kravietz 🦇 @kravietz@social.privacytools.io

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

@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.

@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?

@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

@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

@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

@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

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

@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

@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

@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 so there's a fundamental problem with bashing "capitalism": it's not an ideology but a economic model that is very flexible and can adapt - Sweden, UK, USA, Russia and China are all capitalist, yet their living standards are drastically different; at the same time Marxism is very prescriptive and closed ideology

@yogthos at the same time capitalist states have actually taken steps to reduce environmental impact and in many places succeeded - ozone layer depletion for example

@yogthos also states with Marxist economy inflicted most damage on environment, not only turning large areas of Asia and Europe uninhabitable due to contamination (Kyshtym, Chernobyl) or desertification

@yogthos because under Marxist economy I have personally experienced shortages of literally everything: food, medicines, clothes, accommodation

@yogthos shortage of what have you recently experienced in a market economy country?

@yogthos surplus was one of the main points of Marxist criticism of capitalism, but Marxian economy had a problem much worse: shortages.