/r/LateStageCapitalism - Yet more godless, freedom-hating Communists on Reddit

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I actually thought that subreddit was pretty funny, most of the stuff is /pol/ level memes, just commie instead of alt right. But then here we are...

latestagecapitalism.png

I've never even posted in any of those subs.
 
mdrop22 said:
I actually thought that subreddit was pretty funny, most of the stuff is /pol/ level memes, just commie instead of alt right. But then here we are...

View attachment 245011
I've never even posted in any of those subs.
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I Googled on how that can happen and I found this

/r/LateStageCapitalism is terrible with their bans. I once got banned for saying I was a manager at a coffeeshop. When I appealed, a mod harassed me. I continued to request a real reason when another mod chimed in and said he was a middle manager too. Eventually the mod team decided if I wrote a 500 page essay on why libertarianism is bad and posted it to /r/politicalrevolution they would remove my ban. They can fuck off.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/6cnspi/how_can_subreddits_autoban_users_for/
 
ICametoLurk said:
I Googled on how that can happen and I found this


https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/6cnspi/how_can_subreddits_autoban_users_for/
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I just don't know anymore. How can r/conspiracy be considered a "reactionary subreddit"? They post a lot of anti-Trump stuff and lots believe in the whole Russian conspiracy. There's still plenty of Illumanti and spoopy ghost/alien posts too.

I guess you can't believe in Bigfoot AND Socialism. These are mutually exclusive.
 
PortsideDave said:
Communism and or Marxism fascinates me because despite the numerous failures people still want to try it out. Cuba and North Korea are pure communist countries and are utter shitholes. Laos is a joke and Vietnam became impoverished after the Vietnam war. Funnily enough they became the western imperialists they hated so much when they decided to invade Cambodia and install a puppet government. China is arguable the only communist success story but even then they adopted capitalist ideas in the 70s and 80s to stop an economic crisis. Despite that they're (ironically) shitty to their workers. My theory is it's because Marx was an "intellectual" and thus obviously never wrong about anything. It fascinates me however rebel groups think communism is the way to go despite it most likely being worse for them in the long run.
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Marxism resonates with many people on a moral basis. "People working together instead of against each other; everybody sharing with everybody; equality; no beggars living in the street while millionaires dine of caviar" -- it's in fact an extension of New Testament morals which have been ingrained in Western culture for 2000 years. It appeals emotionally and feels right and just, so some people decide it is the way to go without any considerations of historical failures or practicality.

To this day, GDR fans point out that while there were far less consumer products available in the GDR, nobody had to starve, nobody lived on the streets, there was no unemployment and a very low crime rate. This is true. Jugendwerkhof Torgau was also true. The GDR was massively unforgiving towards people who refused its blessings. A punk or hippie who actively chose to live as a vagrant subverted the state's fundamental dogma -- that every human being knew nothing greater than working shifts in an aluminum foundry, living in a highrise apartment block and practicing folk dances with the Worker's Folklore Group --, so he had to be re-educated. Methods were brutal.

Margaret Thatcher once remarked that socialists had the problem of running out of other people's money. Not very precise -- because the Eastern-Bloc Nations' state banks could print arbitrary amounts of money. What they did run out of were ways to make people work. As mentioned above, the central dogma was that people would actually love factory work once factories were nationalized. They didn't -- most types of industrial work probably aren't very self-rewarding. In order to make people work quickly and efficiently, you sort of need the carrot and the stick. Capitalism does just that: The carrots are raises for reliable workers, the stick is unemployment. This method of motivation seems to be very efficient, this is likely the main reason capitalism succeeds.

This fact -- that for many jobs, people need to be motivated with a reward/punishment scheme -- rings uncomfortable to many: Another reason why Marxism still has a number of adherents. Wouldn't it be nice if work could be made so pleasant and rewarding that employees are content with working just for the greater good? Well, it is kinda hard to make building roads, cleaning the streets, building cars on an assembly line or growing potatoes sufficiently pleasant and rewarding.

My parents once visited a family in the GDR. After dinner, the family's mother said: "And now for something very special and delicious!" My parents wondered what it could be. What she brought out was a small, dry, shrunken orange. "A very special treat! From Crimea Island."
 
The only real honest to goodness communist I ever met, who was willing to sit down and debate me in a friendly way came off as very ignorant of economics and didn't support communism as much as he just hated capitalism because it (in his words) "goes against the natural human condition of altruism"

He believed that fostering competition between people and making it so it was possible for a man to starve in the streets if he didn't/couldn't work was fundamentally against nature.

Now, remember we said he was ignorant? Yeah, that was Exhibit "A", his unshakable belief that we all were happy hunter gatherer noble savages once upon a time, and then the bloody capitalists came along and ruined it all. It only got worse from there, as he refused to believe economics was a thing, and a city that can't fill in it's potholes isn't short of cash in it's transportation budget to do it, they just lack EMPATHY. If they CARED enough, they'd fill them in.... public works employees demanding a paycheck for doing it was proof of how the "natural order" of things was being wrecked by capitalist greed.

So yeah, I agree, most people don't support communism, they just oppose capitalism, on moral, not logical, grounds. Which is why they just don't want to give it up. Facts can't convince them, they know in their hearts that communism WILL WORK.
 
DykesDykesChina said:
Marxism resonates with many people on a moral basis. "People working together instead of against each other; everybody sharing with everybody; equality; no beggars living in the street while millionaires dine of caviar" -- it's in fact an extension of New Testament morals which have been ingrained in Western culture for 2000 years. It appeals emotionally and feels right and just, so some people decide it is the way to go without any considerations of historical failures or practicality.
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The problem is that no society can possibly succeed with such a naive view of human motivation. This just isn't going to happen. When it doesn't, the government you set up is going to have to resort to a carrot and stick approach, and the problem with these socialist "utopias" is that they don't even have carrots, and sticks aren't enough, so they generally go for gun to the head coercion, or just getting rid of people, and using terror to motivate may deter resistance, but it doesn't exactly get enthusiastic support or success.

Part of why our constitutional system works in the U.S. is it was created by people who knew people (including themselves) were thieving, corrupt, greedy assholes and given enough power, would go insane from it and rob everyone blind if they didn't just go purely murderous, so it pit every branch of government against each other, so that their mutual infighting would prevent any one of them from getting too powerful.

Soviet-style systems never do this and thus inevitably get taken over by the most murderous strongman in the country (and it's almost invariably a man).

That gridlock and dysfunction isn't a bug, it's a feature.
 
AnOminous said:
The problem is that no society can possibly succeed with such a naive view of human motivation. This just isn't going to happen. When it doesn't, the government you set up is going to have to resort to a carrot and stick approach, and the problem with these socialist "utopias" is that they don't even have carrots, and sticks aren't enough, so they generally go for gun to the head coercion, or just getting rid of people, and using terror to motivate may deter resistance, but it doesn't exactly get enthusiastic support or success.

Part of why our constitutional system works in the U.S. is it was created by people who knew people (including themselves) were thieving, corrupt, greedy assholes and given enough power, would go insane from it and rob everyone blind if they didn't just go purely murderous, so it pit every branch of government against each other, so that their mutual infighting would prevent any one of them from getting too powerful.

Soviet-style systems never do this and thus inevitably get taken over by the most murderous strongman in the country (and it's almost invariably a man).

That gridlock and dysfunction isn't a bug, it's a feature.
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Another reason the posters in the subject of this thread are hypocrites to their very core is that they are the most selfish, venal bastards of all.

And saddest part of all is that Exhibit A of this exists in the fact their subreddit even exists.

A bunch of raging manchildren who FUCKING HATE CAPITALISM are raging and screaming on something built by, supported by, and promoted by a capitalist system called Reddit, and for all their talk of wanting to buck that system, those fools continue to patronize it by the mere act of being Redditors.

If they want to argue it's a "necessary evil" to spread their message, then comes Exhibit B, when it's revealed that every last one of them is some spoiled waste of human flesh living with their parents, on some sort of welfare, and generally admits to spending money (and thus contributing to the capitalist economy) on frivolous BS, like the one douchebag who admitted he blew money on drugs to escape the "pain" of his daily life.

That doesn't even get into the ones who are proud of shoplifting, and if they want to claim it's their way of saying "fuck capitalism", then they'd make shitty communists, because according to communist theory thieves are an anathema to the very concept of a altruistic society that they so idolize (or so they profess to believe in).

Long story short, that sub is a hypocrisy for existing and all the crap on it is a hypocrisy against the very ideals they claim.
 
eh, we should just automate as many shit jobs as possible, universal mincome and shit. Make robots the means of production. Fuck it.
 
cuddle striker said:
eh, we should just automate as many shit jobs as possible, universal mincome and shit. Make robots the means of production. Fuck it.
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It's probably optimistic to think this is coming in the immediate future, but we should probably work toward something like it. One advantage is more lolcows.
 
DykesDykesChina said:
Marxism resonates with many people on a moral basis. "People working together instead of against each other; everybody sharing with everybody; equality; no beggars living in the street while millionaires dine of caviar" -- it's in fact an extension of New Testament morals which have been ingrained in Western culture for 2000 years. It appeals emotionally and feels right and just, so some people decide it is the way to go without any considerations of historical failures or practicality.

To this day, GDR fans point out that while there were far less consumer products available in the GDR, nobody had to starve, nobody lived on the streets, there was no unemployment and a very low crime rate. This is true. Jugendwerkhof Torgau was also true. The GDR was massively unforgiving towards people who refused its blessings. A punk or hippie who actively chose to live as a vagrant subverted the state's fundamental dogma -- that every human being knew nothing greater than working shifts in an aluminum foundry, living in a highrise apartment block and practicing folk dances with the Worker's Folklore Group --, so he had to be re-educated. Methods were brutal.

Margaret Thatcher once remarked that socialists had the problem of running out of other people's money. Not very precise -- because the Eastern-Bloc Nations' state banks could print arbitrary amounts of money. What they did run out of were ways to make people work. As mentioned above, the central dogma was that people would actually love factory work once factories were nationalized. They didn't -- most types of industrial work probably aren't very self-rewarding. In order to make people work quickly and efficiently, you sort of need the carrot and the stick. Capitalism does just that: The carrots are raises for reliable workers, the stick is unemployment. This method of motivation seems to be very efficient, this is likely the main reason capitalism succeeds.

This fact -- that for many jobs, people need to be motivated with a reward/punishment scheme -- rings uncomfortable to many: Another reason why Marxism still has a number of adherents. Wouldn't it be nice if work could be made so pleasant and rewarding that employees are content with working just for the greater good? Well, it is kinda hard to make building roads, cleaning the streets, building cars on an assembly line or growing potatoes sufficiently pleasant and rewarding.

My parents once visited a family in the GDR. After dinner, the family's mother said: "And now for something very special and delicious!" My parents wondered what it could be. What she brought out was a small, dry, shrunken orange. "A very special treat! From Crimea Island."
Click to expand...

In 1988 the USSR's homicide rate was 9.6 per 100,000, compared to 8.4 per 100,000 in the United States and 1.1 per 100,000 in West Germany. If East Germany was safer than West Germany, it wasn't because the communist system guaranteed it.
 
AnOminous said:
It's probably optimistic to think this is coming in the immediate future, but we should probably work toward something like it. One advantage is more lolcows.
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Yeah it's not coming any time soon, we'll have to slog through decades of most people being unable to find jobs while we build up the robot army before we're close to realizing we've succeeded. There will be nothing but cows *waves arm over landscape* cows for miles.
 
AnOminous said:
It's probably optimistic to think this is coming in the immediate future, but we should probably work toward something like it. One advantage is more lolcows.
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Isn't this approaching Bob Chipman's ideal view of the world?

The difference is, of course, that you don't think it would have happened immediately if Clinton had won the 2016 election.
 
Pointless Pedant said:
In 1988 the USSR's homicide rate was 9.6 per 100,000, compared to 8.4 per 100,000 in the United States and 1.1 per 100,000 in West Germany. If East Germany was safer than West Germany, it wasn't because the communist system guaranteed it.
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I think USSR communism and GDR communism can't be compared in a straightforward manner. Society, mentality and socio-psychology were probably very different.

E.g. Russia has always had a massive alcohol problem, as well as a macho attitude about what constitutes manliness. We all know what alcohol+macho attitude can do violent-crime-wise. Also in 1988, the Eastern-Bloc-nations were already visibly going to entropy.

What is true is that the GDR's crime rate was markedly lower than West Germany's unless you count crimes committed by the state against the populace.
 
DykesDykesChina said:
What is true is that the GDR's crime rate was markedly lower than West Germany's unless you count crimes committed by the state against the populace.
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Less likely to be murdered by some rando, more likely to be ratted out by some neighbor to the Stasi and have your life ruined for no reason.
 
cuddle striker said:
eh, we should just automate as many shit jobs as possible, universal mincome and shit. Make robots the means of production. Fuck it.
Click to expand...
We could automate many jobs with existing technology -- pilots, truck drivers, locomotive drivers, mailmen (just use drones), farmers (hydroponic greenscrapers). In Paris, they tested automated Metro trains which worked flawlessly, but the trade unions luddited the robots away, because they'd have killed the jobs of human drivers. The Nuremberg subway service just said "fuck it" and automated anyway. We'll have to figure out how to deal with robots eating up jobs on a grand scale; Basic Income is often suggested, but at the moment it still seems to be out of reach for most economies; in Germany you'd need about 1000 billion € annually, which is more than the entire German tax revenue. With new technologies, such as Very High Temperature Molten Salt Reactors, plasma arc material processing or nanomachines giving a boost to economies, luxuries such as Basic Income may become viable.

For completely automated production cycles, some breakthroughs in (soft) artificial intelligence are still needed. They may be decades away, maybe even 100 years, I don't know. Fully automated production is still utopian, but I think it is a goal well worth working towards. Capitalism is most efficient at creating such technologies, so currently it is the way to go. It's not the best system imaginable, but holds the greatest promise of improving the human situation and evolving into a better system as time progresses.

 
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