyone who has, other than that they’re poor, which is an artificially inflicted and continually enforced condition, not a natural one.

Yeah hundreds of millions of people across the last hundred years have felt the same. We’re called communists. I’m An anarcho-communist myself, but there’s many different flavors. You can look to Professor Richard Wolff for a prominent US voice who often speaks of the inherent anti-democratic nature of private business and capitalism.