"A visitor to Brussels would normally take in the remarkable museums and infrastructure of magnificent urban display. While the city celebrated the genuine architectural and artistic treasures of northwestern Europe, it did little to reveal the basis of its own immense wealth. In 1927, the main source of wealth for Belgium and the city was not from the artisans but from Africa. It was Africa, particularly the Congo, that made Leopold II one of the richest people on the planet, and it enabled the Belgian economy to become the sixth largest in the world."

"Leopold II became the sole owner of 2.3 million square kilometers of land in 1884, when fourteen European powers participated in the dismemberment of Africa in the Berlin Conference."

"The laziness of the colored races is a kind of genetic burden. Violence was necessary to overcome this natural indolence. If a worker did not work hard, the officer would cut off thier hand; one district official received 1,308 hands in one day from his subordinates. I made war with them. One example was enough: a hundred heads cut off, and there have been plenty of supplies ever since. My goal is to ultimately humanitarian. I killed a hundred people, but that allowed five hundred others to live."

"To supply the emergent tire industry, Leopold II Free State, therefore, sucked the life out of the rubber vines and murdered half the Congo's population in the process (between 185 and 1908 ,the population declined from twenty million to ten million.)"

The problem is that social democracy/ welfare capitalism is still predicated off of the mass exploitation of labour, man.

Norway and all of those countries soc dems like still has the foundation from the miseries in the global south. You cannot have social democracy without that.

Who are the exploited countries going to exploit to allow for that?

You can have the same economic freedom in socialism -- it just is not exploitative and extractive.

So what happens if someone wants a bigger house than the government gave them?

Yep what a f***ing dystopia. Imagine not being able to live in a 12 story mansion

First of all, your operating from a premise not grounded in reality. No one has said everyone will live in the same house or that people are going to have to lineup to have the government give them houses

This why your world is just that. An ideal. It is not bore out from any actual a***ysis of material conditions or an understanding of how things actually work. As space said, your social democracy is based on exploitation

You know I like you syn

“The problem is that social democracy/ welfare capitalism is still predicated off of the mass exploitation of labour, man”

The thing is this what I fundamentally disagree with. I find socialists are too scientific and theoretical about their well.. theory

Most people dont care about that man!!! If my ideal world of a globalist social democracy (which isn’t something I invented btw it’s an actual ideology) happens and some dude is working at amazon but instead of being monitored for his pee break while earning $15/hr like they are now he now has a union, a $45000/yr salary non employement tied healthcare, his kids can go to uni without cost barrier...i think that avg person is going to be living a pretty “happy”, certainly one free from toxic economic pressures.

Tldr i dnt ideologiycally care about labor theory and think it’s compelling enough to cultivate an economy around.

To the second part of yr question it would probably be a very closed off, protectionist field with trading blocks. I.e Africa has free trade with africa and builds it’s wealth up like the eu did etc same would apply for other regions in the world. Also very strict standards on free trade (globally set living wage so you dnt have sweatshops and a race to the bottom) etc

Goes without saying in this world billionaire and corporation profit would be very dialed back

Anf the people in the global south?

Also its literally called scientific socialism for a reason

you are also operating from a premise not grounded in reality but you ignore that

Peep edit just addressed

wealth tax literally makes 0 sense. for example kanye net worth its not liquid assets...

if you are working for a market wage you are not being exploited. if i put $1000 into a company and you put in 0 i put more risk into it.

Idk Breh I’m not a harvard trained lawyer or uchicago trained economist

I’ll trust liz warren and bernie when they say it’s feasible

I’ve heard tht critique before so I'm sure it’s been accounted for ill do some research to see how they’d handle that

Actually hilarious because I'm reading wretched of the earth right now.

"Europe's well being and progress were built with the sweat and corpse of blacks, arabs, Indians, and asians."

How about we delve into reality and not come up with fantasy scenarios. You want capitalism with a safety net. But you have not thought about the nature of capitalism at all. It relies on exploitation and if it cant exploit st home it exploits abroad. Like, you can say you want this social democracy utopia all you want but the fact is that they were built on exploitation. They can only continue to exist by that same exploitation. The moment exploitation ceases to exist for them, well, their whole project fails

"I’ll trust liz warren and bernie when they say it’s feasible"

💀💀

6.6 billion x 2% = 132 million

kanye doesnt even have that much in liquidity lmao.

if you want to tax wealthy more just tax capital gains more

Like yeah I guess if you want to ignore material reality and how these things really do work and manifest, you can have your capitalism with a nice bow on top

Like to say "Africa builds its wealth up like the EU did" is some wildly offensive ahistorical s***

Youre running around calling famous leaders with phds in economics illiterate meanwhile your most important academic contribution is posting a ktt thread on the same topic once a week

Damn Alan Greenspan fan club on ktt2?

Guy should be in prison

Im not necessarily disputing that I mentioned if the economic prosperity of each country ranges from sweden to like portugal i dnt necessarily think that’s bad

In portugal u can get any education and health care for free

Look you also greatly overplay the degree poorer countries are exploited

Im nigerian and the continent is really changing. Ghana is taking on protectionist trade policies, ethiopia, rwanda, kenya are rapidly developing. The biggest potential “exploiter” is the chinese not even the west but that’s a different story

I’ll use nigeria as a case study . We have a gdp greater than SEVERAL eu countries. The reason we are not a first world country infrastructure and society wise is because of corruption point blank period not “the global north”. We just full on hv greedy NATIVE oligarchs who rule us. Same applies to about a dozen other african countries.

This was one of the issues i had in my theory class. It tends to delve into reductionism. Not every arrangement of international political-economy affairs is tied to the idea of the global south vs north

We practically saw all of east asia become middle to high income countries in the span of 30 yrs (china, taiwan, singapore, thailand, SK etc) bcus of homegrown policy choices. Don’t overstate the power EU and NA has

But the house is still government provided isn't it? What if they aren't happy with it or want a different one?

Do people choose the house they want? If they aren't all the same then how do we decide who gets house preference? Some homes are sure to be nicer than others if they aren't all the same.

If it's based on their productive capabilities then do the more "productive" people get the nicer things?