In theory yes. In reality all socialist systems had surprisingly few changes of leadership after one guy rose to power of the “socialist” movement or party. And they don’t really seem to trust their citizens to be socialist without a lot of fear, censorship, spying, silencing critics…
It’s almost as if the majority of humans reject socialism. Which is weird but true.
Honestly I think China will be the only country actually reaching their carbon emissionsl targets set in Paris. All these preaching democratic nations are failing theirs year after year.
How do you plan to take power? And if you manage, how do you plan to stay in power long enough? The average voter is a moron being fed propaganda for years. You will not take power democratically. And you will not stay in power democratically.
Imo there is an issue if you do nothing but increase minimum wage. You also need to limit price inflation and make sure the companies don’t just return the increased cost to the consumer. Then you’ll have gained nothing. Example. Burger grill pays their workers 10$/hr - burger costs 4$. Now you force the burger grill to pay workers 15$/hr, a 50% increase and they go, alright, burgers now cost 6$. Most places do this and the worker, even though they now earn 50% more, can’t actually buy more because cost of living has increased equally. We need regulations on how companies operate their profit or actually get back to a point where competition would punish pricing like that. But somehow with only a handful owning everything that is kinda fucked.
He’s also right. The headline is shit.
I don’t understand why you feel the need to be hostile and make this about white men. This is about civilization theory.
If your point was that white civilizations made the world into the mess it is right now, I wholeheartedly agree with you. It is however not the point of my inquiry. I was generally curious about bigger societies that managed to stay relatively non hierarchial which would result in an equal share of ressources (what this whole thread was about) From what I have read, all bigger “successful” civs developed a strong hierarchy which resulted in a big wealth gap as well and/or built their empire through expansion and as a result slaves and POW who granted them free labour to built their infrastructure. Some examples:
Egypt (not white) China (not white) Khmer (not white) Japan (not white) Osman empire (not white) Persian (not white) Babylon (not white) India (not white)
Imo indigenous tribes are not helpful in this discussion because I am interested in examples or solutions for big societies and tribal structures are very different because people usually all know each other over 1 or two axis which strongly discouraged selfish behavior (it got you shunned).
I am very interested in African and ancient American civilizations but there is not a lot of unbiased literature out there (To my knowledge - which is why I asked for more info)
No offense taken. But I am a bit worries sometimes about the hostility towards people asking questions.
Tbh. So far I mostly read about western, Arab and Asian civilizations and there really aren’t many examples when you go bigger in size of small tribal living. In my opinion, tribal life is a lot different and naturally more non hierarchial because mostly everybody knows everyone and if you act too selfish you’ll be shunned. From what I read it becomes problematic as soon as the civ reaches a high number of people. Then they tended to get expansionist and hierarchial which resulted in either slaves or prisoners of war with lower social status or some kind of caste system.
I will read into the dawn of everything and the other link you provided on the other thread and am happy for more fodder. I will be traveling through south America soon and wanna read up upon their ancient history anyway.
Thanks for taking the time to look it up and edit!
Would you care to give an example of a successful society of the past that achieved what you are describing without slaves or other means of super cheap labor. I can’t think of a single one but I am very interested.
Geheimtipp: Aufhören in Hotels zu gehen. Besonders die mit Animateuren. Geh in Unterkünfte, die von locals geführt werden. Und Besuch die Gegenden richtig. Dann lernst du die Menschen auch wirklich kennen.
The solution is a Multi-Party system with coalition and then compromise out of a position of power. We need to accept that in almost all societies the real left are a minority. Humans don’t like the socialist ideas even if it benefited then Right now because they dream of escaping poverty and to then be better than others. If we destroyed the class system they’d have no chance to some day be better than other people. I believe this drive to get ahead is part of human nature and only few are able to fight it and think in the benefit of the whole.
So there are 2 options:
Is a revolution, violent and ends in establishing an authoritarian government forcing your beliefs on the majority of people which kinda goes against my democratic beliefs and the right of freedom
Go into politics. In europe it would be voting very left and gain enough votes to join a coalition to make the centrists enable more and more socialist policies. This worked very well in some countries like early Germany, netherlands and a big portion of Scandinavian countries. In America basically the only option would be to join the democratic party and advocate socialist policies from within like Bernie sanders is trying for example. Vote more left in the primaries to try and gain influence.
After that when it comes down to voting either of the 2 parties though you probably need to accept the current majority in the democratic party in order to not enable far right.
The time to go more left is between big elections and from within. In big elections like the upcoming its time to set differences aside and unify for the lesser evil.
Never forget that a democracy is a rule of the majority of the population and not a rule of the best policies from your perspective. If you think: Fuck the majority, this is how the country should be run, you are not democratic.
This of course disregards the influence powerful people take in politics which is another topic and way more complicated.
“I respect christians who don’t force their views on me”
No, you don’t. You just prefer not to be reminded that you’re living in sin.
Everybody preaching thinks, everyone must adhere to their personal moral beliefs. They don’t.
And we are not advocating veganism by antagonizing people. That just makes YOU feel better about yourself and doesnt help the animals at all. If you actually care about animal well-being you will set your ego aside and try to actually convince the carnivores by being a good example and adapting your arguments.
I always point out that I will not discuss the morals of killing animals because it’s difficult for a lot of people. I will go on the level how our society treats the animals before killing them. Almost noone is arguing about that. And I’ve convinced a lot of people that way to at least drastically reduce their meat consumption. The rest will come later.
Isn’t it about reducing animal suffering in the world in total? It should be. Making everyone be vegan in no time at all is unrealistic. We are reducing global meat consumption by emphatically making people question their choices and not by antagonizing them. They’ll just get defensive and mock us.
Just look around here. Most of the people here are part of the hate club. Constantly you see posts wishing the worst and horrible deaths on the people they disagree with or who commit crimes/do horrible shit/are rich, and they are being celebrated. ACAB, Trump should off himself, eat the rich, celebrating people drowning on their yachts… But hey, it’s not hate speech if you are on a moral high ground right? Most people here probably agree, that prisons are for suffering, just that so often the wrong people are suffering.
America needs a functioning justice system and people abusing their power is horrible. But you need to fight it by enforcing a system and punishments according to a set of laws. There is no emotion or revenge in justice.
Delete because better response already written in meantime
The US will never stop supporting Israel. They are too dependent on it geopolitically. I believe we may see some more inner political movement against Netanjahu supported by certain US agencies. He will not survive this conflict as prime minister. This will of course not help Palestinians in the long run but it may help with a ceasefire and as a result help the democrats in the upcoming election which would be the main goal right now.
The idea of this super moderated availability of books sounds super great when you write it out like that. But there aren’t even enough teachers around to teach the bare minimum. I don’t know how you imagine that would be manageable.
Side point. If Mein Kampf should be accessible, do you think so should all the hate speech and misinformation everyone tries to ban from social media ?
I mean. Prisoners of war rarely committed any actual crimes right? And I can definitely imagine the Nazis using that term in official documents. Would be stupid otherwise. I think there is a book, the bureaucracy of murder, that talks about those euphemismic language in brutal states. I can also imagine some officers in those camps actually being concerned with feeding the people (or handling the other prisoners watching their comrades die of hunger), just not out of empathy. And finally, it’s just really stupid to take those letters and make a case for the Holocaust being an accident, wtf.
The court doesn’t give a shit, though. Look at what’s happening with the international court.
Oh, and also, the police is supporting me with weapons to fuck you up if you try to chase me from your lawn.
Oh I am sorry. I thought I was talking to someone sharing the consensus we formed as an international community after world war 2 to keep a status quo regarding borders (except for some peaceful special cases) represented by the UN and to stop all the useless expansionist fighting all through history.
This fighting you apparently approve and are completely fine with stronger countries just invading others for expansion of their territory. That is a very shitty world you want to live in.
Just some examples of what you are apparently super fine with:
Russia completely conquering Ukraine and that being accepted by everyone. China annexing Taiwan and while we are at it why not just most of SEA as well. The Republicans just fighting their way to control of the US if they happen to lose the election. I mean people fight and who wins is right, right?
In my example above I shouldn’t even bother slowly creeping onto your land but just fight you for it and if I win I got a free new home. Sounds like a utopia, doesn’t it?
Just for the record. I am not even primarily for a Palestinian state. But it is a way better alternative than to just kill an entire population because you can’t live in peace with them. And I am aware that it’s not just Jewish peoples fault that this apparently doesn’t work. But annihilation is never a solution.
Would you be okay with me moving into your garden and building a hut there and threatening you when you protest ? And when you silently let me live in your garden I bring all my family and friends and build more and start taking your rooms because you know, I need the place and some ancestor of mine told me God promised me your garden. Would you maybe wanna hit me if I don’t stop?
I agree with a lot you are saying. No state can stay stable without some form of control and censorship as soon as it starts threatening the stability of the system. Capitalism does this as well. And they have a very effective propaganda machine.
I feel like capitalist propaganda is so effective because it resonates so well with the basic human instincts and the part of humans that wants to be better than others and is greedy. The monkey brain is competitive and hierarchical. Socialism requires a level of empathy and intelligence a lot of people don’t have. They not only reject it because of media but also because they wanna climb that social ladder. No fun, if it doesn’t exist.
The leaders of most socialist countries though, seemed to not stop at the anti socialist critics. Even other socialist voices that they didn’t agree with got silenced (Mao, Pol Port, Xi Jing Ping making all his ministers disappear).
Also please don’t misunderstand me. I am not arguing against socialism. I am trying to find a form of socialist society that relies on as few authority and violence as possible. I always wondered why the socialist countries struggle so much with keeping their people in, while most refugees try to get into the capitalist societies.