• protist@mander.xyz
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    1 year ago

    There are serious ethical problems with a capitalist system, especially when it comes to the necessities of life, but there’s also ample evidence that other economic systems in practice have been just as bad if not worse regarding food security. Trace the history of the USSR from the Holodomor in the 1930s to empty grocery shelves and bread lines in the 1980s, for example

    • fidodo@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I view the problem as us treating a tool as a system of government. Capitalism is an incredibly powerful tool for increasing efficiency (real capitalism as in a healthy free market, not monopoly bullshit). But we should be using that tool to our benefit, not having that tool use us. We can use it as a tool without it being our basis of society. Also, capitalism is not self regulating. That’s a bullshit myth created by elite monopolists. Unchecked capitalism leads to monopolies and monopolies are the antithesis of capitalism. We used to know that. We used to bust monopolies. We need to learn when and when not to use capitalism. Certain things need to be monopolies. Like transportation and the power grid. Since healthy competition cannot prosper we cannot make them capitalistic. We already need to recognize that capitalism is a tool for us to use. It’s ok to break capitalism in special circumstances for the greater good, because the good of the people is more important than perpetuating capitalism. I think abolishing it leads to apathy and inefficiency, but worshipping it leads to inhumanity, and we’re not even worshipping it properly because again, monopolies are not capitalism. Like all things in life it’s about balance.

    • aname@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      I cannot comment on communism as there has not been a true communism in the world yet, but dictatorships sure have been bad.

      • symcal@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        No system be it either communism or capitalism can be applied 100%

        If we compare today’s capitalism it’s only fair that we compare it to real world application of communism.

        As a Pole that was raised in a country freshly out of this system I can only tell you that you would have to be mentally insane to ever consider communism and expect it to work even half as well is it should on paper.

        • gmtom@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          But that’s not a “real world application of communism” in fact in reality the USSR never even claimed to actually be a communist society, they were just ruled by the communist party.

          Communism has a specific definition, primarily its a post scarcity society, with no centralised government or monetary system. So any system that doesn’t meet that basic definition can’t be called communism.

          Much like we don’t use places like the Democratic people’s Republic of Korea as an example of ehy democracy is bad, because its not actually a democracy, it doesn’t meet the basic definition of democracy.

          You can argue its an example of socialism, but it would be more accurate to describe it as authoritarianism because without democracy a state owned system can’t really be called socialism.

        • Shardikprime@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Venezuelan here, how has been your experience on lemmy so far while discussing your real life experience of what leftists advocate for? Mine has been less than stellar

        • fidodo@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Yes, as with all things it must be balanced. Also, I wish we could recognize that monopolies are not capitalism, it’s just cronyism and there’s no place for that. It’s the antithesis of capitalism and it plagues communism too. It’s just pure corruption.

          • hopelessbyanxiety@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            i thought monopoly is just the natural development in a competition, which (the competition) is pretty relevant in any market economy. I mean, an alt history line could have every monopoly in the market being prevented by gov regulation. But that would require gov that’s not payed in any way by the 1%, who benefit from inexistent competition, to serve its own interest. That’s really far from today’s reality, in most countries i guess.

            • fidodo@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              It is a natural development which is why we have anti trust laws. We recognized over 100 years ago that monopolies are bad and that they need to be broken up to keep capitalism healthy, but decades of corporate lobbying and propaganda made that practice stop happening. You’re right that we need to clean up corruption in the government to make that happen again.

    • Glitchington@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Okay but like, at least understand why the shelves were empy. Behind the Bastards had a great podcast on the matter. Bad science is bad science, no matter how you trade.

      • protist@mander.xyz
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        1 year ago

        What Lysenko did and the magnitude of it was enabled by and is inextricable from the Soviet systems of government and economy:

        Lysenko’s success at encouraging farmers to return to working their lands impressed Stalin, who also approved of Lysenko’s peasant background, as Stalin claimed to stand with the proletariat. By the late 1920s, the USSR’s leaders had given their support to Lysenko. This support was a consequence, in part, of policies put in place by the Communist Party to rapidly promote members of the proletariat into leadership positions in agriculture, science and industry. Party officials were looking for promising candidates with backgrounds similar to Lysenko’s: born of a peasant family, without formal academic training or affiliations to the academic community. Due to close partnership between Stalin and Lysenko, Lysenko acquired an influence over genetics in the Soviet Union during the early and mid twentieth century. Lysenko eventually became the director of Genetics for the Academy of Sciences in 1940, which gave him even more control over genetics. He remained in the position for more than two decades, throughout the reigns of Stalin and Nikita Khruschchev, until he was relieved of his duties in 1965.

      • SCB@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Well it wasn’t so much a problem to Russians because their centralized economic system allowed them to simply starve away those they didn’t like

    • sverit@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, the problems are just different. A mixed form would be ideal, where basic needs would be handled socially and the rest may compete in a capitalist way. The difficulty is where to draw the line exactly.

    • Kecessa
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      1 year ago

      Crown corporations/co-ops/worker owned companies for essential needs, capitalism for all non essentials.

      Tada!