I’m one of the ten men, I’m just a worker like anyone else here, I can just use the little grey matter I have to try and understand the world and look at it with more objective eyes, instead of killing anyone who disagrees with me.
Fucking fascist pos. If you want to kill families go to Russia or Israel and look at how fun it is.
That’s called a cooperative, they exist. You share both the profits and the risks of the enterprise. Not all enterprises succeed. Also, some of the men need to be the managers, accountants, sales etc. It’s not just about the factory workers.
Otherwise, more indirectly, they could be the shareholders of the company. Some companies even use shares as payment for their managers and top employees in order to encourage them to improve the profits of the company.
Otherwise they could just be both the owners and the only people working at a company. If the machine ends up generating lots of profits, they could all ten decide to retire and live off those profits while hiring an eleventh person to operate the machine, or they could reinvest in the company, buy even more machines, hire more people and bring in even more profits, like a complex game of cookie clicker.
Choose the one you prefer and try making it a reality if you want that.
“I’ve made bought a machine that does the labor of 10 men!”
“You’re going to still pay the other nine, right?”
“Why? I bought it to get more of the money to myself. Why would I pay for something and get nothing in return? Why would I just lose money for no reason?”
Seriously though, the dynamics are pretty clear, there’s no investment without the expectation for extra profit (even for a state. Invest in a new railroad with the expectation of higher economic activity and therefore more taxes). Otherwise it’s just charity
If we look at the material conditions of people living in what became communist countries before and after revolution, every single one has been a success.
They were all just coming out from some of the most brutal wars ever tbf. In that sense any government in 1920s was a great success compared to the 1910s in terms of, you now, not killing millions or starving. Same for the 1950s compared to the 1940s. Any peace is better than war. None of those countries were independent, strong capitalist societies before the revolution. Russia was a feudal absolutist monarchy based on serfdom, China was an empire in ruin after numerous wars (against colonial powers) and Korea was pretty much just colony, of the empire of China before, then of the empire of Japan.
the soviet archives are exceptional
Yeah, sorry, don’t know where to find them, or the article saying what you are claiming. Do you have a link? Btw, as for “western powers” in the 1930s, what do you mean? The US? Britain? France? Nazi Germany? Italy? Because at the time there was no NATO, the US wasn’t really into projecting power outside of the Americas, and the alliances between Britain, France, Germany and Italy were really fluid and changed several times over the decade (at some point Mussolini was friendlier with Britain than Hitler, while Hitler was friendlier with Stalin than anyone else).
As for everything else, I definitely agree on the fact that the US system is fucked and should be reformed. I’m just not convinced that the system in communist countries is any better. Are you really certain that a communist system like that of China or the USSR or the DPRK would be any better? Do you think that moving to, say, China, would really improve your standing in society?
BTW, economically speaking, I regard China as a capitalist country with a dictator. There’s really nothing inherently communist in their economy. They have billionaires and they don’t execute all of them, only those who say or do things that cause the government to lose face, or that criticize the government in any way. There are companies, stock markets, bosses and employees, rich and poor.
As for Korea, we can’t really know their condition, as they don’t let anyone just enter and go where they please. They don’t even let their people go outside of the country, not even to allies like China. This is what I call authoritarianism. You don’t get to complain and you can’t even leave, it’s essentially a huge prison, isn’t it?
In the end I don’t see any reason to think communism is any better than crony capitalism. They are both radical ideologies that will fuck over the population in order to enrich the leaders. A middle ground would be best in my opinion. Capitalism with strong social policies and a democratic government with a plurality of ideas.
PS: if you are American, try moving somewhere else in the world if you are so displeased with your current condition. You can do it (which is something many people can’t say) and you’ll probably feel better, or at least expand your mind. Sorry to break it to you, but communism will NEVER, and I mean NEVER, happen in the USA. Keep hoping or whatever, but live your life first and foremost.
I didn’t say it was an intentional policy by the USSR or Stalin, but that, in the end, the famine was artificially caused by the reckless policies of the USSR. It’s not a coincidence that it happened just after the first five year plan was implemented in the whole USSR and the famine propagated throughout the whole union.
the western power had made a unified pact that no one would accept ANYTHING from the USSR as payment for industrial products except grain
Please provide sources, I couldn’t find any. Also, talking about the “western powers” before WW2 is just an historical inaccuracy. In the 1930s the soviet union did indeed export large quantities of grain to pay for heavy machinery, but afaik there was no coercion in this. Among other trade commodities exported by the USSR there were oil, timber, furs, minerals and other raw materials, which were traded primarily with Britain and Nazi Germany (culminating in 1940 with the German-Soviet commercial agreement)
North Korea /South Korea is an interesting one. But, I would like to know where you’re getting your information
What information? That the SK economy is doing a lot better than the NK one? By the way, while NK was cut off from western trade and western aid, it did have full access to the other communist and third world countries, including China and the USSR, which sent significant aids after the end of the war to help reconstruction, canceled or postponed their debts and gave lots of money and equipment. On the other hand SK was also heavily propped up by the US and at the same time was cut off from communist trade and aid. The USSR recognized SK only in 1990, before collapsing and China only did so later in the 90s, with trade happening some time before that in the 80s.
And in all of this I’m not saying that the US were always right in their actions or judgement, or that their form of rabid capitalism is the ideal economic policy, far from it. But from there to say that communism is great or even the answer to societal problems is really misguided. Communism as predicated by communist countries wasn’t really that great. Also it always regressed to some form of authoritarianism.
Which countries do you think did to do communism really well and should be an inspiration for other countries to follow?
But when it is an accidental consequence of industrializing a nation of uneducated peasants
I bet you are thinking of the great leap backwards, in which tens of millions died of hunger due to that little accident in judgment, all the while Mao kept insisting that the uneducated peasants on the brink of starvation were hiding all their surpluses from the state.
But that’s not the only example. The Holodomor comes to mind, the artificial result of Soviet rule in Ukraine, where millions died of starvation and the main authoritarian government pushing for the collection of non-existent “surpluses” apparently hidden by the starving peasants. Or the North Korean famines, explained perfectly in this video by asianometry.
North Korea/South Korea is an interesting case study, where after the war the North found itself near the two biggest communist powers and still managed to struggle to get basic products like food, while South Korea, an ocean away from their main ally and on terrible terms with all local powers (still hated Japan and at war with China) still managed to rebuild and, since the end of the dictatorship, managed to grow an impressively big economy.
I don’t think that’s an inherent truth. Just look at Koenigsberg/Kaliningrad. After WW2 the local Germans were expelled and the city and adjacent lands were completely resettled by Russian settlers. You could try to justify it in a million ways, although I don’t know if ethnic cleansing can ever have a justification, but that’s what happened in the end, in Communist USSR, under Stalin. The reason why today’s old Prussia is Russian instead of German, or Polish or Lithuanian.
And the USSR did the same thing in many other places like Poland, DDR, Moldova, Ukraine etc. Settler-colonialism has nothing to do with capitalism or communism. It has more to do with power and controlling the land.
That being said, you now know that diamond store. How many other diamond stores do you remember off the top of your head?
Thing is, chances are that now you’ll check them out before selling or buying diamonds, and if they are worth it enough, you’ll go there. And if not you, most other people.
I don’t think he meant to the consumer. EU countries can negotiate for the price with pharmaceutical companies, so they can lower the price.
In the US insurance companies can try to negotiate, but their weight is quite low, and the federal government (medicaid, medicare) is forbidden by law to negotiate. Whichever price pharma sets, it’s that.