• protist@mander.xyz
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    11 months ago

    There are serious ethical problems with a capitalist system, especially when it comes to the necessities of life, but there’s also ample evidence that other economic systems in practice have been just as bad of not worse regarding food security, eg follow the history of the USSR from the Holodomor in the 1930s to empty grocery shelves and bread lines in the 1980s

    • fidodo@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      I view the problem as us treating a tool as a system of government. Capitalism is an incredibly powerful tool for increasing efficiency (real capitalism as in a healthy free market, not monopoly bullshit). But we should be using that tool to our benefit, not having that tool use us. We can use it as a tool without it being our basis of society. Also, capitalism is not self regulating. That’s a bullshit myth created by elite monopolists. Unchecked capitalism leads to monopolies and monopolies are the antithesis of capitalism. We used to know that. We used to bust monopolies. We need to learn when and when not to use capitalism. Certain things need to be monopolies. Like transportation and the power grid. Since healthy competition cannot prosper we cannot make them capitalistic. We already need to recognize that capitalism is a tool for us to use. It’s ok to break capitalism in special circumstances for the greater good, because the good of the people is more important than perpetuating capitalism. I think abolishing it leads to apathy and inefficiency, but worshipping it leads to inhumanity, and we’re not even worshipping it properly because again, monopolies are not capitalism. Like all things in life it’s about balance.

    • lauha@lemmy.one
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      11 months ago

      I cannot comment on communism as there has not been a true communism in the world yet, but dictatorships sure have been bad.

    • Glitchington@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Okay but like, at least understand why the shelves were empy. Behind the Bastards had a great podcast on the matter. Bad science is bad science, no matter how you trade.

      • protist@mander.xyz
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        11 months ago

        What Lysenko did and the magnitude of it was enabled by and is inextricable from the Soviet systems of government and economy:

        Lysenko’s success at encouraging farmers to return to working their lands impressed Stalin, who also approved of Lysenko’s peasant background, as Stalin claimed to stand with the proletariat. By the late 1920s, the USSR’s leaders had given their support to Lysenko. This support was a consequence, in part, of policies put in place by the Communist Party to rapidly promote members of the proletariat into leadership positions in agriculture, science and industry. Party officials were looking for promising candidates with backgrounds similar to Lysenko’s: born of a peasant family, without formal academic training or affiliations to the academic community. Due to close partnership between Stalin and Lysenko, Lysenko acquired an influence over genetics in the Soviet Union during the early and mid twentieth century. Lysenko eventually became the director of Genetics for the Academy of Sciences in 1940, which gave him even more control over genetics. He remained in the position for more than two decades, throughout the reigns of Stalin and Nikita Khruschchev, until he was relieved of his duties in 1965.

    • sverit@feddit.de
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      11 months ago

      Yeah, the problems are just different. A mixed form would be ideal, where basic needs would be handled socially and the rest may compete in a capitalist way. The difficulty is where to draw the line exactly.

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      Crown corporations/co-ops/worker owned companies for essential needs, capitalism for all non essentials.

      Tada!