Battlestar
Member
Awareness is important to have.
Discussing Communism
- Thread starter JagerIV
- Start date
Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
Aight, commies, do you want to know what Capitalism is? It's essentially a nice big name we gave to an evolved form of bartering. That is literally it, selling your labour or property for an agreed price.
Granted, I absolutely know why you hate this. It's not something you can micromanage, thus you control freak communists practically perceive it as original sin. It really reveals just how off the rails totalitarian commies are, and why they should be kept as far away from power as possible.
Granted, I absolutely know why you hate this. It's not something you can micromanage, thus you control freak communists practically perceive it as original sin. It really reveals just how off the rails totalitarian commies are, and why they should be kept as far away from power as possible.
I think a quick visit to the Communism Museum in Prague would do much to dissuade a lot of people. You need to see it to believe it, a truly sobering experience.
Doomsought
Well-known member
Has anyone else noticed how the planned economy of a communist stat is essentially the palace economy of a bronze age civilization? You even have the focus on massive public works project, and the total dependacy of knowledge on the priestly class (the communist party).
D
Deleted member 88
Guest
That's not entirely true. Mercentalism emerged due to both the colonial empires and breakdown of the guild system. Modern capitalism really began in the 19th century, with the growth of both industry and the financial sector. Modern capitalism is the most debasing and destructive social force in history.
From foreclosures to environmental destruction, to the rampant greed and swindling, to the breakdown of community ties, family, and the endless search for more pools to invest it.
The opium crisis, deforestation, and the looting of countless communities-comes from capitalism. Not to mention the atomization, drug use, despair, and nihilism that both accompany it and reinforce it.
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You wanna know the funny part?
No communists ever managed to get away from trade, so they were just as capitalist as everyone else despite their weak attempts to fight it
Does any one remember what happened to said bronze age civilization?
Because that collapse was paritcularly ugly.
Doomsought
Well-known member
Basically war + famine caused trade to break down, then the institutions fell apart because they were all interdependent.
In other words every one has a plan until they get punched in the face.
Capitalism, market economies their more nimble they have more redundency and they bounce back from shit faster.
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
...and then people try to say that autarky is bad.
autarky has sub optimal outcomes when taken to the extreme.
I mean in an Ideal world you have no trade barriers or subdisies and end up with maximized economic outcomes for all. Unfortantly ends up happening is that envitably some country cheats in order to get further ahead, or some one puts security above economic growth or some asshole starts a war.
We do not live in an ideal world.
Navarro
Well-known member
Not to mention that it wasn't possible in the bronze-age world because the production of bronze required sophisticated long-range trade networks stretching all the way to Cornwall.
Aldarion
Neoreactionary Monarchist
Everything has suboptimal outcome when taken to the extreme. Fact is, different systems have different strengths and weaknesses, so they are good in different conditions... but conditions change. And system must be flexible enough to adapt to changing conditions - which itself has a lot of prerequisites (decentralization, subsidiarity, flexibility) in different areas (politics, economy etc.). Thing is however, human mind is apparently set-up to think more easily in extremes: so when e.g. capitalism screws up, a lot of people go "capitalism is bad!" rather than "this form of capitalism doesn't work, let's change something".
Perhaps the greatest problem with communism (And the greatest problem of the Feudalism Marx sought to revive but with a mobster twist) is that the party takes power through the bureaucracy. Communists market this as the best thing ever, after all is it not the states job to take care of people? It isn't, but when you make whores out of entire generations of people and create a dependency...it sure looks that way!
But one problem with that...
Bureaucracies suck because government is an unwieldly, dumb, brute.
Why?
Because the vast majority of Government employees, are government employees because literally no one else would take them and they're too scared to sling dope on the corner.
A nation of serfs, ruled by the biggest thugs in the land and governed by mediocrity, for the mediocre and the subpar...Cannot survive. It inevitably exists only for two purposes...to keep the embittered and the worthless in a position above their betters, to keep the people silent and afraid..So that the depraved continue to gain wealth and prestige. No system like that can survive more than three generations..
Y'know we had something like this..in the US doing exactly this and hilariously it lasted longer than the USSR because they had a better understanding of the concept of not shitting where you eat than the Bolsheviks did.
Except our Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin were named, Maranzano, Masseria and Luciano.
...huh...they ended up about the same way didn't they? Maranzano even got knifed to death in a similar venue to Trostsky...
But one problem with that...
Bureaucracies suck because government is an unwieldly, dumb, brute.
Why?
Because the vast majority of Government employees, are government employees because literally no one else would take them and they're too scared to sling dope on the corner.
A nation of serfs, ruled by the biggest thugs in the land and governed by mediocrity, for the mediocre and the subpar...Cannot survive. It inevitably exists only for two purposes...to keep the embittered and the worthless in a position above their betters, to keep the people silent and afraid..So that the depraved continue to gain wealth and prestige. No system like that can survive more than three generations..
Y'know we had something like this..in the US doing exactly this and hilariously it lasted longer than the USSR because they had a better understanding of the concept of not shitting where you eat than the Bolsheviks did.
Except our Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin were named, Maranzano, Masseria and Luciano.
...huh...they ended up about the same way didn't they? Maranzano even got knifed to death in a similar venue to Trostsky...
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Doomsought
Well-known member
While it purports itself to be for the sake of the working class, it is always academics and bureaucrats that champion and benefit communism.
Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
People utterly detached from the rest of society, concealed within their ivory towers that don't resemble real life whilst they huff their own farts, come up stupid fucking ideas? Say it ain't so!
Ironically all the academics end up gulaged and the pencil pushers eat each other in the early stages of implementation post revolution.
..Oh shit another thing Communism and the Mafia have in common..After Luciano established the Commission..came consolidation and a lot I mean a loooottttt of Mid level bosses got replaced.
Hm, hopefully me reading through the tread I'm not responding to something too out of date, but the "is taxation is theft or not" question probably can be best answered by Jesus's "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's". Which is basically a big, it depends.
Sometimes its clearly legalized theft. Like, what King John was doing was excessive taxes to plunder the people to enrich himself, which is why Robin Hood is the obvious good guy despite being a highway man. The licensing system in Detroit as I've heard it described is much more a formal shakedown operation to squeeze more money out of the businesses, and thus reeks of legalized theft.
Likewise, the property taxes in the local area do not feel like theft, because the local infrastructure seems at least decently maintained, and the rates do not seem overly onerous.
And then you have a great big grey area of "questionably legitimate, or partially theft". For example, a town taking out a bond to build a road has a decent air of legitimacy, a town taking out a bond for a road which ended up costing 4x as much as it should for shody work with the money going to a politically connected construction company has the air of a theft perpetuated on the town by the powerful.
Unfortunately, its a very much you know it when you see it standard, which is why even Jesus couldn't give an answer with much more specificity than "taxes should be reasonable to the property claims". I think there used to be some more hard coded definitions of these things, like the Church had a relatively set definition of a tithe, or 10% being what is owed the church, and I believe there used to be some other rules of thumb on other taxation. But, we don't really have that now.
Sometimes its clearly legalized theft. Like, what King John was doing was excessive taxes to plunder the people to enrich himself, which is why Robin Hood is the obvious good guy despite being a highway man. The licensing system in Detroit as I've heard it described is much more a formal shakedown operation to squeeze more money out of the businesses, and thus reeks of legalized theft.
Likewise, the property taxes in the local area do not feel like theft, because the local infrastructure seems at least decently maintained, and the rates do not seem overly onerous.
And then you have a great big grey area of "questionably legitimate, or partially theft". For example, a town taking out a bond to build a road has a decent air of legitimacy, a town taking out a bond for a road which ended up costing 4x as much as it should for shody work with the money going to a politically connected construction company has the air of a theft perpetuated on the town by the powerful.
Unfortunately, its a very much you know it when you see it standard, which is why even Jesus couldn't give an answer with much more specificity than "taxes should be reasonable to the property claims". I think there used to be some more hard coded definitions of these things, like the Church had a relatively set definition of a tithe, or 10% being what is owed the church, and I believe there used to be some other rules of thumb on other taxation. But, we don't really have that now.
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Cherenkov
Member
Before you can begin to discuss what the best tax policy is, you need to have institutions that are capable of implementing that policy predictably, as written. Because the worst thing in the world for economic growth is legal unpredictability. And the only way you're going to get legal predictability is a strong and well-funded government that pays civil servants adequately, and that clearly separates itself from business interests. If the government is weak, then every man is a law unto himself. If you don't pay your civil servants adequately, you get corruption. If the government doesn't separate itself from business interests you get crony capitalism.
The Mandarin
Claim, Assert, Dominate.
Bruh, America was just destroyed by civil servants who wanted to put their betters in chains. Why do we need more of them? lol