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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   28396 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 30, 2025

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Road to hell is paved with good intentions. I am fairly sure that Marx's ideas didn't include people being boiled alive by NKVD but that is what we got in the end.

The problem with socialisms are two - people are selfish and tragedy of the commons. For the first the only socialist solution that works so far is to beat them into submission. For the second - there is no found cure yet for people not giving a shit for the common good under socialism.

I agree with you regarding your critiques of socialism, but

The problem with socialisms are two - people are selfish and tragedy of the commons.

This describes a huge % of issues the capitalist West is currently failing to deal with too

Not quite. The first part - selfishness is usually nudged to be somewhat aligned with the society's interests by the free market. Before Madison avenue takeover of the american economy companies were actually competing with producing better and cheaper items. We had similar boom with electronics in the 80s and 90s, game industry in 2000s. We have such with chinese phones and cars. All those people may have been passionate about their products, but they were passionate about money too.

The second part - yes there is also tragedy of the commons, but just by the nature of the system - the commons are smaller. So there is less tragedy to be had.

Madison avenue takeover

What does this mean?

In a free market the better product wins. In the last couple of decades the better marketed product wins. Which is not optimal for customers

Ahhh

That's an interesting concept. Any good examples? Why do you think the model of "the customer is a rational economic agent who buys the best things for themselves" has fallen apart recently? What changed in the marketing world to allow companies to leverage marketing to make up for sub-par products?

This is for an effortpost that I am not qualified to do. But I think it is combination of two things - women entering the workforce and being single - they just have different buying patterns than men. As every geek that has been forced to buy more expensive and with shittier spec laptop for his girlfriend just because this is such a nice shade of blue. And the other is that marketing stopped selling products, they started selling desire, status, dreams.

For the second - there is no found cure yet for people not giving a shit for the common good under socialism.

How about even more beatings?

Pretending that this is a serious suggestion:

It's not the quantity of the beatings, but their accuracy. You need to

  1. correctly identify asocials, and catch them in the act and
  2. beat them appropriately and publicly.

And this is difficult because

  1. It takes a lot of attention and fine-toothed combing to separate social citizens from asocial ones who have learned to pretend to be social where necessary. They will obfuscate their asocial activities, limit them to settings in which they aren't observed closely, and always keep a plausible excuse handy. After a few months and years of beatings, only the stupidest will be asocial where they can be caught.
  2. If the beatings are too piddly, people will not take them seriously. If the beatings are excessive, people will hate the goons dishing them out rather than the poor asocial who just got his teeth knocked out for taking one minute too long on the loo, which weakens the entire institution. If the beatings happen in secret so that nobody can judge whether they were appropriate, you end up with some kafkaeske nightmare state like the soviet union or Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Either way, you raise up class of violent state-sanctioned thugs who beat people up for not loving the state enough. It's not a winning recipe in the long-term.

It takes a lot of attention and fine-toothed combing to separate social citizens from asocial ones who have learned to pretend to be social where necessary. They will obfuscate their asocial activities, limit them to settings in which they aren't observed closely, and always keep a plausible excuse handy. After a few months and years of beatings, only the stupidest will be asocial where they can be caught.

This might be a problem after a while. It's not a problem right now. There's low-hanging fruit.

Right. Nobody said that all this is easy!

One of the most common jokes in the soviet bloc was - we pretend that we work, they pretend that they pay us. And neither GULAG or their equivalents in eastern europe were productive. And they beat up people.

A couple of things:

  1. The “we pretend that we work, they pretend that they pay us” Soviet joke specifically originates from the post-Stalin era of thaw and stagnation and for a good reason, as the GULAG no longer existed

  2. Marx was already convinced that revolutionary terror is necessary and described it as such

  3. As you stated, the commies noticed that beating up selfish people for their acts of selfishness will successfully de-normalize selfishness socially; in a similar manner, beating people up for not caring about the common good will compel them to care about it or else – it’ll work just as much; however, this assumes that the goons and their commanders will never lose their stomachs for beating people up all the time

I think @Botond173 is referencing the sarcastic quip about how "the beatings will continue until morale improves".

The Juche (kim whatever) guy said it straight face. And in a way the stick works ok up to a point. You can squeeze more productivity. But you rarely can squeeze passion, innovation, and creativity this way - so probably you are doomed to stagnation.

The problem with socialisms are two - people are selfish and tragedy of the commons. For the first the only socialist solution that works so far is to beat them into submission.

Hardly; this just optimizes for the selfish people getting control of the clubs. Marxism has never truly grokked that people's ideological statements and interpersonal solidarity can be faked or hacked.

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