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I’m getting reports further down, I have no idea if what anyone says is true or not. It’s borderline rule 5, but not quite there. This is a strong reminder to hate the argument, not the arguer.
Ah, yes, famously communists love to… open grocery stores?
They actually do. They will all have the same stuff and it will have a low price.
That is basically step two after forming a council.
The stuff: empty shelves.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/cia-rdp85m00363r000601440024-5.pdf
The CIA itself said otherwise in 1983
There are a lot of good reasons to criticize socialists states like the USSR, namely the silencing of political dissent and gulags. But standard of living isn’t one of those good reasons.
And Cuba provides a good modern model:
https://cuba-solidarity.org.uk/cubasi/article/75/feeding-the-revolution
https://www.agritecture.com/blog/2019/11/28/cubas-urban-farming-shows-way-to-avoid-hunger
Lol Cuba provides a good modern model, I’d laugh if it wasn’t such a horrible regime. I guess you hate LGBT+ or you think it’s okay to do so.
But I’m just taking in the wind here, bye Stalinists and other tankies, one day you’ll get it.
Strawman
That still sounds extraordinarily capitalist to me. By calling it Communism, they’re diluting the massive policy failure of actual Marxism, which is more akin to “let’s all take up arms and pillage every home, rich or poor”.
This is more like “let’s all kill the dragon who ate our children and stole our gold”.
“let’s all take up arms and pillage every home, rich or poor”
then you really need to look into what marxism actually is instead of believing stupidity online.
I find it fascinating how nowadays, basic human decency is called “woke” and “communism”.
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This is one of the main reasons Republicans don’t like education. They want to dismantle it and go to a charter system. That way they can profit off education and keep people stupid.
I think this is why we’ll never have a UBI/leisure society/Star Trek style utopia. We are miserable biological apes and revel in other’s misery.
We […] revel in other’s misery.
Well, i don’t.
Fantastic. I’m hungry, when can I come over?
If you’re actually hungry I can help you find food.
Fuck that; this aggressively horrible crab bucketing is cultivated. Pretending decades of capitalist propaganda every god damn second of your waking life while you live in a fantasy wirld based on nonsense abstractions is ‘just a staye of nature’ is insane.
And yet, railing against observed reality is …???
Its where we are, and whay has been done, it is tge past we must reckon with, but it is not the default for humanity, and it was wrought by human hands.
If it can be made by us, it can be unmade by us.
Amen brother. Anyone who says “that’s just the way it is” is giving up. That’s not the way it is, that’s the way it was MADE. By powerful evil people, and we can remake it.
Please don’t assume masculinity, but yes.
I would phrase as ‘that’s the way it is because of constant work to make it that way, and it was not and will not always be that way’.
It’s the primary symptom of being infected with the broke mind virus, which effectively all republicans suffer.
Should bring actual communism back toexplain the difference.
There’s a lot of good ideas in there, but rent freezes aren’t one of them. Limiting what you can charge for a service just means less people will want to provide that service.
good, less landlords. Not only would freezing rent show us which people suck, but it will force the people who suck to sell their extra properties, since if they won’t use them then the property is just losing them money.
My city already tried this and kinda failed(5% raise limit). It only pumped up the price in the end.
It only pumped up the price in the end.
How?
because if you can’t increase rent with inflation you need to start it higher to begin with.
Lol keep going, keep going! What happens when there are fewer landlords?
You either buy an apartment, or live somewhere else.
Demand shrinks, dont forget to mention that. What happens when demand shrinks?
How is demand going to shrink?
If rent is frozen and it becomes unprofitable those units won’t stay empty. You’d need more than just a rent freeze but housing could become affordable again if it wasn’t treated like an investment or profit venture. Get all the corporations to hate it and prices will fly down.
As I said elsewhere, they will be sold to owner occupiers most likely.
Which is a massive problem for those not in a position to buy.
Lol yeah, no. The prices would come down rather than be held indefinitely with no hope of occupants. I admit this will effect the people with 2 properties before the massive corporations. But its better than just allowing this irrational market.
Probably by people buying apartments or moving away
And what, leave the apartments empty? Have them earn zero money, rather than some money?
public ownership with rents based on the costs of maintaining the properties properly
That is actually a far better idea than rent control, yes.
As per my other replies, typically sell the property to an owner-occupier, which is a big problem if you can’t afford to buy a property.
Yes landlords will just take their houses overseas.
Even if you just talk about building new homes, freezing rent just caps the profits that can be pulled out of a project. If it’s profitable right now, why shouldn’t it be with same income tomorrow?
Yes landlords will just take their houses overseas.
You think landlords are going to move overseas so they can landlord somewhere else?
Honestly, if there actually are people like that, then good riddance. They sound like slum lords. Parasites.
Because costs only go up, that’s why. It may not be profitable tomorrow at all.
Then lift the freeze once there’s no profit left anymore, or just keep the freeze for existing buildings. Limit the rent increase etc.
The issue here is, and this has happened before, investors will either sell the property, meaning those not in a position to buy are screwed, or they will do the bare minimum to keep the building functioning, as there is no incentive to improve the building.
Sell to whom?
Owner-occupiers typically.
That sounds like it’s solving the problem, then.
The banks, of course. They’ll buy anything.
And what do they do with that investment?
Problem easily solved. Is a building not being utilized? Seize it and pay the owner fair market value, then have the city administrate it and charge just enough rent to cover expenses of maintenance and improvement and administration.
So why not skip the rent control and go straight to this?
Fair market value is much, much lower 9n rent controlled property
To give the current owners the chance to do the right thing, and make a small but reasonable gain from their property.
And to make it more palatable to the general public. It’s a lot easier to convince people to go along with it if you’re seizing empty unused properties that are only empty and unused because the owner refuses to rent them if they’re not making excessive profit.
investors will either sell the property
Good. Investors rather than inhabitants owning homes is a huge part of why rent and property prices have skyrocketed.
they will do the bare minimum to keep the building functioning
They already do that in order to maximize profits.
there is no incentive to improve the building.
Ever heard of this new thing called laws and regulations? It’s the only “incentive” that actually DOES work to correct the behavior of greedy slumlords.
Letting them keep increasing the already obscenely high rents just means more profits for them in return for no benefit for anyone else.
They already only do the bare minimum. You practically have to take your landlord to court to get any meaningful fixes in your apartment. All new developments are built like shit, developers cut corners anywhere they can. After the building is built the developer “vanishes” so there isn’t anyone to sue when there is something seriously wrong with the building. They just open a new throw away LLC later and put up another shit building. You must not live in NYC
Cost of what?
Then sell your property.
to whom? unless the rent can change (which it realistically shouldn’t if the law is written well) it still won’t be profitable
People make bad investments all the time.
and they have every right to complain about the government making a half decent one into a horrible one
And normal people have a right to not care about people leeching off of actual workers.
And if you’re talking about homeowners, I still don’t care. You don’t deserve imaginary free money for owning land. Its for living in, not an investment.
Go buy some stocks and stop being selfish.
Less people wanting to provide the “service” of rent seeking? Could you elaborate on why that wouldnt be a good idea?
Because you’re kinda boned if you’re not in a position to just buy a property, that’s why.
Seems like that would lead to a lot more affordable houses becoming available to people who couldnt previously own them.
Youd end up getting more landlords anyway because the barrier of entry would be lowered for that as well.
All rent freeze does is caps profits for existing landlords, and they make enough profit as it is.
How would the barrier of entry be lowered? Are you suggesting new investors are going to buy properties they can’t turn a profit on?
Why do you think it would work like that?
Why wouldn’t they be able to make a profit? The demand for housing wouldnt be any lower, they just can’t increase rent above what it was.
The barrier of entry would be lowered by greedier land lords deciding to sell rather than not being able to raise rent, so people who are slightly less greedy and willing to make only maybe a 300% profit instead of a 1000% profit would take over. Corporate landlords get flushed out to make room for smaller mom & pop owners.
If the existing investors have to sell at a loss because there’s no profit to be made, someone gets to buy them for cheaper, making it profitable again.
They’re not going to sell for less than what they can make off the property though, are they?
Then they’ll continue renting these properties at the new rates? Works too.
it will actually make them charge more, or find ways of making you stay temporary. they said rent freeze is coming, they can demand payment upfront
All of them are fucking awesome! Sign me up!
Welfare is not equal to handing over the means of production to the working class. So what mamdani is doing is not socialist.
You’re right, is Social Democracy. But that’s where we are, politically these days. The largest socialist organization in then U.S. (the DSA) is ostensibly not socialist in policy. Anything slightly left of RAGING corporate handouts and bombing brown people is COMMUNISM now.
hold on i thought communism is when government does stuff and the more stuff it does the more communism it is.
on the other hand these are reforms that marxists and communists should definitely support even if this is just basic social democracy.
I propose a new rule: if you’re American and wealthy, you don’t get to talk about communism. At all.
I might make an exception for wealthy Americans with an education in politics or economics, or both.
I am a wealthy American (well, top 3%) and I’m a democratic socialist. I have no education in either. I’d be the first to increase taxes in my bracket to support Mamdani’s ideas. I think you’d be surprised how many of us there are.
Also I hate it when people say “Democrats NEVER vote to increase their taxes, how do they plan to pay?!?”. Yes, I do. I don’t think money grows on trees.
But I also support your idea. Most people in my wealth bracket probably disagree with me. I’ll lower my voice if those I think I’m trying to represent speak for themselves.
Another person around your bracket with degrees in philosophy and theology who somehow got sucked into a career in big biz. I’m happy to pay more taxes. And talk about socialism. I completely agree with you.
And where I live in the EU I’m already paying 49% of my income in taxes + 21% VAT on most goods. I’d still pay more if we needed it (even though, like most countries, what we really we need better taxes on the truly wealthy and corporations). Yeah I’m better off than most, but our Gini coefficient means most (although not everyone of course) does ok.
We have nice roads/public transit, good schools, great healthcare. The taxes I and people like me pay are why everyone can have nice things. If people didn’t have nice things I’d be stand right beside them with the pitchforks and torches. I don’t say that lightly; some of the protests I’ve attended in favor of taking in more asylum seekers have gotten nasty.
I pay about 30% income taxes without any write-offs. VAT is 8%. If we can get to even 40% and 15% for myself that would be a miraculous win. Thanks for protesting (rare here) and giving us hope and an example.
You guys (I used to be one of you guys before I immigrated long ago) have some serious structural problems that prevent effective protest.
I posted on Bsky that people in America should call a general strike and keep striking until things get better, but I know damn well that people are rightly very afraid to lose their jobs or be put in jail, even prison. And because your healthcare, mortgage/rent, even keeping your children, every damn thing is tied to being not-in jail/prison and making money, I understand why people don’t get in the streets as much, the most recent, massive nation wide demonstrations - that the media barely covered - aside.
I like it (the emigration part)
If you got skilllzzz the place I live has a pretty sweet immigration deal. We have had three American families move into our little neighborhood in the last 18 months using it. DM me if you want to know more.
Why state owned grocery stores?
There are “food deserts”, or large areas where it isn’t profitable to open a grocery store, so no one does. The people that live there have no healthy food options. The state owned stores would operate in those unserved areas where no business currently wants to operate.
Most importantly, it’s not ALL grocery stores like the fear mongers like to pretend. It would be something like 4 stores in the entire city.
No necessity should be for-profit (exclusively).
If it is required (by nature, civilization, or by law) it is literally extortion to make a profit on it.
While I don’t disagree with this sentiment, it can be taken too far: -Covering every disease to the point where everyone gets unlimited exotic multimillion dollar treatments -Giving everyone unlimited delivery of high end chef prepared food -Giving everyone access to the best colleges to study whatever they want (no one will study to be a plumber or chimney sweep, roofer, berry picker etc.)
So within the necessities to stay alive and aligned with the means and needs of the society I can agree. Where this all falls apart is that inevitably some tribunal will decide this and inevitably someone will take control of said tribunal to funnel the best food/health care/education/jobs to their cronies, as anyone who lives in a former Soviet state like myself can attest to.
He was asked what he’d do if the grocery store thing fails, and he said, “If it doesn’t work, we’ll just stop doing it.”
Sad state of affairs that something as basic as this is so refreshing and not completely normal.
Why would you not want to live in a post scarcity society? There would be no downside except you don’t get to feel you are better than someone else because of the stuff you posess or the money you make. Your comment reads very much like “fuck you I got mine”
Of course I want to live in a post-scarcity society.
Unfortunately I don’t live in a post-scarcity world. There are limits to everything. Energy, labor, minerals, fertilizer, economies, governments, etc. Due to abundant energy from fossil fuels we have started to believe that anything is possible and that’s great, and I hope we do manage to continue via AI and automation and new technologies to get closer to post scarcity. But we aren’t there today.
The other thing I don’t like about post scarcity utopias like the Venus Project (and yes, I’ve spent a lot of time researching them), is that when it comes to governance, the current plan just seems to be old fashioned communism with a ton of handwaving about how technology will solve everything else. Communist societies of the past also had access to technology, and they didn’t produce anything resembling post scarcity. As a matter of fact, if anything, they mainly produced more scarcity most of the time when compared to capitalist ones.
So for the time being I think the best we can do is to allow capitalism to do what it does best (innovation, scaling, bringing down costs), and let socialism do the things that capitalism can’t handle (economic externalities like climate change, basic human needs that profit motives greatly mess up such as health care and education, solving food and housing insecurity, etc.).
Someday maybe we will get there with enough automation and some fancy resource management software, but I do very much fear the wrong people slanting those systems in their favor. Good governance and oversight will always be paramount to making any system work, and just hand waving about technology won’t be enough.
You believe a great deal about capitalism that isn’t true. Capitalism is very much not about bringing down cost, socialism is. Capitalism hates innovation, if capitalists have something that makes them money they’ll commit bloody mass murder rather than change it, look at the oil industry, the tobacco industry, US healthcare, the whole PFAS debacle etc, etc, etc.
Ask anyone who’s lived under communism and they’ll tell you otherwise. I live in a formerly communist country and have thousands of people around me who can directly compare. The only people who had it better under communism are the bottom 5-10% or people who didn’t want to work. If communism makes things cheaper, it’s because almost everyone has so much less money. Anyone who thinks otherwise has no real experience in the matter.
That’s not to say that capitalism can’t go off the rails. Without proper oversight, it will descend into monopolies and fascism, as we are seeing today. But in a well functioning system that has socialist and pro worker legislation as we see many places in Europe, the best of both capitalism and socialism can be brought out. I don’t know why everyone has to always try to go to one extreme or the other when the best system is always somewhere in the middle.
Communism as it has been tried was indeed flawed af. We’re going to need something else if we want to survive and be much more extreme than that. Your old communism was still a money economy, with the inherent problems thereof, functioned badly with greedy and fearful people at the top.
It’s always funny to me that when you tell them capitalism sucks you are a fan of 20th century East bloc regimes. No I’m not a tankie. Tankies are extremely stupid.
That’s why I mentioned exclusivity.
There should be high end private grocers. There should be plastic surgeons. These should be allowed to be privately owned
To lower prices presumably.
Price gauging has been a major problem at Canadian grocers since COVID. Basically prices went up with supply chain issues / inflation but have not been adjusted for improvements in inflation since then.
These are for profit entities. They would steal a quarter from the poor and hungry if they could.
That’s the fundamental flaw to capitalism - not that it concentrates wealth and power (because that is perhaps human nature) but that it celebrates it.
It conditions us to think that concentrating wealth is not only morally right but something we should all aspire to. That competing is morally superior to sharing.
Ultimately, if capitalists accrue so much wealth and power that they can buy out the interests that would seek to regulate them through democratic will, we then relinquish our democracy for feudalism.
I think that price gouging is mainly a result of allowing too much consolidation via buyouts and mergers, and not actively enough perusing antitrust and anti price fixing enforcement.
I suppose if it’s allowed to get too bad, the government could try to compete in the market, but governments are almost never the most efficient way to do things and can rarely effectively compete on efficiency against a functioning open market. In my eyes, regulation of the open market via labor law, protecting unions, trust busting and anti collusion enforcement is a far better way for government to solve this problem.
Unfortunately a government that’s not functioning well enough to do this kind of oversight will almost certainly fail at trying to compete against in the open market as a grocery store too. At which point you are just running subsidized food banks, which is also fine by me but I don’t think subsidizing all food for everyone will work in most government budgets.
I think the problem is that the antitrust ship has already sailed.
I don’t think a government run grocery store would be looking to compete on the open market. It would be more along the lines of subsidized food for lower income households on food stamps, practically speaking. That is much more sutainable than one that’s open to the general public.
If a government run grocery store could provide a fair price for items we are currently being gouged on, I doubt they would be able to keep up with consumer demand. Essentially middle class and above will have to keep putting up with commercial prices.
provide more affordable groceries. depending on where they would be, they’d either provide food for food deserts, or create competition for other grocery stores, which should lead to cheaper food overall.
This would be a pretty solid idea for Australia, since we basically just have a local supermarket duopoly, then some foreign or small supermarkets, so it would be a breath of fresh air to have a lack of price gouging, although sadly I doubt it’d be as successful as AusPost, but we’ll see.
This so-called “fear mongering” isn’t directed to the broad US population, it is targeting the preexisting bias of lowest common denominator target audience of the right.
Taxed and have it spent on genocide abroad.
Taxed and spent on you.
It’s your choice.
i wish communism was as cool as republicans make it sound
What we really should have:
Fully automated luxury gay space communism!
Powerbottomin to end poverty and sickness
It’s even cooler
The gulags in Siberia confirms!
And Guantanamo Bay, black sites, Alligator Auschwitz, and the American prison population confirms the downsides of capitalism?
One shit iteration of “communism” that by definition didn’t meet any of the requirements to be called communism can’t be held up forever to be the boogeyman to prevent progress.
Communism (from Latin communis ‘common, universal’)[1][2] is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement,[1] whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products in society based on need.[3][4][5] A communist society entails the absence of private property and social classes,[1] and ultimately money[6] and the state.[7][8][9]
The USSR:
- Common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange - not achieved, state owned but not common owned
- Allocates products in society based on need - not achieved
- Absence of private property - partially achieved, state owned
- Absence of social classes - not achieved
- Absence of money - not achieved
- Absence of the state - fucking lol
Someone has filled your head with propaganda.
The gulags were the just the name of their prison system and most of them were actually west of the Caucasus.
Oh, and America now imprisons more people (by numbers and per capita) than the USSR ever did.
You are at beast don’t know what you’re talking about. Иисправительно-трудовые лагерея (ЛАГ in GULAG) are specifically, namely, explicitly concentration camps that used forced labour to kill people. It’s very distinct from the regular prison system, which used inhuman conditions to kill people at lower rates.
Also America’s prison system is for profit, encouraging them to incarcerate as many people as possible.
The gulags were concentration camps my dude, people got sent there for breaking laws like “criticism of the government”. Most “prisoners” died there.
Also, you just couldn’t not make a “whatabout the USA” lol. Such a trope.
You are factually incorrect.
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You realize there are currently concentration camps in the US eating Americans’ tax dollars right?
The problems that the soviet union had weren’t exclusive to communism, they were exclusive to corruption.
While either system can become corrupted by bad actors, ideologically, capitalism rewards selfishness, and individualism, while communism encourages sharing and community.
At its base, capitalism is literally impossible without exploitation of the surplus value workers create. Capitalism cannot exist without profit, and profit cannot exist without stealing money from workers.
Stop taking everyone for an American.
Also: you just had to shoehorn in a whatabout the USA in there hadn’t you. Got no other arguments? 😁
Then don’t read that part, it doesn’t change the rest of what I said.
Whereas your entire comment was a whatabout the soviet union?
Just had to argue against a strawman, eh? Weird ass thought process when I was just meeting you at your own level, bruv.
I’ll believe it when I see it. Not to say that I’m not willing to give it a shot, fuck knows what we’re doing now isn’t fucking working.
We have never found a perfect political/economic system. That’s why it’s so important that we continue to evolve what we have to be better. I feel like this has stalled out in this country and we are seeing the fallout live.
I don’t care what you call it, I want that. Call it doodoo pickle butting, if it offers that, sign me up for everyone else too.
Call it butt sex and then we can also claim this was the gay agenda we kept hearing about.
Thats the thing, im past the stupid naming and everything. I just want policies that help people and not billionaires. Call it marxism, stalinism, whatever the fuck you want.
It’s a pathetic attempt to rile the old people who remember the cold war propaganda against communism and socialism. While young people are like “So what?”
Yeah sadly that doesnt work here in eastern europe because communism and even social democratism(what this actually is) is associated with the ussr which was a truly horrible regime.
Eastern Europeans are some of the most gullible people on earth. Stalin never even claimed that the USSR had achieved communism, yet somehow every grandma in his “state socialist” empire thinks full communism was reached and the state withered away like Marx predicted. They believe lies he never even told.
I understand that’s the power of propaganda, but damn… It’s been 40 years and most of them never bothered to sit down and learn what a communism is. I can’t imagine being that willfully ignorant.
can’t imagine being that willfully ignorant.
I have some trump supporting neighbors I’d like to introduce you to.
Stalin never even claimed that the USSR had achieved communism, yet somehow every grandma in his “state socialist” empire thinks full communism was reached and the state withered away like Marx predicted. They believe lies he never even told.
He did claim to be communist though - as in, he is ideologically driven to attempt to bring about communism. So calling the USSR “communist” is 100% correct. And naturally, what do you call life under communists? Communism! (This is wrong, but it’s an understandable switch-up).
Well, that’s where I have to disagree with Stalin’s official narrative. I don’t think he was a communist, I think he was an opportunist with no ideology beyond personal empowerment. I think he’d have said he believed in anything if it gave him more power.
Sounds a lot like trump
I’m surprised it’s not more associated with France since social democracy is what the have going on.
I have a 20-something son who basically grew up with MAGA shitting on everything. From his perspective ( and his friends), they don’t see anything wrong with trying out Socialism/ Marxism/ Communism. They feel like the current system of “Democratic Capitalism” has led to the rise of vicious MAGA Nazis, and weak Democratic defenders of our Nation, with the majority of Americans suffering to some degree, so why are we fighting so hard to preserve it?
When we emerge from the other side of this, don’t expect America to go back to anything resembling what it was before.
When we emerge from the other side of this, don’t expect America to go back to anything resembling what it was before.
One can only hope so. What we had before wasn’t great either and pretty much lead to how things are now.
Exactly. In a way, we agree with MAGA, it’s time for a change. They took the initiative, and turned the country in their direction, which is evil, by any definition.
The Establishment Democrats were asleep at the wheel while this played out over 40 years, despite many warnings and steady escalations. Now, we have arrived at their Promised Land, and it is as ugly as they promised, and as a student of history, I promise you it WILL get a lot uglier, likely far beyond any of our imaginations.
We can’t return to the Status Quo, because that WAS the problem. We need to create a new Paradigm, one that will not be afraid to ferociously defend Liberty from Traitors, Crooks, and worse.
Up until the communism part I thought they were endorsing him.
dont you mean marxist part.
I mean, maybe they are a communist, and like the ideas and are endorsing him!
How the fuck is a higher minimum wage anything but our current system?
I’m not convinced it’s not satire
They need to base politicians salaries off minimum wage. If they only earned a salary based off 4-5x the minimum wage, that shit would never be lagging as bad as it is now
Why 4x minimum wage? How could they represent the poorest people in a country if they make quadruple the money?
If they cant live with minimum wage, its their problem to solveIt’s [supposed to be] a demanding position. Relative to the skills we should be demanding these people to have, the pay they currently get is actually not that impressive.
4 times as demanding sounds kinda funny. 254000× or whatever sounds like religious fairy tales. To the guillotines.
Wtf are you talking about? Congress’s salary is only ~178k.
Congress is the 4. Private sector is the ∞.
No one in this thread had mentioned private sector. Try to stay on topic.
this only works if they stop them from being able to hold investments in companies, and markets, then pass laws for, as well as getting rid of political donations. If we don’t do that their salary going down would only negatively affect the small number of congress members that want actual change to things.
I have a solution, make it legal to kill politicians who hold investments or take bribes. They become outlaw and anything done to them is just the consequences of their actions.
It’s not the already obscenely rich accumulating more wealth to the detriment of everyone else, which is the inevitable consequence of the current system of laissez faire capitalism.
$20 is socialism and $30 is communism. I’m sure Karl Marx said something like that.
Why oh why do we peg it to a number rather than to a metric, even if it were Big Macs ffs!!!
