Conservatives are the people outside of the last frame encouraging the cops to step more on the neck region.
Under socialism, the tower belongs to The People, and is used by their representatives in the Party.
Socialism doesn’t dictate a government structure, there’s authoritarian socialism and there’s anarchist socialism and there’s socialism in-between.
What’s ironic about your point is that you’re advocating for a literally authoritarian economic system where the owning class dictates what laborers do. You spend most of your waking hours working for a dictator.
Socialism is about making the economy worker owned and giving the workers control over what gets produced and how. That could be via worker cooperatives, it can be via anarchism, it can be via an authoritarian state that (claims to) represent the worker.
oh hey there’s the trivial argument I was expecting… I’m not going to debate this (at an elementary school level) with you but you might consider that anarchists thought of that believe it or not. You can choose to educate yourself, or you can feel smug.
Humans existed for well over 200,000 years without government. There is strong evidence of massive settlements that existed for extended periods without any sign of being ruled, just people living and cooperating.
In fact, it’s the formation of governments that could enforce exploitative economic systems that started the ecological collapse of this planet in the first place. Humans without government live in balance with the rest of the world.
The idea that humans, to survive and thrive, require the formation of an entity (government/state) that allows the subset of the population in control of the it to exploit the subset not in control of it is a dangerous fallacy.
Socialism doesn’t dictate a government structure
I disagree! Socialism by definition requires the people to own their own homes and the places where they work, which is difficult in a government not run by the people. Socialism must be democratic, anything else is just red fascism.
it can be via an authoritarian state that (claims to) represent the worker.
I may have been hasty, seems you agree! But I would like to stress that any government which claims to be socialist but makes unions illegal and enforces capitalism and private property shouldn’t really get to call itself socialist or communist. They’re just state capitalist oligarchies.
I’ll give you that. I am leaving room in my definition for anarcho-communism and anarcho-socialism (or even anarcho-syndicalism and other left-anarchist systems) and those don’t require a state.
Democracy is a decent enough way to run a state, but anarchists would critique democracy (from the left) by pointing out that it can violently compel people based on the will of the majority, and so consensus building, federation, and mutual aid can replace a democratic state while accomplishing socialism.
This is american version of capitalism (meaning it is oligarchy, not capitalism).
A fundamental principle of capitalism is competition. In US, lobbying (aka legal bribery) has eliminated competition. So it has changed from capitalism to oligarchy.
Norway is also capitalistic, but everyone is rich there. US could and would have been there if politicians were not sold.
Capitalism and being an oligarchy are neither mutually exclusive nor mutually inclusive, nor is the presence or absence of competition neither mutually inclusive or exclusive of oppression of others for gain. One could argue, though, that capitalism tends to eventually lead to oligarchies and, as the graphic suggests, oppression for gain as these are both strategies to maximize gain and the capitalist operator with the most gain can use that gain to further increase future gain, and so on. This can lead to the systematic selection for oligarchic, oppressive capitalists.
Norway is rich, like many other countries, due to its economic oppression of the global South. While its distribution of that wealth is more equitable than the United States, it still relies on the same system of oppression to accrue disproportionate wealth.
What I am reading from your comment is: Norway is not perfect, therefor the argument you were replying to is invalid or diminished. Might not be what you intended, but that’s what it reads like.
I don’t think oppression of the global south is a valid criticism of Norway. I do think the things Norway needs to improve upon are largely similar to things the US has to improve upon. Only Norway is miles ahead in many of these key aspects.
Like corruption, most Norwegians want less corruption.
Equity, most Norwegians think there is not enough equity
Healt care and welfare, most Norwegians think people don’t get good enough help with low enough friction
Of course there are more points, and some points don’t have overlap.
Put bluntly, most of the logic in the argument I’m replying to sounds good but doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. It presents two false dichotomies as explanation for issues with capitalism. Hence the first paragraph, explaining why those associations are false.
Then I address Norway in the second paragraph, which is given as an example of “good capitalism”.
What I am reading from your comment is: Norway is not perfect, therefor the argument you were replying to is invalid or diminished. Might not be what you intended, but that’s what it reads like
I’m not sure how you’re getting that. I asked my coworker to give it a read without explaining my thesis and they don’t see it either. You don’t explain why, so I’m at a loss.
I don’t think oppression of the global south is a valid criticism of Norway.
Why not? You again don’t explain why, so again I’m unsure what you intend beyond “your writing sucks and you’re wrong”. Give me some substance I can actually respond to!
I really like all of the roundabouts. Even inside the tunnels! Glorious traffic flow. My hometown has a couple. I’ve begged via letters to the Town management to install new roundabouts instead of 2 pending new traffic light intersections. But, nope. Lights wins the battle. Dumb!
Norway is also capitalistic, but everyone is rich there. It’s pretty good here, but not that good.
Wage inequality is way lower here in Norway than in most of the world, but it’s unfortunately on the rise, in addition to right wing politics becoming increasingly prevalent. Things are good here because inequality was always low, and therefore unions could “win”, unlike in the US where unions were successfully opposed by powerful corporations.
Norway is slowly becoming worse, but way slower than the rest of the world because unions and the welfare state stops foreign and domestic companies from exploiting us as much as they want to.
I’d draw the man with the million boxes using just the one to see over the fence.
liberalism is the capitalist buying a ticket and then equity
I really really hate the original version of this meme. No one uses equality, equity, and justice to mean the things the meme implies >:|
Not in this meme, but in the original. It implies that equality is not a good thing because surely the people calling for it haven’t taken into account that everyone is different and has different needs. It shows equity as being the same situation but tailored for everyone’s needs, and justice as being the same situation but with whatever created the inequality in the first place as having been removed.
My issue is that people don’t use these words in this way, the people calling for equality always want to provide according to peoples needs, and to remove the things causing inequality.
I think it depends a lot on the people using the words. People who don’t believe that the systematized slavery as practiced in the US produced long-lasting generational effects, for example, might say that treating people equally moving forward is best. Under that belief system, everyone starts on ~even footing and gets the same opportunities, so actually it’s less fair to make special cases for folks!
In my view those folks are starting from a deeply flawed premise (and usually one they’ve arrived at in order to justify the worldview they already hold), so their conclusions are worthless. But I think they’d meet the criteria of advocating for equality and against equity, and sincerely mean it. It’s not hypothetical either, I’ve met people like this - depressingly many, in fact.
