Political Memes

FYI, in the fifties the CIA wrote a memo where they stated that claims that Stalin was autocratic were largely exaggerated and the USSR largely had collective leadership.

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-00810A006000360009-0.pdf

It’s the best system when combined with strong regulation and good social safety nets.

Sure, it's just too bad it's also a system in which the most powerful are incentivized to cut regulations and destroy social safety nets.

This utopic version of capitalism sounds really nice, but it's fully incompatible with the actual reality of capitalism.

It’s the best system when combined with strong regulation and good social safety nets.

Both regulation and social safety nets run counter to the concept of a free market and a free market is central to the definition of Capitalism.

That's like saying "The best form of travel is unrestrained forward acceleration" with the caveat that it must be combined with the ability to break and steer.

Uh, why? What's actually good about it? Like, what dies it do well?

The strongest safety net would be to do away with capitalism and move to socialism. Which is why the U.S. diplomatically isolates, trade embargos, or just fucking assassinates countries/leaders that try to start socialism.

when combined with strong regulation and good social safety nets

🤣 I’m not disagreeing with the sentiment but to think we’ll see those anytime soon is a bit of a sad joke. I think too many people in power have made too much money for anything but a sundering to change their minds and allow themselves to be regulated and work for the good of all, instead of themselves.

In a slightly different vein of thought, I think there is truth to the sentiment that fascists don’t cede power willingly. I get that we should focus on things we can change that aren’t unimportant, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a fascist government being voted out.

I was average people and watched a lot of layoffs happen over it.

It didn't feel that way, not like 2006 felt. I think the crash got quickly overshadowed by 9/11. I also believe that the bubble itself was actually managed better, instead of becoming instant tax cuts and handouts like bubbles under Republicans, so the fallout didn't feel so bad.

Being close to tech, it was a hard time with friends losing their jobs.

You are not like them poors bro, you will be a billionaire any day now! You don't wanna pay taxes on those billions right?

I agree with this. It's gotten bad, like, great depression bad, at times, but it never lasted. There has so far been bounce backs in a relatively reasonable timeframe.

When it crashes, you'll know.

Techno fascism? No wait that's what we're turning into

At the very least heavy regulation to prevent unfair practices. Humans will pretty much always optimize the fun out of everything.

Take competitive video games for example, where once something becomes the meta, it's used and abused until it gets nerfed. But people still play hundreds of games with whatever the most optimal meta is, even if it takes the fun and variety out of the game and makes it boring.

Pretty much every economic system ends up the same way, people figure out the most optimal ways to exploit whatever the system is, take the fun and fairness out of it, and ruin it for anyone who doesn't want to play by the meta. In an ideal system, there's strong regulatory systems in place (for example the FTC and the CFPB) that work to balance things and make sure the system works for everyone. But the people who like to optimize the fun out of things have decided they'd like the regulators out of the way so they can go crazy with their exploitation.

This but unironically

Any where such stupidly high wealth inequality cannot happen, or at least that doesn't put "the economy" as the most important thing in the universe, environment, communities and individuals be damned