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207 points jimhi | 6 comments | | HN request time: 0.989s | source | bottom
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germandiago ◴[] No.29829418[source]
This is the sad truth of places like Cuba or North Korea. Everything is forbidden to the point that eating is difficult. So people get corrupted and the guards, etc. just want their part.

None of those things should be illegal. It is really annoying to see how a leader class kills people of hunger and make everything illegal so that now everyone is a criminal for trying to survive.

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FredPret ◴[] No.29829520[source]
Communism is taxes and government regulation gone mad
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thechao ◴[] No.29829740[source]
Communism is the ownership of the means of production by the workers. You're talking about about an out-of-control regulatory state; maybe one with an authoritarian bent?
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merpnderp ◴[] No.29830371[source]
How many countries has communism been attempted in? 25? And of those, 4 remain officially communist, but whose economies have either transited to free markets or are moving that way. It is safe to say only the dreamers still believe in communism.m

And people keep saying that communism hasn't been tried. But it has. It starts with the state trying to be socialist and then "withering away" to full on communism (according to the ideology's author). Only we never get past that part. We usually go straight to concentration camps, murdering those who disagree with the revolution, relative poverty, and a extremely uncompetitive economy.

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1. beaconstudios ◴[] No.29831294[source]
Yeah, state socialism doesn't work, that much is exceedingly obvious. That doesn't mean that we should just give up and accept capitalism as "the best we can do" as a species. It's just clear that authoritarian means are funnily enough not the route to a less authoritarian future.
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2. ModernMech ◴[] No.29831652[source]
People forget that there are many axes of the political compass. I think political scholars count over a dozen. Who knows how many there are, but it's definitely not a simple linear left/right dichotomy. One other important axis in this context is the authoritarian/democratic dichotomy. We know that the left/authoritarian (Soviets) quadrant of this space doesn't work, just as we know the right/authoritarian (Nazis) quadrant doesn't work.

We have evidence in America that the right/democratic quadrant kind of works -- it can produce great prosperity, but there can be a lot of sadness still (Jim Crow). At least there are mechanisms to fix it internally. It can get better (Civil Rights Act) but it can also get worse; we are finding now that if the Overton window moves too far to the right, there seems to be a tendency for America to become more authoritarian. We don't really know what going too far left looks like in America (probably the same IMO) because it's never even come close to happening; despite all the hysteric labeling of Democrats as Communists, they are really more liberal than left. There is no mainstream leftist representation in the US Federal Government, not even Bernie or AOC (the Green New Deal is written squarely within the framework of capitalism).

There are a lot of people out there saying that the left/democratic quadrant looks attractive, but they are shouted down by people who say that we can't ever try that, because look at what the left/authoritarian quadrant did in the past. People who are here in this thread right now. They are very vigorous about this claim, possibly because they lived under such left/authoritarian regimes. But I think that's a big mistake to conflate left/authoritarian with left/democratic, and it leaves us at a suboptimal local maxima as a society.

People often argue that it's a short trip from left/democratic to left/authoritarian, and that may be true. But it's also a short trip from right/democratic to right/authoritarian, and that's where we are right now as a nation. On this day, January 6, we as Americans should be more aware of that than ever. But that doesn't mean we can't try new things, and we shouldn't be held back from improving the future by the failures of the past.

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3. Aunche ◴[] No.29833000[source]
Ideals cannot be mapped to numerical axes. At least in present day, it's impossible to for the left/democratic quadrant to exist. If you want to limit seize the means of production from the likes of Elon Musk, you need a position more powerful than him. Guess where the next Elon Musk is end up in such a system? With the absence of monetary capital, greedy people seek to maximize political capital instead, creating corruption. This happens after every attempt of socialism. Democracy has only existed with a healthy private sector that keeps profit seekers out of public service. Even someone like Mitch McConnell has some interest in public service.
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4. ModernMech ◴[] No.29833591{3}[source]
Yes, you do need something more powerful than Elon Musk: you need the power of collective action! Without workers, the value of Tesla is comparatively nothing to what it is valued at now. Without workers, Elon Musk goes from the richest man in the world, to just a guy who owns some empty buildings and machines that don't do anything. Elon's true power is his workforce, not his money.

It's true that democracies are hard to set up and maintain. We are learning that here in America right now. It seems like authoritarianism is the natural order of governments, so maybe left/authoritarianism is like a local minima: it's easy to fall into that well, hard to get out of it, but there are much better things out there if you can avoid it.

5. int_19h ◴[] No.29834864[source]
For more reading on this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-libertarianism

6. int_19h ◴[] No.29834884{3}[source]
You don't need to seize the means of production by violence. The only reason why people can own so many in the first place, is because the state recognizes and protects their abstract property rights.

For example, a person with ten titles to ten houses can only live in one of them at a time; their control of the other nine comes from the ability to call the police who'd evict any squatters - which then makes it possible to rent them out. But suppose the police wouldn't show up?