Kapitalism
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And don't forget how one bakery could pay their employees only the bare minimum, cut corners where they can and use the profit to undercut the 'good' bakery until the 'good' bakery goes bankrupt and the 'bad' bakery can simply be a local monopoly and raise prices as they like.
Raise prises and if legally possible even lower wages, hey we are the only bakery in town so it's getting paid peanuts or have no job at al.
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Capitalism only works if it's regulated. Unregulated capitalism just becomes feudalism again. In your example, the owner of the bakery chain no longer has to innovate or compete. They simply own something and wait for money to be delivered to them.
Of course, for the government to be able to regulate things, it needs to be bigger and more powerful than the businesses it's regulating. You can't have Amazon being worth 2.3 trillion because it can easily make itself immune from competition and immune from regulators.
A mixed capitalist / socialist economy is the best solution we've come up with so far that actually seems to work in the real world. Only the most insane would want things like fire services to be fully privatized, or for every road to be a privately owned toll road. But, a fully state owned economy didn't really work either. Trying that caused the USSR to collapse, and it caused China to switch to a different version of a capitalist / communist / socialist setup. The real issue is where to draw the boundaries. Most countries have decided that healthcare is something that the government should either fully control, or at least have a very strong control over. Meanwhile, the US pays more and receives less with its for-profit system. In England, they privatized water, and it seems to have been a disaster, meanwhile the socialist utopia of USA mostly has cities providing water services.
Where do you draw the line? Personally, I think Northern Europe seems to have the best results. Strong labour protections, a lot of essential things owned by / provided by the government, but with space for for-profit private enterprise too.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Exactly, this is why strong laws are needed. In the end we (the people) all benefit. Maybe a small example but when the EU started to push for usbc as the only standard, it made things lot better. If you are older and still have a drawer with 15 chargers all with different plugs, voltages and amps you known what I mean. Back in the day before cheap chargers from aliexpress, just replacing a simple charger from the manufacturer could be a pretty expensive thing.
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My former boss was in a gulag for most of his teens. He was not paid and to this day he has no idea what crime he was convicted of.
Maybe your former boss was bullshitting you. Maybe he knew precisely why he was in prison, but didn’t want to admit his crimes to his employees. It’s pretty common for ex-cons to falsely claim innocence.
He just knows he served time and was targeted by guards because he was Jewish and the Soviets were very bigoted.
There were many prominent Jews in the Bolshevik revolution, and Jews continued to be active members of the Communist Party, in soviets, and in the Politburo.
My degree is in the downfall if the USSR. I have spent a lot of time reading accounts of prisoners. Many never knew because they were not present at their trial.
He has the numbers tattooed on his arm. I know people who knew him in Belarus that I knew separate of him who talked about it.
There were prominent Jews in the politburo. There was also a fuckload of antisemitism as anyone who lived in the USSR could tell you. The USSR was just as racist as every other European nation.
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It isn't common for people to be sent to slave camps as a punishment for years without knowing why they were charged
Ever heard of Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo?
That’sthe kind of evil unique to totalitarian shitholes like the USSR.
The Gulag episode lasted less than two decades, by the mid-50s it was a thing of the past and never resurfaced in the country. Almost as if it was a mass hysteria response to Nazi infiltration, and not born out of a desire to oppress people inherently. Again, at the peak of the Gulag system, the prison population was similar to that of modern USA. Much more authoritarian if you ask me
The same nation you are praising
Yes, I'm praising this nation because even if it did mistakes, by industrialising eastern Europe and by eliminating Nazis it saved hundreds of millions of lives.
You wouldn’t be supporting their evil actions in this case if you had any empathy
I'm not supporting the excesses of the Gulag repression, it's something that we can and should criticise. I'm supporting the rest of things of the country, which led to the saving of hundreds of millions of people from hunger, disease and Nazi genocide. The Gulag repression seems horrible until you realize the Nazis murdered 27 million Soviets at that time. It was an extreme measure carried out in extreme times.
You are making a lot of apologies for overt racism
I'm not. If he was jailed for his race that's wrong. You're just making too much criticism of the country thst saved Europe from fascism and which saved hundreds of millions of lives in the process.
I am not talking about WWII at all because it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. WWII was over for years by the time he was imprisoned for no apparent reason without a trial he attended.
You are bringing up WWII because there is no moral ground for you to support and justify the USSR’s evil actions otherwise so you keep hamming your irrelevant claim because otherwise you’ll have to accept the USSR wasn’t a good moral nation bit was really quite racist, evil and oppressive (all of which are true).
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No one is in a US prison who has not had the opportunity to be present at their trial or know why they are charged.
The nation I am talking about ceased to exist decades ago so whatever “your country” is it isn’t the USSR which is what we are talking about.
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Even if i dont check and just believe what you wrote, it still beats the shit out of the situation a ton of us are in right now (also that was literally 34+ yrs ago. Life was different then AND the country was recovering from tons of shit). Not to speak of the countries that make our ill gotten comfort possible too. And just to clarify, present day russia is not communist or socialist. they're as capitalist as the western states are. They are no better and no worse in terms of inequality.
The important part, will you have a respectful discussion or do I have to block you?
Man, it Ended 34 years ago, check out how life was in the eighties in URSS. Or seventies. The gulag vas so nice.
Today it's an autocracy, people earn 200€ a month and goes to prison for nothing, what a glorious place.
But I'm probably talking in the wind here, you don't seems to be interested in knowing right or wrong:
Even if I dont check...
If you want to know, do check.
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I thought it was the nazis who said that, so I checked it with FuckDuckGo assist:
This phrase, "He who does not work, neither shall he eat," originates from the New Testament, specifically 2 Thessalonians 3:10,
Also love that people try to make it morally acceptable because of reasons.
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Man, it Ended 34 years ago, check out how life was in the eighties in URSS. Or seventies. The gulag vas so nice.
Today it's an autocracy, people earn 200€ a month and goes to prison for nothing, what a glorious place.
But I'm probably talking in the wind here, you don't seems to be interested in knowing right or wrong:
Even if I dont check...
If you want to know, do check.
And thats what I meant.
Respect means you acknowledge my arguments. Just backing off on the insults a bit (but not fully) isnt cutting it. Respectful discussion is addressing people's arguments as well as not insulting them or their intelligence.
I will definitely take the time and check things that are brought forward. Saying "just because shit was bad back then means exactly that, not that the system it was in was shit." isnt the same as sticking fingers in ones ears and singing lalala. Doing as if that were the case is just abusive rhetoric.
Because shit is horrendous today as well: Fentanyl hordes, people freezing to death on the streets, protesters shot, people deported to concentration camps, genocide, media spewing propaganda, most of the population living paycheck to paycheck, guantanamo. Most of the examples are US but the EU is only marginally different and catching up fast.
There is no such thing as a perfect system. Gulags alone are no sole cause for dismissal same as guantanamo is.
Here's a video about the reason why people hate socialism so much https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mhYS59egWQc
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And thats what I meant.
Respect means you acknowledge my arguments. Just backing off on the insults a bit (but not fully) isnt cutting it. Respectful discussion is addressing people's arguments as well as not insulting them or their intelligence.
I will definitely take the time and check things that are brought forward. Saying "just because shit was bad back then means exactly that, not that the system it was in was shit." isnt the same as sticking fingers in ones ears and singing lalala. Doing as if that were the case is just abusive rhetoric.
Because shit is horrendous today as well: Fentanyl hordes, people freezing to death on the streets, protesters shot, people deported to concentration camps, genocide, media spewing propaganda, most of the population living paycheck to paycheck, guantanamo. Most of the examples are US but the EU is only marginally different and catching up fast.
There is no such thing as a perfect system. Gulags alone are no sole cause for dismissal same as guantanamo is.
Here's a video about the reason why people hate socialism so much https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mhYS59egWQc
I don't acknowledge your arguments because the boil down to whataboutism, "it was a long time ago" and other fallacies.
Then you goalpoast-move and try to say I don't like socialism lol. If you think the USSR was socialist I have a bridge to sell you.
BTW what bout you acknowledge my arguments? Based on historical facts? Nah guess you doesn't like what you'd read.
URSS was an authororian crap "union" and Russia is trying to become as bad, hopefully Russian will go the same way and be dismantled ASAP so their citisens can finally live in a free country.
Also Europe is on the brink of collapse or something? ROFL I live here. But you don't seems to be interested in facts.
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I don't acknowledge your arguments because the boil down to whataboutism, "it was a long time ago" and other fallacies.
Then you goalpoast-move and try to say I don't like socialism lol. If you think the USSR was socialist I have a bridge to sell you.
BTW what bout you acknowledge my arguments? Based on historical facts? Nah guess you doesn't like what you'd read.
URSS was an authororian crap "union" and Russia is trying to become as bad, hopefully Russian will go the same way and be dismantled ASAP so their citisens can finally live in a free country.
Also Europe is on the brink of collapse or something? ROFL I live here. But you don't seems to be interested in facts.
Yeah, I didnt think you would be able to defend against any of it.
But since you're still being condescending, this conversation is now over.
I will check the stuff you mentioned because, unlike you, I have no issue with being corrected.
Good luck with your attitude mate.
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No one is in a US prison who has not had the opportunity to be present at their trial or know why they are charged.
The nation I am talking about ceased to exist decades ago so whatever “your country” is it isn’t the USSR which is what we are talking about.
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I am not talking about WWII at all because it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. WWII was over for years by the time he was imprisoned for no apparent reason without a trial he attended.
You are bringing up WWII because there is no moral ground for you to support and justify the USSR’s evil actions otherwise so you keep hamming your irrelevant claim because otherwise you’ll have to accept the USSR wasn’t a good moral nation bit was really quite racist, evil and oppressive (all of which are true).
I am not talking about WWII at all because it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand
I brought up WWII because the peak of the Gulag system was starting on 1936, and by Stalin's death in the mid-1950s it had essentially disappeared, it was a system implemented during a time of extreme necessity due to dekulakization, maintained during WW2 and the Nazi hysteria of the late 1930s after the assassination of Kirov, and dismantled after Nazism had been eliminated from Europe.
really quite racist
The USSR was patently the least racist nation in Europe. While in my homeland of Spain education in Basque and Catalan was forbidden, the Soviet Union for the first time in history guaranteed the citizens of all the republics an education in the official language of their choice, leading for the first time to universal education in Ukrainian, Kazakh, Belarusian, or even minor languages such as Mari for those who spoke it and desired to be educated in such languages. In France, up to 1993, there were no public schools teaching children in Occitan language, and even now I don't think there's even one. Fuck, the "Union of Socialist Soviet Republics" doesn't even have a toponym or an ethnicity in its name, how many countries can claim the same?!
evil and oppressive
Look. I'm a Spaniard. In 1936, we had a fascist coup which resulted in a civil war between fascists and anti-fascists. The policy of the western world was to do nothing and to leave the war to itself while the Nazis and the Italian Fascists bombed the fuck out of my country's partisans (ever heard of Picasso's Gernika?). The only nation in the planet to help the antifascist struggle was the Soviet Union, which is the only source of Spanish antifascists of weapons, planes, tanks and military training against the fascists. It's crazy to tell me that the only nation that helped the fight against fascism in my homeland was "evil and oppressive". Your grandpa, a Jewish man, would have been murdered if it weren't for the Soviets. The very fact that you're here is because of the 27 million lives that the Soviet Union sacrificed in order to save Europe from Nazism.
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Exactly, this is why strong laws are needed. In the end we (the people) all benefit. Maybe a small example but when the EU started to push for usbc as the only standard, it made things lot better. If you are older and still have a drawer with 15 chargers all with different plugs, voltages and amps you known what I mean. Back in the day before cheap chargers from aliexpress, just replacing a simple charger from the manufacturer could be a pretty expensive thing.
I've been through at least 5 different kinds of phone chargers over the years. Starting with the olde-fashioned coaxial power connector, then going to various versions of USB, and at least 2 kinds of Apple proprietary connectors. Standardizing on USB-C is great. I just hope that they're able to update it in 10-20 years when USB-C is fully out of date.
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Yeah, I didnt think you would be able to defend against any of it.
But since you're still being condescending, this conversation is now over.
I will check the stuff you mentioned because, unlike you, I have no issue with being corrected.
Good luck with your attitude mate.
Lol I sure have a limited energy for tankies, but if you're serious i'll be so to.
Have a nice evening.
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Yes, Intellectual Property must go down. People often think positively of copyright, thinking that no one would support artists if they weren't forced to, and that artists couldn't possibly make a living if it weren't for copyright. I think we are rich enough that if we were to share it properly we could give everyone, not just the talented, time and resources to create art. And I think the talented would still gain advantages by being talented, people want to support artists that mean a lot to them. But to be fair, limiting or removing copyright is not only not that popular of an idea, it's also the least of our worries, cause it mostly concerns entertainment purposes.
Patent laws is where we need to act. To give a clear example: patent laws mean that excessive amounts of money goes to pharmaceutical companies, This is always defended by saying that they in turn will invest this money into research. The problem is
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They spend far more money on marketing than on R&D, which effectively means that you're often not getting the best medicine, it means your getting the best marketed medicine.
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When money does go to R&D, the research that's being done, is limited to that which benefits the pharmaceutical company. This is an unacceptable limitation. For example it is not in the interest of pharmaceutical companies to to cure disease, it's far more commercially attractive to make it a manageable chronic disease, where you rely on medication for the rest of your life.
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Companies will not share their knowledge. For a company these are trade-secrets that could benefit their competition and if you have to compete obviously sharing knowledge is not in your best interest. But if you want to help humanity forward, obviously you should.
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Drug prices are often excessively high, in part because of the previously mentioned marketing costs that you pay for.
Neither of these problems would exist if R&D was funded by governments and charity. And the pharmaceutical is just one industry that's taken as an example. The way that intellectual property is holding humanity back can not be overstated. Basically we need to go free and open source on IP,
I think the strength of your intellectual property protection should be inversely proportional to the size of your organization.
A character I design myself or an invention I patent myself should be firmly protected so I can't be bullied out of the market as easily, but a big company should get only fleeting protection.
That's just my take.
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I am not talking about WWII at all because it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand
I brought up WWII because the peak of the Gulag system was starting on 1936, and by Stalin's death in the mid-1950s it had essentially disappeared, it was a system implemented during a time of extreme necessity due to dekulakization, maintained during WW2 and the Nazi hysteria of the late 1930s after the assassination of Kirov, and dismantled after Nazism had been eliminated from Europe.
really quite racist
The USSR was patently the least racist nation in Europe. While in my homeland of Spain education in Basque and Catalan was forbidden, the Soviet Union for the first time in history guaranteed the citizens of all the republics an education in the official language of their choice, leading for the first time to universal education in Ukrainian, Kazakh, Belarusian, or even minor languages such as Mari for those who spoke it and desired to be educated in such languages. In France, up to 1993, there were no public schools teaching children in Occitan language, and even now I don't think there's even one. Fuck, the "Union of Socialist Soviet Republics" doesn't even have a toponym or an ethnicity in its name, how many countries can claim the same?!
evil and oppressive
Look. I'm a Spaniard. In 1936, we had a fascist coup which resulted in a civil war between fascists and anti-fascists. The policy of the western world was to do nothing and to leave the war to itself while the Nazis and the Italian Fascists bombed the fuck out of my country's partisans (ever heard of Picasso's Gernika?). The only nation in the planet to help the antifascist struggle was the Soviet Union, which is the only source of Spanish antifascists of weapons, planes, tanks and military training against the fascists. It's crazy to tell me that the only nation that helped the fight against fascism in my homeland was "evil and oppressive". Your grandpa, a Jewish man, would have been murdered if it weren't for the Soviets. The very fact that you're here is because of the 27 million lives that the Soviet Union sacrificed in order to save Europe from Nazism.
It’s crazy to tell me that the only nation that helped the fight against fascism in my homeland was “evil and oppressive”
No, it is entirely accurate. They did some good and a LOT of evil. Totalitarian states tend to be evil. They were no exception.
Your grandpa, a Jewish man, would have been murdered if it weren’t for the Soviets.
No my FORMER BOSS was in a gulag again without a trial which you seem to be avoiding discussion of.
My grandfathers fought the Nazis in Europe and Japanese in the Pacific. A great uncle fought in Spain and in Germany against fascists both times. MY ancestral history empowers me to fight the evils of totalitarianism, why doesn’t yours?
The very fact that you’re here is because of the 27 million lives that the Soviet Union sacrificed in order to save Europe from Nazism.
Obviously this is not true at all.
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Not according to people I know who experienced both. In the USA you know your charges and you might not be enslaved.
The USSR was evil and racist. It’s one of the reasons why they failed.
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It’s crazy to tell me that the only nation that helped the fight against fascism in my homeland was “evil and oppressive”
No, it is entirely accurate. They did some good and a LOT of evil. Totalitarian states tend to be evil. They were no exception.
Your grandpa, a Jewish man, would have been murdered if it weren’t for the Soviets.
No my FORMER BOSS was in a gulag again without a trial which you seem to be avoiding discussion of.
My grandfathers fought the Nazis in Europe and Japanese in the Pacific. A great uncle fought in Spain and in Germany against fascists both times. MY ancestral history empowers me to fight the evils of totalitarianism, why doesn’t yours?
The very fact that you’re here is because of the 27 million lives that the Soviet Union sacrificed in order to save Europe from Nazism.
Obviously this is not true at all.
Sorry, mixed up grandpa and boss, hence the "the fact that you're here". The fact that you could have that conversation with your boss is because the Soviets gave everything to save him.
My grandfathers fought the Nazis in Europe and Japanese in the Pacific. A great uncle fought in Spain and in Germany against fascists both times
So all your family fought on the side of socialism against fascism and now you spit on their tomb by saying "socialism is just as bad"?
The Soviet Union was the most advanced and humane state of its time. Western Europe was murdering tens of millions through imperialism in the global south, the US had literal Jim Crow era laws against black people and was killing tens of millions through imperialism in Central/South America. If it weren't for the fucking Bolsheviks, the entirety of Eastern Europe would have been genocided by Nazis and the few remaining people colonised, never to industrialise. The Soviet Union was the first country to guarantee truly universal healthcare, education and pensions, and only then did Europe have to follow through for fear of revolution. Highest unionisation rates in the world, abolished houselessness and unemployment. It certainly had flaws, but it's literally the best it had to offer. For every Stalinist repression victim you quickly go dig up, I'll show you ten Africans murdered by French/Belgians, or a hundred Indians murdered by British.
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Not according to people I know who experienced both. In the USA you know your charges and you might not be enslaved.
The USSR was evil and racist. It’s one of the reasons why they failed.
wrote last edited by [email protected]the US prision system legally and literally enslaves people today. prisioners work in the US.
the US is evil and racist today. your gulags hold almost a quarter of the planet's entire prision population.
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the US prision system legally and literally enslaves people today. prisioners work in the US.
the US is evil and racist today. your gulags hold almost a quarter of the planet's entire prision population.
hence the “might not get enslaved”. You might not get enslaved in the US system. The USSR was enslaving all in the gulags.
As you have repeatedly backed the evils of an authoritarian racist system are you in a place to judge anyone morally?
Please change, we don’t need more people defending racism.
