It can. In theory.
The theoretical part is the “uncorrupt government” you speak of.
The only way to keep a govt “uncorrupt” as you put it is under pain of literal death. And even then its not foolproof. Some will still be tempted.
If you want a govt that will serve the people while being as incorruptible as possible you have to choose politicians by lottery instead of election. They get called, go serve, then go back to the life they had before. Like 4 years of Jury Duty. Political graspers, climbers, those will always trend towards corruption. Like that old addage, anyone actively seeking political office is unfit to serve in that capacity as their motivations are suspect. Power, authority, etc. All that is only intensified in a system as inconceivably corrupt and broken as ours is.
A bit late to the party
You literally left Reddit because of what capitalism did to it.
Reddit would probably never have existed without capitalism…
A world without capitalism or Reddit. The sheer thought warms my heart. 🥰
Yes because people never communicated over the Internet before Glorious Visionary Entrepreneurs from the Great Private Sector took hold of it and gave us all these Valuable Products, they just sat on their ass wondering what to do with such technology like complete idiots.
I swear free market ideology is the dumbest shit you can possibly believe in, I’d sooner become a fucking Mormon.
Yeah but capitalism also made reddit great, before making it terrible.
There’s a balance in there somewhere. What we got ain’t it tho.
I mean the stages of economic transition have been “fuedalism->capitalism-> socialism” as each one is progressively more efficient and supercedes the previous.
I may be wrong, but I don’t see socialism and capitalism as hard opposites.
I see capitalism and communism are like hard opposites with socialism somewhere in between.
Capitalism is the state controlled by the capital owners with the workers repressed.
Socialism is the state controlled by the workers with the capital owners repressed.
They are literally hard opposites. One is a bourgeoise-state and the other is a proletarian-state.
I learned that “capitalism” is an economic system, not a system of government.
So you could have a socialist state that funds essentials like healthcare and transportation through taxes with a market (capitalist) economy.
Amazed that I had to scroll down this far to read this. Capitalism does not magically create a fair society through the creation of value (which seems to be what its proponents keep saying: investors generating economic activity and wealth). But similarly you could have a socialist economic system, with no real democracy. Which, as we’ve seen, devolves into a corrupt oligarchy. We’ve seemingly lost this perspective in the decades since WWII, but a solid representative parliamentary democracy and separation of powers are the best way to create and maintain a fair society. It requires some other conditions too, like good education, free press, etc. but the core is a system where power is distributed and temporary, depending on democratic processes (elections). This democratic legitimacy is what we should be defending at all costs, imho. It’s not sexy, though.
As opposed to the corrupt oligarchies liberal states are… I guess you just don’t call it corruption when it’s working as intended.
That’s not a socialist state. It’s a capitalist state with welfare. If the political structure of the state itself has not been reworked to put the workers in power what you’re describing is just a state where the bourgeoisie (who control power) have decided to do welfare, usually for their own benefit such as reducing revolutionary energy by providing the workers with concessions (the welfare state). That is social democracy.
You do not have socialism without overthrowing the hierarchy that places the bourgeoisie as the ruling class:
Capitalism = Capitalists in power. Proles repressed.
Socialism = Proletariat in power. Capitalists repressed.
Communism = No more classes, only 1 class because the bourgeoisie have been completely phased out.
This just made China’s system click in my mind. Thanks Awoo
All of this sounds at odds with representative democracy. What political system would you see working with socialism as you describe it?
Socialism is also an economic system.
I learned that “capitalism” is an economic system, not a system of government.
Consider for 3 seconds that what you “learned” about the world is a product of the system that produced it
Capitalism is a system of government, and in capitalist countries, they teach their citizens that capitalism is at at odds with the state and not working in conjunction with it
Capitalism is where everything is owned by an individual
Socialism is where only the means of production are owned by the state, but the individual still has private properties
Communism is where everything is owned by the state
This is not correct, I encourage you to do some more reading about how coats are made if you’d like to understand this better.
best way I’ve seen to tell someone to read capital lmao
:che-smile:
Okay, well, I’ve studied everything from all sorts of marxist tendencies to syndicalism to anarchism, to classical economics, and I think you’re either using terms wrong or have the wrong idea. Can you define your terms or rephrase what you mean?
I apologize if this is too blunt.
So I understand total capitalism as an entirely market driven economy with no government influence
And total communism as an entirely planned and government prescribed economy
And socialism as some of the economy is market driven and some government planned.
Viewing it entirely in economics is incorrect. All of the above can be done under capitalism. The key difference is not what form of economics are employed but which class controls power and puts the resources of the state to use.
The capitalist state is a state where capital owners hold power and use that power to exploit more capital.
The socialist state is a transitionary state in which the workers have seized power and use the state to repress the bourgeoisie and put resources to their own use.
The communist state is what occurs when capitalism is entirely defeated, all nations are socialist, conflict is eliminated and material abundance is achieved, at which point states start to stop existing as the resources within them that are put towards repressing the bourgeoisie through violence are put towards other things when there is only 1 class in society.
no more half measures walter
There is no balance though, the shit-ification that happened to Reddit is a necessary function of capitalism. What we saw as Reddit at its best was, from a capitalist’s perspective, Reddit at its worst. I’m sure you’ve noticed a similar process taking place in lots of other areas as well.
What we saw as Reddit at its best was, from a capitalist’s perspective, Reddit at its worst.
And capitalists will allow this “at its worst” phase in order to capture the market, before squeezing it. This pattern is consistent in many industries.
Reddit was never great lmaoo
It was a pedo networking tool reknowned worldwide for it’s jailbate and non-consensual creepshots. These moderators received awards from admins. Then it got too much attention and got a PR workover, burning a woman CEO at the stake to satiate the gamer-fascists before becoming a bland Atlanticist CIA sockpuppet front of bland corporate posts.
At no point during this entire thing did it ever approach anything comparable to greatness
I meant the platform more than the company.
It’s my favorite format for social media… that’s why I’m on lemmy.
communism made lemmy so where does that leave us
I guess ‘a lot of free spare time in a socialized copitalism’ made lemmy.
activity = (forProfit) ? “Work” : “Hobby”
Are you saying you used Reddit for its jailbait etc subs? Cause Reddit was much more than it’s jailbait subs.
…
Do you have a point?
Are you really trying to do that?
It was good when it had only a few hundred thousand users, but obviously you weren’t there.
no that was when it was a jailbait/creepshots/libertarian/“hacker” site. Still not good. Still pedo and soy.
I left Reddit because of short term decisions to squeeze money out of consumers to look good in an IPO, instead of having an actual long term thought.
Does Long therm thought make money in the short term?
So, capitalism?
You do realize that the incentives of capitalism necessitate that right?
Tell me how you were harmed by capitalism, without telling me you were harmed by capitalism.
You left reddit because of capitalism. What is an IPO? It is the launch of a business onto the public capital markets to release equity and to enrich its existing owners. What do all businesses on the markets operate on? Short term growth for the next financial quarter optimised to enrich their investors (shareholders) in the shortest amount of time possible.
Capitalism consistently destroys everything you enjoy and yet you defend it relentlessly while asking for long term thinking, which is not a feature of capitalism. When you wake up to this reality you might actually start to question “maybe the socialists are right about a few things” and spend some time with us learning what we actually believe.
But you know what happened after Reddit turned to crap? Because no one actually has to use Reddit, because Reddit is just a bunch of bored nerds and Reddit is just a bunch of forums, eventually someone realised: “wait a minute, I can code this in a few weeks and make it way less crappy than most social media. And maybe if I make it all open, a whole ecosystem of social networks can grow together”. And when Reddit turned to crap, “the invisible hand” acted and people slowly started to migrate over to lemmy and other social media and now reddit is just a bunch of bots
A few weeks?
Mate please check my profile. I have been here for 3 fucking years. Lemmy did not magically appear in a few weeks that is incredibly offensive to the sheer amount of work my comrades have put in to make it.
And calling their work “the invisible hand of the market” is also nonsensical. Because the forces driving its creation, and the rest of us communists that support it, are the destruction of the markets. There is not one single jot of profit motive involved in Lemmy. You seem to recognise some of the problems of capitalism but consistently come to incorrect conclusions about everything because you have spent no time whatsoever getting a real political education and understanding the forces at work.
And you fail to ask yourself what happens to your “market forces” alternative to reddit. In any scenario where the market is responsible for replacing reddit the market will also bring it back to exactly the same point of self-destruction through pursuit of capital. You will hurt yourself all over again.
Thank you for proving the theory.
Why’d you just repeat @Awoo@hexbear.nets statement?
The problem there is the same as that of idealised communism, you’re relying on humans to do what they typically don’t do. Humans will take for themselves at the cost of communities if they feel they can get away with it, including the ones in government.
“Uncorupted Goverment” LoL when did that last happen under Capitalism?
You’ll be happy to know there’s a social media site just like lemmy run by capitalists. It has all the benefits that capitalist ownership provides.
Socialists don’t hate markets, they hate workers not having any power or democratic choice in how they interact in the market.
Workers owning the means of production just means the workers are doing the same work but they are in ownership of the factory and the profits. They will still sell the products they produce in a marketplace.
I hate markets
Do they actually trust their coworkers to run the company without tanking it almost immediatly? Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks without fucking something up, let alone actually having input on how the business is run.
Some of the workers may be managerial. But the managerial workers don’t own a disproportionate amount of the company, and they’re not considered the “superior” of any other workers.
@lightnsfw @dingus
You really think the people currently running your company are any different from those other coworkers?I think they have education related to the running of a large company whereas most of my coworkers barely made it through their IT certs and have some of the stupidest takes regarding how things should be done I’ve ever heard in my life.
Education related to the exploitation of their workers
Ftfy
Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks without fucking something up
This is a problem with the company you work for, not your coworkers. I’m sure if they were paid more, were given more agency, and received better training, they’d be better elployees
No, they’re just idiots. Myself and others have had the same training and responsibilities and do fine. It’s not that difficult of a job.
Most of my coworkers can barely make it through their own tasks
I guess you haven’t met many CEOs, then.
I trust my average coworker much more than the average CEO.
Highly depends on your coworkers. My current coworkers? Yeah they’re great, we have two electrical engineers on my team, buncha geniuses.
My last job? Oh man I wouldn’t trust those guys as far as I could throw em.
How would that even work.
It’s very very easy to do something like have a capitalist system where business and the rich are taxed. But you aren’t on about that.
You could divide everything up today. But with change and new business ideas that system will never work. You think the people would want to invest in new automation, new ways of working, new industries. If it means growth and job losses? No never. Just look at the western car industry, or any big government owned industry. People don’t want change, even things like running a factory 24/7 instead of a nice 9-5 is difficult.
Then Japan’s comes along and does all this new stuff and puts most of the western workforce out of business.
Under capitalism automation benefits the owners (on a small timescale, they worsen the totroptf) under socialism time saving just means the population has more time.
That is why workers currently push against automation under capitalism.
Not a market socialist though, just a socialist.
Are people investing in new automation currently because I’ve been using the same crappy tools for over 10 years now and they keep getting crappier.
Oh yeah we automate creative work now, the one thing that could still be a cheap hobby.
If worker-owned workplaces still operate within a market, there will still be pressure to compete with other companies. People can still come up with new ideas to compete and change can still happen.
I, a socialist, hate markets. They are simplistic and functional artifacts of the available way to pass information.
So, you would never trade with someone else something you have for something they have? You want to be entirely self sufficient?
If this isn’t true, why do think markets serve no purpose?
Do you really think all exchange of goods is a market?
Yes. Do you not?
So Christmas gifts are a market?
Cool, what is your preferred replacement and does everyone in this thread agree? You have managed to continue criticism but not offer a replacement yet again.
The ole can have criticism without perfect solutions response. Cool, how useless and pointless of you.
I’m confused, isn’t criticism without alternatives itself useless and pointless?
No, it broadens and deepens understanding.
Alternatives come from that understanding. Criticism is the fundamental step towards alternatives.
No, it broadens and deepens understanding
How exactly do you come to that conclusion?
Edit: “Thing bad” doesn’t broaden or deepen anything. “Thing has specific shortcomings which aren’t present in specific alternative to thing” is a useful criticism. Criticism without alternatives is just called complaining.
Boot-flavored capitalist Kool-Aid must be so refreshing during such a torrid summer
“Uncorrupt government”
This is as delusional as anyone can get.
A wise man said it all once: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Oh so pragmatism would have that we abandon any hope at equality and we should accept to be slaves for the rich?
I don’t get why the only solution is to trust others to take care of you. I have some bad news: No one gives a crap about you. The sooner you realize this the better. You should be responsible and learn more on how to manage your assets, investments, money, etc. In my opinion, this idea that we have to keep trusting the elite to run our lives is ridiculous. People should be more responsible and manage their money in an independent way.
I like cryptocurrency for this, because I have full control on my money and no government will be able to rehypothecate my money for whatever risky nonsense they’re doing. But you don’t have to be like me or like cryptocurrency. All you have to do is start thinking of a solution that works for you. You can start saving now, diversify in the world economy, and take risks that are appropriate to you, and prepare for your retirement. No need to act as if you have zero power when there are enough tools to give you power over your own money.
I’m the kind of guy that takes all my matters into my own hands, because I trust no one. I even run my email server, my cloud, my VPNs, my everything. I don’t need anyone, company or government, and I have calculated risks in all my endeavour. I can migrate whenever I want. I believe everyone in the world should strive towards that. But we’re living in a centralized world where google alone can just block almost everyone’s life. I’m not in that club.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
~Carl Sagan
You will always have people taking care of you, from the clothes you wear to the things you eat. There is no escape.
Not even by living on your own are you not using other peoples knowledge or products.
I don’t get why the only solution is to trust others to take care of you.
Society is built around people “taking care” of you in different ways. Like being a doctor, a teacher, an employer, the police, etc.
That’s why we grew out of being caveman, because we’re built to be cooperative with each other in our DNA. If we didn’t, we’d either be small tribes or individuals and probably die out really fast. It’s because we need others to rely on or we’d literally be extinct.
I don’t think you understand what trust means. There’s almost zero trust with doctors, teachers, etc. You don’t trust doctors out of the blue, but you build an informed decision from the reviews of such a doctor by seeing if they’re good at what they do. This hunky dory delusion that everyone trusts everyone is not real. The doctor, teacher, etc, will be punished if they misbehave and that’s what the free market is about. Keeping them in line as a kind of incentive to behave well.
On the other hand, what you guys want to do is hand all your wealth and power to elites that don’t give two craps about you, have zero consequences in the case they mess up, and have zero incentive to do the right thing (as opposed to make it look like they’re doing the right thing), and then expect them to not steal your hard earned money, and then cry about it when they do it. Well, guess what? I don’t trust the fed has my best interest when they printed 80% of the US dollar money supply over the last 3 years. Why should I store my wealth in USD? Now you go ahead and trust them and do that, and keep complaining on lemmy that the rich are getting richer (NOT because of the printing) when someone tries to talk sense into you. I guess everyone will pay for their decisions after all.
Doctors are doctors because they passed their doctorate.
Someone more knowledgeable than you set the minimum bar of skill they require to practice their craft.
You don’t get to make trust based decisions on doctors because you don’t know what a good doctor looks like. You lack the knowledge to do so. Unless you are yourself a doctor.
I have even less trust in corporations than the government.
If you let those, they would bring slavery back if they could. Since that improves their bottom line.
Dude everything you said is wrong… doctors don’t have doctorates… PhDs do. Also you didn’t invalidate my point, which is that trust isn’t blind. You sound like a teenager. When you grow up you’ll understand what accountability means and how governments have none.
So not only do you have no idea what you are talking about, you also fall back to ad hominem fallacies because you are unable to debunk the stuff I said.
Your knowledge is lacking, so your opinion on who you can trust is worthless.
You sound like a science-denying anti-vaxxer.
Capitalism is not “when you have markets.” I totally agree that it’s important to have well regulated markets. But capitalism perverts democracy with bribery and lobbying. Democratic Socialism is when you have a democratic government and a democratic economy.
There’s only one kind of democratic economy and we already have a word for it - it’s socialism. If the means of production isn’t owned by the workers it’s not democratic. It’s not socialist.
Keep in mind, you are posting this to lemmy.ml, so I don’t know what you expected… Maybe something like this would be better recieved on lemmy.world or on your account’s instance.
Are people on lemmy.world more dense and unrealistic?
yes
The bias is justified. The left is correct. Markets don’t create wealth without necessarily simultaneously creating poverty
For more information, research “surplus army of labor”, “primitive accumulation”, and “accumulation by dispossession”.
Primitive accumulation is a bad term. It works if you’ve read the theory behind it, but otherwise it sounds like someone saving up a bunch of money then starting a successful business compared to what it is which was colonial genocide, enclosure of the commons, and mass starvation as people were ripped from agricultural labor and cast into the factories and mines to work for feudal lords turned industrial capitalists.
I agree but in this context I’m literally telling them to read about it.
I was just summarizing for the people who are too lazy to go read anything and will just stop here
Well that’s just bullshit. Markets have brought more people out of poverty than anything.
Capitalism literally requires poverty to even function.
Lib - “Markets make everything cheaper, which is good.”
Leftist - “But if there is a labor market, won’t that make labor cheaper?”
Lib - “Yes, and that is good.”
Leftist - “How is that good?”
Lib - “It leads to more profits.”
Leftist - “But why is it good to have more profits?”
Lib - “Because a good country is when corporations make profits, and the more profits the corporations make, the gooder the country is.”
Kid: “Mommy, what’s a strawman?”
Mother: “Take a look a this post here. See how they speak for both sides of the argument?”
Kid: “Yes, they’re arguing with themselves.”
Mother: “Exactly, and they can make their opponent say what they want.”
Kid: “That seems like an easy way to make your argument look good”
Mother: "Yes. It’s like fighting someone who can’t put up any resistance. They could be made of straw. A strawman. "
Kid: “Oh, I see.”
You didn’t engage with their argument, but good try nonetheless. It’s nice to see you cling to a fallacy rather than engage in good-faith discussion of an argument clearly illustrated for you to relate to.
Love to spend insane amounts of resources on creating a phone that has the same tech and capabilities as all the other phones, but I can’t just get access to their research and they can’t just get access to mine.
Love to spend insane amount of time working up a cure to covid, but I can’t share my research with others and they can’t share it with me, yay this is awesome.
Love to spend insane amount of resources working out how to make people want to buy a sugary drink and then spend even more to make them want to buy my drink specifically.
Love to build empty houses and love to create 1.21 times more food than we need.
Love to do all this as the world is burning and people are starving.
Capitalism is the most efficient distribution of resources
Did you know that China is responsible for 75% of the global poverty reduction over the last 40 years?
Over the past 40 years, the number of people in China with incomes below $1.90 per day – the International Poverty Line as defined by the World Bank to track global extreme poverty– has fallen by close to 800 million. With this, China has contributed close to three-quarters of the global reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty. At China’s current national poverty line, the number of poor fell by 770 million over the same period.
Do you know how China got such a huge poverty by the 1980s? Do you know how China got the wealth to start impacting it’s poverty?
Hint: the CCP took power in 1949. The Maoist era ended 30 years later, and massive economic liberalisation reforms started.
China today is a world trade powerhouse governed by an elite class (The CCP) with the proles given just enough to keep them where they are. It’s lifted them out of poverty, but it is the shining example of a totalitarian capitist state. If anybody thinks the proletariat have power in China, and it is therefore a socialist state…or that it’s classless with no elite and a communist state… well… You need to talk to some Chinese people.
Glad to see Liberals busting out the good old “it’s not real socialism!!111!!” to cope with China’s success :’)
To paraphrase this cool guy named Ernesto: Its not our fault reality is marxist
I wish it was just “towards the left”.
I’m very much on the left socially and left of center economically, but even I feel like every other comments section on here reads like some insane tankie commune.
It’s always a weird flavor, too. Like “I’m communist but only if I get all the wealth. Also I hate minorities but love the LGBT.”
For some reason it just makes me think of Dennis on 30 Rock. “Fiscally liberal, socially conservative.”
I’m communist but only if I get all the wealth. Also I hate minorities but love the LGBT
Where did you see that?
It’s a bit of hyperbole, but Lemmygrad and Hexbear aren’t far off.
A lot of their users believe that Russia is a communist state, not some crony capitalist society that would make Bezos blush. They also seem to really love Trump for some reason.
No where. “Centrists” love strawmen.
Wtf is an uncorrupt government?
“Military Intelligence”
Two words combined that can’t make sense 🎵
All types of governance and economic systems are susceptible to despotism.
It takes a constantly educated and involved population to fight it.
Serious question. Is it possible to do this with very large populations? It seems like it might get inherently more complicated with several tiers of government (federal, state, county, city, etc…)
It definitely feels like Dunbar’s Number is a gate to keep this from being effective in large communities.
If we can’t view more than a finite amount of other humans as being “real,” how do we begin to get massively large groups of humans to care for one another? This is a question I don’t have the answer to.
Because you don’t have to view them as “real” to know that caring for others can make things better for you too.
I don’t think the issue is the being able to care, the issue is the arseholes turning groups against each other for their own gain.
“I only do the right thing because God will punish me if I don’t” vibes lol.
Why can’t you just operate from a principle of making things better for everyone?
The amount of left wing folks on some of the more extreme instances bashing the most left wing people in the American Democratic party because they’re not complete socialist idiologes is just wild. Like I want to see a major shift towards some form of democratic socialism in America and think we definitely need real change in that direction, but the hatred for elected officials closest to your views just because they aren’t extreme enough for you is silly.
I don’t understand why they feel the need to attack the left win branch of the DNC when Joe Manchin equists. When the Republican party exists. Focus efforts on some positive change and getting people you want in office instead of trying to tear down what should be an ally. Make the people you think aren’t extreme left enough the conservatives of a new wave. The defeatest attitude that just criticizes the closest thing they have to what they want is just silly.
Other than a violent change of the guard/revolution. It’s not going to be an instant process. You have to accept small progress where you can get it.
