I don’t own much capital, but I live in a post communist country and I sure as hell don’t want to experience the shit our country already went through once.
Yeah, blame the Russians. As if the Russian revolutionaries were not fighting for the same ideals you believe in. Just by not realizing that eliminating capitalists concentrated all the power in the government and handed power to Stalin on a silver platter.
Once you come up with an economic model that both works economically and does not hand power to elected officials or some other such group, you have my support. Until then, I will keep the safe assumption that socialists have zero idea what they are talking about and would lead us to doom if we gave them the chance.
As someone also from a post soviet country, don’t make the mistake of thinking all socialism is the same as Leninism.
Once you come up with an economic model that both works economically and does not hand power to elected officials or some other such group,
So you’d rather support a system where the power is handed to the unelected “officials”? You can see that happening in real time with Musk effectively leading the US. Not to mention almost all forms of democracy have people handing the power to the elected government, so I really don’t know what you’re opposing here.
Yet comparing all socialism to the Soviet Union is exactly what you did. The fact that Russian revolutionaries failed to eliminate dictatorship does not invalidate the philosophy of communism, it just demonstrated that Russia was unable to overcome their own social inertia.
Russia was always brutal to their people and to their neighbors, for centuries. They stayed that way as Soviets, and they haven’t changed from it as capitalists. Abusing the working class is a violation of communist principles, not an inherent feature.
Once you come up with an economic model that both works economically and does not hand power to elected officials or some other such group,
I literally wrote that I would support some form of socialism. That is not sarcasm. I am not talking about one example, I am talking about economic and game theory principles.
If you analyse the common forms of socialism using those, it is obvious it will always devolve into authoritarianism. The incentives between leaders and the population are too misaligned and the power is too concentrated.
You wrote you’re supporting of the kind of socialism a lot of socialists would consider capitalism, because it doesn’t try to achieve socialism, it just tries to keep people happy by having strong social programs. And it’s odd of you to talk about game theory when according to game theory capitalism gets more effective when those same social programs get cut and that money is used for capitalistic purposes. Capitalism is also the reason why we still have 40 hour work weeks, because any increase in individual productivity is not used to reduce working hours but used to reduce the number of workers. Why? Because the goal is profits and if you can do the same amount of work with less people your profits increase. Keeping the same amount of workers but reducing working hours doesn’t increase profits so that’s not a desirable outcome.
f you analyse the common forms of socialism using those, it is obvious it will always devolve into authoritarianism.
No offense, but I seriously doubt you’ve done any of such analysis.
The incentives between leaders and the population are too misaligned and the power is too concentrated.
So instead we should support a system where political motives are commodified and corporations sell the power to influence the political landscape (see Cambridge analytica) and corporations have such power entire nations struggle to keep them in check (see Facebook fighting with EU over targeted ads) and then there’s whatever shady shit Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing are doing. The USSR had a corrupt power structure in place but they still had to play the charade of appealing to the people. Part of the reason you know USSR sucked is because they had to do it publicly. Corporations have unchecked concentration of power, they can (and they do) keep their shit secret and when there are whistleblowers (like in case with Boeing) they just kill them and nobody will do anything about it because corporations can have so much power nobody can keep them accountable.
You’re struggling so hard in the comments, just to be wrong.
Why are you so invested in capitalism? Do you own lots of capital or something?
I don’t own much capital, but I live in a post communist country and I sure as hell don’t want to experience the shit our country already went through once.
Let me guess. Post-Russian? Don’t blame communism for Russia’s glaring flaws.
Yeah, blame the Russians. As if the Russian revolutionaries were not fighting for the same ideals you believe in. Just by not realizing that eliminating capitalists concentrated all the power in the government and handed power to Stalin on a silver platter.
Once you come up with an economic model that both works economically and does not hand power to elected officials or some other such group, you have my support. Until then, I will keep the safe assumption that socialists have zero idea what they are talking about and would lead us to doom if we gave them the chance.
As someone also from a post soviet country, don’t make the mistake of thinking all socialism is the same as Leninism.
So you’d rather support a system where the power is handed to the unelected “officials”? You can see that happening in real time with Musk effectively leading the US. Not to mention almost all forms of democracy have people handing the power to the elected government, so I really don’t know what you’re opposing here.
Comparing all capitalism to the US is the same as comparing all socialism to the Soviet Union.
There are plenty social democracies in Europe. I advocate for spreading those and making incremental improvements to them where appropriate.
Yet comparing all socialism to the Soviet Union is exactly what you did. The fact that Russian revolutionaries failed to eliminate dictatorship does not invalidate the philosophy of communism, it just demonstrated that Russia was unable to overcome their own social inertia.
Russia was always brutal to their people and to their neighbors, for centuries. They stayed that way as Soviets, and they haven’t changed from it as capitalists. Abusing the working class is a violation of communist principles, not an inherent feature.
I literally wrote that I would support some form of socialism. That is not sarcasm. I am not talking about one example, I am talking about economic and game theory principles.
If you analyse the common forms of socialism using those, it is obvious it will always devolve into authoritarianism. The incentives between leaders and the population are too misaligned and the power is too concentrated.
You wrote you’re supporting of the kind of socialism a lot of socialists would consider capitalism, because it doesn’t try to achieve socialism, it just tries to keep people happy by having strong social programs. And it’s odd of you to talk about game theory when according to game theory capitalism gets more effective when those same social programs get cut and that money is used for capitalistic purposes. Capitalism is also the reason why we still have 40 hour work weeks, because any increase in individual productivity is not used to reduce working hours but used to reduce the number of workers. Why? Because the goal is profits and if you can do the same amount of work with less people your profits increase. Keeping the same amount of workers but reducing working hours doesn’t increase profits so that’s not a desirable outcome.
No offense, but I seriously doubt you’ve done any of such analysis.
So instead we should support a system where political motives are commodified and corporations sell the power to influence the political landscape (see Cambridge analytica) and corporations have such power entire nations struggle to keep them in check (see Facebook fighting with EU over targeted ads) and then there’s whatever shady shit Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing are doing. The USSR had a corrupt power structure in place but they still had to play the charade of appealing to the people. Part of the reason you know USSR sucked is because they had to do it publicly. Corporations have unchecked concentration of power, they can (and they do) keep their shit secret and when there are whistleblowers (like in case with Boeing) they just kill them and nobody will do anything about it because corporations can have so much power nobody can keep them accountable.