but everything connected to acts of a communist country is the result of communism ofc

Here's some research, there's much more out there:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5494206

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2430590

researchgate.net/publication/8906035_Hierarchy_and_social_status_in_Budongo_chimpanzees

Humans inevitably form dominance hierarchies. You can divide these hierarchies into dynamic and stable ones.

In dynamic hierarchies specific positions in the hierarchy aren't indefinitely occupied by one individual, so that other individuals have the opportunity to advance up the hierarchy given they put in the effort and gain competence.

In stable hierarchies, the game is slightly more rigged. The ones on top usually remain there, and the ones on the bottom find it very difficult to climb up.

As explained by Robert Sapolsky; the more subordinate position in stable social hierarchies is associated with greater stress, whereas in dynamic hierarchies, the dominant position experiences the most stressors due to increased competition and instability during times of reorganization.

America's economy is slowly converging into a stable hierarchy, especially at the extremes, and it can't sustain itself like that. I like to call this "the death of the American dream".

The socialist solution is to get rid of hierarchies altogether, or at least the economic ones. But that isn't possible without authoritarianism, nor is it desirable.

A more realistic approach would be a hybrid. I think this quote from Eric Weinstein sounds kinda cool: "...we may need a hybrid model in the future which is paradoxically more capitalistic than our capitalism of today, and perhaps even more socialistic than our communism of yesteryear."

So there you have a human nature argument. Socialism doesn't work (the old cliché) and unregulated capitalism leads to unsustainable inequality. We need something else.

Take care.

There are also numerous studies showing that human nature lends itself towards cooperation. My whole point is you can't separate human nature from the structure of society. There's a reason those studies mention social status a lot

Lol at social democracy also

curious what you guys might think of this video

what stage might we be at? stage 3?

So how y’all niggas respond when someone hits you with the “socialism has never worked”

Lol

Fascinated to read the replies to this

Competition and cooperation aren't opposites. Humans both compete and cooperate to survive, and they do that inside hierarchical social structures. Cooperation doesn't imply equity.

As to your other point, you simply can't make the argument that dominance hierarchies are a social construct. That stuff is millions of years old and not unique to humans. That's why I linked the chimpanzee study. You can go way further down the evolutionary tree than chimpanzees tho.

Not sure what you mean by the last part. Social status is what I'm talking about the whole time. Social status is your place in the hierarchy.

I'm not arguing against hierarchies. I'm arguing against the idea that we are inherently selfish people who can't see beyond our own needs, which is the argument people make in favor of capitalism.

Hierarchies can be natural, but look at some of the things one of your studies cites as social status indicators. Hierarchies, if they need to exist, need to be legitimate, which means democratically constructed by everyone with a stake in the game, and they need not lead to inequality either. So, at work for example, you can have a boss, but that boss needs to be chosen by the workers, and it doesn't mean that the workers can't own the means of production. it simply means that the workers agreed among themselves that their chosen boss has some exemplary leadership skills and is good with day to day operations. it doesn't make them unequal, it simply means he has a different skillset.

Y u got a picture of Stalin in OP as if this s*** is all memes lol he's the worst argument 4 this s*** but maybe im being too serious

People who make a point to say that, end up caping for the U.S. system which is socialism for the rich,

If you're rich, you get better quality healthcare, you can pay off fines for breaking the law (thus being rich you can break the law), get better lawyers, get tax breaks and can donate back to a PAC to buy politicians who to continue such a system, you can get better loans, better everything really when it comes to money

Meanwhile f*** talking about socialism or capitalism for a second to address how absolutely ridiculous government spending is on military s***.

Social security is a reason why a lot of folks hating on socialism can retire because we pay payroll taxes out the ass for something this next generation might not even get depending on how long this iteration of social security lasts, they can't blame us for trying to set up a better future where a greater number of people have a better chance of happiness and security when the money and resources are absolutely there they're just being misplaced and misused cause no one wants to f*** with the behemoth of government spending $100k for a $500 product just to keep their budget high as hell

2 lobsters itt....

detox the thread

Old folks equate the concept of socialism to communism of the 50s but negate the fact that we already have social/social welfare programs that help everybody

A lot of the faults with these programs is government being incompetent and immediately when they need a change 2 the budget or a nice talking point they'll say "We're gonna cut social security cause those people are leeching off government handouts instead of working hard like I did" meanwhile folks got 3-4 jobs trying to put food on the table to feed the fam because rent increases gentrification makes living more expenses and inflation increases without the minimum wage increasing enough to make one job a livable income

Please dont be in here conflating welfare with socialism

Socialism as the main form of government clearly is much different than social programs, yeah

I don’t know what people even want out of this thread though

My point probably got cluttered but I was just trying to illustrate that people in the US detract from socialist policy by equating it to oppressive soc/comm regimes, meanwhile capitalism is crushing people in much the same way keeping people subdued and working for very low wages

But u right I’m making this s*** potentially about something else

i wanna know with what metric you judge that capitalism is working

Ok. I don't think we disagree on the selfishness part.

Hierarchies produce inequality by definition tho. Now, the resources by which status is indicated don't have to be money, or something similar. It's abstract.

Here's a funny example I heard from Robert Sapolsky. If you take a group of Buddhist monks and give them testosterone injections, because testosterone makes you more competitive, they're going to go crazy competing with each other doing random acts of kindness lmao. That's because they'll form a dominance hierarchy in which status equates with generosity. You're going to have inequality based on the amount of generosity each monk can generate. A small number of monks are going to end up being exponentially more generous than the rest. This way they optimize the net amount of generosity in their community lol. Evolution is really good at optimizing things, that's basically what it does, kinda like machine learning.

The same thing is going to happen with your workers given the freedom to acquire more resources the higher position they occupy, whatever those resources might be. But if you distribute the resources equally then you flatten the hierarchy and less value is going to be generated in the long run because there's no game to play when nobody wins, and nobody loses. Even machine learning algorithms can't work without a reward system.

Market economies try to harness this human characteristic, but it only works to everybody's benefit when value and price coincide, which is often not the case. That's why I'm not a fan of not regulating markets to any extent. And I'm not a fan of socialism for obvious reasons. That being said, I'd pick capitalism over socialism every time.

Do I know what the perfect society looks like? No. Nobody does really, one has to be pretty delusional to think they do. But we're going to get there eventually, it's part of our evolutionary process. And artificial intelligence is going to speed that process up quite a bit when it destroys jobs as the main concept of wealth redistribution.

I see some people in here are already getting pissed that I have a dope ass JBP avy lol, so I'm going to dip. I have to study for my finals, trynna take my spot in the education systems competence hierarchy by getting better grades lmao. Peace.

how do you feel about social darwinism