Comments by "Stephen Jenkins" (@stephenjenkins7971) on "How to Split a City in Half (Berlin)" video.

@Johnny.Picklez Marxist states don't exist in reality and never can, but the process to reach them (Socialist) always get stuck there. Thus people just shorthand the attempts to reach Communism as Communism, dismissing claims by Marxists of "not real Communism" as just an attempt to rationalize the failed attempts to reach a state which is not reachable at all. You're gonna have to cite that study. Because West Germany complete blew out East Germany. South Korea lagged behind the North, but the North had immense economic backiung by the USSR and little-to-none by the US but still far surpassed it by the 90's. South Vietnam didn't exist long enough to compare. So what "similar capitalist countries" are you speaking of? The only one I could think of was the USSR, and that was accomplished through extreme bloodshed and suffering, to be blunt so I barely count it. Because the fact of the matter is that each and every Socialist country collapsed in on themselves and especially the ones which were subjugated quickly and eagerly switched to capitalist economies. There are almost no economies based on Marxist theory left. Btw, economy isn't even everything. Nazi Germany's economy completely overshot comparable capitalist and Marxist economies. I sure as helpl am not gonna give it a ringing endorsement for that. I didn't say bad examples of capitalism are super rare. Just that they're not the standard, while for Marxist-inspired nations they were. African nations have exploded out of poverty rapidly since adopting capitalism, for the most part. Hell, world poverty across the planet has dramatically fell, especially after the fall of the USSR. Really, if I wanted to be slightly disengenious, I could ostensibly claim that any opposition to capitalism could be framed as: "Why do you hate the Global Poor?" The US doesn't have its hands in Africa, not since the Cold War. At least not a major hand. China does, but it's relatively recent, though far more omnipresent. France also does, if you wanna make that argument. But at least don't confuse Western nations like that.
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@Johnny.Picklez The difference between capitalist and Marxist economies tends to be that unstable capitalist states are examples of bad capitalist states. Meanwhile everything described about unstable capitalist states are almost entirely uniform for Marxist states by default. Thus, most people don't like the idea of Marxists getting into power, regardless of their ideals.
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Very few Americans would want something like this since the US is so huge and public transportation for anything but large cities is a waste which nobody would use.
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@Johnny.Picklez Yeah, in some cases the Socialist governments vastly improved their country compared to what existed before. Though I find the Russia one questionable since the USSR essentially stole the country from the Democratic Assembly before it could do anything, and the means it did that was complaining about the war the Assembly refused to leave because they knew that if they did they'd face massive territorial losses...and then the Socialists proceeded to lose even MORE territory. Thus making their propaganda against the new democratic government moot. But yes, compared to the Tsar, the USSR was an immense improvement. That being said, that really isn't saying much. Nor is replacing Batista. I wouldn't say just Capitalism drives innovation, but it's under the auspices of Capitalism that most things not related to hte military have improved drastically. The USSR advanced, but it lagged immensely behind the US in terms of domestic and civilian innovation and progress. It kept up in military hardware and what could be derived of that. Mind you, the thing about Capitalism is that the government is not entirely tied to the civilian economy, so the government can intermix with the economy and make new innovations. When people talk about Capitalist innovation, it's not just the civilian sector or companies, but also governments intermixing with those companies that isn't possible in full-blown state-controlled countries since...well, yeah. Government-funded projects under Capitalism yields infinitely more domestic/civilian innovation than their Socialist counterparts. Than, well, any economic syste; not just Socialist. The US provides immense social aid to its citizens, it's just not at the level of other Western countries. From Social Security to Food aid to government-funded ways to help reduce poverty. I can agree that more needs to be done, but don't dismiss it out of hand. Look, I don't think Capitalism is the final system of the human economic experience. But I don't see anything replacing it for now. Social Democracy is still Capitalism.
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@TowZatya Uh-huh, and you're kinda ignoring the explosive growth that had West Germany long surpass East Germany outside of that "6.3x". By your logic, Ethiopia is wealthier than Sweden today since it has a higher GDP growth. Kinda missing the PRESENT GDP part of that equation as well as GDP per capita. "without any form of imperialism" They're both Germanies. They both had imperialism prior to the split. And what imperialism did either Germany do post-1945??? Are you talking about their sponsors? Because both the US and USSR did imperialism, no cap. Bruh, East Germany was the industrial capital outside of the Ruhr, genius. The issue was that the Soviets literally stole all of the machinery back to the USSR because they're imperialist maniacs who can't help but destroy everything they touch.
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@Johnny.Picklez Could've fooled me. But okay.
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@shepherdanton Capitalism is not the same as freedom. Capitalism is flexible, it can exist in a dictatorship or a free democracy.
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@donnerwetter1905 Really? Thought Las Vegas had a similar public transportation system. And frankly, the NYC public transportation system is just dirty, not rundown at all.
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@peterw.8434 Of course there isn't as much inter-regional traveling. The US is massive, and the population is far more dispersed while in Germany the population density is far more heavy. Creating the infrastructure for public transportation is just not going to be a thing in big countries like the US, Canada, or Australia. I never claimed otherwise.
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@donnerwetter1905 NYC really isn't that different from the rest of the big cities. They all have public transportation too. They kinda need them. Speaking as a NY'er too.
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@donnerwetter1905 Berlin is 27% to NYC's 31%, and this trend seems mostly reversed in comparable cities. So fair enough, though hte gap is not "far below" by any stretch of the imagination. Most cities seem to be around 14% while most German cities are around 20%. Not to mention that NYC transportation is DIRTY not "rundown". Inb4 you claim that US infrastructure is rundown when worldwide statistics place the US at 87 to Germany's 90 or so.
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@TowZatya In what realm of existence does that occur? Not this one, since East Germany's GDP and economic output was so low in comparison to West Germany that a wall needed to be built to prevent East Berliners from escaping to the West.
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@edelweiss2971 What are you even talking about? I never once professed to support Socialism, I think.
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@donnerwetter1905 "The infrastructure score is calculated based on the following factors: road connectivity index, quality of roads, railroad density, efficiency of train services, airport connectivity, efficiency of air transport services, linear shipping connectivity index, efficiency of seaport services, electrification rate, electric power transmission and distribution losses, exposure to unsafe drinking water, reliability of water supply. The World Economic Forum made significant changes to their methodology in the 2018 edition of the report. Therefore, scores from previous years cannot be reliably compared." You seem to be thinking os "surveys" as in "people's opinions" when this is obviously not the case. But fine, I'll get yet ANOTHER source. Also, your bigotry aside, Germany is a mostly static country in terms of weather and issues with climate while the US is EXTREMELY diverse. US electricity grid going down is far more often caused by weather issues (Texas got it's knocked out due to a snowstorm which almost NEVER happens for example) or other such phenomenoms.
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@donnerwetter1905 "The infrastructure score is calculated based on the following factors: road connectivity index, quality of roads, railroad density, efficiency of train services, airport connectivity, efficiency of air transport services, linear shipping connectivity index, efficiency of seaport services, electrification rate, electric power transmission and distribution losses, exposure to unsafe drinking water, reliability of water supply. The World Economic Forum made significant changes to their methodology in the 2018 edition of the report. Therefore, scores from previous years cannot be reliably compared." Are you seriously so full of yourself that you think that this sounds like a survey? "Statista" almost never uses opinion surveys unless it states as such, and "survey" in this case is an inspection via gathering of information from other sources like the World Bank. But German bigotry seems to be acceptable across German society these days, huh? So much so that even if I cited the World Bank itself, which places Germany at 4.37 in Infrastructure and the US at 4.07 in Infrastructure...you'd still try and claim otherwise, right? Grow up. Edit: This is a classic European ignorance in your last sentence. The issue is not in natural disasters, it's in the immense diversity of climates the US deals with compared to any compact European state like Germany. Texas has never dealt with a snowstorm, not really, so its infrastructure never accounted for that and got its electrical grid knocked out. That doesn't even mention the fact that a sprawling population with few dense populations means that it costs the US far more to have similar infrastructure to Germany at all.
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@donnerwetter1905 I was and am frustrated with this consistent German superiority complex that allows people like you to use personal experience and trump over literal statistics. You can't be wrong. I admitted when I was wrong using statistics, but from my experience I've seen plenty of public transportation in the US cities. Because my personal bias is flawed. But YOUR personal bias is somehow correct because you say so. Edit: Dude. Your video is just a copy of Grand Central Station, but I didn't see any access to general subway stations while the GCS does have high speed rail like that tour. Hell, the tour version for GCS has way more views, funny enough. But yeah, I'm done with you. I can throw statistics at you and your superiority complex will never asmit that US infrastructure is only slightly behind Germany's. I bet you also believe that Americans have generally poorer Middle Class at this rate. Whichever the case. I'm done. 👋
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