Hey kids: Don't be a sucker for socialism

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I havn't followed the whole thread (44+ pages) and apoligize if this link is old hat: Tytler Cycle.

Yes, that's a detailed version of an idea that sometimes gets meme-ified along the lines of: Hard times create strong men > Strong men create good times > Good times create soft men > Soft men create hard times.

As the world turns...

Bernie Sanders’ New Campaign Advisor David Sirota Once Touted Hugo Chavez’s ‘Economic Miracle’ in Venezuela

Several new staffers have joined the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I­–Vt.), including David Sirota, a columnist and political activist who once praised the economic policies of former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.

In a 2013 column for Salon, Sirota credited Chavez's "full-throated advocacy of socialism" with achieving an economic miracle. "As shown by some of the most significant indicators, Chavez racked up an economic record that a legacy-obsessed American president could only dream of achieving," he wrote.
https://reason.com/blog/2019/03/19/bern ... -venezuela



In other news from the Venezuelan socialist miracle, "Desperate Venezuelans storm sewage drains in search of water."

I heard somewhere that Denmark is doing well...<shrug>

So, nobody works unless they want to? Might be time to think on that. We are all interconnected in that we depend on others for electricity, water, computer/cell/tv, food, shelter, and travel. Somebody does that, and they like to get paid. If you tax them really high to pay for your free stuff, what if they decide they don't want to be part of the slave labor market. Suppose all electric utility workers decided they needed free stuff too and all at the same time? You want free higher education? What incentive do the professors have to show up?

the third way countries are all doing relatively fine, last time i checked. but all you MAGAs can go on just spouting the same old jingoistic jibberjabber, "we're the best, nobody better than us, nobody has anything to show us, blah blah blah..."

If it weren't deadly serious, it would be funny.

End-stage socialism is always the same. Worthless national currency litters the streets in Venezuela.

The Socialist Revolution is proceeding according to plan.

On Point: Venezuela's Maduro Starves His Own People

Venezuela's slide to chaotic penury and violence continues. Socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro and his government ought to resign in shame, but caudillos and their cronies inevitably attempt to cling to power, no matter the suffering they inflict.

The Venezuelan people certainly suffer. In the last month, the nation with over 300 billion barrels in proven oil reserves has suffered three major electrical blackouts affecting three-quarters of the country. Even the capital, Caracas, went dark.

There's a loss of lives as well as lights. Venezuelan sources reported that 46 hospitalized patients died as a direct result of the first blackout.

Starvation haunts Venezuela. The United Nations estimates almost 4 million Venezuelans are malnourished. Some 22 percent of Venezuela children age 5 and younger suffer from chronic malnutrition.

Lack of food and medicine is one reason over 3 million Venezuelans have fled the country. Refugees in Colombia give aid workers detailed information on conditions in Venezuela. Medieval suffering? Yes, with cellphone videos providing 21st-century evidence.

Maduro and his government had refused humanitarian aid because they deny a humanitarian crisis exists. Maduro blames Venezuela's problems on "sabotage." Who are the saboteurs? Neighboring Colombia, the U.S., oil companies, capitalism, etcetera.

The real blame lies with Maduro and his predecessor, former army paratrooper Hugo Chavez, founder of the so-called socialist Bolivarian Revolution. Chavista authoritarianism and the corruption and repression socialism inevitably creates crippled and impoverished what was once one of Latin America's richest nations. The country's daily oil production is a third of what it was in 1999. According to the International Monetary Fund, Venezuela's inflation rate in January was 2.6 million percent.

Maduro uses food as a weapon against his own people, just like the Soviet Union did. In July 2016, Venezuela's food shortages were so severe the military took charge of food distribution. In January 2017, the army took control of food imports.

Maduro's supporters immediately benefitted from this militarized system. They had and still have access to food. They can also demand bribes from starving citizens in exchange for food.

https://strategypage.com/on_point/20190417203729.aspx

Another interesting effect of socialism is that it convinces people the only way to get ahead is by being corrupt. When you have generations of people who need to cut shady deals to live above the poverty line or just to eat, you end up teaching an entire culture to be corrupt, dishonest scam artists.

The Chinese call this 占便宜. Every time you see a dodgy piece of Chinese electronics such as a POPstation, claiming to have 4K colour 3D graphics when really it's just a brick game on a monochrome screen, remember that the designer's parents and grandparents lived through Mao's famine and had to survive through corruption, deception and letting their neighbors starve to death.

It may seem funny that 26 years of Maoism produced the most amoral, cut-throat capitalists in the world but the truth is, it was inevitable.

everybody makes a false choice between one extreme [hard-core socialism] and the other [hard-core capitalism] without considering the "third way" successfully practiced in northern Europe for quite some time now. amuuurica could use a bunch of that third way.

idk.. i mean a 70% of corporate tax may not be that bad for our trillionnaires since 96% of their wealth are safe and sound in some tax haven in bermuda , that is like 70% of 4% which is like 2.8% of everything which if spent on the right places could make a lot of difference in saving this collapsing political entity . i mean for most ppl living in america is not any particularly different from living in venezuela as of in 2019. so.

lmao

I only skimmed a couple pages but I'm mostly seeing right wing strawmen of socialism.

I'm fairly agnostic on the capitalism/socialism spectrum and believe that some kind of hybrid like social democracy or market socialism is best. Socialism is just workers owning the means of production. If you have an authoritarian state control the entire economy and repressing people, that's a problem, but I think america's version of capitalism is rife with problems and dysfunction of its own. My ideal system would involve markets with generous safety nets (basic income + medicare for all + a couple other things), and workers owning the means of production within a cooperative model.

If you can have a system with workers owning the means of production within a market system, like, say, worker cooperatives, I don't see how that would bring all of the problems people like to talk about when they scream socialism, those are normally associated with authoritarian governments that control everything and mismanage it on a massive scale. And honestly, the vast majority of people in the US who are left wing are not socialist, even the people who say they are like Bernie and AOC. I mean they're basically social democrats. They have more in common with FDR and social democratic states in Europe than they do with say cuba or china or venezuela. And then when you get into mainstream democrats like Clinton and Obama and Biden....yeah they're what used to be moderate republicans in the new deal era. I mean America's political system is center right to right. Those are your choices. Then when actual center or center left people exist they're seen as these flag burning radicals who will turn us into the USSR.

So yeah, be open to "socialism", especially the american varieties. They're nothing like what the strawmen make it out to be. Our "left" is like the bare minimum we should be doing to take care of our citizens.

^^^hiya Jon and welcome to our club