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"Socialism will make life hard!" (Proceeds to show a picture of reality) (discuss.online)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.world
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[–] 38 points 5 months ago (19 children)

My dad says most people are stupid and shouldn't own the means of production, since they will fuck it up. And that's the only intellectual critique of socialism I ever heard. Everyone else is just saying some stupid bullshit about minorities having rights and feeding the undeserving.

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  • [–] 68 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    And that’s the only intellectual critique of socialism I ever heard

    It almost is, until you watch 5 minutes of billionares talking and go "so these are the smarter guys that won't fuck it up".

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  • [–] 48 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    His critique carries the underlying assumption that private owners of the means of production are selected for their merit rather than nepotism, chance, corruption, and sociopathic tendencies.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago

    When its owned by everyone, one person doesn't get to mess it up, everyone gets a say. And you still will have people with business minds, mechanical minds, and just let me do labour minds

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago

    You should ask your dad if people are stupid why are they allowed to vote?

    If the answer is that they shouldn't be allowed you can go down the rabbit hole of "who is worthy to vote?" and end up with a variation of fascism. Or if everyone should be able to vote the followup is if people are allowed to decide how their government is ran why shouldn't they be allowed to decide how their work gets done?

    The thing with letting people own the means of production is that it heavily correlates with the concept of democracy. It's contradictory to be pro democracy and against collective ownership of the means of production.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago*

    He's not wrong, per se.

    People that are closer to production are less likely to see the business holistically. That's not their fault...I think many CEOs don't want employees talking about the big picture. They want silos. An us vs. them mentality between support and developers...between accounting and purchasing...between human resources and Chad in sales....etc.

    Of course, that goes for an individual person. When you have all departments represented and conferring, then you've got the whole picture, and that changes the calculus significantly.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    It doesn't mean the general public should be in charge of the nuclear reactor, it just means that the benefits of the power plant get spread around the populace rather than all getting funnelled to one guy and his 2nd yacht. Also perhaps the energy prices should be capped at a reasonable level rather than allowing them to go sky high just because somebody built a data centre within 500 miles of the power plant.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    My dad is a teacher with two masters degrees, was the teachers union president for 20 years and is MAGA.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    It happens. A friend of mine flipped to MAGA after COVID. He's a very smart guy that comes from labour on the factory floor to C level now. He gets fed nonsense on twitter and tiktok and just accepts it. Like missing a critical thinking aspect now.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago* (3 children)

    Is that supposed to be a serious critique?

    People currently own the means of production.

    Less people, tiny amount of extremely rich people.

    Rich != Smart. Literally 0 correlation. Significant amount of evidence showing that being or becoming extremely rich actually makes you both stupid and a psychopath.

    Your dad's argument can also be applied to the concept of a democratic government.

    People are stupid, they shouldn't be allowed to vote or have rights, they should just be be told what to do by their betters.

    ... your dad has the social iq of a toddler, or a cult member.

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  • [–] -1 points 5 months ago* (2 children)

    Well, I do agree that people are extremely stupid. But I wouldn't give the stupidest, most corrupt and controlling people the most power in a society.

    But I also understand that socialism isn't possible under a so called democracy (which just enables the capitalist corruption). If we want a socialist country, the best we can get is the Yugoslavia or Cuba.

    Yes, it's that terrible (or I'm just venting about losing faith in humanity). People are too stupid/selfish (and probably also chauvinists) to consistently oppose the capitalist rule. We could either get an authoritarian dictatorship or a neoliberal dystopia (and I would actually prefer authoritarianism).

    Also, while my dad is extremely intelligent, I don't think he even cares enough about anything to form opinions. And I think I also wouldn't if occasionally having an inner monologe would take a considerable effort. Life is extremely stupid and painful and I didn't choose to be born and participate in this shitshow.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago*

    Socialism is definitely compatible with democracy.

    If you wouldn't want to have the stupidest, most psychotic and authoritarian people in charge of things... you would need a mechanism or mechanisms to prevent that from happening.

    Because it is naturally what happens in many or most human hierarchies of organization.

    It is what has and is currently occuring, under capitalism.

    Socialism is, horrendously oversimplified, the idea that private people should not be in charge of capital, big expensive things that make the economy possible.

    They should not be allowed to mold the world and lives of thousands or millions, by fiat.

    Capital, infrastructure, those things should be subject to the whims of the people in some manner, via maybe a command and control planned economy, where the government planners are subject to some kind of accountability system, maybe democratic, maybe not...

    ...or maybe via the anarcho syndicalist approach of sort of merging the labor union and business management hierarchy into a structure more resembling a multifaceted parlimentarian government, where employees are voters, maybe also customers are members and also have some kind of voting rights, where 'business' decisions actually are made by elected representatives.

    Or maybe many other possible configurations, many other possible meldings of 'ok this economic sector is non critical, lets just let the "free market" happen there, within regulations, but this other economic sector is extremely critical and thus must be publically, socially, operated.'

    Democracy is not possible when people are stupid.

    Thus, education must be well made available and provided to the people, lest their ignorance facilitate their own oppression.

    Even the classical liberals of the 1700s say this.

    But if you have a system that allows public education to be hollowed out and replaced with elitist, preferential, private education... you should not be surprised that society reverts to a rigid class or caste system.

    Incuriousness, inequity, poverty, lack of basic human physiological needs, lack of a possible potential future to aspire to... these things traumatize the human mind, and they reinforce themselves, if no one does anything to fight against it.

    Therefore, at least as I see it... you have to fight, you have to hope.

    Otherwise you are a traitor to the species and, given the extent of modern technology, a traitor to the planet.

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