So socialism

[PhroX]

On that note, I am wondering how current AIs would manage to handle economic planning.

Well, that would depend very much on what you told the AI the goal of said planning was.

 

[Lexicus]

I don't see how the whataboutism strengthens your case for communism

I'm not making a case for communism or for the USSR, I'm commenting on a double standard that I see: the bad things the US has done don't make the US evil, but the bad things the USSR did make the USSR totally evil. Why?

 

[Kyriakos]

At least under Stalin, USSR was criminal, killed, mass-deported to Siberia and generally made life hell for many in its domain. It's no wonder that when he died he was renounced by the ruling party.
That said, it's not like Lenin was a humanist either, more of a petty mob ruler, while Trotsky showed just how clueless he was when he unilaterally retreated from the front expecting Germany to also stop fighting and spontaneously become communist=> a stroke of imbecility.

 

[Yeekim]

I'm not making a case for communism or for the USSR, I'm commenting on a double standard that I see: the bad things the US has done don't make the US evil, but the bad things the USSR did make the USSR totally evil. Why?

US builds border walls to keep people out. Vice versa with USSR.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

On that note, I am wondering how current AIs would manage to handle economic planning.

however they were trained/rewarded for handling it, they'd do that goal very well. it probably wouldn't be an outcome humans would prefer, but at least it would get that bad outcome very efficiently and without corruption! (note: this is a very bad idea before alignment as a problem in AI design is solved, if it can be).

 

[Kyriakos]

Apart from the systems, those are two vastly different societies. Russia, for example, has a culture of artistic literacy, whereas US is predominantly about so-called "pop-culture".
There's also the nice quote by Oscar Wilde, about the US.
Ultimately, if one has some priviledges, it is clearly better to live in the US. But it'd be false to mute those elements which are better in Russia.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

I used to want to believe a better world was possible and I saw socialism as the way.
I still Feel kind of disgusted by how things are, but I've not gotten enlightened in socialism really, and now I don't know.

The Soviet union was reprehensible. Same with all other supposed revolutions that have been taken out really. And in the west or whatever I see mainly ignorant fools yapper past eachother about things they don't understand. I was among them. I'm not much better now.

What's the merit of socialism. Is there any hope?

How would one learn?

I had to delete an earlier post because the topic is specifically about socialism, not communism.
Anyway.
If by socialism we mean the government manages a certain industry, I'm not sure how that makes the world a better place on its own.

Take the issue of socialized medicine. Now I've heard it said often that medicine is "too important an issue to be left up to market forces". And while I agree that it's a very important issue, I'm not sure why the stretch is being made that it's "too" important. Other than that's what voters decided. Which, okay. But there are other important industries--commodities--where that very notion does not seem to apply, such as housing construction, food distribution, electrical power, telecommunications, maybe even car manufacture.
I'm left to ask, what actual failure on the part of an industry warrants a government takeover, presumably indefinitely? What burden of proof has been reached which shows that that is allowable?

(I only bring up socialized medicine because in the US it's a very contested issue, with proponents trying to find the best foreign model by which to follow. Conceivably we could discuss any socialized industry here...)

 

[Lexicus]

US builds border walls to keep people out. Vice versa with USSR.

And in your mind, building a wall to keep people out makes the USA good? I'm very confused by this response

 

[Hygro]

Better

 

[Plains-Cow]

however they were trained/rewarded for handling it, they'd do that goal very well. it probably wouldn't be an outcome humans would prefer, but at least it would get that bad outcome very efficiently and without corruption! (note: this is a very bad idea before alignment as a problem in AI design is solved, if it can be).

I think that an AI could still do it better than humans. I mean, did you ever see how people like Ghadaffi or Nicolae Ceaușescu tried economic planning?

 

[Lexicus]

Better

The US building a border wall is an example of a morally bad thing

If the implication is supposed to be that the immigrants come to the US because the US is morally superior to the rest of the world, then this is a good teachable moment about how liberals substitute feelings for historical analysis

 

[Hygro]

Wow you’re serious.

A wall to keep people out who want to come in is categorically indicative of a better country to its citizens than a wall to keep its citizens trapped from leaving.

You are confusing concepts as well. Immigrants come here because it’s better for them, this is acknowledged by your “liberals”.

But “liberals think they come here because of its moral superiority” is some weird made up concept salad fit for stuffing a scarecrow.

 

[Hygro]

Yeekim goes “everyone from the USSR thinks it sucked” which is not accurate by poll numbers but a common regional opinion.

You twist the wall thing from “better than worse” to “exemplifying good”. I thought it was a joke but italicizing one word was all we needed to get back on track.

How can we have a more democratic society built on good communication if we can’t have an honest conversation about what that even means?

Like you’ll never have real socialism without the agreement of the Yeekims of the world so what are we even doing here?

 

[Angst]

I had to delete an earlier post because the topic is specifically about socialism, not communism.
Anyway.
If by socialism we mean the government manages a certain industry, I'm not sure how that makes the world a better place on its own.

Take the issue of socialized medicine. Now I've heard it said often that medicine is "too important an issue to be left up to market forces". And while I agree that it's a very important issue, I'm not sure why the stretch is being made that it's "too" important. Other than that's what voters decided. Which, okay. But there are other important industries--commodities--where that very notion does not seem to apply, such as housing construction, food distribution, electrical power, telecommunications, maybe even car manufacture.
I'm left to ask, what actual failure on the part of an industry warrants a government takeover, presumably indefinitely? What burden of proof has been reached which shows that that is allowable?

(I only bring up socialized medicine because in the US it's a very contested issue, with proponents trying to find the best foreign model by which to follow. Conceivably we could discuss any socialized industry here...)

if we talk socialized industries i'm pretty biased maybe, coming from a succesful country with a lot of its success rooted in socialized industries. whether the root is a cause or incidental i do not know, but i generally like my empiricism when dealing with policy. if i had to choose between two present systems, i like the one that seems to work better instead of collapsing.

for the matter at hand, healthcare:

i like socialized medicine because it's cheaper for the same efficiency.
(or at least what it really means when people say socialized medicine colloquially in europe; it means incredible government oversight. eg germany's healthcare is basically private but is harshly controlled by the government. the model would probably be considered socialist in the states*)

supply-demand is good for making money, but it's simply not efficient in industries where demand is effectively infinite. you can't put a price on what you'll want to pay for being alive

*edit sidenote but coming from denmark the fact that many people have a hard time conceptualizing some of the more finicky relations between public and private is why this whole conversation is so often a swamp; denmark has a massive public sector, but is wholly intervowen with private business, and there's much less red tape in our massive government for private ventures than many of the big industry players worldwide. mericans have a hard time relating to this situation because like "but they got massive taxes, huge public sector and more socialized industries industries than us, how can there be less government control over the private sector!????"

 

[Gorbles]

A wall to keep people out who want to come in is categorically indicative of a better country to its citizens than a wall to keep its citizens trapped from leaving.

To its citizens, sure. But that wasn't Lexi's point (at least not as I understood it). When talking about moral superiority, "bad to different groups of people" is still "bad". You can attempt to justify it by claiming that it's more understandable that a government is bad to the outside rather than the inside (of the wall), I guess (not that you have - I'm just trying to extrapolate).

And yes, "better than worse" is here being established as "exemplifying good". Because one has to come out on top. They're not being presented as "pick two", they're being presented as "pick one".

 

[Hygro]

If you cannot or do not differentiate among recipients of medical care, the marginally cost of providing one more unit of insurance in a firm goes down. This means that in order to have the lowest total cost of insuring everyone you need to fulfill two conditions:

Have one firm providing the insurance
It doesn’t charge above cost

It’s simple economics that if you want the best healthcare for everyone you socialize it.


This turns out to be true for a lot of things in our economy that are privately provided.

 

[Moriarte]

Why do people rush to go "but the USSR was bad", every single time? We can't even get past the USSR to discuss socialism itself

Thought you knew the answer to that one. They didn’t spend enormous resources to vilify everything Soviet, socialist, communist, for you to come here and try to be smart ass by separating socialism and USSR. These, who’s livelihood depends on it, will keep making sure there is no entrance into the conversation about any form of social equality by pointing fingers at the large red monster. And other monsters of similar nature.

 

[Angst]

Thought you knew the answer to that one. They didn’t spend enormous resources to vilify everything Soviet, socialist, communist, for you to come here and try to be smart ass by separating socialism and USSR. These, who’s livelihood depends on it, will keep making sure there is no entrance into the conversation about any form of social equality by pointing fingers at the large red monster. And other monsters of similar nature.

my dad still reads the unity list's (danish socialists') political programme and starts ranting about the khmer rouge. i note to him that it's a party for academic humanists, kindergarten teachers, artists, poor people and such, that their current programme is always basically higher taxes and more welfare. and he goes "pol pot was a teacher"

gonna take us all over soon, those communist kindergarten teachers

 

[Hygro]

To its citizens, sure. But that wasn't Lexi's point (at least not as I understood it). When talking about moral superiority, "bad to different groups of people" is still "bad". You can attempt to justify it by claiming that it's more understandable that a government is bad to the outside rather than the inside (of the wall), I guess (not that you have - I'm just trying to extrapolate).

And yes, "better than worse" is here being established as "exemplifying good". Because one has to come out on top. They're not being presented as "pick two", they're being presented as "pick one".

We all agree it’s not a sign of goodness that you have to keep people out, at best it’s a sign of necessary weakness adjacent to goodness and at worst it’s a wall to keep them in the outside-prison of your making.

I would enjoy a clarification on your second paragraph.

But we do agree in the abstract that a system good to those on the inside is better than to none at all, right? And in the abstract version of the wall trope, America’s wall beats Berlin’s in righteousness?

 

[Lexicus]

Wow you’re serious.

A wall to keep people out who want to come in is categorically indicative of a better country to its citizens than a wall to keep its citizens trapped from leaving.

You are confusing concepts as well. Immigrants come here because it’s better for them, this is acknowledged by your “liberals”.

But “liberals think they come here because of its moral superiority” is some weird made up concept salad fit for stuffing a scarecrow.

Yeekim goes “everyone from the USSR thinks it sucked” which is not accurate by poll numbers but a common regional opinion.

You twist the wall thing from “better than worse” to “exemplifying good”. I thought it was a joke but italicizing one word was all we needed to get back on track.

How can we have a more democratic society built on good communication if we can’t have an honest conversation about what that even means?

Like you’ll never have real socialism without the agreement of the Yeekims of the world so what are we even doing here?

This point about border walls was brought up in answer to the following question:

the bad things the US has done don't make the US evil, but the bad things the USSR did make the USSR totally evil. Why?

To which the reply was:

US builds border walls to keep people out. Vice versa with USSR.

This is baffling to me because I understand immigration's push-pull factors to be mainly determined by the difference in material standard of living, something that I understand to have little relation to how "good" or "evil" a society is.

So, in light of this, I don't know how to interpret your posts. In particular I don't understand this line:

But “liberals think they come here because of its moral superiority” is some weird made up concept salad fit for stuffing a scarecrow.

Liberals tend to interpret history primarily in moral-idealistic terms so instead of a real explanation for why 9/11 happened you get "they hate our freedoms," and instead of a real explanation about why immigrants come here you get "USA #1!". This seems quite obvious to me. And you seem to be basically implying that the "USA #1" view is correct while also denying that anyone actually believes it, which, again, I do not know how to interpret.

And in the abstract version of the wall trope, America’s wall beats Berlin’s in righteousness?

I don't agree with that at all.