It's a meme
this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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You can't call an idea with 200 years of history and hundreds of books on the subject "half-baked" without explaining what about it you think is unfeasible. Either you have never actually talked to a socialist, or you've simply never listened.
So, a few questions:
The factory has owners. It would be unfair to not compensate them for their capital investment. You are describing a situation where you disallow private enterprise, but all systems describing this type of agreement to date have resulted in terrible outcomes. It will destroy competition. I am reminded of hearing about my brother’s visit to the Soviet Union when he was younger. He went with his group to an ice cream shop and asked what flavors they have and they said vanilla. As in, this limits options and provides a shitty quality of life. It also leads to issues where people who are able to provide a high value to society are not rewarded at a higher rate than a lazy or dumb person. The incentive is gone. These are issues that no text has reconciled. Even Plato’s dreamed Utopia, he knew that such a thing only would work if you brainwashed people generationally to value the idea of communal ownership. He basically left it at the leaders not being able to own things, but having all that they need while other classes under them could still own things. In essence, his utopian society was totally unrealistic in any meaningful timeline and still formed different classes of people.
It destroys society to take away people’s possessions because we built a system where property ownership is a central component. Having possessions is such a basic human construct that your are living in a pipe dream if you feel that you can remove that. The idea that people would share with one another and not get what they are worth to society is salient in describing why socialism as a whole crumbles. You can have socialized policies, but destroying the whole economic system doesn’t work. See my reply later in this thread for examples of real incremental changes.
Fuck the owners.
Prove it.
What competition?
What value does Donald Trump bring to society?
Prove it.
Prove it.
You mean completely unlike people brainwashed into believiing "capitalism gud?"
Stop conflating simple possessions with private property, genius.
Socialism seems perfectly alive and kicking to me - despite the uncountable amounts of treasure spent violently crushing it.
FTFY.
Fine
The USSR, Cuba, PRC is better but for some reason they are very authoritarian.
Granted there are many industries that don't have good competition, but the vast majority do. Look at clothes makers, construction, pharma.
He bought real estate where there was more demand than people expected, and took advantage of that. There was no apartments in the empty plot before Trump Tower, now there is and people want them.
The USSR did have great amounts of innovation in the beginning, but once you get to a certain point, it just gets pretty much impossible. Look at the second person's answer.
While it is dumb to say that there are no texts to reconcile these issues. It is crazy how the USSR didn't implement any solution except rewarding innovation to drive innovation. I'd say that is enough evidence to say with confidence that there are no existing solutions to the mentioned issues.
Sure there is some brainwashing in the right where they think capitalism is great in and of itself. I think that people also recognize that capitalism needs some good amount of regulation that would curb the failures there. It's not perfect as it exists now, but it sure as shit better than any socialist or communist nation.
If you're gonna make enemies with the most powerful nation in the world, that usually happens. The USA saw a threat to their influence and took action.
You're going to have to name examples where the working class actually controls the means of production - it can't actually be socialism otherwise, can it?
Funny... it's almost as if capitalists talk about "competition" a lot to justify their parasitic existence - but in reality they absolutely seem to hate the idea of competition. Must be purely my imagination, though.
In other words... nothing. Do you have any real examples of capitalists being anything other than parasites?
The USSR allowed the innovation that suited the CPSU's interests. In the exact same way, the US only allows innovation that suits the interests of the ruling elites - that's why you can buy an expensive new smartphone every month but you can't buy a cheap lightbulb that will last you thirty years that is based on hundred-year-old technology. Humans do not require "incentivization* to innovate - in fact, capitalism's need to repress innovation that doesn't suit the interests of a capitalist elite is thoroughly understood.
See the answer above.
The myth that you can "fix" capitalism through regulation is pure propaganda.
Nope. There are lots of people in the US that sure wishes they could have Cuba's healthcare system - and Cuba's healthcare system isn't even socialist nor communist.
The US is "most" at a lot of things - none of them are worth bragging about. And it has utterly failed to crush socialism even within it's own borders, never mind anywhere else in the world.
Anti-capitalism is not necessarily socialism or communism. Anti-capitalism does not necessarily imply supporting the USSR's particular policies. The mistake that the USSR and others made was not using market mechanisms when they make sense.
Trump participates in the systematic denial of people's equal claim to land and natural resources with his real estate empire. Land and natural resources should be commonly-owned.
There is no reason innovation can't be rewarded under postcapitalism