Sure, fuck it, that's communism. Death to communism, instead we must create a classless stateless society!
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"The elite telling the working class to stand in line and dictating what to pay for a living expense. That is not capitalism"
Man, this is on the same level as "nazism is leftist ideology because national SOCIALISM!!!!!!!!!!!"
That has to be a troll account.
Not at all. Here in South Africa, the ruling ANC has spent the last thirty years demonstrating what perfect neoliberal capitalists they are... yet you'll still find plenty of local neo-nazis blubbering about the (supposedly) "socialist" ANC.
Sounds like the next thirty should be fairly predictable.
I have to agree.
Poe's law is a bitch as always, but between the display name, the flags and the message itself (particular words as well as the fact that the statement is bordering on incoherent), I'm fairly certain this position is not sincerely held by the poster.
Now, whether it's a leftist satirizing unhinged right-wingers or a troll account posing as leftist to portray them as deranged - your guess is as good as mine (though I'm leaning toward the former).
The person who wrote the comment must be lobotized.
Happened to me. Lived in a building for multiple leases for $1100 -1300 a month over the course of seven years. Next renewal jumped to over $1800 per month. When I asked why, they said, "Because it's what people are willing to pay. "
Here in NY we have 1 year leases capped at an increase of 3% per year. However landlords can increase rent another 3% if they can show that they had to do upgrades or emergency repairs or some other nonsense. They've applied for and received this exemption to double our increase EVERY SINGLE YEAR I've lived there, and it seems there is nothing to stop them from doing it every year until the end of time.
The infuriating thing? There are no actual upgrades being done. The roads are constantly full of potholes. The water lines constantly spring leaks. The power is constantly cutting out - brownouts are common, and blackouts happen every winter. We are responsible for paying all our utilities, mowing the lawn, and maintaining our lots, and the office is apparently responsible for nothing and spends nothing upgrading or maintaining the park. But somehow they qualify for that extra 3% increase every single year without fail.
- I live in a trailer park owned by Horizon Land Management. There are youtube videos detailing how trailer parks used to be cheap housing for the poor, but now that private equity companies like Horizon are buying them up, they're raising lot rent sky high and parasitizing the people who are so poor they can't afford to leave. Trailers were the cheapest housing many of us could afford. Where else could we go? They basically suck the blood out of us like vampires.
Lol "Communism".
I mean, it is moving past capitalism and into something else, but that thing is feudalism.
turns out everything people hate about communism is actually just stuff capitalism does.
But we have to be moderately responsible for the outcomes instead of just throwing our hands in the air and giving up!
oh yeah, definitely! i agitate toward socialist (and anarcho-syndicalist) policy at every chance i get! On top of that, I'm also continuously attempting to plant subliminal ideations toward it among people with whom i interact on a daily basis putting it in terms my propaganda-poisoned colleagues' minds might actually grasp--
'if only we could decide this democratically, huh?`
'after all, we're the ones who actually have to do the work and see how things transpire here on the front lines of the whole operation...'
'nobody upstairs knows how things work around here better than us.'
'btw don't we have some kind of right to peaceably assemble and petition for redress of grievances, ACTUALLY...?'
'idk i just like democracy bro ;3'
'kinda sucks how our tax dollars are being spent to prop up a genocidal regime so they can give their citizens free healthcare while we're stuck with nothing, doesn't it...'
'hey if you want cheaper eggs, i know a place near here...! it's a co-op market owned and operated by the local farmers and a dozen fresh eggs is like ... sometimes HALF of what the big chain stores charge!'
"ohhh i'm so sorry to hear your cable company treats you that way...! it's awful! y'know, it seems like every time people ask a corporation to handle infrastructure it just makes more waste, fraud and abuse... but as for me, the fiber optic line to my house is fast and stable and cheap, and it's owned by all us residents in my town. Municipally owned! I would love for you to have that too. wouldn't you? why not ask your neighbors how they feel about it?"
all of these examples are exaggerated and hyperbolic for illustrative purposes. i usually have to be a lot more subtle in order to avoid tipping them into a performative faux-patriotic 'four legs good two legs bad' thought terminating cliche fugue state.
I have a MAGA family member who says things like that all the time. Usually he starts by saying "the socialist aristocracy did [insert complaint about capitalism]..."
It is what American boomers think “communism” is.
It’s also not too far separated from the Soviet Union, which represents “communism” in many peoples minds despite its fairly rapid departure from Marxist ideals.
For fun, when I was in school, I'd ask people what they thought of this and that all the time and I was very much impressed that "what is ____" are questions that don't have answers. Our education is fucked.
Generally, to boomers capitalism and communism is absolutely summed up with that drunk in the grocery store story.
Consumer choice is typically the vibes.
Ah yes, the Soviet union where rent capped out at 10% of your salary, and that's just in places without any labor incentives. If you were in a new industrial town your rent was free since it was you doing a favor to the people in moving to a remote area and having to live in a new city. That's totally the same thing as American capitalism and totally opposed to Marxist ideals...
10%! Where can I sign up?
1930s-1980s USSR. (Gorbachev's reforms really fucked with some areas before the collapse but the edge of the union was unharmed until the 1991 collapse wherein many former states of the USSR experienced homelessness as a problem for the first time in 70 years.)
Also some parts of China have rules of 0-25% of your salary depending on location, whether or not you were a rural citizen before moving to a rented home, and why you moved. (not that normal rent is far off from that thanks to the fact only 8% of the Chinese population doesn't own a home.)
The USSR did not "rapidly depart from Marxist ideals." I don't know where this mythologized version of Marxism originated, but Marx was explicit about wanting a dictatorship of the proletariat, a democratically controlled state that had public ownership as the principal aspect of the economy. This was the only path Marx saw as a transition to communism.
Also, rent was mostly a nominal thing as far as it related to disposable income in the USSR, which is completely different from the US. Makes sense considering the USSR was run by the working classes and the US is run by capitalists.
You don't understand! Communism is when bad things. And in capitalism nothing bad can happen, it can only good happen.
This is why the USSR and PRC did cultural revolutions and re-education camps.
Communism is when bad decision of politician affects entire nation.
Capitalism is when bad decision of a rich person affects entire nation.
Difference is that one of those people is elected in democratic system.
Sometimes forcefully elected
There are people who would be elected endlessly thanks to their sheer competence. My town had one such mayor, but opposing party passed country-wide limit to amount of times one can be re-elected.
And I bet americans would love to still have Teddy Roosevelt as their president, especially now, though that might require a bit more than forceful election, a bit of necromancy perhaps.
No, it's a dictatorship. Dictatorship of capital. Soviet union was also a dictatorship, which is why they also had elites that dictated how much of what you can have. It wasn't because of the communism that they had elites, it was because it was a dictatorship.
Of course the funny thing about capital is that it tends to accumulate, so you get a dictatorship pretty naturally.
Adam Smith wrote about how much he hated landlords because they are feudalism.
It's two sides of the same coin. Everyone likes capitalism in the early days when there are lots of entrepreneurs and small businesses competing against each other. Mom and pop can run a family store. There's a strong middle class and national prosperity.
But it doesn't last, and capitalism always morphs into crony capitalism, where monopolies run everything and lawmakers are bribed to protect the rich and exploit the poor. It's functionally no different from communism, which is a political and economic model (yes its both) that just speedruns straight to late stage oligarchy.
Both crony capitalism and communism concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few oligarchs that control most of the nation's resources. Both hand majority control over to one or a handful of major political parties. Both involve high degrees of bribery, corruption, and accumulation of wealth and power with the goal of exploiting the masses.
Marx was a liar and a terrorist. His work has done more harm to humanity than nuclear weapons. Communism is a blueprint that tricks the naive, the gullible, and the stupid and in every single instance without fail causes violent revolution that incorporates genocide to put the absolute worst people in power so they can oppress and tyrannize those weaker than them.
Crony Capitalism is the same end, it just takes longer and dresses the whole thing up in mask and gown and plays a charade to keep people from realizing the truth.
The human race has an inherent flaw. We can't govern ourselves properly. Every single model of government we have ends up abusing the people who the government is supposed to represent. We don't have a model of government that actually works as intended.
There is no good capitalism. Capitalism was a power shift from one ruling class to another: kings to the capitalist. May we prefigure a world without rulers.
Everybody wants to wear the boot.
Exactly. The words used to describe the model are just that. Words. The ruling class is always shitty people who have their heads in the clouds. They cannot fathom the struggles of the working class and have no idea how to actually make things better. It doesn't matter how you structure the government when our rulers are always human-shaped embodiments of shit.
I understand why my post above gets so many downvotes. It's natural for people to want to believe they have an answer that works. That what they believe in is correct and everyone else is wrong. I'm telling you that everyone is wrong, and we don't have a model that works. Nobody wants to hear that, but it's the answer I've arrived to after thinking about politics and economics for decades. It's also why the people are so susceptible to demagogues. A man with a plan will come along, tell everyone what they want to hear, and lead society towards its next mass atrocity. It's going to happen again. It will happen here in the USA. You can bet on it.
Tell us you don't understand what communism is without telling us you don't understand what communism is. 🙄
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