SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
On January 15th, 2018, World Socialist Web Site reported that users are unable to share a promotional video for a January 16th online meeting, "Organizing Resistance to Internet Censorship."
Facebook has blocked users from sharing a social media video promoting the January 16 online meeting "Organizing resistance to Internet censorship," featuring World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board Chairman David North and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges. The initial post of the video, uploaded Friday, cannot be shared by any user. Those who attempt to do so receive an error message that seems to imply a technical failure.
Users reported, however, that upon clicking "If you think you're seeing this message by mistake, please let us know," they were presented with a notice that clearly indicates the content had been blocked in the name of keeping Facebook "safe."
WSWS published an open letter about internet censorship and net neutrality on November 25. The FCC repealed net neutrality rules on December 14, 2017.
In this AC's opinion, Facebook is certainly within their rights to refuse to host any content for any reasons they choose. However, for many people, Facebook is the internet.
Should we worry about entrenched services such as Facebook and Google using their positions to suppress information? Does the presence or absence of net neutrality change one's analysis of the situation?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by anubi on Wednesday January 17 2018, @07:21AM (32 children)
"Gullible" youths? Or "Disenfranchised" youths?
Socialism will spread amongst a poverty stricken workforce like flames spreading amongst oil soaked rags.
Just the time the elite think they have things all under control, have 99% of the populace obedient to them, they rise up and the 1%'ers find themselves outnumbered 100 to 1, not only that but the people who service the infrastructure that supported them is amongst that 99%.
I guess that's why they teach history in school. The thing works just like a "relaxation oscillator". The frequency of this oscillator is quite dependent on the driving force and the restraining power of the thin blue line.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @07:49AM (30 children)
Capitalism creates wealth; socialism destroys wealth.
As capitalism implies voluntary trade, it must be the case that every government is inherently anti-capitalism.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @08:38AM
Nothing like ignorance to cement an ideology. Good talking point you have there, very solid and simple. The best point.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @08:42AM (27 children)
Oh, look. Another nitwit.
Big hint: Stalinism wasn't Socialism.
N.B. Stalin was a Counterrevolutionary and an Authoritarian.
The first thing he did was get rid of those who he suspected weren't loyal to HIM.
Sound like anybody in recent news reports?
Socialism is simply another ownership model--a more distributed model.
Socialism is the collective ownership of the means of production by The Workers.
Socialism is Democracy in the workplace.
If you're against Socialism, you're against Democracy.
.
Let's play '"Name that system".
Example 1:
You go to work and someone else has decided what you will produce.
Someone else has decided how you will produce it.
Someone else has decided where it will be produced.
Someone else has decided what will be done with the profits.
Example 2:
You go to work and you and your coworkers democratically decide what you will produce.
You and your coworkers democratically decide how you will produce it.
You and your coworkers democratically decide where it will be produced.
You and your coworkers democratically decide what will be done with the profits.
N.B. Every worker's vote is equal to any other worker's vote.
...and the reason it works this way is because there are no non-worker owners|stockholders|board of directors.
In fact, it would be accurate to say that The Workers (and only the workers) collectively own the means of production.
.
In the 1st example, TPTB could
- have you doing things in an unsafe way
(West, Texas fertilizer factory (exploded); Union Carbide's Bhopal plant (leaked poison gas and killed thousands and thousands))
- have you dump poisonous coal ash into the nearby river because The Ownership Class doesn't live in the community where the production is done, so they don't care about that community
- export your job because they found cheaper, more exploitable workers
- pay the workers as little as they think they get away with and cut benefits each year
(Under Capitalism, workers have repeatedly made concessions but got canned anyway.
Welcome to the post-Thatcher/post-Reagan era.)
In the 2nd example, workers who own their own company would tend NOT to
- do things in a worker-hostile/dangerous way
- poison the air, water, soil, and people of their own community
- export their jobs
- cheat themselves WRT compensation [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday January 17 2018, @09:05AM (14 children)
Say... WHAT? Careful with that logic down the stairs, you may end in breaking it badly.
Would you have said: 'If you are against Socialism, you are against Democracy in the workplace', that would be correct. Otherwise it's like you are saying: "if you hate cats, you hate all four-legged animals"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @09:27AM
Capitalism exists even in places with the most repressive of governments.
Capitalism is completely government-agnostic.
Now, if ALL decision making is top-down (Authoritarian) where you are, you will never have Socialism there.
Socialism is Democracy -extended- to the workplace.
...and for this, even the veneer of Democracy (as in the Oligarchical USA) is good enough.
...and your analogy stinks too.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday January 17 2018, @09:43AM (12 children)
My young paduwan, if you are against democracy in the workplace, you are against democracy in the marketplace, and you do in fact hate all four-legged animals. Please do not let your personal experience under a Marxist-Leninist Stalinist dictatorship blind you to basic truths, even though such a bias is completely understandable.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:40PM (11 children)
Mmm... Bias you say.
Imagine an academic setup for a workplace, University of some kind. How would you like a democratic (as opposed with meritocratic) decision process in regards with the choice of curricula? Wanna take the risk of 'your ignorance is as good as my knowledge.
The old definition of socialism needs patching for workplaces where the biggest value is located in wetware rather than hardware. Happens a lot in software engineering - just look a Linux and imagine where will it be with a democratic governance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday January 17 2018, @11:42PM (6 children)
Well ideally the knowledgeable person will be elected to lead the project. The carpenter leading the framing crew, the electrician leading the wiring crew, the accountant looking after the books and the software engineer handling the software, with the one the group agrees is the best being the lead.
Unluckily the ideal comes against human nature where likes and dislikes can be more important then actual skill, which is also a problem in current (representative) democracies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @12:14AM
You have a better grasp of human nature than the woo-woo thing that c0lo has.
The Workers that I have encountered want to get the stuff done in the best way, get their compensation, and move on to the next task.
Putting the most-able guy in charge expedites this.
Thinking that Socialism queers that notion rather than bolstering it is simply a demonstration of prejudice.
(Reading Dilbert regularly will give you plenty of examples based on real life experiences, showing that the common rigid Authoritarian workplace model is very likely to give bad results.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 18 2018, @12:33AM (4 children)
Like in: ideally the best prepared person gets to be elected to push the strategy/tactics required for the best governance of USofA population... and yet you finish with the Orange Clown at the head.
While this (by the number game) needs not** to end in the demise of USA , in the conditions a business (with lower resources than a country) or a project the failures due to mismanagement tend to be more frequent. For every Mondragon success there are hundreds of other cooperatives that failed.
Agreed.
It boils down to: human nature does not guarantee the success of socialism - even if it does not guarantee its failure.
---
**even if the survival result is still not guaranteed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @02:21AM (1 child)
...for the best governance of USofA
...when you have a media whose job it is to inform the public.
When you have the Lamestream Media that USA has, whose job it is to maximize profits for The Ownership Class, you get Drumpf.
I've mentioned the statement by CBS's CEO numerous times.
They knew perfectly well what they were doing to the country--and they didn't care.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 18 2018, @02:49AM
I hope you'll agree that's necessary but not sufficient.
E.g. an informed public is absolutely useless if that public is only able to react based on "The Truth" that was fed to them, with no thinking of their own (one would contrast "education" vs "indoctrination/taming" as concepts here?)
Which does show that the condition to reach the the status of ideal are far from trivial. With the immediate corollary: the more necessary condition, the less probable the ideal status.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday January 18 2018, @04:08AM (1 child)
Nature itself does not guarantee the success of anything. Lots of failures in new businesses in any system and even the forest outside sees only a few trees succeed after millions of seeds start out.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 18 2018, @04:29AM
But it does. Entropy, for instance, will ever be higher as the time passes - uninterrupted growth is how one usually define "successful", right?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @11:55PM (3 children)
look [at] Linux and imagine where will it be with a democratic governance
You mean like Debian, which has adopted systemd?
N.B. In contrast, elsewhere in the (meta)thread, I have linked to Switzerland's brand of Direct Democracy.
There, a decision made by "government" can be rescinded by popular vote.
As for the Linux kernel, so far, I'm just fine with The Benevolent Dictator for Life.
The old definition of socialism needs patching for workplaces where the biggest value is located in wetware rather than hardware
...or perhaps not.
Swedish Worker Cooperative Software Development Company Has No Boss [soylentnews.org]
...and you, as so many others here, have made the mistake that Socialism and Democracy are different things.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 18 2018, @12:52AM (2 children)
Another remarkable and somehow singular example of success - just as Mondragon (yes, I know, there are other successful cooperative, but the proportion of them warrants the "somehow singular" characterization).
As I said somewhere else, intrinsically socialism and democracy aren't bad - just they don't guarantee the success (much less optimality, whatever way optimality is defined).
---
It may appear as strange idea, but I'll say it anyway: the same way as money, the means a production (and their ownership) are also a mean not an end**.
If you like a SciFi projection, imagine a post-energy/material-scarcity society as sorta depicted by StarTrek (replicators and teleporters available) - you still think the "ownership of production means" would be relevant to that society? (in a minuscule scale of it, today we see the - pale - situation with "on demand fabbing" - inexpensive 3D printers and/or CNC machines).
--
** I'll let you ponder what could be that end. That is, if you accept the idea as a hypothesis at least.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @02:49AM (1 child)
The page lists others.
Your hyperbole has fallen flat (as usual).
just as Mondragon (yes, I know, there are other successful cooperative[s]
Had you not had your head stuck up a dark orifice so many times, you would have noticed the DOZENS of times that I have mentioned the thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of worker-owned co-ops in northern Italy.
I've also mentioned The Marcora Law [google.com] which seeds that.
Boston and Quebec are getting to be co-op hotspots.
Madison, WI has been for some time.
I'm expecting Oakland to really ignite any day now.
There are numerous places all over the globe with great ideas. [google.com]
Meanwhile, USA.gov (and UK.gov and AU.gov) are stuck on stupid with Oligarchy and NIH.
.
replicators and teleporters [...] 3D printers
Who is building them and fixing them?
Where do the inputs come from?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 18 2018, @03:47AM
(note: mate, I expect better from you than foul language. Please behave and we can continue to have a dialog. Otherwise, I'll relegate you in my personal "don't care" category.
Pay attention to my posts, those that aren't grinning at least, and see that I value cooperation more than competition, the social more than the private, etc. But I'm old enough to know that nothing is perfect and those I already mentioned here aren't sufficient)
Would you be so kind to compare the number of people involved into coops with the number of people that are not?
Because you must admit that "thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands" could mean just as low as 8000 people or even less (if the same person is part of more than one coop).
Mate, I never said that coop-style economy is impossible. Nor did I say coops are shit.
I only said that coops aren't the guaranteeing a success and optimality by themselves. There's something more that need to get into their chemistry than the simple "we are a coop, wooohoo, now we're set for life".
Pretty much the same apply to the direct democracy in Switzerland - you simply don't wave a fairy wand and coops are magically successful.
I'll let the reader imagine what else is necessary - (I hate answers and The Truth, even when they are my answers and my truth, because they have the tendency to kill the thinking. You can imagine my feelings about the answers and "The Truth" of others)
Don't know about other places, but the community and cooperation spirit is not as dead as the rumors are exagerating.
First of all, I wasn't depicting a reality, I only set up a mindframe (this is why "If you like a SciFi projection") in which "ownership of production means may become irrelevant". In this context (pure speculative), here are the answers:
- presumably, building and fixing is done by whoever is qualified to do it and is trusted by those around it that it will do it properly. Potentially even a specialized maintenance robot may do it.
It's not like, in a post-scarcity world with replicators and teleporters, a part which is required for repair/maintenance cannot be asked for someone that operates another replicator (and transported by teleport).
- Where the inputs come from? Pure energy, available at so low cost in the post-scarcity world that it wouldn't matter. Picard ordering a cup of tea from the replicator doesn't seem to care too much about E=mc2
Just in case you really don't know about the "maker movement", pay a visit to reprap.org [reprap.org]. It's not the only site, you'll be able to find many other sites supporting the makers (even if just by presenting the designs or knowhow).
Yes, nobody is making (yet) stepper motors and what not at home, but:
1. they are cheap nowadays, much cheaper than the computers were at the beginning of the open-source movement. And don't tell me that you scorn open-source movement because it uses paid-for and personal computers
2. it's a start (has been quite a long time ago).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Lester on Wednesday January 17 2018, @11:14AM (6 children)
Example 2:
Company goes to bankruptcy because it's poorly managed.
That's a real world outcome. There are cooperatives that work, but there are also a lot of companies took by workers that were finally sold.
I don't mean that it is a the only outcome. Private business go also to bankruptcy, but a cooperative has the same problems that a private company, but in addition its own problems, one of them management.
If workers are wise enough to delegate decisions on a qualified and honest staff (in a tacit way or in a explicit way) , things may work. If non qualified workers use power to impose decisions about things they don't understand, bad. If workers begin to ask the same wages for everybody, you run into problems, you spend more time in committees, meetings about internal issues than doing real work.
Personal ambition is a problem, but it is also an important fuel of society improvement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @11:59AM (1 child)
If you think just because the board of directors names Joe MBA to be CEO of a private company, or because some idiot decided to manage his own business and he's a "job creator" now, then the capitalist management issue is gone I hope you are happy in the world you wish for. Speaking of which, how close to insolvency are you if you don't get your next pay check, o great economy teacher?
But hey you KNOW cooperatives have an extra unsolved problem vs private companies. You heard it in that "greed is good" movie. We'll just call it personal ambition now ...
(Score: 2) by Lester on Thursday January 18 2018, @02:43PM
Did I say that cooperatives should be banned?
If cooperatives do it better, perfect. I just think that cooperatives need conditions that are not always met. And for me, the proof is that there are much more private business than cooperatives.
I won't rise any objection if you gather a group of people and start the producción of software, or hardware, or the new SuperHD, or cars, or ships, or chairs, or pencils, or LED bulbs, or whatever you decide. Nobody is stopping you. Just do it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @01:01PM (3 children)
Mondragon has been doing the co-op thing since 1956.
They started out with 6 worker-owners.
They're now have over 100,000 worker-owners in 40 countries on 5 continents.
In the (meta)thread, I linked to the compensation for the worker-owners of the Suma Cooperative.
They're also doing great--making all of their own decisions thank you very much.
A co-op will try to promote from within.
Places often have folks who have taken business courses, gotten degrees, worked in management at other places, yada,yada,yada.
When they can't find the skill set they need already within their own ranks, they can hire people, farm out work, or bring in new worker-owners.
They can also send their worker-owners to school to get extra skills before those are needed.
Oh, and the differential in pay between top management and workers in Capitalist operations in the USA is, on average, 349:1.
At Mondragon, the largest pay differential is 9:1. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [wikipedia.org]
Private business go also to bankruptcy
With CxO compensation based on stock valuation, short-term thinking in Capitalist operations is common.
Stupid non-productive shit like stock buy-backs is what you get with Capitalism.
Capitalism is on its deathbed.
"The Recovery" is bullshit.
While "the paper economy" looks good, it's not actually producing any new goods or services; production isn't expanding.
The 1 Percent is just shifting cash from one pocket to another.
Nothing NEW is being produced.
Capitalism is a notion whose time has come and gone.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday January 17 2018, @06:25PM
But it's also true that coops can succumb to bad management. I know of one example that worked well for about 60 years, and then elected a board that was expansionist, and went bankrupt within a decade, even though it still had lots of community support. You *DON'T* take a low margin business and try to make it more profitable by rapid expansion...but these professional managers did.
Now it's true this was a consumers coop, not a workers coop, but the same general rule applies.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Lester on Thursday January 18 2018, @01:02PM (1 child)
And I have several examples of the opposite. Maybe Mondragon is the exception, not the most common case. Can you point more cases?
Well I wouldd't say smartphones, Internet, modern computers etc are nothing. They were created by private companies, not by cooperatives.
Private companies are producing Drones, facial recognition, AI, electrical cars, better batteries, autonomous cars, new, more efficient solar cells, windmills, etc.
Perhaps you expect breaking, revolutionary invention. Well that is something rare, but accumulative small improvements create new things. In a smartphone, in a hand, you have a computer more powerful than any 15 years ago desktop. You have GPS, phone, mail, calendar, clock, radio, camera, video, image editor, video editor. 15 years ago that was science fiction. Forget the mantra "everything is invented already".
Well, well, well...
Capitalism is going to be here for ever, because it is in our DNA. Cynics that think that "Man is wolf to man" are wrong, and those who think that "man is born good and society turn him bad" are also wrong. In our DNA is the spirit of cooperation and the spirit of competition. As soon as the group is safe, competition appears brights, when group is in danger cooperation brights. Stalinism, i.e. just replaced some masters for others. Why? There are a few only competitive people and few only cooperative people, and most people in the middle in a bell curve [wikipedia.org], you acting as if have exterminated the right side of the curve is the worst thing you can do. You can exterminate the right curve remove a group of people. The people remaining has the same curve
There is a crisis, sure. Perhaps that level of unregulated capitalism is going to change and be more regulated. Or perhaps the opposite. But the idea that the natural and unstoppable trend is going to a new and more equal and happy society is naive. Ask Mafia what they think about. Ask warlords what they think about. Ask corporations moguls what they think about. We are more likely to go to a worse world than to a better world. There is a queue of bad guys waiting to take over the ruins of a society. The best way to avoid it is to be realist. Accepting that personal initiative is import and that not everybody is cooperative is a good beginning.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 19 2018, @12:29AM
There's a region in northern Italy [wikimedia.org] that has them by the THOUSANDS. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [wikipedia.org]
Those account for about a third of the region's economic activity.
The Marcora Law, [google.com] which seeds that, is something I've mentioned here MANY times.
After the boom-and-bust Capitalists fail and lay off workers, those workers can pool their unemployment insurance payments in a lump sum and start their own worker-owned cooperative.
The program is wildly popular.
If you haven't heard about it, that's because you have shitty sources of "information" (Lamestream Media).
N.B. Following the Russian Revolution, Italy had a notable Socialist movement going which (typical of movements by The Workers) was crushed by The Capitalist Class.
The Marcora Law got that going again, starting in 1985.
.
smartphones [...] modern computers
...produced in China.
You're not doing well at all at supporting your point.
batteries [...] solar cells, windmills
China again.
...and "intellectual property" is more of "the paper economy".
Where are the USAian workers producing NEW goods|MORE goods?
(Factor in USA's already-exported manufacturing capability and USA's already-exported jobs and you get a net loss; USA's trade deficit continues to grow.)
Wanna see a western country that is getting it right? Look at Germany.
you expect breaking, revolutionary invention
Not necessarily.
I'm looking for EXPANDED PRODUCTION i.e. more USAians working.
I'm looking for ACTUAL INVESTMENT IN NEW JOBS FOR USAians.
...not stock buy-backs.
...not CEO pay going from 335x to 349x of workers' pay.
Note also that The Workers are also consumers.
A Capitalist economy requires ever-increasing growth (consumption)--and with USA's Labor Non-Participation Rate not going below 22 percent for years and years and good-paying 1960s USAian jobs being replaced with part-time, minimum-wage jobs (or not replaced at all), the economy (USAians producing and consuming) is going in the opposite direction.
Capitalism has failed. Neoliberalism has accelerated that.
Capitalism is going to be here for ever
That's what they said about slave economies.
...and Feudalism.
Both are now anachronisms.
Nope. Capitalism is just 1 more inadequate system that has been tried and has failed for the majority of humans.
What is needed is a system that respects The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (of which USA is a signatory).
FDR proposed an Economic Bill of Rights. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [wikipedia.org]
Socialism (or even Communism) is the system best suited to meet its provisions.
The USAian "middle class"[1] which began with The New Deal of the 1930s has been eroding--in particular since Reagan; more than half of USAians are now in The Precariat. [google.com]
[1] I hate that term for a vaguely-defined income strata.
There are only 2 classes: The Proletariat and The Bourgeoisie.
[Capitalism] is in our DNA
Your weak mind has allowed you to fall for The Capitalists' propaganda.
The expansion of "the middle class" was largely due to unions and The Communist Party of the US, particularly in the 1930s & 1940s.
Left to The Capitalists, you would still be working 6 days a week, 16 hours a day--alongside your children.
In our DNA is the spirit of cooperation
Yes. I've been saying that worker-owned cooperatives are the way to go.
and the spirit of competition
Again, the propaganda of The Capitalists is messing with your mind.
Competition doesn't require Capitalists.
(Mondragon regularly eats the lunch of Capitalist operations.)
Capitalism is you working to maximize profits in order to make The Ownership Class rich(er).
A Socialist worker-owned cooperative where there is no separate Ownership Class to siphon off profits without performing any labor is a much better notion.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday January 17 2018, @01:33PM (2 children)
You're conflating socialism with communism. Communism is the "democracy in the workplace" you're talking about. Socialism is the intermediate step where the state is directing production because the proletariat is still suffering from the false consciousness they were indoctrinated with under capitalism. The state, led by enlightened individuals who understand the Marxist project, is there to teach everyone a new way of producing material goods. Once everyone understands and has internalized collective ownership, then socialism will naturally give way to communism because the need for government will have melted away of its own accord.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday January 17 2018, @08:27PM
I don't think this can or will ever happen. Humans simply do not work this way. I would be very surprised if even one in fifty humans were "angelic" enough to make something like that work.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @09:49PM
Communism is the "democracy in the workplace" you're talking about
In your dissertation, your description of the forms is good.
At this point, we just disagree on the terms.
I would call Mondragon "Socialist":
"The collective ownership of the means of production by The Workers".
I would not call it "Communist" (where everything is owned by everybody).
Trying to think of the thing as being nationwide or worldwide all at once can muddy the picture.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by iru on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:45PM
> Not real socialism
I have the feeling I’ve hear that before.
(Score: 1) by bobthecimmerian on Thursday January 18 2018, @06:27PM
While I understand and support your ideals, but there is a phrase like this commonly associated with Stalin: "It's not the people who vote that count, it's the people who count the votes."
Capitalist systems tend to slide into a corrupt oligarchy. You only need to look at human history to see it. It's inherent to the system. But socialism has its own degenerative tendency, and it's to authoritarianism. You only need to look at human history to see that too.
Until someone can make a compelling argument that their new form of capitalism/socialism/anarchy/whatever has some type of fundamental advantage over all forms tried before, I have to assume the best possible situation is a socialist and capitalist hybrid such as is practiced in Scandinavia and Germany today. Still far from perfect, but better than the rest of the world.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday January 17 2018, @08:25PM
Did even one single neuron fire in your frontal lobes while you typed that, or was it straight from your ass to your hands without involving the ol' wetware?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @08:56AM
Well, they teach a version of history.
It would be a whole lot more informative [google.com] if the material included that of
Howard Zinn [google.com]
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz [google.com]
Oliver Stone [google.com]
Naomi Klein [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]