jeremyparker

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jeremyparker ,

Me: Oh, I get it, this "Lemmy" website -- it's like The Onion but for nerds?

My fellow lemmings: No, they're serious. run0 is real.

Me: Hah. The Onion, but for nerds! I love it.

jeremyparker ,

Lol you just provided the simplest counter to the most common capitalist argument.

"You don't understand capitalism, bro. The problem isn't capitalism, it's the regulation on capitalism. Under a true capitalist system, there can't be monopolies because capitalism rewards competition."

Ok so what happened to all the reddit apps


Edit: I really like the reddit app example because it's simple: no regulation or anti-capitalist force made them to that, it was literally just a capitalist decision.

But regulatory capture is an important part of capitalism, and no matter how many ancap bullshit artists say otherwise, government is absolutely part of the capitalist plan. Giving the workers a "say" (or the illusion of one) keeps them a bit quieter, but more importantly, having a government outsources a lot of crap they would otherwise have to pay for, like infrastructure, which would be a huge strain on profits.

In fact, the ancap bullshit idea that unregulated markets would improve things is an artificial limitation on capitalist power. Total lack of regulation is a restriction on capitalism.

jeremyparker ,

While you're not wrong, it's important to retain a global perspective. There are "communist" leaders that were total pieces of shit and while they did have help, that help wasn't always capitalist. Stalin is an example here.

And then there's pieces of shit who were supported by external forces, but not by capitalist regimes seeking to undermine them. I'm not 100% confident in this history, and there's no way I'm going to spell his name right, but, the Romanian piece if shit, Caucescu (???) came to power riding a wave of support from the Nazis. Hitler didn't do it to destabilize Romania, but because he was like, "there's some good old fashioned fascist genociders down there, let's give them more guns." And those fascist genociders were technically communists.

What I'm getting at is that the enemies of a worker-ruled communist state are many, and many of those enemies are within their own systems. Communism, like every other system, suffers from the fact that there are humans involved. Just because a communism exists doesn't mean it's going to be utopia.

But that also doesn't mean that communism can't be good, or at least better.

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