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If you're feeling left out it's probably because you defend billionaires who would mince you into fertilizer
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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I hate capitalism, I just don't know of a better alternative. Nordic socialism is just capitalism with a big government. Soviet socialism failed miserably (it turns out, it is very hard to plan an economy). I have never heard a solid plan for communism that works on a national scale, never mind a plan for transitioning to such a society.
On the other hand, capitalism works reasonably well most of the time and we can just fix issues with it when they crop up (and we have a big backlog of issues to fix).
Capitalism does not work reasonably well most the time. Unchecked it leads to countless busts and Booms that leave the average person destitute. You really should look into the history of the early 20th century. The only reason we even still have capitalism. Is because of two massive world wars. Slaughtering and grinding up many tens of millions of people. As well as passage of basic Social Security nets. We've largely at least abandoned the spirit of. If if not in practice as well.
Capitalism has been a failure at every level. Constantly. That isn't a justification or Praise of leninism. There's a lot of other ideologies on the Socialist side Beyond leninism. And they don't require large National level government. Look into them sometime.
Is there any system that is more fair and/or gives you more freedom? I havent found any.
On a hypothetically completely free capitalist market, I can sell and buy whatever I wish and the value that I get when selling directly correlates to the value I'm bringing to the buyer. If I generated a lot of value, I have more capital so I can also buy more value using that capital. Sounds fantastic in theory.
In an unregulated free market, you could buy milk, drink it and fucking die because it had poison in it.
Yeah of course thats why there are regulations in place. Nobldy would trust that milj seller again though, so for cases that are not as bad as a human life being ended, the system would still work...
Regulations?? No way. I said free market.
Whats your point then? That a completely free market is bad? Yeah, thats why we dont have one.
Of course not! Free markets are great, they allow me to make money however I please. But if you're gonna regulate my business, at least leave me the opportunity to exploit my workers to some extent. I won't be made obsolete by some stoner beatniks who think they can run my business better than I can in some high-falutin' democracy. I own this place. It's mine. I bought it with my own bank account.
It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal liberty" is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment.
Democratic socialism, Social democracy, original libertarianism of the non Rothbard variety, even pragmatic anarchocommunism. As long as they aren't dogmatic ideologues.
A completely free market has never, and will never exist. Further markets, and currency existed before capitalism. Capitalism didn't make them possible. Finally capitalism demands you sell for as much as the market can bare, not what is fair for the value you added. Of which capitalists generally add none. Without labor nothing gets done.
Under capitalism people that generate most of the value get the least of the capital. It's just a more abstract way of defining and justifying oligarchy. Other than Divine Birthright.
Don't get me wrong. I'm all for rewarding people who come up with new processes and ideas to increase efficiency etc. That's not really what capitalism does.
Would you mind elaborating on the "original libertarianism"? What doed that mean exactly? Could really find much...
It's more commonly referred to as left libertarian these days. However it far predates right wing libertarianism. And for myself at least. I personally feel that calling original libertarianism left libertarianism, and right wing libertarianism right wing libertarianism gives right wing libertarianism far too much legitimacy.
Libertarianism is and always has been a left-wing ideology. These so-called right wing Libertarians(neo-libertarians) have much more in common with liberalism than libertarianism. And equally ironic. Those that we call liberals{neo liberals) in the United States for instance. Often have more in common with actual Libertarians than "right-wing" Libertarians do in many instances. Though there's still a good dosage of capitalist and even fascists under the moniker of the Democrats too.
The whole situation is super complex and wildly cloudy due to bottomless pockets for propagandists unfortunately.
Did you actually check? Because based on a bunch of metrics I saw the USSR did pretty well compared to the feudalism that came before it and the capitalist "democracy" that came after its illegal and undemocratic dissolution.
I know (and have discussed it with) plenty of people who lived in the former USSR. Everyone I spoke to agreed that it was a mess.
Of course, there is clear selection bias in who I spoke to (they are people I am friendly with and most of them reside outside of Eastern Europe) and all of them only experienced the Soviet system after it had gone through Stalin.
Here is an illustrative anecdote since we are trading those:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskARussian/comments/sxdi3q/comment/hxtgsbd/
Here is data: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1128057/russia-opinion-on-dissolution-of-the-ussr-by-age/
Note that the people who were adults before its collapse overwhelmingly want it back, and that Russians only supported its continuation back in the 90s referendum at 55ish percent compared to much higher percentages in the non-Russian SSRs.