Comments by "Donovan" (@donovan4222) on "Bhaskar Sunkara: Socialism and Communism | Lex Fridman Podcast #349" video.

Neither of those things are socialized, in fact, housing and medical care are more privatized in the US than they are in almost any other country.
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Why not?
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@RealJoshBinder Not exactly, means of production are controlled through the workers, not necessarily the state. There are different schools of thought in socialism/communism as to what the role of the state should be, and whether it should exist at all. But regardless of that, none of this means you couldn’t do a podcast… “Reeducation camps” have nothing to do with socialism, socialism means worker control. Work camps are just authoritarian practices that can and have emerged in all types of societies.
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That guys kind of an idiot
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I don’t support Elon, or any billionaires really. They aren’t going to save you, they are part of the problem.
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@tanishpanjwani3117 Inequality and distribution/control of resources
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@tanishpanjwani3117 And working class families won’t have enough to feed themselves as long as an obscenely rich 1% of people control all of the wealth in society. That’s why Elon Musk is a problem. Billionaires shouldn’t exist in an economy that makes sense and works for everyone. Yes all billionaires put us in this situation, it isn’t any one person, it’s an economic system that favors the rich. Rich people control the economic system, and they design it to keep themselves rich, which means keeping others poor. The reason the government regulates wages and financial institutions to benefit the rich, is because we allow people like Elon Musk to fund election campaigns. It’s not a problem with Elon specifically, although he does seem like a pretty bad person and compulsive liar.
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@tanishpanjwani3117 I’m a socialist, but you don’t even need socialism to have less shitty capitalism where there is less obscene wealth inequality. Elons hasn’t done much at all positive imo. He marketed electric cars to seem cooler, I guess that’s positive? That’s about all I’ll give him credit for, because all he is really good at is marketing. The economy right now is controlled by a handful of business owners, who also control the government to some extent, but the government can be influenced democratically, billionaires cannot. You can easily fix those election campaigns by having publicly funded elections. I don’t care about “government control” I want more democracy, the government just happens to be the only institution we have that is powerful enough to challenge capitalists, and can be influenced by democratic pressures.
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@tanishpanjwani3117 What do you think the advantage of capitalism is that you couldn’t have under a socialist system?
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@tanishpanjwani3117 Why can’t socialist societies incentivize hard work, competence and innovation? Capitalist societies haven’t really “survived” it’s just the current system, we had hunter gatherer societies, we had slave societies, and feudalism/monarchy societies that all existed for thousands of years, capitalism has been here for a few hundred. I don’t see why you need capitalism for innovation. Socialism can and has had markets, you seem to be confusing capitalism with a market. Markets predate capitalism by thousands of years. In capitalism, you still have a handful of bureaucrats fulfilling demands, they’re called business executives.
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