Communists: "Real communism has never been tried!!!1!12!"
Capitalists: "All the poverty and famine in the world are not because of capitalism!!!1!12!"

What a boring shitpost, to say that radical systems never lead to prosperity while also saying that people lack self-awareness.

This post was edited by Leevee on Jul 16 2021 08:38am

to be fair the more realistic critique of capitalism isn't famine or poverty, its environmental damage and conflict in the developing world.

capitalism created open pit mining operations run by warlords in africa, capitalism created spilled oil tankers in the gulf of mexico, capitalism created biologically homogenous ecosystems farming cattle or palm oil or avocados in Brazil. but it didnt create poverty in these areas, poverty already existed there, and capitalism helps alleviate some poverty. its just not at nearly the rate that profits are raked by firms in America or elsewhere on the backs of the labor there and the environmental damage it left in it's wake.

def a shitpost by OP tho lol

Ironic.

Capitalism is not linked to either poverty or famine, and it is principally responsible for the dramatic reduction in extreme poverty over the last century. Communism leads to poor economic outcomes, which in turn are only possible via an extreme concentration of political power which results inevitably in political oppression.

This isn't a case where we need to find middle ground. Capitalism is simply the far superior system for human development.

There's plenty of places where QoL got worse under capitalism. The thing no libertarian or conservative in general ever wants to admit is that first-world success under capitalism came via things like gunboat diplomacy and active protectionism of their own economies.

Capitalism also drove slavery far higher than it ever was pre-capitalism. Yeah, there were tribes taking people as slaves, but capitalism made it the biggest industry on a continent and a massive industry on several others, and created human breeding farms in the American South to keep the nation supplied in slaves after their import was banned.

But when you analyze "decrease in poverty" you just don't count the slaves. They aren't people, they're a product, so their suffering doesn't count.

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Jul 16 2021 09:07am

Capitalism is linked to imperialism and colonialism, and its entire existence has been predicated on those. The American war in the Phillipines for example was completely to open markets to Americans business.

This post was edited by Skinned on Jul 16 2021 09:09am

yes the tl;dr is, imo, that capitalism creates tertiary negative effects for the population not under capitalism. communism creates tertiary negative effects for the population under communism.

banana republics or sub saharan africans weren't capitalists, they're victims on the fringe of capitalism. whereas polish people under stalin were in a communist umbrella, even if one the edge of it.

I wouldn't say communism does that specifically, but that any totalitarian system creates those negative effects. So yes, also communism.

As for capitalism, they hide the negative effects by not classifying the groups being shit on (slaves, minorities, etc.) or by keeping them far away.


The funniest part is when you point out sweat shops use suicide nets because people are constantly killing themselves, and then conservatives insist these people have a better life compared to farming, because they were definitely committing suicide while farming and have a way up from a sweat shop.

suicide in a population increases as quality of life increases. it's a known effect. apathy of the masses due to easier times.



any totalitarian system creates the opportunity for abuse because control is the currency of the state once economic laws (in a broad sense) have been abandoned.

any capitalist system creates the opportunity for abuse of the poor because currency is the currency once greed overtakes morality.


being a farmer in an agrarian society is hell, you just dont kill yourself because you're too tired to even bother and your death means the death of your family. your lives are tied together. if my job at Google in 2021 bums me out i can an-hero and my family just needs 5k for a tossed together funeral. i woke up one day a few months back to 5 dead chickens, if i was a farmer that wouldnt just be a bummer, it would be the knowledge my child doesnt get to eat.

Like I acknowledged in a previous post in this thread, Chile, Cuba and Central America are a different story and examples where capitalist countries did indeed meddle with socialist experiments, so that their failure cannot be held against socialism/communism; hence, I very intentionally did not use these as examples to prove my point.







This discussion started when ink claimed that communism has vastly reduced poverty everywhere it was tried, to which I replied that this was only true in the initial years when the communist system could still draw on the structures and wealth created before the implementation of communism. My stance basically is that the economic inefficiencies and disincentives inherent to communism will, in the long run, always lead to economic and social decline and impoverishment.

So far, no one was able to name me a single counterexample. You then came in and brought up the "communism hasnt worked because it was always sabotaged by capitalist countries (usually the U.S.) messing with the communist or socialist states"-talking point, to which I replied that this cannot explain the poverty and decline of the Soviet Union, China under Mao before the capitalist pivot, Venezuela and Argentina. I repeatedly acknowledged that your argument is valid in some cases, like the aforementioned Cuba and Chile.


It can work in theory, but I don't think it will ever work in practice because communism just goes against human nature. Milder or more moderate forms of socialism could succeed, but there's huge pitfalls. More often than not, even without foreign interference, the government will devolve into authoritarianism, or corruption will get out of hand, or mismanagement and and a lack of ambition cause the country to fall behind relative to its global competitors.

For the record: I do believe that some sort of socialism is the endgame of human history, some 250 or so years from now when the global population has shrunk to a managable ~2 billion and technology have advanced to the point where everyone's material needs and desires can reliably be met in sustainable fashion.


The point is that there are a myriad of examples of capitalist countries, no matter if they start off rich or poor, which made big economic strides and saw the standard of living of its citizens improve. By contrast, I don't know of a single example of communist countries achieving the same in the long run.

You are right that the sample size of countries where communism was tried out and which were not screwed by outside intervention is too small to conclusively rule out the possibility of communism working, but the data points we have so far are sufficient to presume that such a scenario is statistically unlikely. So that's an empirical argument against communism, on top of the aforementioned substantive arguments against it.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jul 16 2021 09:46am