@kravietz The problem is further compounded by the fact that the rich use their accumulated resources to aggressively spread propaganda that puts them in a favorable light. They buy news media, think tanks, special interests groups and so on with the purpose of spreading memes beneficial to them. This works the same way as religious indoctrination where people are bombarded with pro-capitalist ideology from the young age.

@kravietz the only places where capitalism works is when you have strong socialist policies and heavy regulation. I'm not sure what you mean about Marxism being a prescriptive and closed ideology. What specifically do you mean by that?

@yogthos here you are absolutely right: capitalism needs regulation, otherwise it turns into neocon feudalism; regulation alone doesn't really guarantee anything - Russia or USA are heavily regulated, yet their systems are full of abuse

@kravietz I don't know that I agree about Russia and US being regulated in any meaningful way. The oligarchy owns both countries and does whatever it wants. The countries that are regulated would be China and Scandinavian nations.

@yogthos both are very regulated; whether the regulation serves the people or is executed consistently is another matter; in USA insulin cost is skyrocketed precisely because of regulation that serves an oligopoly; in Russia regulation is used to extort bribes

@kravietz I think it's a bit of a stretch to call that sort of thing regulation though :)

@yogthos Marxism made a number of hard requirements for communism: violent revolution, dictatorship of proletariat, central planning. There's not much room for adaptation, if you want to call yourself "Marxist" or "communist", Marx was very categorical about it

@kravietz dictatorship of the proletariat is just democracy. It also looks like you're confusing Leninism and Marxism which are two completely separate things. Meanwhile, the violent revolution is not really a requirement of communism but rather a natural reaction to capitalist abuse of the population.

@kravietz so I agree that capitalism can work on small scale, but you have to have strong oversight by the public.

@yogthos I'm onboarding a ferry now so can't really provide relevant quotes, but check Chapter 1 from Lenin's "State and Revolution", it has a nice collection of quotes from Marx and Engels justifying actual, rather than metaphorical, terror and dictatorship

@kravietz right but that's Lenin's interpretation of Marx and Engels hence Leninism. It's also fair to describe USSR as state run capitalism as opposed to socialism advocated by Marx. The first thing that happened in USSR was that the local soviets got dissolved.

@yogthos accumulation of capital thwarts competition, but it's easily solved by progressive taxation and inheritance and property tax

@yogthos what you describe is an early "labour value theory" as proposed by Marx and Engels (although vaguely); there's a number of fundamental problems with LVT - it cannot be reliably measured, it assumes the all citizens have the same needs, and it relies on central planning

@yogthos sorry, but if someone produces new insulin with less burden and side effects it's not because of a vendor's "whim" but because patients want it

@kravietz in a socialist system that would just happen by default because resources are optimized towards providing cheaper solutions naturally since there is no profit motive in the first place.

@yogthos "real socialism" operated in quite the opposite fashion: because there's no competition, nobody cared about quality; because there's no imperative of "profitability" nobody cared about production cost or effectiveness

@kravietz that's not really true though. For example, a lot of stuff produced in USSR still works today. Meanwhile, under capitalism we got planned obsolescence.

There was also a large study conducted in the 80s that showed physical quality of life under socialism to be higher across the board https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2190/AD12-7RYT-XVAR-3R2U

@yogthos I'll prefer to read the full study before commenting on it. As a matter of fact, life expectancy was ~10 years lower in Eastern Bloc as compared to the rest of Europe. Another question is what they define as "socialist" - Sweden maybe?

@kravietz the study focuses on Soviet Union specifically, and definitely worth reading in full.

@yogthos how ironic it's hidden behind a for-profit paywall :D

@kravietz yeah sadly :)

@yogthos a lot of stuff like what - a hammer and a sickle? Possibly, as it's really difficult to make them in low quality. I had the "pleasure" of driving Soviet cars produced in 80's and even a new Lada or Uaz would break more often than a 10 years old VW, not to mention twice more fuel used per 100 km.

@kravietz how about closed cycle rocket engines that beat anything US could produce https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oGr1UVNBDLs

@yogthos we had a joke in 80's Poland "maybe the prices of food increased twofold but at least prices of locomotives decreased by 20% so all is good on average!"

@kravietz I mean things weren't perfect obviously, and I think Leninism specifically is quite problematic. I do think that a good governance system needs to work bottom up though.

The system needs to represent the majority as much as possible in terms of how resources are allocated. And that's only possible when everybody has roughly the same influence.