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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • Every unregulated capitalist economy has devolved

    Right, but I’m not arguing for unregulated capitalism. I think capitalism should be highly regulated. I’m arguing for fair markets that reward good actors and punish bad. I’m arguing for continually refining capitalism and fixing the problems. Which is why I keep having this argument. You’re obviously an intelligent person, motivated to change society for the better, with a good moral compass. I want you on my side. I want people to want to work on the actual problems, and not pin their hopes on some big idea that will fix everything, because that doesn’t exist.

    Sure, there have been authoritarian governments that said they were socialist for PR.

    This is the cognitive dissonance about Marxism that bugs me the most. You believe that a system such as Capitalism is so flawed that it must be replaced with something else, but you are unwilling to see that Socialism is also flawed in different ways. If you adhered to the principles of pure Marxism, you would see that Socialism as well must be discarded for a better alternative. Instead of seeing that, you will label every failed Socialist state as a fake. We need something else.


  • Steam engines literally led to the development of electric motors. Steam engines led to steam turbines which led to dynamos which led to electric motors, each invention building off the knowledge gained at the previous step.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_turbine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Algernon_Parsons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamo

    Your analogy is doubly flawed. Each type of engine you mention has strengths and weaknesses that depend on external variables. Internal combustion isn’t better at producing electricity for instance, which is why we mostly use external combustion to do that. Electric motors aren’t better than internal combustion, except that internal combustion is causing climate change. It’s also flawed because history has shown that Socialism doesn’t work better than Capitalism. I could see, if this were purely theoretical, someone arguing the benefits of Marxist ideas, but it’s been tried. In several places around the world, people tried to put in place the kind of changes you’re advocating. In every case it led to authoritarianism, brutal repression, and starvation. Does it suck that poor kids don’t have enough to eat, while Bezos builds space yachts? Yeah it sucks, but it’s not millions-starving-to-death levels of suck like we actually, not theoretically, got every time we tried Communism or Socialism or any kind of take-their-stuff-and-give-it-to-me-ism.