Topic: Enjoy communism (III) rats eating dead people and people eating rats in NK (Read 548 times)

The deadlock part has given me a different perspective to be honest, if you look at it, you can actually see that you're right, we always compete and it's always been a survival of the fittest ever since the dawn of time. I don't necessarily agree that men are inherently evil, probably a mixture of parenting, morals introduced and attitude could influence them but I don't think that no one is born a bad seed.

When you talk about "the achievements of Cuba under Fidel", do not be too lazy to read about what happened BEFORE Fidel! Most of what you consider to be Fidel's "merit" - it was all built and implemented before him! There is a lot of information about "before the Fidel period", do not be too lazy to read, you will be very surprised - there is about medicine and education, and a lot more about what was then destroyed or degraded to a primitive level.

A short excerpt:
“And finally, the economic indicators that speak for themselves: from 1950 to 1958, Cuba ranked second or third in Ibero-America in terms of income of the population. Despite its small area and population of only 6.5 million, in 1958 Cuba was far ahead of Latin American countries, as well as Spain, Portugal and Italy, ranking 29th among all world economies.

According to the International Labor Organization, in 1958, the unemployment rate in Cuba was one of the lowest in the world - 7.07 percent. Cuba ranked eighth in the world in terms of the average wage of workers (after the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, New Zealand, Norway and Denmark), and in terms of peasant income - seventh. "

LOL... It is funny that now Communists believe that Jacinda Ardern is one of them. The New Zealand Labour Party is "left-wing" in a relative sense. By no means they are closer to the communists. They support capitalism and have taken strong stance against communist/socialist policies. If you classify parties such as the NZLP as communist, then even the United States can be said to be ruled by the Communist Party. Because Joe Biden is from the Democrat party, which is far more left-wing when compared to the NZLP. Don't try to paint successful capitalist economies as success of communism. "Real" communist countries are Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea.etc.

I would like to state that you did not mention one country that followed real communism because real communism is really different than the countries you mentioned because you are mixing socialism which is not pure communism and authoritarian regime like they have in North Korea.

Coming to Cuba, under Fidel Castro it was a much better rule and they focused on education and at one point the literacy rates were much higher than some of the developed countries and their health care system was great and lastly i am coming from a state which is ruled by Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the development is evident as our state is usually rated number one in terms of education and other social economic benchmarks.

Since you are talking about communism, Now coming to New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern is the prime minister from Labour Party which is a left wing political party. If you have any debates regarding this we can continue  .

Nagorno-Karabakh (NK) is another "excellent" example of how Russia is building "enclaves" around itself for regional destabilization, using any methods and means. Likewise, the conflict in NK is a classic composition provoked and played out by the Kremlin "comrades". And if not for Turkey's help to Azerbaijan, this abscess would have hindered the development of both Azerbaijan and Armenia for many decades. And if you carefully watched the development of the liberation operation of Azerbaijan, then you could not help but notice, at the initial stages, the hyperactivity of Russia, in an attempt to make efforts and leave this "cloaca" in the state in which it was in order to further manipulate the region. But, as soon as Russia realized that Turkey is on the side of Azerbaijan, and Turkey will not "express deep concern," in case of failure), Russia immediately understood where its place was, and the whine crawled to the side ...

If we go back to the history of the last 30 years, then Russia has produced a lot of cesspools such as NK: in Moldova - the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (local separatists with the support of the Russian army, scenario, management and participation of the Kremlin), in Georgia - Abkhazia (local separatists with the support of army of the Russian Federation, began with a provocation from the Russian Federation), Ukraine - Donetsk People's Republic and Lugansk People's Republic - local separatists, scenario, support, funding, management and direct participation of the Russian army). And everywhere that the hand of Russia touched, from the flourishing regions there were medieval cesspools, with no prospects, and complete degradation ... Real sectors of the economy, industry were destroyed and destroyed, more or less valuable enterprises were exported to Russia! For example, from Ukraine to the territory of the Russian Federation, from the temporarily occupied territory in the east, in 2014-2017 more than 35 enterprises and factories were exported !!!

Those who lived the horror of communism are fine with a capitalist society with all its flaws, so they can finally stay away from the bloody leftist policies that led to the hell they were used to, while those who lived the prosperity of capitalism seem to not be thankful for what they had, so they keep desiring the romantic communist utopia with the promise this time it will be different.

The situations you were exposed during your childhood and adolescence will reflect on your behavior and your perspective regards the world in the present time. Imperfections of capitalist societies lead many people, especially in the western society, to think the world promised by the left wing is the solution. However, doesn't matter how bad your capitalist country is right now, it could be much worse if it were under a communist regime, or maybe it's already transmuting into a communist regime and you haven't even noticed yet.

Communist ideology can never thrive, because it's the ideology of the envious and the frustrated that have to abuse power and other people to feed his ego. Actually it's really similar to Hitler, no? Maybe that is because his ideology and the communist one had their origins in the same roots...

Normally when I have created threads, if they have reached page 5 I have locked them because the conversations tend to go from being a little off-topic to being completely off topic and in other cases redundant.

In the case of charities, I think it is a bit related because we are talking about communism/redistribution, and in an ideal world, as paxmao pointed out I think in another thread, nobody would have to donate to charities, but everything would be perfectly redistributed. However, we are not going to see that unless the decisions are made by an AI and I think not even that.

You won't remember but I told you that I do donate to a charity, just when you asked me last time, precisely that week I also made a donation in person to a person in need. I donate to that charity of my choice because in a way I trust that the money is being used well, although you can never trust 100%. At the moment I don't plan to donate elsewhere but the one you point out seems to be a good one.

Yes, of course it's not that simple. I'm in favour of truly progressive taxation, a wealth (rather than merely income) tax, and a UBI. But I don't want to derail the thread by getting into a discussion about the nuances of all of these things. I'm not suggesting we break up the yacht, sell the parts, and demand that the money be spent directly on sanitation. I think that kind of approach is overly prescriptive.


True. Although I suspect you and I would draw the line of 'too much' in quite different positions. There is a lot of 'crying wolf' on this, too. Threaten to raise corporation tax by 0.5% and there will be a cacophany of howling from global giants that they can't possibly survive and will have to leave the country in search of a new business-friendly home abroad. 


Yes, agreed. As someone with a keen interest in data, I'm aware of the inefficiencies of for example many charities. However the charity evaluator GiveWell, which is I think extremely good, has shown that one of the most efficient ways to help the global poor is simply by giving them cash without it having to run through a network of possibly corrupt intermediaries (GiveDirectly is consistently ranked as one of their top charities). I'm not sure if you give to charities, but you may also be interested in having a look at Deki which helps to a small extent to reduce inequality of opportunity by providing small interest-free loans to budding entrepreneurs in poorer nations. But I think I may be derailing the thread again, so I'll stop there.

It is not a matter of supporters, but of upholding an outdated social and cultural core. Any political party also develops its ideology to unite certain groups under its auspices. Every community, from LGBT people to the Ku Klux Klan, strives for integrity, creating norms and values ​​that help separate the self from others.

Have you ever wondered why some social groups consider themselves to be better than others? And any political struggle comes down to the manifestation of intolerance, while trying to revive outdated models of power .. Indeed, in fact, there is a struggle between the political ethics of our countries, and ordinary people are closely intertwined with each other. I find the explanation for this in the fact that before 1991, politicians were more or less in control of the situation. And after the collapse of the military-political blocs, we got more and more opportunities to meet face to face with those who did not belong to our circle.

But we have talked about this before. It's not as easy as I take from the rich and the poor will suddenly have clean water. For starters, I don't think UNICEF is 100% objective because they make a living from it but assuming that's true, the redistribution you propose, which is taking gold from the yacht and spending it to invest in clean water infrastructure is never carried out like that in practice.
 
Taking away moderate amounts is theoretically Ok but if you take too much away from those who get rich, in the end you end up disincentivizing and less and less wealth is created and you have less and less to redistribute.

Then, we have to think that for this money to reach poor people, there is a lot of political spending, bureaucracy, personnel, and if we take into account that where water is needed is in third world countries where politicians are usually even more trash than in developed countries, it seems to me that even if you confiscate the whole yacht they are going to build few infrastructures. 

Ha. I suppose I'm a different kind of leftist, then. A lot of ideologies tend to be absolute and idealised; the difficulty is applying them to the real world, which is of course messier and full of all kinds of unknown variables and people who will try to exploit whatever system of government is put in front of them. We're probably all guilty to an extent of trying to argue in favour of our preferred theoretical solutions, even when they are unworkable in practice.

I think that the first example below is obscene, and should not be permitted, because the second example exists at the same time. But I'm happy to concede that capitalism (held in check by a democratically elected government) is the best (by which I mean, least bad) system we have.

Well, I'll tell you: I've spent my life surrounded by leftists, and they don't say this:


I don't hear things like that, and instead I usually hear that in Cuba and Venezuela everything is wonderful, while they complain about capitalism and order any kind of crap through Amazon Prime from their Iphone.

Yes, it is happening right now. The stories that come out of North Korea are horrific. The Nazis ran concentration camps for a few years in the 40s. North Korea have been running them for over half a century. They have the worst human rights record on the planet. Have a read of "Escape From Camp 14" by Shin Dong-hyuk.


Why would we forget, though? You do seem to be running a bit of a one person crusade against communism... but there's not really anyone to argue against, or at least no-one with a compelling counter-argument. Communism is terrible, has failed again and again, and is drenched in blood. Stalin and Mao, for example, are two of the biggest mass-murderers in history.

And yet... communism isn't really the problem. In theory, it's a reasonable and equitable — if, for me, unpalatable — idea. The problem is that it is so easy to abuse. Autocracy, however it manifests, whether in a state that is nominally communist or not, is the worst system of government. Any system that cannot, or will not, be held accountable for its own actions is invalid and unrepresentative.

Laissez-faire 'ancap' capitalism is terrible for the same reason, so so easy to exploit.

The best system of government is one where opposition is not just possible, but encouraged, and indeed a vital part of the structure. I am happy to live in a capitalist democracy. As I've said before, it's an oxymoron, but that is its power. There are of course problems, corruption, cronyism, and inevitably a strong tendency towards plutocracy... but still, it's better than the alternatives. And I always vote for a left-wing party, because I see this as providing a more potent countervailing force to the capitalist tendency towards self-enrichment at the expense of others*. Voting for a right-wing party in a capitalist state is a vote to encourage inequality of opportunity and to further entrench the elite.




* Please don't mention that damned cake. Unrestrained capitalism is a 'will to money', and is exploitative by nature. The question of whether or not potential wealth is infinite (it's not), sidesteps the issue.

Just one simple question. Which group of countries are the richest in this planet? Those which follow capitalism, or those who follow socialism? I checked the list, and found that there was no socialist nation in the top-100. Obviously not everyone may benefit out of capitalism. You need to work hard, if you want to earn money. It is the socialist thinking, that you get money for doing nothing. Those who don't want to work in capitalist economies will remain poor and then they will complain that capitalism has failed them.

BTW, let me ask you in which country you are residing in. A capitalist nation, or a socialist one? If you were living in a socialist country, then I am sure that you won't be even having the means to type this post.

I was more in line to people saying socialist and communist to anything that implies redistribution, perhaps not your case. About how much is redistributed, who pays for it and what is "included" (obviously paid with taxes, I did not even think that had to be said), that would be where I would focus a discussion and the adjustments that different economic cycles may require.

RE thin states, please notice that I said they cannot provide safety and stability on a continuous basis. If you look at an initially very thin state (US) a few of the first things that had to be setup was the ability to collect taxes, the centralisation of money emission, a pan-state law,... It was simply impossible to run a country if you had to ask all the states for permission and money to, for example, pay an army to defend it.

State structures cost money and, I believe that there is enough proof of these being required.

Also read somewhere that starvation in NK is so bad people use drugs to alleviate the hunger and redirect it to something else. Just mind-boggling to think about how things are going in NK when their supreme leader gets fatter and fatter by the day. I think we're all well aware of the shoot-to-kill order if you ever did try to cross the border which sucks. Communism never works in practical applications no matter how good it sounds on paper. Very well said, also saw these apologists who kept on defending Communism like it was God's gift to these countries. I would also agree with your explanation as to why Communism only works on paper and never when it's practically applied. The fact that they don't have a solid concept of what a "state" is in countries where it is implemented makes communism a very dangerous ideology to follow through.

I have never said that. But I tell you what I usually say when they talk to me about "free" services. They are never "free". You don't pay for them on a bill, but you pay for them via taxes.

In the case of health care, I think it is right that it should be universal (not free), because demand is inelastic: you can decide not to buy clothes or mend old clothes or not to go out so much, etc., but if you have a heart attack you have to be treated now. The demand side is totally different in health issues.


And we will agree that the best system is a mixture of both: free enterprise, respect for private property, etc., combined with some redistribution. Which from what I understand you are more in favor of taxation and redistribution than I am (I would say there are a few forumers of a similar opinion to yours, such as Cnut237 and suchmoon).


I would say that they are essentially different because the history of mankind shows the opposite: the great states that are dedicated to redistribution arose precisely from "thin" states that created wealth. If you put a huge state where there is no wealth created, you are not going to have anything to redistribute. States are extremely inefficient at creating wealth. I would say that the more regulations and taxes they put in place, the more efficient they are at destroying it.

There is a general misunderstanding about Capitalism and Socialism governments. The fact that a state provides some free services does not make it communist. I am afraid that the precise definition is quite fluid and there is a grayscale of possibilities.

Particularly, there is a tendency to confuse economic liberalism and the Austrian School of though with Capitalism. I my very humble view, that is only a version of Capitalism. The basis are right to individual property, free enterprise and the possibility of  investing for a return. This has nothing to do with the liberal versions that propose a thin state or zero intervention.

For me, there is clear proof that those "thin states" cannot provide safety, continuity and opportunity for all, just as communism cannot either.




Yes, just as Capitalism sell the paradise of material goods, the "opportunity for all", the self-made millionaire dream... Is there a system that is not promising utopia?



And that may happen only thanks to your marvellous version of Capitalism has failed millions of people. on the promise of milk and honey. You do not get the moral high -ground on undelivered promises. N



That is not true. Imperialism  and expansionism of the capitalist countries has killed more people that any other ideology. Kaiser´s Germany was not communist, Hitler was certainly not Socialist and  Japan was not communist nor the US was socialist when dropping Fat Boy on Japan, nor UK was communist when setting Hamburg in fire. I do not mean to make a  competition of this, and I am certainly not a supporter of tyranny in any manifestation,  but I am tired of  propaganda and the  attempts to compare and elected government with authoritarian  despots.

LOL.. don't you get tired of defending communism?

I am 100% sure that you are not from a country where communists were in power. Because I haven't seen anyone from former communist states such as Russia or Ukraine defending them. If "real communism" is different, then please enlighten us and show us an example of such a country. Communism is a bunch of impractical and obsolete ideas, which can never work in real life scenario. Dozens of countries have tried the communist/socialist system, and not even one has been successful. Some of them, like China shifted to capitalism before it was too late.

This is true because I don’t see a single really Souialist or Communist state right now. After all, socialism and communism in theory are completely different from what we see in practice in states that call themselves socialist or communist. The main slogan of communism is from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. That is, a communist society presupposes a complete abundance of material wealth. If this is not the case, then such states cannot be considered communist. North Korea is a purely totalitarian state and has nothing to do with socialism or communism.