Poiltical Ad Appeals to Left's Absolute Terror of Not Being Told How to Live

[Draco Dracul]

Mm, I feel like this is a semantic trap then. Specialized vouchers just aren’t flexible enough to account for how people live, and if you do make them flexible enough to do so it’s not really meaningfully different from currency. It’s all a means of tracking what resources a person is consuming relative to what needs to be produced.

I would say the inability to circulate and thus accumulate through any means other than no interest savings makes it substantially different from currency.

[Draco Dracul]

Put another way markets are fine at determining what sorts of shoes to make and food to stock, and trying to do something else rarely ends well.

The problem is more turning, say, housing into a market or denying people the means to engage with the goods markets.

In my view the commodification of everything and the denial of people the means to engage with the market are in fact emergent properties of the market. The market is also prone to extreme irrationality and the creation of artificial demand as seen with Tulip Madness or literally everything to do with cryptocurrencies.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Put another way markets are fine at determining what sorts of shoes to make and food to stock, and trying to do something else rarely ends well.

The problem is more turning, say, housing into a market or denying people the means to engage with the goods markets.

In my view the commodification of everything and the denial of people the means to engage with the market are in fact emergent properties of the market. The market is also prone to extreme irrationality and the creation of artificial demand as seen with Tulip Madness or literally everything to do with cryptocurrencies.

Can you contextualize the denial of people the means to engage with the market?

Problems of the market aren't much different than problems of institution and subsequently centralization topped off with intersectionality. Problems emerging directly from the market aside, it itself is ubiquitous throughout the modern world, east or west. Not to say that there isn't a direct link between that and colonialism for all intents and purposes.

[CharlesPhipps]

And remember, 'Nazi' is short for the German for "National Socialist".

And then Hitler murdered all the Socialists in the Night of Long Knives and Nazism became a radical Far Right ideology that befriended other far right ideologies. Thereafter becoming a symbol of fascist Right Wing extremism for decades to come.

You were going to add that part, right?

[Frustration]

There are Right versions of Socialism as well as Left, Mr. Phipps.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Nazi is an inherently ironic term. The fact of it employing the term socialism is completely superficial. Socialism's legacy is pretty tied with the Soviet Union, but it is nowhere near as maligned as fascism or nazism.

Socialism is institutionally linked to the 2nd World, though the moral polarity between 1st and 2nd world is hardly black and white. Also the notion that 1st world naturally applies to America by means of calling it a fully developed market is reasonably dubious under theoretical conditions at least.

[TGLS]

There are Right versions of Socialism as well as Left, Mr. Phipps.

Which is closer to your definition of socialism:
A) Socialism is a political ideology and movement which has proposed a set of social and economic measures, policies and systems characterized by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production.
B) When I use the word 'socialism', I mean any political theory that asserts that an individual's life and work do not belong to him, but rather to society.

[CharlesPhipps]

There are Right versions of Socialism as well as Left, Mr. Phipps.

I'm just saying the, "Nazis are really left wing" thing is the dumbest thing ever. They're the embodiment of a Far Right party. If you want to refer to a tyrannical Left Wing group we have the Soviets and Chinese (albeit they're pretty Far Right these days).

It's a weird meme designed to discredit the accusations of Far Right groups leaning into fascism or, you know, non-evil Socialism.

[CharlesPhipps]

B) When I use the word 'socialism', I mean any political theory that asserts that an individual's life and work do not belong to him, but rather to society.

My favorite is: a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

Which gives a lot more room than, "The government shoots you if you don't work in their factory."

Such as, "Don't let corporates run the government like comic book villains."

[goodperson25]

Such as, "Don't let corporates run the government like comic book villains."

We have examples of both a corporate comic book villain and a corporate real life person running a major government. In many cases the comparison was (arguably) more favourable to the comic book villain.