Sorry, are we on the same platform? All I see from the communists are cringe memes and even cringier “debates” that would get them laughed out of a middle school debate club.
Communism has always been about the future. When Lenin and Marx wrote their books and birthed their movements, they wrote about manufacturing processes EVENTUALLY eliminating material needs and displacing most people from work. They were kinda right at the time seeing the textile industry replace thousands of weavers with machines and the advent of powered farming equipment. What they didn’t account for was the industrial revolution actually adding jobs to the workforce and for a time, jobs being replaced were reliably being replaced with other skilled positions.
But that hasn’t been true since the 90s, since then there has been a marked trend towards automation replacing jobs, and slowly, a lot of the human populace is becoming useless.
I think most serious full on commies like myself understand that it’s still a future form of governance that’s inevitable if we want livable conditions. If we continue to have the almost pure and unbridled capitalistic system we have in the US when automated driving, AI, and general purpose robots really kick off, there will be some pretty serious issues.
Without getting too into doxxing myself, my family runs a construction company and builds houses. Have you seen the concrete 3d printers by chance? My dad was smart enough to get 2 a few years ago. Not only did it cut material costs by about 50% in construction, we went from running a 20 man crew to a 4 man crew when running those things. We still run traditional crews, but those days are numbered, for sure.
We’ll need communism because, one day very soon, a huge number of us are going to be unemployable. Hell, DEEP BLUE out of IBM already has a higher diagnostic rate than human doctors. The US Department of Labor and Goldman Sachs are estimating 300mil - 600mil will be replaced with current AI tech, the biggest losses will be in call centers, and what’s left of secretarial workers.
This is my one obsession. Fear of how we can’t possibly all be employed, because of automation, and how the resources and power will keep concentrating in the hands of those who own the automation. I’ve had this argument with friends that aren’t as left leaning as me, and what i’m told over and over again is that i just lack the vision. That this has been a scare since forever, and yet look at how new jobs keep popping up. “There’ll be jobs you can’t even imagine right now”, they say. “Fearmongers like you have been around since forever”. “Employment is actually going up”.
In my mind though, we’re like the horses when the engine was invented.
It’s funny that the people who usually say someone else lacks vision are the people keeping themselves blind. They assume that things must stay good because that’s what they’ve experienced. They can’t imagine the case where things are different, which most of the evidence is pointing towards.
Your friends are provably wrong. I’d have to look up the actual numbers and dates again, but since around 1994-2000 automation and industrialization has replaced more jobs than it has created, and has in every year since at an exponentially increasing rate. Unfortunately while it would be nice to do this peacefully, the first Rosie the Robot is likely to cause a mass upheaval. Stupid people will try to ban them outright, the smart ones will simply tax the companies that make them and control them providing universal basic income from the revenue.
It’s hard to comprehend what 8 BILLION people really means as well. All of these social systems. Religion, governments, anarchy, empires all existed before there were even one billion people. Before globalization, before instant communication. During the fascist revolutions in China in the 70s there only a third that many people on the whole planet and no one had a cell phone.
Capitalism is failing because it’s a pyramid scheme that’s becoming flattened by the monstrous scale of the base. It makes it so clearly obvious what’s going on now.
I feel like most of our attempts so far aren’t equipped for the scale we’re talking about. I hope someone with the resources to help can figure out how to educate the right people with the right perspective to come up with an alternative… but probably not in my lifetime. Which is a bummer.
We definitely need to figure out how to average out the access to resources and influence. Lots of people think I mean communism but I don’t. That’s an old idea that we should consider borrowing from though.
We’re simultaneously the horse and the rider. We’re centaurs, lol. It would be like if centaurs invented cars. They could still run for fun or for exercise, but at some point they have to accept the car is better at certain things.
A reduction in economic opportunity will naturally be met with declining birthrates which we’re already seeing. People who aren’t thriving don’t want to have children. I don’t expect that to change, I expect it to accelerate as automation reduces opportunity further and further.
You don’t need genocide, you just need to wait 80 years.
Great plain language breakdown for the uninitiated. Doesn’t disregard socialism as a solution to the problems outlined, but that’s a whole other discussion. Frankly at this point in history, it’s largely academic IMHO.
a lot of the human populace is becoming useless.
Emphasis mine. This would be my only edit. Useless only as a consumer and worker. Still imbued with dignity and capable of generating meaning and experiencing a worthy life.
My bad, I did mean useless in terms of a production standpoint.
I’ve never personally had a problem with being useless. The time I value most in my life is the time I spend idle because it feels like I have so little idle time.
Now it’s my bad. I didn’t mean to imply anything about your intent. Your goodwill is pretty clear from everything else you wrote. Just wanted to add a little asterisk there, for other readers.
Great plain language breakdown for the uninitiated. Doesn’t disregard socialism as a solution to the problems outlined, but that’s a whole other discussion.
I’ve always pictured socialism as more a middle step toward full blown communism. I also recognize the value of private enterprise and competition. So whatever communist society we end up with still needs to find ways for that healthy competition to thrive.
But like… We can easily meet human needs at this point for everyone. It’s unjust and stupid not to do so
Socialism in the traditional Marxist path is a transitional step to Communism, yes. Communism, however, is fully anti-market, and as such is anti-competition. Communism is a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society, perhaps you meant to say a system like Market Socialism should precede Communism, rather than some impossible form of competitive Communism?
I think we might be mixing up our micros and macros. Seems like some people will enjoy competition and outdoing each other no matter the extrinsic (or lack thereof) rewards. That’s how it is now, anyway.
I don’t think we’re disagreeing, but I’m thinking of like a somewhat friendly rivalry between, like, two teams of tool makers to outdo each other in design or production efficiencies. Like the kind of stuff that people get up to at work or play, naturally.
I’m no economist, but that doesn’t sound like market competition to me. At least there is no driving force behind it, other than human nature, or maybe like an ad hoc competition for kudos or esteem.
I feel like if we could get everyone’s basic needs met, then human ambition would fill in the gaps. Not for everyone of course, but that’s the case right now - needing money doesn’t necessarily make you more ambitious.
Have you seen the concrete 3d printers by chance? My dad was smart enough to get 2 a few years ago. Not only did it cut material costs by about 50% in construction, we went from running a 20 man crew to a 4 man crew when running those things.
This is where the gaps in your perspective start, concrete 3D printing is incredibly niche, and would usually take more higher paid labor to be used in places that replace concrete methods. That’s not to mention the significant labor in their design and production.
That’s the same with medical AI, AI in general has a massive hallucination problem, but for diagnosis especially, just as many doctors are actually needed for the core part of their job- treatment and running the tests to gather the data for the AI in the first place.
The economy functions on people exchanging the product of their labor for the product of other people’s labor. The amount of useful things produced per hour of a humans labor going down is a good thing. It means we have to work less to live comfortable lives. Capitalism has been remarkably effective at that, it allows people to be as lazy as possible. Communist societies on the other hand, have had no incentive and therefore have not minimized human labor. Why invest in ways for people to work less? What benefit would the planner see in that, if they already have the people to fill those positions?
The one of the most arguments in favor of capitalism is innovation, and then people point to the several clear examples of centrally planned countries inventing something- but that forgets the equally important innovation. Innovation in production, which no centrally planned society has ever excelled at.
This is where the gaps in your perspective start, concrete 3D printing is incredibly niche, and would usually take more higher paid labor to be used in places that replace concrete methods. That’s not to mention the significant labor in their design and production.
Uh… I literally grew up in a family that runs a construction business and have been heavily involved with both the actual construction of houses AND the business management aspect side of things.
So let me tell you right now that you’re totally and completely ignorant. Running one of these things takes 1 skilled person who makes sure the machine is extruding correctly by maintaining the proper water/concrete mix, and 3 unskilled people to smooth the concrete layers out.
That’s the same with medical AI, AI in general has a massive hallucination problem, but for diagnosis especially, just as many doctors are actually needed for the core part of their job- treatment and running the tests to gather the data for the AI in the first place.
Again wrong. My mom is a nurse and has worked with IBM as well. Currently nurses feed in all the data, and it spits out a diagnosis, then a doctor reviews it’s diagnosis and rolls with it. Considering it’s almost 99.9% accurate in diagnosis already it’s better than the doctors.
Capitalism has been remarkably effective at that, it allows people to be as lazy as possible.
Lol yeah fucking right.
You are 100% bonkers man, the fact that you can spout this much bullshit is pretty incredible in and of itself.
I like your idea that we need to move in the direction of a more social communist environment over time. That makes sense.
Looking around at the world and arguing that everything is fine and saying no one could possibly thing of something better is so mind boggling ignorant.
You shouldn’t have taken the bait. You’re talking to a sea lion
Evidence? ;p
I will deny it of course, but there’s no point. Like Chomsky said, the person who throws the mud always wins. I haven’t asked for an infeasible amount of evidence, just any amount of evidence for a claim, and if anyone wants evidence for my claims I’m happy to provide it.
Looking around at the world and arguing that everything is fine and saying no one could possibly thing of something better is so mind boggling ignorant.
Who said that? (Is this sealioning? Asking for evidence of you accusing me of saying something I didn’t say?)
I too can pull the “I am closely involved in the industry so therefore I’m right without evidence card”. I’m literally an industrial automation engineer(and software developer).
Running one of these things takes 1 skilled person who makes sure the machine is extruding correctly by maintaining the proper water/concrete mix, and 3 unskilled people to smooth the concrete layers out.
I’m not merely talking about the operation of the machine, also the onsite assembly, maintenance, loading, etc. Do you have any citeable evidence that concrete 3D printing is more effective and efficient than traditional concrete methods in common scenarios? Because I just have what’s available on the internet which all points to it not being more effective or efficient currently.
Again wrong. My mom is a nurse and has worked with IBM as well. Currently nurses feed in all the data, and it spits out a diagnosis, then a doctor reviews it’s diagnosis and rolls with it. Considering it’s almost 99.9% accurate in diagnosis already it’s better than the doctors.
How is that me being wrong? You’re not explaining how that removes human labor. You’re just saying it improves the quality of care, which is an undeniably good thing. I guess the only error was that I didn’t specify doctor or nurse gathering the data or doing the treatment.
Lol yeah fucking right.
You are 100% bonkers man, the fact that you can spout this much bullshit is pretty incredible in and of itself.
I’m not a communist, but I agree. I think most people would agree communism/socialism would only work if there is abundance, which in this case will be brought by automation. This is exactly what Star Trek predicts-- if global warming doesn’t get to us first.
I’d argue that the people who think Socialism can only work with abundance, even Communism, fail to understand that Socialism and Communism must be built over a long time, and imagine concepts like “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” must be applied to a pre-existing Capitalist economy.
Really, they just don’t see the timescale. There’s no meaningful reason Socialism cannot happen today with current productive forces.
Good point. We actually already have abundance, even going as far back as twenty years ago. The EU produced so much food that a term was coined “wine lakes and butter mountains”, as so many agricultural goods were left rotten in warehouse storage.
These food produce could be sold or sent to poorer countries or elsewhere. However, doing so would “upset” the market, and to be fair outcompete local farmers in developing countries. We’ve actually solved world hunger long ago!
I think for an equitable solution, there has to be a global single market and/or world government to manage resources. And before anyone objects says “1984” or as predicted, communism wants to take over the world indeed, no, I’m not positing a totalitarian state. Just think how the EU is not a fully authoritative institution, but more like a loose agreement of different countries. That could be replicated on the global level to manage the abundance we have and achieve some sort of socialism.
This is a good empathetic arguement for socialism. Unfortunately many terrible people like the second solution of just killing off the unemployable in various ways. This was usually done through invading neighbors which increases ones own power and reduces your own unemployable workforce. If you don’t want to kill off your own people, you may also have a minority group in your borders that can be put on trains for removal in various ways. Unfortunately the Karl Marx saw a common issue in history and proposed an empathetic way to solve it, but most people I know are assholes and prefer the second option.
Unfortunately many terrible people like the second solution of just killing off the unemployable in various ways.
No communistic / socialistic people actually believe that garbage, the whole point of communism and socialism is to provide for people’s basic needs. I’ve never once met someone that seriously talks about communism who would actually suggest using people like that. And communism doesn’t mean democracy, the best systems are obviously ones where people have equal opportunity to voice their opinions and needs equally.
It’s actually a bad faith argument by capitalists who struggle to see the use of a human being beyond how much labor they can be used for.
More like spouted something that had nothing at all to do with communism on any level other than some bogeyman scare tactic propaganda bullshit designed to pathetically attempt to make communism look bad.
…sorta. I think the better question is to what degree should we be communist? Should people be homeless and hungry in 2023? Do people have the right to a doctor, access to free education, and communication through the Internet as basic human rights?
I’m pretty sure we can do these things, we just don’t.
That is legitimately one school of thought, as I’ve heard it, yes. I’m not so sure about it myself, but we’ve definitely got capitalism – no one’s going to argue that – so we may as well use it to the advantage of human flourishing.
So our world is literally dying, we’re living in the greatest mass extinction event ever, and instead of anything being done this process is actually accelerating by every conceivable metric we have. A friend of mine works on coral reef preservation. Most of the people in that field have given up on actually preserving wild coral as it exists today. His group switched to trying to preserve and grow as many samples as possible in private environments in the hopes that one day the oceans can again support coral reefs. If people knew in how bad shape our oceans and natural spaces really are there’d be a lot more panic.
All because capitalism exists solely to consume endlessly until there’s nothing left.
Making a lightbulb that lasts forever is a terrible business decision because you’ll sell less lightbulbs. In 2023, replaceable batteries have all but disappeared because once the battery dies in a modern day device people see it as time to replace that. Building to last, building renewable, building self-sustaining, that will NEVER be a core tenant of capitalism, because none of those things are profitable. So is building multi mile long fishing nets which indiscriminately catch everything, up to the point where they’re too worn to use, then they’re cut free and rest across the bottom of the ocean where they pin everything they land on and go on killing more sea life. Our oceans are literally coated in those nets because that’s what’s profitable.
We’ve got capitalism, yes we do, and people have cancer and aids, it doesn’t mean we should all just learn to work with cancer and aids. People falsely tie a lot of ‘positive’ things to capitalism, but in the end, capitalism is all about making a quick buck no matter what the cost by any other metric.
TLDW: While they undoubtedly made more money because of their actions, shorter life (incandescent) bulbs shine brighter, and with a “better” colour mix than longer life ones.
I wonder if we would have gone in that direction without a profit motive, or if I dimmer bulb would have been “good enough” if it meant we’d have to spend less resources on bulbs (and making them) overall.
Agreed. Rereading it, I now see how my statement about “using capitalism” sounds like I’m advocating maintaining it in some capacity. Poor phrasing on my part.
I meant simply that it’s uncontroversial to recognise that we’re living under capitalism presently, but that’s just our starting position. That even if you think socialism or communism “needs capitalism” (debatable, academic), well that’s step #1 out of the way already, because we’ve got it, so now what?
As you can see from your upvote/downvote ratio, most of the vitrol towards communism here is rightly directed at the Tankies, as theres a LOT of them spewing braindead takes that are the weirdest mix of SJW (For lack of a better term for nice sounding but low thinking social takes) and authoritarian… as if authoritarians or violent revolutionaries are ever going to care for any minorities past getting into power.
Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to communists who express support for one-party communist regimes that are associated with Marxism–Leninism, whether contemporary or historical.
While everything you said is true, another fact is also true. We could have already automated away almost 2 billion middle and upper management jobs worldwide. They refuse to deploy that automation because that would eliminate all of the crony capitalist jobs that exist, and they, the ultra rich, could have saved themselves trillions of dollars in the last decade.
They prefer to automate the jobs that are harder to automate, so they can drive all the “poors” further into poverty. Every economic analysis in the last decade has shown that the rich refusing to embrace automation and a fair minimum basic income, have cost them at least $100,000,000,000,000 dollars in the last 45 years. Yeah that’s 100 trillion dollars in growth that they just threw to the wayside, knowing it was there, just to see how many of us they can kill before we decide to kill them.
How would you know it’s dog shit unless you read it? People like you are infuriating. It’s never “what you said is wrong because…” but always “I’m not reading this [because it’ll cause me too much cognitive dissonance].” You can’t actually engage in a discussion, instead assuming you must be right because it’s the ideas you were taught as a child. It’s a religion, where you’d rather have unquestiining faith instead of engage the argument.
If you’re correct, there’s nothing to be afraid of. If you’re wrong then maybe your ideas will be improved instead of staying in ignorance.
Replying again to note you just said this: “People are straight up slaves to consooming. They’ll find any excuse to justify it even on a damn piract sub.”
You’re here complaining about communism while also talking about consumption being unethical…
I’m assuming you’re just a troll, but if not what’s going on? Do you need someone to talk to? Are you OK?
Are you talking about people who critique capitalism and its bandaids from the left, or people who chose a collection of countries with red flags to simp for?
Everyone on hexbear and lemmygrad is already a communist, so they don’t spend a lot of time trying to convince each other that communism is good and capitalism is bad, although they do post specific examples. It’s mostly current events, venting, and shitposting. A lot of the serious discussion is either in the weekly news megathread or buried in the comments under some shitpost begging xi jinping to nuke the white house.
Every debate i have with people on lemmy eventually ends in them resorting to 4th grade insults towards me or just straight up throwing hissy fits.
Lemmy is full of children who think anarchy is really good and has no flaws but they cannot explain how societal flaws would be fixed by it. Anarchy is just an example.
Edit: i saw a post another day on an .ml instance just like this I think calling libertarianism bad because it was never tried out in practice meanwhile I feel the need to say this conumimisim has been tried out tons of times and has failed miserably
Good examples of this is pol pots and his Khmer rouge and the failure of his regime
I don’t believe in libertarianism although i do think some of its ideas can be used in practice to good success but thisis my personal opinion . But I think it’s a bit hypocritical to call one political system bad while believing in one which has failed miserably time and time again
Communism is a trap for the simple minded idealists who are disillusioned with capitalism. In theory, it could be a utopia. However, it takes a few basic assumptions in order to work. The biggest one is that everyone participating in the system truly believes in it and no one tries to take advantage of it for personal gain. But it’s far too easy for someone or a small group of people to seize power and then keep everyone else powerless to do anything about it. This has been the cause of the failure of all communist governments that I’m aware of.
On a smaller scale, communism works extremely well though. For example, in gaming guilds. Sharing resources, allowing everyone to specialize where they want without suffering from diversifying their skills or dumping play time into other areas can help everyone to advance more quickly. I put this into practice in ff14 with great success. Raid tiers release every 6 months when they also release new crafted gear which is the best for raid progression, but requires some new ingredients which are time locked but tradeable. So our raiders would contribute their ingredients to crafters and they would provide them with gear, and food. The arrangement required the raiders to continue contributing ingredients for 3 months which were evenly distributed among crafters, and they would then make items and profit from them. They would return 10% of profit (not revenue) to the guild bank which funded all kinds of things. Everyone got what they wanted.
While I disagree with alot of this I think this is a very good nuanced take good on you. You bring some strong arguments.
Prehaps its just me but In my personal opinioni wouldn’t find people trustworthy with my money and resources especially in a gaming guild. I’m sure there have been many good gaming guilds although I’m sure there’s alot of people out there to just take advantage
The big difference between it and real life is you can leave and move somewhere else without a major impact except maybe a tiny bit of time lost. In real life, people either don’t have that option or they do and end up in poverty and having to work 100 hrs a week to make ends meet in their new home.
How would one take advantage of Communism for personal gain in a way that goes against Communism? Have you legitimately thought beyond pure vibes in your head?
How does one “easily seize power” in a democratically controlled system, moreso than a top-down oriented one like Capitalism?
Tankies are cringe - but in spite of what they’ll tell you, they’re not communists… Just look at how enfranchised workers are/were in the USSR, China and, the DPRK.
Edit: The red fascists are clearly getting upset trying to square their authoritarian single-party states with their LARPing about the proliteriat. American diabolism isn’t a political or economic system, you dopey fucks.
I too love identifying with a word rather than holding my own beliefs. Then when others also identify with that word and do something bad, I say they’re not a real representation of that word.
Are you going to apply this principle consistently and tell me the DPRK is democratic? I ask because that would be a deeply stupid claim to make, but we’d hate for you to be inconsistent.
I don’t indentify with the word democratic. But, I think the difference is it’s pretty clear that very few people would interpret the DPRK to be democratic, whereas clearly many people commonly understood the USSR to be communist. And, the meaning of words comes from how people understand them. That’s descriptivism.
Descriptivism is when you’re wrong. 50% of the participants in this conversation say so, therefore it’s true.
Similarly, if the majority of people take the word “Juden” to mean subhuman monsters of a specific ethnoreligious group that are a threat to society that should be rounded up and genocided. Why are they wrong from the perspective of linguistic prescriptivism?
What’s the linguistic prescriptivist definition of communism? None of what you’ve said has anything to do with definitions - only assigning now meaningless labels.
Descriptivism isn’t about the majority deciding a definition. It’s about communicating to be understood. If you argue that the USSR was capitalist people will disagree, you might be right if you interpret capitalist through your definition though. People disagreeing with your definition doesn’t make you wrong, but it is useless, ineffective communication. Either bundle your definition with your message, or use definitions that others would understand (and that’s where descriptivism comes in).
You’re talking about the application of labels, not shaping a definition. What’s the linguistically prescriptive definition of communism that’s descriptive of these regimes?
If most people think I’m straight, but I’m enjoying getting railed by 10 dudes 10 times per day, I’m not straight - they’re wrong. If everyone agrees that getting railed by 10 dudes 10 times per day is straight, that’sprescriptivism descriptivism.
I didn’t mention prescriptivism, I only mentioned descripticism. The usefulness of words comes from their understanding, not their use. If you use 100% valid dictionary words but not how people commonly understand them, then you’re failing to communicate. In this case, you have a definition of communism contrary to how people understand it, so you should either clarify your definition of it, or not be so attached to the word that you insist on using it.
Sorry, are we on the same platform? All I see from the communists are cringe memes and even cringier “debates” that would get them laughed out of a middle school debate club.
I’ll bite.
Communism has always been about the future. When Lenin and Marx wrote their books and birthed their movements, they wrote about manufacturing processes EVENTUALLY eliminating material needs and displacing most people from work. They were kinda right at the time seeing the textile industry replace thousands of weavers with machines and the advent of powered farming equipment. What they didn’t account for was the industrial revolution actually adding jobs to the workforce and for a time, jobs being replaced were reliably being replaced with other skilled positions.
But that hasn’t been true since the 90s, since then there has been a marked trend towards automation replacing jobs, and slowly, a lot of the human populace is becoming useless.
I think most serious full on commies like myself understand that it’s still a future form of governance that’s inevitable if we want livable conditions. If we continue to have the almost pure and unbridled capitalistic system we have in the US when automated driving, AI, and general purpose robots really kick off, there will be some pretty serious issues.
Without getting too into doxxing myself, my family runs a construction company and builds houses. Have you seen the concrete 3d printers by chance? My dad was smart enough to get 2 a few years ago. Not only did it cut material costs by about 50% in construction, we went from running a 20 man crew to a 4 man crew when running those things. We still run traditional crews, but those days are numbered, for sure.
We’ll need communism because, one day very soon, a huge number of us are going to be unemployable. Hell, DEEP BLUE out of IBM already has a higher diagnostic rate than human doctors. The US Department of Labor and Goldman Sachs are estimating 300mil - 600mil will be replaced with current AI tech, the biggest losses will be in call centers, and what’s left of secretarial workers.
This is my one obsession. Fear of how we can’t possibly all be employed, because of automation, and how the resources and power will keep concentrating in the hands of those who own the automation. I’ve had this argument with friends that aren’t as left leaning as me, and what i’m told over and over again is that i just lack the vision. That this has been a scare since forever, and yet look at how new jobs keep popping up. “There’ll be jobs you can’t even imagine right now”, they say. “Fearmongers like you have been around since forever”. “Employment is actually going up”.
In my mind though, we’re like the horses when the engine was invented.
It’s funny that the people who usually say someone else lacks vision are the people keeping themselves blind. They assume that things must stay good because that’s what they’ve experienced. They can’t imagine the case where things are different, which most of the evidence is pointing towards.
Your friends are provably wrong. I’d have to look up the actual numbers and dates again, but since around 1994-2000 automation and industrialization has replaced more jobs than it has created, and has in every year since at an exponentially increasing rate. Unfortunately while it would be nice to do this peacefully, the first Rosie the Robot is likely to cause a mass upheaval. Stupid people will try to ban them outright, the smart ones will simply tax the companies that make them and control them providing universal basic income from the revenue.
It’s hard to comprehend what 8 BILLION people really means as well. All of these social systems. Religion, governments, anarchy, empires all existed before there were even one billion people. Before globalization, before instant communication. During the fascist revolutions in China in the 70s there only a third that many people on the whole planet and no one had a cell phone.
Capitalism is failing because it’s a pyramid scheme that’s becoming flattened by the monstrous scale of the base. It makes it so clearly obvious what’s going on now.
I feel like most of our attempts so far aren’t equipped for the scale we’re talking about. I hope someone with the resources to help can figure out how to educate the right people with the right perspective to come up with an alternative… but probably not in my lifetime. Which is a bummer.
We definitely need to figure out how to average out the access to resources and influence. Lots of people think I mean communism but I don’t. That’s an old idea that we should consider borrowing from though.
We’re simultaneously the horse and the rider. We’re centaurs, lol. It would be like if centaurs invented cars. They could still run for fun or for exercise, but at some point they have to accept the car is better at certain things.
A reduction in economic opportunity will naturally be met with declining birthrates which we’re already seeing. People who aren’t thriving don’t want to have children. I don’t expect that to change, I expect it to accelerate as automation reduces opportunity further and further.
You don’t need genocide, you just need to wait 80 years.
Great plain language breakdown for the uninitiated. Doesn’t disregard socialism as a solution to the problems outlined, but that’s a whole other discussion. Frankly at this point in history, it’s largely academic IMHO.
Emphasis mine. This would be my only edit. Useless only as a consumer and worker. Still imbued with dignity and capable of generating meaning and experiencing a worthy life.
My bad, I did mean useless in terms of a production standpoint.
I’ve never personally had a problem with being useless. The time I value most in my life is the time I spend idle because it feels like I have so little idle time.
Now it’s my bad. I didn’t mean to imply anything about your intent. Your goodwill is pretty clear from everything else you wrote. Just wanted to add a little asterisk there, for other readers.
I’ve always pictured socialism as more a middle step toward full blown communism. I also recognize the value of private enterprise and competition. So whatever communist society we end up with still needs to find ways for that healthy competition to thrive.
But like… We can easily meet human needs at this point for everyone. It’s unjust and stupid not to do so
Socialism in the traditional Marxist path is a transitional step to Communism, yes. Communism, however, is fully anti-market, and as such is anti-competition. Communism is a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society, perhaps you meant to say a system like Market Socialism should precede Communism, rather than some impossible form of competitive Communism?
I think we might be mixing up our micros and macros. Seems like some people will enjoy competition and outdoing each other no matter the extrinsic (or lack thereof) rewards. That’s how it is now, anyway.
Competition, sure. Sports, competitive cooperation, and other methods can be had. Market competition would not exist.
I could be saying the same thing you’re saying though, so correct me if I’m misunderstanding please.
I don’t think we’re disagreeing, but I’m thinking of like a somewhat friendly rivalry between, like, two teams of tool makers to outdo each other in design or production efficiencies. Like the kind of stuff that people get up to at work or play, naturally.
I’m no economist, but that doesn’t sound like market competition to me. At least there is no driving force behind it, other than human nature, or maybe like an ad hoc competition for kudos or esteem.
I feel like if we could get everyone’s basic needs met, then human ambition would fill in the gaps. Not for everyone of course, but that’s the case right now - needing money doesn’t necessarily make you more ambitious.
But is it really easily if only one yacht? /s
This is where the gaps in your perspective start, concrete 3D printing is incredibly niche, and would usually take more higher paid labor to be used in places that replace concrete methods. That’s not to mention the significant labor in their design and production.
That’s the same with medical AI, AI in general has a massive hallucination problem, but for diagnosis especially, just as many doctors are actually needed for the core part of their job- treatment and running the tests to gather the data for the AI in the first place.
The economy functions on people exchanging the product of their labor for the product of other people’s labor. The amount of useful things produced per hour of a humans labor going down is a good thing. It means we have to work less to live comfortable lives. Capitalism has been remarkably effective at that, it allows people to be as lazy as possible. Communist societies on the other hand, have had no incentive and therefore have not minimized human labor. Why invest in ways for people to work less? What benefit would the planner see in that, if they already have the people to fill those positions?
The one of the most arguments in favor of capitalism is innovation, and then people point to the several clear examples of centrally planned countries inventing something- but that forgets the equally important innovation. Innovation in production, which no centrally planned society has ever excelled at.
Uh… I literally grew up in a family that runs a construction business and have been heavily involved with both the actual construction of houses AND the business management aspect side of things.
So let me tell you right now that you’re totally and completely ignorant. Running one of these things takes 1 skilled person who makes sure the machine is extruding correctly by maintaining the proper water/concrete mix, and 3 unskilled people to smooth the concrete layers out.
Again wrong. My mom is a nurse and has worked with IBM as well. Currently nurses feed in all the data, and it spits out a diagnosis, then a doctor reviews it’s diagnosis and rolls with it. Considering it’s almost 99.9% accurate in diagnosis already it’s better than the doctors.
Lol yeah fucking right.
You are 100% bonkers man, the fact that you can spout this much bullshit is pretty incredible in and of itself.
You shouldn’t have taken the bait. You’re talking to a sea lion: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
I like your idea that we need to move in the direction of a more social communist environment over time. That makes sense.
Looking around at the world and arguing that everything is fine and saying no one could possibly thing of something better is so mind boggling ignorant.
Evidence? ;p
I will deny it of course, but there’s no point. Like Chomsky said, the person who throws the mud always wins. I haven’t asked for an infeasible amount of evidence, just any amount of evidence for a claim, and if anyone wants evidence for my claims I’m happy to provide it.
Who said that? (Is this sealioning? Asking for evidence of you accusing me of saying something I didn’t say?)
His other other parent actually runs the sealioning database and has records of you looking like a sea lion.
💀 I’ll ask my dad who owns MongoDB and my mom who invented SQL to delete it.
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More evidence that all types of people came from Reddit
I too can pull the “I am closely involved in the industry so therefore I’m right without evidence card”. I’m literally an industrial automation engineer(and software developer).
I’m not merely talking about the operation of the machine, also the onsite assembly, maintenance, loading, etc. Do you have any citeable evidence that concrete 3D printing is more effective and efficient than traditional concrete methods in common scenarios? Because I just have what’s available on the internet which all points to it not being more effective or efficient currently.
How is that me being wrong? You’re not explaining how that removes human labor. You’re just saying it improves the quality of care, which is an undeniably good thing. I guess the only error was that I didn’t specify doctor or nurse gathering the data or doing the treatment.
Yeah I love ad hominem and just insulting.
I’m not a communist, but I agree. I think most people would agree communism/socialism would only work if there is abundance, which in this case will be brought by automation. This is exactly what Star Trek predicts-- if global warming doesn’t get to us first.
I’d argue that the people who think Socialism can only work with abundance, even Communism, fail to understand that Socialism and Communism must be built over a long time, and imagine concepts like “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” must be applied to a pre-existing Capitalist economy.
Really, they just don’t see the timescale. There’s no meaningful reason Socialism cannot happen today with current productive forces.
Good point. We actually already have abundance, even going as far back as twenty years ago. The EU produced so much food that a term was coined “wine lakes and butter mountains”, as so many agricultural goods were left rotten in warehouse storage.
These food produce could be sold or sent to poorer countries or elsewhere. However, doing so would “upset” the market, and to be fair outcompete local farmers in developing countries. We’ve actually solved world hunger long ago!
I think for an equitable solution, there has to be a global single market and/or world government to manage resources. And before anyone objects says “1984” or as predicted, communism wants to take over the world indeed, no, I’m not positing a totalitarian state. Just think how the EU is not a fully authoritative institution, but more like a loose agreement of different countries. That could be replicated on the global level to manage the abundance we have and achieve some sort of socialism.
Oh I agree, one fully unified, decentralized “government” would be best, organized bottom-up.
This is a good empathetic arguement for socialism. Unfortunately many terrible people like the second solution of just killing off the unemployable in various ways. This was usually done through invading neighbors which increases ones own power and reduces your own unemployable workforce. If you don’t want to kill off your own people, you may also have a minority group in your borders that can be put on trains for removal in various ways. Unfortunately the Karl Marx saw a common issue in history and proposed an empathetic way to solve it, but most people I know are assholes and prefer the second option.
No communistic / socialistic people actually believe that garbage, the whole point of communism and socialism is to provide for people’s basic needs. I’ve never once met someone that seriously talks about communism who would actually suggest using people like that. And communism doesn’t mean democracy, the best systems are obviously ones where people have equal opportunity to voice their opinions and needs equally.
It’s actually a bad faith argument by capitalists who struggle to see the use of a human being beyond how much labor they can be used for.
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More like spouted something that had nothing at all to do with communism on any level other than some bogeyman scare tactic propaganda bullshit designed to pathetically attempt to make communism look bad.
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Isn’t that the thing, we needed capitalism now to be able to have communism in the future?
…sorta. I think the better question is to what degree should we be communist? Should people be homeless and hungry in 2023? Do people have the right to a doctor, access to free education, and communication through the Internet as basic human rights?
I’m pretty sure we can do these things, we just don’t.
That is legitimately one school of thought, as I’ve heard it, yes. I’m not so sure about it myself, but we’ve definitely got capitalism – no one’s going to argue that – so we may as well use it to the advantage of human flourishing.
So our world is literally dying, we’re living in the greatest mass extinction event ever, and instead of anything being done this process is actually accelerating by every conceivable metric we have. A friend of mine works on coral reef preservation. Most of the people in that field have given up on actually preserving wild coral as it exists today. His group switched to trying to preserve and grow as many samples as possible in private environments in the hopes that one day the oceans can again support coral reefs. If people knew in how bad shape our oceans and natural spaces really are there’d be a lot more panic.
All because capitalism exists solely to consume endlessly until there’s nothing left.
Making a lightbulb that lasts forever is a terrible business decision because you’ll sell less lightbulbs. In 2023, replaceable batteries have all but disappeared because once the battery dies in a modern day device people see it as time to replace that. Building to last, building renewable, building self-sustaining, that will NEVER be a core tenant of capitalism, because none of those things are profitable. So is building multi mile long fishing nets which indiscriminately catch everything, up to the point where they’re too worn to use, then they’re cut free and rest across the bottom of the ocean where they pin everything they land on and go on killing more sea life. Our oceans are literally coated in those nets because that’s what’s profitable.
We’ve got capitalism, yes we do, and people have cancer and aids, it doesn’t mean we should all just learn to work with cancer and aids. People falsely tie a lot of ‘positive’ things to capitalism, but in the end, capitalism is all about making a quick buck no matter what the cost by any other metric.
If you’re referring to the Phoebus Cartel, they had legitimate reasons for limiting lightbulb life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb7Bs98KmnY
TLDW: While they undoubtedly made more money because of their actions, shorter life (incandescent) bulbs shine brighter, and with a “better” colour mix than longer life ones.
I wonder if we would have gone in that direction without a profit motive, or if I dimmer bulb would have been “good enough” if it meant we’d have to spend less resources on bulbs (and making them) overall.
Agreed. Rereading it, I now see how my statement about “using capitalism” sounds like I’m advocating maintaining it in some capacity. Poor phrasing on my part.
I meant simply that it’s uncontroversial to recognise that we’re living under capitalism presently, but that’s just our starting position. That even if you think socialism or communism “needs capitalism” (debatable, academic), well that’s step #1 out of the way already, because we’ve got it, so now what?
As you can see from your upvote/downvote ratio, most of the vitrol towards communism here is rightly directed at the Tankies, as theres a LOT of them spewing braindead takes that are the weirdest mix of SJW (For lack of a better term for nice sounding but low thinking social takes) and authoritarian… as if authoritarians or violent revolutionaries are ever going to care for any minorities past getting into power.
…the fuck is a tankie? I’m almost afraid to google it.
anticommunist nonsense
While everything you said is true, another fact is also true. We could have already automated away almost 2 billion middle and upper management jobs worldwide. They refuse to deploy that automation because that would eliminate all of the crony capitalist jobs that exist, and they, the ultra rich, could have saved themselves trillions of dollars in the last decade.
They prefer to automate the jobs that are harder to automate, so they can drive all the “poors” further into poverty. Every economic analysis in the last decade has shown that the rich refusing to embrace automation and a fair minimum basic income, have cost them at least $100,000,000,000,000 dollars in the last 45 years. Yeah that’s 100 trillion dollars in growth that they just threw to the wayside, knowing it was there, just to see how many of us they can kill before we decide to kill them.
Not sure why this was voted down. It’s a great contribution and a reasonable point of discussion.
I am not reading all that shit dog
How would you know it’s dog shit unless you read it? People like you are infuriating. It’s never “what you said is wrong because…” but always “I’m not reading this [because it’ll cause me too much cognitive dissonance].” You can’t actually engage in a discussion, instead assuming you must be right because it’s the ideas you were taught as a child. It’s a religion, where you’d rather have unquestiining faith instead of engage the argument.
If you’re correct, there’s nothing to be afraid of. If you’re wrong then maybe your ideas will be improved instead of staying in ignorance.
Lol I don’t care what you have to say commie
If that makes you feel better…
It doesn’t make anything you believe correct or accurate though.
Replying again to note you just said this: “People are straight up slaves to consooming. They’ll find any excuse to justify it even on a damn piract sub.”
You’re here complaining about communism while also talking about consumption being unethical…
I’m assuming you’re just a troll, but if not what’s going on? Do you need someone to talk to? Are you OK?
And here, everyone, is exhibit A as to why critical thinking is going down the drain globally.
Are you talking about people who critique capitalism and its bandaids from the left, or people who chose a collection of countries with red flags to simp for?
Everyone on hexbear and lemmygrad is already a communist, so they don’t spend a lot of time trying to convince each other that communism is good and capitalism is bad, although they do post specific examples. It’s mostly current events, venting, and shitposting. A lot of the serious discussion is either in the weekly news megathread or buried in the comments under some shitpost begging xi jinping to nuke the white house.
god I hope he does
But are they leftists?
He probably refers to the hexbear/Lemmygrad Members. Aka the latter
Every debate i have with people on lemmy eventually ends in them resorting to 4th grade insults towards me or just straight up throwing hissy fits.
Lemmy is full of children who think anarchy is really good and has no flaws but they cannot explain how societal flaws would be fixed by it. Anarchy is just an example.
I’d take an anarchist over people who think the opposite is better
And I’d rather talk to people with a developed frontal cortex. We both have our preferences.
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Edit: i saw a post another day on an .ml instance just like this I think calling libertarianism bad because it was never tried out in practice meanwhile I feel the need to say this conumimisim has been tried out tons of times and has failed miserably
Good examples of this is pol pots and his Khmer rouge and the failure of his regime
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge?wprov=sfla1
Stalin and leninism with the failure of the ussr
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinism?wprov=sfla1
I don’t believe in libertarianism although i do think some of its ideas can be used in practice to good success
but this is my personal opinion. But I think it’s a bit hypocritical to call one political system bad while believing in one which has failed miserably time and time againdeleted by creator
Go touch grass.
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Communism is a trap for the simple minded idealists who are disillusioned with capitalism. In theory, it could be a utopia. However, it takes a few basic assumptions in order to work. The biggest one is that everyone participating in the system truly believes in it and no one tries to take advantage of it for personal gain. But it’s far too easy for someone or a small group of people to seize power and then keep everyone else powerless to do anything about it. This has been the cause of the failure of all communist governments that I’m aware of.
On a smaller scale, communism works extremely well though. For example, in gaming guilds. Sharing resources, allowing everyone to specialize where they want without suffering from diversifying their skills or dumping play time into other areas can help everyone to advance more quickly. I put this into practice in ff14 with great success. Raid tiers release every 6 months when they also release new crafted gear which is the best for raid progression, but requires some new ingredients which are time locked but tradeable. So our raiders would contribute their ingredients to crafters and they would provide them with gear, and food. The arrangement required the raiders to continue contributing ingredients for 3 months which were evenly distributed among crafters, and they would then make items and profit from them. They would return 10% of profit (not revenue) to the guild bank which funded all kinds of things. Everyone got what they wanted.
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While I disagree with alot of this I think this is a very good nuanced take good on you. You bring some strong arguments.
Prehaps its just me but
In my personal opinioni wouldn’t find people trustworthy with my money and resources especially in a gaming guild. I’m sure there have been many good gaming guilds although I’m sure there’s alot of people out there to just take advantageThe big difference between it and real life is you can leave and move somewhere else without a major impact except maybe a tiny bit of time lost. In real life, people either don’t have that option or they do and end up in poverty and having to work 100 hrs a week to make ends meet in their new home.
How would one take advantage of Communism for personal gain in a way that goes against Communism? Have you legitimately thought beyond pure vibes in your head?
How does one “easily seize power” in a democratically controlled system, moreso than a top-down oriented one like Capitalism?
Is that what I said? Do you think I’m talking about Vanguardism?
https://lemm.ee/comment/6253119
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Got it, just vibes and emotions, then.
isn’t there an irony that this comment itself would get laughed out of middle school debate club?
Its just a meme mate
This is an unedited exchange from the show IT Crowd while she’s trying to subtly tell them she’s on her period and they just don’t get it.
Lemmy is full to the brim of commies
And trannies
Really, what more could you want?
Couldn’t have said it better
Tankies are cringe - but in spite of what they’ll tell you, they’re not communists… Just look at how enfranchised workers are/were in the USSR, China and, the DPRK.
Edit: The red fascists are clearly getting upset trying to square their authoritarian single-party states with their LARPing about the proliteriat. American diabolism isn’t a political or economic system, you dopey fucks.
I too love identifying with a word rather than holding my own beliefs. Then when others also identify with that word and do something bad, I say they’re not a real representation of that word.
I like using the dictionary definition, myself.
Are you going to apply this principle consistently and tell me the DPRK is democratic? I ask because that would be a deeply stupid claim to make, but we’d hate for you to be inconsistent.
I don’t indentify with the word democratic. But, I think the difference is it’s pretty clear that very few people would interpret the DPRK to be democratic, whereas clearly many people commonly understood the USSR to be communist. And, the meaning of words comes from how people understand them. That’s descriptivism.
Oh - I get it.
Descriptivism is when you’re wrong. 50% of the participants in this conversation say so, therefore it’s true.
Similarly, if the majority of people take the word “Juden” to mean subhuman monsters of a specific ethnoreligious group that are a threat to society that should be rounded up and genocided. Why are they wrong from the perspective of linguistic prescriptivism?
What’s the linguistic prescriptivist definition of communism? None of what you’ve said has anything to do with definitions - only assigning now meaningless labels.
Descriptivism isn’t about the majority deciding a definition. It’s about communicating to be understood. If you argue that the USSR was capitalist people will disagree, you might be right if you interpret capitalist through your definition though. People disagreeing with your definition doesn’t make you wrong, but it is useless, ineffective communication. Either bundle your definition with your message, or use definitions that others would understand (and that’s where descriptivism comes in).
You’re talking about the application of labels, not shaping a definition. What’s the linguistically prescriptive definition of communism that’s descriptive of these regimes?
If most people think I’m straight, but I’m enjoying getting railed by 10 dudes 10 times per day, I’m not straight - they’re wrong. If everyone agrees that getting railed by 10 dudes 10 times per day is straight, that’s
prescriptivismdescriptivism.Prescriptivismdescriptivism isn’t relevant here.I didn’t mention prescriptivism, I only mentioned descripticism. The usefulness of words comes from their understanding, not their use. If you use 100% valid dictionary words but not how people commonly understand them, then you’re failing to communicate. In this case, you have a definition of communism contrary to how people understand it, so you should either clarify your definition of it, or not be so attached to the word that you insist on using it.
It’s more like “strong-arm-uments”, amirite?
That and a lot of communists sucking eachother’s dicks over how smart they are.