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this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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I'm lower-left quadrant but always cop a fair amount of shit from others on 'the left' (nebulous term though it is) for my feelings on capitalism. The people I speak to have never seen anything but corruption, and have a combo of zero faith and utter hatred for it.
My personal feelings are that with strong, enforced checks & balances, capitalism can be combined with socialist policies to create a fantastic standard of living (see Norway), without it becoming cancerous. Unfortunately most of our western political systems (and capitalism is strongly influenced by political systems) seem to be run on a wink and a nudge, an assumed sense of 'fair play' which we all know has been shown to be worthless in recent years.
Strong unions; an educated populace; politicians who actually give a shit; this is what we need. But, capitalism has an absolute stranglehold on the populace of most western countries via print / tv media. The foxes are in charge of the henhouse and the hens are getting shit on.
You're getting shit from leftists because you're doing the "socialism is when the government does stuff" just from the other side.
And referencing the "political compass" unironically.
Well, and the corporate owned media with a hypercapitalist agenda, all the lobby organisations, the lack of proper public education for centuries, red-blue-whitewashed historytelling, the oppression of the black minority, a deeply flawed election system, the imprisonment crisis, and related the opiod crisis, gerrymandering, not enough unions, the fucked up healthcare situation itself...
The American Dream ™ is the biggest scam in the history of America. It's the land of opportunity for some. Ever since the change in corporate greed in the late 70s and early 80s (especially fucking Reaganomics), the wealth has been accumulating more and more among fewer and fewer and workers are being treated as resources instead of people. Pensions used to be much more common. Now the US (or at least one party and mich of another) has effectively convinced a large portion of the populace that literally trying to protect workers is evil. The lions share of profit used to go to actual workers with investors taking a cut off the top. Now the investors take most and barely pay workers. A vast majority of Americans are part of a system where they don't get to keep what they rightfully earned with their work. Instead poor people give a larger and larger portion of their work value to investors. It's fundamentally unsustainable and people keep believing they might be one of the people who have a chance to make it big (even though they're more likely to win the lottery than to make it on their own).
Luckily, I live in Europe. I got free healthcare, free education, have okay workers rights and not so much rising facism than you gals and guys overseas.
Yeah yeah two parties bad we fuckin know but talk to us when both sides start hard shoving for the removal of human rights. Talk to us when Republicans stop gerrymandering voting maps because they know it's the only way they'll get elected.
It's not fucking both sides it's one side actively shitting all over the country while the other side gets blamed for it. Meanwhile half our citizens have been so dumbed down that they can't remember any Republican scandal longer than 5 god damn minutes.
bUt HeR eMaIlS!!
BuT hUnTeR bIdEn!!
bUt TrUmPs DiCk Is So TaStEy!!!
I'm not from USA, but from the outside in, it's pretty obvious what Biden can, and can't do. You have to take his achievements (which there are many of, unfortunately the dems don't seem to be very good at trumpeting their actual good works) with the pinch of salt that they haven't had the control in the senate they need to enact the policies they like. Enough people vote for 3rd party or feel fatigued / despondant like you, that they didn't get the actual control of senate, and lost the house in midterms.
Whether it's slow walking (or blocking) appointments, fake dems like Sinema, dems that have to be stupid-capitalist to maintain power (Manchin), they've just not had the numbers.
You have a point that Clinton was pretty good, and was probably the first showing of the Republicans becoming obstructionist and never relenting since.
The Democratic Party has control of the Senate in name alone. Sinema and Manchin do not toe the line and have effectively threatened to even switch parties if they aren't taken seriously. The "control" the Democrats have had in the past four years of any branch has been teetering on the edge of a pin. They basically had enough to just stop harmful Republican policies that would have been passed instead. The one thing Republicans do better than Democrats is to simply back each other up no matter how corrupt one of them might be. Trump probably could have shot a person in broad daylight in the middle of fifth avenue and Republicans would ensure that nothing happened.
I think you're missing the point of how a political party operates. The members of the party should support their own platform and the leader of their party. You'll never not have parties. That's just basic game theory. You need cooperation on main points. Even your own responses about Democrats indicates whether you pretend to not think that way, you actually do. Otherwise you're not internally consistent with your logic. Though that wouldn't surprise me based on your unabashedly childish responses so far.
This is such a childish and naive statement. No matter what system is put in place, the president alone can't make a radical difference in a positive direction, only shitty ones.
Yeah, Reagan really did a great job letting AIDS kill all those people because he hated the gays.
Oh, and kickstarting the modern homeless crisis by closing all the countries mental health facilities without another solution in the wings.
You can have socialist policies without being a socialist society. Our (UK) NHS is a socialist policy, free healthcare at the point of use. My country is decidedly not socialist!
Everyone knows what "free" means especially when they refer to it as socialist. Pointing out it's taxes is such a tired statement that folks who pretend to be smart like to pull out as a gotcha. You're not actually adding any value to the conversation by saying that. And yes, universal healthcare would absolutely be supported by the founding fathers. But virtually no one in one specific party votes in that direction and generally votes to go in the other. At least some of the other party try and fight for it.
Ftfy. Nothing stops anyone from voting for it right now. There's only one side even remotely fighting for it. It's just ignorance, laziness, and hate that keep it from happening.
You are not a leftist is probably why.
What matters is the ability the allocate resources according to the needs of us all and that people have confidence in future resources to be happy. Private ownership is contrary to the first; it helps with the second. That is any "capitalism" must be limited to pertonal needs.
Who decides what constitutes a "need"? Will this proposed society be based purely on subsistence?
You and those whose needs would cause their needs to go unmet.
"Congratulations comrade, this week you get a new toaster!"
"...my shoes are falling off my feet..."
"We do not have shoes, comrade! This week we made toasters!"
Socialism has many of the same benefits as capitalism. It's also compatible with other systems. A socialist country can trade with a capitalist. I have no issue with slowly moving toward socialist but I don't think there is much to be gained in protecting capitalism.
This I think is a key part of misunderstandings... I'm not trying to protect capitalism, I'm trying to be realistic in how we go about modifying society towards more socialist goals. We're not going to upend the global capitalist systems in our lifetime, I don't think. And imo things are going to get worse before they get better, as wealth continues to be concentrated in fewer hands, as productivity increases due to further automation. I hope the tipping point isn't something that causes massive loss of life, like the collapse of civilisation.
It's like... imagine you have a lake filled with crocodiles, sharks, and jellyfish. We need to get to the other side. Wanting to get there isn't enough, we need a solution. We can just keep endlessly pushing people in expecting them to somehow cross the lake (trying to 'destroy' capitalism), or we can build a bridge across (slowly modify capitalism to have strongs checks and balances). Anyway it's just my personal opinion, I stand by it