Comments by "Not Today" (@nottoday3817) on "Actually, Leftists aren't STUPID people" video.
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I came here hoping for a conservative to tell other people that lefties are not simple minded people that don't want to work and feel opressed by everyone, who are all secretly nazis. Well, 50minutes later... -_- yeah, why did I even bother giving you my trust when it comes to socio-economics?
First of all, about the Biblical analogy. Mate, if you are confused about that, save some money, go on a cruise, cause your mind is really burnt out. It's literally in the name 'Fruit of knowledge of good AND EVIL'. Before eating the fruit, Adam and Even only knew good or neutral, the serpent tricked them so they can also know evil.
Secondly, and for anyone reading this, NO, not all socialists are like that. Heck, NO REAL socialist is like that. TIK has some what would call 'reactionary bias'. He believes that because he identified with part of the socialist world, he is more right when speaking about socialism than others who stick to their views.
Thirdly, you mention something scratching the back of your head when mentioning Venezuela, USSR, Cambodia, China etc and socialism. Well, dear TIK, why isn't something scratching the back of your head when you praise capitalism when there exist things like the Tuskegee experiments, the Opium Wars, the Drug Wars, the Cartels and the Mafia, the black population being on food stamps in the USA at the same time people were bashing USSR, black people being used as human experiments without their consent and so on? Why don't those things bother you as much as the others?
So, for any readers out here, here's how an actual view of socialism looks like:
1. It depends from person to person. Socialism was meant to be for the people, by the people. Of course, because it involves centralisation, people have varied opinions on how much should be left to the individual and how much should be left to the gouvernment.
2. Capitalists are not our sworn enemies. Capitalist exploiters, like the ones sending bombers against people trying to unionize or, in modern time, creating bots to promote anti-union sentiments in Amazon, yes, they are enemies of the left, but that's because they actively chose to act against people minding their business. Socialism doesn't reject principles of capitalism, like the right-wingers, would want you to believe. No. They still embrace the ideea of competition, they still embrace the ideea of initiative and they still reward them and they still realise the importance of capital and obtaining profit. What happens however, is that socialists see the limitations of capitalism. Capitalism is a system, more like an utopia, which works great when you are talking about small scale. One entity interacting with one or two others. However, on large scales, the existance of the core principles of capitalism (ie protection of private property, desire to invest and expand to accumulate even more capital, access to free market) are starting to collide with each other due to basic rule of economics: on large scales, we have limited accessibility to resources. (Mind you, I said accessibility, not simply 'resources', because you could have resources, but if you are unable to exploit them, in economics, they basically do not exist, or even become a hindrance). Because we have this limitation, it should be obvious that at some point, all those companies that are trying to grow will eat each other out until there is one or two who would control the access to all resources needed for an activity. If they control the access to resources, they have no competition, no competition, no free market. Also, one has to aknowledge that resources are different. The idea of 'finding alternatives' just doesn't work in practice. You cannot find a good alternative to toiletpaper and toothpaste for example, similarly to how you cannot find a good alternative to copper and aluminium in conductive circuits. (believe me, our communist leaders tried to)
3. We don't see the ideea of working as being opressed. Perhaps that picture is a 'somewhere in Russia' type of story, aka somewhere happened something weird, but people take it as the norm and blow it out of proportions. Yes, thanks to a huge increase in offers for business and economic majors, lots of people graduate from universities with good knowledge of economics, which should tell them that a centralised system has some really strong advantages depending on cases, but they forgot to ask for how to apply the knowledge they've obtained. And so, they end up working some depressing jobs in stores, accounting offices and so on, realising how the world around them is going to ** and they cannot do anything about it. But there are some lefties who instead went for engineering or medical degrees, or for law studies and for many others, and they can really get closer to implementing the changes they want to see. As such, for us, working, to some degree, is a non-financial payment in itself. The problem with opression, and why we say people are opressed under capitalism, has two sides: 1. Literally active opression (people being prevented from unionising, in some cases people being bombed, people being used as scapegoats etc.) 2. Passive opression and stealing of value. For 2, we know that you will never get paid for how much you earn your institution, since that institution needs to also sustain non-production staff. And, as I've said, in some cases, being able to work a job you enjoy might be a payment in itself. The problem and opression comes in when the work effort doesn't scale in with the payment.
And, for the final, here's an example. Many of you might be unaware, but in Japan, the land of turbocapitalism, you have a paradoxal crisis: the anime industry is in a crisis due to shortage animators, but there are plenty of animators on the market. So, how does that relate to capitalism and opression? Well, simply put, there is no shortage 'of animators' per se, however, there is a huge shortage of 'skilled animators', aka people with experience. This shortage comes from the fact that there is a huge number of animators on the market since anime is very popular in Japan and many people would want to work in a field that blends in their passion with creativity and money. Ok, a socialist might be confused: if there are so many, why a shortage? Well, because we are talking about turbocapitalism here. Because there are so many animators on the market, the bosses can easily tell their employees: do this, or I can easily find you a replacement. This leads to overworking, depression, health issues and, of course, they pay you nothing extra. And if you object, well, you are booted out and someone else takes your place. So, of course, people quickly realise they cannot work with passion in this field and they cannot ask to be paid more, even though the industry is booming right now, so everyone with some experience is quickly leaving the industry for some other jobs. Because of this, very few people spend enough time around senior animators and producers to learn all they need to know, before they quit, and, as such, the crisis comes. And, frankly, I picked this because it's easier to explain in its fullness, but similar situations can be found in the programming world, with game studios or web developers, or in the airline industry, with pilots and mechanics.
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@TheImperatorKnight Get me to drink? I assure you, even after 2 bottles of vodka, I wouldn't be drunk enough to believe all you are saying.
I am unwittingly criticising socialism, not capitalism? How so? Weren't the Opium Wars caused by a private corporation? Weren't the human experiments conducted by pharmaceutical companies? Aren't people in the workforce treated as replaceable fools thanks to a wrong mindset? Oh, and don't get me started with the argument of 'corporations aren't capitalism'. Yeah, sure. Capitalism 'technically' disavows the existance of corporations and any forms of polarisation (monpol, duopol, oligopol), but in reality capitalism has no means to stop the formation of those entities, plus, those are very effective forms of securing dominance over the free market, thus granting you the best return on your investments, which is what capitalism encourages. So, in short, even though corporations and all of that are technically not capitalism, capitalism doesn't prevent, and even encourages their existance.
Also, I'm not a landmine to be triggered
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