Kinda like republicans running on how bad the government is under dems then doing their best to wreck it so they can complain about dems not fixing it?
I just want a system of government that makes rich people pay taxes and uses that tax money to fund infrastructure and social services. I don't really give a shit what they call it.Ā
I just want a system of government that makes rich people pay taxes
What you're describing is impossible. The existence of rich people implies their capture and control of government.
There is no lasting equilibrium or economic justice that can be achieved in class society.
Exponential wealth and power consolidation is an emergent property that cannot be disentangled from private ownership of the means to produce what people need.
You are literally smoking dude. Look at the marginal tax rates of the last 100 years... Guess what in the early 1900's when they had a very high tax rate for millionaires and the ultra wealthy, there was less interference in government and higher socialist programs. Hell repealing citizens United alone in the USA would have stopped the vast increase in political spending by oligarchs.
The solution is a return of common ownership of the means of production and community run organisations. The 'government capture' here is of the working class, taking control through these community organisations working together on an international scale.Ā
And the ambitious will corrupt the organizations. It still takes a well educated populace to run that system. The workers concentrate the power and then some party takes it away.
Every system is better than the next if you approach it with pure theory.
Just to be clear, Iām heavily on the side of labor here, but fundamental human flaws are something that need to seriously be considered.
Complacency and apathy being the biggest problem, greed being the hammer to that nail.
My point being, the optimal approach is probably somewhere in the middle. Basic needs can be met.
You're mistaking cultural conditions for immutable facts of humanity. Humans are biologically capable of self management and co regulation. You're making an assumption based on your own experience, projecting it onto all civilisations across all of time. What you see is not 'fundamental human flaws' but the consequences of a society raised to be docile and competent only of serving one's employer. With very few exceptions, all humans have the capacity to self organise, and corruption is only possible when they have been stripped of that ability.Ā
It's what you get with an anti intellectual society, nobody can have a useful discussion because the group is opposed to concepts such as using the right word for the thing you're trying to talk about and listening to and responding to other peoples arguments.
Just a couple days ago some peanut was saying the MLB ownership structure was basically a leftist communist dream. You really can't exaggerate how bad people's misconceptions are
Yeah socialism would be asking the kid to share with the disabled kid next door who couldn't go out trick or treating which is obviously an evil and horrible thing to do
I shared my candy with my neighbors who were Jehovahs Witnesses since they werenāt allowed to do Halloween. Kids are naturally socialists lol. You donāt need to explain it to them.
More specifically it's asking every kid in the neighborhood to give the housebound kid one piece of candy so that by the end he has a bag full.
Capitalism is demanding the kids give you three quarters of their bag of candy because they live in your house. Ignoring how they have no other option.
Almost every time I hear someone describing the 'nightmare scenario' of living under socialism, they end up describing the current realities of modern day capitalism.
Yeah, they "collapsed" spontaneously because of communism/socialism. The monarchist militias and fascist death squads trained at the School of the Americas, funded by the State Department, and armed by the CIA had nothing to do with the "collapse."
No, Stalin was given contol of the red army to get a few of the Baltic states in line (yes, that means it never would have worked.) But, once Stalin was victorious, they said, "Wonderful comrade, now relinquish the power and we can truly be classless, stateless and godless!"
And Stalin says, "Crazy idea. How about I keep the power and we just be godless and classless.'
And as he still had control over the red army there was nothing they could do.
I tried that too recent, didn't work out well for me either. People don't seem to like the '/s', but I think it's pretty effective. Text make sarcasm hard to parse. And people do belive conflicting things and vote against their own best interests.
I don't like the /s when it's obvious sarcasm, because it hurts the humor to be told "that was a joke btw". But I also know it's necessary for all the people that won't get it.
After getting badly misinterpreted one time trying sarcasm on reddit, even after making a follow-up post to explain the sarcasm and then requiring a crystal-clean follow-up to the follow-up, I now make sure to put a /s on all sarcasm. Far too many people will just not catch it otherwise.
No. While people post dumb shit all the time, that comment can only be read as making fun of that type of person. If it was only the first two sentences, you might have a point. But, "Meanwhile I live in a state that has been run by republicans for 40 years." could not have made it any more clear.
He doesnāt think. He just regurgitates the propaganda talking points dear leader gives him.
You canāt have a discussion with these clowns because they donāt have an opinion or solutions. They literally just parrot their daily propaganda talking points. They donāt understand the issues, donāt have a real opinion on the issues, or care to understand. They think, believe, and say what they are told to.
Theyāre both wrong about the definitions of socialism and capitalism. But the guy who steals his kidsā candy is advocating for straight up sociopathy. My guess is that heās a libertarian.
Neither is a governmental system. Capitalism breeds fascism, though, because when the people's needs aren't met, they'll rally behind anyone who promises them a better life. In socialism, you find true democracy because the community works together to support each other rather than competing for scraps.
In socialism, you find true democracy because the community works together to support each other rather than competing for scraps.
Oh really? Care to provide examples? Because when I think of socialist countries ā North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, China ā ātrue democracyā isnāt exactly the first thought in my mind, so its curious to see the dichotomy youāve drawn up between capitalist states and socialists states.
You're talking about altruism. It can exist in both systems. Also both systems can result in extreme populism and nationalism, a recipe for totalitarianism (which fascism is a subtype of).
When the richest man in the world is a ketamine addicted Nazi who helped rig an election for a bloated fascist pedophile, it gets hard to see altruism and capitalism as something that coexist so much as hardy strains of altruism managing to survive in the hostile ecosystem of capitalism.
And socialist countries have perfect record of elections and winners?
Before you say there hasn't been a true socialist society, you should know that also means there's no evidence suggest socialism can handle corruption better than capitalism.
Well the candy is only free at the point of service. Adult who collectively have more resources than children, pool some of those resources together so all children can partake in Halloween. It's arguably one of the most socialist holidays.
Socialism isn't a preset economic system, and it's absurd to assert how it functions. It's a movement, a broad and vague movement consisting of a range of beliefs, but predominantly seeks to restore social production through common ownership of the means of production
It's not stupidity, it's an intentional effort to destroy the movement through semantic destruction. The word is intentionally used outside of its original meaning, used as a shorthand for "bad" to make any mention of the movement bring on negative associations. It's what happened with 'woke'. They saw 'being aware of social injustices' as a threat and so began a campaign to reduce its meaning to "leftist thing that's bad"
Socialism is the social (societal) ownership of the means of production.
Capitalism is the private ownership of capital goods and services.
The image is neither socialism nor capitalism but is something that socialism can become and is the outcome of every socialist country and movement so far.
Capitalism is simple to understand. You can have admin level control over goods and services, which includes money aka capital.
Socialism is not so simple to understand. Social ownership is ownership by the society. Every member of society has admin level control over the means of production. The means of production is anything, everything, anyone, and everyone required for society to remain at a functional state.
Some things to unpack here.
If everyone has admin level control, that means whoever gets to the rules first, makes the rules. If you are aware you could, that is. But it means any given person can rewrite the rules for everyone else because they all are, at the beginning, co-owners.
The means of production includes humans because we as a civilization have not reached a technological level where humans are not required somewhere in the process of many fields. Like agriculture. A human will either purchase seeds, decide where to grow them, purchase and move in other materials, run the farm equipment, process the raw crops, package, and ship to where they are needed. If that human does not work, society degrades that little bit. So, that human is forced to work or else society starts to fall apart.
So, two issues of socialism:
A Socialist, if they get there first, can rewrite all the rules and turn socialism into an authoritarian dictatorship, and because of the rules already in place, other socialists cannot object.
Some people are just forced to work no matter what, as they themselves are the means of production and them not working harms the collective society.
I wish people could just accept that any economic system involves a certain amount of stealing resources, you will always be able to frame it that way, and it's actually OK, that doesn't mean that it's good or bad
What you are actually describing is the redistribution of wealth. This is literally the definition of an economic system. We have money so that it can redistributed, that is it's only purpose. Capitalism "steals" money from the workers and gives it to the owners. Socialism "steals" money from the owners, abs gives it to egalitarian institutions. Any tax is "stealing" by this metric
If you don't like that then what you want is anarchy. And anarchy without a system of currency as well
You aren't actually opposed to the idea of taking resources from one group and giving it to another. You just call it theft when you think it's unfair. But that's not what you said and it would be a different conversation if it was. Taking resources away from one group and giving it to another is not enough by itself to decide how good a system is, and I wish people stopped pretending it was. It's an empty insult
I think he means giving the kids an ability to vote on the rate of ātaxation.ā So they can vote to pay out taxes to dad at 40% or mom at 39.5%, theoretically teaching them the value of voting
If you want to be technical about it the Dad would have taken all the candy and equally redistributed it to everyone in the house, but that does exclude the typical politician taking a bigger cut you see in literally every historical government system ever
A capitalism version of trick or treating would be this.
I the father, am now a capitalist corporation and I graciously "hired" my kids to collect candy. Candy-collecting wouldnt be a thing without me. As a "job-creator", if I went away, no candy would ever be collected.
I send my "employee" children out to collect candy. They bring the candy back to me, the owner of the company, and I take the 100 peices of candy and give them each 20, a reasonable amount for the work they did, and I take 60 pieces because I led the whole operation and I came up with the idea of collecting this specific way....which grants me all that "surplus" candy.
Now, you might say I "stole" the candy from them, and that they deserve 50 each. Well, I arranged with all the neighbors ors that their payment of candy was going to the company and not my employees, so those kids never actually possessed the candy they collected. Additionally, they cant eat all that candy in one night, so the candy I took doesnt hurt them at all, and theyre luck to be given all this candy from me, the honorable business-owner.
Socialism is still the workers taking care of the not workers. Ideally just the not workers arenāt choosing to be not workers, they have a valid reason.
A more analogy would be everyone in the community donates a little bit of candy so that families without enough resources also get to enjoy some candy. But everyone gets a portion of candy back anyways. Itās not like youāre paying in and not getting back. Iāll pay taxes. We all have suicidal benefits.
Kids went trick or treating, then I took one candy bar from each of them to make a nice little treat package for the little boy next door battling leukemia who couldn't go this year.
The community wasn't forced to give your kids candy: that's charity, not socialism. Socialism requires the state or an authority taking, which is what the parent in this case did.
That's like my dad telling me libertarianism means he can impose his will on me lol. That's how your son's rite of passage becomes supplanting you as a man
Socialism would be more like: You have three kids, but one is very sick. Two go out trick or treating, each get an entire pillowcase full of candy. More candy than they possibly could eat in a reasonable amount of time. Parent takes one third of the candy out of each bag and gives that to the sick kid, so that even though they weren't able to trick-or-treat, they still get candy.
Nah, what communism would really be (assuming the leadership wouldn't be corrupt as hell, which is what Rubel would be in this situation, and is also a thing that tends to happen a lot under communism) is Rubel taking all the candy, and giving each of the kids an equal share of the whole, regardless of who got how much. Great for the kids that got nearly nothing (either by laziness or bad luck), sucks for the ones who managed to get a lot through hard work.
None of this is what anyone is saying it is. Community coming together and feeding kids is charity, socialism is if the government took control of the candy factory and only made M&M's, capitalism buying costumes for Halloween.
Both are bad metaphors. Socialism doesn't take away in exchange for nothing. And unlike feeding children in Halloween, socialism is not consensual or charitable.
Bingo. People making proclamations of social and economic order of things when they're just blabbering about. I shutter to even think what kind of conversations one would have with such a person so intellectually astute...or pretending to be so.
Socialism is an economic and political system where the major means of productionāsuch as factories, land, and resourcesāare owned or controlled collectively rather than by private individuals.
Capitalism is an economic system where private individuals and businesses own and control the means of production for profit
Communism is a political and economic ideology that aims to establish a classless, stateless society based on the communal ownership of the means of production
Democracy is a system of government where power rests with the people, who exercise it either directly or through freely elected representatives
And combinations are the best solutions. Think Canada, Scandinavia, Europe, New Zealand. Australia etc. The citizens are actually free and share their successes with each other rather than creating extremes of haves and have nots by hoarding wealth and cutting taxes.
If you have food and others don't and are hungry, the duty of care comes in. Humanity is measured by the care and concern for the welfare of others, especially if they lack basic necessities.
Holy shit none of you understand socialism. Socialism is when the people own the means of production. Full stop. In all societies that have attempted to implement socialism the state became the proxy for the people, thus the state owned the means of production. They are both wrong. Socialism is one of the most devastating ideologies in modern times, and those of you who have never lived under it do not understand what it is or even why it is bad.
The fact that we are even arguing about socialism vs capitalism vs communism in 2026 is just stupid. Any nation that isn't a dystopian nightmare to live in is going to have a mixed economy. Until we live in star trek times with replicators and robots to replace all labor, we need capitalism to distribute things in a way that keeps people producing them. We need social programs to not become some darwinian hellscape that abandons all of our elderly or disabled or below average. We need government oversight to make sure a handful of rich people don't create a monopoly so large they effectively become the state.
The problem is that propaganda has convinced a huge amount of the population that anything besides pure, unhindered capitalism is either socialism or communism. No matter how advanced or productive we become, it's nearly impossible to do anything with it to actually improve society because these people will fight tooth and nail for the right of the obscenely rich to hoard all of the benefits of it for themselves. Recently, these people have decided the better course of action is to centralize the maximum amount of power they can from the government to the most hateful, narcisistic celebrity billionaire they could find.
You don't see the religious aspect, but I would encourage you to try. Trump is a prophet and a cult leader for Evangelical Christians, and this is a limited hole in your knowledge.
The problem is that propaganda has convinced a huge amount of the population that anything besides pure, unhindered capitalism is either socialism or communism.
On the other side, leftists work hard to convince people a mixed economy is just capitalism with red paint and needs to be destroyed before it "inevitably" turns to fascism...
Literally no one relevant on "the left" is doing this.
The entire right wing apparatus, from their propaganda dumps to their politicians and the oligarchs that own them, down to the most pathetic white nationalist voter, ALL, in lockstep, scream lies about socialism and communism. It's foundational to their entire ecosystem. Crying about communism without having a single speck of a clue about what it is is a personality trait for Trump voters.
Nothing even remotely similar exists among progressive and liberals. No one wants the government to seize all of the means of production. We just want some shit that objectively works far better when the government runs it instead of for profit corporations (cough health insurance).
There is no both sides here, so stop lying about it.
We have socialist polices in America. Roads, police, sewers, Medicare, Medicaid, firefighters. All socialist. The Nordic countries which enjoy the highest quality of life are even moreso because the state makes sure people have access to free healthcare and education, and good welfare if anything goes wrong. And things are less likely to go wrong if you have the aforementioned free healthcare and education
Thatās a very narrow definition of socialism and not what is meant when people refer to socialist policies. The Marxist definition is always used to scare people. Would you also call a social democracy or even democratic socialism a devastating ideology? The backbone of prosperity in this country is a result of our social democracy.
How would you implement your democratic socialism without a planned economy? Planned economies lead to mass poverty, and to a loss of freedom. All implementations of socialism are fundamentally incompatible with the western way of life.
All āwesternā ways of governing are already social democracies. The united states (since Regan) prioritizes social policies that help corporations and wealthy individuals privatize profits and socialize losses. Itās a failed experiment, nothing trickles down. The policies being advocated for like universal healthcare, low or no cost education through college, higher wage floors, pre K childcare, and protections like more robust family leave and sick pay are not fundamental changes to the system. They are changes to the primary recipient of the social programs.
"in all societies" it's always just a handful of revolutions in the 20th century lmao. Revolutions which predominantly intended from the beginning to establish state ownership and so don't even support your argument. Never acknowledging the fact that common ownership is the DEFAULT which we had for the majority of our existence.Ā
I had a guy from cuba tell me why socialism is bad. Just look at Cuba he said.
I realised then, that just because a person lived it, doesn't mean he understood it.
Cuba wasn't then way it is because of socialism. It was that way because capitalists won the wars and has had their boots on them every since.
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u/Blacksun388 12h ago
Describing the horrors of socialism by describing the horrors of capitalism.