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Both sides are the same
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
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Literally yes. Housing, employment, education, healthcare and pensions are guaranteed in Cuba, and were guaranteed in the USSR, both in theory and in practice. What are you exactly talking about?
Communism is just impossible to implement. It only takes one human's greed to destroy the system. Center-left is far more plausible where the economy is capitalist with lots of checks and balances to counter extreme capitalists' greed and the state having control over essential industries and important parts of the economy (energy, water supply, transportation, education, healthcare and stuff) while abolishing religious systems to nil the discrimination on that end.
The entire concept of life itself is very capitalist — You have to exploit all resources available to you so you can survive and thrive. Only some species share resources — that too if they are in abundance for them.
This is an incredibly inaccurate way to describe nature and you feed into narratives that capitalism is "natural" that stop us from thinking critically both about nature and humanity when you frame things in this way.
Did I ever say capitalism is good? I am saying extreme ends of both economic systems are impossible if you want a free and thriving society.
What you have accomplished is to introduce a completely arbitrary and reductive continuum and stated both ends are bad... so what?
I don't care either way what you think about capitalism, I am telling you to stop comparing capitalism to nature because it exposes that you clearly don't know anything about nature.
Great job editing your comment after I post my reply.
I know more about nature than you clearly do. I was a professional wildlife photographer for a long time and have travelled to various places, studied a lot of animal behaviour and have been around people who are professionals in this field. So yeah… I won’t be taking shit from a person banging a keyboard in their mother’s basement.
Socialism is not extreme. However, communism is. Educate yourself.
Civilisation would be impossible to implement if we didn't criminalise destructive behaviour like murder.
Make greed (hording wealth) illegal.
Capitalism literally encourages human greed to accumulate wealth and destroy the societal system. Even if you tax and regulate them that's still what's encouraged, as its literally the entire point of the system
And regarding "only some species share resources.." Yes. Us. That's literally what society is. How do you think humans grew to become the most successful species on earth? If you win I do not lose. It's not a zero-sum game. Cooperation is literally a win-win. Do you think technology and science would thrive and prosper in a cutthroat society where people kill and steal from each other over any tiny advantage they can get?
I am not saying capitalism is great.
You guys ignore the very fact that socialism and communism is a failed system because they are so extreme in its nature. You have to make people believe that the opposite is worse. Capitalism is failing today because it is going towards an extreme, both are the 2 sides of the same coin. Having the best of both worlds is what will create balance. The capitalism from 50 years ago and capitalism today are vastly different. Because earlier we were either centre-right or centre-left.
It definitely didn't thrive under socialism.
I mean, do you know what socialism is? Do you know what capitalism is? It's not really extreme in the objective sense, what is extreme is that someone can own a thing that they don't even use, and hire other people to use for them, and then them profit just because they own it. Or own land and make others pay to use or live on that land, just because they own it. I mean, I find that to be absurd in the grand scheme of things, but that is what capitalism is.
Capitalism just feels like a very anti-social economic system
I don’t see where technology is exactly “thriving” under capitalism. Sure it’s advancing but in ways that don’t actually serve the people. It actually seems to be a significant dividing factor for people today. Even healthcare is the U.S. is fractured (to be polite) because a handful of wealthy decided science is whatever they say it is and defunded research.
You state capitalism isn’t great and claim socialism as a failed system, but how can that be when we see literally today capitalism has failed us. Has there ever been a point in time we as people have truly implemented a socialist society that is not twisted, bent, and raped by capitalism or communism?
I mean Russia did put people in space
Whose space program caused significant dent in their already broken economy just to compete with the US. Won't call that thriving.
Also China is not socialist. It is state a owned authoritarian capitalist country at best. It just calls itself is socialist but ranks no. 2 in total number of billionaires after the US.
And during both regimes' socialist/communist eras, each country's individual death toll, as a result of the economic policies and the authoritarian regimes, was more than the Nazi holocaust. I won't even call that a thriving civilization let alone thriving of science.
So how about the death toll of countries under the strain of capitalism?
Sure capitalism has blood on its hands. But pointing to capitalist deaths doesn’t erase the catastrophic death tolls under communist regimes. It's not a competition of “which ideology killed more,” it’s about which system actually functions without collapsing or requiring authoritarian control.
You can control capitalism with regulations. Communism historically only survives through force and collapses when markets are removed.
I’m so tired of individuals confusing socialism and communism. It is not the same thing. Educate yourself.
First level headed comment i think ive ever read on lemmy. People need to get out of black and white thinking. It has to be a blend.
We need libraries and fire stations. We also need some competition and industry so we can live comfortably and buy shit; thats just how it is.
We dont need billionaires.
You claim communism is impossible to implement yet you have no issue in attempting to implement a democracy that capitalism won't be able to pervert, despite one never having existed before and it being impossible for one to exist.
It sounds less like genuine rationality and more like rationalising a status quo bias. Even worse when people are claiming capitalism to be the natural order of life, despite existing for less than 0.0000001% of it and humans being egalitarian for far longer than they were capitalist.
Peak homoeconomus experiencing "capitalist realism." They even colonised your dreams.
Yes, capitalism as a formal economic system is recent but the behaviours it’s built on aren’t. Competition, territorial control, hoarding for security, unequal outcomes all of these exist across nature (including humans). Lions fight for dominance, trees compete for sunlight, squirrels hoard food. Resource competition is older than any ideology.
Communism, on the other hand, assumes sustained large scale human cooperation without hierarchy, which has never existed stably either outside small tribes where scarcity was low and populations small. Scaling that to millions is where it collapses.
I’m not defending status quo. I support regulated capitalism with social welfare (centre-left). Capitalism needs checks, not abolition. Meanwhile Communism needs human behaviour to fundamentally change.
One system builds on instinct and incentives and the other demands we override them entirely.
That’s the difference in feasibility.
No, you're just rationalising sociopathy with thoroughly disproved social-Darwinism. Contrary to what people think, it was our sharing of resources that set us appart from our competitors, not competition within our species. That's basic human evolutionary history.
People had to be beaten, whipped, staved, dispossessed of their land and forced leave their egalitarian lives to endure capitalism, making it the opposite of human nature. You just don't know the history of capitalism.
Again, can you name one single country that hasn't had its democracy utterly perverted by capitalism? We both know you can't and that's why you refuse to answer. Can you even name one check that hasn't been perverted? As you can't, why do you think any could magically work now?
Believing it to be human instinct is just telling on yourself for you lack of empathy, believing everyone else has as little as you do.
We were egalitarian for 10s of thousands of years. That's real human nature whether you like it or not. Just because we happen to be ruled over by the most greedy and sociopathic people in society, it doesn't make it our nature.
You can't name a time capitalism hasn't perverted democracy and failed the 99% but think failing that way only applies to communism. Like I said, peak homo economicus experiencing capitalist realism. You fell for the first lie you were told and refuse to hold it to account.
Yeah cool I am stupid and useless. Now go take your solution and start a revolution. I will grab a popcorn. I have a life to live. 🤡