7 ms·

That's not what I said.

• WalterBright 4y ago
  The game in socialism is also making a lot of money.
  • Jensson 4y ago
    Problem: Politicians are corrupt! Solution: Give more power to politicians! Lack of power corrupts, need to give them more until they stop being corrupt! Not sure why anyone thinks that would work.
    • pydry 4y ago
      Because politicians are accountable to voters and unless the monopolies are nationalized the monopolies are accountable to no one.
      • WalterBright 4y ago
        > politicians are accountable to voters And then what happens to minority interests? How about we have a national vote on what phone you get? Which car you get? Whether carrots or tomatoes get produced? What movies get produced? What clothes are produced? Which diseases get funding? What apartment you get? How many ounces of meat you get per week? What music you get to listen to? What could go wrong with that?
    • imtringued 4y ago
      Just do Sortition, give more power to a representative sample of the population.
    • asdff 4y ago
      I really don't understand how people can simultaneously believe that governments are corrupt and the private sector would support the public's interests. Guess who is corrupting government: the private sector who only support their own interests.
      • WalterBright 4y ago
        I know this is difficult to understand how it works, but the beauty of the free market is everyone benefits while selfishly working for their own self-interest. Socialism, however, requires altruistic behavior, and very few people are consistently altruistic and self-sacrificing for the common good.
        • kingkawn 4y ago
          Too much koolaid
        • asdff 4y ago
          How can people benefit when in the free market system consumers are seen as a resource to be exploited?
          • WalterBright 4y ago
            Because the seller, in a free market, has to please is customer. The way to please the customer is to have the customer benefit from the transaction. For example, how long do you think McDonald's would last if its McBurgers tasted bad? McDonald's success is extremely tied to customer satisfaction. Tossing the ball back to you, under socialism, why would the socialist service care if you're pleased with the service or not?
            • asdff 4y ago
              Because a socialist system is ran by the public. It is beholden to the public as its shareholders. Mcdonalds needs to taste tasty, but only to get you hooked enough to choose mcdonalds over other foods. You think the shareholders would rather their customers actually eat healthy which means limiting consumption of Mcdonalds? No, they are practically in the business of selling cigarettes but in the form of fats and sugars. They want you addicted. The goal of the capitalist isn't to make their customer happy, its to extract as much of their available disposable income as possible.
  • imtringued 4y ago
    The Soviet Union seems to have failed that game by collapsing through external debt.
    • groby_b 4y ago
      The game has never been to make money for the country, or the government. And IIRC, a lot of people in power in the USSR made a lot of money out of the collapse of the USSR. Heck, there's some mid-level KGB dude who made $200 billion off it.
    • MichaelCollins 4y ago
      The Soviet Union accrued massive debt due to internal production inefficiencies caused by corruption and mismanagement. Russia has extraordinary natural resources, by all rights they should be one of the most wealthy countries on earth.
      • WalterBright 4y ago
        The same goes for South America. Yet they remain mired in poverty thanks to their predilection for socialism.
        • trs8080 4y ago
          Actually they remain mired in poverty largely because the US keeps meddling in their affairs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... So it's more like "they remain mired in poverty because of the United States' predilection for predatory capitalism."
          • relativ575 4y ago
            Notice how on that list none of South America countries appear after 1990s? Venezuela has been hostile to the US, yet they are still there. Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia have elected socialism-leaning governments multiple times during the last 30 years. Not to mention Nicaragua or Mexico, that are not considered South America. Colombia is the latest example. So they are poor because of US meddling, and not even a tiny part due to their policies? You have to try harder if you want to blame their issues on the US.
  • isk517 4y ago
    The game of any ecological/political system is to acquire power, the exact system is merely the set of rules you play by to get it.
• ericmay 4y ago
  It definitely came across that way to me in your comment as well. You associated corruption with capitalism via "and that's the name of the game" as though the objective of capitalism is to destroy public institutions, when what's actually the case is that the objective of corrupt people is to destroy or co-opt public institutions for their own benefit. The economic system is largely immaterial in that effort. Actually, you could argue the opposite in that capitalism helps prop up public institutions versus other economic systems because there are minimum levels of regulation, rule of law, and security that are required for capitalistic economies (ranging from the US, to Sweden, to Singapore) to function and for capital owners to profit.
• deleted 4y ago
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