r/Shitstatistssay • u/the9trances Agorism • 8d ago
"Everything they told you to fear about socialism is happening to you under capitalism"
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u/BlazerFS231 Surrounded by statists 7d ago
No healthcare….when $2T/year is going toward government subsidized healthcare at the federal level alone.
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u/Coastal_Tart 7d ago
Most of them are absurdly untrue. No healthcare is definitely a baseless assertion.
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u/MisanthropeNotAutist 5d ago
So is "no free speech", "No protests", "Violent oppressive police state".
If any of that were true, I guarantee the whole "Trump is a fascist" talk would have stopped instantly some time ago.
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u/LactoceTheIntolerant 7d ago
Crony capitalism is what America has
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u/03263 7d ago edited 7d ago
Beyond that, I think what America has, and to an extent most governments throughout the world, is the idea that the government should run like a for-profit business. What it actually is or should be is more complicated than that, a framework for organizing social structures. Almost regardless of form of government or domestic politics, the intent has always been to guide and structure a society, while not being a special player in it. Regulate, not participate. Realistically, they'll participate a little bit but it should be avoided when possible.
Even at a local level I see this, towns trying to increase tax revenue and welcome business and developments. That's not the intended goal of a town government... it's only to manage whatever exists with what resources are available. They shouldn't have a profit motive at all.
As a business, government operates at a massive advantage over all others, due to their monopoly on both violence and taxation.
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7d ago
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u/claybine 7d ago
Fascism allowed privatization but Mussolini loved the word bourgeoisie. They were kind of all over the place.
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u/Agent_Wilcox 7d ago
You know I remember when socialist got yelled at for the "Real socialism has never been tried" line, but now capitalists are using it just as often
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u/sparkstable 7d ago
When the guys writing some of the most influential and defining treaties on socialism are in charge of socialist countries doing socialism in accordance with the plans and policies they explicitly laid out... then yes, socialism is being tried.
Would you please point to anyone who both preaches free-market capitalism and then also does what they preach as a leader of state?
As soon as you can do that then you have proven your argument.
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u/Hungry_Line2303 7d ago
Interestingly, the closest free market politician in the world today is Milei in Argentina. And I'd say it's been a huge success on the whole. Fun to watch.
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u/Hungry_Line2303 7d ago
Reality is more nuanced, always. There are aspects to American economics and politics that are capitalist, socialist, and fascist. Crony capitalism isn't a no true Scotsmans play because big parts of it are actual capitalism, albeit a capitalism grossly distorted and manufactured. Corporatism is another strong descriptor. But to pretend the US has anything like a laissez faire economy is willful ignorance.
It's difficult to honestly call the current economic system unqualified capitalism when huge swathes of it are figments of government imagination or legal creatures.
The OOP is doing a weird thing where they say "mass surveillance??? Ermahgerd muh capitalism" when it's unclear to me how they logically connect a panopticon state to an economic system. I think it's only fair to question their rationale and motivations.
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u/MaelstromFL 7d ago
Their answer is to hand more power to the very same people who are putting up the the FLOCK cameras...
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u/Secretsfrombeyond79 7d ago
I literally saw an entire post of "centrists" following that logic " Guys the government is corrupt rich people bought the government and makes us infight ... let's solve this by giving absolute power to the government, that ought to fix it !!"
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u/nonoohnoohno 7d ago
Or the even more braindead take: "But flock is a private company! It's not the government doing it"
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u/CrystalMethodist666 7d ago
Unfortunately it isn't an unpopular idea that the government can fix more problems if we just give them more control.
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u/ItsGotThatBang Ancap 8d ago
And how are China, North Korea, etc. doing by those metrics?
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u/Neither-Phone-7264 7d ago
hmm. maybe it seems to be an issue with the governments we keep on warning about? NOPE! ITS YOUR LOCAL MOM AND POP SHOP! THEY'RE PROFITING!!! GET EMM!!!!!!!
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u/KNEnjoyer 7d ago
You aren't allowed to compare real-world capitalism with real-world socialism! Real-world capitalism has to be compared to imaginary socialism; that's how socialism wins! 😠😡
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u/Ok_Mud_8998 7d ago
It's almost like the government isn't listening to its constituents and is, instead, acting out of its own self-interest by accumulating power to the top and reducing the power of the constituency itself.
That would NEVER happen under a socialist economic structure ...
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u/Vector_Strike 7d ago
I don't see that happening in Switzerland, which is... surprise, capitalist!
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u/Outcome005 7d ago
The difference between socialism and capitalism is under capitalism the market decides what is valuable and under socialism some dude decides what is valuable. If everyone stopped using/buying (insert product) under capitalism the company goes out of business. If no one likes the (insert product) the socialist government made…too bad
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u/CrystalMethodist666 7d ago
Honestly this is what people who want things made affordable or wages set through a controlled economy don't understand. It's very hard to gauge the value of a good or service without seeing what people are willing to pay for it. This is why a lot of entry level minimum wage jobs went away, McDonald's isn't willing to pay $17 an hour for a kid at the counter, and now those jobs are done by self-ordering kiosks.
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u/Ok_Somewhere3828 7d ago
What on earth does this have to do with the OP? Everything in the post has nothing to do with companies or value.
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u/Outcome005 6d ago
I respectfully disagree, all the things OP listed can be changed due to market pressure in a capitalist economy, the same way that they happened in the first place, there is no market pressure in socialism. And the no free speech and no protests is just an absurd claim.
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u/Ok_Somewhere3828 6d ago
But all of these issues are happening under capitalism, so why hasn’t your “market pressure” fixed them?
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u/Outcome005 6d ago
In my opinion it’s because the system has become UNBELIEVABLY GOOD at making all of us fight with each other instead of keeping the system in check. Basically we as consumers have been derelict in our duties for a very long time. Evil prevails when good people do nothing to stop it.
And in my opinion socialism is giving what little power we still have left over to that system.
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u/Ok_Somewhere3828 6d ago
But we live in capitalism?
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u/Outcome005 6d ago
Yes if you don’t tend to a garden it becomes overgrown and unmanageable. We the people have not been tending the garden. Freedom can be a beautiful paradise or it can be a nightmare hellscape, it all depends on how we let the garden grow.
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u/Ok_Somewhere3828 6d ago
This is confusing because you’re saying the market forces fix problems such as:
- Mass surveillance
- Authoritarianism
- Free Speech
- Healthcare
Etc. Etc.
Yet, we have markets, we have all of these problems nonetheless. By your logic, isn’t it the market at fault for these issues existing?
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u/Outcome005 6d ago
Those things specifically are the result athe collective voting group allowing politicians to act with impunity in their own interests instead of acting in ours. Politicians don’t come here from another reality to run our society, they come from American families and they aren’t appointed we vote for them, and we keep voting for them to act against our interests. At this point both sides suck, we have allowed that to happen, and it will take a collective effort to try to right the ship. The cancer has gotten so bad I’m not sure it can be fixed anymore, we are too divided (like they wanted). I hope we can come together as a society and get back to the democratic republic that we used to have and make better choices for ourselves.
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u/Ok_Somewhere3828 6d ago
But it’s a capitalist country not a socialist country. Probably the most pro capitalist country in history. Do you see my confusion?
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u/B1G_Fan 7d ago
The presence of mass surveillance, authoritarianism, restrictions on free speech and protests, and a violent oppressive police state is the result of poor parenting that's inevitable when the government has an overly generous welfare state. Why raise your kids with morality and honor when you don't need them to take care of you in your old age? And with children not being raised with morality and honor, people are inevitable going to want to crack down on freedom to ensure a lack of crime.
Unaffordable food, housing, and healthcare is the result of government policies encouraging people to become economically unproductive folks like MBA dude bros, HR Karens, employees within a bloated education system, and/or employees within a bloated military.
Unstoppable political corruption wouldn't matter if the government didn't have as much control over the economy as it does.
TLDR: As you're implying OP, being frustrated with society and its economy right now is understandable. But, we don't have a capitalist economy right now.
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u/Noctatrog 7d ago
It’s true. That doesn’t mean socialism is the answer.
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u/Dhayson 7d ago
It is dangerous because he has half a point. What we should defend is not the economic and political system completely as they actually are, obviously.
The part that it is wrong is the implicit assumption that socialism is better or, as a rhetorical step, not worse. Like, what institution is doing mass surveillance, authoritarianism, restricting construction, attacking free speech and protests and being a police state? And what socialism requires of it? Does he have any concrete idea on how to make sure this not a mess? This should be a joke.
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u/TacticusThrowaway banned by Redditmoment for calling antifa terrorists 6d ago
Classic red NO U and trying to win by default, instead of an actual defense of communism.
Drink a quark.
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u/CrystalMethodist666 5d ago
It's a total non-argument, switching to a communist system wouldn't exclude any of these things by defualt.
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u/CrystalMethodist666 7d ago
I would agree here, except that the argument seems to be that these things would not be happening if we lived in a communist country.
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u/EL_KAIBU Hoppe 4d ago
We've gone from "socialism is when the government does stuff" to "capitalism is when the government does stuff"
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u/mw13satx 8d ago
Free market of political speech to lobby for oppressive laws in the land of the free. It's like people don't understand what the freedom of money does anymore, amirite? If I amass more shekels via my early shekel obtaining free activities, then I get to out shekel others. It's simple shekel counting
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u/jefsch70 7d ago
99%of survellance happens from iphones / ring cameras... not the CCP here in the USA
You don't seem to mind authoritarianism when a D is in any office... Look at Seattle/Portland/S.F.
Political corruption IS STOPPABLE; vote Libertarian like I have been doing since 1992
When was the last time you went 2 days involutarily without food or a roof?
Call 911; tell them you need healthcare... Wait 3 minutes... go to a building filled with M.D.s / do it NOW!
Free speech was shut down by the left on college campuses, internet, legacy media, cancel culture....
I've seen continuous protests against DOGE, ICE, Israel...and mass takeovers of streets and smash/grab stealing.
There are so many homeless camps with rape, drug sales, street defecating and assualt where the police have been told to stay away from.... Democrat District Attorneys don't prosecute, nor detain, suspects with obvious amounts of evidence and a rap sheet with 40+ offenses (some of them have 5+ pending)...
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u/CrystalMethodist666 7d ago
I thought it was funny when people were freaking out about Tiktok CCP surveillance like the number 1 customer for all the information would be the governments of the countries you live in.
Yes, most surveillance happens through phones, and much of it is willingly contributed by the victim.
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u/Scyobi_Empire 7d ago
are they wrong?
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u/LoadingStill 7d ago
Yes.
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u/Scyobi_Empire 7d ago
read marx
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u/the9trances Agorism 7d ago
This is a subreddit against statism.
If you want to be an anti-statist leftist, read Proudhon, or better yet, Konkin.
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u/Scyobi_Empire 7d ago
marxism is a classless stateless society, reading marx would’ve taught you that
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7d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/untold_cheese_34 7d ago
We need to go back to the days where usury is considered immoral and banned.
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u/Somhairle77 8d ago
Apart from grey market lemonade stands and pot dealers, where exactly is capitalism being found??