Yeah and then Israel can go back to their peaceful genocide right? I get it death is bad, but ignoring context (settler colonialism) to feel superior by saying both sides are bad is dumb. None of us can sit here and tell an oppressed people how to fight their oppressor.

12 days of Christmas by Bob and Doug Mckenzie

https://youtu.be/1DTwLqR071M?si=SpMC1J3ZPPSNECcJ

It is one of the consequences of monopolies, but monopolies are a consequence of economic competition.

The “winner” gets the losers stuff and customers (mergers for example), making the winner bigger and more able to manipulate the market to their benefit.

When there are few enough companies profits can be chased without consideration for anything else (planned obsolescence, shipping jobs outside the country, lay-offs, etc.)

So, like you said except in a for profit market, monopolies are inevitable.

Imagine thinking a few hundred people you disagree with is worse than a mega-corp manipulating information for profits.

I mean, he knows loads about manipulating people and being rich. Does he bring value to society?

No.

Which parts exactly?

I mean, a good chunk of things are things I don’t like because they are fascist. For example: ethno states intent on committing genocide. Or attempts to conflate disdain for a state and its settler colonialism, as disdain for an entire people, which I suppose is fascist in and of itself.

Or are you saying that you have such a refined pallet for preferences that you like everything except things that are fascist?

I “know” this is a metaphor, and I’m being a wet blanket about it, but I’m saying it anyway. There is no super hero to save anyone from anything, much less a society circulating the drain. The only way to make things better is by getting organized with your friends, family, and neighbours.

Be prepared (collectively) when things go to shit, and actively try to make them better. You can do very little alone, but together the choice is no longer between Hitler and Hitler, it’s change or stagnation. And neither genocide Joe or Cheetos man will lead to any positive progress.

Okay, no more wet blanket…

This is disingenuous: the fundamental principle of socialism and Communism is democracy. And, credit where credit is due, capitalism forced us to socialize the production of goods and services (it now takes many people to “produce” anything). Currently, there is no discussion about who gets the profit of socialized labour, it goes to the people who own the workplace, which are rarely the workers.

So, to make your example realistic, you and this other person are part of a community that grows apples (pick any rural community). Together, you all own the fields.

How do you decide what each person gets? You come to a consensus. There are so many variables; is the other person injured?young?sick?old? Or really bad at picking apples? Maybe you are on some apple picking super serum. How do you decide who gets what? The same way people usually do; you decide together.

In your example, having a blanket rule as you suggest would never work, and would be unfair, but it is what happens now in our advanced capitalistic economies. If you pick 1000 apples for a company, how many do you keep? Or more realistically; once the apples are sold, how much of the.profits go to you? You have no choice. You work, get paid, and go home. You work harder and you end up with just about the same amount at the end. The only saving grace is if you work hard enough, one day you might be promoted by the generous owner to a position where you are no longer the poor schmuck who does all the work. But that poor schmuck will always still exist, it’s just no longer you.

…I need to write less lol

How much supply is needed to bring the price down then?

While I agree that in general there is a problem with zoning laws making it all but illegal to build anything other than single family homes, markets work in such a way that the price is based on what people are “willing” to pay. Where a home is a fundamental necessity, this is already problematic. Nevermind the huge increase in access to money (the advent of mortgages and all of the policy surrounding them) driving up the demand side of the equation.

So when the options are: Homelessness (kind of illegal) Renting (very expensive) Buying (even more expensive)

Foregoing any participation in the housing market isn’t really an option.

As a side note: the simple supply/demand model is from econ 101, and I really think it’s unwise to make decisions based on first year university textbooks.

I am genuinely curious, I couldn’t find what Communism did to Finland. There was the civil war between socialist and non- socialists, but this can’t be blamed on one ideology over the other, the Soviets invaded southern Finland to “liberate” the “reds” in the south, but this also isn’t able to be blamed on Communism, as it was the Soviets. And then Finland sided with the axis powers and attacked the Soviets, including the siege of Leningrad leading to mass suffering and starvation of “communists”.

I do not come from Finland so it’s hard for me to know much about the history outside of what I can read. I just pulled most of these facts from Wikipedia (a liberal western source), so if you are willing I would appreciate some insight.

True, the south manages to have a rising GDP and the world’s worst rates of suicide, and some of the longest working hours of anywhere, while being held hostage by that same crime family. That is the difference you can expect while you kiss the boot of the empire responsible for segregating your country and preventing any attempts of reunification.

Though to be fair, DPRK is the way it is at least in part thanks to the Americans obliterating their cities and farm land. But we can ignore history to make a “I used to be in a communist country and it’s bad, trust me bro” statement.

And I agree, I prefer to live in a system where prisoners aren’t primarily minorities or political prisoners. And where the prison system isn’t the most populated in the world, and rife with for-profit forced labour.

I would also be curious to hear which definition of “capitalism” and “Communism” you are using. That is, if you are open to dialogue.

Because capitalism was the first time money existed lol

That would require reading Marx lol. These hot takes usually come from reactionaries mimicking what they hear from other reactionaries/charlatans/media towing the stateline. Marx was wrong about some things of course, like the revolutions to a democratically worker owned economy would come from the industrialized centres. But knowing about the ideas which are critical of our current economic system is dangerous to a few, and freeing to the majority.