• @zeppo
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        93 months ago

        Communism is not price controls, Jesus. It’s the state seizing assets from wealthy people and nationalizing businesses. Regulating how businesses can operate in a capitalist system is nothing new. You could call it socialism and even that’s a stretch.

      • @[email protected]
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        33 months ago

        How do you have price controls without prices? Price regulation is explicitly a phenomenon in market economies.

        • @zeppo
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          33 months ago

          Uh, those links don’t say it’s “Communism” which is the problem with the one OP posted. Nobody said this story wasn’t true. It’s the idiotic “let’s scare some ignorant rubes, it’s communism!!” angle. The Democratic party isn’t even remotely communist, unfortunately.

            • @zeppo
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              23 months ago

              Sigh… uh, yeah. Communist countries control prices and economic activity to a far greater degree. Like, so much more that it’s absurd to claim that, which is the point here. The link also barely says what you claim it does.

                • @zeppo
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                  3 months ago

                  Yes, but that’s an incredibly simplistic point of view. Plenty of capitalist economies also have limits on prices. In the US, over 40 states already have price gouging laws on the books for years, going back to 1979. The EU has enacted various statutes to control prices of consumer goods as well. You could call it socialist, perhaps… but it’s also kind of silly to think that capitalism means unbridled capitalism with no regulation. That’s never been how it worked. When the US nationalizes Walmart, Kroger and ConAgra let me know.

                  • casey is remote
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                    -23 months ago

                    @zeppo I completely agree with you here. We are not in a pure, Capitalist society. Right now, we are in what is known as a mixed market economy.

                    However, I would posit that we are closer to the free market model than a planned economy, and the farther away we move from the free market model, the closer we get to a planned economy. It doesn’t mean that we’re there already, but, in general, moving away from the free market model sets off red flags for those worried ending up in a planned economy.

      • NeuromancerM
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        -243 months ago

        and this is how the starvation starts. With caps on prices, it becomes unprofitable and they just reduce supply. Talk to any survivors of communism and low food supplies has always been an issue.

        • @I_Has_A_Hat
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          3 months ago

          Record profits from grocery stores and food suppliers. But please, tell me more about how they can’t afford to drop prices and it would be unprofitable.

          Keep in mind, unprofitable means going into the red; not just making less profit than the previous quarter. Infinite growth is an insane philosophy, especially for basic goods.

        • @zeppo
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          43 months ago

          You realize that food producers in a communist nation wouldn’t be supposed to make profits, right? The problems with that in various countries were from poorly done central planning.

          • NeuromancerM
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            -63 months ago

            It’s an inherent flaw in communism. People starve under the system.

            • @[email protected]
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              33 months ago

              Source? Communism has never been implemented, and the systems designed to transition to communism, e.g. the USSR, we’re actually pretty successful in decreasing hunger. People starve under capitalism.

            • @zeppo
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              33 months ago

              Not any more than it is under capitalism. People starve under that system too. Meanwhile you have Republicans crying that a state might pay $1.50 a day to feed a needy kid lunch at school. Why is that even necessary then?

              • NeuromancerM
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                -53 months ago

                My friends who survived communism would disagree with you. Do you have a cite to show otherwise?

                Looking at Venezuela, I have not seen anything like that here, have you? or Cuba? When I was in Cuba, malnutrition was common.

                • @zeppo
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                  33 months ago

                  Do I have a citation that starvation exists in capitalist countries as well? I don’t think comparing the rest of the world to the US, which is extraordinarily well-positioned economically for a variety of reasons, makes much sense. Even so, we have 15-30 million people in the US who experience occasional or chronic food insecurity.

                  As far as Cuba, who knows how they would have done without decades of a US trade embargo. Venezuela has suffered under looting and misrule by authoritarian dictators, not communism.

                  • NeuromancerM
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                    -43 months ago

                    Cuba is only embargoed from us. Pretty much everyone else in the world trades with them.

                    Authoritarian dictators. Communism. It is all the same thing.

                • Nicholas Conrad
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                  63 months ago

                  Record inflation is though, and makes all the nominal profits numbers go up without adding any extra underlying value to the companies balance sheets.

                  • casey is remote
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                    -63 months ago

                    @nicholas @agamemnonymous The real reason we’re seeing record profits is that big businesses are preparing cash stockpiles ahead of the inevitable economic collapse that financial experts and insiders are all expecting, but nobody wants to talk about that.

                    My common response to the “corporate greed” accusation is asking if squirrels are greedy for hoarding acorns for the winter.