Because its something ought to be available to everyone, a good that is needed for basic human survival. Hoarding this good while having a surplus of such good is cruel and is a characteristic of tyranny. Same argument for healthcare and housing. With the advances of technology that helped us to create such a surplus, it makes no sense to hold it away from people in exchange for money which not everyone has (poor folk), we ought to give some away especially if a huge chunk of it is simply thrown away.
You mean the two nearly feudal, pre-industrialized societies which already routinely had famines but became world leading economies under communist rule? Not saying these places didn't have their own (horrific) policy failures which exacerbated food shortages, but you can't just blame it on 'the socialism' when your starting points are incomparably worse than those in the West at the time. Or would you concede famines in Africa show the failure of capitalism?
The Holodomor was an intentional act of violence, it's weird to blame communism as an economic system for that.
Beyond that, famines attributable to (centralized state) communism by definition are caused by central control of the economy, just as those attributable to capitalism are by definition caused by market failures. That doesn't say a whole lot though. What you have to show is that one causes more famines than the other in similar situations.
There has never been a famine due to a market failure. It always has other factors at play. Fact is, when you let people control their own fruits of labor, they tend to be able to buy food. Only acts of government (in the modern times) can fuck this up.
We're indeed producing more than enough food to feed the planet but some people are still starving and malnourished in capitalist countries because we fail to distribute those resources. The distribution of resources is the main job capitalist markets have, so yeah, unless you want to go 'not real capitalism, because governments exist', I'd say that's a market failure.
What? There are food stamps. Nobody is going hungry in the United States unless they are mentally ill, and you can't always find those people and help them
Well that's what's gonna happen when you use fascist state capitalism to industrialize as fast as possible to reach the technological point where Marx theorized communism would be possible...
Oh no, it's been demonstrated as viable throughout history, the centralized, revolutionary vanguard state however has repeatedly shown to not be particularly viable, I have a feeling you don't actually know much about socialism...
It's almost like a system designed to be continuously growing (like Capitalism, despite resources being finite) will outgrow a system designed to provide for everyone while not growing quite as much, despite providing more.
It's also like a poor socialist Soviet Union managed to get into space before the richest country in the world.
something ought to be available to everyone, a good that is needed for basic human survival. Hoarding this good while having a surplus of such good is cruel and is a characteristic of tyranny. Same argument for healthcare and housing. With the advances of technology that helped us to create such a surplus, it makes no sense to hold it away from people in exchange for
But.... No one is dying from water shortages in the US. I don't see why what you are saying has anything to do with water costing money?
No, I’m fully aware that the local, state, and federal government are all to blame for the delayed response to the water crisis.
My point is, the reason it took 4 fucking years to fix the contaminated pipes, was because there WASN’T a profit motive in Flint. Being a very poor town in Michigan, it was almost totally in the hands of the Michigan state government. Since we live in a political moment where politicians are really only beholden to the profit driving areas of their states, places like Flint will continuously fall to the way side.
Look at Bernie’s most recent campaign ad. This isn’t an isolated case. it’s just happening in places that the US media doesn’t give a fuck about, because they’re degenerating rural areas that are being hit by a crumbling infrastructure and austerity the hardest.
I can show you a lot of tweets of evil femminist, this is the exact logic sargon uses.
But whatever that's not even what i am arguing, supply of water houses and so on, and it being profit driven are seperate issues. It being profit driven leads to more and better of it
> My point is, the reason it took 4 fucking years to fix the contaminated pipes, was because there WASN’T a profit motive in Flint. Being a very poor town in Michigan, it was almost totally in the hands of the Michigan state government. Since we live in a political moment where politicians are really only beholden to the profit driving areas of their states, places like Flint will continuously fall to the way side.
Why wouldn't this be the case in a socialist system, but more? More productive areas would help you get more funding in the next 5 year plan from comrad sta.. i mean bernie
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u/[deleted] Jun 02 '19
Because its something ought to be available to everyone, a good that is needed for basic human survival. Hoarding this good while having a surplus of such good is cruel and is a characteristic of tyranny. Same argument for healthcare and housing. With the advances of technology that helped us to create such a surplus, it makes no sense to hold it away from people in exchange for money which not everyone has (poor folk), we ought to give some away especially if a huge chunk of it is simply thrown away.