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this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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chapotraphouse
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
Everyone here makes fun of liberals because the private property and market economies keep getting in the way of the equality and human rights parts.
lmao at liberals explaining how companies like Blackrock are bad and we need to stop them while the philosophy and politicians they've hitched their wagon to says that is all juuuuust fine
I think it because most of "us" don't have a political ideology that we conform to 100% or politicians we can vote for that we actually agree with.
I'm with everyone on the "capitalism fucks us all" but I have a very hard time seeing the proletariat utopia succeed in various places, luxury goods production for one example. For me personally I think the greed incentive drives people to create something like the next PlayStation, but a state or stateless system wouldn't give two shits about what people want to play. There would be very little incentive to create truly difficult and expensive things.
Again, I'm with you all on the "capitalism is fucking us" as greed is running rampant, I want equality and inclusion of all peoples, I want housing provided and healthcare to be a right. I just don't have a political ideology to fully identify with so "libtard" or "succdem" is the closest I can get.
And Tetris was invented there
important to remember that socialist states are sanctioned and embargoed by the west. Cuba, for example.
And yet Cuba — a small, besieged, island nation — still managed to develop their own COVID vaccines. Their infant mortality and literacy rates are better than America's. They house their homeless. Imagine where they would be now without western sabotage. Imagine if they could trade freely with the rest of the world and actually seriously develop their economy. With their priorities, where would they be today? "Utopia" is a high bar but "better than America" is not.
If good people were in charge of America, for that matter — if businesses did not own the government, police, and military — imagine what could be done immediately with the stroke of a pen. Infrastructure, healthcare, education, costs of living and housing, theenergy grid, Flint's drinking water. These problems are straightforward to fix, we have the resources and know-how already. It's just politically impossible, because a class of people with interests opposed to everyone else's holds all the power.
Absolutely, I'm with you on all of that! Sorry I don't have a better response to a detailed reply, but I appreciate it!
Also, returning to your earlier point, about socialist economies not producing a lot of luxuries
The USSR did produce some luxury goods later on, but in lesser quantities than the west, because the USSR lacked the west's vast trade networks and third world colonies. In 1985, exports and imports each accounted for only 4% of the USSR's gross domestic product. They produced a lot of their own goods using their own population's labor, which probably made it harder to develop specialized industries to the same extent you'd see in wealthy capitalist nations that perform a lot of trade.
Also, socialist states have done a lot of central planning — again, because they were rapidly industrializing — but socialism does not forbid markets. "Socialism" just means "workers control production, rather than owners." Communist Yugoslavia has been described as a market socialist state. Even in capitalist economies, there are worker co-ops that participate in the market. Markets might be better at producing luxury goods and niche shit than centrally planned economies.
...why doesn't lemmy put a space under my last bullet?
You're a liberal that wants regulation and a welfare state. Your cheap consumer goods are made off cheap extraction of raw materials in the developing world. No way you'd pay 3k for a PS5.
It all depends on what my income would be in that scenario. If a 3k PS5 meant that no one was being exploited (I'm a blue collar laborer so that means me too) then possibly our incomes would be such that 3k doesn't seem so bad.
A friend of mine works for Intel and makes a fuckton of money so he bought a $5k couch. I'd never in my wildest dreams buy a couch that expensive, but if my income was like his I might think about it different.
My point was more that things lead by committees are much less likely to give the O.K to have labor diverted to the production of "Fun Toy" that people do really want because it's not a necessity and there's no benefit to society other than temporary entertainment.
Then learn more
The people ARE the state. Do you think movies and music and tv don't exist in socialist countries?
I think a key part of liberal tradition is that it is idealistic. Wich makes that wikipedia article a lib vew of themselves. There was hardly any reference to capitalism aside from the vacous statments saying liberals like free market.