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Life During Class Wartime

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31–40 of 263 posts

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the west, the prevalent idea is that socialism/communism lost and that there is nothing beyond capitalism. It didn't just "lose", it killed millions of its own people in the process. Having been born in a communist state, I'd rather clean toilets in American than do anything else in the USSR. Edit: It's basically impossible to communicate the day-to-day misery and deprivation of late stage Communism without soun…

What about all the places where that didn't happen? E.g. the Nordic countries where social democracy has been extremely successful.

I think it helps to draw some distinctions here. Nordic countries have strong social welfare systems, but private property and free enterprise are still a thing. This is not at all the same as communism where everything is ultimately state owned and operated.

China is an interesting example too because it's basically capitalist with strong government oversight. So you can go hog wild on exploiting labor and amassing wealth as long as you don't oppose the overall goals of the government. We'll see how long they can keep it running - the problem with most authoritarian systems is that they're only as good as their current leadership, and when that changes things tend to fall apart.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#32

The elephant in the room is why governments need more money: old age benefits like social security. I fear that taxing wealth will just be a tax on future investment while funnelling that wealth to the elderly. Already, folks are pushing to make the key asset owned by the old - housing - free from property taxes (if you're over 60, naturally)[1] which will only push housing prices up and drive more budget deficits th…

The cure to that, unfortunately is more corruption and here America is leading proudly

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#33
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the west, the prevalent idea is that socialism/communism lost and that there is nothing beyond capitalism. It didn't just "lose", it killed millions of its own people in the process. Having been born in a communist state, I'd rather clean toilets in American than do anything else in the USSR. Edit: It's basically impossible to communicate the day-to-day misery and deprivation of late stage Communism without soun…

We are currently killing millions of our own people. Communism is not stuck in time with the USSR.

> We are currently killing millions of our own people.

What do you mean?

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#34
post #3

Yeah I'm glad somebody's talking about it. Wealth inequality seems like it will be THE defining issue of our lives (accelerated drastically by AI). I think there are many practical ways to solve it, and would love to see more proposals out there. Instead I tend to see nihilism or division.

What are these practical ways to solve it? And who do you think will implement them? Especially when Billionaires control the opinions of a big chunk of the population.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#36
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are currently killing millions of our own people. Communism is not stuck in time with the USSR.

> We are currently killing millions of our own people. What do you mean?

Perhaps you haven't been paying attention to the skyrocketing prices of fuel, food, and healthcare... Or did you just think all those people just above the poverty line disappear when the livable income floor gets hydraulically jacked up?

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#37
post #3

Yeah I'm glad somebody's talking about it. Wealth inequality seems like it will be THE defining issue of our lives (accelerated drastically by AI). I think there are many practical ways to solve it, and would love to see more proposals out there. Instead I tend to see nihilism or division.

[flagged]

If you have a vanguard with special privileges then congrats, you've replaced the inequality of Capitalism with another inequality. This is the exact challenge GP is talking about; it's hard to avoid the tendency for power to accumulate.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#38
post #2

Regarding the IMF report, is it actually harder to hide wealth than income, or is it that there are so few global taxes on wealth that nobody's currently bothering to hide it? It seems like income, being a continuous series of transactions, would be the more difficult of the two.

Revenue transactions and taxable income are two very different topics.

Your accountant can clarify the difference.

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#39
post #3

Yeah I'm glad somebody's talking about it. Wealth inequality seems like it will be THE defining issue of our lives (accelerated drastically by AI). I think there are many practical ways to solve it, and would love to see more proposals out there. Instead I tend to see nihilism or division.

Extreme power inequality seems to be the default state of human society. Power concentrates until it's maximally concentrated, then stays there. Power shakeups seem to usually replace one group of elites with another group of smaller or the same size. Exceptions to this rule come about for specific reasons. Before the industrial revolution, there just wasn't that much power to go around. Everyone was working their la…

I think you'll find that any specific change in political directions come about from specific reasons (what would even be the alternative?).

Re: Life During Class Wartime

#40
A fairer way would be requiring all excess profits be invested in hard assets like factories, infrastructure etc. capital should be forced into competition and create excess capacity.
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