Regarding Communism

[Gnske]

Yeah, this is true across creative arts generally tbh. Creative personality traits match up better with the left than the right.

Clearly you haven't had Deustchland, Deutschland Uber Alles and Panzerlied on repeat during long train rides.

Let's face it, fascism produces the greatest in fashion and art. Commies destroy it and love to destroy it. What did the Nazis ever destroy? A book or two?

 

[Furball]

Nah ****, Nazi architecture is ****ing garbage.

 

[Gnske]

Try seeing a Communist reaching god through the architecture of light. He'd kill millions before he got close and would just end up with a filthy east-German commie block.

Let it be said I have no affinity for Nazis whatsoever, I only really really like their style.

 

[grecian]

I think we all know I'm pretty left-wing, but Communism doesn't work in exactly the same way Libertarianism wouldn't work, it accepts that human beings will be decent, and we know that's not the case.

Communism could work if everyone accepted the principles of everyone being equal, but that's regrettably not human nature, just as people believing libertarianism would mean people would use their riches to benefit the rest wouldn't happen. A few would, but most would accrue riches in their gated communities and let everyone else starve.

Both are about a ridiculous idealism that doesn't exist in reality.

So a mixture of social responsibility and capitalism is the only way to curb humans horrible base instincts,I'm afraid.

 

[watson]

I think we all know I'm pretty left-wing, but Communism doesn't work in exactly the same way Libertarianism wouldn't work, it accepts that human beings will be decent, and we know that's not the case.

Communism could work if everyone accepted the principles of everyone being equal, but that's regrettably not human nature, just as people believing libertarianism would mean people would use their riches to benefit the rest wouldn't happen. A few would, but most would accrue riches in their gated communities and let everyone else starve.

Both are about a ridiculous idealism that doesn't exist in reality.

So a mixture of social responsibility and capatalism is the only way to curb humans horrible base instincts,I'm afraid.

Totalitarian ideologies and their systems like Communism are a way of exerting power and control over people and society, and that's all.

The fact that Communism has something to do with economics and 'equality' is merely incidental because that is not what it is really about. You could say that these things are smokescreens designed to divert attention away from Communism's real aim of concentrating power into the hands of an oligarchy.

The reason that all Totalitarian systems fail in the long-run is that people don't like being told how to think, how to live and how to submit. The human spirit rightfully craves both autonomy and freedom and will eventually revolt against its oppressor.

 

[watson]

Incidently, the reason that Libertarianism fails as a system is that it provides no way of shielding society from Totalitarian ideologies like Communism, Facism, or Islamism.

Sure Libertarianism is lovely and cuddly like a lamb, but it will always be eaten by a preditor who doesn't give a ****.

 

[Ikki]

Ah, the "body count" argument. Am I allowed to count the several million dead across SE Asia as part of the "body count" for Western capitalism, or are we allowed to use historical nuance now?

Does this count as the "body count", for example?

You can't blame "Western capitalism" for body count any more than you can the human race in general. Capitalism is just another word for freedom - and reflects reality. People will do good with their freedom and some will do bad.

Communism is inherently evil because it is a distortion of reality that appeals to peoples' prejudices, which ultimately centralises power in the hands of one or a few.

The two aren't even comparable in that instance for you to even bring up this point.

The comparison has the same flaw that GIMH's did, which I think I can explain better now. The conclusions derive directly from the framework used. Any centralised-power system will always appear worse than any decentralised-power system, because responsibility for bad outcomes is attributed to one actor ("the state"), rather than dispersed among various individual baddies.

1970-1990 Russia thus appears much worse than post-1990 Russia, even though the level of oppression and violence is much worse in the latter, because the oppressors are no longer officially affiliated with the state.

What in the ****

So it only looks bad? This has got to be one of your worst posts.

Communism and authoritarian systems are worse because they concentrate power, with the almost guaranteed end of abuse.

I am not sure what a decentralised-power system is really (Federal?), but the more government/power is divided generally the less people die.

 

[Ikki]

No we aren't. But the comparison between a craving for a pure Marxist system and the craving for a pure market-based system is apposite. Not because the ideologies are anything alike, but because they attract similar levels of zealotry among their proponents. You'll always hear a Marxist say stuff like "They just didn't implement it right in the USSR/ Cuba/ China/ wherever as a way of explaining away the cruelties and excesses of Marxist regimes.

Yeah...they're comparable because people who like them are fervent? You mean, like everything? People are fervent about playing video games, it doesn't have anything that makes the comparison relevant.

And you'll always hear the free market #freedom warriors say similar things when markets collapse or wealth gets concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority while a shitload of people get crapped on. "It's not a true market. There's too much control/ it's an oligarchy/ monopoly, not a truly free market". As if oligarchies and monopolies aren't products of markets themselves. Assuming of course they give a **** at all as to whether such situations are of benefit to people to begin with.

The problem with people like yourself commenting on these systems is that you don't actually use terms that make a coherent argument. Oligarchies are impossible under capitalism because you are not concentrating power - where I can lawfully cage or shoot you for not doing what I want. Monopolies can't exist in a free market for long because the barrier to entry is non-existent - they generally exist in systems with opposing beliefs.

Point is, Marxist systems don't work. Pure market systems don't work. Regulated market systems do. Arguing about the nature and extent of the regulation of markets is probably where it's at. You get numpties who want virtually everything state-owned, and you get numpties who want virtually everything privately owned. They're just opposite sides of the same ****tardery. Yet neither side sees it.

the fact that you are here typing all this on a computer just makes this hilarious to me.

You got to love the virtue signalling of the middle-ground. People would stay in the middle between good and evil as long as they can pretend they're not biased.

Incidently, the reason that Libertarianism fails as a system is that it provides no way of shielding society from Totalitarian ideologies like Communism, Facism, or Islamism.

Sure Libertarianism is lovely and cuddly like a lamb, but it will always be eaten by a preditor who doesn't give a ****.

In other words; it means existing in reality where you can't force people to do something even if it is to their benefit because that force will later be used to propagandise people into stupid systems like communism or socialism

The reality is that every single day of our lives we all have to be responsible for ourselves and what we wish out of society. If we start sleeping at the wheel, regardless of system, we all crash.

 

[Spark]

The computer is a very strange example of a technology they owes its existence to private enterprise without government involvement. You'd be able to make a much more convincing case for the importance of the military-industrial complex in its development.

 

[Uppercut]

What in the ****

So it only looks bad? This has got to be one of your worst posts.

You just haven't understood it mate.

 

[Spark]

Also I swear to god I am this close to calling other people's posts "virtue signalling" infractable. Everyone here is doing their best to argue in good faith from what they actually believe, this stuff about calling other posters' opinions "virtue signalling" is nothing but detrimental to the atmosphere of the forum. This **** has gone on for way too long and it ends now.

Kthx.

 

[Spark]

Totalitarian ideologies and their systems like Communism are a way of exerting power and control over people and society, and that's all.

The fact that Communism has something to do with economics and 'equality' is merely incidental because that is not what it is really about. You could say that these things are smokescreens designed to divert attention away from Communism's real aim of concentrating power into the hands of an oligarchy.

The reason that all Totalitarian systems fail in the long-run is that people don't like being told how to think, how to live and how to submit. The human spirit rightfully craves both autonomy and freedom and will eventually revolt against its oppressor.

Hold on, what? Economics (or at least political economy) is what Communism (= Marxism-Leninism, let's say) is all about. The capitalist class expropriates (i.e. steals) what rightfully belongs to the working class, and therefore must be destroyed as a matter of moral justice. Not equality, and this is why Communist movements go off the rails so quickly: what constitutes the "capitalist class" is very easily redefined to mean "anyone we don't like".

This thread has been weird tbh, people talking about Communism as if it's just a stronger version of, say, Clement Attlee's ideals, when in reality it's not remotely similar in its base justification.

 

[GIMH]

Also I swear to god I am this close to calling other people's posts "virtue signalling" infractable. Everyone here is doing their best to argue in good faith from what they actually believe, this stuff about calling other posters' opinions "virtue signalling" is nothing but detrimental to the atmosphere of the forum. This **** has gone on for way too long and it ends now.

Kthx.

Awful moderation. If people think others are virtue signalling they should be free to say so.

 

[Ikki]

Also I swear to god I am this close to calling other people's posts "virtue signalling" infractable. Everyone here is doing their best to argue in good faith from what they actually believe, this stuff about calling other posters' opinions "virtue signalling" is nothing but detrimental to the atmosphere of the forum. This **** has gone on for way too long and it ends now.

Kthx.

Why? I call it how I see it: people like to play the middle ground to pretend that they are not biased towards fundamentals or fervency and it is done as a cover to disguise their own nonsense. The idea that capitalism and communism are at the opposite ends of the spectrum (and one is really an economic system) is simply nonsense.

If we are going down that slippery slope the least you could do is infract people for trying to make others out as extremists for what they believe - particularly when they can't even phrase the other side of the argument properly to then deconstruct it.

----

The general argument for me is instructive of how badly the western education system, and even culture, has been when it comes to the topic of communism. People don't defend Nazism or fascists to anywhere near the same degree or create false equivalencies to then stave off criticism, but the reality is that communism has been far more harmful than the Nazis/fascists were. People know full well about Nazi concentration camps, yet probably think a Gulag is a Turkish bread.

You just haven't understood it mate.

I understand it perfectly, this is just a poor place to make that distinction for the real fact that the communists killed about 100 million people around the world. So it's not simply a matter of framing, although I can agree with your point re centralised powers looking worse than decentralised ones.

And the reality is that when people judge things on such a superficial level, it's always a poor argument. Imagine someone defending Nazis because 'optics'.

The computer is a very strange example of a technology they owes its existence to private enterprise without government involvement. You'd be able to make a much more convincing case for the importance of the military-industrial complex in its development.

No, it isn't. The government didn't create the internet, people did. The popularity of the computer and, as an extension, the internet owes far more to the entrepreneurial efforts of individuals like Jobs and Gates than any bureaucrat. And let us not even get into the grand majority of inventions and knowledge gained from individual action.

But this is getting away from the overarching point. We as a species have only gotten ahead because we have managed to make mistakes, learn from them and share this information with others. The freer this exchange the increase in innovation and the faster it happens.

Time is just meaningless, we are not becoming advanced just because there is a passage of time and people just 'know' more. We are getting there because we continue to become more connected and the fountain of collective knowledge is increasing. When you have authoritarian governments, you are essentially limiting this pool of knowledge because you are controlling what is good or bad, what will benefit or not, because you are subject to a smaller pool of intellect.

 

[sledger]

Awful moderation. If people think others are virtue signalling they should be free to say so.

Yeah I don't really see what's wrong with doing this as long as there is no ad hominem tone involved (i.e. ala Benchmark00 - "you only hold that view because of blah blah" etc.).

 

[Spark]

Yeah I don't really see what's wrong with doing this as long as there is no ad hominem tone involved (i.e. ala Benchmark00 - "you only hold that view because of blah blah" etc.).

This is exactly the sort of thing I'm getting at. You can criticise virtue signalling in general of course, but what you can't do is address other poster's views with "you only believe that because you're trying to impress people". That just isn't on.

 

[Spark]

No, it isn't. The government didn't create the internet, people did. The popularity of the computer and, as an extension, the internet owes far more to the entrepreneurial efforts of individuals like Jobs and Gates than any bureaucrat. And let us not even get into the grand majority of inventions and knowledge gained from individual action.

The network infrastructure of the internet is a direct evolution of networks created at DARPA: the basic TCP/IP protocols which the entire internet uses as the basis of information sharing were also developed at DARPA, DNS is based on the name systems used at DARPA, etc etc. The more top-level HTTP communication protocol was developed at CERN.

You can argue these things might have been developed anyway, but as a statement of fact "the government didn't create the internet" is simply wrong.

 

[Ikki]

The network infrastructure of the internet is a direct evolution of networks created at DARPA: the basic TCP/IP protocols which the entire internet uses as the basis of information sharing were also developed at DARPA, DNS is based on the name systems used at DARPA, etc etc. The more top-level HTTP communication protocol was developed at CERN.

You can argue these things might have been developed anyway, but as a statement of fact "the government didn't create the internet" is simply wrong.

Just because government taxed people to fund something that later was blown into a revolutionary technology doesn't mean they created the internet. It's just absurd to state because you are talking about a non-conscious entity. All of human history, predating governments, went towards creating our current technologies - frankly, you don't even need to go that far to find critical individuals who without the technology would not exist. Which is why I will repeat: people - human ingenuity - created the computer and internet.

The reason why it is silly to credit that the government created these things is the same reason why it is silly to believe in communism.

 

[Spark]

Just because government taxed people to fund something that later was blown into a revolutionary technology doesn't mean they created the internet. It's just absurd to state because you are talking about a non-conscious entity. All of human history, predating governments, went towards creating our current technologies. Which is why I will repeat: people - human ingenuity - created the computer and internet.

The reason why it is silly to suggest that the government is able to create these things is the same reason why it is silly to believe in communism.

Okay so the statement is then so vague as to be completely meaningless (and I think the same thing is true of "computer" which I suspect is not remotely well-defined in this sentence). If this is the standard of "people created something" then I could be completely absurd and say that some bloke in a cave who realised that rubbing two sticks together made sparks about fifty thousand years ago or whatever created the 747.

The internet is an information sharing network. What exactly is the point of an information sharing network without a method of sharing information?

 

[Spark]

BTW the "internet is a product of human ingenuity" as opposed to "de facto US government property licensed out to the world" would probably be strongly disputed by, like, half the governments of the world.