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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 c

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'm not particularly sure what your point is. I don't love big private organizations. I'd prefer a world with medium sized companies that fail fast. But I don't hate them, not a lot - they have two big things that separate them from governments: you can always go to another, usually just by crossing the street and going into a different shop. And they can't shoot you or throw you in jail.

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'm not particularly sure what your point is. I don't love big private organizations. I'd prefer a world with medium sized companies that fail fast. But I don't hate them, not a lot - they have two big things that separate them from governments: you can always go to another, usually just by crossing the street and going into a different shop. And they can't shoot you or throw you in jail.