Everyone loves candles. Some guys are just pointlessly insecure about candles being a “girl thing”. I’ve also known girls that love the smell of gasoline. People be what they are regardless of their lower bits.
While I generally agree, the project needs to be big enough that somebody looks through the code. I would argue Microsoft word is safer than some l small abandoned open source software from some Russian developer
As someone who works in a call center, screw that last person on here. So sorry you hate the automated system. Sorry you had to wait on hold. They can’t keep enough of us employed because y’all are fucking mean and no one wants to be abused for $15/hr.
Er, I mean, Thank you for calling, sorry about your wait!
Don’t you think you could both be victims? Waiting for ages listening to a 13 second loop of music interspersed with “your call is important to us” might make people a bit more angry?
You should be mad at the people who gain financially from it, and could make it better for you and the customers, but might have to skip that third yacht for little Timmy.
You are making the extraordinary claim, that despite socialism being used throughout the world, it simply doesn’t work. Therefore the onus of proof is on you. So, can you please describe why socialism doesn’t work?
China, Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos are all examples of socialist countries today. China alone lifted over 800 million people out of poverty in recent decades. Compare that to the capitalist paradise in India.
Not really, Nordic model is capitalist because the capital owning class owns the means of production and holds power in society. Nordic model has generous social services and a social safety net, but that of itself does not make it socialist. A socialist model implies that it is the working class that holds power and that means of production are under a mix of public and cooperative ownership. This is the model that all western countries fight against.
You previously mentioned China. And China do have big companies like NetEase. Are such companies under a mix of public and cooperative ownershiprs? How it differs from IKEA? Not arguing, just trying to understand.
The difference with China is that capitalists don’t run the government and all the core economy is publicly owned. I can highly recommend this book discussing why China is fundamentally socialist
I find that comparing how China and India developed after WW2 is illustrative as well. India took the capitalist route while China remained socialist, and the difference today is stark. India has incredible amount of poverty and the situation continues to get worse, meanwhile China is responsible for the biggest poverty elimination programs in the world. The fact that China is developing differently from capitalist nations is a good indicator that something different is happening there.
I’m learning the material and I have a few questions.
You say that in China the capitalists do not run the government. But how do you know that they do not have their own business or are not affiliated with the capitalists? For example, in my country there is a law that does not allow deputies and the president to have their own business. But it does not work, these people simply register the business for other persons and, in fact, continue to own the business.
How China got out of poverty is amazing. But I also heard that the workers were very heavily exploited. This is one of the reasons why the US moved production there. And even now, workers in China are paid little despite the fact that the country is rich. How can this happen in a socialist country that should protect the interests of the workers?
As for the Nordic model, you said that it is not exactly socialism: it is capitalism, but with tough rules for business and good social programs. So they more centric then leftists really. And I don’t argue with that. But I don’t understand why if the capitalists run the country, they simply won’t loosen laws to make business easier and reduce social programs? How has this system not collapsed yet?
Sorry if some of the questions seem stupid, I’m just trying to how this all works.
As I pointed out, we can look at the tangible outcomes in China such as poverty reduction programs that simply aren’t happening in countries where capitalists are in charge. So, we don’t have to take their word for it, we can just look at the outcomes.
It’s also worth noting that 87.6% of young Chinese identify with Marxism, and the party has 95 million members. People in China learn about communism in school, and I think it’s reasonable to assume that a country where vast majority of young people identify as Marxist, would have a genuine communist government in charge.
Another indicator we can look at is that China doesn’t suffer from regular crashes seen under capitalism. An inherent contradiction within capitalism is that the capitalists always want to cut pay for their employees to minimize the costs, while they also require consumers with enough spending power to consume the commodities they produce. This is why capitalism results in regular economic crashes when wages fall below the point where consumption can keep up with the rate of commodity production. At that point you end up with overproduction and a crash. If China was capitalist then it should be experiencing these kinds of crashes regularly just like actual capitalist nations are in the Western world.
Working conditions and wages in China are improving rapidly. Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it’s the most populous country on the planet. Social mobility in China is actually higher than it is in US.
Finally, 90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. This sort of home ownership is not seen in capitalist countries where housing has become a commodity.
The reason capitalists run the countries even under Nodric model is because they are able to use their wealth to create disproportionate influence on the society. Capitalists own the media, provide funding for political campaigns, and so on. This allows capitalists to run a propaganda campaign against the population of the country. A couple of excellent books on the subject are Inventing Reality and Manufacturing Consent.
And in fact, we do see this system erode over time. Here’s a discussion of what happened in Sweden since the 70s and how capitalists have been eroding social programs there jacobin.com/…/sweden-1970s-democratic-socialism-o…
I think if the west ever becomes socialist then the type of socialism we’ll see will necessarily be rooted in western culture and it’s going to be its own unique flavor. Even China says that their system is a product of their own conditions and history, it’s not a model that can be franchised to other countries directly. And Chinese model is far from perfect, so it’s worth looking at both the good and the bad to learn and improve upon what works there while avoiding the negative aspects.
Hilarious how the same people who do hand wringing about paying to ensure that everybody has their needs met go to work and hand over most of the value they create through their labour to their employer. 🤡
if I recall correctly many adblockers (including uBlock origin) stopped working a while ago on chrome when chrome implemented manifest v3.0 for extensions
Hasn’t happened quite yet. uBlock Origin on Chrome is much less robust than on Firefox, that’s for sure. Manifest 3 is finishing it’s rollout this month and we’re looking at not being able to functionally use adblockers in Chrome very soon.
Ah okay, thanks for the info. I don’t use chrome myself and haven’t been reading up on the whole ordeal recently so my information was a bit outdated lol
Do not let confirmation bias and nationalism control your view. I could say “America hasn’t done anything bad, it’s all Russian propaganda, I currently live here and I’m doing just fine.” We both know that people suffer everywhere.
The general statement I made was not about what you experienced, it was about the attroticities that were committed by the government and leading parties. You could even consider Stalin alone and outweigh everything good it ever did. His lowball kill count through deliberate pillaging of his own populace (farmers), selective starvation to kill off groups he did not favor, and planned genocides (yes, plural) against the USSR’s own populace beats Hitler himself. And it’s not even close.
But let’s look at more recent occurrences, those you likely heard about yourself. Let’s also ignore the cold war, a national dick measuring contest and dumb all around. Between multiple proxy wars in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and Vietnam, they put all their eggs in one basket as they literally always have: war. The USSR entirely sacrificed their domestic production, research, and innovation for their people to put it towards killing others. Their entire economy stagnated and collapsed because they couldn’t support their population. And, as always, the people rebelled and won.
I linked you literal scientific studies showing that communism greatly improved life in tangible material terms, and that life got dramatically worse after USSR dissolved. I also provided surveys showing what people who lived under both systems have to say. You on the other hand, just spewed absolute nonsense that’s not actually backed by facts.
Also, nobody rebelled against USSR, vast majority of people were against the dissolution, and nobody won. Over 7 million people died and the standard of living dropped dramatically after.
You are either an ignoramus or a liar. You should be deeply ashamed of yourself in either case.
Lmao, glad I wasted I wasted my time on you. Kinda hard to lie about proven genocides. You do not get to determine what is fact. The science fact is literally “millions and millions of people died.”
The science fact is that you’re a lying scumbag. If this “genocide” you refer to is the famine in Ukraine then you should learn the actual facts, which of course being a piece of human garbage I doubt you care about.
During the 1932 Holodomor Famine, the USSR sent aid to affected regions in an attempt to alleviate the famine. According to Mark Tauger in his article, The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933:
While the leadership did not stop exports, they did try to alleviate the famine. A 25 February 1933 Central Committee decree allotted seed loans of 320,000 tons to Ukraine and 240,000 tons to the northern Caucasus. Seed loans were also made to the Lower Volga and may have been made to other regions as well. Kul’chyts’kyy cites Ukrainian party archives showing that total aid to Ukraine by April 1933 actually exceeded 560,000 tons, including more than 80,000 tons of food
Some bring up massive grain exports during the famine to show that the Soviet Union exported food while Ukraine starved. This is fallacious for a number of reasons, but most importantly of all the amount of aid that was sent to Ukraine alone actually exceeded the amount that was exported at the time.
Aid to Ukraine alone was 60 percent greater than the amount exported during the same period. Total aid to famine regions was more than double exports for the first half of 1933.
According to Tauger, the reason why more aid was not provided was because of the low harvest
It appears to have been another consequence of the low 1932 harvest that more aid was not provided: After the low 1931, 1934, and 1936 harvests procured grain was transferred back to peasants at the expense of exports.
Tauger is not a communist, and ultimately this specific article takes the view that the low harvest was caused by collectivization (he factors in the natural causes of the famine in later articles, based on how he completely neglects to mention weather in this article at all its clear that his position shifted over the years). However, its interesting to see that the Soviets really did try to alleviate the famine as best as they could.
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