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I cannot strongly stress how amused and annoyed I am by you defending the interests of people with more money than you and your entire family have ever made or

I cannot strongly stress how amused and annoyed I am by you defending the interests of people with more money than you and your entire family have ever made or ever will make. You're right. Our current system requires us to use money to represent limited resources and those resources are not infinite. Congratulations. However the idea here that some people just have to suffer and be catastrophically disadvantaged so that an (increasingly smaller and squeezed) middle class can enjoy the fruits of their hard labor as the money continues to concentrate at the top is absurd. Try thinking outside of the box for a moment. The current system is fundamentally broken but I guess as long as you've got yours it suits your needs.

radu_floricica 6y ago
I was born in communist Romania. Thank you very much, but I had one socialist system in my life, I really don't want another. Every single one that humanity tried was either suboptimal, dystopian or straight up humanitarian catastrophe. But sure, I guess they weren't "real" socialism, so let's try and try and try again. sigh. Somebody in my country once said something like: "If you're not communist at 20, you have no heart. If you're still communist at 30, you have no brain". So I guess I should be more patient. But well... I am a bit irritated by people saying things with conviction while not knowing enough history to cross the road.
- hellotomyrars 6y ago
  It's disingenuous to suggest that the thing I am advocating for is the system as it existed in communist Romania. I am not. Just as I do not advocate for the current economic system in the way it exists. However I know that our current system's goal isn't to provide for the people, and the failings of our current system are extreme. My biggest point is that I'm not saying everyone should be provided a luxury yacht by the state. It's impractical and nobody needs a luxury yacht to be happy or live. But I know that people do need things like a place to sleep, food to eat, and access to healthcare to be happy and live. And if you slip in to a situation where you lack any one of those things, getting out of it can be that much more difficult. I think we have an obligation to each other as humans to try and provide for each other. I guess that it's an unpopular belief.
  - radu_floricica 6y ago
    What history, literally two comments up I was saying how the standards defense is that "it was not _real_ communism, let's try again and this time we'll get it right". groan The goal of the system isn't to provide for people. That's the core fallacy that doomed pretty much any socialist system ever. Systems are shit - all of them. More you rely on one, more fucked you are. What you want is to let people to provide for themselves. Because yes, they can and they want to. And trying to say that they need a "system" to provide for them... ugh. It's offensive in so many ways. People are not children - children are children. Now, this being said, things are quite complicated. There are commons problems, which are very hard to solve by the free market. You do, unfortunately, need some system for those, with the inherent shittyness. But as a rule, the smaller it is the better. More you try to do centralized, worse results you get. Even the modern great success stories in social democracy (western countries, northern europe etc) - they either have a catch (like natural resources) or did most of their growth on a small system, and now are spending their success as social benefits. And yes, you do want a social safety net, for general principles. You don't want old people dying in ditches because an investment firm went bust with their pensions. But that's about it - safety net has nothing to do with treating perfectly healthy adults like they're disabled or children. They are the ones _paying_ for the safety net. Somebody has to.
    - fallingfrog 6y ago
      This bizarre sort of doublethink when it comes to organization is just so baffling. You seem to believe that private institutions can be as big as they want and will always run fine, but public institutions are always shit. Why? You say that people have to be left to take care of themselves- you show me a person who is truly taking care of himself without being a part of some larger organization or community and I’ll show you a naked hermit shivering in the woods. Look, I live in the United States, where we are utterly incapable of building something like high speed rail or dealing in an organized way with a pandemic, and it’s exactly this kind of thinking that got us here. There is no fundamental difference between a public and private organization, except that one is run somewhat democratically and the other is a private fiefdom. And we all have a duty to look out for each other, not just ourselves. That’s how civilization keeps itself going.

radu_floricica 6y ago

I was born in communist Romania. Thank you very much, but I had one socialist system in my life, I really don't want another. Every single one that humanity tried was either suboptimal, dystopian or straight up humanitarian catastrophe. But sure, I guess they weren't "real" socialism, so let's try and try and try again. sigh. Somebody in my country once said something like: "If you're not communist at 20, you have no heart. If you're still communist at 30, you have no brain". So I guess I should be more patient. But well... I am a bit irritated by people saying things with conviction while not knowing enough history to cross the road.

hellotomyrars 6y ago
It's disingenuous to suggest that the thing I am advocating for is the system as it existed in communist Romania. I am not. Just as I do not advocate for the current economic system in the way it exists. However I know that our current system's goal isn't to provide for the people, and the failings of our current system are extreme. My biggest point is that I'm not saying everyone should be provided a luxury yacht by the state. It's impractical and nobody needs a luxury yacht to be happy or live. But I know that people do need things like a place to sleep, food to eat, and access to healthcare to be happy and live. And if you slip in to a situation where you lack any one of those things, getting out of it can be that much more difficult. I think we have an obligation to each other as humans to try and provide for each other. I guess that it's an unpopular belief.
- radu_floricica 6y ago
  What history, literally two comments up I was saying how the standards defense is that "it was not _real_ communism, let's try again and this time we'll get it right". groan The goal of the system isn't to provide for people. That's the core fallacy that doomed pretty much any socialist system ever. Systems are shit - all of them. More you rely on one, more fucked you are. What you want is to let people to provide for themselves. Because yes, they can and they want to. And trying to say that they need a "system" to provide for them... ugh. It's offensive in so many ways. People are not children - children are children. Now, this being said, things are quite complicated. There are commons problems, which are very hard to solve by the free market. You do, unfortunately, need some system for those, with the inherent shittyness. But as a rule, the smaller it is the better. More you try to do centralized, worse results you get. Even the modern great success stories in social democracy (western countries, northern europe etc) - they either have a catch (like natural resources) or did most of their growth on a small system, and now are spending their success as social benefits. And yes, you do want a social safety net, for general principles. You don't want old people dying in ditches because an investment firm went bust with their pensions. But that's about it - safety net has nothing to do with treating perfectly healthy adults like they're disabled or children. They are the ones _paying_ for the safety net. Somebody has to.
  - fallingfrog 6y ago
    This bizarre sort of doublethink when it comes to organization is just so baffling. You seem to believe that private institutions can be as big as they want and will always run fine, but public institutions are always shit. Why? You say that people have to be left to take care of themselves- you show me a person who is truly taking care of himself without being a part of some larger organization or community and I’ll show you a naked hermit shivering in the woods. Look, I live in the United States, where we are utterly incapable of building something like high speed rail or dealing in an organized way with a pandemic, and it’s exactly this kind of thinking that got us here. There is no fundamental difference between a public and private organization, except that one is run somewhat democratically and the other is a private fiefdom. And we all have a duty to look out for each other, not just ourselves. That’s how civilization keeps itself going.