Hell, the socialist aesthetics aren’t even necessary. Just hating the United States is enough.
Everybody Sucks Here
AITA Nation Edition v2: Electric Boogaloo
Truth.
Don’t worry - this is tankiejerk. We’re an anti-tankie comm. Bootlickers aren’t tolerated here.
No, sorry, only one thing can be true at once. My working memory is really small.
that use the aesthetics of socialism
This isn’t even a criteria for many
Can anyone explain what the aesthetics of socialism are and which atrocities are being hidden?
Could it be China? But they aren’t Socialist.
Not in practice, but they do claim to be (and in fairness, do some things in a more “socialist” way - looking at you privatisation in the west…)
I think this what OOP means with “aesthetics”, it’s that they claim to be a socialist state, when in many ways, it’s rather capitalist.
Regardless, holding up any country as a beacon of all that is good is pretty silly, if you ask me.
No where (that I know of) should be emulated in every regard.
Could it be China? But they aren’t Socialist.
Take that up with tankies, who will argue long and passionately that China is actually very socialist.
Nuance is hard, yo…
Nah, think I’m going to boil down hundreds of years of history in to 280 characters, that’s the best way to get my point across in the tiktok age.
USA <- old and busted
FSA <- new and even more busted because the F is for Fascist.
“Whataboutism” is one of the most prevalent logical fallacies. It never makes any sense.
It kinda doesn’t matter what you call China, mixed economies outperform market economies.
Every major fucking country on earth today is a mixed economy.
Fair point, probably not the best term to use. In the video, Clinton uses “command economy” to describe them, and singles them out as member of the WTO that isn’t a market economy.
China hasn’t been a command economy since the 80s, though. And command economies consistently underperform market economies, to a staggering degree.
I mean, they’re everyone’s largest trading partner. You’d expect a planned economy to under perform the evolutionary pressures of a market. The first time. But the second? Or the third? What about command economy that learns from what didn’t work in the past?
If every country is a mixed economy, then they’re just the far end of the spectrum. More command than market, at least compared to most other places.
I mean, they’re everyone’s largest trading partner.
They’re also the largest country, by population, in the world.
You’d expect a planned economy to under perform the evolutionary pressures of a market. The first time. But the second? Or the third? What about command economy that learns from what didn’t work in the past?
Uh, but planned economies do underperform compared to a market. The spike in Chinese prosperity was because of intense market reforms in the 80s and 90s which significantly increased prosperity and turned the country from immensely backwards and impoverished to increasingly developed.
If every country is a mixed economy, then they’re just the far end of the spectrum. More command than market, at least compared to most other places.
Not really. The Chinese public sector of their economy is actually lower, as a proportion of GDP, than Sweden.
I’m curious about the source of this statement
The Chinese public sector of their economy is actually lower, as a proportion of GDP, than Sweden
Can you provide source? Because for State Owned Enterprises I can only find metric ~40% (China) vs 10% in Sweden.
https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/exp@FPP/USA/JPN/GBR/SWE/ITA/ZAF/IND/CHL/FRA/GRC/NLD/ESP/RUS
China’s private sector has become much larger than in years past - from ~2% of the economy in the 1980s, to ~20% in the late 1990s, to a majority now (though there’s some quibbling as to the exact numbers).
See thats one take but is “US Imperialism” not just codeword for NATO?
Not unless what you wrote is code for “I’m an ignoramus and like to spout the brand of dogma I’ve based my identity on”.
But it’s not, is it?
I’ve just always heard “US Imperialism” in context of things like NATO, Ukraine, Vietnam, formerly Afghanistan, and Israel but TBH Israel is more the UK’s baby, Vietnam had more French soldiers on the ground, and people like to conveniently leave out US cooperation with Saudi Arabia.
It just feels like a term with intentionally blurred context and no real meaning outside of a derogatory term for NATO. What do you think it means?
Imperialism isn’t just about military actions. The US also has great economic impact. Just look at all the BS coming out of Trump’s trade wars… Imperialism is about being bullish in interaction and expanding influence and control. It looks messy … because it is messy.
Note: As the original post points out, just because the US is bad does not magically make enemies of the US good regardless of the color of cloak they hide their own BS behind.
All the Bullshit coming out of Trump’s trade wars impacts the USA first and foremost. It’s not forcing any other nation to sell for less or cut off relationships to other nations.
If making mutually beneficial deals was “imperialism” then it sounds like you just want the USA to suffer in general.
IMO calling out Iraq would be a great argument against US Imperialism. Exxon Mobil was the bigger winner from that invasion.
All the Bullshit coming out of Trump’s trade wars impacts the USA first and foremost.
Failed imperialism is still imperialism. Trump’s trade wars are, quite nakedly by his own statements, meant to force other countries into a position of subservience to the US (and Trump himself). That they’ve failed because Trump doesn’t understand jack about shit doesn’t mean it wasn’t an attempt to use economic coercion as a means of imperialism - it just means Trump et co are incompetent imperialists.
I’d still rather have a state that pretends to be socialist than one that upholds capitalism - an ideology that seeks to place everything and everyone under the domination of a few elites.
“Golly gee, I sure do love this state which pretends to be socialist, but upholds capitalism by placing everything and everyone under the domination of a few elites!”
How is that worse than what we currently have?
Are you… legitimately asking how Western democracies like Canada and Germany are better than the kind of systems that the PRC and USSR ran?
Things can be bad without being equally bad.
