• UnicodeHamSic [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      No, it doesn’t even work on paper. We don’t need to build two competing factories to see what is best. We invented science. Somebody can just make a graph. It’s that easy

    • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      capitalism only works if you just really hate feudalism but also want to keep the rich people in charge which is what it was designed to do. In much the same way that the united states of America was only really created to form a singe legal entity to be responsible for sharing the debt of the revolutionary war accross the states and everything since is just mission creep

      which is a large part of why the American constitution is so messed up and such a dysfunctional and stupid legal foundation of a country, the country wasn’t really designed with maintainability or long term existence in mind from the start

      • Parent [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        keep the rich people in charge which is what it was designed to do

        Under capitalism didn’t the monarchs that were formally in charge lose power to the new capitalists though? For one, King George losing the colonies. I’m guessing a lot of the founding fathers probably were descended from feudal lords though.

        • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Well George Washington wasn’t poor. The american revolution isn’t a great example though as on top of being a bourgeoise revolution it was a break away of a colony. Added to that the fact that British society was at that point primarily capitalist with feudalism having been gradually whittled away by enclosure.

          Britain in general is not a good example of this as the transition from feudalism to capitalism didn’t happen in a clean one then the other switch but by a more gradual process and Britain still has feudal elements like the land largely being owned by the aristocracy, a monarch, and a legislative body with a power over which laws are passed with heritable seats for members of the aristocracy. That said the aristocracy weren’t what they were and many are flat broke. Britain is a complicated case study for my point here

          The French revolution is a much better example as it was one group of rich people overthrowing the aristocracy and abolishing the traditional rights of the aristocracy because they were ideologically motivated to by liberalism and then proceding to establish a capitalist economy

          (the socialist movement is in many ways recognisably older than liberalism for example the preaching of John Ball in the 14th century and was opposed to feudalism so in the french revolution and english civil war was noticably present in the anti feudalism movement but the movements themselves weren’t socialist) - like how socialists also revolted against the shah but the movement ended up being islamist not socialist

    • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      The same is true of many implementations of communism. The problem isn’t the system, the problem is people, and people try to corrupt the system to their benefit.

        • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          How has what I said got anything to do with liberal ideology? If anything, the implication of what I said is that we need more authoritarianism, in order to stop people fucking around.

      • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        The same is true of many implementations of communism. The problem isn’t the system, the problem is people, and people try to corrupt the system to their benefit.

        People everywhere have always been exactly the same since the dawn of time. Mitochondrial Adam and Eve were literally McDonald’s franchise owners. I am extremely intelligent.

        • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          I mean, not to be glib. It does look like we are functionally then same as our recent ancestors. Like, hundred thousand years ago on the plains of Africa the homo-sapians there would be indistinguishable from any person off the street today after a wash and shave.

          • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            It’s not a question of of similarity in terms of how we look, or our intelligence. It’s a question of whether “human nature” is an immutable thing that exists. Marxists say that it doesn’t, it’s merely a consequence of material conditions, and that changing material conditions would change what people call human nature

            • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              1 year ago

              I mean, we do have some nature. It just isn’t as pronounced as people like to talk about. And it specifically isn’t what capitalism calls it.

        • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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          People everywhere have always been exactly the same since the dawn of time. Mitochondrial Adam and Eve were literally McDonald’s franchise owners.

          Nothing to do with what I’ve said, but ok.

          I am extremely intelligent.

          Yes, you are!

          • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            You said that communism can’t work because of human nature, thereby implying that everyone everywhere has always been exactly the same, ignorant of the fact that the concept of private property was invented about five thousand years ago in a few isolated places. For hundreds of thousands of years and for the vast majority of people who have ever lived, they never knew anything about private property and probably would have considered the idea absurd (which it is). No private property = communism. If we can say that anything is human nature (nothing actually is, since human nature changes depending on context), it would actually be communism. Capitalism is not only collapsing right now because it’s a terrible idea, it’s collapsing because of its fundamental contempt for human beings and even nature itself.

            • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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              I didn’t say that communism can’t work. I’m just saying people try to fuck it up for their benefit, whatever it is.

              Maybe people will get better over time and be less likely to do that. Really though I think it’s just something we have to account for, by developing robust social systems that can’t easily be abused, not without being caught.

              • relay@lemmygrad.ml
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                1 year ago

                People are self interested yes. Eliminating rent seeking behavior that is enabled by private property makes the social system harder to game for helping themselves at the cost societal good. Communists want to eliminate private property for this reason. Does this mean that all anti social behavior will be eliminated? No, but most crime is committed due to lack of economic opportunity. Politicians not doing what is in the interest of the people that elected them is often due to capitalist funded lobbying firms. Not having private property addresses those problems and other problems that are caused by those problems.

              • BurgerPunk [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                Marxism has an answer to the idea of people getting better. “Human nature” as you see it is a result of material conditions. If we change the material conditions we change “human nature”

              • duderium [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                I didn’t say that communism can’t work. I’m just saying people try to fuck it up for their benefit, whatever it is.

                The same was true of capitalism when it was getting started in rural late medieval England, but here we are.

                Maybe people will get better over time and be less likely to do that. Really though I think it’s just something we have to account for, by developing robust social systems that can’t easily be abused, not without being caught.

                Democracy in every home and workplace (also known as communism) should take care of this.

                “Maybe people will get better over time”—it’s certainly a choice people have. We can kill ourselves with capitalism or build a better world for everyone with communism.

              • very_poggers_gay [they/them]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                People, particularly the wealthy, try to fuck things up for their benefit because capitalism has so deeply engrained in them a sense of rabid and egocentric individualism, and has taught them that having more than others makes them good, and if they have more than others it’s because they’re good.

                The poor are “abusing” social systems because many of those systems lock them into poverty, where they’re forced into a game of economic limbo, which withholds any/all benefits if they earn too much (which is still not enough to live on), or they do things to receive more support than what the state says they are owed with the goal of having an acceptable standard of living, if they can even achieve that.

                Neither of these problems will be solved by people “getting better over time”, and in fact, we are all observing these things getting worse and worse. Reforming social safety nets can maybe provide a solution to the latter problem, if they’re drastic enough. But, imo, communism provides the solution to both.

      • Ram_The_Manparts [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Lmao, I literally read this exact same “argument” from a different user in a different thread five minutes ago.

        You guys really need to come up with some new material.

      • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        The same is not true of implementations of communism. Socialist states at their best implement systems that encourage the natural human drives for cooperation and compassion, and in the two largest cases, China and the Soviet Union, it led to the fastest gains in quality of life in history

        • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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          Socialist states at their best

          And capitalism at its best does not distort the value of everything. Yet the people problem is so endemic that the value of everything is distorted.

            • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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              To look at its best you’d have to look at individual moments. Just like looking at the successes of communism you’d have to look at individual moments, rather than the overall state of the country now. The people problem is endemic everywhere, so instances where things haven’t been twisted are rare.

              • Trudge [Comrade]@lemmygrad.ml
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                1 year ago

                Yes, that’s why I mentioned historic as well. Which country in which period of time would you say best exemplified capitalism at its best?

                1980s social democratic Sweden? 1990 miracle of Han South Korea? Current Singapore?

                • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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                  I don’t really have an opinion of any country being the best example. You’d probably be better off looking at individual transactions to find good examples - Capitalism is all about transactions at the end of the day.

                  An example of things working as they should could be found in microprocessors. ARM design almost all of the processors in our phones, but they don’t actually manufacture them. They license their IP to Qualcomm, Samsung and others who use and modify the designs to create the devices we buy. The end consumer price of the phone is definitely over-inflated, but the supply line transactions for those components work in a novel yet reasonably fair way.

                  Granted, there are many more examples of things not working as they should. That’s because people fuck around and do things they shouldn’t, because it benefits them somehow. Capitalism doesn’t prevent that, but it isn’t the cause of that, people are.

                  • Trudge [Comrade]@lemmygrad.ml
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                    1 year ago

                    Okay, let’s talk about transactions then. You mentioned a good B2B example of a good transaction that benefits business entities that engage in it.

                    Can you give me a good B2C example of a good transaction in capitalist societies that benefits consumers?

                  • ShiningWing@lemmygrad.ml
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                    An example of things working as they should could be found in microprocessors. ARM design almost all of the processors in our phones

                    This is especially hilarious because the whole reason RISC-V has been developing rapidly is because the ARM monopoly isn’t an example of things working as they should, and companies want an alternative

          • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
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            1 year ago

            Just jumping in here to say, look up the concept of ‘commodity fetishism’. The value of everything is distorted because capitalism is commodity producing society. This is explained in the first three or four chapters of Capital Volume I.

      • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        I mean, in the the liberal west used violence to replace comunism with a right wing dictatorship. Yes.

        However that isn’t really a flaw in comunist theory

        • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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          Yes. Basically, any time someone tries to do something nice for everyone and introduce communism, some people or other come along and fuck it all up. Then they call their fucked up monstrosity “communism” to further damage the credibility of any meaningful progress.

          Those people are the same people who fuck up capitalism and distort it for their benefit. Maybe it’s easier for them to do under capitalism, maybe that’s just what they’re used to and they don’t want to change, but if all you do is deal with capitalism as the problem then you’re still going to have a people problem with whatever comes next.

            • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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              You call them capitalists because they were successful at fucking up capitalism.

              • DoiDoi [comrade/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                I think you are missing some necessary historical context to follow along with what they’re saying here. Capitalists (through military, CIA, NATO etc) have routinely engaged in mass killings of communists around the world. One specific instance being the murder of 1 million+ people (communists) in Indonesia between 1965-1966 all organized and funded by the US. There’s a great book about this called The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World that I think everyone who isn’t familiar with the incident should read.

              • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 year ago

                Cna you show me an example of where capitlaism has worked? The system has failed every time it has been tried. It is so bad that being around it is bad for other systems. If the systems they touch always fair it is time to consider why they are so toxic.