FearandLoathingintheMotte
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User ID: 4101
FearandLoathingintheMotte
1mo ago
Maybe I don't understand communism, but state owned enterprises don't seem like something that was important to the core ethos/concept of communism.
I thought the whole point was workers would all essentially be "shareholders" of the firm.
Maybe you need the state to be the ultimate owner to ensure ownership transfers between workers, but "communism is when the government takes over the firms" seems kind of inaccurate.
It is something a lot of communist countries did/do, but it also strikes me that many communist countries were just dictatorships dressing themselves up as communists to make the local people think they'd get a cut of the prosperity.
I suppose I'm doing a "no true scottman" thing, although I can reconcile it by saying that I don't think communism works very well when exposed to human nature. True communism has never been tried, because groups of humans greater than Dunbar's number basically can't do it. If ants were smart they'd make Marx proud though.
FearandLoathingintheMotte
1mo ago
Yeah that's why I ranked it low likelihood lol
I could see some kind of Cartel coup leading to a situation proximate to Haiti, but 1) I think the country was already somewhat in the pocket of the cartels 2) the cartels seem to have more state capacity than Haitian gangs (bar is so low it's in the earth's core).
FearandLoathingintheMotte
1mo ago
Cuba didn't get fucked up because the USSR backed off from their threatening plans, and Cuba is a small poor country that doesn't have any ability to threaten the USA, most notably, no land border. The USA was willing to go full kinetic to stop the USSR building out nukes in Cuba.
Ukraine or hypothetical Mexico are large, share land borders that make some flavor of invasion much more plausible, and the West or hypothetical China didn't back off from their (less threatening than nukes) plans.
I am fairly confident that the USA would go kinetic to prevent a Chinese naval base in Baja California, if the spycraft and diplomacy failed.
Also to be clear, the Russians are trigger happy retards and going into Ukraine was dumb and disproportionate to the threat they faced.
FearandLoathingintheMotte
1mo ago
State control =/= socialism either though
That just sounds like autocracy
Do Venezuelan workers own the means of production? No, they do not
FearandLoathingintheMotte
1mo ago
What do corporate taxes have to do with the definition of communism/socialism?
Can it only be considered communism or socialism if corporate tax rates are above x%?
FearandLoathingintheMotte
1mo ago
No one ever answers this one
You don't even have to use a Cold War example. What do we think would happen to Mexico today if it tried to let China set up naval bases on its coasts?
FearandLoathingintheMotte
1mo ago
because Communism
Is Venezuela even remotely communist? Do the workers own the means of production/their firms?
It looks a lot more like an autocratic narco state
FearandLoathingintheMotte
1mo ago
Beat me to it
FearandLoathingintheMotte
1mo ago
Good God he was on fire back then
FearandLoathingintheMotte
1mo ago
And he did it at almost no cost.
This strikes me as likely, but it's too early to know for sure. In the off change Venezuela goes even more to shit, there will be a "you break it you bought it" situation of bad publicity
Trump wanted a big legacy-defining move, like buying Greenland, and this time he got it.
Unless the country implodes, which is unlikely, or the country does a total 180° and becomes a functional western democracy+economy, which is even less likely, there will be no legacy here for Trump lmao
The regime of a shithole country will be more friendly to the USA, the cartels will still move drugs around, and maybe marginally more oil will be available on the world market if Venezuela manages to pump more?
the United States took over Venezuela in a matter or hours at minimal cost
No it didn't. It blew some shit up and then did a helicopter insertion to kidnap the head of state. This was very cool, and absolutely not "taking over a country" as that requires occupation.
He alluded that "something needs to be done" about the Mexican cartels. Destroying them would be a true legacy-maker.
Agreed, but good luck with this one
FearandLoathingintheMotte
1mo ago
Let it never be said that American immigrants aren't productive at least...
FearandLoathingintheMotte
1mo ago
I think I'm going to leave this to my wife
You should be a leader in your marriage and shoot this down yourself. You and your wife might be more chill about this stuff than me and mine, but I'd be pretty unhappy if my partner seemed low-key down to fuck my friend and was saying "hey I don't want to, unless... you're cool with it? If you're not cool with it that's fine, but I'm putting the decision in your hands in case you maybe are cool with it"
FearandLoathingintheMotte
1mo ago
Anyone denying America is #1 is silly
But on the other side, Americans going "we're #1 and always will be, lalalala I can't hear you" when anyone points out China's rise is equally silly.
What's the plan to stay #1? Because right now it's not looking like there is one (see: infinite US Navy procurement disasters, absolutely sclerotic internal politics, and the absolute whiplash of elected political leaders).
I will happily admit I know very little of Venezuela. Everything I've read about it's governance in this thread sounds more like "dictatorship loots country for its seed corn, country spirals into poverty" moreso than "they legitimately tried to ensure the workers owned the means of production/captured more of the surplus of their labour and then it fells apart for X reason"
I also imagine I probably have a somewhat simplified model of communism in my head, I don't have a deep dialectic understanding of Marx et al, that's for sure.
This rings pretty true to me? Most communist nations may have called themselves communist, but again kind of just did the whole "dictatorship loots country for its seed corn" thing.
I'm not entirely sure how that's a fallacy. I think I'd pre-emptively reconcile it by saying I'm pretty confident communism is an optimistic idea that simply doesn't work when paired with human nature, as we keep seeing when communist countries end up being autocratic shitholes where the workers are just as fucked as they were previously.
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