• DarkCloud@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    We’re always going to end up with people who can manipulate a crowd being in charge. We’re stupid like that.

    • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      This is what I always find amusing about the Communist argument.

      Like, the elected politicians and bureaucracy can’t be trusted enough to regulate industry under capitalism so we’ll centralize things and then trust them to regulate industry under Communism?

      • Cowbee [he/him]
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        1 hour ago

        Like, the elected politicians and bureaucracy can’t be trusted enough to regulate industry under capitalism so we’ll centralize things and then trust them to regulate industry under Communism?

        If that’s your understanding of Communism, then you need to read The State and Revolution. Quite a lot of Communist theory is concerned with eliminating the concept of beauracracy.

          • Cowbee [he/him]
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            44 minutes ago

            Democracy does produce satisfactory outcomes, what changes reality is the structure of said democracy. Very few systems are direct democracies, and direct democracies themselves are flawed even in theory.

            You should read the text.

      • Skua@kbin.earth
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        3 hours ago

        To be fair, I don’t have to trust elected politicians to distrust unelected CEOs and other upper management more

        • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          But it’s not like companies or business entities won’t have folks in charge of them under communism… Someone has to run the whatevers…

          • SquirtleHermit@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            But it’s also not like the person who runs the whatevers has to be beholden to shareholders and profits. They could instead be incentivized to prioritize the collective well being of the workers.

            And for that matter, politicians and the bureaucracy also live in a system that incentivizes (to the tune of millions in bribes) them to prioritize the interests of businesses owners, and thusly shareholders and profits, at the cost of the common good. Which is a major reason they can’t be trusted.

            • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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              49 minutes ago

              Or, as has happened in capitalism, people will find ways to bend the system to benefit themselves. Except this time without boards so much as bribable officials and whatnot.

              • SquirtleHermit@lemmy.world
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                13 minutes ago

                And now we find ourselves at the beginning of the meme.

                Also, I find “people are greedy” to be an uncompelling reason to support a system that incentivizes greed and exploitation. If people bending a system to benefit themselves is a problem, then the system should be designed to be resistant to this, in a way that incentivizes promoting the common good. Or at the very least shouldn’t encourage these problems.

                Capitalism encourages these problems.

          • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip
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            2 hours ago

            Ideally, supervision over most non critical sectors would fall to randomly drafted, single term committees of the people, think jury duty except better compensated and obviously with bureaucratic resources available to enable these committees to fulfil their role adequately.

            Now this isn’t suited for everything, but in either system any true oversight is done by the people, not the state.

            • Lauchs@lemmy.world
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              47 minutes ago

              Half of America wants to vote for trump and you want to trust in random people? That seems like a wild leap of faith.

              • GarbageShootAlt2
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                9 minutes ago

                It’s more like 30% and that’s with Americans being some of the most wildly mis-educated people out there. I’m sick of seeing sortition shit, but sicker still of misanthropy.

  • EABOD25@lemm.ee
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    5 hours ago

    People are neither inherently selfish or inherently generous. People are survivors regardless of what is necessary to do so. A human will give the shirt off his back to his neighbor but will spite a customer service worker because they’re in a bad mood or feel slighted. Your tribe is your most important social aspect

    • Quacksalber@sh.itjust.works
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      3 hours ago

      But it is that selfishness that communism can’t control for and that capitalism only dampens the effect of. You need a system that counteracts those selfish tendencies in order to reach lasting stability.

  • frightful_hobgoblin
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    5 hours ago

    the initial argument only applies to Utopian Socialism anyway – fighting for your personal interest is exactly the point of communism, destroying all the enemies of the working class