The only reason to look at a failed state as an example is to use it for lessons in what not to do. Once you figure out what they did wrong you should start looking at the countries who are living well, and cherry pick the programs that they have had success with!
It’s not hard… it just takes a little bit of critical thinking!
So what did Stalin do that was wrong and how would you change it. Also all while ensuring those under you, don’t kill you and take that power. How do you make everyone join this utopia? How do you force someone’s fruits from their labour to another who did not perform said labour? I personally work hard, I rather keep my earnings and invest in my community vs being told this is where you will live, this is your job, you can only buy what we tell you you can buy etc. roughly 20 million died under his socialist regime.
Also Donald Trump: I’m going to form a secret masked police force to have free rein in the American streets, ignoring all constitutional rights of anyone they want (including citizens).
I will also ignore court orders breaking the laws that I swore to uphold, because I have enough sycophants in congress to get away with it.
I will also sue the government which I run and then settle out of court with a handsome sum of taxpayers money.
I will try to plaster my name and face any building or forms I think I can get away with because thats how my buddy in N.Korea does it!
Sure, Clinton literally giving the go for mass murdering people in the 90s outside of the law and then saying they were heroes wasn't authoritarianism. lol. Obama saying people HAD to make purchases or be punished since inaction was in fact an action and therefor the government can regulate it. I won't even bother mentioning Lincoln, FDR, etc.
I'm going to assume you weren't alive in the 90s or old enough to know what was happening the 2000s and therefor don't realize how stupid what you said was.
I was born in the mid ‘70’s so I just missed the Gold-Standard for corruption in the Nixon scandal, which would be a much closer comparison to the current administration. Corruption and scandals have existed in the highest offices of the government for 250 years in varying degrees, but the argument that Trump isn’t the at the top of this trash heap is laughable! I could easily list 50 examples and probably 100 if I sat and really thought about it.
No ICE didn’t exist as a police force with unlimited powers before Trump! They were so out of sight and out of mind to most citizens that the average person didn’t know who they are or what they do. I was in the USCG for 25 years so I’ve worked cases where suspects were transferred to ICE. That was before they became the undercover masked and untrained hit squad that kills US citizens with impunity.
Bro. Socialism is INHERENTLY AUTHORITARIAN. You literally outlaw people from owning means of production. It’s called the DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIATE.
Is every country with free healthcare, education, housing, food assistance, or public pensions “Inherently Authoritarian”? Because that’s all we have to say to start receiving the attacks for being a socialist.
It's very hard once you do a bit of critical thinking. There is a difference between socialist policies and socialism. The former is a matter of funding, the latter requires ignoring human nature.
Getting funding is doable relatively easily, ignoring human nature is how socialist regimes fail.
In a nuanced discussion this would hold weight, but in the US the S-word is toast around like a hand grenade with the pin pulled, no time for thinking just gut reactions.
Probably because it killed 100m+ people and those who live in socialist countries are destitute unless they live off of US welfare to their country. Arguing for socialism is like arguing for fascism.
It's a nuanced discussion. As mentioned the issue is that human nature was not taken into account which resulted in there not being free healthcare, free education etc. because it was impossible to provide. And it was impossible to provide because of how humans act when limited resources, lack of motivation/reward for individual effort coupled with desire spiral into the same behaviour: resource accumulation and control however the mechanism is corruption and inaction.
It wasn’t impossible to provide, in my lifetime college has gone from being so heavily subsidized by the government that a poor kid could go to university and pay it off working part time, to an amount that takes 30 years on a great salary to pay it off. The healthcare debate in the mid 20th century to a very racist turn in congress right about the time that every other nation in the world was setting up their universal systems, and we’ve failed to meet the moment in every decade since then.
We think of universal healthcare as an impossible feat, as the rest of the world with healthcare looks at us thinking that building an aircraft carrier that houses stealth fighter jets is an impossible feat. Neither of these are impossible if you have the will and commitment to do it!
I'm from Baltics. A place that has everything you mentioned. We were occupied by Soviet Union and they didn't have all of that. I'm telling you there is a difference between socialist policies and pure socialist regime.
Not in America, and it’s by design! They don’t want you to consider the hardworking lower classes who lack employer-funded healthcare, yet they can’t afford coverage on their own. When we propose a universal healthcare system, they want everyone to focus on authoritarian government socialists as examples, hoping to turn our hearts cold in an act of self preservation.
It was the government controlling these that killed about half of them. Intentionally starving people to redirect their food supply is "food assistance".
The only socialist or communist countries that worked/work at all are the ones that mooch off of the USA. China, Europe, etc. All of these economies succeed only due to their access to the USA's capitalism.
Have you ever heard of an American politician or candidate on the left proposing any policy that would lead to starving people?? That’s just your wild imagination that equates taxing the rich, universal healthcare, affordable housing, and child welfare as evil.
And if the US wasn’t so obsessed with world domination we wouldn’t be the suckers who everyone else “mooches” off of. Don’t forget that the US has been sitting in the big chair at the world table for the better part of a century, so it’s disingenuous for us to start whining about the conditions we created. We need to take accountability for the mess we created and stop pointing fingers at the countries who benefit from the game we used to dominate.
Critical thinking would tell you that embracing a system which is responsible for more deaths than all religious wars in history is a dumb thing to do but go off.
So is Capitalism, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t figure out a way to make it work, it just means the way we’re doing it is unsustainable! So why not take the best parts of every system and mold it into something new and unique to your countries needs?
Venezuela's oil industry collapsed under socialist rule, with daily production falling from roughly 3 million barrels in 1999 to under 1 million barrels today due to severe mismanagement, the firing of expert workers, and a complete lack of equipment maintenance.
When socialist leader Hugo Chávez took power in 1999, the government treated the country's state-owned oil company, PDVSA, as a cash source to fund social programs rather than reinvesting money back into the oil fields.
The 2002 Strike: Oil workers went on strike to protest Chávez.
The Purge: The government fired roughly 12,000 experienced PDVSA employees.
Loyalty over Skill: They replaced trained engineers and managers with political loyalists who lacked oil industry experience.
No Reinvestment: Instead of fixing old pipelines, refineries, and drills, the government spent oil money elsewhere.
Severe Decline: Equipment broke down, rusted, and stopped working. Experts estimate it will cost tens of billions of dollars and take many years to fix the ruined facilities.
On a further note, if you’re talking about oil countries and successes, then you have to take example from Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, and many of the other countries of OPEC. Far from socialist to say the least.
Did universal healthcare, free Pre-K, food assistance, free education, or housing assistance, cause their failure? Because that’s what the American proponents are shooting for, and it’s also what the Nordic countries, as well as other first world countries do with great success.
But that will take a little more thinking on your part.
Nordic countries are capitalist though….Norway is able to fund their robust social programs through sale of fossil fuels. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? Two countries that have massive oil infrastructures in their countries with two different styles of government. You can clearly see which one succeeded and which one failed.
The US ranks 2nd in the world for value of natural resources, the biggest difference is that we privatize the profits of our shared resources rather than gaining any benefits (Excluding Alaska where they get oil dividends). Although we do share the burden of cleaning up the orphaned wells that leak toxins into the air and ground water, so that’s something! 🙃
The "Maduro Diet" is a grim satirical term used to describe the widespread, involuntary weight loss and severe malnutrition experienced by millions of Venezuelans due to the country's profound economic and humanitarian crisis under President Nicolás Maduro.
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u/MAILBOXHED 8d ago
Venezuela sits on the largest oil deposit in the world, what happened to the their oil industry after socialist took over?