Atlas667

Thats not the world we live in though.

Most of the world, like 90%+, is verifiably poor and struggling.

Every year the world economic organizations (all of em) pump out metrics about people coming out of poverty, but these are political and subject to bias.

Above 10 dollars a week is not poverty? Are you sure? 521 dollars a year?

And of course not all of the world is poor in the same capacity. Where a person can only eat meat once a week is different to where a person cant pay their rent, but they are both equally damaging and poverty.

What you think has been happening is not what has been happening.

In the Soviet Union and China most people were serfs or indentured servants. That is, the majority of the population.

They were bound by debt to serve either the state or local landlords.

Their revolutions werent acts of jealousy like you want to believe, they were real, spontaneous movements that came from the people. The communists only directed the movement that was already there.

Do not be childish, please read history seriously.

I think there are a bunch of assumptions in your take.

There are billions of us. We cannot all be capitalists and start our own businesses. Literally 100 years ago American socialists like Olive Johnson were already pointing out how the profit motive from large players has ruined mom and pop shops and made medium businesses almost completely beholden to production and finance monopolies.

What do you think will happen with the increased production from AI? Will the capitalist just allow the masses to compete openly with them?

I doubt it. Most likely more monopolization will occur.

Small business owners are the tip (retail) of the massive whole-sale industrial-production monopolies or they are artisans at best. And the masses are the rest of us, the 95%.

Western suburban mentality always posits that these ills cannot happen, even though they were continuously happening even through out the 20th century (Detroit is just one example).

> Looking back at 2025 we'll be saying "Remember when they said everyone would lose their jobs to AI..."

Even if... one would think that a capitalist economy would do great with more and capable workers. One would think that more stuff would get done. Right?

I think there is a good chance that it will, in fact, shift millions towards unemployment. I am pro technology, yet technology in the hands of profit seekers will only be used to seek profits.

It happened during the agricultural revolution and during the industrial revolution. Millions of people were made unemployed by more efficient technology. Millions had to flee the country sides to then be thrown out of factories a few decades later, leading to slums and mass poverty. So many that the government had to enact more and more welfare programs like public schools, and food programs.

Capitalism is the only economic system that cannot handle more workers. For-profit production is not compatible with mass employment.

Almost like capitalism shoots itself in the foot and then forgets about it.

Ah, this is what i come to Hacker News for: out-of-touch rich people figuring out how to escape the influence created by out-of-touch rich people.

I agree in general tho. There are billions of us subject to this private facade of public platforms. This is by design, the Internets possibilities are engineered into place.

Text is better together with specific formats like Circa, ranges, exact years or dates, and unknown.

"I feel like something is missing in my life"

> Thinking...

> Have you ever had that energetic and refreshing feeling after a Baja Blast(TM)?

Cool and terrifying proof of concept, it's public info at the very least.

Nearly all the countries that support cartels are capitalists.

Venezuela is a progressive reformist state with many many capitalists. The reason why its considered a rogue state in your capitalist media is that it wont play ball with the american capitalist block/cartel.

Drugs could be made a legal industry in order to end the drug crisis. But drug cartels preserve regulation-less profits. Its literally billions they save by avoiding legality and taxation.

Damn, dude. Dont embarass yourself. You have no idea what socialism is.

If you dont know of any murderous actions on behalf of transnational capitalist entities and states I suggest you read any modern history.

From the invasions and massacres in my own country, to 2 world wars, to colonialism, to dissappearances all across sotuh america, to outright murder of democratically elected presidents.

Did you know drug cartels are capitalist entities as well? They extort, murder and traffick for profits extracted by labor.

I gave you countless examples that you discard. I gave you accurate narratives to world events you were weaponizing. And I've explained how socialism has nothing to do with "government" control and murder.

The facts of my support is that I think the only way to permanent mass democracy is democratized production. That's all. That's socialism.

To you capitalism is an abstract idea you conflate with freedom. To you socialism is murder and dictatorship.

I suggest you reanalyze your concepts.

I dont defend mass executions or even the mistakes of communism. Mismanagement and murder is inexcusable. But i do not see them as inherent to socialism, but as product of their times.

Conveniently you dont mention any of the mass executions caused by capitalism?

All the wars, all the covert operations, all the murderous and genocidal dictatorships, two world wars?

Knowing full well a sitting US president critiqued the military industrial complex as a capitalist threat.

Capital is even responsible for on going genocides.

You know well I do not advocate for mass murder.

I am advocating for mass democracy and the only way to acheive that permanently is through democratized production. I am advocating for progress and for an end of using base material needs for profits.

To laud Afghan mujahideen with their verified acid attacks on women is insane on your part. Afghanistan was a monarchy before the people overthrew their monarchs for socialism and before the americans funded their extremists, who you praise.

The Afghan socialists were fighting monarchies, warlords(tribal land lords) and even shitty socialist leaders. - Figures of Soviet deaths are overblown to include non-births and even Nazi deaths, that is the state of anti-communist propaganda these days (right now). There is no denying that Soviets made mistakes, I am no apologist, but the western narrative is wrong on so many accounts that it discredits itself. A country trying to industrialize while undergoing a civil war and foreign attacks had a hard time organizing their agriculture under a drought. It is objectively a massive failure, but it is not inherent to socialist democracy.

What you fail to mention about the world wars is that both world wars were caused by capitalist tensions between nations. Both world wars can be fully attributed to capitalists enrichment and their contradictions between nation states. These are the gashes in humanity caused by capitalist colonialism. -

Let me tell you, Socialism is not something you vote for, its something you do. Democracy takes the efforts of society to make happen.

Neighborhood councils are a fundamental part of socialist theory. Ask yourself why you've never heard of it? Who produces the media content that gets promoted and published? Is it your neighbors with their social interests? Or is it massive capitalist publishers with their interests? The censorship in capitalist societies is about monopoly control and volume/amplification.

Capitalists are a fundamental threat to mass democracy.

lol, marketing knows no bounds.

Almost like its all emotional-level gimmicks anyways.

If I see "No AI bullshit" I'd be as skeptical if it said "AI Inside". Corpos tryina squeeze a buck will resort to any and all manipulative tactics.

Most non-democratic countries that exist are capitalist countries.

Even the ones you're probably thinking about are capitalist, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Sudan, etc. All capitalists.

Capitalism creates authoritarianism through corruption as a grey market business practice.

The problem with fake socialists is that they suggest solutions that do not fix the fundamental problem with democracies. That there isn't democracy.

How will higher taxes guarantee that they will be used appropriately?

How are the people guaranteed that officials will not be corrupted to divert that money into other projects?

How will the corruption, the largest problem in modern capitalist economies, be fixed by this?

No real answers, we just have to trust cause hes different?

Democracy is not trust, democracy is control. Don't be fooled.

Never took a politics class.

There are dozens and dozens of books outlining revolutionary experience of different peoples. I can't tell you all of it cause I haven't read every single one, and for the ones I have read this isn't the place to do so. Seek them out and read them, I can only give you a general overview.

> Do you think judges in other countries (especially communist and social countries!) are somehow totally independent?

No doubt corruption will literally ALWAYS be a problem. But capitalist property rights allows people to corrupt for a living.

Capitalist property relations means you control a vital part of a functioning society, its production, which allows you to profit from peoples labor and "invest" in politics to attain a better outcome. Workers can't do that, you and I cant do that.

Corruption under capitalism is intensified by the very nature of how capitalism works. In one phrase: Capitalism always leads to authoritarianism.

> 1) why should the current owners be okay with it, and what are you going to do to them if they aren’t. (Historically, this is often ‘murder them’)

They are not going to be okay with it. But you gotta get outta your head that capital is "mom and pop shop". Capital is finance, raw materials, and monopolies. Mom and pop shops are almost as equally squashed under the boot of monopolies as average workers .

That's also why monopolies and finance capital conflate themself with mom and pop shops, they want you to think they're "just like us". Half of us don't own our houses or cars, they own six of each.

The way this take over happened in the past is that workers would organize and after a long political struggle end up controlling production in their workplace.

The ownership of production would be made a crime enforced by the workers themselves. The incentive to uphold it is better share of the outcomes of good production.

> 2) how would ‘the people’ even operate it ‘individually’ without destroying it or having the same hierarchical (or worse) power structure (historically this is ‘don’t worry, our political appartchik/crony will run it’)

The workers already operate 98% of all production everywhere. They just dont do it according to their own collective interests. Right now workers operate production to squeeze pennies for the shareholders/owners. Think about what a manager does: put profits over quality.

What a socialist workplace would do is they would operate in a similar way by sustaining operations, organizing with other branches (top and bottom), coordinating with neighborhood/regional councils, increasing production to the highest degree, all in order to take production to the highest level and produce enough for all. No profit extraction to slow them down.

All workers would partake in the decision making towards sustainable production. They WANT to keep their jobs, so they have to operate well. Capitalists aren't ruling all of production and keeping it from falling apart, people aren't dumb.

> and 3) how do you stop abusive pieces of shit from abusing the structure? (Historically, this is murdering anyone who complains that we’re being abusive).

Ever heard the phrase "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun"? It's a poetic way of saying that the people must arm themselves and be their own police force if they are to preserve their own order. These neighborhood councils would (and did in the past) organize their own police forces made up of volunteer members.

Neighborhood representatives would be members of your neighborhood, if they were stepping out of line you could literally put them in jail yourselves. No big money to fund the police and defend them.

This requires deep political knowledge to recognize when a person is trying to take over property for their own gain. Total transparency of public income will be made a right, I'm sure everyone will agree.

> People like Stalin and Mao did untold damage under the banners of communism

You say that about Stalin and Mao, and sure they did commit mistakes, I am not here to defend them. But also think about what monarchies were doing and how they helped undo that. THE MAJORITY of people in Russia and China were indentured slaves, serfs. Many were prohibited from reading and kept in a state of constant toil and suffering for profits.

Many of those serfs rose up and killed their masters, its not right, of course, but what is? It happened get over it.

The communists didn't create the revolution, the revolution truly did happen organically and the communists were there to guide them into a state without capitalism.

Read a fucking book, there are dozens talking about just this.

Maybe to you cause you've never read about actual revolutions.

Like I said, a lot of this actually happened. Its word salad cause you're probably used to reading fiction.

Take the state and distribute its functions across organized neighborhood councils, treat capitalism like a crime, make production satisfy needs not generate profits.

There I condensed it for you.

The Khmer Rouge were not communists.

China, the CIA, and MI6 backed them solely because they were against the NVA. They were tools. And they severely lacked an ideological backbone which is why shit go so bad in Cambodia. It was fascism.

Like I said before Wikipedia is average tier knowledge, but sometimes it compounds sources well, so follow the sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_s...

And it would be inline with what it has been proved the US did in that same time frame in Indonesia as well, and for very similar reasons too.

lol, you've made no argument yet you act like you have presented something here.

Corporations already fund some politicians and judges whole careers. Corporations fund the policy groups within popular political parties. They fund the policy groups/think tanks that influence popular political parties as well.

Did you think this was just the will of the people?

Ever heard of Citizens United? What is Lobbying?

Do you think these people are just gonna come out and say: "Hey, influencing politics is a whole industry worth billions."? and "We make sure your political options are aligned with our interests before they even reach your perception"?

None of them propose mass democracy because they know its not in their interest, but it is in ours.

Don't vote for images. Democracy is not trust, Democracy is control.

Can you point me to the critique you mention?

Also

I mean "what it looks like" to you is kind of irrelevant because we really do not live in a democracy but it probably looks like one to you.

Are you OK that your country aids in the literal enslavement and exploitation of people abroad for cheap goods?

Are you OK that capitalist countries perpetrate more war and caused more death than any other before it? You must be if you believe in democracy.

Wake up, there is no democracy.

ALL poverty is fabricated and sustained for profits.

So in the same sense: How does capitalism work? Is it democratic or is it a profit extraction system that knows no bounds?

I know communist states commited some mistakes in the 20th century, most are inflated for capitalist propaganda but there are legit ones.

But Im not here for apologia. I do what makes sense. And it makes sense to me that profit creates authoritarianism. And that to create true democracy we must democratize production. That shit makes more sense to me than "getting rich makes everyone better through competition".

Read communist literature and decide for yourself, be intellectually honest, and move on if its not right. I dont care. I dont want someone to rule over me. And I'll never EVER vote for someone who isnt enacting mass democracy. Which is why I havent voted. I'm a real person with real aspirations and I wont be taken advantage by the rich who provably run this shit.

What do you mean? I'm literally going off of historical realities.

Shit like this actually happened and not even that long ago. It sounds like you've been Americanized in such a way as to see social change impossible.

You've got suburb mentality. The capitalists define your historical progression, even your conception of it.

Authoritarianism follows that mentality.

If Pol Pot was a Marxist why did Vietnam (Marxist) fight against Pol Pot?

I'll tell you.

Pol Pot was never a communist. He was an anti-intellectual who himself said he had never read Marx and said he admired Hitler. Western Nations claim he was a Marxist in order to spook the average citizen. There are also serious allegations that the CIA and the MI6 were involved in trafficking weapons to them.

The Vietnamese were seen as a threat by the Cambodian capitalists and the Chinese didn't like the Vietnamese due to the sino-soviet split. The US, China, and the UK backed Pol Pot to get at Vietnam.

Pol Pot was a populist. Asian fascism was created to counter Marxism.

Read about the CIA backed killings in Indonesia. They aided in the killing of LITERALLY 125,000 people a month in order to squash communist sentiment in Asia.

> and yet it always ends up the same, with one person in charge (chairman, commissar, supreme leader, etc.), and everyone at the point of a gun.

Where did you read that?

Did you know that the Americans have placed more dictators in power than any other state in existence?

> I’ve known many people who lived through the USSR, and a few that lived through Mao’s China. I’ve lived in Eastern Europe and seen the long term damage. This isn’t academics. This is what happens when people are given high minded academics and use it to justify atrocities - which are easy to do in this case. Almost custom made to do.

Did you know that capitalism started world war 1 AND 2? What has caused more destruction in Eastern Europe than both world wars? Did you know that most of the destruction and social chaos in Africa was caused by capitalism? Did you know that capitalism has decimated South America? Why do you not say that the poorest countries on earth are all capitalists?

I'm not here to defend or espouse the doings of past states. I'm here because I want to put power in peoples hands. The billions of us, not just the middle class. I don't want anyone above me, like there is now. I want people to have democratic power in order to end this artificial poverty that generates power for the few. All poverty world wide is sustained for profits and that is evident.

Mass starvation was very, very common in that region of Asia. Refer to this link, but of course dig more into them to learn more. Wikipedia is like average-tier knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines_in_China

What is interesting to note is that none of the other famines listed is attributed to ideological systems, just the last one even though monarchy ruled for the longest time. Also there has never been another famine in China since. But, anyways, I am not particularly fond of modern China and their affinities for capitalist production.

> How do you propose this would actually work?

The organization of the masses into our own political force. I dont mean middle class white people, I mean everybody. It literally requires the reorganization of our lives for the creation of mass democracy. It requires proactive participation of all of us that can. It requires physical tools as well as organizational tools. Democracy is something we do, not something that is done for us.

We would eliminate the regional bourgeois-state and replace it with the organized peoples representatives with essentially accounting roles FULLY accountable to regional and neighborhood councils. (blockchain could help manage funds) No more politicians with wealthy connections. No more policy groups deciding what goes on. It would be a council of representatives selected and organized by neighborhood councils whose collective aim would be the control of regional production. No more bourgeois-courts, it would be replaced by a peoples courts.

And you may say "That's what we have now", but it isn't. Your average citizen is so far removed from any democratic action and money has taken such a hold in politics that even voting is totally nullified in our system. That's why we call it bourgeois-democracy. Candidates are just celebrities/performers for their billionaire constituents and average people have ZERO control over candidates and their policies. Policy does not come from the people.

THERE IS NO DEMOCRACY WITHOUT MASS DEMOCRATIC ORGANIZATION.

And the reason that this cannot be taken advantage of within socialism is at the very core of socialism itself: and it is that through revolutionary education, people would learn to spot capitalists and eliminate them from social life. Like a person would stop a thief stealing in your own house. And we're talking about capitalists as a class, not necessarily individuals. No one will be allowed to own production for profits. No one will be allowed to employ other persons for a profit. People would enforce this with an iron fist in order to preserve their own working class power.

Just like if you see slavery you would stop it. Right? In the same way that slavery was extinguished and made unacceptable, so would capitalism. We would halt it as one would halt abuse on a street. If someone is using property to make profit from you they would be jailed as the only way to profit would be through wage theft, meaning paying employees less than what they worked for. Wage theft would be made a serious crime. Unlike today.

This is the "grandiose" check and balance of socialist representative democracy that through the democratization of production we dont allow individuals to leverage production. There shall be no profit-market from production.

We would then start reigning in that production and use production solely for the sake of satisfying needs, not generating private profits. Work would be a right, guaranteed. More workers is only better (except if you're producing for profits). Think about that, capitalism is the only economic system where more workers is worse because for-profit-production cant handle so many workers.

These are just thoughts I have from actually reading communist literature. At least read something. I've read about everything before making up my mind. Its called being intellectually honest.

Read about past revolutions from the perspective of people who were there, not the perspective of ideologues fear-mongering funded by millionaire think tanks. What is also very important to understand is that these 20th century revolutions were never "induced" by communists. They truly did arise from mass discontent, what the communists leaders did was guide the discontent into an organized form through teaching people who didn't even know how to read how to liberate themselves from for-profit-production.

Democracy is not something some dude on the internet writes into a chat box. We will decide on the best way to organize ourselves when the time comes, but private production ALWAYS leads to authoritarianism.

Marxist theories arent just floating in space they are grounded studies.

Marx's Capital is actually a very well written piece of research, fully cited with notes for each citation. The dude was a proffessor. Lenins books are research pieces, not vague posturing. They are cited and founded in real phenomenon. In fact Lenin was persecuted because of the things he researched. He has books studying the rise of banking in Russia and Europe and how corruption arised from the simple business practices of finance capital and how that turned into imperialism through profit seeking of raw materials in foreign lands.

You would know that if you actually engaged with it instead of forming your opinions from vague notions passed down to you or read on social media.

Their theories arent unfounded.

> only actually ‘doable’ through authoritarianism

Nah. The central point of Socialism/Communism is the DEMOCRATIZATION of production. Calling it authoritarianism is a lie by billionaires to keep people hating it.

See, If peoples courts decide that wallstreet hedge funds and the military industrial complex deserved life sentences in jail they call it authoritarianism.

But when bourgeois judges systematically put poor people in jail its "just the legal system" and "hey it aint perfect, but nothing is".

Your ideas on Marxism are very western. The Khmer Rouge was backed by the CIA and the brits. Pol Pot was the only Marxist who said hes never read Marx, imagine that. Its almost as if they werent Marxists. He also adored Hitler, which is antithetical to Marxism.

Remember and recognize that a peoples state will always be called authoritarian by the rich.

Marxism is about making the people their own state. Make society FOR itself by eliminating the capitalists who create the imbalance of power.

Usually selecting is something like .class.subclass:nth-child(4).

Which will sometimes block what you want, but not always since they switch their layout so much.

You need conditions.

Its really finnicky to get right and I usually want to block views on cards, recommended tabs, trending and I have to redo it every 2 or 3 weeks.

Im the person he replied to, check this:

"So long as the state exists there is no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state."

Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)

So, the goal is that the people must become the state directly and dissolve the divide.

And so representative systems are necessary, as you say. And representative systems are not inherently bad.

What makes them bad is the other parts of society that allow a small group of people to take advantage of representative systems.

That small group is the capitalist class. Their control of production, and their profits give them a front row with the state.

Representation is all about context.

In order for the people (AKA literally everybody) to become the state we must undo that power imbalance and let people control production themselves.

Regulations themselves are not bad, but regulations without changing any of the power/property relations in society politically means NOTHING for the masses (you and I are part of the masses btw).

You are doing wishful thinking. The world is not ideas the world is real.

Regulations meets deregulation backed by billionaires. They can completely fund political candidates and judges. They can carry out conspiracies to avoid and circumvent regulations. In fact they do. The powerful already are the law, dont you see? They cant do everything they want, but they do almost all of it.

Do you think politics is as it seems? The very existence of the massive power imbalance requires you to think deeper about how politics works and not believe the illusion of modern democracies.

> There are many kinds of profit besides the currencies broadly recognised today.

Your mentioning of "many kinds of profits" is ignorant, we're talking about profits and capital, it doesnt matter what the currency is. The rule is still exactly the same:

The accumulation of profits from the work of others leads to power imbalances. The type of currency is irrelevant.

And the red paperclip thing was a stunt, it is not an inherent part of modern economies. Its not "real".

> To actually stop corruption would require an incorruptible omniscient surveillance system

Nah. Blockchain can be used for managing funds. In fact the function of the state should be reduced to accounting, which almost anyone could do.

> Ah, the small-commune model of communism.

Im not talking about that. Read Lenin, real democracy requires local councils. Small communes dont work.

Honestly, dude, I can tell you know nothing about communism, marxism or even power dynamics in politics. I'm not being rude. Read about it, because if not youre just hating because someone told you to.

Like I said before: Marxism is a framework that describes the progression of society through socioeconomic theories. It implies the democratization of production. Thats whats so bad about it, according to the rich and their state. Thats why they made you hate it without you even knowing what it is.

Then why it's so pertinent that capitalist countries waste billions fighting it wherever it arises?

More murder and war has been perpetrated as part of anti-Marxism than any other cause in history.

- The Vietnam "War" (Genocide) - The Korean "War" (Genocide too) - The whole Afghanistan affair that still resonates on today - Balkanization (induced by NATO) - Indonesian govt killing 1.5 million in a single year (CIA) - US trained South American Death Squads - Invasion of Barbados by the US - the overthrow of Burkina Faso - the overthrow of Allende - the School of the Americas - Nazis killed more non-semitic East Europeans than jews in the name of anti-marxism

You could, in a very real sense, draw a line through the history of modern warfare and the history of anti-Marxism.

Only for Americans is it a myth because they are primed by their billionaire controlled media and educational system to avoid it.

All in all, its a theory of socio-economic development that implies the democratization of production. That's literally whats so bad about it.

This may sound rude, but "democratic socialism" is just wishful thinking. How can regulations stop corruption? Is that really your best bet?

I'm a socialist because I know you can't stop it that way. It's simply impossible. They will corrupt/lobby/influence their way around it. They currently do.

What is your plan? To REALLY SUPER DUPER trust the next candidate you have zero control over?

"Democratic socialism" is not democratic or socialism. Socialism is actually democratic and prevents exploitation.

The only way to actually stop it is to not allow individuals to profit off of others. Individuals shall make their OWN assets through their own muscles. No ownership of property that allows you to reap what others sow. It's logically the only way to avoid power imbalances. And it's something that we all enforce and control through local councils.

Remember, democracy is not trust, its control.

> The form of capitalism that existed when Marx wrote his thing, stopped being used in most places around the Great Depression era.

The type of capitalism Marx described is alive and well.

It exists in the undeveloped parts of the world, and it is maintained through force by many capitalist blocks and their allies. People around the world are kept exploited because their economies eventually tie into ours, and their exploitation makes us "competitive". Just because its not you and your kids toiling all day doesn't mean there aren't any.

And it was like that here too, it was only undone through force by socialists, that's why you're allowed to work 8 hours a day only, we have a minimum wage, and children aren't working in factories.

This didn't happen by the graciousness of profiteers, it happened through the threat posed by the masses, people were killed on American streets for this. Don't ever forget that. That's how they rewrite history.

Don't think it can't arise again, it evidently is... slowly.

I've tried adding rules to ublock origin but sites like youtube and many others now have "component obfuscation". Meaning there is no unique ID on their components/elements and it makes it much harder to target.

And some element titles/names are even on a different component than the content, which is even harder still. So it says "reels" on one component and the actual reels are on another.

Blocking now has to be a logical combination of CSS selection, text identification and a target-action component.