I guess, but I don't see how that's relevant. Who reads for "clout?"

Oh wow! I always wondered if my comments actually get people to check out the pages and books I link, I've tried to focus more on explaining things in my own words unless a book or article is extremely relevant and quotes necessary (people sometimes saw my older style of quoting Marx, Lenin, Engels, etc as book worship, which is fair critique IMO).

That's actually really interesting!

Did you read up on all the atrocities caused by capitalism? Have you looked into the US gulag system? Its literally a plot point in the Andor series.

I've read dozens of books, hundreds of articles, and continue to read. The overwhelming majority of those who lived in the USSR want it back, this is a well-known phenomenon. Over 7 million people died due to the dissolution of socialism in the USSR, prostitution, drug abuse, poverty, disparity, all skyrocketed while life expectancy plumeted thanks to the utter destruction of the economy and the elimination of social safety nets.

Well over 90% of Chinese citizens support their government, even from western survey. Socialism in China lifted 800 million people out of poverty, and is combatting climate change and regularly improving conditions for its people, without relying on imperialism like western countries do. This is charting a genuine alternative to the naked plundering of the west towards the global south.

I am not going to trust one person's anecdotal experience vs the legitimate and long-term study I've done, the people who lived in the USSR, PRC, etc that I've spoken to and spoke positively of them, and the ongoing process of decay capitalist countries are in while socialist countries are steadily developing and improving. Go ahead, rely on the assumption that I must be stupid or ill-read to support a worker-centric economy rather than the absolute system of plunder that is crumbling. Keep doing Nazi apologia by equating a system of industrialized mass murder with a system that doubled life expectancy, democratized the economy, provided free and high quality healthcare and education, over tripled literacy rates to 99.9%, and more. Stay in your right-wing echo chamber formed by anecdotes and refuse to read anything.

I wonder if the discourse here and elsewhere suffers from the perspectives used to approach the topic initially. Asking the question of "how do we get this system to work," rather than just submitting to the failed outcomes of well-known examples. Most people don't want to create a system by which one or a small group of people can prosper at the detriment of the larger community. I think understanding how these systems affect their populations on a granular level is the only way we can find/create the best system.

it doubled the life expectancy of those in the USSR

Does that include political dissidents, homosexual people, and economic criminals? Oh those people were executed in droves? My mistake.

Don't waste your time on cowbee, he's well spoken and slightly more polite than the rest of his ilk but he's just as murderous as the rest of them, it's just harder to get him to take his mask off.