Phanlix

More like spouted something that had nothing at all to do with communism on any level other than some bogeyman scare tactic propaganda bullshit designed to pathetically attempt to make communism look bad.

So our world is literally dying, we're living in the greatest mass extinction event ever, and instead of anything being done this process is actually accelerating by every conceivable metric we have. A friend of mine works on coral reef preservation. Most of the people in that field have given up on actually preserving wild coral as it exists today. His group switched to trying to preserve and grow as many samples as possible in private environments in the hopes that one day the oceans can again support coral reefs. If people knew in how bad shape our oceans and natural spaces really are there'd be a lot more panic.

All because capitalism exists solely to consume endlessly until there's nothing left.

Making a lightbulb that lasts forever is a terrible business decision because you'll sell less lightbulbs. In 2023, replaceable batteries have all but disappeared because once the battery dies in a modern day device people see it as time to replace that. Building to last, building renewable, building self-sustaining, that will NEVER be a core tenant of capitalism, because none of those things are profitable. So is building multi mile long fishing nets which indiscriminately catch everything, up to the point where they're too worn to use, then they're cut free and rest across the bottom of the ocean where they pin everything they land on and go on killing more sea life. Our oceans are literally coated in those nets because that's what's profitable.

We've got capitalism, yes we do, and people have cancer and aids, it doesn't mean we should all just learn to work with cancer and aids. People falsely tie a lot of 'positive' things to capitalism, but in the end, capitalism is all about making a quick buck no matter what the cost by any other metric.

Your friends are provably wrong. I'd have to look up the actual numbers and dates again, but since around 1994-2000 automation and industrialization has replaced more jobs than it has created, and has in every year since at an exponentially increasing rate. Unfortunately while it would be nice to do this peacefully, the first Rosie the Robot is likely to cause a mass upheaval. Stupid people will try to ban them outright, the smart ones will simply tax the companies that make them and control them providing universal basic income from the revenue.

Unfortunately many terrible people like the second solution of just killing off the unemployable in various ways.

No communistic / socialistic people actually believe that garbage, the whole point of communism and socialism is to provide for people's basic needs. I've never once met someone that seriously talks about communism who would actually suggest using people like that. And communism doesn't mean democracy, the best systems are obviously ones where people have equal opportunity to voice their opinions and needs equally.

It's actually a bad faith argument by capitalists who struggle to see the use of a human being beyond how much labor they can be used for.

Seriously? Hmmmmm well I guess we'll try linux for the umpteenth time again. I'm seeing some new program names and processes here since last time I tried, so who knows? It may actually be up to the task for my day to day. That'd be nice, I'm not a fan of cloud based Operating systems. I bought my hardware, I like to own it, not give it to whatever software corp is installed on it.

Kudos on the respectful questions instead of dissolving into rhetoric. I love these sort of conversations.

But while we have had many counties try and fail to make a thriving socialist society. We have had capitalism thrive and make everyones lives better

Hold the phone. We have thriving socialist societies today, unless the EU is doing a lot worse than I thought. In fact in France and Germany they're nearly 100% nuclear and renewable and in France's case have secured enough nuclear fuel to power their society for centuries. All of them have socialized medicine, and judging by the new heart surgery techniques out of France lately they're not lacking for innovation just cause the government is footing the bill. Furthermore, have ALL capitalist countries stood the test of time economically? I can name quite a few that exist right now like Fiji, which is certainly capitalist, but does NOT help their people in being capitalist (selling their water has harmed their environment, and the profits really are not passed along to their people).

Why would you think innovation would disappear?

Let's take the socialist (communist) medical systems in foreign countries. There is still IMMENSE value in winning the government contracts that use your medicine. And I'm a weird communist who still values personal property and intellectual property, I still see that as integral to the process. So like, if you invent the cure for cancer you can still demand $X per treatment, we're just talking about who's footing that bill in the end. I'm just cool with the government being able to design a competing product/treatment. That's kinda really it.

NASA is purely government funded and non-profit. If NASA had been able to charge for half the stuff they gave the world for free they'd be the richest corporation on the planet, since the MRI, CAT scanner, and a whole ton of other technology was made by them. Yet NASA doesn't profit on any of it, and is one of the most innovative entities in the world. Kinda puts a dent in your 'well there'd be no innovation' right? I dunno man, have you ever met scientists and engineers? I'm convinced if you just gave them all unlimited budgets and material all our problems would be solved overnight, and most of them would refuse anything beyond the satisfaction of having made something new and decent living wages and conditions.

And that seems to be working wonderfully for the EU countries who've already adopted this system, and for the Chinese, it's not like innovation just dissipated from there, hell they're beating us in a few areas right now.

....sorta. I think the better question is to what degree should we be communist? Should people be homeless and hungry in 2023? Do people have the right to a doctor, access to free education, and communication through the Internet as basic human rights?

I'm pretty sure we can do these things, we just don't.

Great plain language breakdown for the uninitiated. Doesn’t disregard socialism as a solution to the problems outlined, but that’s a whole other discussion.

I've always pictured socialism as more a middle step toward full blown communism. I also recognize the value of private enterprise and competition. So whatever communist society we end up with still needs to find ways for that healthy competition to thrive.

But like... We can easily meet human needs at this point for everyone. It's unjust and stupid not to do so

My bad, I did mean useless in terms of a production standpoint.

I've never personally had a problem with being useless. The time I value most in my life is the time I spend idle because it feels like I have so little idle time.

I'll bite.

Communism has always been about the future. When Lenin and Marx wrote their books and birthed their movements, they wrote about manufacturing processes EVENTUALLY eliminating material needs and displacing most people from work. They were kinda right at the time seeing the textile industry replace thousands of weavers with machines and the advent of powered farming equipment. What they didn't account for was the industrial revolution actually adding jobs to the workforce and for a time, jobs being replaced were reliably being replaced with other skilled positions.

But that hasn't been true since the 90s, since then there has been a marked trend towards automation replacing jobs, and slowly, a lot of the human populace is becoming useless.

I think most serious full on commies like myself understand that it's still a future form of governance that's inevitable if we want livable conditions. If we continue to have the almost pure and unbridled capitalistic system we have in the US when automated driving, AI, and general purpose robots really kick off, there will be some pretty serious issues.

Without getting too into doxxing myself, my family runs a construction company and builds houses. Have you seen the concrete 3d printers by chance? My dad was smart enough to get 2 a few years ago. Not only did it cut material costs by about 50% in construction, we went from running a 20 man crew to a 4 man crew when running those things. On top of that we can do what we did in weeks in a few days at best. We still run traditional crews, but those days are numbered, for sure.

We'll need communism because, one day very soon, a huge number of us are going to be unemployable. Hell, DEEP BLUE out of IBM already has a higher diagnostic rate than human doctors. The US Department of Labor and Goldman Sachs are estimating 300mil - 600mil will be replaced with current AI tech, the biggest losses will be in call centers, and what's left of secretarial workers.

Knowing that steamdeck uses Linux does give me hope. I'm rocking a 3080ti though, how's that Nvidia support coming along these days?

Next build will likely be AMD, but unfortunately I build PCs to last.

My first PC had dual 660s SLI, which was over 16 years ago and can still handle most AAA games. Baldurs Gate 3 was the first to make it run in low graphics.

My second PC was built when the 1080ti came out and that's still running my VR room.

This PC I just built is similarly designed to last upwards of a decade, and still will be a contender after that. So maybe another 7 to 10 years before I build a Linux PC .

I'm old enough to remember when wine came out and how excited everyone was we were finally going to have games in Linux lol.

I'd love to switch to linux. But I love the video games, and I'm a pirate, because I'm broke. Until Linux gets real support for games, I can't join.