Because you invested in a shit plan or simply made your investments poorly. I know plenty of people who are doing well on their retirement investment plans, and I’m doing fine too. Don’t blame America, the country, for your shitty decisions.
and it’s the government model that is to blame?
Yes, because it leaves itself so prone to authoritarian takeover. As I’ve said before, this is a feature of communism, not a bug. A single, one-party “transitional” government is intended. You might as well just put up a sign that says “Dictator Wanted.” This is why there isn’t a single instance of communism on a nation-state scale that hasn’t quickly devolved into an authoritarian state. It’s not hard to understand this. Your government model has to account for the reality that people are going to disagree on things and faction out. Your model has to be able to manage that process. Communism insists everyone adhere to the same ideology, and those that don’t just get “re-educated.” It’s a horrible ideology, a horrible government model; naïve utopian fantasy at best, cynical authoritarian scheme at worst.
Lemmy overall is just different shades of red. Picking your instance just allows you to select pink vs. crimson.
C is for cunnilingus and cunnilingus is for me!
Simple - it’s the ideal.
Not in my view. I don’t want the State owning all sources of wealth and material goods. The problem with capitalism is that too much of that stuff gets funneled into too few hands. Communism is the same problem, just different people. No thanks.
As I said, not a fan of it, but the global economy is pretty entrenched in it. Can’t just get rid of it cold turkey style.
Not going to waste my time with someone who has such absolutist views untethered to reality.
You point out one quasi-mistake I made and all of a sudden my entire position is false and based on ignorance of how the world functions?
People like you are what make the internet a shitty place to be sometimes.
You can replace Russia with North Korea if it suits you, I forgot to include that one. Yes, the USSR was communist, while modern day Russia much less so. Doesn’t change my point and doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m talking about.
There are plenty of governments out there that aren’t authoritarian. What do you mean when you say “the government is threatened by a plurality of citizens?” What is the nature of the threat in question? A democratically-elected government that puts down an armed rebellion from part of its populace doesn’t magically become authoritarian simply because it used forced to maintain its existence in response to a domestic threat.
Give me an example of a communist country that has not resulted in the creation of an authoritarian government.
Yes, but you choose to work for a company. Don’t pretend that’s the same as the government of the country you happen to be born in taking ownership of your creations. In a capitalist country, had Alexey Pajitnov chosen to develop the game himself, he would have made much more from it. If he had done that in the USSR, he’d still have his creation and all its monetary proceeds taken away from him.
How’s about a website that generates money, like Facebook or YouTube? Can you own that?
What about products that designed to create ongoing streams of revenue, like a patent on an invention or a piece of art you can collect royalties from every time it is displayed? The USSR famously took ownership of Tetris away from its creator.
Under communism, how does the stock market work? I’m not a big fan of it, but it’s pretty hard to imagine getting rid of it now that the global economy is pretty much dependent on it.
Today, five countries exist that can be said to be communist: China, Russia, Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba. Of those five, none have achieved actual communism, and several have inarguably embraced capitalism to a great extent. All of them have essentially authoritarian governments. Which is unsurprising, since a dictatorship of the proletariat is central to the Marxist vision of how to create a communist society, and involves the creation of a single-party transitional government that forcibly suppresses all its critics and rivals.
I’m not big into capitalism and I think we should implement plenty of socialist reforms, but I will never understand why some people on the Left—or anyone for that matter—think communism is what we should be striving for.
Damnit, now I wish lurking came intrinsically with boba.
Well, that’s a good question; I’m not enough of a sleep expert to know, but it’s possible the 2 hours of sleep could stave off the effects of insomnia for some time or they might actually stave them off for a full 24 hours more. A standard sleep cycle is roughly 90 minutes long, and there’s some evidence to indicate that the raw amount of sleep in hours isn’t actually that important for the purposes of restoring the brain’s ability to function properly; some data indicates that the grogginess we feel when waking up sometimes has more to do with our sleep being interrupted during a sleep cycle as opposed to at the end of one. So, theoretically, it’s possible a sleep-deprived person might feel quite refreshed after just two hours of sleep. But again, I’m no expert.
Relevant fact for those who don’t know: after roughly 72 hours without sleep, you will start hallucinating, which is a symptom of psychosis.
That’s called “being antisocial” and it’s absolute bliss.
That’s not “mildly infuriating,” that’s straight-up scary. Call the cops.
LOL. Omg I’m such a survivor. I’m only a survivor because I survived this long. I would be a completely different person if I I just survived longer than this. 😝