Topic: [It's not real communism] or why socialism can still be an answer - page 3. (Read 1123 times)

Representative democracy used to be effective when a single individual didn't represent literally hundreds of thousands of individuals.

Originally, there was a single congressional member per around 40-60k citizens. Now it's closer to 250k-500k citizens.

It's crazy to think that individuals can be represented by someone that's job is to represent 250-500k other people.

I've proposed implementing a liquid democracy system to replace the house of representatives, and I'll probably be running for my state house on that platform; which the individual voice matters.

No that's not what I said please quote me entirely ><


You don't have a choice of which society you live in because you're born in it that's what I said!

Of course then you have all the choice in the world to try to change it. But you don't chose where you start from which is the main thing that will influence your life.

And I'm sorry if you're shocked by this but the group in which you're born will do whatever it wants to you.. That's already the case and it will always be. A group decides what should and should not be done to its members. Simple example if you're born in Western countries the group decided you must get mandatory first education and can't have sexual relationships before a certain age. Would you be born in an Islamic dictatorship the group would have made very different choices... The kid born has no saying in this

And so you're advocating that the group I was born into can do anything they want with me (or anyone else), as long as some of them agree that it's ok?

Conversation over.

Have fun in your dictatorship, sorry, commune. I hope everyone else chooses to do something nice to you

I'm not sure if this could be what's @OP is trying to say, this video tried to explain the difference between socialism and communism and it says;

"according to Marx, socialism is a precursor to communism and the next logical step after capitalism"

And this was the second time that I've heard of that quote. Can someone who had read or knew about the communist manifesto confirm if Marx really said that? If this were true, I wont make any arguments about socialism and communism.

The idea of Marx is a stateless, moneyless, and classless society, while the idea of socialism is heavily understood as equally shared profits within a "cooperative". Can someone tell me if my view of socialism is right?

So this is how I basically understand communism and socialism, communism is a utopian system that can only be achieved if socialism is put into practice.

If you're looking for a community with the idea of socialism, or the idea of "equally shared profits", the kibbutz from Israel is a good example, IMO. Some said that the kibbutz are enjoying this equally shared profits, but if an outsider would want to join their system, it must pass their exam and is required to donate money.

Imagine if that community became self-sufficient, gathered all the knowledge, built their own vehicles, have their own army and weapons, made their own phones, computers, what will be next? Communism, world domination, or it will eventually collapse? I'm not sure if the word trust is known to them or if their system is entirely a trustless community. But here's the catch, if someone doesn't trust this equally shared profits, or if some member of the kibbutz community will suspect about their profit, a decentralized blockchain can be a good public ledger for them. Let me correct @OP, it must be decentralized/public blockchain and not just blockchain.

This is my basic understanding of capitalism - "follow where the money flows", and my country tried to follow it.

Back then, my country was the number 1 exporter of rice, but my government doesn't believe that agriculture is the first step to industrialization, and now we are importing it. My family, both my mom and dad, were from a family of farmers, but most of them sold their agricultural lands, and their excuse is that money generated from farming is not worthy enough for their hardwork. Too much competition leads to excess of food, the middleman who buys their crop back then said that there is too much rice to consume. Today, the middleman's excuse of buying the crops harvested is still the same. I'm not sure who should I believe, the middleman who says that there is too much rice, or my government who always kept on importing rice just to fill the scarcity.

EDIT: I do own an agricultural land, but it's not income generating, which part of the class should I belong? I'm not basically paying tax, FYI.

That's why most kids, when they grow up, leave the family. Each individual is his own group, so to speak. It's only when individuals agree on being a group that they can become a group. Even Stockholm Syndrome groups of captives are captive by agreement. Why do they agree? Because the alternative is too scary.

Exactly, which leads to the question "is it possible to get one without the other?". Which is the whole point of this OP. I'm glad someone got it cause I had a feeling of hitting a wall with TECSHARE xD
I disagree here

To take something we all know (even if I'm convinced possibilites are more or less infitine and the best solution is yet to be created) let's take the constitution/laws system that is currently used. The rules aren't the laws but the constitution, because laws can be changed easily while constitution is supposed to structure society. If you change constitution you change society in a redical way.

So you're saying not everyone can participate to writing the rules? Why not? Of course not everyone can agree on something, that's impossible, but why couldn't a vast majority agree on something?

Ahah!
Well you reach another problem here which is the idea of choice. You can't have this choice. And i mean, it's just a fact, you can't have this choice that's all. You don't whose where you're born, well it means you don't chose which kind of society you live in, and if you're born in a group leaning towards the "nearly everything" while you're more on the "not much" side... Well I don't have a solution.

And I don't think those groups can coexist, it seems to me that those groups can only fight each other until one remains ^^

It's incredible but I actually globally agree with what you wrote. First time ever I believe.
That would be ideal but... Very complex to put in practice. I mean the problem is not to put the person away of this society but to find another society accepting this person. And more, it's a bit unfair because all "new persons" by that I mean all persons born in this society won't be given the choice.

What the hell it means that I more or less agree with a full BADecker post? Omg what's happening? 

Some thoughts.

Socialism is a difficult thing for fairness. The reason is that all people are different, and they all have different needs to operate efficiently. The best people who can tell what the needs of a person are, is the person himself or the people near him. This means that socialism can only be applied to the general basics of people... food, water, clothing, basic housing, etc.

People thrive on some kind of desire to better themselves and their possessions/conditions. In other words, if the particular form of socialism takes away opportunities to be better - make more "money" - it will only produce a mediocre society.

Generally speaking, when people work together in a socialistic way, and when they are positive about the socialism they are working in, nature provides an abundance of property and advancements for the people. To be fair, the benefits of this advancement, whether it be in property or science or "money" or living conditions, needs to be applied for all people... not simply stored up, nor used the ways a "dictator" might use it, except by the formal agreement of all the people of the society.

There are many writings about how to apply socialism correctly. Most people have their own form of socialism in their own family. Good socialism must allow freedom in such a way that unfair advantage can never be taken against any of societies members. This has to include a form of socialism where people can remove themselves and their property from the society if they want... but at least themselves if they had formerly agreed to pool their property, making it theirs no longer.

Blockchain technology is something that can help with all this. But the whole idea of socialism is extremely complex. Many of the writings by popular socialism thinkers are not realistic, but have elements in them that allow socialism to become a dictatorship... or the next most dangerous thing, a democracy.

Oh yeah, because an elite group of unaccountable academics would always have the people's best interests at heart right? Oh PLEASE DO tell me about how great technocracy is. I have been round and round with this sham of an ideology as well.

Start with government? I thought that you didn't like big state controlled centralized entities! That could never go wrong could it? Your vision is a totalitarian nightmare. In fact the Nazis were obsessed with order and record keeping. Some of the earliest IBM systems were even used to catalog people in camps. It would be EVEN better with everything automated right? I can't wait to have my virtual lawyer protect my virtual rights!






Considering you are the one floating the premise that "it is not real Communism", you are the one that needs to demonstrate that your ideology has any SUCCESSES to EVEN JUSTIFY trying it again. I think after hundreds of millions of lives lost over the past hundred years or so "trying Communism" it is safe to say you better have some good fucking evidence before we try this dumpster fire of an ideology again at all.

Your premise in the op is literally just a "no true Scotsman fallacy" combined with some circular logic as a pathetic misdirection tactic. You aren't arguing facts you are attempting to condition me to your ideology via brute force and repetition. My point is I am saying THE IDEOLOGICAL CONCEPT IS THE PROBLEM.

Hey I got a question for you Mr. workers rights. Did you know the USSR was bankrupted right around the Bolshevik revolution, and Wallstreet bankers not only helped plan it, they funded it, and helped Marxism and Communism take power from the Tsar? That's right. Your precious ideology was the invention of Wallstreet and European bankers!

It is a system of controlled opposition. Red vs Blue. Us vs Them. Republican vs Democrat. Only on a global scale. It is right in your face. The symbol of Communism, the hammer and sickle, are ancient. The hammer represents building and creating, and the sickle represents destruction and the harvest. Capitalism comes in and builds society up. The people get too much power and influence or society becomes otherwise imbalanced, such as via the financial debasing, then Communism is brought in to strip the nation of resources systematically until there is nothing left. Then the process is started all over again. We don't have to submit to harvesting.

Answer is in your sentence, problem is linked to the government not the economic idea
Where would you rather live? USA or Norway?
Cause if you look at the hapiness rankings of countries, top ones are definitely socialist countries.
What?? No not at all. Africa is the poorest continent and is more or less a capitalist paradise...
No you don't have a socialist economy, you're just in an elective dictatorship :/

Everytime, everywhere in the world, someone tried to implement a socialist economy the results wereonly poverty, massacre, millions of deads, hungers... But no, that was not the true socialism. Let's try again and killmore people and make more governments rich.

Liberalism, on the other hand, always made the people have better lives, with more freedom and real development in all areas (culture, technology...)

All poor countries in the world are not really capitalists, but socialists.
I live in one of them: Brazil. We have a socialist economy now. We are fucked.

Take a look at https://www.heritage.org/index/

It's an index of economic freedom. All good countries in the world are living liberalism economies, while bad countries are living socialist economies.

I bet you live in a rich country.

I'm doing this step by step because you're so biased that you don't seem to actually read me. My point is not saying that communism works but that previous communist countries failed because of the representative government system. So that it's worth thinking about a communist direct democracy. Thinking about it, not saying it's the solution. There is a "can" in the title you know?

Why so? I never said communism works that's absolutely not my point... Please re-read me because I never wrote that and will never because I don't believe so. That's not the point of this OP.
Agreed. That's more the point of this OP which is to say that those deaths are linked to the dictatorship, which is a consequence of how communism was implemented.
I'm taking your link as a reference:

1"During argument, someone re-defines the group in order to exclude counter-examples. Instead of backing down from "all groupmembers are X" to "most groupmembers are X", the debater simply redefines the group."
Didn't do this

2"Before argument, someone preemptively defines some group such that the group definitionally must be entirely "good" or entirely "bad". However, this definition was created arbitrarily for this defensive purpose, rather than based on the actual qualities of the group."
Didn't do this

It's not a No True Scotsman because I'm not saying at all that communism works or is good or whatever.
Then as you love to say, if you bring a new argument please provide evidences to back it up.
Don't see the link with the argument... And until you bring any proof of that you just sounds like a conspiracy theorist to me ^^


I disagree strongly with the last part, first I don't see how what you describe is historically accurate because it just never happened anywhere. Second because the "opposition cycle" you talk about is much more linked to inequalities cycles for me. But that's a whole different argument you're discussing here ^^

It is always the same thing with Communists... its not that they are wrong, its just that I don't understand it and simply need to hear it repeated enough times to be suitably indoctrinated via operant conditioning. YOU ARE LITERALLY STATING THE SAME ARGUMENT  only in a SLIGHTLY different way. I think after a few hundred million lives lost we should just give up on the ol' Communism, what do you say?

So for you "Implementing A" and "Trying to implement A but fail and implement B" is the same?
My point is saying that failure is linked to representative government, not the ideological concept.

It's exactly the same as saying that flying is impossible because you weren't able to fly just by moving your arms. It's not that flying is impossible, it's that you need a different kind of technology and a different approach.


Exactly, excellent comparison ^^

From what I see, most problems from the different economical or ideological systems come from representative government which is just elective dictatorship with extra step. If you can acti directly in the code as you say, then you create something completely different where you can apply your ideology/economic ideas.

Technocracy with heavy favor towards automation ~= socialism.

Start with government to prove a mostly automated front-end and then expand from there. Automation may be more expensive in the short term, but overall, it's a valuable investment.

The only hitch is the government "automation" probably should be open source so the people can vote on the "changes" in the code of law.

Once we automate government in this way, we can automate industry similar. This way, as an individual, if you want change in a product, you just fork the automation framework to create your own version.

Your entire op was just saying past Communism was not true Communism... I say it is a fallacy, you deny you said it, then turn right around and say but no it will work this time. Your logic is circular.

Oh ok so you actually didn't understand my OP at all ^^

I'll try to make it shorter and easier:
-Past "communist countries" were not communist but dictatorship
-They failed to implemant communism and were transformed into dictatorship in the process

No true scotman would be saying "those states aren't proof of communism failure because that was not the right kind of communism"
I'm saying "they tried to implement communism but failed and were transformed into dictatorship on the way"

It's not that they implemented something which is not real communism, it's that when trying to implement it they failed completely and utterly because communism isn't compatible with representative governments. That's my point. Hope it was a bit clearer.

No I... Did you read me? ^^

That's not a coincidence at all and I explain that communism leads to dictatorship not because of what communism is but because of how it's implemented. The problem isn't communism/socialism but how we handle it. And my point is that new technologies might allow us to implement it in a different way.

Didn't you....literally...just get done doing that? I guess it is just a convenient coincidence those are the same instances eh?