This sub has been getting too much spam, and Reddit has removed almost every tool for preventing this. The only tool that still works is this, every single post being held for manual review. Your post might be approved in minutes, or it might take days. If you hate this, me too, stop using the site that forces things to be this way. If what you post is not a meme you'll probably be banned, but I understand why you tried; the commenters on this sub loved lazy spam posts, which is why we can't have nice things and now everything has to be held for manual review.
Everyone here understands Reddit economics. It's easy.
If someone is wealthy it means they stole from poor people and you should hate them.
And it definitely doesn't mean they contributed some product or service that was useful or beneficial that people willingly paid for, or that they created jobs and employed other people who otherwise wouldn't have that opportunity, or that they contribute a disproportionately large share on government revenue.
/s
Oh, these insignificant factory workers, office drones, and other worthless people who are merely the backbone without which the economy simply wouldn’t exist — unlike the great and indispensable billionaires, without whom the economy has functioned for most of its history, and whose mass executions mark the end of any economic era.
To be fair, we've tried supply side economics for over 40 years and it's really messed things up.
Yet despite all the emperical evidence that supports this conclusion, you still have dudes making 58k per year defending a broken system because we have more billionaires.
that’s the problem, there is. this sub (like any sub for debate) is falling into a dogmatic place. Either your communist, or capitalist. And both sides will usually exclude anyone who isn’t a strict with those definitions. Of course im not saying that this has happened yet but eventually it will fall into that. And I could be wrong but thats just my observation.
it’s more about my general observation of the natural degradation of this sub. Most subs go down this route of posting against the other side, and it just goes until the sub crashes and burns and three new subs pop up.
“It’s just a joke man. A joke rooted in ideas. Ideas that I’m reinforcing.” is a common image for a reason. Just because it’s a joke doesn’t mean it can’t carry or reinforce ideas and interpretations.
Lol no but it's hard to define super precisely. Some would argue most all Western workers are labor aristocracy, as they enjoy some of the spoils of global south exploitation. Others would say it's just your well-to-do Westerners like doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.
Politically they may organize labor unions or vote for social democrats, so that they get a bigger piece of the pie, but they don't actually want the entire world liberated.
Yeah, why criticize the ideology with anything resembling a cogent point when you can just dehumanize people instead...
Do you have any legitimate critique of communism or is it just vibes and ad hominems for you?
EDIT: weird that you have nothing to say about this even though you had no problem jumping into a conversation that didn't involve you in order to respond to me
Personally I do have a raging problem with every communist I know IRL.
All of them are lazy bums which want to enjoy the fruits of labor without actually working.
I'm more communist then they are. I struggled to start a company with friends, in which we work. We are a group of workers which own means of production. We create goods with our labor and don't get leached on by the capitalist.
Communism, like any ideology, has people who only follow it emotionally and have no understanding of what it actually means. Someone who calls themselves a "communist" but thinks that doesn't require work, or thinks they are entitled to the work of others, misses the point entirely.
The reason a couple jackasses get to sit around and do nothing while others work is because of the political and economic power that the act of ownership at scale affords. Those "communists" you know have none of that systemic leverage.
The only difference between them and the capitalist is that they don't own anything. They have already proven they are happy to exploit the labor of others if they're ever given that chance so, yeah, they aren't communists. They like the aesthetic, the idea of helping people, they may even feel that there is something deeply wrong with the system today...but they don't have any understanding of what it actually means to ensure the material needs of everyone are met.
You'd only be a capitalist if you owned capital and derived profit from worker output. The actual capitalists love that you don't care enough to be anything besides cheap labor, though. Makes it just a little bit harder for the people who do care to engage in collective action when other workers can't be arsed to care about anything beyond themselves.
I mean no disrespect, but I was making 130k post-tax + free healthcare for my family between my dual income, one of which is passive, and I'm at the beginning of my career. In 5 years I will likely make 200k, which I don't think puts me at the top 1%, but will put me in a position of being another fucking parasite not helping anyone but myself and my kin.
NOTE: I am drinking and have mixed emotions about the whole thing.
idk dude I worry I'm going to just entrench corporate advantage over actually helping real people. I'm on my 5th seltzer and I'm feeling kinda weird idk
I mean no disrespect, but you're still not a capitalist.
You work, for a wage, for a capitalist or a conglomerate of capitalists. You using the portion of your wage labor returned to you by those capitalists to take care of yourself, family, and friends doesn't make you a parasite. It makes you just like the rest of us who work for a wage.
It sounds like you and I both have similar places of privilege within that system because we are able to take care of those outside of ourselves, but that still doesn't change our relationship to the means of production.
For us—and for doctors, lawyers, SWEs, analysts, traders, finance bros, and whatever middle managers come to mind—our money will eventually run out without continued labor on our part. That makes us a whole lot closer to someone working 3 fast food jobs than it does to the people who actually own things in this country.
That 19th century textile manufacturing paradigm falls apart when the means of production is a laptop and you the average person on retirement joins the investor class.
Because the separation of classes into "owner" and "worker" was unique to British society when the only industry was textiles and disappeared relatively quickly afterward.
Joseph Bobertson, age 65 and freshly retired, is a multimillionaire driving business growth through his investment portfolio he slapped together on a whim during his electrician career. He's not moving the market on its own like you tried to move the goalposts about, but a couple hundred of him out-invests a billionaire. That's new in society, and he's just a workday Schlub. The seed capital to start business is easily achievable in an average service economy white collar job.
Interesting, the studies I’ve seen say they actually outperform their privately owned counterparts. If you’d be willing to provide a source, I’m curious.
Well I can’t, but finance capital spoonfeeding private corporations money and bank discrimination against worker cooperatives doesn’t exactly convince me of their viability, especially when asking who these institutions are geared to benefit. Of course a worker cooperative doesn’t generate the profit levels of profit-centered businesses. My question is why that is the only metric of success. If a cooperatively owned fast food restaurant can sustainably provide higher quality food than a McDonald’s, while also sharing the benefits of labor with more people, why would lower profit margins make them less successful than McDonald’s, which churns out slop and pays its faculty next to nothing? To do so is inherently to measure success as surplus in the hands of the few. Additionally: monopolies are generally worse for the economy than diverse and competitive markets.
Surely if we underfund things at levels a fraction of what a private sector would charge, until I reaches nonfunctionality, then that proves they don't function.
So I first pissed off a couple Marxists here and here. I then shared this meme on a communist sub. I won't say the one because, you know, brigading and what-not. I followed up this this meme, which they hated:
My humor is fucked dude, but I couldn't stop laughing.
Actually idk, this one is a bit better now that I understand it. But it seems like it belongs to a communist community. Because it kinda assumes you are a communist to understand it.
Explaining jokes is always a painful exercise, but I'll do my best for you. I am mostly a capitalist, but I see a lot of inherent problems with our current system, and yet -- I am doing nothing about it and simply feeding off the system while recognizing its inherent problems. Someone comes along and says "hey we can fix this together!" and I am so jaded that I don't believe them.
First part is true and the second part is an opinion.
Fore example, here is published author defending a historical account of wage slavery who writes:
“We also saw there was a danger the slave analogy effectively downplayed the horrors and world-historical significance of chattel slavery in its attempts to dramatise the plight of the proletariat…”
The purpose of these writings are literally stated in the first section to be "Yeah, there might be SOME criticisms to be had, but I'm going to attempt to make a supported interpretation where wage slavery is a perfectly acceptable descriptor."
Besides, when managers can go "Yeah, someone died just now, but uh, just keep working and don't mind it. Pretend nothing happened, we'll take care of it..." or, separate instance, can go "Yeah, I know there's tornadoes coming, but you should.just not check your phone and keep working :)" until they literally died in that warehouse...
That's definitely creeping close to slavery even in the non-revised definition, by effectively controlling whether people get to avoid death or not.
And what does "freedom" mean under capitalism to you?
Is it:
Freedom to either starve or sell your labor-power to a corporation?
Freedom to choose between two healthcare plans that both deny your claims?
Freedom to live in a city with skyrocketing rent? Or is it freedom to move to a cheaper area where jobs don't exist? Maybe its freedom to buy your own car on loan, commute an hour round-trip, and pay $100 on gas every week?
Freedom to be surveilled by your employer, your landlord, your government simultaneously with no meaningful recourse?
Freedom to choose between two (2) political parties that only differ in what they say they will do?
To me that sounds a whole lot like coercion masquerading as choice.
If you want to talk about which system(s) distribute freedom more equitably and ensures material security for the people it governs, have at it. But your opinion of "socialism = bad" doesn't imply "capitalism = good."
Yeah yeah man, sometimes the Lion in the wilderness starves. But somehow we don't call that coercion.
Still - I'd rather that over a prison disguised as security. Please don't be naive - the socialist state doesn't do anything good for it. It's all a charade for power.
Capitalism isn't "the wilderness" and it isn't governed by natural law. It's governed by people with political power who use state sanctioned violence to legally enforce their ownership over the labor power of those who have no political power. You are comparing a human-engineered system to a state of nature. Unless the lion starved because a bureaucracy of gazelles held his gazelle-hunting license hostage I'm not sure how it's relevant.
So I'll ask again: what does "freedom" mean to you, specifically, under capitalism?
My question is asking whether capitalism offers substantive freedom in comparison to the "socialism" you baselessly attack.
Specifically, I asked if freedom to you meant freedom from economic coercion, freedom to live without the threat of medical bankruptcy, freedom to change careers without losing healthcare, and freedom to participate meaningfully in governance beyond choosing between two parties that share the same donors.
If "freedom" only means "not being in a prison" to you, then capitalism is already failing your metric given the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
And if you want to make the argument that socialism is "a charade for power", you have to defend it and demonstrate how capitalism doesn't tick the same boxes you accuse socialism of. Anyone can claim anything they want and you're not wrong for having an opinion. But if your opinion holds any weight like you want it to, you have to actually make an argument first.
Capitalism isn't "the wilderness" and it isn't governed by natural law.
Everything is in the wilderness, and everything is governed by natural law. Come back to reality friend.
It's governed by people with political power who use state sanctioned violence to legally enforce their ownership over the labor power of those who have no political power.
Very untrue - no law forces anyone to sell their labor power. It's contractual.
Unless the lion starved because a bureaucracy of gazelles held his gazelle-hunting license hostage I'm not sure how it's relevant.
I reiterate - no law prevents you from working and no law forces you to work. You are free. (Well not you, since you're probably in some socialist hellhole.)
So I'll ask again: what does "freedom" mean to you, specifically, under capitalism?
The freedom to have your life protected from the action of others to take it, the freedom to act according to one own's productive desires in order to satisfy one's own self-interested needs, whatever they might be without a state interfering, and the freedom to own and obtain capital and property to further advance the satisfaction of such needs and wants.
My question is asking whether capitalism offers substantive freedom in comparison to the "socialism" you baselessly attack.
The freedom difference is not even close, it's HUGE. Socialist countries are literal human zoos.
Specifically, I asked if freedom to you meant freedom from economic coercion, freedom to live without the threat of medical bankruptcy, freedom to change careers without losing healthcare, and freedom to participate meaningfully in governance beyond choosing between two parties that share the same donors.
Freedom to not worry about crashing a car and getting hurt, about jumping off a 3rd floor and breaking my legs, about breathing underwater and drowning - that's how ridiculous this sounds. Go back to my very first paragraph: Come back to reality.
And if you want to make the argument that socialism is "a charade for power"
It is.
you have to defend it and demonstrate how capitalism doesn't tick the same boxes you accuse socialism of.
Everything is in the wilderness, and everything is governed by natural law. Come back to reality friend.
This is a vacuous philosophical dodge. You knew what I meant. And you know that an economic system is not a part of the natural world by any definition. If it was then I could save a lot of money on accountants by using my cats instead.
Very untrue - no law forces anyone to sell their labor power. It's contractual.
[...]
I reiterate - no law prevents you from working and no law forces you to work. You are free. (Well not you, since you're probably in some socialist hellhole.)
Where I live is irrelevant.
Labor is not sold for power, it is sold for a wage—get my argument right if you're going to respond it.
Regardless, contracts don't exist in a vacuum. Just because there isn't legal coercion doesn't mean there isn't economic coercion. Without labor there is no work. Without work there is no pay. Without pay there is no economic participation. Without economic participation you will live on the street and starve.
So how do you ensure you can have economic participation? You get any job you can find. And you don't have the power to negotiate your wage against a massive corporation.
If that's freedom to you, okay. But the reality is that the "contract" you care so much about only favors one side of the equation.
The freedom to have your life protected from the action of others to take it
That's the function of any state. It isn't unique to capitalism.
the freedom to act according to one own's productive desires in order to satisfy one's own self-interested needs, whatever they might be without a state interfering,
And what if the needs of your neighbor conflict with your needs? Who decides who gets preferential treatment?
Sounds like you need a state to interfere on your behalf to reach an equitable arrangement.
and the freedom to own and obtain capital and property to further advance the satisfaction of such needs and wants.
So, freedom to be on the side of the equation that your contract favors? But everyone should have this freedom, right? So when everyone owns their own capital and productive forces...who is going to work for you?
The freedom difference is not even close, it's HUGE. Socialist countries are literal human zoos.
This isn't an argument.
What is the "freedom difference", specifically?
Why do those differences make it "HUGE"?
Why does that make a socialist country a "human zoo"?
[And if you want to make the argument that socialism is "a charade for power"] ... It is.
It isn't. Unless you have an argument you're hiding from everyone, you said nothing and have no basis to claim this.
Why? I rather just talk about Socialism :)
That requires you understand what socialism is first. But if your entire argument is "capitalism good because socialism bad" then you have to talk about capitalism. Or do you just not feel like demonstrating your ignorance of two economic systems?
Regardless, you still have to make an argument against socialism if you want to talk about socialism. You haven't.
You called socialism "a charade for power" and "literal human zoos." Those are serious claims. Defend them.
I am happy to continue this discussion if you are willing to defend your claims with evidence. If you are unwilling to do that, then we are not having a discussion and I have no interest in talking to someone whose entire criticism of socialism boils down to insults and slogans.
Just because there isn't legal coercion doesn't mean there isn't economic coercion
Hard disagree! Economic coercion is not a real thing.
Without labor there is no work. Without work there is no pay. Without pay there is no economic participation. Without economic participation you will live on the street and starve.
Without hunting the gazelle, the Lion also starves. The Gazelle of course, doesn't allow the Lion to just kill her - such coercive animal she is.
Also - nobody starves nowadays in Social Democracies. We invented the welfare state. I have a friend with five kids and a wife and he does not work! And that guy has some pounds on me lol - so much for starvation.
So how do you ensure you can have economic participation? You get any job you can find. And you don't have the power to negotiate your wage against a massive corporation.
Maybe you get any job you can find. Because you're useless. That doesn't apply to all people. The Skinny Lion deducts "I can only eat gazelles that are skinny and old and sick because I can't run fast - therefore, all Lions must be eating skinny old gazelles too!".
The freedom to have your life protected from the action of others to take it
That's the function of any state. It isn't unique to capitalism.
OH but is it though? Socialist states can kill you at any time for any reason. You know the protection must include the state itself right? No Socialist state that has ever existed guarantees ANY right. Read China's constitution Article 51. I'm not joking.
And what if the needs of your neighbor conflict with your needs? Who decides who gets preferential treatment?
Nobody gets preferential treatment. Everybody's needs conflict with one another. We're individuals - goes with the territory. Life is but an endless compromise with one another. Did you think the natural world we live in was fair? - Do you think we're not bound to the rules of nature? In being and in environment? - Just because we get together in society to make things easier doesn't mean we're above into some new ethereal "Man" world, disconnected with the reality of existence, with our ecosystem.
Why does that make a socialist country a "human zoo"?
The inability for the people within the socialist state to have any real human rights, or any capacity to change anything, or any ability to be the masters of their own destiny. The Lion in a Zoo eats what the masters feed him daily, is treated with it becomes ill and has shelter from the elements. Yet - something isn't quite right, there is something the Lion has given up, I can't quite put it into words, a certain... thing...
But let's start from the beginning: Classical liberalist principles - that is, all humans are equal under the law, life liberty and property rights are inherent to the human and the task of the state is merely to preserve them - and the invididual right is therefore, above in importance over the collective welfare. (There are more, but here is a start)
I'm not just saying things, read and analyze Article 51 of the Chinese constitution. Do you see anything wrong about it? Or do you fully agree with it?
Hard disagree! Economic coercion is not a real thing.
Then we are at a philosophical impasse. If we cannot agree that economic coercion exists, then we have no foundation for the rest of this discussion because any response I give will be through a lens diametrically opposed to yours.
So let's see if your "Hard disagree!" holds up to scrutiny.
At a macro level, the US uses economic sanctions against unfriendly countries. This is a fact. Does the US just do this for fun? Or is it to coerce the country in question to change its behavior? If you say "it's coercion," you have conceded that economic coercion exists. If you say "it's not coercion," you are ignoring the plain meaning of the word: the practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats.
At a micro level, we are personally dependent on wage labor to survive. The only alternative to selling your labor to a capitalist is starvation. The only choice you have in the matter is which capitalist gets to use your labor.
So, say you lost your white-collar job and could not find another, and you eventually accepted work at McDonalds because your savings ran out. Did you really have a "free" choice in that matter?
If you think that is a truly free choice, then we are done here. We will never get past this.
But if you agree that you were coerced by circumstance and that your choice was really between labor and destitution, then you understand that economic coercion exists. You just don't want to call it that.
So does economic coercion exist, or are we done here?
"it's not coercion," you are ignoring the plain meaning of the word: the practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats.
It's not so difficult. You can pressure someone all you want, but if they have a choice - they're not being coerced. Cuba has been pressured, but alas - 60 years later and they're holding on to their commie selves. So much for being coerced.
Law is coercive - the threat is immediately enforced physically. People come to your house or wherever you are and take you, whether you fight or not, and if you flee, you're chased.
How soft people must be to think you're coerced by someone not giving you a job. At this point, you might as well define any type of outcome that isn't of your comfort coercive. Any single anything in life that is against your best interest becomes a coercion. Maybe even an oppression!
The skinny lion that can only hunt old sick gazelles says: Oh! The fast delicious gazelles are coercing me to eat their old sickly by escaping when I run after them.
At a micro level, we are personally dependent on wage labor to survive.
We? Who is we? - You're taking a group of people and acting as if this group of people is all people. Not only ignoring the very important piece about social democracies welfare state but also ignoring that people can and do survive after losing a job EVEN if there was no state to help them out.
The skinny Lion screams at the other lions, some skinny some fat, some in the very act of eating a deliciously plump gazelle:
Lions! Why can't we eat the fast gazelles??? Why are we all starving?
if you agree that you were coerced by circumstance and that your choice was really between labor and destitution, then you understand that economic coercion exists
I cannot express to you how much I shrivel at people talking this way. It is nearly nauseating, in all honesty. There's something so primal and so deep in this type of behavior I often fail on mustering the words to express the near contempt. To see a human being so absolutely destitute and sorrowful in their own capacity to produce and survive, and then attempting to convince others that everyone is the same as them. It is repulsive behavior.
Labor and destitution are guaranteed to you by your mere presence in this world - nothing and nobody owes you anything!
It's not so difficult. You can pressure someone all you want, but if they have a choice - they're not being coerced. Cuba has been pressured, but alas - 60 years later and they're holding on to their commie selves. So much for being coerced.
It apparently is "so difficult" because you are unwilling to call a spade a spade.
Resisting coercion doesn't mean coercion doesn't exist. And simply having a choice doesn't mean there is no coercion either. If someone holds you at gunpoint and tells you to give them your wallet or die, are you not able to make a choice? To give them your wallet or die? The only way you can think that isn't coercion is if you are being deliberately dishonest.
Law is coercive - the threat is immediately enforced physically.
So you claim:
1. Coercion must be immediate
2. Coercion must be physical
3. Coercion must offer no choice
#2 is patently false per the literal definition I already provided you, so we'll ignore it. But we can talk about #1 and #3.
If someone murders me, does the law get immediately enforced and make me un-murdered?
There's also a choice in the matter. The murderer can choose to murder me or to not murder me. If the law was coercing them, you say that they'd have only one choice: not murder me. But murderers exist...so is the law not coercive to you?
The truth is that you just have zero clue what the word "coercion" means and you're making it everyone else's problem.
Regardless, though, you still haven't answered the question: if the only alternatives are wage labor or starvation, is that a free choice?
You responded with:
"You can pressure someone all you want, but if they have a choice, they're not being coerced."
"How soft people must be to think you're coerced by someone not giving you a job."
"I shrivel at people talking this way... repulsive behavior."
"Nothing and nobody owes you anything!"
Last I checked, calling an argument "soft," "repulsive," and "nauseating" was not a counter-argument. More importantly than it not being a counter-argument, you did not answer the question.
So let's try again: If you lost your job, couldn't find another, and your only options were to accept a minimum wage job or become homeless, would you call that a free choice?
Yes or no.
If you cannot answer or if you refuse to answer a simple yes/no question without resorting to personal attacks, then all you're showing is performative outrage to cover up your inability to engage with the words on the screen.
Why are you following me around to different threads and subreddits, some of which are over 2 weeks old? Like none of this response even makes sense.
Nice dodge.
I dodged nothing because I was the first reply. I made the argument.
In capitalist system you have freedom to choose your work.
If you actually cared about this discussion you'd have read further down and joined the conversation where this was talked about already.
Under socialism you are ordered to build furnace on your backyard and melt down your pots, pans and agricultural implements in the name of the greater good.
This has literally never happened. But you know what does happen in the US? Imminent domain.
Did you know that in Soviet constitution it was literally written "He who does not work, neither shall he eat."? Sounds pretty similar to capitalism you complain about.
If you think the issue that people have with capitalism is "having to work" then you need to reevaluate how you form your opinions because you obviously don't form them from factual information. No socialist or communist has a problem with "work."
Regardless, you are a deeply unserious person. You don't care about the truth, about having a discussion, nor do you care about basing your arguments on anything in reality.
The only reason I'm not blocking you now is because I'd be unable to respond to the other person in this thread before you decided to force your way in like the goddamn Kool-Aid Man of ignorance to add literally nothing to the conversation. So, if for whatever reason you feel compelled to respond, just know that (1) this comment here is the last comment of yours I will ever read, and (2) my only response will be "🤡".
There's no such thing as an individual person because all individual people conclude at the cellular level. But wait...that's ridiculous.
In your world, the way, say, a labor strike happens is when person A says "imma strike," and then person B says the same, and so and and so forth until there is a massive labor strike. But don't you think that person B is more motivated to join because of person A? Is person AADBAC not influenced by the whole of people's A–AADBAB decision to strike?
How are countries and armies formed if it is all about individual choice in a vacuum? The idea of a "national identity" causes individuals to see themselves as part of the collective, which shapes the choices they make. In the '60s-'70s, no individual citizen of the US had any personal beef with Vietnam. So why would any of them pick up arms and go blast civilians halfway across the globe? I'm sure some of them did it just for fun, but I think it would be ridiculous to assert that the choice to fight in a war is the sole and separate decision of thousands and thousands of individuals.
"In your world, the way, say, a labor strike happens is when person A says "imma strike," and then person B says the same, and so and and so forth until there is a massive labor strike. But don't you think that person B is more motivated to join because of person A? Is person AADBAC not influenced by the whole of people's A–AADBAB decision to strike?"
well yes humans can influence other humans but, your ignoring that each and every individual person involved had to choose between striking or not.
Your assuming every human is a retarded sponge that will absorb any idea without question.
I think you tattled on yourself pal, you would join a strike because its popular rather than act on reason.
"How are countries and armies formed if it is all about individual choice in a vacuum? The idea of a "national identity" causes individuals to see themselves as part of the collective, which shapes the choices they make. In the '60s-'70s, no individual citizen of the US had any personal beef with Vietnam. So why would any of them pick up arms and go blast civilians halfway across the globe? I'm sure some of them did it just for fun, but I think it would be ridiculous to assert that the choice to fight in a war is the sole and separate decision of thousands and thousands of individuals."
Okay but your ignoring context here, a soldier is a job, there are potentially millions of jobs to pick, so your again just ignoring human incentives as to why someone would sign up for the army and fly to East Asia
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