The Democracy of the founding fathers was Greek Democracy, predicated upon a slave society, and restricted to only the elite. This is the society we live in today, even with our reforms towards direct representation. The system is inherently biased towards the election of elites and against the representation of the masses. Hamilton called it “faction” when the working class got together and demanded better conditions, and mechanisms were built in (which still exist to this day) that serve to ensure the continued dominance of the elite over the masses. The suffering of the many is intentional. The opulence of the wealthy is also. This is the intended outcome.
If a person would rather allow land to go fallow purely because of profit incentive, and that fallow land will result in the suffering of others, the only moral thing to do is dispossess them of that land. They weren’t using it anyway apparently, in this hypothetical.
And give it to who? Who’s going to farm that land when they’re not allowed to make a profit from it? It’s not easy work.
Maybe some of the millions of people who are currently unable to even afford adequate food for themselves because of the profiteering of these very landholders, who engage in such sabotage as mass slaughter and burial of animals to prevent price drops. You know, profits are after wages, right? Profits aren’t wages. You only make profits after you pay wages and costs. So… you pay wages.
When you place economic decisions from a profit driven one into the hands of the politician, you get just as perverse incentives. What’s even worse is that the government cannot fail so the system just gets progressively worse until the entire system collapses. I’m good with a liberal system as is with some moderate reforms to account for externalities.
I will just copy and paste part of my comment that I made to another, because your final argument is the same.
This is exactly why the dismantling of capitalism in a post authoritarian world has so far always resulted in starvation. You have no sufficient answer to this question that addresses actual human behavior. It inevitably results in forced labor and oppression in the name of humanity.
Lmaoo. Mass starvation happens in this world under capitalism The Israelis are purposefully inflicting it upon Palestinians. The US is purposefully attempting to inflict it upon Cuba. So when starvation is the intended outcome, it’s okay? But when it is an accidental consequence of industrializing a nation of uneducated peasants with a less than 30 year life expectancy, and is followed by decades of life expectancy increases and increases in quality of life and equality of rights, that’s not okay?
I get it, suffering is okay if it’s the status quo, but if it happens in service of doing better, that’s not okay, so we should just be happy with the status quo, where the vast majority suffer daily indignities and violences, and are forced into exploitation by coercive structures.
You benefit from the current system, so the suffering of the many NOW is less real to you than the potential suffering of yourself in a situation that when enacted had objectively raised the quality of life for the vast majority of people who live in the societies where it was enacted, by all objective measures. Is that it?
I bet you are thinking of the great leap backwards, in which tens of millions died of hunger due to that little accident in judgment, all the while Mao kept insisting that the uneducated peasants on the brink of starvation were hiding all their surpluses from the state.
But that’s not the only example. The Holodomor comes to mind, the artificial result of Soviet rule in Ukraine, where millions died of starvation and the main authoritarian government pushing for the collection of non-existent “surpluses” apparently hidden by the starving peasants. Or the North Korean famines, explained perfectly in this video by asianometry.
North Korea/South Korea is an interesting case study, where after the war the North found itself near the two biggest communist powers and still managed to struggle to get basic products like food, while South Korea, an ocean away from their main ally and on terrible terms with all local powers (still hated Japan and at war with China) still managed to rebuild and, since the end of the dictatorship, managed to grow an impressively big economy.
That’s an objectively false read on the holodomor and can be easily verified by simply reading the first hand sources from the time, such as the letters from Stalin where he urged the Ukrainian SSR that the Russian SSR believed that the grain shortage was far worse than they were admitting, or the one where he sent massive food aid. Or that there were a class of people who in order to attempt to maintain their privilege and position in society were actively destroying grain.
You know what also gets left out in that conversation, is that the western power had made a unified pact that no one would accept ANYTHING from the USSR as payment for industrial products except grain. Actually, first it was grain, and lumber, but when they realized that grain shortages were coming to the USSR, they restricted it to grain only, as an attempt to prevent the industrialization of the USSR.
North Korea /South Korea is an interesting one. But, I would like to know where you’re getting your information, because despite 98% of all buildings in the north being bombed by the US (we dropped more bombs on Korea than were dropped in all of WWII), the North was more developed until the 80s.
It’s also funny, how the country the US sided with was a military dictatorship for decades, while the north had human rights exceeding those present in the US, including the right to food, shelter, and education, and despite being blockaded by the western world, STILL managed to outdevelop the South who was backed by the US (on the order of billions a year for multiple decades straight).
I bet you don’t know that their nuclear program was a direct result of the Axis of Evil speech by Bush, did you? They didn’t have one before that, and if they hadn’t started one then, they’d have ended up like the other two countries in the “Axis of Evil”. It’s funny how the Axis of Evil was two countries that hate each other and one on the opposite side of the world, huh?
I didn’t say it was an intentional policy by the USSR or Stalin, but that, in the end, the famine was artificially caused by the reckless policies of the USSR. It’s not a coincidence that it happened just after the first five year plan was implemented in the whole USSR and the famine propagated throughout the whole union.
Please provide sources, I couldn’t find any. Also, talking about the “western powers” before WW2 is just an historical inaccuracy. In the 1930s the soviet union did indeed export large quantities of grain to pay for heavy machinery, but afaik there was no coercion in this. Among other trade commodities exported by the USSR there were oil, timber, furs, minerals and other raw materials, which were traded primarily with Britain and Nazi Germany (culminating in 1940 with the German-Soviet commercial agreement)
What information? That the SK economy is doing a lot better than the NK one? By the way, while NK was cut off from western trade and western aid, it did have full access to the other communist and third world countries, including China and the USSR, which sent significant aids after the end of the war to help reconstruction, canceled or postponed their debts and gave lots of money and equipment. On the other hand SK was also heavily propped up by the US and at the same time was cut off from communist trade and aid. The USSR recognized SK only in 1990, before collapsing and China only did so later in the 90s, with trade happening some time before that in the 80s.
And in all of this I’m not saying that the US were always right in their actions or judgement, or that their form of rabid capitalism is the ideal economic policy, far from it. But from there to say that communism is great or even the answer to societal problems is really misguided. Communism as predicated by communist countries wasn’t really that great. Also it always regressed to some form of authoritarianism.
Which countries do you think did to do communism really well and should be an inspiration for other countries to follow?
If we look at the material conditions of people living in what became communist countries before and after revolution, every single one has been a success. Life expectancy in pre-soviet Russia was under 30. Similar in pre-CPC China. Hell, even NK under its blockade as a tiny country has increased the life expectancy of its citizens by over 20 years. The average working hours in Russia were more than cut in half, and wages more than quadrupled. Wages in China have quadrupled in just my lifetime. At the time of the revolution Russia had one of the least educated populations in the world, and now have one of the highest, even decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Hell, to this day there are still more women as a percentage in science than in my own country.
China was by definition the poorest country in the world at the time of its revolution, and now it is legitimately the number 2 superpower, and outputs more STEM grade a year than any other country. There is not a single objective metric by which you can measure either country that would reveal anything other than a success, and not only a success, a massive success.
If you’re genuinely interested in learning what the USSR was allowed by capitalist powers to export, the soviet archives are exceptional, but I can also see if I can find a video or something for you, no promises, I read most of my information.
You also misread, my post said that NK was more developed than SK until the 80s, not that it’s economy is doing well now. It’s been under a brutal embargo for decades after that Axis of Evil speech, but still somehow has life expectancy trending up, which would be definitionally impossible if things were half as bad there as my news says.
I definitively live under authoritarianism capitalism. Maybe you don’t notice it because you have some privileges I don’t, whether that be your race or class, but I do. I am harassed every time I see a policeman. I’ve been pulled over and held at gunpoint because I looked like some other brown person. I’ve seen my friends houses raided and families harassed because they dared to report police brutality. I’ve been held in a chokehold by the police until I passed out for the crime of playing Pokémon go after dark and refusing to provide my ID. I have had friends murdered for being brown in public, and other friends who were beaten for the same. Thousands of people are in jail without being charged as we speak.
I think the obsession many westerners have with “authoritarianism” is extremely telling of their privilege. We live in authoritarianism capitalism. Authority exists, and currently it is primarily used to oppress the working class and minorities. It will continue to exist, and just because you are in a position of privilege doesn’t mean that hundreds of thousands if not millions of others do not suffer nearly daily abuses at the hands of the system, just within the U.S, but if we include the rest it is billions every single day.
The US the HIGHEST PRISON POPULATION IN KNOWN HISTORY, BOTH AS A PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION AND AS RAW NUMBERS.
What myself and other people want is that authority to be vested in service of the people, rather than in service of capital. We want a government that, instead of restricting the rights of their people or encouraging abuses of minorities, uses it’s power to oppress the oppressors. So put the Walton kids in prison, and return their ill gotten goods to the people. They deserve it, genuinely, so do many many other horrifically sick people who predate on the working class in order to line their already huge pockets.
China arrests their billionaires and executes them for exploiting the working class, we name colleges after them.
They were all just coming out from some of the most brutal wars ever tbf. In that sense any government in 1920s was a great success compared to the 1910s in terms of, you now, not killing millions or starving. Same for the 1950s compared to the 1940s. Any peace is better than war. None of those countries were independent, strong capitalist societies before the revolution. Russia was a feudal absolutist monarchy based on serfdom, China was an empire in ruin after numerous wars (against colonial powers) and Korea was pretty much just colony, of the empire of China before, then of the empire of Japan.
Yeah, sorry, don’t know where to find them, or the article saying what you are claiming. Do you have a link? Btw, as for “western powers” in the 1930s, what do you mean? The US? Britain? France? Nazi Germany? Italy? Because at the time there was no NATO, the US wasn’t really into projecting power outside of the Americas, and the alliances between Britain, France, Germany and Italy were really fluid and changed several times over the decade (at some point Mussolini was friendlier with Britain than Hitler, while Hitler was friendlier with Stalin than anyone else).
As for everything else, I definitely agree on the fact that the US system is fucked and should be reformed. I’m just not convinced that the system in communist countries is any better. Are you really certain that a communist system like that of China or the USSR or the DPRK would be any better? Do you think that moving to, say, China, would really improve your standing in society?
BTW, economically speaking, I regard China as a capitalist country with a dictator. There’s really nothing inherently communist in their economy. They have billionaires and they don’t execute all of them, only those who say or do things that cause the government to lose face, or that criticize the government in any way. There are companies, stock markets, bosses and employees, rich and poor.
As for Korea, we can’t really know their condition, as they don’t let anyone just enter and go where they please. They don’t even let their people go outside of the country, not even to allies like China. This is what I call authoritarianism. You don’t get to complain and you can’t even leave, it’s essentially a huge prison, isn’t it?
In the end I don’t see any reason to think communism is any better than crony capitalism. They are both radical ideologies that will fuck over the population in order to enrich the leaders. A middle ground would be best in my opinion. Capitalism with strong social policies and a democratic government with a plurality of ideas.
PS: if you are American, try moving somewhere else in the world if you are so displeased with your current condition. You can do it (which is something many people can’t say) and you’ll probably feel better, or at least expand your mind. Sorry to break it to you, but communism will NEVER, and I mean NEVER, happen in the USA. Keep hoping or whatever, but live your life first and foremost.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
asianometry
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I don’t think you realize how quickly things devolved into starvation under the Soviet Union or early CCP. They then very quickly shifted to centralized planning. This isn’t a question of scale or perception. It was immediate and required a change very quickly.
Yes, centralized planning is significantly more efficient both materially and in terms of labor. Thus why most modern mega corporations are run as planned economies within themselves. There’s entire books about it, if you care to read them. The first one I read on the subject is called “The Peoples Republic of Wal-Mart”.
Yes, take out the checks on power inherent within private corporatism and you get full on communism. It’s not better. Add in racism and you make genocide extremely efficient as the state controls all resources.
Tell me what’s happening in Gaza again?
It appears to me that Israel did not have full economic power over the Gaza strip like they would under a command economy and the elected government of Hamas used that to prepare to kill over a thousand civilians in Israel. To bad they weren’t authoritarian like you would prefer and they could fully stamp out the Arabs in the region. Funny how it goes both ways sometimes.
What makes you think any of what you said? Looks like gaslighting and projecting.
What economic system do the countries currently perpetrating genocide have again?
How is that relevant though? They’re acting in response to an atrocity committed by the government of Gaza, capitalism has nothing to do with it.
And we both know that plenty of people starved under communism.
That’s delusional. They’re furthering their settler colonialist system at the expense of a subjugated minority. They’ve admitted as much on National TV. Their intention is genocide. Definitively. The Palestinians have a international law stating that as occupied peoples, they have the right to resist their occupation, up to and including through violent means. What international law gives the Israelis a right to genocide them? The US and Israel are the only countries in the world in support of this genocide.
People under communism starved through droughts, or poorly thought out Five year plans. People under capitalism are starved intentionally, whether by failure to provide resources to those unable to secure adequate work (over 25% of US children are food insecure, almost a million people are homeless), or through policies like the settler colonial policies of apartheid Israel or apartheid U.S.
That doesn’t really have anything to do with capitalism.
Settler-colonialism is a capitalist ideology. It has everything to do with capitalism.
I don’t think that’s an inherent truth. Just look at Koenigsberg/Kaliningrad. After WW2 the local Germans were expelled and the city and adjacent lands were completely resettled by Russian settlers. You could try to justify it in a million ways, although I don’t know if ethnic cleansing can ever have a justification, but that’s what happened in the end, in Communist USSR, under Stalin. The reason why today’s old Prussia is Russian instead of German, or Polish or Lithuanian.
And the USSR did the same thing in many other places like Poland, DDR, Moldova, Ukraine etc. Settler-colonialism has nothing to do with capitalism or communism. It has more to do with power and controlling the land.
I appreciate that insight, and while I don’t agree, it does give me something to chew on for a while, and another excuse to read the soviet archives to see what they were discussing internally at that time. That archive is a godsend, it’s how you can prove definitively that the Holodomor was not intentional, and that attempts were made to not only ease it, but to preempt it from happening. Attempts which were sabotaged by a class of people who wanted to keep their privileges and place above the ordinary people.
Political archives where there is an incentive to cover up your own actions and lie about production is not an inherently trustworthy source. There were no third party validation of the narratives that corroborate them but plenty that poke holes in them. The reason why the West seemed so untrustworthy relative to the East at the time was due to a relatively free press. Amazing how checks on power degrade trust in one faction but also keep it relatively honest.
Dog you can’t even spell pseudo. You expect me to take anything you say seriously? We’re discussing high level geopolitics, the kind of thing that requires hundreds of hours of reading to even start to understand, and you’re here just projecting whatever you feel as if it holds any weight. The soviet archives were released by CAPITALISTS after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They have been poured over millions of times by thousands of people, there are entire books on the subject. It’s not just a stack of papers, it’s an entire field of study.
So yes, there were third party validations of them. Hundreds of them.
This is retribution for an attack and massacre of civilians, not colonialism. Israel doesn’t want Gaza.
Then why do they have over 500,000 settlers illegally living in what is internationally recognized as Palestinian territory? Why are they bombing the exact escape routes they demanded that Palestinians use? Why are they bombing the West Bank, where Hamas has no presence? Why has literally the entire world called this a genocide except for two countries: the US and Israel? Why did the Israelis kill 248 Palestinians, 40 of which were children, just this year, and just prior to the attack? Why do they call their periodic bombing campaigns “mowing the lawn”? You have to be literally delusional to think that THE ENTIRE WORLD EXCEPT FOR YOU is wrong. There’s only two countries that support this horrific genocidal campaign, and one of them is committing it, the other is arming them to commit it.
Edit: The big one, why have the Israelis prevented adequate amounts of food aid to enter Gaza to ensure healthy nutrition? They literally control how much food and water Gaza gets, and have for decades. They control how many building materials get in, they control the border and don’t let people leave. It’s literally called the “largest open air prison” in the world, by international watchdogs and its being called a genocide by holocaust survivor genocide awareness groups.
Nailed it.
My government actually pays mostly corporate (but not all) farmers not to produce or actively destroy their products, rather than buy it and have communities freely disperse it.
Farming requires a lot more than land
You’re right, it requires people! It’s too bad there’s not an army of people underemployed in exploitative jobs that do not meet their basic needs along with an army of unemployed and often even unhoused people… We could just… pay them living wages to farm… there’s an idea!
Excellent, so we’ll need some profits on that food then, to pay them?
Let’s keep going with this thinking. We’re inventing a system from first principles
Profits aren’t wages, you obviously haven’t read much economics. Profits are what’s left AFTER wages and costs.
You’re failing to differentiate between gross and net profits.
Ever run a business?
How is everyone going to afford this food if you’re selling it for a gross profit? I believe that was your original point.
Yes, I have run a business haha. Profit doesn’t mean either gross or net profits, it means, and I quote from the dictionary,
That is profit. Now, people can break it down further, but, when someone is referring to profits, you should assume they mean the dictionary definition of profits.
I should, should I?
You previously suggested I’ve not read enough economics, so should I assume you have? Do they all use that word with that meaning?
Also, I’m wondering if you have an answer to the other question. How is everyone going to afford this food that’s being sold even if it doesn’t have a markup?
How is anyone going to afford the food that is no longer being marked up? If the food is cheaper, somehow less people will be able to afford it than now? Is that the position you’re coming from?
I’d like to answer your question, it’s just… not really a question that makes any logical sense.
And yes, you should. I can provide plenty of economic texts if you would like to come to understand the economic system you live under. We can even start all the way back with Adam Smith, and move up from there. Like the part where he says that someone holding land without working to improve it does not deserve the land, and should not be allowed to keep it.
Farm machinery isn’t free