Read ‘The Shock Doctrine’…
Sure but almost everyone is richer than god. That mf needs money all the time.
As an American with a lot of experience with this exact problem, it really depends on what city in the US you live in. Some places hate pedestrians like they are Satan’s ass cancer, and some places it’s so common no one even notices. It all depends on the city’s involvement with infrastructure.
Keep in mind that it’s actually really bloody hard to get potholes filled as a “private entitty” the only real option you have is to literally throw money at the “Local Government” whatever it might be called for you then tell them the flow will stop unless they do it.
Free market can’t do shit unless it’s actually free to do stuff like this.
“Lol China will never catch up”
Outsources everything to China
China catches up
“Yeah well China will never become eco friendly”
China starts producing cheap eco friendly tech
Yellen: “Hurr durr muh overproduction will hurt the oil compa- i mean global market”
Western Economists: What China really needs to do is stop investing in production, promote domestic consumption, and start spending foreign reserves on goods rather than bonds.
Because China can outsource everything to India, while India can outsource everything to Africa…
makes me wonder what would happen when we run out of cheap labour in third world countries
but I guess, no one will ever let all the (other) countries develop enough for that to happen 😠
So it is pyramid scheme
The impending climate/water crisis is likely to make us find out! As conditions worsen it will effect “third world countries” the most (and highly dense countries), forcing an unprecedented wave of immigration. Our systems aren’t built for this, and we seem fully unwilling to change anything until it is actively on fire.
China closed the gap for sure, but they haven’t caught up yet. Their demographic issues and deflation over the next decade is likely to hinder their progress in closing that gap
Not that I oppose other economic systems from prospering, just I don’t think it’s accurate to say they’ve caught up. For example, they still can’t manufacture chips at as small a scale as US companies can. That’s a very significant manufacturing component to be dependent on
I work for a company that manufactures environmental testing chambers. We also have operations in China, but they mostly sell to the Asian and European markets. They make one specific model at that plant, 4-5 units at a time, very rapidly, but they can’t do custom work, like the plant I work at in the US does. We specifically make chambers that are outfitted to meet specific needs of our customers, our Chinese plant can’t do that yet.
What “other economic system?” China is a state capitalist command economy – They can call themselves “communist” all they want but at this point it is in name only and we all know it. They left behind any shreds of actual communist philosophy in the late 1970’s and conveniently kept only the Soviet style authoritarian parts.
The entire country is run as one giant business for the purposes of profit, and although major swathes of their business sector may be state-owned, they’re still driven by a capitalist profit motive, and they keep said profits for themselves to no benefit of the teeming masses who make up everyone who isn’t already at the top.
I’m anti authoritarian, but I meant centralized vs decentralized economic planning. I agree though, communism is state capitalism
“We already benefited from slaves so now slavery is bad, We dictate what civilized world means”
and
“We polluted the whole world for our industrial revolution, so now pollution is bad, we protec environment”
Outsources everything to a country without any labor rights or environmental protection
feels good man
also
“We enabled our big tech to create a global surveillance system and international monopolies”
Tiktok bad because it reports to CCP
Pointing out any of the hypocrisy means you’re a tankie (i’m yet to know what it actually means).
As far as I’m concerened, one does bad things without any filter, one uses the media, tech and its hegemony to project a positive image while severely downplaying and ignoring their atrocities.
Sooner or later, China is also going to learn to do the same with their big tech and media companies.
If it helps, probably not
A tankie is a kind of communist that is disliked by other communists. So you know if someone calls you a tankie, that person is a leftie and they agree you’re a leftie too, but the bad ones.
It comes from the invasion of socialist Hungary (?? Not really sure here) by Soviet tanks. There were people for and against it. The ones in Hungary defending Soviet point of view, that is, supporting tanks imposing social order, were called tankies.
What you said is all true. And most of the tankies I’ve come across seem to hold their beliefs mostly due to learning about and needing to confront the hypocrisy that you’ve outlined.
But in my opinion, they come to some strange conclusions. For example, it seems to me that many hold Russia and especially China up as some kind of shining beacon of hope, and miss that they are just as bad as the US, if not worse, just in different ways.
I think it’s out of the false dichotomy of The West vs China and Russia. While in fact there is no dichotomy, every large political actor will only try to bend everyone else, not benefit humanity.
It’s not a capture the flag, it’s more of a death match, but many think they are too big to fail, have too much upper hand, or can outsmart others. Too bad the people are the losing side
Yeah…
…ha ha…
…funny…
I’m not sure that God himself has any money. All the pastors and religious preachers kept Gods money for themselves.
No worries,mobility will tickle down eventually
I’m still waiting for the first round of trickle down economics to reach me…
4 people are richer than God
Wait… Doesn’t the church give all their donation money to that guy? Surely God is still richer. /s
God spends the money through his disciples, child.
Now fucking tithe.
I donate 10% of my income to the poor.
I am the poor.
The more you give, the more you qualify to receive!
We take tithe now, charity comes next weekTM
“He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money!”
I mean the guy canonically can’t resist taking a bet on wether torturing a guy will make him lose faith, might be a bit of a gambling problem.
There really is a Carlin quote for everything
Ghostface Kafka is an awesome username.
Yeah it’s non-stop laughs here
I’d laugh, but I lost the ability to in an asbestos mine and don’t have health insurance to fix it.
Don’t worry about it. They can’t really fix that anyway.
Similar thing happened to German telecommunication infrastructure (for an industry nation our internet is notoriously bad in compatison to EU neighbours), happened to our public transport infrastructure, especially to our trains, and is currently happening to our hospitals.
Privatizing critical infrastructure has never been a good idea.
It’s a good thing that the train infrastructure is now for the common good (gemeinwohlorientiert) and can finally renovate everything.
Don’t get me wrong: the trains are still for profit
(West-)German telecom was a government monopoly run by the mail service and it was terrible.
And Canada, too. Thanks Mulroney.
Privatized oil, privatized Air Canada, privatized Via Rail. They would’ve gone further if they could’ve.
And Australia, too. Thanks Hawke.
They’re really trying here in Alberta. I hate it here
I feel sorry for you.
Preach. It’s just getting worse and worse here.
Don’t forget the NAFTA-shafta. Selling all our manufacturing down the river.
God for the life of me… who was in charge then… Who was it Reah…
/s
Because Karl Marx said socialism is good, and they determined Karl Marx is bad, therefore socialism must be bad.
Other way. They determined socialism is bad first since that gives a real alternative to capitalism.
It doesn’t need to be an alternative. It’s a really effective way to regulate capitalism by standardizing and socializing private industries like education, police, fire, roads, internet access, healthcare, etc.
I would argue that the alternative is important even if you don’t do it. The USSR increased standards of living in capitalist powers by leaps and bounds, just by standing, even only on paper, for an alternative.
Socialism is the workers collectively owning the means of production, everything else is just details. (Well, the anti-heirarchy bit is important too, especially to keep the means from falling into something that isn’t just capitalism with extra steps, but complicated)
It is innately opposed to capitalism as a result. What it isn’t innately opposed to is a market economy.
Is a service economy inherently socialist? The person is the means of production and is self owned.?
The means of production would not just be yourself but also other work tools. A basic desk job wouldn’t really fall under this condition, since you usually don’t have control over your computer or the software running in it, for example. I couldn’t think of any example of a service job where all the work tools are worker controlled right now.
🤔
The problem would start when you start organizing the service provision into company heirarchies. Especially if the main thing someone provides is owning the company. In that case, the “means of production” include the organization itself.
I could see a really idealized gig economy model working, though. Or just everything being organized as worker co-ops.
And, of course, then you have to start asking questions about how the service economy is actually procuring resources to function. Sure, you’re trade based, in theory, but who are you trading with? One of the reasons socialism tends to be globalist in nature is that it doesn’t do a whole lot of good for the idea if that “socialist economy” is actually supported by imperialism or someone else doing the ruthless exploitation of labor and then selling you those resources for cheap.
How socialist is your worker owned co-op, really, if you’re buying your food from a slave plantation?
That’s a socialist economy, not socialism. Socialized industries, like the ones stated above, are collectively paid for by all citizens and provided to all citizens equally. You don’t pay every time you need the police because their salaries are socialized by taxes. It’s an effective way to ensure quality of life for all citizens, with payments proportional to their income. Adding industries to tax socialization is an effective way to bring balance to capitalism, and improve the quality of life for vulnerable members of society, without the need of a full system overhaul.
Honey socialism is an economic system. A socialist economy is socialism.
Like, a honeydew melon is a honeydew.
If power remains with the capitalist class, and industry continues to be organized around their whim, you will not achieve meaningful reform, except in response to a threat, which will be taken away when that threat diminishes. FDR didn’t do the New Deal because he was secretly had socialist beliefs despite his family, but because he was old money buying guillotine insurance.
I was clarifying the difference between checking capitalism with socialism, and a socialist economy. You seemed to think socialism cannot be integrated into capitalism. Did my explanation help you understand the difference now?
What you are describing is social democracy, a subset of capitalism. That is not socialism integrated into capitalism, because once again, power remains with the capitalist class.
Socialism is when the government does stuff, huh
Socialism does not need to be regulated by a government. It’s a form of economy. However, we currently socialize many industries in a capitalist nation, and by socializing more industries, we can improve the lives of poor people at the expense of the wealthy, effectively keeping capitalism more equitable.
It’s okay to be a social democrat, buddy, welfare states are perfectly acceptable forms of ideological liberalism.
One might even call it a step on the path to actual socialism. Someone should write a book about these transitionary states, perhaps leading to the eventual withering of the state entirely.