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Eagle367 said:
Let's talk political theory for a bit. First of all, communism has never been implemented in any country. Communism is the ultimate goal of many Socialist countries and that;s why they call themselves communists. Communism is like a utopia version of society for the people. Russia, Cuba, China, etc fall into those communist socialists. But what Bernie Sanders is and what the Nordic countries and Europe are is very different. Firstly, socialistic policies are not failures if there is less corruption evolved and they are built up smartly. Germany basically has free college, universal healthcare and their law requires boards of companies to have 49% worker representation. That's hardcore socialist right there. The social democracies of Europe are also a more socialist than the US but maybe the farthest they go is something like Germany. The belief that any of that is bad is not shared by many people. So the premise that you think it's bad is not agreed by me, at least. A democratic socialist is even more to the left of social democrats. That's what I believe Bernie Sanders is but not what's he's run as. His platform is like a social democrat but his beliefs I think are more left than that. He knows though that Americans are not there yet. And he did not lose because his policies were not popular. They were the centre of the primary and the most popular policies in the race. He lost because of the imaginary manufactured consent of electibility. The mindless pursuit of beating Trump no matter who else comes is what beat Bernie this time( he can still win) and last time, we all know Clinton screwed him over. There was a lot of corruption going on last time. Finally, the US is no stranger to socialism. Socialism is in the US today and a form of socialism saved the US back in the day. The new deal was very socialist in nature and I believe whenever the greed of chrony capitalism gets too much for the country to hear, socialistic policies have saved the country. Pure capitalism leads of oligarchy and plutocracy. The US is very close to those things. It needs socialism to save democracy again. Contrary to the belief Americans are force fed about Socialism and dictatorships, it's very effective in maintaining democracy if done right. Some Socialist policies in the US are roads, public schools, public libraries, police, army, emergency services, subsidies for the rich, bailouts for the rich, funding research through public funds, etc. And as a famous American Socialist once said: There is Socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor. Yes that guy was a socialist, go read his work. If the message Bernie gave was through the lens of MLK and FDR, I believe he would've done a much better job of claiming the electibility argument for himself as well. It was not a perfect campaign by any means. But the general are easier for Bernie to win rather than the democratic primary. I believed that before this thing started and I know it now. A mix of socialism and capitalism is the best system the world has come up with. No need to free or hate a system. That's illogical and stupid. Learn from every political theory, the good and bad and figure out the best mixture of different theories to come up with something better. |
Not going to derail this into the protracted debate here but I will hit a few points. First, I am well aware that Communism the party/government system isn't communism proper, that's their goal. Hence why I called them socialist. When I say diet socialism, what I mean is that he has more or less sliced out the "bad" part as most see it and left the "good" part: removed totalitarianism and (most) nationalization but left in the large scale redistribution of wealth and massive expansion of government programs.
The things you list from Germany are *goals*, features of their society. My critique of him is the methods and plans which are problematic. Also, again, it's a matter of him using labeling that is inappropriate with regards to the Nordic Model specifically.
Also, what Bernie proposes is far, far, far to the left of the New Deal. And it has a few features in particular that Roosevelt would have called insane. The New Deal label is another oft misused one and many don't have full knowledge of what was in the New Deals (and many actually don't realize how fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants the New Deal was :P). And some of what was in there was knowingly hairbrained but done for a publicity stunt, most notably the Wealth Tax Act that literally only taxed Rockefeller and was intended as a campaign platform. The New Deal is generally viewed as favorable, but it was a blunderbuss approach of "throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks." I do, however, think that it was a necessity. The economy had experienced a highly irregular crash driven by a host of forces both internal and external and the downward spiral was caused by outside panic that collapsed the banking system. However, different horses for different courses: our current issues have different causes and different effects. The problems are also radically different as well. The issue of that time wasn't income inequality or stagnant wage growth or housing deficits, it was the utter collapse of nearly all of the economy and 25% of the entire workforce being without work due to...well mass idiocy. The issues of our day call for plans that address them in a way that makes sense, not tearing pages from playbooks of yesterday.
The need for balance is true yes. You need to keep an eye on the top 5% to make sure they aren't rigging the system or competing unfairly or being abusive and you need to help the bottom 5% and you need safety nets for when things go sideways and you need to curate the market to ensure it is competitive and not stagnant. But it has to be done delicately or measures intended to help will do harm. FDR could afford to be crazy because...well 25% of the workforce was unemployed and the entire economy was in a giant hole that market forces on their own would have taken a long, painful time to rectify. But worth noting, a number of things were implemented, tried, thrown out. These days things are implemented, have unintended consequences, and then forgotten about.
Which is the other thing we have to remember: the government of FDR's time was very, very, very different from the government now. If we want to do even a sliver of what Bernie proposes with regards to public sector work projects, our government needs a massive, systemic reform from the city level all the way up to the fed.
Also, a thing to seriously remember: Cronyism is a tango. And a tango takes two. We don't have unregulated or unchecked capitalism, not even close. Some regulations are good and necessary and some new ones could stand to be done. But There's also an inconceivable mountain of regulations that are currently in place purely to be used to club the opposition before they become a threat and a means to give bureaucrats something to do to justify their own existence. A government this mired in exponentially expanding bureaucracy couldn't actually implement the New Deal. It's so cripplingly slow, bloated, inefficient, it would be a clownshow of unparalleled proportions. So it's a two sided problem. Regulations that should be there aren't, regulations that shouldn't exist do. And when unnecessary regs are in, you can check history and see for yourself: they always help established players in the market.
