I used to be strictly materialist and atheist. Now I’m pretty spiritual. Don’t necessarily follow a religion and don’t support bigotry but yeah, I’m fairly spiritual now. This is a recent development and I never thought I’d be here like 5 years ago.
I used to be strictly materialist and atheist. Now I’m pretty spiritual. Don’t necessarily follow a religion and don’t support bigotry but yeah, I’m fairly spiritual now. This is a recent development and I never thought I’d be here like 5 years ago.
To port over a semantic argument from elsewhere on Lemmy:
You know the phrase “own the means of production?” A phrase I’ve been taught to associate with communism is “the workers shall own the means of production.”
Well, ‘the workers’ means ‘the people’, and ‘the people’ means ‘the public’, and anything owned by ‘the public’ is actually owned by ‘the government’ and ‘the government’ is controlled by ‘the elites.’ Which is why any communist nation falls immediately to despotism, the instant you actually form your communist government the elites are in 100% control.
I’ve argued with someone on here before on the difference between a free market economy and capitalism. I was taught in a free market economy, private individuals own the means of production. An individual has his tools, he works, and trades goods or services to others at prices set by the laws of supply and demand. Under capitalism, capitalists own the means of production, a capitalist is a wealthy individual who invests that wealth - or capital - in ventures with an aim to make a profit. The boss owns the tools and pays workers a wage. The American system has sloshed around between those two extremes since the industrial revolution, periods like the early 20th century trusts and robber barons and…now, where large corporations headed by a very few very wealthy individuals own basically everything, and periods like the 50’s and 90’s when smaller startups in exciting new fields were springing up. The former are the closest we come to the elites owning the means of production, and it tends to be a terrible time to be alive for the average citizen, the latter are the closest I think humanity has come to “the people” meaning individuals at large actually owning the means of production.
Neither system “lifted millions out of poverty.” Neither capitalism or communism has the means or motive to do that. Industrialization did that. Turns out, improving the reliability and quality of food, water, tools and medicine increases the population’s standard of living.
Ah, ok. So socialism isn’t socialism because you’ve defined it out of existence. Got it. But capitalism is socialism, since you defined it that way. Well cool, if capitalism is socialism, call me a capitalist. It’s not though. There’s a reason capitalism devolves into fascism. Seize the means of production.
“communism” devolves faster, is basically my thesis statement. I say, as an owner of a lot of power tools.
Yeah, you’re definitely right about that. I’ve never advocated communism, specifically for that reason.
So don’t have a government either.
Has there ever been a country without a government that did well in the long run?
I’m pretty sure that’s an awful idea.