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[–] 33 points 1 year ago

the smugness is always the worst part.

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  • [+] 6 points 1 year ago* (7 children)
  • [–] [S] 30 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Markets are fundamentally profit driven, and services like healthcare or housing need to be provided regardless of the profit motive. These are a natural fit for the state owned industries. Where markets can have a role is providing nice to have things that improve general quality of life, but aren't living essentials.

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    *Capital markets. Commodity markets are fine as long as you align stakeholders with ownership. So worker and consumer coöps. Rental and housing coöps are a great example.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    How do you prevent the commodities turning into capital?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    You don't have to. If it becomes capital, then it is subject to the same multi-stakeholder analysis.

    If I bought a printer, it would just be a commodity. If I start selling products made from said printer and hire more people, then it would need to be a worker coöp.

    How would an authoritarian socialist system handle someone wanting a printer given that it could be used as capital?

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I like to take a Mutualist position on it. Things should only be socialized to their direct stakeholders. So most companies would be worker coöps. Utilities would be consumer worker coöps. And large interstate transit would be federal. Universal healthcare would fall into the later as a largescale consumer coöp.

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  • [+] 6 points 1 year ago* (1 child)
  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    As a Mutualist, I firmly disagree. Coöps are essentially a democratic alternative to top-down coercive management styles or forms of ownership. It is a mutualist system that is antithetical to competition.

    Take a renter's coöp for example. Essentially everyone owns their building and they aren't competing with other buildings or have shareholders would expect a return on investment.

    With coöps you can actually respect locality. Large auth-socialist systems will often have with people competing interests who have undo control over local systems. That isn't to say broader standards shouldn't exist, but that they should be done thru voluntary industry wide syndication.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    To make clear the point Cowbee made, consider these three scenarios:-

    1. The different parts of the country have different levels of natural resources / infrastructure / educational facilities. Co-ops i the wealthier areas are doing well, and all their employees are prospering. But those in the poorer areas are struggling, and all their employees are struggling.

    2. There are five co-ops making the same type of product (say, radios). They each have their own design office, factory, sales networks and marketing. Would it not be more efficient to consolidate them?

    3. There is a co-op that works in digging coal and running a thermal power plant. The society as a whole would benefit from switching to solar panels, but this co-op keeps blocking all such efforts since it would hurt them.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (22 children)

    I've never encountered this type of liberal. Neolib, sure.

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  • [–] [S] 31 points 1 year ago (20 children)

    Liberalism is an ideology with two main parts. First is political liberalism which focuses on individual freedoms, democracy, and human rights. Second is economic liberalism which centers around free markets, private property, and wealth accumulation. These two aspects form a contradiction. Political liberalism purports to support everyone’s freedom, while economic liberalism enshrines private property rights as sacred in laws and constitutions, effectively removing them from political debate.

    Liberalism justifies the use of state violence to safeguard property rights even when they come into direct conflict with providing necessities such as food, shelter, and healthcare. The idea that private property is a key part of individual freedom provides the foundational justification for the rich to keep their wealth while ignoring the needs of everyone else. Thus, all the talk of promoting freedom and democracy is nothing more than a fig leaf to provide cover for justifying capitalist relations.

    This is an excellent primer on the subject https://orgrad.wordpress.com/articles/liberalism-the-two-faced-tyranny-of-wealth/

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  • [+] -12 points 1 year ago (19 children)

    I very much understand all of this. Do you truly prefer maga? You would rather have ICE raids than student loan forgiveness? You would rather have Medicaid cuts than the CHIPS act. I am not a liberal but I have to admit I am extremely embarrassed by the short sightedness and lack of care from modern leftists. Letting Trump won is causing so much harm to people who don't deserve it. Is the DNC the answer, fuck no. But letting republicans win everything is clearly pushing America to the far right.

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  • [–] [S] 14 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Not only are you creating a false dichotomy here, but you're ignoring the fact that Trump coming to power is itself is a direct product of decades of liberal policies.

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  • [+] -6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    It's not though. He came to power through a strong propaganda network, he is actually just continuing liberal policies.

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  • [–] [S] 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    The question you need to ask yourself is what made his message resonate with people now when this sort of rhetoric was ignored before. People are falling out of the liberal mainstream because they see their material conditions decline, this makes them lose faith in the system and mainstream media. This is what creates room for opportunists like Trump to come in and promise change like draining the swamp, and so on. Obviously, he is continuing the same policies that benefit the ruling class, but the same people who were fooled by the liberal message for decades prior, are now fooled by his promises.

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  • [–] -5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Because NYC has proof the DNC is not far enough left to achieve their goals. Everywhere else the DNC can be used as a leftist Boogeyman.

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  • [–] [S] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    The dem party as a whole is fundamentally a right wing party. The NYC is proof that there is demand for left wing policies in the US, but they cannot be implemented sustainably within the capitalist system.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Right, but it's currently the only system in use anywhere. It is truly a despicable way of life that will likely cause the end of this planet but I am 99% sure that allowing it to be completely controlled by billionaire tech edge lords and racist incels is not a better outcome than Kamala. This isn't about being the entire game plan and effort but allowing the further right party gain control by not voting just doesn't make any sense to me. Every single president of my lifetime has sucked but the damage done by Bush with Homeland Security shit and what Trump is doing with ICE is honestly detrimental enough that ignoring it is fucking weird to me. Again, I do not like the DNC but I understand the dystopian nature of the country I live in and the true hopelessness of third party votes. The DNC will never get a penny from me unless hell freezes over and they run actual leftists, but they will get my vote because I can't picture a single scenario where anyone's life is improved when Republicans are in control.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 1 year ago

    Uh no, other systems very much do exist. Go look at China or Vietnam as two obvious counter examples. The reality is that the US will continue on the exact same trajectory regardless of which oligarch owned party is in charge. The US is a dictatorship of capital. Until people start organizing outside voting and create an actual labour movement, nothing will fundamentally change.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    How on earth did you come to the conclusion the comment you were responding to was supporting MAGA? Honestly baffling

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    Because it doesn't support Democrats and anything that doesn't support them must be supporting MAGA. Politics is black and white like that.

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  • [+] -7 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    Because leftists are pushing the youth towards the right. There are way more lil Nazis then there ever have been. Y'all are the reactionary assholes that assume I have to love the DNC, quite the opposite. I can however, see reality.

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  • [+] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)
  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    The far right seems to be winning both the culture war and the political war. This was unimaginable 15 years ago.

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  • [+] 8 points 1 year ago* (3 children)
  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Ahh yes, the demise where it is in place in literally every country on the planet and right wing parties are gaining momentum everywhere. What are you actually talking about?

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  • [+] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    If China is the kind of socialism you all are talking about, I'm good.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    You vote for a genocide and tell yourself it's because you're anti-fascist... you sure that's reality you can see?

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  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I don't vote for a genocide. Neither party is going to fully control Israel. Allowing Trump to take office was the true worst case scenario for Gaza and it's people and that is proven more true everyday. The only reality is that more Palestinians are dead because Trump is the President and they now have no shot at any sort of future as an independent nation because Trump became President. If you didn't vote for Kamala and could have you are responsible for that but your fanatascism and lack of awareness allow you to lie to yourself. If you actually gave a shit about the people over your narrative . . .

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Neither party is going to fully control Israel.

    Whichever party wins fully controls Israel. It is a client state.

    Allowing Trump to take office was the true worst case scenario for Gaza and it’s people and that is proven more true everyday.

    You are a holocaust denier. You deny the genocide existed until your team lost power. You are exactly the same as them.

    they now have no shot at any sort of future as an independent nation because Trump became President.

    Clownish ignorance. You supported the biggest Zionist in the entire country. It's exactly here that the distinction between evil and stupid has zero relevance.

    You didn't just suddenly start giving a shit about the lives of Palestinians. You're an evil piece of shit who wants to use them as political props for your nazi party now that the other nazi party is in power.

    Follow your leader.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago

    I didn't support anything I'm just not an extremist zealot so I can understand that a bad situation can get worse. Gaza was a genocide under the Dems but under Trump it will no longer exist. If you can't see that difference I truly feel very sorry for you.

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    [+] -19 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    There’s a little bit more nuance than that isn’t there? You can provide these things, but we still need to produce things right? Because we haven’t yet reached full automation. So the question is if we provide those things and a significant part of the population decide that they are happy with the minimum and thus they don’t want to work, and we start having massive labor shortages such that the goods needed to sustain the economy cannot be produced, what do we do? Well the only solution at that point is to make labor mandatory, and forced if the individual is noncompliant. Which is why the labor market as it exists is seen as the lesser evil. This is a bit of an oversimplification because I’m not looking to write an essay here but that covers the gist of why a liberal may oppose full on socialism.

    For me, the imperative is achieving that automation. Only then is full socialism viable.

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  • [–] [S] 30 points 1 year ago

    We don't need to reach full automation. We throw away half the food we produce right now, there is more empty housing having been bought up for speculation than there are people in the US or Canada. The problem is with the economic system that fails to distribute according to need. The solution is to ensure that workers are the primary beneficiaries of their own labour as opposed to the oligarchs who own capital.

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