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   Mitch Conner (olmitch@shitposter.club)'s status on Saturday, 03-Feb-2024 14:26:25 JST Mitch Conner
   Visegrád 24 on X: "BREAKING: Argentine President Javier Milei just managed to push through his package of reforms that will transform the country’s economic system. 300+ laws will be repealed or amended. State-owned companies are sold off & massive deregulation introduced The vote? 144 vs 109 https://t.co/SuT87tRZ33" / X
   https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1753565745500365229
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     iced depresso (icedquinn@blob.cat)'s status on Saturday, 03-Feb-2024 14:26:24 JST iced depresso

     in reply to
     @olmitch > state owned companies sold off
     seems like there is something of a mess in here somewhere
     shouldn't a 'company' be profitable enough that it doesn't need to be sold to stand on its own :blobcatderpy2:
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     iced depresso (icedquinn@blob.cat)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 03:14:49 JST iced depresso

     in reply to

     • Aven
     • incognitum
     @aven @incognitum @olmitch wrecking was a charge for sabotaging socialism. which the CIA was actively doing and distributing instruction manuals for.
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     Aven (aven@shitposter.club)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 03:14:50 JST Aven

     in reply to

     • iced depresso
     • incognitum
     @incognitum @icedquinn @olmitch socialist activists seem to pretend that abolishing capitalism means that corporations and industry would cease to exist, in a "food comes from a grocery store" mindset. In reality, it means that companies are nationalized and seized by the state (which communists call "the workers" or "the people") and become state-owned corporations.
     
     State-owned corporations operate on a different set of incentives: money and growth of their corporation don't come from profit (revenue minus costs) or happy customers, it comes from The Party (bureaucrats with politically-correct opinions). Therefore state-owned corporations tend to be very inefficient, very polluting, miserable to work for, an miserable to buy from.
     
     The post office is a good example, with the expression "going postal" coming from how happy their workers are with their jobs. In terms of customer satisfaction, I'd point to the VA (Veteran's Administration) as the state-owned corporation for single-payer public-option healthcare. Public school teacher low salaries, public school teacher child abuse (and inability to be fired for it).
     
     Socialists seem to think that all industry and corporations should work that way, and point to the most regulated and government-controlled industries as examples of how capitalism is failing, demanding even more merger of state and corporate power as the solution. Socialism was never about ending corporations, it was always about making them too big to fail and then incorporating them into the government.
     
     Full-blown communism is when you have to go to work and your shitty abusive job, and refusing to do so is unpatriotic and criminal. There is no unemployment or homelessness in communism because they're rounded up and put in sweatshops. If they refuse to work, they're imprisoned and enslaved and sent to more remote areas. Look up "Wrecking" in the USSR.
     on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ likes this.
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     incognitum (incognitum@liberdon.com)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 03:14:51 JST incognitum

     in reply to

     • iced depresso

     @icedquinn

     Think of the post office, or amtrak, or the NY subway, or public schools. They provide shit service at outrageous cost, and with all of that they aren't even profitable counting the public teet as "revenue". And they don't need to be because their customers aren't the people relying on their services, their "customers" are nameless bureaucrats spending other peoples' money.

     Companies aren't inherently good, it's just that in a free market the bad ones are allowed to die.

     @olmitch

     on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ likes this.
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     iced depresso (icedquinn@blob.cat)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 03:16:40 JST iced depresso

     in reply to

     • iced depresso
     • Aven
     • incognitum
     @aven @incognitum @olmitch there are those old anticommunist print manuals they gave out. they basically detail how to deliberately create inefficiencies and bureaucracy so a working group can get as little done as possible.
     
     sadly it seems they then used it domestically because a lot of stuff here looks exactly like how they told anticommunists how to crash production :blabcat:
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     iced depresso (icedquinn@blob.cat)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 03:21:02 JST iced depresso

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     • Aven
     • incognitum
     @aven @incognitum @olmitch trying to remember the name of the booklet
     
     i found this one https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26184/pg26184-images.html but i don't think it was it
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     Aven (aven@shitposter.club)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 03:21:03 JST Aven

     in reply to

     • iced depresso
     • incognitum
     @icedquinn @incognitum @olmitch I'm sure there was some of that because the CIA is evil and should be destroyed. But also communists lie and blame the CIA for literally everything. The USSR did the vast majority of it to itself.
     
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrecking_(Soviet_Union)
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     Aven (aven@shitposter.club)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 03:47:17 JST Aven

     in reply to

     • iced depresso
     • Terry Hendrix II 🏹
     • incognitum
     @thendrix @icedquinn @incognitum @olmitch the CIA is fascist and therefore benefits from socialism. I forget who said it but it went like "The very portrait of fascism is the man sitting at the FBI desk at Twitter".
     
     You can't have an FBI desk at every fedi instance admin's house. That's why they need a monopoly that needs to be regulated such that it becomes illegal to run a fedi instance. For instance, legally requiring real-time moderation that is impossible for anyone but a megacorporation to do, and removing the concept of "posts are property of their respective users".
     
     Consolidation of the market under a few giant umbrella companies is great for the government, and is worth bailing them out as they get less and less competitive. Everything gets shittier, but the fascists gain increasing control over an ever-shrinking pie. If Marxist revolution comes, it'll just be a CIA coup to remove the remaining publicly-elected officials and non-government power, and crown themselves (the TLAs) kings, making what they were building all along official.
     on-lain ✔ᵛᵉʳᶦᶠᶦᵉᵈ likes this.
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     Terry Hendrix II 🏹 (thendrix@social.hendrixgames.com)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 03:47:18 JST Terry Hendrix II 🏹

     in reply to

     • iced depresso
     • Aven
     • incognitum

     Now they’re the same thing.

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     iced depresso (icedquinn@blob.cat)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 03:50:55 JST iced depresso

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     • Aven
     • incognitum
     @aven @incognitum @olmitch i think functional socialism looks more like hackerspaces and worker co-ops.
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     Aven (aven@shitposter.club)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 03:50:56 JST Aven

     in reply to

     • iced depresso
     • incognitum
     @icedquinn @incognitum @olmitch my point is that in socialism you cannot refuse to work, and you cannot strike for better working conditions. In socialism the worker has far less power and freedom, and the state will consider refusal to work as sabotage or disability like Sluggish Schizophrenia, which the USSR used to put political dissidents into asylums.
     
     The more socialist activists "win", the less power they have and more more miserable they become. Socialist activist "helping" is Munchhausen Syndrome By Proxy against workers, making workers weaker under the government than they were under private industry. See unions for which it is illegal to strike.
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     iced depresso (icedquinn@blob.cat)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 03:57:31 JST iced depresso

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     • Aven
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     @aven @incognitum @olmitch sort of. capitalism tends to have everything owned by a financial caste. worker co-ops are actually owned by the citizenry, and not in the euphemism version of that statement that tankies mean
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     Aven (aven@shitposter.club)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 03:57:32 JST Aven

     in reply to

     • iced depresso
     • incognitum
     @icedquinn @incognitum @olmitch that's just small communes and private business. That does work, but it's not socialism. It's actually capitalism. The people involved own the means of production on a private basis. Even if shared, it's still private for the group, and is therefore a corporation.
     
     Socialism is necessarily government and large-scale centralization of power. Also
     
     "The purpose of socialism is communism" - Lenin
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     iced depresso (icedquinn@blob.cat)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 04:14:16 JST iced depresso

     in reply to

     • realcaseyrollins ✝️
     @realcaseyrollins @olmitch :neocat_gun: don't touch the post office its important (also, you can't, because USPS is the only constitutionally mandated agency lmao)
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     realcaseyrollins ✝️ (realcaseyrollins@social.teci.world)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 04:14:18 JST realcaseyrollins ✝️

     in reply to

     • iced depresso

     @icedquinn @olmitch This is a really good point.

     I’ve had my own general idea of selling off most departments of the federal government to rich people for them to turn into separate companies or merge them into an existing one (like #USPS), but I guess if a department is making money it can just be given to whoever runs that department.

     Although my personal plan involves forcing the rich to win these departments at auctions and using the revenue to pay off some of the #USA’s national debt.

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     Aven (aven@shitposter.club)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 04:38:07 JST Aven

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     • iced depresso
     • Aven
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     @icedquinn @incognitum @olmitch which is why socialist activists most hate small business owners, never turn their organizations into co-ops, and gleefully shut down small businesses during lockdowns in favor of "essential businesses" like Walmart and Amazon. It's why they hate indie game devs and prefer AAA, "because AAA can pay workers a steady salary, whereas indie is cruel to the worker who might work for the equivalent of less than minimum wage if their game does poorly".
     
     They always seem to have some reason to prefer the big player over the small player. Then things get worse as the big player gets complacent due to lack of competitive market.
     Then they demand government step in, and big player becomes "too big to fail".
     Then things get worse, as there is no alternative, no free market.
     The more they "win", the worse things are for them (and everyone else).
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     iced depresso (icedquinn@blob.cat)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 04:38:07 JST iced depresso

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     • Aven
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     @aven @incognitum @olmitch i suspect the government has no socialists. like every pro-labor thing, it tends to be taken over and sockpuppeted by the sociopaths.
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     Aven (aven@shitposter.club)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 04:38:08 JST Aven

     in reply to

     • iced depresso
     • incognitum
     @icedquinn @incognitum @olmitch
     >capitalism tends to have everything owned by a financial caste
     That's kind of a strawman, because one could say that The Party is the "financial caste" in socialism. People with big money exist regardless of the system, and I'd argue that socialism is even better for big money people because then they control everything, not just capital. The definitions I'm working with are "capitalism is private ownership of capital and free markets" and "socialism is public (government) ownership of capital and regulated markets"
     
     >worker co-ops are actually owned by the citizenry
     So are publicly-traded megacorporations. The difference is size and whether the owners also work there or not. Private companies and small business are not "functional socialism", they're actually more capitalist than megacorporations. Small business owners or worker co-op workers are the most capitalist, because they own the capital at their organization.
     
     A socialist hackerspace or worker co-op would look like lobbying the city or the federal government for a taxpayer-funded grant to create a makerspace or co-op, where the money for it has little to do with how well it is run or what it makes or if the workers are happy.
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     iced depresso (icedquinn@blob.cat)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 04:39:10 JST iced depresso

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     • iced depresso
     • Aven
     • incognitum
     @aven @incognitum @olmitch royal lords have power because they're willing to use force and know how to con everyone in to obeying them. populist movements ... don't.
     
     so whenever you see populism being treated well by things the lords control--run, do not walk, that isn't populism.
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     iced depresso (icedquinn@blob.cat)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 04:42:39 JST iced depresso

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     • Aven
     • incognitum
     @aven @incognitum @olmitch i'm sure authoritarians do. but that still isn't owned by "people" so much as just imperial property by another name.
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     Aven (aven@shitposter.club)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 04:42:41 JST Aven

     in reply to

     • iced depresso
     • incognitum
     @icedquinn @incognitum @olmitch
     >i suspect the government has no socialists
     No one at the government wants the government to own the means of production?
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     iced depresso (icedquinn@blob.cat)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 04:49:05 JST iced depresso

     in reply to

     • Aven
     • incognitum
     @aven @incognitum @olmitch nobody did that here.
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     Aven (aven@shitposter.club)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 04:49:06 JST Aven

     in reply to

     • iced depresso
     • Aven
     • incognitum
     @icedquinn @incognitum @olmitch don't fall for the Pavlovian word-association thing of "Socialism = things working well, Capitalism = things sucking, Socialist = Good honest person, Capitalist = Sociopath", because that shit is what actual sociopaths use "to con everyone in to obeying them".
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     iced depresso (icedquinn@blob.cat)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 04:57:27 JST iced depresso

     in reply to

     • Aven
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     @incognitum @aven @olmitch i think i've made that joke with some regularity; megacorps "running to the state to be protected from capitalism."
     
     regardless, economic capitalism is 'the factory belongs to some guy," economic socialism is 'the factory belongs to the community,' and economic communism is 'everything is owned by the state.' we have never really seen the middle one, but we have seen the last one in two flavors: by euphemizing an imperial statehood as socialism (the USSR), or just overt imperialism (Feudal Europe.)
     
     There are some things which do not call themselves socialist (they might call themselves syndicalist at times), but are the closest to being owned by the community, which are hackerspaces and worker co-ops.
     
     the sociopaths like to push "socialism" in some crippled form--one that for some reason means "nanny state involved in every aspect of your life" and another where the state (that they control) helpfully owns everything, but that is not for the benefit of the commons, that is just neofeudalists saying shit that sounds cool to consent decree you back in to serfdom.
     
     Peasant revolts tend to fail (The Populist Moment) with a lack of organization and follow-through vs. people who have those things, and we have many examples of people pretending to support such revolts on utilitarian purposes (French revolution, Bolsheviks.)
     
     Thus I don't believe the state consists of people who actively want production to be democratized. They want control over everything and either wear a trench coat about it being socialism (now give it to the state to own) or a trenchcoat about it being capitalism (now for your own safety, only this megacorp is allowed to sell it.)
     
     i am now, though, bored.
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     incognitum (incognitum@liberdon.com)'s status on Sunday, 04-Feb-2024 04:57:29 JST incognitum

     in reply to

     • iced depresso
     • Aven

     @icedquinn

     In the US the government has to keep swooping in with hundreds of billions (cumulatively into the several trillions) of dollars in bailouts to protect the banker caste *from* capitalism. It seems odd and perverse to lay that outcome at the feet of capitalism.

     The US is fascism wearing a free enterprise skinsuit.

     @aven @olmitch