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I'm lower-left quadrant but always cop a fair amount of shit from others on 'the left' (nebulous term though it is) for my feelings on capitalism. The people I speak to have never seen anything but corruption, and have a combo of zero faith and utter hatred for it.
My personal feelings are that with strong, enforced checks & balances, capitalism can be combined with socialist policies to create a fantastic standard of living (see Norway), without it becoming cancerous. Unfortunately most of our western political systems (and capitalism is strongly influenced by political systems) seem to be run on a wink and a nudge, an assumed sense of 'fair play' which we all know has been shown to be worthless in recent years.
Strong unions; an educated populace; politicians who actually give a shit; this is what we need. But, capitalism has an absolute stranglehold on the populace of most western countries via print / tv media. The foxes are in charge of the henhouse and the hens are getting shit on.
You're getting shit from leftists because you're doing the "socialism is when the government does stuff" just from the other side.
And referencing the "political compass" unironically.
Now that's just cliquey, damn dude what are you 14?
That isn't socialist policies. People keep trying to conflate what socialism is vs capitalism.
Norway, Sweden, etc are all capitalist countries that voted to use their tax base to create a strong welfare system. Nothing in their system is 'socialist'.
Nothing stops people from voting for these things in America either except our bad two party system.
except our bad two party system.
Well, and the corporate owned media with a hypercapitalist agenda, all the lobby organisations, the lack of proper public education for centuries, red-blue-whitewashed historytelling, the oppression of the black minority, a deeply flawed election system, the imprisonment crisis, and related the opiod crisis, gerrymandering, not enough unions, the fucked up healthcare situation itself...
What a sad world you live in. I live in America where people have the ability to do better. Maybe you should consider moving here as we are the land of opportunity.
Luckily, I live in Europe. I got free healthcare, free education, have okay workers rights and not so much rising facism than you gals and guys overseas.
Good for you. Using your logic, I have all the same things as well.
What logic?
Exactly.
You're claiming you're getting something 'free' when you're paying taxes for it. That means I am getting my health insure for free as well.
Well, i haven't nearly payed as much taxes as I received stuff for free from the community. I am from a lower class family, low income, psychological illness, etc. I got free healthcare my whole life, including about two month hospital time in total, 52 session of behavioral psychotherapy, all the vaccines, all the checkups, some MRT-scans, a fair amount of medication (some with a small fee). Then, i got free primary and secondary education. Then, I got 5 years at university for about 3000€ (but i got a ticket with which i could take any public transportation, which is good here). Additionally, because I'm from a poor family, the community payed me for studying. I got around 700€ a month, 350 as a gift, 350 as a 0% loan. Yes 0%. And then I had kids. While I was studying. My partner was also studying and getting free money because poor parents, and because we had small kids we got an extra 800€ every months just because we were students with small children. And 200€ for each child. Have i mentioned that I got 200€ for just being a my parents children from 18 til i was done with university? A few months on unemployment also.
So until now I've only payed back a fraction of what the community gave me in taxes. Regarding that these taxes also pay police, roads, parts of the punlic transportation, cultural stuff, and all the other shit a good country does. Only a fraction. Soon, i will have to start paying back the 0% student loan. But now I'm earning loads of money (in fact, we earn loads of money), our children can live free of financial fear in a fairly sizeable house in a nice neighbourhood woth lots of diverse and friendly people. When they want to go to university, they're parents aren't poor though, so we'll have to support them (we're even legally obliged, which is a good thing)
Probably i will pay back all the community did for me since I have to pay a fair amount of taxes. But what they leave me is enough for a luxorious lifestyle or a buying a house. Maybe even both.
We do have our problems here and there. But compared to the dystopia you have going on, I'm really really happy to not have to fuck with that.
Don’t believe the internet whiners. We are not a dystopia by any stretch of the imagination.
We can do better but overall it’s a great place to live.
Personally I want a single payer system here. I think insurance through your employer is just a stupid idea.
The American Dream ™ is the biggest scam in the history of America. It's the land of opportunity for some. Ever since the change in corporate greed in the late 70s and early 80s (especially fucking Reaganomics), the wealth has been accumulating more and more among fewer and fewer and workers are being treated as resources instead of people. Pensions used to be much more common. Now the US (or at least one party and mich of another) has effectively convinced a large portion of the populace that literally trying to protect workers is evil. The lions share of profit used to go to actual workers with investors taking a cut off the top. Now the investors take most and barely pay workers. A vast majority of Americans are part of a system where they don't get to keep what they rightfully earned with their work. Instead poor people give a larger and larger portion of their work value to investors. It's fundamentally unsustainable and people keep believing they might be one of the people who have a chance to make it big (even though they're more likely to win the lottery than to make it on their own).
I think the dream is still achievable, but I agree with your points. Pensions are good/bad. They're good because they were meant for retirement but bad because so many companies dumped them for the 401k. The 401K was meant to supplement are retirement, not be the retirement. I do think companies should be forced to match a 401K. That way, people would have something more akin to a pension plan. Profits have always gone to the investors. That is nothing new. I would say the largest issue is companies are more heavily leveraged than they use to be. They're carrying a lot of debt where even when they have a good year, they're still one step from bankruptcy.
You can have socialist policies without being a socialist society. Our (UK) NHS is a socialist policy, free healthcare at the point of use. My country is decidedly not socialist!
It isn’t free. It’s paid for by tax money. Just like our Medicare/medicaid and VA systems. Tax paid health care was started by our founding fathers. Somewhere it got lost in our values over time but it’s at our core.
Everyone knows what "free" means especially when they refer to it as socialist. Pointing out it's taxes is such a tired statement that folks who pretend to be smart like to pull out as a gotcha. You're not actually adding any value to the conversation by saying that. And yes, universal healthcare would absolutely be supported by the founding fathers. But virtually no one in one specific party votes in that direction and generally votes to go in the other. At least some of the other party try and fight for it.
I said free healthcare at the point of use, not free healthcare. And it's nothing like your US systems, I was personally charged £0 for my emergency appendictomy surgery, £0 for the ambulance ride, and £0 for the hospital stay.
Yeah yeah two parties bad we fuckin know but talk to us when both sides start hard shoving for the removal of human rights. Talk to us when Republicans stop gerrymandering voting maps because they know it's the only way they'll get elected.
It's not fucking both sides it's one side actively shitting all over the country while the other side gets blamed for it. Meanwhile half our citizens have been so dumbed down that they can't remember any Republican scandal longer than 5 god damn minutes.
bUt HeR eMaIlS!!
BuT hUnTeR bIdEn!!
bUt TrUmPs DiCk Is So TaStEy!!!
We have a democrat in office. Is your life radically better ? Mine isn’t. So yes, both parties blow.
I'm not from USA, but from the outside in, it's pretty obvious what Biden can, and can't do. You have to take his achievements (which there are many of, unfortunately the dems don't seem to be very good at trumpeting their actual good works) with the pinch of salt that they haven't had the control in the senate they need to enact the policies they like. Enough people vote for 3rd party or feel fatigued / despondant like you, that they didn't get the actual control of senate, and lost the house in midterms.
Whether it's slow walking (or blocking) appointments, fake dems like Sinema, dems that have to be stupid-capitalist to maintain power (Manchin), they've just not had the numbers.
Biden has shit for achievements. The democrats have control of the senate. They don’t have control of the house.
To be fair Trump didn’t do shit either.
Really the last president to really kick ass was Clinton. History is going to love that man more than we realize. I didn’t like him when he was in office but in hindsight he crushed it. Historians keep upgrading his presidency and rightfully so.
You have a point that Clinton was pretty good, and was probably the first showing of the Republicans becoming obstructionist and never relenting since.
The Democratic Party has control of the Senate in name alone. Sinema and Manchin do not toe the line and have effectively threatened to even switch parties if they aren't taken seriously. The "control" the Democrats have had in the past four years of any branch has been teetering on the edge of a pin. They basically had enough to just stop harmful Republican policies that would have been passed instead. The one thing Republicans do better than Democrats is to simply back each other up no matter how corrupt one of them might be. Trump probably could have shot a person in broad daylight in the middle of fifth avenue and Republicans would ensure that nothing happened.
Nobody should toe the line. That is why our politics has failed for so long. People just toe the line instead of compromising to get deals done. We need both parties to work together to solve the problems. Right now one of my largest complaints with the Republicans is they just want to shoot down what the Democrats want to do. They're not compromising to do something other than shit on the other persons ideas.
I think you're missing the point of how a political party operates. The members of the party should support their own platform and the leader of their party. You'll never not have parties. That's just basic game theory. You need cooperation on main points. Even your own responses about Democrats indicates whether you pretend to not think that way, you actually do. Otherwise you're not internally consistent with your logic. Though that wouldn't surprise me based on your unabashedly childish responses so far.
No that isn’t how parties have worked historically. Historically politicians tried to appease their voting base. That means sometimes they’d vote against party lines.
This is such a childish and naive statement. No matter what system is put in place, the president alone can't make a radical difference in a positive direction, only shitty ones.
Yet, Clinton did. I get you're a debbie downer but many Presidents have made radical differences. Reagan and Clinton both did a good job. Bush, Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden did not.
Yeah, Reagan really did a great job letting AIDS kill all those people because he hated the gays.
Oh, and kickstarting the modern homeless crisis by closing all the countries mental health facilities without another solution in the wings.
And yet, it's not 40 years later and we still have no vaccine or cure for HIV/AIDS. Blaming Reagan is tad silly. I doubt you were alive during the crisis but it was alarming. Faucci mishandled the situation just like he did with COVID.
it’s not 40 years later and we still have no vaccine or cure for HIV/AIDS.
What? We have multiple examples of massive growth in treating and stopping the spread of AIDS/HIV?
The Reagan administration literally acted like it was a joke that no one should care about because it only affected gay people. This was during a period of time where people preached that the disease was God punishing sinners. You can rewrite history all you want, but Reagan killed people by minimizing the seriousness of the disease and minimizing the gay community at the same time, essentially saying "It's okay if we let the queers die."
That opinion was given to him by Faucci. Reagan was not in charge of the disaster. Faucci was. Faucci is the one who would not sign off on the waives for the drug treatment. You are assigning blame to the President for something that isn't in his power. It is why the LGBTQ has spoken out against Faucci for years.
My quality of life improved dramatically when I moved away from Republican led areas and into Democrat-led areas.
Ergo, you are wrong.
I’ve done fine either way. How did you move from a republican president? You move to another country? Otherwise my argument sticks.
I moved to California, so, almost another country.
But I was speaking more of the state and local governments, which have more of an impact in my direct life.
However I think anyone who was able to get health insurance with a pre-existing condition would probably say a Democrat president has directly helped their quality of life, possibly in that they would have no life at all without that Democrat president. Just for one example at the federal level.
Nothing stops people from voting for these things in America either
except our bad two party system.Ftfy. Nothing stops anyone from voting for it right now. There's only one side even remotely fighting for it. It's just ignorance, laziness, and hate that keep it from happening.
When have I said I wouldn't vote for these 'things'? and which things are we speaking of? I fully support a single payer system. As I said previously I support mandated 401k from employers. So what thing am I not willing to vote for?
You are not a leftist is probably why.
What matters is the ability the allocate resources according to the needs of us all and that people have confidence in future resources to be happy. Private ownership is contrary to the first; it helps with the second. That is any "capitalism" must be limited to pertonal needs.
Who decides what constitutes a "need"? Will this proposed society be based purely on subsistence?
You and those whose needs would cause their needs to go unmet.
Who decides what constitutes a “need”?
Aaaaand that's how communism ---> dictatorship
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"Congratulations comrade, this week you get a new toaster!"
"...my shoes are falling off my feet..."
"We do not have shoes, comrade! This week we made toasters!"
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Ok, let me try to make this simpler and more direct, since abstraction clearly isn't your strong suit. The problem is with this:
production is decided by society itself
In practice, this becomes a committee sitting in a room somewhere deciding what & how much the society needs, and then how to go about producing it. The problem with this is that it can only ever be reactive and not proactive (a need must be recognized before it can be addressed, therefore the need must exist first in order to be recognized). Having a government make all production decisions will never be flexible or fast enough to actually sustain a society.
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Socialism has many of the same benefits as capitalism. It's also compatible with other systems. A socialist country can trade with a capitalist. I have no issue with slowly moving toward socialist but I don't think there is much to be gained in protecting capitalism.
This I think is a key part of misunderstandings... I'm not trying to protect capitalism, I'm trying to be realistic in how we go about modifying society towards more socialist goals. We're not going to upend the global capitalist systems in our lifetime, I don't think. And imo things are going to get worse before they get better, as wealth continues to be concentrated in fewer hands, as productivity increases due to further automation. I hope the tipping point isn't something that causes massive loss of life, like the collapse of civilisation.
It's like... imagine you have a lake filled with crocodiles, sharks, and jellyfish. We need to get to the other side. Wanting to get there isn't enough, we need a solution. We can just keep endlessly pushing people in expecting them to somehow cross the lake (trying to 'destroy' capitalism), or we can build a bridge across (slowly modify capitalism to have strongs checks and balances). Anyway it's just my personal opinion, I stand by it
I fail to see how anything you said was useful in that I already admitted that it would need to be gradual, so you spent a lot of time on an entirely unnecessary analogy and thensome. However, you offered none of that in your initial comment. You just said that capitalism could still work. If there was any misunderstanding, it was on you for not sharing something you expected people to magically already know.
No need to get pissy, I was just trying to re-explain myself in a way you'd understand.
I have no issue with slowly moving toward socialist but I don't think there is much to be gained in protecting capitalism.
That was my reply to you about not needing to be a socialist society to have socialist policies. I clearly understand the principle of gradual change without childish analogies that waste everyone's time. You mention nothing in your comment about gradual change. Simply that we don't need a socialist society. Don't become condescending when people can't read your mind due to your inability to communicate. See how few words I used to discuss gradual change? No need for childish condescension for such a simple idea.
Don't be a dick. You just wasted my time with elitist shit about how smart you are. You mad because they said "don't be pissy"?
Well ya sounded pissy to me, and you're doing an even better job of it now. Be better than that