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important rulepost
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
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I hope you realize that this is an incredibly privileged take. The US is rife with issues, but the hardships experienced by the average western citizen doesn't even compare to the suffering that you would find in, say, Pol Pot's Cambodia, or (to a less extreme extent) Maduro's Venezuela. To compare what a US citizen deals with on a daily basis due to capitalism to what a citizen of any of those countries had to go through is very reductive and may be perceived as disrespectful to many who had to live those experiences.
I have some fellas from Detroit that would disagree.
My dude you need to stop right now before you end up saying that genocide isn't that bad. Because that's what Pol Pot did.
Genocide and pol pot is terrible. So is the USA.
Killing millions and being dysfunctional are in a different realm of terrible. I'm sorry, but how did you come to the conclusion that they are even comparable?
hm i wonder if theres any capitalist countries with a history of committing genocide..
Every genocide can be bad at all the same time. You know?
yea i know. genocide is never a good thing. no matter who does it. whats ur point?
I'm not sure about your specific views, but my point is that the genocides carried out by the USSR and by China and by other 'Communist' states are bad, and that they don't become any less bad as a consequence of Capitalism also having carried out genocides.
i fully agree and im sorry if it came across differently.
No you're good, just trying to answer
lol oki. i decided to stop arguing with the tankies here. i dont wanna legitimize it as a valid position to discuss about.
dont waste too much time on these fuckers, look after urself too :3
I'm all ears. Please give me a list so I can expand my understanding.
oh dear here we go. off the top of my head, there is of course, canada, usa (native americans), israel (palestinians), nazi germany (jewish people, PoC, queer people, communists, and a whole bunch of others)(it mightve called itself socialist but was still very much capitalist), china (uyghur people) (also might call itself communist but they literally have billionaires and a fucking stock market, cmon)
I view nazi germany and china quite a bit different from real capitalist societies. Simply having a stock market doesn't mean the markets are free to function as they please.
I also tend to disagree with canada and usa being genocidial at this point in time. For sure they did horrific things, but comparing usa to nazi germany or current day china is delusional, as the US country's government is not actively killing a part of their own population.
What rubs me the wrong way in these conversations is mentioning capitalism as a system that commits the genocide. Both germany and china are/were state driven, and as such the markets didn't really have anything to do with the actions. Instead the genocide is driven by the government that is/was authoritarian, and as such the markets aren't driving the killing.
The one country I agree with being a free market and genocidial is Israel.
So because the genocide the US did was in the past it doesn't count?
It counts for sure. It's just different to call current US genocidial in comparison to stating that US has committed genocide. Kinda like germany is not a genocidial country, but 80 years ago it was. The government now isn't the same that committed the atrocities.
I'm probably off topic, but in left leaning communities I see a lot of references to the US as a genocidial regime. My above explanation should clear up somewhat why I feel that it's a bit far fetched. Eg. the current state of things in the US doesn't count as one IMO.
We have a government that spends billions of dollars on the military industrial complex with what amounts to no opposition politically. Having spent that money we then go on to justify the weapons being deployed around the world.
If Isreal is a genocidal country, how is America not for enabling Isreal? There is no distinction in my mind. It's the same capitalist interests at play.
I understand where you are coming from, but maybe u understand our point of view, that you don't need the genocides and war that bad anymore, when past genocides and wars already have made you the mightiest force in the world.
If your on top and have mostly money, its easy to screw others with said money, a fight you'll always win, and pointing the blame, when they switch to the same strategies, you used to get in the position of power where you are now.
I don't disagree with people saying that US is doing questionable stuff. What rubs me the wrong way is that the current meddlings of US are being compared to what is being done in ukraine right now. They are fundamentally different levels of evil.
are u saying that government intervention in the "free market" = communism?
as a reminder, communism is a stateless, classless, and moneyless society.
also, state intervention in the market does not make a country no longer capitalist, they all have that.
i was just giving u a list of genocidal capitalist countries, i wasnt comparing them with each other.
many countries are built on genocide thanks to colonialism. canada is one of them, and it has not changed its course
I mostly agree with the rest of the points, but I have to comment on this. I'm not implying that china is communist. AFAIK I did not state that in my comments. What I am saying is that government intervention in free markets is antithetical to capitalism. That doesn't make it communism, socialism, or any other flavor of purism, but still disqualifies the country from being capitalist.
yea i figured. just wanted to make sure 👍
all the countries i mentioned have/had corporate taxes
oof so by that definition, are there any capitalist countries right now? has it ever been tried and succeeded so far? if any intervention in the free market makes a country no longer capitalist, i mean.
Sry but this is just bullshit. Nearly every country does that and they are capitalist. Its not antiethical, its needed to stabelise capitalism (even in the USA there are ISO norms, food and drug administration, tax differences for different corporations etc. Pp.)
My country, Guatemala, for a start. With tacit US approval even.
For the person dying of hunger is the same. But yeah, killing millions is bad and is something America NEVER did, right?
Implying the us is better than Cambodia because Cambodia committed genocide is very weird, considering that the US did so too
You can't be serious...
The United States, for all it's faults, is the pretty side of capitalism.you don't even need to look to the most poor countries to see a standard of living that makes even directly post ww2 soviet union look like a great place.
Im not from USA, and from my point of view its mich worse than most other countries (no healthcare, no independend courts, murder sprees in schools nearly every day, opression of half of the world (a half of them just to get more oil to destroy the planet faster), one of 3 of the biggest war-pushers in whole earth, polutes and destroys earth mode than every other country per citizens, etc. PP.)
capitalism mostly opresses and profits from people out of the country to Funktion. if its Bad in Venezuela or Cuba or Afghanistan, or even early russia, thats at least partly fault of US.
Venezuela is not communism, China isnt, russia isnt. Most of them have failed, at least partly because caputalist societys atack them and stop a as soon as they are born and they can't form a stable democracy. Before reading Marx, your bashing of communism isnt worth anything, as you clearly don't understand what you are talking about. We never had communism, and some would say not even socialism. You sound like you don't even know the difference, since you keep talking about communism, which is a utopian society after humanity has stopped a lot of bad habits and has learned to live without working against each other in competition and working together instead, which arises maybe after generations of workig socialism, which we clearly didn't have.
4.you exactly prove my point. I dont agree with tankies either, but the number of people around here blindly copying capitalist propaganda while understanding nothing they bash about is too damm high.
You have a warped view of USA that doesn't reflect reality. You're seeing it through the lens of sensationalist news media and hyperventilating social media posts.
The actual reality for Americans is that it's a vast, beautiful land with an amazing spectrum of various experience. Violent crime is rare overall, and most Americans have never seen or heard any gun violence in person. Health care is available to pretty much everyone, even if you don't have money. We have state-run healthcare facilities that the poor can make use of like county health departments.
My life in the USA is great, because I don't live in a big city. I live on my own land, in a nice house that I own, and I'm just middle class income level. It's pretty easy to accomplish if you choose a low cost of living area rather than a big metropolis or suburb thereof.
Well of course the standard of living in the imperial core is higher than the countries it has exploited or destabilized. A lot of American wealth is the fruit of imperialism.