this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
960 points (88.7% liked)

Political Memes

5521 readers
1599 users here now

Welcome to politcal memes!

These are our rules:

Be civilJokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.

No misinformationDon’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.

Posts should be memesRandom pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.

No bots, spam or self-promotionFollow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (7 children)

So, what is the best system we have got (that doesn't turn into totalitarianism)?

[–] pomodoro_longbreak 5 points 1 year ago

Any kind of centralised authority can turn into totalitarianism if you don't check it. It's just how power works.

I mean that's just my opinion. I'm not like a politics major or anything, so

[–] merc 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The best system seems to be a mix of many things.

Without Capitalism we probably wouldn't have the smart phones of today. People voted with their wallets to direct companies like Apple and Google to indicate what they were willing to pay for and what they weren't. In a relatively short time we've gone from big, clunky, expensive devices that could only make phone calls, to smart computers that can do almost anything, where the phone is often a barely used feature. In a "command economy" we'd probably just have slightly smaller devices that were still essentially portable phones, because nobody would have made the leap to "smart" stuff.

OTOH, Capitalism when it comes to health care is awful. People who could otherwise be happy, healthy, productive members of society can't afford to pay monstrous bills so they get stick, stay sick, and sometimes die. Insurance providers hire enormous teams of people to figure out how to deny claims, and hospitals hire enormous teams of people to get insurance companies to pay for treatments. From the point of view of a society, it's best for everybody to have access to treatment, and for everybody to kick in a little to a pool to pay for that treatment.

It's even good to have a little mix of traditional systems where people do things the way they've been done for centuries. They may not be as efficient, but sometimes people start realizing they really appreciate the craftmanship. Or, there's some disaster in the new way of doing things (say massive crop failures due to using a monoculture), and it's good to have the traditional way as a backup.

As for totalitarianism, that's more a political "system" rather than economic. You can have a totalitarian capitalist system, where the owners of capital own the political system too, and the people at the bottom have no say in what's going on (you could say the US is headed in that direction). Or, you could theoretically have a fully democratic capitalist system where everybody has an equal say, regardless of how much capital they own. Similarly, you could theoretically have a fully socialist / command economy system where all capital was collectively owned and everybody has an equal say. That's what communism was supposed to be. Or, you could have a fully autocratic command economy where the government owned everything and one person controlled the government. That's what the USSR essentially became, or North Korea today. Today's Russia is effectively a mixed economy under a dictator. The state owns a lot of things, in theory, with their riches flowing to Putin. But, Putin also allows some privately owned companies with privately owned capital to exist, as long as he gets paid off. It may be that this is the most likely outcome of every state. A dictator can't be awake 24/7 and aware of everything, so they at least need to delegate some trust to other people. It's unlikely that those people will be loyal unless they get some share of the wealth and power

Fully equal systems where nobody has more power than anybody else are essentially never seen "in the wild". In reality there are always people who have more political power than the rest. If you remove the government entirely, you soon get warlords, not cooperation. Given that we're constrained by humanity, the ideal system is probably one where there's a relatively powerful state, and some hierarchy of power, but where the it doesn't feel oppresive to most people most of the time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Just making a note that this:

From the point of view of a society, it’s best for everybody to have access to treatment, and for everybody to kick in a little to a pool to pay for that treatment.

Is 100% compatible with capitalism. Socialism is not when the government collects taxes and does things.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I just want to make sure I understand that you're on the record for being in favor of single payer healthcare? Because your other posts seem to suggest you'd be against government "interference" with the market

[–] merc 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In theory, sure, it's compatible with capitalism. In practice, unless the government forces young healthy people to pay into the pool, they won't.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Government-paid healthcare is not socialism. Socialism and socialized costs are different things.

[–] merc 0 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The government forcing you to do certain jobs after deciding what people need. (But you imagine that you will get the nice jobs, and will get the good resources.)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Or this but with no government and no rules. (But i will be a teacher of philosophy or do programming. totally a societal need.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Or someone will just rape and then kill You because "yay" there's no gov and no rules ;)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Having government and rules doesn't prevent that, so the point is a bit moot

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Show me the 1st World country where everybody can get away with that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

But then the whole community will come together to punish the rapist right? Right? Guys?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Totalitarian regimes are awesome I heard!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Rojava and Democratic Confederalism was going pretty well until the US abandoned them to Turkey and Assad.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

That argument is so damn tired

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago

You should take a trip over to Cuba, they have an amazing employment system and universal healthcare! That's why they have lots of recycled cars and buildings that never get fixed up. Except they only spend money to fix up the fancy hotels and expensive restaurants for European tourists. Cubans aren't allowed and can't afford to go to nice restaurants or hotels.