Senate This thread is publicly owned (marxism, socialism, and left-wing ideologies)

Breaking up monopolies is a good and obvious step, but we should do more than that. What we have in America is capitalism gone completely off the rails. Corporations and businesses and the extremely rich simply have too much power, and we've seen again and again how they put their own profit motive above the interests of society and ordinary people. Capitalism needs to be strongly regulated in order to function, in order for society to function...and the only thing that can counter-balance the power of businesses are labor unions and the government.

We keep hearing about Republicans decrying socialism, but this is a straw man argument and a smear. None of the Democrats, not even Bernie Sanders or AOC, are really socialists. America isn't in danger of sliding into far-left socialism...we have the completely opposite problem.

 

Congratulations for taking personally a general statement in response to a general question. If I thought somebody here wanted to commit mass murder, I wouldn't be talking to them, I'd be talking to a lawyer who works on both sides of the Pond.

No. You opened a question about reasons why people might find authoritarianism under Communism worse than under Capitalism. I gave you a reason. Which you took personally.

The Cold War was two borders away from me when I grew up, not on the other side of the world. The Iron Curtain fell less than a thousand kilometres from my home. It fell less than a thousand kilometres from my home, in my living memory, after the bafflement and the doubts about Glasnost and Perestroika, until the explosion of joy that accompanied the fall of the Berlin Wall. A tyranny fell there, and people rejoiced, not for capitalism, but for freedom; I was alive to witness those times.

Communist authoritarianism is not an abstract notion for me. I lived on its periphery, and knew - and still know - quite a few people who had experiences with it. I'd have liked to have been able to give concrete examples of what life under Communist brands of authoritarianism was like, as plenty of adults I grew among actually had experiences, or adults I met later in life who were still alive - except you've made clear, on a number of occasions, that you dismiss such testimonies, so all I have to put forward in answer to you are cold, hard numbers.

It's nothing personal. It's responding to a question you have brought up yourself, and respecting lines you have set yourself.

 

I dont vote exclusively republican - not at all. And Sanders & Warren want to do too many things I simply completely disagree with. Sure, they chest-thump about some corporation-power-reducing things but then they spew various ideas(which are not for this thread) that turn my stomach. Not all republicans are the same just as not all democrats are. Its not like plenty of Dems dont also benefit greatly from those "big, nasty corporations" too. C'mon. They own stock, get campaign donations, etc, etc. You know this to be true.

Well, Im mostly on board with what you're saying here. Just as long as one of the other counter-balance entities you mention dont start to get too big and fat. Balance is the key here.

 

Who have you voted for that wasn't a Republican?

 

see, here's the problem with your argument. You say you don't think I'm going to be some kind of Soviet mass murderer, yet every time I talk about leftist politics, you bring them up. So obviously that's a lie. I *have* to be a Soviet mass murderer in your mind for you to keep bringing up these people whenever I talk about workers owning their own companies or other leftist topics. Nothing I've said indicates I want to do anything that you always bring up, yet you bring it up nonetheless. That's why I think you're lying when you say you don't think this.

 

There's actually a rather long list that even capitalist-supporting economists acknowledge as possible market failures. And as you allude to, some of those market failures include public goods and noncompetitive markets. But can also include the actors not having enough information or the same information, externalities (like it not naturally including the cost of environment damage in the price tag, or not including the cost of using non-renewable scarce resources in the price-tag, and lack of focus on sustainability rather than the short-run in general - famous metaphor for this being the tragedy of the commons). And as marketing shows, people often make emotion-based decisions rather than rational decisions.

 

You'll want to have someone outside test your logic there.

I'm not bringing those dead up because I think mass murder is something you're interested in doing. In fact, I'm pretty certain you're the person about whom I said that you wouldn't have been an actor in the real world Communist regimes that existed during the Cold War, but part of the tally because your mouth would have gotten you killed.

Nevertheless, you do keep bringing up, on a regular occasion, lines of argument which imply Communism hasn't been or can't be that bad. It has been. There are more than enough people still alive today that can tell you everything you need to know about it. And your regular circonvolutions about this, or outright denials, feel to me like denying a very long litany of the dead you don't seem to want to acknowledge as victims of Communism - feel free to do the contrary, it only takes a few words - just like you aren't interested in firsthand or secondhand accounts of a more personal nature after having declared, on repeated occasions, that you don't think they're trustworthy.

It's because I consider the memories of those who died and those who suffered should not be put aside that I do, on a regular basis, call you on this, as I call others out on other matters. When you say nobody can bring up a valid reason to fear Communist authoritarianism over Capitalist forms of it, you're just plain wrong. And I'd love to have the option to bring up much more granular counter-examples, but again, you have made clear that you won't listen, so there's no reason for me to bother putting them out rather than go for the harshest option.

And when a statement pisses me off on these boards, no matter who issues it or on what topic, I don't exactly pull punches (look up JTS' pick for D&D creature to describe me, it's a good metaphor for how I post). Not only are the harsh replies I make to some of your content not about you, you aren't the only one whose content I make harsh replies to. It isn't personal on either level. It isn't about you on either level, nor about any other person I call out.

And I'm not monomaniacal about the atrocities I talk about either - the Trail of Tears came up a few days ago, for an example - nor afraid to mention those of my own country and religion when relevant - like the Thirty Years War brought up today, an atrocity that involves Catholic France and ranks among a very select few atrocities that can actually compete with the Black Death in terms of proportion of a population wiped out.

You might think it's personal - and that's your right. I'm telling you it's not - and you might not feel that way. But if you do feel that it's personal, you have every right to put me on ignore, and/or to call moderation over to adjudicate it. I am, for my part, going to report my own post so it's flagged for them and they can tell me, if they think so, that I'm being accusatory of you on such a severe level as you declare I am.

 

Hard to argue with much of this. I guess my main belief is that capitalism provides the best foundation for an individual to succeed versus the other systems out there. At a very high and simple level, Capitalism is very much "you get out what you put in". I much prefer that than some community approach to like everything. That being said, we do have to reign it in a bit, look long term for sustainability, try and not let good people fall on hard times with no protections or ways to get them back on track, etc. as best we can.

 

I don't feel personally slighted over your responses to me. I've had far worse. I'm annoyed at the way it derails the topic. You constantly bringing up unrelated things like this derails my attempts to educate people on what I believe in and why I believe those things. That's my annoyance. That's what I'm upset about. Hence why I suggested that should you think I'm a soviet mass murderer that you should just put me on ignore. Because when you bring up mass murder while I'm trying to talk about my views (which have nothing to do with mass murder), it derails the conversation.

So please, click that ignore button. Make yours and my life way better.

One last thing: if you think that any attempt at worker ownership of the means of production must end in massacres, that's just you being classist. You don't believe the working class has the ability to lead without terror. That's a you issue buddy, not a me issue.

 

If there's one thing capitalism isn't, it's "you get out what you put in". This one I can attest to personally after having been paid €735 for a month in which I worked all but one of the days, and close to 400 hours in total, in September 2008, making sure the start of the school year would go as undisturbed as possible for 1,100 students in the absence of any CPE familiar with Lycée Pierre de Fermat, work the two CPE who would have normally been around would have been respectively paid ~€4k-5k for.

Capitalism doesn't reward you for what you put in. It rewards you for what you can leverage.

As I actually appreciate most of your content, no, ignoring you isn't going to make my life better. You don't seem to feel the same your way - feel free to put me on ignore.

And you can't exactly complain when you declare nobody can oppose you a counterpoint and someone comes up and tells you "actually, here's one".

 

but you didn't. You never actually stated what makes authoritarianism in liberal democracies acceptable.

 

On this one, liberal democracies actually hold a serious advantage where their own populations (and this is important: their own populations) are concerned: they are a lot less lethal than communist regimes have been to their own (and most don't even have the death penalty at this point, the USA and Japan being the most notorious and barbaric exceptions), nor anywhere near as routinely using fear as a tool of control.

Case in point with the present protests against vaccine passes, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: liberal democracies largely let those demonstrations happen, and are often reluctant to stringently enforce the strictures of such passes. It's a rather defanged form of authoritarianism, one where revolting is actually much, much more likely to get you killed than submitting.

Counterpoint: authoritarianism in liberal democracies is also a lot less efficient with regards to obtaining results. With a notable exception when liberal democracies find themselves victim to people going for authoritarianism that is intended to terminate the liberal democracy itself. Again, plenty of examples abound in states that became the USA's or the USSR's puppets, as well as in many past and present fascist states. Here, liberal democracy exposes a flaw it has compared with other forms of government: it is largely impotent to defend itself in the face of naked force.

A tangent: the Glasnost and Perestroika, ie. the USSR beginning to abandon totalitarianism and beginning to make concessions to its own authoritarian practices, and beginning to head in the direction of liberal democracy, was a major contribution to its collapse. A state that has come to depend on its own violence for its continued existence simply doesn't survive abandoning its violence. It's a lesson the USSR learned, and a lesson the Bourbons learned. At least Gorbashev got out of his gradual abandonment of authoritarianism with a head on his shoulders.

 

You're answering the wrong question though: I never talked about the Soviet Union. This is what I wrote:

Not at first, it won't. There will need to be the dreaded authoritarianism to force people to do things (which is somehow worse than the authoritarianism that already exists in current say western societies. No one will actually be able to explain how it's worse authoritarianism, but whatevs).

You're comparing current say liberal Democratic authoritarianism to the Soviet Union and other tyrannical countries. I asked how it was better than the authoritarianism I was proposing in the this.

This is why I said you think I'm a soviet mass murderer. Because you bring up the Soviets when I never proposed anything Soviet like. You, of your own volition, continue to assume that what I'm asking for is more Soviet Union and more Stalin. And your answers reflect on this. I never mentioned the Soviet Union.

So yes, you think I want mass murders. You think this and as long as you continue to bring up mass murder every time, I'm going to continue to say that you think I'm a mass murderer.

 

Okay, I'm going to have to offer an apology on that one, because I clearly misread it and responded as though I'd read a direct reference to communism.

So, for what they are worth, you have my apologies.

 

It was a reference to a communist society (one that Darth Philosopher brought up). But a future one. Not a reference to the Soviet Union.

This is why I'm beyond perplexed that you bringing up things like the holodomor. I'm not Stalin. I'm not asking to kill people. I'm talking about a better future society.

 

There isn't really a clean slate here, though. When Communism is brought up, even if you're going to consider a future form of it, there are past and present forms, and there is living memory that justifies fear of it. I was brought up in a world impregnated by that fear, and by pity for those unfortunate to live so near to us. We knew them; the Iron Curtain wasn't completely impervious. I'm not just talking about refugees who made it to our side. Visits and interactions with Eastern Europeans were quite possible, if you had reason to make the trip. Yet they lived so far, because they lived on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, in a world where tyranny ruled openly. This isn't something that is easily put aside for those who have been marked by it.

Ironically, a communist economic system is what I'd wish in a hypothetical future, even if I don't think at all that it will happen. But most of the ideological baggage, I'm not interested in. I'd much rather it were acknowledged and outgrown.

But that's not going to happen either, now, is it?

 

Funny, I'm currently suffering right now from capitalism and liberal democracy, but my fear of it doesn't seem to matter.

 

This is not an attempt at being dismissive of your fears, but an attempt at bringing up the context that used to exist next door: do you have to worry, when discussing your ideas, about denunciation by those you converse with resulting in imprisonment, and possibly quite a bit worse? You do have - and are currently exercising - a freedom of speech that simply didn't exist for our neighbours.

I do fear capitalism, by the way. I think the combination of it and scientific progress is railroading us towards the extinction of any semblance of liberalism, and will come with a catastrophic death toll - that's the essence of what I brought up regarding the medium-term disparition of the need for labor, and the resulting redundancy for most of our species (it is one component part of a dystopic story I've been tinkering with).

As strange as it might read, I'm interested about your own concerns there. I might learn something from them, too - it's happened several times from what you've been posting here.

 

There's actually quite a bit i can't talk about without causing some kind of legal or societal reprisal against me.

You might find this amusing, but there's actually a tyranny of the Credit Reporting system in the US. I'm scared I won't be able to find work again. I incurred large debts a couple years ago when my mother died and it affected my credit score. When I apply for work, the further you get into the application process, they run a background check and that includes my credit scores. This prevents people from working at high paying jobs even when they have the education and experience, like I do (I have a BS and I have a lot of analysis and tech experience). This is also something that affects me when I look for a place to live. When I want to get a car. And this is a tyranny everyone who isn't rich faces.

I haven't been to a doctor for a routine check-up in over five years. Even when I had medical insurance through my employer, I just never had the spare money for copays. I watched my mother, who had probably the best private medical insurance money could buy, still deal with the stress of fighting them so that she didn't pay hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket. She may have had insurance, but she wasn't wealthy and didn't have power.

I think western capitalism is unsustainable, and I think you either have to gradually get towards a society that is socialist and less individualist or you wait to long and the fascists take over. Because when the climate refugees start coming en masse, if we haven't changed by then we will be having fascists on the street trying to stop them.

 

I don't find it amusing at all. To some degree, I find it familiar.

My older sister found herself in a very deep pit because of an accumulation of personal and fiscal debt, and only got out of of the worst of it and got not to have a daughter growing up with her mother jailed because one of her aunts worked high enough in the fiscal administration to spare her a fall that far. It is, however, a situation that is still screwing with her, and put her at the mercy of an a****** who beat her as recently as a couple of years back. It's also currently screwing with my oldest niece's attempt to ask for state aid to set herself up.

I'll readily grant that my sister did enjoy some protections - like a working social security, despite her fiscal issues - that you don't. On your side of the pond, she'd have been screwed.

I'm not very good at expressing sympathy, so I'll end up saying this bluntly: here's hoping your situation won't kill or cripple you.

I can't offer much in the way of assistance (I'm in the red and trying to keep my own business alive these days...), beyond looking up in what conditions someone could petition for asylum here based on medical need, if it comes to that and if you want that assistance. If you ever need ask, I'll try.

You've also certainly reinforced my belief that the USA's brand of capitalism is completely effed up and needs to be torn down ASAP...

I don't think we have the time for a gradual shift towards a less individualist society at this point, socialist or other. The hour is already very late... And I'm actually more worried about capitalists in the vein of Bezos or Zuckerberg than I am about fascists. The latter I see being the useful idiots of the next generation of the former.

 

A relatively recent phenomenon I think is the rapidly growing number of economic migrants from the US. I've mentioned before the large and growing community of American immigrants here in Cairns for whom push factors actually outweigh pull factors; not withstanding that they chose Aus over other countries.

I don't know a single one who regrets their decision to leave; and I think the US represents the horrific scenario that countries like Aus and the UK could face if they move any further towards Neo-Liberalism than they already have. The human fallout is frightening.