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hard disagree, many OG and influentual socialists came from rich backgrounds. There's also lots of poor people out there who are simply waiting their opportunit

hard disagree, many OG and influentual socialists came from rich backgrounds. There's also lots of poor people out there who are simply waiting their opportunity to be corrupt. Anecdotally I've experienced many people from working class backgrounds who are extremely proud of their tax evasion. The key dividing line is those who follow the rules and believe in the system and those that don't and are just looking out for their own interests. This further explains corruption within socialist systems where everyone is effectively "equal" but some people are still looking out for themselves over everyone else.

don_esteban 1y ago
The problem is when the rules are made to sustain and exacerbate the social divide, not to make the life better for everybody. No need to go far, just look at the result of lobbying in the USA. Btw, while there are many famines caused by despots (Stalin's, Mao's, Red Khmer's), there is also Bengal's famine of 1943. One must also point out that China in the last 40 years have done perhaps more regarding the poverty mitigation than anybody else in the human history (capitalism, especially the wild one, has actually quite patchy record...)
- whatshisface 1y ago
  The Chinese people did all of the work, their government simply allowed them, returning some of their own money in the form of state investment. Who pays for "state" investment?
  - don_esteban 1y ago
    The Chinese government did a lot of smart policies, empowering their people to unleash their entrepreneurial drive, helping them with targeted investment where that was deemed to get good long term/strategic payoff. This was not passive 'let them do what they want', it was (and still is) an actively guided process - there is enough information about that in the net. It also failed in many ways, but overall influence is highly positive, the results speak for themselves. Failing to see that is a sign of ideological blindness.
- Quarrelsome 1y ago
  > The problem is when the rules are made to sustain and exacerbate the social divide, not to make the life better for everybody. perhaps "rules" was a poor choice of word. What I meant was more a belief in society in general, a belief in the nation, in fairness. I guess in one-word: selfishness. I believe the _real_ political divide is between those who are selfish and those who are not.
  - don_esteban 1y ago
    much better, thank you still, ideological zealots really unselfishly believe in their case, whether that is fundamental christianity/islam/communism/capitalism (ok, maybe capitalism not, almost by definition, capitalism is about greed) and are willing to inflict unbelievable horrors in the name of their ideology one should also not forget that there exist deep cultural differences and what is considered 'fair' and 'belief in society' is quite different e.g. between the western judo-christianism and eastern societies
- Aunche 1y ago
  Lobbying isn't used to exacerbate the social divide. It's used to achieve incremental policy wins and prevent incremental policy losses for the clients of the lobbyists. This is what the general public needs to do as well if they want the government to better represent their interests, but they have little interest in that. People willingly choose to exacerbate the social divide, and the overwhelmingly negative sentiment to lobbying is evidence of this. Colonialism is a form of centralized planning, which catastrophically fails for the same reasons that it does in communist regimes. China is evidence of capitalism's incredibly successful record of poverty mitigation. They've retained some communist style central planning, but the "bad" part of capitalism is unlimited accumulation of wealth, as mentioned upthread, which China allows just like any capitalist country.
  - don_esteban 1y ago
    Lobbying to create laws that benefit rich people/big corporations and make the life of ordinary people tougher directly exacerbate the socio-economic divide. Telling the poor/weak to use the tools designed for rich/powerful is just obscuring the reality. The reality being that the system is designed by rich, for rich, to maintain and improve their position. "People willingly choose to exacerbate the social divide" What do you mean by that? People willing choose to be poor and powerless? "Colonialism is a form of centralized planning" - no, colonialism (and neocolonialism) is a form of institutionalized looting, historically highly successful (see the graph of the GDP (as a percentage of the whole world GDP) of Great Britain vs India for a nice example) No, the worst part of capitalism is unlimited accumulation of power, by the way of wealth buying/subverting the state. I suspect one of the reasons China was able to maintain its upward trajectory was their ability to separate the political power from the wealth (see the case of Jack Ma what happens if the wealth starts to impinge on political power in China). From the point of view of West, they did some highly questionable decisions that costed them trillions (squashing the blockchain miners, bursting property bubble, going hard after excessive gaming and internet time by kids) and would not be conceivable in the west, but overall might be net positive for the society at all.
    - Aunche 1y ago

don_esteban 1y ago

The problem is when the rules are made to sustain and exacerbate the social divide, not to make the life better for everybody. No need to go far, just look at the result of lobbying in the USA. Btw, while there are many famines caused by despots (Stalin's, Mao's, Red Khmer's), there is also Bengal's famine of 1943. One must also point out that China in the last 40 years have done perhaps more regarding the poverty mitigation than anybody else in the human history (capitalism, especially the wild one, has actually quite patchy record...)

whatshisface 1y ago
The Chinese people did all of the work, their government simply allowed them, returning some of their own money in the form of state investment. Who pays for "state" investment?
- don_esteban 1y ago
  The Chinese government did a lot of smart policies, empowering their people to unleash their entrepreneurial drive, helping them with targeted investment where that was deemed to get good long term/strategic payoff. This was not passive 'let them do what they want', it was (and still is) an actively guided process - there is enough information about that in the net. It also failed in many ways, but overall influence is highly positive, the results speak for themselves. Failing to see that is a sign of ideological blindness.
Quarrelsome 1y ago
> The problem is when the rules are made to sustain and exacerbate the social divide, not to make the life better for everybody. perhaps "rules" was a poor choice of word. What I meant was more a belief in society in general, a belief in the nation, in fairness. I guess in one-word: selfishness. I believe the _real_ political divide is between those who are selfish and those who are not.
- don_esteban 1y ago
  much better, thank you still, ideological zealots really unselfishly believe in their case, whether that is fundamental christianity/islam/communism/capitalism (ok, maybe capitalism not, almost by definition, capitalism is about greed) and are willing to inflict unbelievable horrors in the name of their ideology one should also not forget that there exist deep cultural differences and what is considered 'fair' and 'belief in society' is quite different e.g. between the western judo-christianism and eastern societies
Aunche 1y ago
Lobbying isn't used to exacerbate the social divide. It's used to achieve incremental policy wins and prevent incremental policy losses for the clients of the lobbyists. This is what the general public needs to do as well if they want the government to better represent their interests, but they have little interest in that. People willingly choose to exacerbate the social divide, and the overwhelmingly negative sentiment to lobbying is evidence of this. Colonialism is a form of centralized planning, which catastrophically fails for the same reasons that it does in communist regimes. China is evidence of capitalism's incredibly successful record of poverty mitigation. They've retained some communist style central planning, but the "bad" part of capitalism is unlimited accumulation of wealth, as mentioned upthread, which China allows just like any capitalist country.
- don_esteban 1y ago
  Lobbying to create laws that benefit rich people/big corporations and make the life of ordinary people tougher directly exacerbate the socio-economic divide. Telling the poor/weak to use the tools designed for rich/powerful is just obscuring the reality. The reality being that the system is designed by rich, for rich, to maintain and improve their position. "People willingly choose to exacerbate the social divide" What do you mean by that? People willing choose to be poor and powerless? "Colonialism is a form of centralized planning" - no, colonialism (and neocolonialism) is a form of institutionalized looting, historically highly successful (see the graph of the GDP (as a percentage of the whole world GDP) of Great Britain vs India for a nice example) No, the worst part of capitalism is unlimited accumulation of power, by the way of wealth buying/subverting the state. I suspect one of the reasons China was able to maintain its upward trajectory was their ability to separate the political power from the wealth (see the case of Jack Ma what happens if the wealth starts to impinge on political power in China). From the point of view of West, they did some highly questionable decisions that costed them trillions (squashing the blockchain miners, bursting property bubble, going hard after excessive gaming and internet time by kids) and would not be conceivable in the west, but overall might be net positive for the society at all.
  - Aunche 1y ago