European here.
This seems to mainly only be an issue in the US. Socialism = Communism = Enemy
If at all anything, the opposite seems to be the case here. We’re looking at the US as a “this is how bad it will get if we let go” example
In addition: government programs that help everyone = helping black people = no.
I think this is the fundamental reason why the US never went to public/universal anything, be it healthcare, education, whatever.
Yep. We should have told the colonies of Georgia and Carolina to fuck off, and we’ll get around to conquering them, after we kicked The King out of the other 11 colonies.
If one person had voted differently during The Continental Congress, we would have started abolishing slavery
Fascinating history.
Yeah y’all really don’t want to end up like us. We’re not the land of the free. The streets are most definitely not paved with gold. We’re just a giant ponzi scheme.
Well, French president and several of its ministers are saying that socialist left, or radical left, is extremist. So no, it’s not an America problem. It’s very much a Europe problem too.
Socialism = Communism = Enemy*
*Unless Russia 🤑
The USSR collapsed several decades ago. Russia now is fascist, over a Capitalist economy.
I think you missed the point
As a european it’s always been fucking WERID how americans panic and reach for their guns at the mention of socialism.
I mean
There was this whole thing called the Soviet Union then there was like a missile crisis
And there was like a group that called themselves National Socialists and they did a genocide and tried to take over a bunch of land by force
We also had to fight a bunch of talking trees that dug tunnels because military industrial complex and heroin
It’s definitely many layers of propaganda but as an American I definitely understand WHERE it comes from, I understand why most people here flinch at the word.
You also gotta understand we had multiple generations in a row huffing lead gasoline so while younger millennials aren’t impacted as bad, MOST Americans are legitimately lead brained.
It wasn’t just leaded gasoline. I was busy getting hot boxed with cigarettes in my grandparent’s leaded gasoline car before burning some asbestos, plastic cutlery, and batteries in the living room fireplace.
Forget no seatbelts or bicycle helmets. Our chemical exposure would probably send a younger person without a built up tolerance into instant seizure.
I also remember crimping down lead shot sinkers on my fishing line with my teeth. Good times. Good times indeed.
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In all fairness, we panic and reach for our guns at the mention of just about anything. Right this very moment, I’m pooping on company time, scared out of my wits, a nine millimeter at the ready atop my presently ankle adorning boxers.
“Most powerful empire the world has ever known”
Lol Americans
The Romans conquered the known world with pointy sticks and diplomacy.
The US hasn’t been on the winning side since ww2 despite having nukes and spyplanes.
Even the British Empire spanned the globe, and all they had was cannons, rum, and syphilis.
Did they have taco bell tho
I too would like a Medieval Meal
More importantly, did they have the ability to deploy a Taco Bell, McDonald’s, and Wendy’s anywhere in the world, within 72 hours, just so their troops would have variety of food?
Nope. The Japanese knew they had royally fucked up when they realized that we had ships that were dedicated to ice cream supplies. You have to have everything else needed for war covered, before you start the logistical supply train of ice cream.
Nothing like a cone after a long day of killing japs, hits the spot. knowhatimsayin?!
No they just had the latrines too close to the food prep area, same effect
Is that your food prep hack? 🤤
Find out the one weird trick to lose weight fast - generals hate it!
Lol at the person who said Lemmy doesn’t have many comments.
Oh time for my link
Frame Canada
Wendell Potter spent decades scaring Americans. About Canada. He worked for the health insurance industry, and he knew that if Americans understood Canadian-style health care, they might… like it. So he helped deploy an industry playbook for protecting the health insurance agency.
I’d like to point out that the majority of people on Lemmy 100% think about this. Hence how many up votes it has :p
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Any criticism of capitalism is the same as historical communism and therefore always wrong. Accept your fate, citizen.
I like this new meme format
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Socialism is not “Social Safety Nets,” and if you were knowledgeable about what you were talking about, you would say Socialism and attempts at Communism. Socialism is Worker Ownership of the Means of Production, and the USSR was a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Communist party had stated goals of reaching Communism, a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society, by using Socialism. They never made it to Communism.
The USSR of course isn’t the only form of Socialism, and isn’t the only method to achieve Communism, but what you just said makes absolutely no sense.
Do you think that maybe people begin to understand what you’re talking about if you refer to Social Safety Nets as Social, not Socialism, because Social Safety Nets are not in fact Socialism?
As a side note: terrible choice to use rape as a casual term for doing something bad. Be more empathetic.
I don’t think about this at all. My parents are from the former Soviet Union and I actually heard from them how life there was (mostly not great).
Also I think that fearing socialism is a very American thing.
What was not great about it?
The USSR was a developing country, and generally lacked luxury commodities, and depending on era, had a mostly unaccountable Politburo and a lack of food in the early stages.
By metrics, the Russian Federation has relatively recently surpassed life expectancy of the USSR, and now has more open travel and access to western commodities like smartphones, but you’ll find many older people in Russia who wish the USSR never collapsed (the majority, in fact), though again that’s also partially due to nostalgia for being an important global power.
I was asking them what their parents didn’t find so great about it.
Fair enough, haha.
I’m not OP, but I can certainly give you my story from Hungary. Not USSR in name, but USSR enough for the distinction to be moot.
Story starts with parents and grandparents. They were around when the soviets put Rákosi into power. He installed communism - everything belongs to the people! Including our fucking house. My grandparents often retold how police came one night, told them their house now belongs to another family, and they were told to get lost by morning. They could bring whatever they could carry with them, but they had to leave all the farming equipment, all the animals, pretty much all their belongings behind. The few hectars of land and our animals all belonged to the Producer’s Union anyway, we lost all rights to them virtually overnight.
Not that it mattered. The things you produced? Since everything belongs to the people, police would come and take away whatever quota the party set that year. Even if we produced it, it’s not ours after all. We may or may not got some of it back, depending on what the allocations were set. Usually not - famines got common, becuase noone cared too much about their work if it got taken away anyway. It got so bad that the good communist people people revolted against Rákosi.
Then came Kádár. I actually lived in that system. Shortages were commonplace. At the start things were strictly planned (later on they opened up to allowing people to work for their own benefit… strictly after they put in their required hours at their workplace, though). There were five year plans, though for what I know, those were mostly for propaganda. But since there wasn’t a free market, the planning bureau would decide how many tractors, shoes, bread etc would be produced. Well, this never worked out well. If you wanted to buy fruits, toilet paper, anything, you would need someone to tell you when the shipment would come. Then you got in line early and hoped the stock wouldn’t run out by the time you got your turn. And you bought whatever you could, because if you had excess toilet paper and your neighbour had none, you could barter for something you needed.
We wanted a car. So we applied at the state car dealership (Merkúr). We paid upfront, waited a year… and got a totally different brand of car in a different colour. We were furious, so we demanded our money back and purchased a second hand Lada Samara from someone in town. It still wasn’t what we wanted, but I’d have rather burnt my money than give it to Merkúr at that point. Turns out the Lada Samara 1300S was a great car though, I shouldn’t have sold it like twenty years later :(
We wanted to build a house. Only everything was in short order. We had to drive three-four towns away, buying bricks and ceramic tiles left and right until we had enough that we could start construction. We didn’t build what we wanted; we could’ve paid for it, but we had to build whatever we managed to find in stock around.
Now I know people called us the “happiest barracks” because say Caucescu in Romania was way worse… but people who are so fond of actual socialism should remember that our people were risking getting shot to escape this system.
LOL! “What was not great about the Soviet Union?”
That’s the sort of thing I might expect to hear from a teen with broccoli head syndrome.
For me the main problem with the USSR was that they abused beautiful dogs to create cyborg creatures out of them, in a horrifying attempt to create cyborg soldiers.
This thread is lit. I’m going to list 4 arrangements of the economy. If you are interested in participating, name what you think each one is:
1: A small group of people own the lands that are worked by another group of people. The leader of these owners is chosen via divine right. The people who work the land keep what they make, however for protection they must work other lands and do not keep what is made from them
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A small group of people hold dominion of a large group of people. The large group must work for food, lodging, etc. and are forced to do so by the threat of death and physical punishment. They do not get to keep what they make, the economic situation is determined by the generosity of those who hole dominion over them
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A small group of people own the majority of wealth in the form of businesses, factories, goods, etc. They purchase the time of a much larger group of people who sell their labour to make ends meet. The small group decides what to do with the excess goods, services, and money.
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A large group of people own the businesses, factories, goods, etc. These people work to make ends meet and decide collectively (democratically or through other means) what to do with the excess goods services, money, etc.
I hope these are both clear and vague enough. Good luck!
In order:
Feudalism Oligarchy Capitalism Socialism
How’d I do?
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Yes!
Do you ever ponder the inverse for yourself?
