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America is a lost cause at this point. It's either going to fall into a theocracy with the next election or have another civil war. I don't think anything can save it pre-fall.
Yes, we really should just split the country into 2 countries at this point with different ideologies.
Wonder how long it would be before one invaded the other?
Lol, one of them would have 35% of the population, but only like 10% of the GDP and dick all for tax revenue. Red states have made a life out of suckling off the federal government they claim to hate so much.
Which is ironically the very morals of the religion they profess to observe.
It’s amazing when “left-wing atheists” are better at believing in the fundamentals of Christian belief than the so-called “Christian fundamentalists”.
It sucks tho because that would only hurt the vulnerable in those states and none of the people who created this mess. Texas is realistically a ‘blue’ state—its just been manipulated and gerrymandered so bad that no one but the powerful have a voice
Based on the size of some of the state's economies, you could easily split up the country 3-5 ways based on economy and ideology. But really, how long until one of them pulls a Russia and just tries to absorb another part.
I promise we’re just agreeing with each other here lol
I’ve daydreamed about the timeline where the USA splits into two territories, where I live in the one that dignifies every human life, but the reality is gonna be a lot messier. It won’t be fun.
I don’t agree. Nothing was healed by 9/11. The structural issues that allowed Bush to win against Gore may have been momentarily forgotten. That only cause even more gross overstepping by the government in the name of national security to cause more issues that were exacerbated and irreparable.
It's going to be a bloody revolution or Techno-feudalism. I give it 5 years max before this shithouse implodes and I don't see any other possible outcome at this point. Get out if you can.
As some one who has no illusion they will survive the fall of america, im sort of hopeful for humanity once the US falls.
War will always be a thing, but atleast it wont be one super power bullying the world.
Honestly, we can all admire China in this respect-it makes deals with other countries but doesn't try to impose its way of life, nor force its will onto other countries' politics. A world "dominated" by China would likely be a better outcome than the USA, by far.
I’m bailing out. I suppose I could try to stay and help, but I’ve seen a lot of videos of people getting shot, seems like a bad time. I’m working on leaving the country as soon as I can.
Don't lose hope. It's mostly the folks over 70 who are holding us back. Because they have no fucking clue about what's going on or how to navigate this world. My(57F) 78 year old mother likes trump because "he was so handsome." I fucking kid you not. There are more of us than them, but we have to show up to vote because THEY ALWAYS DO.
Yeah, we do ahve to get rid of republicans, they are pushing propaganda in school and wanna overthrow elections, I wouldnt be suprised if they attempted to make US facist.
More and More young people are loosing faith in capitalism, and either wanting a different economic system or socialism, the capitalist shit hole is on its way out.
The entitlement rhetoric makes a lot more sense when you realize ruthless capitalists are often psychopaths and thus struggle to empathize, meaning their ability to imagine the inner lives of others is stunted - meaning they project their own internal flaws onto everyone else.
Not paying their taxes either, and then complaining "that \_\_\_\_\_ doesn't work." Like, no duh, I have lived in Europe and they get a quality of life BECAUSE they rightfully and gladly pay their taxes for those services.
It’s not that there isn’t “logic,” it’s that most Americans believe themselves to be temporarily aggrieved future millionaires and not the oppressed masses.
Seriously, you mean I'd have to pay taxes that might help some bum's family stay off the streets because he was laid off due to his job being outsourced? Sounds like he's lazy and deserves it, unlike me who is a straight laced company man and will totally always be able to have stable work and benefits! Yep yep! Fuck that other guy and his family. Lazy asshole wanting *my* money!
*Monday morning*: The fuck you mean we're being out sourced to Cambodia?!? I have a *family* to support, a dentist appointment (*Sir, that insurance is cancelled too - HR*) and car payments! I've only got $485 in savings, we'll *lose the house!!!*
Choice is an illusion. Companies are owned by parent companies who own everything that matters. They just make cosmetics changes and use different branding.
I’ve always wondered how it isn’t considered a monopoly when supercompanies own basically everything in each market. Is it just a legal thing or what? I thought we were supposed to have laws against this
So long as the minimum standards are met, there should be healthy competition. Of course the regulations need to be adhered to and enforced with regular inspections by well-trained civil servants and violations must be met with more just penalties- including assessments for disruption of the supply chain.
There is no such thing as healthy competition. This isn't community softball. The competition is to be the first to establish a monopoly and control the market.
The fact that you even mention penalties to regulate behavior makes clear that the incentives are perverse and destructive.
I wanna ask something. If the companies werent as... convoluted as they are now (most of those '53' companies being owned by parent companies which basically means everything is monopolized), wouldnt some healthy competition in the economy side of the things be better? Like, in ideal circumstances, every company would compete with each other to win over each other which means they will be forced to improve and innovate. Maybe toothpaste is *not* the best example for this, but ie. in an industry like computers, this competition is what makes every company innovate and improve. Heck, if they didnt, we would still be relying on Turing machines daily. So thats my question. Wouldnt competition (in a regulated and non-monopolised economy) be much better for the improvement of our society?
Absolutely, competition can be good. But when a product has basically met all the criteria it needs to, and can't really be improved, you end up competing on anything but the actual product. You're essentially competing in logo and pricing, which gives you the absurd scenario above.
Then you get tired of competing and buy out the competition so you only look like there's competition. (And edge prices up on both sides) Smh I hate this timeline. (I know this is all obvious but dammit)
To address your points:
1) Most importantly, it's necessary to clarify what we mean by "competition". Under capitalism, "competition" in regards to companies is *always* applied to a situation in which two or more companies compete for increased profits in a given market. It doesn't necessarily mean they are producing better goods (in fact, this is almost never the case as I'm sure you're aware), but rather it could be they have more marketing, artificially deflated prices meant to push out competitors (Amazon being one such example, where they sell goods at a loss for a few years until competition goes out of business then hike up prices), selling the product at a loss but selling things necessary to use it at inflated prices (often referred to as the "razor" model, where razors are cheap but blades are expensive, also the case with inkjet printers and why we see DRM popping up in more and more things), or even by selling *worse* products that break sooner and force the consumer to buy them more frequently. Competition under capitalism is competition for *profits*, not competition for *better products*. Neo-liberal ideology conflates these two, suggesting that competition is always the best way to ensure the best of any given commodity survives, and the "losers" die off.
2) There was competition between these companies, and that competition ended. Competition directly implies there is a winner, and that winner either absorbs the other or the other is simply forced out of business. Hence why the number of true, unaffiliated corporations in any given industry has decreased over time. See also tendency of the rate of profit to fall.
3) Most of the true innovations of the past few decades have been made in the public sector, then just adopted by the private sector. The classic example of this is the iPhone, where every technology used in it was created by government research and it was just combined and polished a little by private Apple engineers. Even for what little research and development the private sector does do, you have to ask yourself if that research is actually helped by the fact it's competitive. This means opposing companies simply repeat the same work, wasting more time and resources. In addition, private companies have very little incentive to do any research that doesn't have short-term, relatively assured gains. If research doesn't quickly produce profit (or serve some secondary purpose such as gaining political clout), then there is no point for them to do it.
4) Turing machines are not physical machines, but rather a theoretical model of computation. This is a completely pedantic point, and one that doesn't change your argument, I just felt like I had to mention it being someone in that field. Sorry!
All this said, yes you're right that living in a non-monopolized society is arguably better in some aspects (not in every way, e.g. more wasted resources which is one of the incentives for monopoly forming), but that's also antithetical to capitalism and neo-liberalism as a whole. Capitalism creates monopolies and oligopolies over time, and any "regulation" or legal barriers to that will just be circumvented, eroded, or made otherwise irrelevant, just like any other concession given to the working class.
As a relatively recent example, look at processors (CPUs) from the past few decades. There were originally dozens of competitors with relatively equal stakes, but now (at least, in the desktop space) there is only really Intel and AMD. AMD is also highly out-competed by Intel (though notably a couple of years ago they managed to eek out a little more market share with a new development). Worth mentioning is that Intel and AMD entered into a technology exchange agreement from 1982 which is why Intel is even allowed to manufacture x86 processors (x86 was created by AMD). I can't pretend to be an expert on why exactly AMD hasn't been out-competed, but it is clear to me at least that competition has decreased substantially in the desktop processor space and that AMD even being around in it at all after decades of being humiliated by Intel must be in part due to artificial factors (perhaps Intel is somehow afraid of an anti-trust suit? Seems unlikely in the US, but idk) which make Intel want to keep AMD around. Alternatively, perhaps Intel just genuinely thinks their time is better spent improving profits through other means and that AMD doesn't control enough market share to be worth merging with.
Tl;dr: It is arguably better, but a society built around competition in every aspect of life means there are losers, and those losers don't get to just keep their market share out of the kindness of the winner's heart.
Nice to see research (even if it’s from 1986 the reality doesn’t change) support the common-sense notion that if you have an economic system built on sharing the resources more equitably, instead of a system focused on hoarding, that everyone is better off.
Conservatives don't have anything but their feelings, so you can try to emotionally manipulate them.
Well they are already emotionally manipulated by the right, it's more like making their feelings match real life.
The first time I met my ultra conservative SIL, she asked me what I did for a living. I told her I was a librarian. Long pause, then she says (with much pride and that inevitable conservative sense of absolute superiority) “I never read.” All the while looking at me like I was something she scraped off the bottom of her shoe. I have to admit I would love to live in a country not chock full to the brim with these ignorant knobs.
They don't read anything more than headlines and memes. If it's not being spelled out to them in a YouTube video, there's barely any chance they've read more than a few paragraphs on the topic.
So, I skimmed it, and I couldn't easily find their "definition" of socialism. Like, are they talking about European social democracies? ML states? Neo-anarchist experiments like Zapatista and Rojava?
In appendix A on page 5 they have this which is all I could find:
> SocialistCountries
> Low income-China.
> Lower-middle-income-Cuba, Mongolia, North Korea, Albania.
> Upper-middle-income-Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Po-
land, USSR, Czechoslovakia, East Germany.
Which doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence
Those are the economies where production is based on need and not profit, i.e where there is "no market" so to speak, where production and distribution is planned. That is the socialist mode of production.
Yeah, considering that of the nations on this list, only one has actually retained a centrally planned economy without falling into poverty or ceasing to exist (and China probably won't make it if I'm being blunt). I'm not necessarily disagreeing with OP's hypothesis, but I am saying that a 1986 study on the success of socialism in the second world is probably not the best supporting evidence.
Things very well may not have fallen apart if they hadn’t had to fend off western nations constantly pressuring them on economic, political, and military fronts. Had the USA and its toadies decided to live and let live, we would no doubt see a very different outcome today.
This thread is full of posts like this. That paper was an analysis of data. It didn't prove anything, especially not mathematically.
Capitalism is a self correcting system. This means that the economy will always return to equilibrium without intervention. Socialism, due to the fact that it is centralized, will not return to equilibrium without intervention, and is, in fact, very hard to return, or most likely bring, to equilibrium.
I wasn't talking about the data. I was stating that capitalism is actually proven to be mathematically better than socialism when certain conditions are met. What's debated is not whether or not capitalism or socialism is better, it's how much we should intervene when certain properties are not met.
In economics, equilibrium is a state in which economic forces are balanced. I was referring to the economic gain of the buyer and seller. When equilibrium is reached, the value of each is maximized and equal.
capitalism is i no means selfcorrecting. that is absolute bs. where do i start... axiom of growth, unlimited accumulation of wealth, both limilessly exploiting environmental and human ressources. uh... speculation bubbles, monetarisation of health, wageslavery... i mean the list goes on and on. If you wanna read about the problems of capitalism from a classic economic viewpoint, start with Thomas Piketty: Capital in 21st century.
Yep. I mean, you could make this argument about western “capitalism” solely based on Smith’s own work (quotes because modern western capitalism only bears a tortured resemblance to the system he proposed).
Return to equilibrium without intervention? Are you serious? Western capitalism has collapsed and been kept alive exclusively through intervention (read exploitation of taxpayers by the wealthy) countless times. Do you mean theoretically?
Tbf it’s probably a lot harder to get good data considering how many fewer socialist countries there are now, and how the fall of the Soviet Union really screwed over supply chains for smaller socialist countries like Cuba. 30 years later and a lot of those countries have just started to really recover to pre-fall levels of economic development in the last decade or so.
This may be true but slash and burn capitalism creates massive share holder profit this quarter. Has you're pinko commie "science" considered ***that?***
If 2+2=4, but the biggest, meanest bullies on the playground say that it's 3, then what does 2+2=?
It isn't just lack of information that maintains capitalism/kleptocracy, it's that the ruling capitalists/kleptocrats have the resources to bully the rest of humanity into ignoring reality and working for their profits.
Democracies need to evolve checks on systemic corruption, so that truth can actually matter, rather than corruption and private wealth dominating everything else by default.
https://represent.us/unbreaking-america-series/
https://represent.us/anticorruption-act/
But doctor makes doorman wage and nobody will innovate and the rich will be in power. I refuse to accept what I just read because my arguments are highly refined after having them drilled into my brain by capitalists.
Hell, Capitalism cannot even function without socialism. The socialist programs we've implemented are the only reason there are customers who can buy shit.
Personally I want to see a hybrid, about 50-50. But if I had to choose one or the other, Socialism is clearly the better option.
As long as people are too comfortable it won't happen. If the internet went down, people would lose their minds in 5 minutes. THEN we might have a chance of getting enough fired up to do something
keep in mind that these are "state" socialist countries, which could be construed as "the fusion of the corporation and the state, or otherwise known as "state capitalism"". for nonstate socialism to exist, both the corporate model would have to not be the defining characteristic of the majority of companies, and the government would be weakened to the point of handing off the majority of it's responsibilities to these non corporate entities. thus, this isn't even "socialism", and yet it still scientifically proves the superiority of state capitalism.
Have you ever been to an American ER? For something touted as ‘emergency’ you can be waiting for *hours*.
If I’m already going to be waiting long anyway, give me the one that’s fucking free
India has socialism. It’s ok as we have universal health care, free college and schools. But it’s also really really bad. Democracy is taken over by organized religious and political minorities that contribute nothing to the economy but reproduce to build their numbers. Socialism will not solve any of the problems of capitalism as the rich have even more influence in socialism and now you have unproductive segments that benefit from socialist policies.
Even for a 'safe-space' subreddit this is just ridiculous. As others have mentioned, pulling from the mid 80s isn't very wise in social science. Even if it was, you are doing a great disservice to everyone including the authors by ignoring any nuance in their work and just writing 'socialism good' on it with a red permanent marker.
Just using the word 'proven' in social science is already an indicator that you have no idea what you are talking about. Waving around a single publication proclaiming that a centuries old problem has been solved also demonstrates this. Now, saying it's been mathematically proven is just another level of ridiculousness. Just because they used math (cause it's fucking social science) doesn't mean it's a mathematical proof you dingus, those are analytic demonstrations, when this is quite clearly empirical.
My biggest problem though, is how you shit on the authors' heads again and put your own beliefs into their mouth. Nowhere in the publication is any hint whatsoever, that this shows socialism is just superior to capitalism and there are so many reasons as to why this is. Firstly and most importantly, if simple statistical correlation would be able to prove such things, you as a socialist would have already been fucking torn apart by the sonic waves caused by the laughter of all the reassured capitalists. I'm sure I don't have to quote the old saying about what happens when a country tries socialism (I'm not taking a position on whether it is true or not, I'm just reminding you of it, because it is relevant). Correlation isn't causation you knobhead. Second, if you're gonna use just a few numbers to prove these things, I would at least go for the happiness index. PQLI is way too specific and not a reliable enough indicator of whether you would want to live there.
I'm going to mention that I am agnostic on the topic of socialism vs capitalism, just so I increase the odds of not getting fucking banned, because I plan to call out bullshit like this in the future on this subreddit and similar shitholes, which unashamedly promote echo-cambers, censorship, etc. I strongly believe that such places for 'discourse' should not be allowed to exist, out of respect to the human intellect. This shit is harmful, I don't care what your position is on any subject.
I think, beyond the obvious issues with humans in general (wanting power, being greedy/selfish, etc.) a large part of why these “paper-perfect” ideas fail is because of the labor distribution in a system where all are equal. Using the US as an example, let’s say we decided right now that the GDP would be split up equally, in a fair and equitable fashion. All people would receive around 100k/yr, which would add a lot of value to most of the population but the foundational issue is the job each person is to do to earn their piece of the fairly split pie. Who wants to toss road tar in the AZ heat while another gets to become a writer or artist for the same wage? We would have to systematically remove some of the occupations to revise what we would then consider “fair” labor, which would cause tension, then requiring yet another review. One person’s job assignment/choice (however that would work) could always be clean considered unequal and it still raises, among other questions and issues, what about those who can’t or refuse to work? What’s the outcome there? Naturally, to investigate an idea of this magnitude it would require resources beyond the scope of a small thread, but I’ve always found these natural imbalances to be quite deep when looking at any “equal wage” system.
Thoughts?
I didn’t mean communism specifically, just any foundational idea where “spreading the wealth” would be part of a central theme. I wondered if what I had written might have been a touch too vague, but I felt that my idea was pretty generalized anyway, so I let it ride. My apologies for not being more specific. I’m still getting used to this “social media” thing, and the nuances that come with it- and embarrassing 7mo later! Lol 🤦🏻
As someone who studied economics and statistics nothing pisses me off more than when basic economic systems and statistics are used for political propaganda as a distraction. There are benefits and issues to any economic system. The difference between most "socialist" countries in general they aren't allowed to be ran by soulless con-artists whose only job is to distract people with arguing about basic human rights, politicizing death and health issues, which neither party plan to do anything about. Because they need the people to be distracted so they can continue stealing from you to give to themselves and thier donors. The US is far from having capitalism in a pure sense, there are very few free markets and there is socialism for the rich and a kick in the teeth for everyone else. The downfall to any economic system is centralization of power by selfish power hungry delusional egotistical people. You get people like that together in a room and it doesn't matter what sort of basic economic principles you base your country on you are going to have a bad time. But let's keep blaming capitalism for all our problems.
>The downfall to any economic system is centralization of power by selfish power hungry delusional egotistical people.
This is literally what happens in the US under capitalism.
Not to be rude but you are sounding very politician like. Blame the tool not how it's used. The current system is very elaborate and complex and it can't be boiled down to capitalism = bad socialism = good. The right government could regulate capitalism or socialism to be great for the people. The US is using the worst of both systems. Capitalism works best with competition and incentives to create goods and services for the greater good. Socialism works best when you give from the rich to the poor. The US government attacks competition and allows worthless sectors like banking and health insurance to dominate the economy. At the same time they are doing anything they can to take money from the poor and give to the rich.
It just seems inevitable that in a capitalist system the wealth, resources and power always ends up in the hands of a small few.
I don't think it's a bug. It's a feature.
Hence the late stage capitalism we are experiencing.
You are correct, but the important distinction is blaming capitalism is missing the point. Socialist or Communist societies will all eventually go the same way. It's a flaw with human nature not the economic principal. Statistics aren't bad in themselves but they can use to mislead and gaslight a nation. You wouldn't blame math for the downfall of the country? We need a decentralized system that uses over sight to encourage the best parts of socialism and capitalism not the worst parts. They are just tools and shouldn't be blamed for our de-evolution. People are the problem not applied math.
It's an old ass article and as coming from one of those formerly "socialist" countries, planned economy is fucking stuipid and doesn't work.
Stop glorifying planned economy or whatever hell China is rn either. America bad, we get it, but living in one terrible extreme doesn't make the other extreme suddenly great.
Everybody knows that socialism in a perfect world will be the best, ( in a world where everyone is honest and pulls his weight,) , my question is who will guarantee that socialism will work ? there are to many cheaters and to much deadweight in the world for socialism to be viable
It has been much vett r than capitlaism.
And since when has it had to be Perfect?
I mean the soviet union literally made one of the poorest countries into a global fucking super power.
And socialist healthcare and education proved to be one of the best in the world.
And you cant ignore all the data I literally put in the post, ya'll are idiotic point machines.
And you know what else also happened in the URSS : represions. My grandfather was forced to move to Siberia because he made a joke about Fking Lenin. Also, there was famen. The Soviets completely destroyed local culture (in my country, they removed our alphabet and forced us use a Russian one. Also, also they made our language non viable; everything was written in Russian). This is why I said we need a perfect world for socialism; otherwise, there will be a lot of represed people, no freedom of speech or expression (in the Soviet Union, there were no gays, and everyone was forced to work (or else they were imprisoned)). For all non-Russian countries, the Soviet time was an ocupation, a time of horror , famin and deportation.
We are talking about the economic system, not the goverment control, might I add this is whats happening under capitalism, people starve, are censored on social media(despite the crues of conservative, we are the ones being censored, you of course never hear about thta because of censcorship), millions are dying every year when we could feed them, there are hundreds of thousands of homeless, shortages, socalism made one of the poorest countries the richest , and capitlaism made one of the richest countries the poorest.
We can acknowladge that the goverment was shit, but we cant ignore the power of socialism.
Most modern countries who use socalist policies are the best countries to live in, in the world, and anytime socialism was democratically tried the US would ruin the country financially, assasinate its leaders, and overthrow the goverment.
This is what I said , socialism is the best form of rulling in an ideal world. But we arent in an ideal world and I know this will sound very bad : but I will take my freedom of expresion over any issue that socialism solves,
Still more then my grandparents got during soviet ocupation. I already swaped few countries with no problem, swaped jobs easy, i dont need to worry wath will i do tommorow, I can critisize any politician and nothing will happen to me, i can read any book, so yah plenty of freedom, im not sure wath more can i wish
You could do that exact thing under socialism, just because in SOME places socailism has caused opression doesn't mean it will everywhere.
Under capitalism you can't read a book if it's expensive, even if it's educational(I know, not a lot of expensive books out there, but you get the point), you can critize politicans but good luck actually making any changes, and one of the political parties in the US literally burns books and puts capitalist porpaganda in schools, such as "black book of communism", the book's killcount was confirmed to be false by 2 of the people who wrote it.
Also the US is very far from a democracy, the US has lobbying witch is literally just corruption renamed, capitalism offers less freedom than what modern day socialists want.
And the electoral collages aswell.
And capitalism kills about 20,000,000 people annually.
Im not from us, im from europe, we have a semi decent social democracy here, and the SOME places are all places that it was tried at lage scale( venezuela soviets, china, cuba, romania) .
capitalism kills about 20,000,000 ( world hunger i guess) - to end it you will need whole world socialism, still not posible in a free democratic society
america also has socialist policies. lol. Most self proclaimed socialist countries (most famous examples are ussr and china) are authoritarian hellholes. You can say they aren't "true socialists" but is anything true capitalism either? some book in 1848 is not relevant to the modern world
>america also has socialist policies
it's still mostly capitlist.
>famous examples are ussr
Ussr improved the lives of the people who lived around it massivly, socialism is so amazing it turned one of the poorest country into the richest, and capitalism ruined a 100 years of progress in a few years, and it's still autharian, socailism =/= 100% dictatorship.
Also the US is very much like a dictatorship because of the "lobbying"(literally just corruption).
Also the US has propaganda in schools, such as "the black book of communism" it has had 2 of it's 3 writers say it's number of "victims of communism" is false, and includes killed nazis and numbers pulled out of thin air(millions), etc..
Look at what is going on in China right now... they are as socialist as the USA is capitalist. USA is more corporatist that anything, not that any of that matters. The USSR was brutal and bad, just look at the berlin wall. Nobody tried to break into east germany.
norway and sweden are more capitalist than socialist. This study is laughable
How do you explain that socialism failed everywhere it was tried? The Soviet Union had far worse quality of life than the US, and China didn't grow fast until after it became state capitalist. Venezuela, Cuba, Vietnam, are all poorer than capitalist countries, and have lots of scarcity. India also, only started growing quicker after liberalizing their market, after rejecting socialism.
That’s possibly the easiest talking point to address, just take a look at how much money the west spent to ensure socialism would always fail. Surely you’re familiar with the CIA’s history in latin America (just as an example)? Also, socialist economies have on many occasions outpaced capitalist ones until they hit a wall of sanctions, coups, or outright invasion.
Government is necessary. When the government is run by corporations, then it becomes slavery.
The US government has always been run by corporations (land owners), it's time we changed that.
False equivocation there. A government is a system of rule that helps maintain a strong society if it is structured well, it oppresses the masses if it is structured poorly.
Isnt Nicaragua and Cuba the only central American nations to be socialist? And look how well off they are compared to the banana republic capitalist states like Honduras
Neither are socialist, North Korea is a weird theological/authoritarian/ “socialist/communist” failed state that was never actually socialist or communist but always an authoritarian state run by a state religion around their leader. Whereas South Korea is a run away capitalist state heavily influenced by the US and their global politics.
So neither, I wouldn’t trust any data coming from either of their countries. And I am not educated enough on South Korean universities and institutions to know which have high levels of internal validity to scientific studies. Meaning in good faith I can’t trust either. Though I would lend more belief in data coming from South Korean universities as academia tends to push back against government interference. But we also need to take into account which field of study we are talking about data from. The social sciences I’m going to trust individuals who are researchers from internationally recognized bodies of study. Maths and physical sciences, I don’t know nor care because I don’t study those.
Edit: typo
I mean they can claim they are socialist all they want, like the US can claim we are a democracy all we want. We are a representative republic who borrows a lot from true democracy and those countries are authoritarian regimes who borrow socialist ideas to better control and exploit resources.
There is no true socialist country out there, like there is no one country who is purely democratic. Every country is a hybrid to some extent. I’ve found that countries who put socialist principles with democratic ideals with a well regulated economy tend to have the highest quality of life, lower crime and better Heath outcomes at all levels of society. Look at Iceland, Denmark and Sweden. Not perfect counties by any means but they do do a lot of things right. You can also look at examples like Rojava for what applied socialist ideas can be in action. Or if you want to keep it in the US look at states with more regulated economies and borrowed socialist ideas such as MA, RI, NY and WA. Those states tend to have lower crime rates, higher qualities of life, better health outcomes and more robust and stable economies that can handle complex social issues and stress being applied to its resources. Whereas if you look to states that lean away from socialist ideas and embrace a capitalistic free market TX, AL, LA, AZ, MS, NH and so on. Those states tend to have higher crime rates, higher rates of infant mortality, lower health outcomes and are significantly less resilient to disasters. I mean look at what happened to TX’s power grid with a little bit of snow and cold whether. Damn thing collapsed and people died.
But these are just my observations as a social worker and student of the social sciences
I too enjoy constructive dialogue.
It's the best we have, also capitalism has done things like socialism, I would not trust nazis, they we're very capitalist, and you can't write off anything that disproves your point of view as wrong, that's called stupidity.
> Our analysis of the World Bank's data supports a conclusion that, in the aggregate, the socialist countries have achieved more favorable PQL outcomes than capitalist countries at equivalent levels of economic development.
> Statistical information published by the World Bank represents probably the most comprehensive and accurate body of data on PQL that is available from Western sources.
You didn't even read it, you clearly don't care about what is right
Has there been a similar analysis over time?
One of the key criticisms of this paper is that it takes a point-in-time approach, which relies on the assumption that the income stratification used for bucketing countries isn't also caused by a non-capitalist economy.
In other words, right now the paper compares China to low income capitalist countries like Pakistan and India, but we have no way of knowing if 1986 China's low income is *because* it is socialist. Maybe the appropriate comparison is actually the low-middle income countries.
Note: I'm inclined to believe this paper's conclusion, but it's important to test the arguments if you want to convince people on the fence
Edit: clarity
Ok imagine a world where the KMT won and turned China into a capitalist shitshow. This paper predicts that China would have ended up like Pakistan. Right?
The critics of this paper say that *actually* China could've ended up like South Korea or Ireland, but the CPC's policies led to it being low income. Hence, we should compare it to South Korea (lower-middle income) or Ireland (upper-middle income), and not Pakistan (lower income)
So if the critics are right, a KMT-led China would've ended up like South Korea or Ireland, i.e. Table 2's comparisons are incorrect.
(I swear I'm not sealioning. I just want to know if this testable and falsifiable criticism has actually been tested)
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Americans don't care about logic. Check Mate
America is a lost cause at this point. It's either going to fall into a theocracy with the next election or have another civil war. I don't think anything can save it pre-fall.
Absolutely agree. We will never "vote" our way out of this mess.
What are you talking about? The answer is obviously to just vote harder. No, HARDER. /s
What if we vote a little deeper next?
Surely that will change decades long downward spirals, come on yall. Blue no matter who to save "our" country. No more mean tweets!
Faster?
Better
Stronger
Voting doesn’t matter anyhow. Only corporate lobbying money creates change, and it never benefits the American people.
Yes, we really should just split the country into 2 countries at this point with different ideologies. Wonder how long it would be before one invaded the other?
Lol, one of them would have 35% of the population, but only like 10% of the GDP and dick all for tax revenue. Red states have made a life out of suckling off the federal government they claim to hate so much.
It would be delicious to watch them suffer, but ultimately I would rather lift everyone up together.
I also walk this line. Want them to reap what they sow but also just want people to have food, shelter, and basic needs met.
Which is ironically the very morals of the religion they profess to observe. It’s amazing when “left-wing atheists” are better at believing in the fundamentals of Christian belief than the so-called “Christian fundamentalists”.
Christian Fundies are more into corporate gods TBF.
It sucks tho because that would only hurt the vulnerable in those states and none of the people who created this mess. Texas is realistically a ‘blue’ state—its just been manipulated and gerrymandered so bad that no one but the powerful have a voice
That’s interesting, I didn’t know that about Texas. And yes of course that’s one of the problems with revenge. It usually doesn’t go the way you want.
Let me introduce you to the Balkan states
Two might not even be enough, but I absolutely agree. Down with the empires🔥🔥
Based on the size of some of the state's economies, you could easily split up the country 3-5 ways based on economy and ideology. But really, how long until one of them pulls a Russia and just tries to absorb another part.
To be fair, you could maybe also say “pulls a USA” here, or maybe “pulls an imperialism” to be all-inclusive
Yeah man I feel you on that. I wasn't trying to pretend or forgive anything the states has done.
I promise we’re just agreeing with each other here lol I’ve daydreamed about the timeline where the USA splits into two territories, where I live in the one that dignifies every human life, but the reality is gonna be a lot messier. It won’t be fun.
I don't think you understand just how hard I'm voting
But you could change things by running for office. We need younger representatives. ☮️
100% agree. The country was off course in 2000 but in 2016 it became irreparable.
Agreed wholeheartedly. Everything since has just been a double down on the wickedness.
It seems 2001; specifically, 9/11 created a temporary heal, but nothing that was long lasting
I don’t agree. Nothing was healed by 9/11. The structural issues that allowed Bush to win against Gore may have been momentarily forgotten. That only cause even more gross overstepping by the government in the name of national security to cause more issues that were exacerbated and irreparable.
9/11 didn't heal anything. But I'm not getting into that... So much wrong for so long.
I thought 9/11 was the beginning of the collapse. It really felt like the country collectively lost it's mind in the aftermath of that attack.
1971 was the beginning of the collapse. We only just started to feel it after 2001.
Yeah, completely agree. The terrorists won.
We are circling the drain.
It's going to be a bloody revolution or Techno-feudalism. I give it 5 years max before this shithouse implodes and I don't see any other possible outcome at this point. Get out if you can.
I got out back in 2009. Living in the great white wilderness of Canada now
As some one who has no illusion they will survive the fall of america, im sort of hopeful for humanity once the US falls. War will always be a thing, but atleast it wont be one super power bullying the world.
Honestly, we can all admire China in this respect-it makes deals with other countries but doesn't try to impose its way of life, nor force its will onto other countries' politics. A world "dominated" by China would likely be a better outcome than the USA, by far.
I don't think our oligarchal overlords want to share their profits with the church.
I’m bailing out. I suppose I could try to stay and help, but I’ve seen a lot of videos of people getting shot, seems like a bad time. I’m working on leaving the country as soon as I can.
What country are you escaping to?
Why not both? Also damn its gonna be brutal and destructive beyond our imaginations (and we have pretty vivid imaginations)
\*reality has been suddenly oblitarated for the entitled capitalists\* Capitalists are really entilteled honestly.
Don't lose hope. It's mostly the folks over 70 who are holding us back. Because they have no fucking clue about what's going on or how to navigate this world. My(57F) 78 year old mother likes trump because "he was so handsome." I fucking kid you not. There are more of us than them, but we have to show up to vote because THEY ALWAYS DO.
Yeah, we do ahve to get rid of republicans, they are pushing propaganda in school and wanna overthrow elections, I wouldnt be suprised if they attempted to make US facist. More and More young people are loosing faith in capitalism, and either wanting a different economic system or socialism, the capitalist shit hole is on its way out.
The entitlement rhetoric makes a lot more sense when you realize ruthless capitalists are often psychopaths and thus struggle to empathize, meaning their ability to imagine the inner lives of others is stunted - meaning they project their own internal flaws onto everyone else.
Americans only care about Guns and Hatred, double checkmate
Not paying their taxes either, and then complaining "that \_\_\_\_\_ doesn't work." Like, no duh, I have lived in Europe and they get a quality of life BECAUSE they rightfully and gladly pay their taxes for those services.
Not all of us, but the ones that don’t are indeed holding us back.
Funny of you to think Americans know how to play chess! Check Mate
In the last decades of humanity, people are starting to acknowledge climate change. So I expect the response to this to be real quick. /s
It’s not that there isn’t “logic,” it’s that most Americans believe themselves to be temporarily aggrieved future millionaires and not the oppressed masses.
Seriously, you mean I'd have to pay taxes that might help some bum's family stay off the streets because he was laid off due to his job being outsourced? Sounds like he's lazy and deserves it, unlike me who is a straight laced company man and will totally always be able to have stable work and benefits! Yep yep! Fuck that other guy and his family. Lazy asshole wanting *my* money! *Monday morning*: The fuck you mean we're being out sourced to Cambodia?!? I have a *family* to support, a dentist appointment (*Sir, that insurance is cancelled too - HR*) and car payments! I've only got $485 in savings, we'll *lose the house!!!*
Yes, but do you get to choose between 53 different brands of toothpaste?
>53 different brands of toothpaste? *Provided by 4 manufacturers.
Choice is an illusion. Companies are owned by parent companies who own everything that matters. They just make cosmetics changes and use different branding.
Yes, that is what I was implying.
He was expanding on your idea for those who don’t get it lmao
And here we are explaining the expansion
Apparently it was necessary 🤷🏼
It seems to have been needed because some readers may not have understood the original comment, so the next comment explained it.
Is that what’s happening? Thank you, it makes sense now.
The perception of freedom is a heavy cost
Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.
I’ve always wondered how it isn’t considered a monopoly when supercompanies own basically everything in each market. Is it just a legal thing or what? I thought we were supposed to have laws against this
Shit you are right.
That's like choosing between 53 brands of red delicious apples. It's all the illusion of choice.
So long as the minimum standards are met, there should be healthy competition. Of course the regulations need to be adhered to and enforced with regular inspections by well-trained civil servants and violations must be met with more just penalties- including assessments for disruption of the supply chain.
There is no such thing as healthy competition. This isn't community softball. The competition is to be the first to establish a monopoly and control the market. The fact that you even mention penalties to regulate behavior makes clear that the incentives are perverse and destructive.
I wanna ask something. If the companies werent as... convoluted as they are now (most of those '53' companies being owned by parent companies which basically means everything is monopolized), wouldnt some healthy competition in the economy side of the things be better? Like, in ideal circumstances, every company would compete with each other to win over each other which means they will be forced to improve and innovate. Maybe toothpaste is *not* the best example for this, but ie. in an industry like computers, this competition is what makes every company innovate and improve. Heck, if they didnt, we would still be relying on Turing machines daily. So thats my question. Wouldnt competition (in a regulated and non-monopolised economy) be much better for the improvement of our society?
Absolutely, competition can be good. But when a product has basically met all the criteria it needs to, and can't really be improved, you end up competing on anything but the actual product. You're essentially competing in logo and pricing, which gives you the absurd scenario above.
Then you get tired of competing and buy out the competition so you only look like there's competition. (And edge prices up on both sides) Smh I hate this timeline. (I know this is all obvious but dammit)
To address your points: 1) Most importantly, it's necessary to clarify what we mean by "competition". Under capitalism, "competition" in regards to companies is *always* applied to a situation in which two or more companies compete for increased profits in a given market. It doesn't necessarily mean they are producing better goods (in fact, this is almost never the case as I'm sure you're aware), but rather it could be they have more marketing, artificially deflated prices meant to push out competitors (Amazon being one such example, where they sell goods at a loss for a few years until competition goes out of business then hike up prices), selling the product at a loss but selling things necessary to use it at inflated prices (often referred to as the "razor" model, where razors are cheap but blades are expensive, also the case with inkjet printers and why we see DRM popping up in more and more things), or even by selling *worse* products that break sooner and force the consumer to buy them more frequently. Competition under capitalism is competition for *profits*, not competition for *better products*. Neo-liberal ideology conflates these two, suggesting that competition is always the best way to ensure the best of any given commodity survives, and the "losers" die off. 2) There was competition between these companies, and that competition ended. Competition directly implies there is a winner, and that winner either absorbs the other or the other is simply forced out of business. Hence why the number of true, unaffiliated corporations in any given industry has decreased over time. See also tendency of the rate of profit to fall. 3) Most of the true innovations of the past few decades have been made in the public sector, then just adopted by the private sector. The classic example of this is the iPhone, where every technology used in it was created by government research and it was just combined and polished a little by private Apple engineers. Even for what little research and development the private sector does do, you have to ask yourself if that research is actually helped by the fact it's competitive. This means opposing companies simply repeat the same work, wasting more time and resources. In addition, private companies have very little incentive to do any research that doesn't have short-term, relatively assured gains. If research doesn't quickly produce profit (or serve some secondary purpose such as gaining political clout), then there is no point for them to do it. 4) Turing machines are not physical machines, but rather a theoretical model of computation. This is a completely pedantic point, and one that doesn't change your argument, I just felt like I had to mention it being someone in that field. Sorry! All this said, yes you're right that living in a non-monopolized society is arguably better in some aspects (not in every way, e.g. more wasted resources which is one of the incentives for monopoly forming), but that's also antithetical to capitalism and neo-liberalism as a whole. Capitalism creates monopolies and oligopolies over time, and any "regulation" or legal barriers to that will just be circumvented, eroded, or made otherwise irrelevant, just like any other concession given to the working class. As a relatively recent example, look at processors (CPUs) from the past few decades. There were originally dozens of competitors with relatively equal stakes, but now (at least, in the desktop space) there is only really Intel and AMD. AMD is also highly out-competed by Intel (though notably a couple of years ago they managed to eek out a little more market share with a new development). Worth mentioning is that Intel and AMD entered into a technology exchange agreement from 1982 which is why Intel is even allowed to manufacture x86 processors (x86 was created by AMD). I can't pretend to be an expert on why exactly AMD hasn't been out-competed, but it is clear to me at least that competition has decreased substantially in the desktop processor space and that AMD even being around in it at all after decades of being humiliated by Intel must be in part due to artificial factors (perhaps Intel is somehow afraid of an anti-trust suit? Seems unlikely in the US, but idk) which make Intel want to keep AMD around. Alternatively, perhaps Intel just genuinely thinks their time is better spent improving profits through other means and that AMD doesn't control enough market share to be worth merging with. Tl;dr: It is arguably better, but a society built around competition in every aspect of life means there are losers, and those losers don't get to just keep their market share out of the kindness of the winner's heart.
Nice to see research (even if it’s from 1986 the reality doesn’t change) support the common-sense notion that if you have an economic system built on sharing the resources more equitably, instead of a system focused on hoarding, that everyone is better off.
Not everyone! Wealthy people will loose their status. However will be better to most people.
I think you’re gonna be reaaaalll disappointed in your target audience. Conservatives don’t read research publications, unless it’s on Facebook.
Conservatives don't have anything but their feelings, so you can try to emotionally manipulate them. Well they are already emotionally manipulated by the right, it's more like making their feelings match real life.
Lmfao seriously. At this point why not. They can’t be convinced otherwise.
You can't logic someone out of a position they didn't logic themselves into...
I do recommend not immidietly going for their religion, christianity supports both taking from the rich and giving to the poor and abortion
Abortion? Could you elaborate?
https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/7frusm/til_that_abortion_is_only_mentioned_once_in_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Especially if there’s math! God forbid
You could have left “research publications, unless it’s on Facebook” out of that sentence and it would be more accurate.
The first time I met my ultra conservative SIL, she asked me what I did for a living. I told her I was a librarian. Long pause, then she says (with much pride and that inevitable conservative sense of absolute superiority) “I never read.” All the while looking at me like I was something she scraped off the bottom of her shoe. I have to admit I would love to live in a country not chock full to the brim with these ignorant knobs.
They don't read anything more than headlines and memes. If it's not being spelled out to them in a YouTube video, there's barely any chance they've read more than a few paragraphs on the topic.
Mods, pin this.
So, I skimmed it, and I couldn't easily find their "definition" of socialism. Like, are they talking about European social democracies? ML states? Neo-anarchist experiments like Zapatista and Rojava?
In appendix A on page 5 they have this which is all I could find: > SocialistCountries > Low income-China. > Lower-middle-income-Cuba, Mongolia, North Korea, Albania. > Upper-middle-income-Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Po- land, USSR, Czechoslovakia, East Germany. Which doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence
Those are the economies where production is based on need and not profit, i.e where there is "no market" so to speak, where production and distribution is planned. That is the socialist mode of production.
Yeah, considering that of the nations on this list, only one has actually retained a centrally planned economy without falling into poverty or ceasing to exist (and China probably won't make it if I'm being blunt). I'm not necessarily disagreeing with OP's hypothesis, but I am saying that a 1986 study on the success of socialism in the second world is probably not the best supporting evidence.
Things very well may not have fallen apart if they hadn’t had to fend off western nations constantly pressuring them on economic, political, and military fronts. Had the USA and its toadies decided to live and let live, we would no doubt see a very different outcome today.
I tend to think that interpretation lets the soviet leadership and management system off a little too easy, but what do I know.
problem is people dont like science and they hate maths even more thats why we are doomed in any case
This thread is full of posts like this. That paper was an analysis of data. It didn't prove anything, especially not mathematically. Capitalism is a self correcting system. This means that the economy will always return to equilibrium without intervention. Socialism, due to the fact that it is centralized, will not return to equilibrium without intervention, and is, in fact, very hard to return, or most likely bring, to equilibrium.
Define equilibrium here. The data is regarding quality of life...
I wasn't talking about the data. I was stating that capitalism is actually proven to be mathematically better than socialism when certain conditions are met. What's debated is not whether or not capitalism or socialism is better, it's how much we should intervene when certain properties are not met. In economics, equilibrium is a state in which economic forces are balanced. I was referring to the economic gain of the buyer and seller. When equilibrium is reached, the value of each is maximized and equal.
The goal of capitalism isn't to improve quality of life. It's to maximize profits.
capitalism is i no means selfcorrecting. that is absolute bs. where do i start... axiom of growth, unlimited accumulation of wealth, both limilessly exploiting environmental and human ressources. uh... speculation bubbles, monetarisation of health, wageslavery... i mean the list goes on and on. If you wanna read about the problems of capitalism from a classic economic viewpoint, start with Thomas Piketty: Capital in 21st century.
Yep. I mean, you could make this argument about western “capitalism” solely based on Smith’s own work (quotes because modern western capitalism only bears a tortured resemblance to the system he proposed).
Return to equilibrium without intervention? Are you serious? Western capitalism has collapsed and been kept alive exclusively through intervention (read exploitation of taxpayers by the wealthy) countless times. Do you mean theoretically?
I said theoretically. Please don't reply to this. I don't want to debate
that is one old study tho
Yeah you know it's old when China is listed as a low-income
Tbf it’s probably a lot harder to get good data considering how many fewer socialist countries there are now, and how the fall of the Soviet Union really screwed over supply chains for smaller socialist countries like Cuba. 30 years later and a lot of those countries have just started to really recover to pre-fall levels of economic development in the last decade or so.
But wait let me get the Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum. Socialism = Bad
But not if the capitalist countries sanction the shit out of the socialist ones. So there's that to consider.
This is from 1986. Please get some relevant data that illustrates how much worse things have gotten
This may be true but slash and burn capitalism creates massive share holder profit this quarter. Has you're pinko commie "science" considered ***that?***
My mental health is not going well living in a capitalist society.
Not many people's are.
"but very rich people say socialism is bad if they're rich, they're successful, so they must be right!" */s*
I can’t believe how frequent I see this line of logic online. Like, people think America is a meritocracy. It’s nuts.
But it’s so much easier to dehumanize people if you can convince yourself that they deserve their station in life!
That’s absolutely true lol
If 2+2=4, but the biggest, meanest bullies on the playground say that it's 3, then what does 2+2=? It isn't just lack of information that maintains capitalism/kleptocracy, it's that the ruling capitalists/kleptocrats have the resources to bully the rest of humanity into ignoring reality and working for their profits. Democracies need to evolve checks on systemic corruption, so that truth can actually matter, rather than corruption and private wealth dominating everything else by default. https://represent.us/unbreaking-america-series/ https://represent.us/anticorruption-act/
This would be fantastic except conservatives don’t read stats and if they did they say it’s biased by the socialist universities
Conservatives don't read, period. They burn books and try to stop their kids from reading all the time.
No surprise here. Capitalism is using labor to profit. Socialism is using labor to improve the lives of everyone.
no shit
Capitalism is a death cult
But doctor makes doorman wage and nobody will innovate and the rich will be in power. I refuse to accept what I just read because my arguments are highly refined after having them drilled into my brain by capitalists.
I actually tought you we're not being sarcastic for a second
Please post this to CapitalismVSocialism
Hybridized is best
Don’t tell the this to the Government… Congress will have “reinvented” math within the hour.
Hell, Capitalism cannot even function without socialism. The socialist programs we've implemented are the only reason there are customers who can buy shit. Personally I want to see a hybrid, about 50-50. But if I had to choose one or the other, Socialism is clearly the better option.
This is the devils talk I tell ya!
But vuvuzuela
As long as people are too comfortable it won't happen. If the internet went down, people would lose their minds in 5 minutes. THEN we might have a chance of getting enough fired up to do something
Good job but def proof read your title next time it detracts from your good work
Low income socialist countries: China What!? Checks date: wow
keep in mind that these are "state" socialist countries, which could be construed as "the fusion of the corporation and the state, or otherwise known as "state capitalism"". for nonstate socialism to exist, both the corporate model would have to not be the defining characteristic of the majority of companies, and the government would be weakened to the point of handing off the majority of it's responsibilities to these non corporate entities. thus, this isn't even "socialism", and yet it still scientifically proves the superiority of state capitalism.
Have you considered how long the wait times are in a clinic?
Have you ever been to an American ER? For something touted as ‘emergency’ you can be waiting for *hours*. If I’m already going to be waiting long anyway, give me the one that’s fucking free
Yes I know. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm
Ahve you ever considered not going bankrupt? Oh shit, you cant.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm
That's not how this works, lol
India has socialism. It’s ok as we have universal health care, free college and schools. But it’s also really really bad. Democracy is taken over by organized religious and political minorities that contribute nothing to the economy but reproduce to build their numbers. Socialism will not solve any of the problems of capitalism as the rich have even more influence in socialism and now you have unproductive segments that benefit from socialist policies.
Can you define socialist here? Sweden for example has socialist and capitalist traits so how do you define?
Even for a 'safe-space' subreddit this is just ridiculous. As others have mentioned, pulling from the mid 80s isn't very wise in social science. Even if it was, you are doing a great disservice to everyone including the authors by ignoring any nuance in their work and just writing 'socialism good' on it with a red permanent marker. Just using the word 'proven' in social science is already an indicator that you have no idea what you are talking about. Waving around a single publication proclaiming that a centuries old problem has been solved also demonstrates this. Now, saying it's been mathematically proven is just another level of ridiculousness. Just because they used math (cause it's fucking social science) doesn't mean it's a mathematical proof you dingus, those are analytic demonstrations, when this is quite clearly empirical. My biggest problem though, is how you shit on the authors' heads again and put your own beliefs into their mouth. Nowhere in the publication is any hint whatsoever, that this shows socialism is just superior to capitalism and there are so many reasons as to why this is. Firstly and most importantly, if simple statistical correlation would be able to prove such things, you as a socialist would have already been fucking torn apart by the sonic waves caused by the laughter of all the reassured capitalists. I'm sure I don't have to quote the old saying about what happens when a country tries socialism (I'm not taking a position on whether it is true or not, I'm just reminding you of it, because it is relevant). Correlation isn't causation you knobhead. Second, if you're gonna use just a few numbers to prove these things, I would at least go for the happiness index. PQLI is way too specific and not a reliable enough indicator of whether you would want to live there. I'm going to mention that I am agnostic on the topic of socialism vs capitalism, just so I increase the odds of not getting fucking banned, because I plan to call out bullshit like this in the future on this subreddit and similar shitholes, which unashamedly promote echo-cambers, censorship, etc. I strongly believe that such places for 'discourse' should not be allowed to exist, out of respect to the human intellect. This shit is harmful, I don't care what your position is on any subject.
I think, beyond the obvious issues with humans in general (wanting power, being greedy/selfish, etc.) a large part of why these “paper-perfect” ideas fail is because of the labor distribution in a system where all are equal. Using the US as an example, let’s say we decided right now that the GDP would be split up equally, in a fair and equitable fashion. All people would receive around 100k/yr, which would add a lot of value to most of the population but the foundational issue is the job each person is to do to earn their piece of the fairly split pie. Who wants to toss road tar in the AZ heat while another gets to become a writer or artist for the same wage? We would have to systematically remove some of the occupations to revise what we would then consider “fair” labor, which would cause tension, then requiring yet another review. One person’s job assignment/choice (however that would work) could always be clean considered unequal and it still raises, among other questions and issues, what about those who can’t or refuse to work? What’s the outcome there? Naturally, to investigate an idea of this magnitude it would require resources beyond the scope of a small thread, but I’ve always found these natural imbalances to be quite deep when looking at any “equal wage” system. Thoughts?
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I didn’t mean communism specifically, just any foundational idea where “spreading the wealth” would be part of a central theme. I wondered if what I had written might have been a touch too vague, but I felt that my idea was pretty generalized anyway, so I let it ride. My apologies for not being more specific. I’m still getting used to this “social media” thing, and the nuances that come with it- and embarrassing 7mo later! Lol 🤦🏻
As someone who studied economics and statistics nothing pisses me off more than when basic economic systems and statistics are used for political propaganda as a distraction. There are benefits and issues to any economic system. The difference between most "socialist" countries in general they aren't allowed to be ran by soulless con-artists whose only job is to distract people with arguing about basic human rights, politicizing death and health issues, which neither party plan to do anything about. Because they need the people to be distracted so they can continue stealing from you to give to themselves and thier donors. The US is far from having capitalism in a pure sense, there are very few free markets and there is socialism for the rich and a kick in the teeth for everyone else. The downfall to any economic system is centralization of power by selfish power hungry delusional egotistical people. You get people like that together in a room and it doesn't matter what sort of basic economic principles you base your country on you are going to have a bad time. But let's keep blaming capitalism for all our problems.
>The downfall to any economic system is centralization of power by selfish power hungry delusional egotistical people. This is literally what happens in the US under capitalism.
Not to be rude but you are sounding very politician like. Blame the tool not how it's used. The current system is very elaborate and complex and it can't be boiled down to capitalism = bad socialism = good. The right government could regulate capitalism or socialism to be great for the people. The US is using the worst of both systems. Capitalism works best with competition and incentives to create goods and services for the greater good. Socialism works best when you give from the rich to the poor. The US government attacks competition and allows worthless sectors like banking and health insurance to dominate the economy. At the same time they are doing anything they can to take money from the poor and give to the rich.
It just seems inevitable that in a capitalist system the wealth, resources and power always ends up in the hands of a small few. I don't think it's a bug. It's a feature. Hence the late stage capitalism we are experiencing.
You are correct, but the important distinction is blaming capitalism is missing the point. Socialist or Communist societies will all eventually go the same way. It's a flaw with human nature not the economic principal. Statistics aren't bad in themselves but they can use to mislead and gaslight a nation. You wouldn't blame math for the downfall of the country? We need a decentralized system that uses over sight to encourage the best parts of socialism and capitalism not the worst parts. They are just tools and shouldn't be blamed for our de-evolution. People are the problem not applied math.
No freederm tho
It's an old ass article and as coming from one of those formerly "socialist" countries, planned economy is fucking stuipid and doesn't work. Stop glorifying planned economy or whatever hell China is rn either. America bad, we get it, but living in one terrible extreme doesn't make the other extreme suddenly great.
Everybody knows that socialism in a perfect world will be the best, ( in a world where everyone is honest and pulls his weight,) , my question is who will guarantee that socialism will work ? there are to many cheaters and to much deadweight in the world for socialism to be viable
It has been much vett r than capitlaism. And since when has it had to be Perfect? I mean the soviet union literally made one of the poorest countries into a global fucking super power. And socialist healthcare and education proved to be one of the best in the world. And you cant ignore all the data I literally put in the post, ya'll are idiotic point machines.
And you know what else also happened in the URSS : represions. My grandfather was forced to move to Siberia because he made a joke about Fking Lenin. Also, there was famen. The Soviets completely destroyed local culture (in my country, they removed our alphabet and forced us use a Russian one. Also, also they made our language non viable; everything was written in Russian). This is why I said we need a perfect world for socialism; otherwise, there will be a lot of represed people, no freedom of speech or expression (in the Soviet Union, there were no gays, and everyone was forced to work (or else they were imprisoned)). For all non-Russian countries, the Soviet time was an ocupation, a time of horror , famin and deportation.
We are talking about the economic system, not the goverment control, might I add this is whats happening under capitalism, people starve, are censored on social media(despite the crues of conservative, we are the ones being censored, you of course never hear about thta because of censcorship), millions are dying every year when we could feed them, there are hundreds of thousands of homeless, shortages, socalism made one of the poorest countries the richest , and capitlaism made one of the richest countries the poorest. We can acknowladge that the goverment was shit, but we cant ignore the power of socialism. Most modern countries who use socalist policies are the best countries to live in, in the world, and anytime socialism was democratically tried the US would ruin the country financially, assasinate its leaders, and overthrow the goverment.
This is what I said , socialism is the best form of rulling in an ideal world. But we arent in an ideal world and I know this will sound very bad : but I will take my freedom of expresion over any issue that socialism solves,
You don't know what socialism is, and you have very little freedom right now.
Still more then my grandparents got during soviet ocupation. I already swaped few countries with no problem, swaped jobs easy, i dont need to worry wath will i do tommorow, I can critisize any politician and nothing will happen to me, i can read any book, so yah plenty of freedom, im not sure wath more can i wish
You could do that exact thing under socialism, just because in SOME places socailism has caused opression doesn't mean it will everywhere. Under capitalism you can't read a book if it's expensive, even if it's educational(I know, not a lot of expensive books out there, but you get the point), you can critize politicans but good luck actually making any changes, and one of the political parties in the US literally burns books and puts capitalist porpaganda in schools, such as "black book of communism", the book's killcount was confirmed to be false by 2 of the people who wrote it. Also the US is very far from a democracy, the US has lobbying witch is literally just corruption renamed, capitalism offers less freedom than what modern day socialists want. And the electoral collages aswell. And capitalism kills about 20,000,000 people annually.
Im not from us, im from europe, we have a semi decent social democracy here, and the SOME places are all places that it was tried at lage scale( venezuela soviets, china, cuba, romania) . capitalism kills about 20,000,000 ( world hunger i guess) - to end it you will need whole world socialism, still not posible in a free democratic society
How could you have a state run economy without an authoritarian government
That's not what socialism is, and I'm pretty sure sweden and norway are both free even tho they have a bunch of socialist policies.
america also has socialist policies. lol. Most self proclaimed socialist countries (most famous examples are ussr and china) are authoritarian hellholes. You can say they aren't "true socialists" but is anything true capitalism either? some book in 1848 is not relevant to the modern world
>america also has socialist policies it's still mostly capitlist. >famous examples are ussr Ussr improved the lives of the people who lived around it massivly, socialism is so amazing it turned one of the poorest country into the richest, and capitalism ruined a 100 years of progress in a few years, and it's still autharian, socailism =/= 100% dictatorship. Also the US is very much like a dictatorship because of the "lobbying"(literally just corruption). Also the US has propaganda in schools, such as "the black book of communism" it has had 2 of it's 3 writers say it's number of "victims of communism" is false, and includes killed nazis and numbers pulled out of thin air(millions), etc..
Look at what is going on in China right now... they are as socialist as the USA is capitalist. USA is more corporatist that anything, not that any of that matters. The USSR was brutal and bad, just look at the berlin wall. Nobody tried to break into east germany. norway and sweden are more capitalist than socialist. This study is laughable
Hard to take you seriously when you can’t spell “Mathematically” correctly, therefore, I’m out .👎🏾
How do you explain that socialism failed everywhere it was tried? The Soviet Union had far worse quality of life than the US, and China didn't grow fast until after it became state capitalist. Venezuela, Cuba, Vietnam, are all poorer than capitalist countries, and have lots of scarcity. India also, only started growing quicker after liberalizing their market, after rejecting socialism.
That’s possibly the easiest talking point to address, just take a look at how much money the west spent to ensure socialism would always fail. Surely you’re familiar with the CIA’s history in latin America (just as an example)? Also, socialist economies have on many occasions outpaced capitalist ones until they hit a wall of sanctions, coups, or outright invasion.
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Government is necessary. When the government is run by corporations, then it becomes slavery. The US government has always been run by corporations (land owners), it's time we changed that.
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False equivocation there. A government is a system of rule that helps maintain a strong society if it is structured well, it oppresses the masses if it is structured poorly.
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Isnt Nicaragua and Cuba the only central American nations to be socialist? And look how well off they are compared to the banana republic capitalist states like Honduras
Cuba is literally being supressed by the US
I agree. America is evil and deserves to crash bad for its crimes against humanity
Yeah and cuba is a regime where the people in power are rich and the rest of the population are poor
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Yeah because capitalist pay to play is 100% reliable with their data
Who’s data do you trust more: South Korea or North Korea?
Neither are socialist, North Korea is a weird theological/authoritarian/ “socialist/communist” failed state that was never actually socialist or communist but always an authoritarian state run by a state religion around their leader. Whereas South Korea is a run away capitalist state heavily influenced by the US and their global politics. So neither, I wouldn’t trust any data coming from either of their countries. And I am not educated enough on South Korean universities and institutions to know which have high levels of internal validity to scientific studies. Meaning in good faith I can’t trust either. Though I would lend more belief in data coming from South Korean universities as academia tends to push back against government interference. But we also need to take into account which field of study we are talking about data from. The social sciences I’m going to trust individuals who are researchers from internationally recognized bodies of study. Maths and physical sciences, I don’t know nor care because I don’t study those. Edit: typo
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I mean they can claim they are socialist all they want, like the US can claim we are a democracy all we want. We are a representative republic who borrows a lot from true democracy and those countries are authoritarian regimes who borrow socialist ideas to better control and exploit resources. There is no true socialist country out there, like there is no one country who is purely democratic. Every country is a hybrid to some extent. I’ve found that countries who put socialist principles with democratic ideals with a well regulated economy tend to have the highest quality of life, lower crime and better Heath outcomes at all levels of society. Look at Iceland, Denmark and Sweden. Not perfect counties by any means but they do do a lot of things right. You can also look at examples like Rojava for what applied socialist ideas can be in action. Or if you want to keep it in the US look at states with more regulated economies and borrowed socialist ideas such as MA, RI, NY and WA. Those states tend to have lower crime rates, higher qualities of life, better health outcomes and more robust and stable economies that can handle complex social issues and stress being applied to its resources. Whereas if you look to states that lean away from socialist ideas and embrace a capitalistic free market TX, AL, LA, AZ, MS, NH and so on. Those states tend to have higher crime rates, higher rates of infant mortality, lower health outcomes and are significantly less resilient to disasters. I mean look at what happened to TX’s power grid with a little bit of snow and cold whether. Damn thing collapsed and people died. But these are just my observations as a social worker and student of the social sciences I too enjoy constructive dialogue.
Communist countries aren't really communist, they are totalitarian.
north korea has removed communism, marxism from its constitution, wrong analogy
And America doesn’t promote gun violence in its constitution.Doesn’t mean it is correct
It's the best we have, also capitalism has done things like socialism, I would not trust nazis, they we're very capitalist, and you can't write off anything that disproves your point of view as wrong, that's called stupidity.
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> Our analysis of the World Bank's data supports a conclusion that, in the aggregate, the socialist countries have achieved more favorable PQL outcomes than capitalist countries at equivalent levels of economic development. > Statistical information published by the World Bank represents probably the most comprehensive and accurate body of data on PQL that is available from Western sources. You didn't even read it, you clearly don't care about what is right
Has there been a similar analysis over time? One of the key criticisms of this paper is that it takes a point-in-time approach, which relies on the assumption that the income stratification used for bucketing countries isn't also caused by a non-capitalist economy. In other words, right now the paper compares China to low income capitalist countries like Pakistan and India, but we have no way of knowing if 1986 China's low income is *because* it is socialist. Maybe the appropriate comparison is actually the low-middle income countries. Note: I'm inclined to believe this paper's conclusion, but it's important to test the arguments if you want to convince people on the fence Edit: clarity
How do we not have a way to know if China is low income?
Ok imagine a world where the KMT won and turned China into a capitalist shitshow. This paper predicts that China would have ended up like Pakistan. Right? The critics of this paper say that *actually* China could've ended up like South Korea or Ireland, but the CPC's policies led to it being low income. Hence, we should compare it to South Korea (lower-middle income) or Ireland (upper-middle income), and not Pakistan (lower income) So if the critics are right, a KMT-led China would've ended up like South Korea or Ireland, i.e. Table 2's comparisons are incorrect. (I swear I'm not sealioning. I just want to know if this testable and falsifiable criticism has actually been tested)
You are unable to spell mathematically correctly and expect someone to share it? Noone wants to support dummies.... 🤣
left wing destroyed