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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • If anything didn’t need a source then it’s that the wealth of rich nations is upheld by the less rich nations. Anyone who isn’t aware of that should not be listened to on any political or economical topic

    Yet, what you said earlier struck me as incredibly “buzzwordy” so to say. You hinted at the choice being Marxism (we’ll come back to that one) and capitalism with the “Nordic Model” (reductive US-centric naming schemes at work) being sold as a (for you not satisfactory I assume) middle ground.

    You seem to reject this middle ground because (and correct me if I’m wrong, I’m reading between the lines here) it will not solve the huge discrepancy in wealth between our richest and our poorest countries in earth.

    So far, so good. Now: when you talk about “Marxism”, what do you mean by that exactly? I’ve seen this word thrown around countless times (again, mostly from the US) and most of the ppl doing so would have made Karl Marx vomit in his luscious beard when he heard what wild theories go by “Marxism” these days. So you’ll have to be rather specific as to what you mean. "Marxism " isn’t a clear-cut thing in the best of times.

    Secondly: I’m assuming you want the global revolution the theories by Engels and Marx discuss im their economical parts and change the whole world towards a classless society by an uprising of the working class (however that would look). Isn’t any call for such a thing another manifestation of the same air of superiority we 1sr worlders tend to fall victim to? Any capitalist would tell you that the nations held back by the “1st world” just needed to fend for themselves and all would be great, right? While I can see how this is not a sentiment one would support (I don’t either), it’s not completely off. Even if we in the west decided that Marxism (again, whatever that means) is the Bee’s Knees right now, isn’t it just the same kind of patronizing if we just assume that the people in poorer countries think the same and expect them to (again) follow our lead into what we tell them is a better future? What if they want capitalism or whatever else? (Unlikely, yet still)

    Now regarding the “Nordic Model” or all other forms of social economy: I think it’s safe to assume that the US and Europe have a comparable amount of “oppression per person” regarding foreign industry, yet the amount of exploitation of domestic workers will vary greatly.

    Lacking many state-driven social security nets, the US will likely come upnfirst when it comes to local exploitation. So, if there was a way to ease this up while the rest of the world is not up for revolution stuff, why wouldn’t it be worthwhile to take that route?


  • Well, I’d say at least less exploitation than the raw capitalism the US has right now.

    The funny thing is that the Allied powers helped establish a nation that has fixes for many problems the US faces right now, both constitutionally and economically in 1949.

    Germany’s economy calls itself “social market economy” and acknowledges that the state has to interfere with “the market” whenever the developing power gradient in capitalism threatens to stomp the weaker. Does it work perfectly? Of course not! Nothing does on that level. Is it in danger of being hollowed out by capitalist fuckfaces constantly? Absolutely. Yet the model might give.some ideas.

    https://www.deutschland.de/en/topic/business/social-market-economy-in-germany-growth-and-prosperity


  • This sounds awfully like one of those weird debates where twisted and contorted buzzwords get thrown around and once one of us Europeans innocently enters the discussion gets downvoted and hated into oblivion because everything we say is taken in some weird context we didn’t know shit about.

    In what context dies a “Nordic model” come up and what’s it supposed to entail?


  • Shitposting aside: there is a valid point on there. Because we can’t see our opposites in any discussion on the internet, we cannot take clues into account we otherwise might have. This leads to far-reaching misinterpretations. Imagine someone with a very weird and overly simplistic political stance they defend with tooth and nail. Now imagine that person to be some activist with a cap with political slogans on it. Okay, and now imagine the person to be not that, but a 15-year-old who just started to grasp the world around them but thinks they have it all figured out (puberty doing puberty things). Your reaction to either of them would be VASTLY different, wouldn’t it. Imagine how many stupid internet fights would never have happened if it was known that one of the participants is a literal child that can’t have a clue what they are talking about yet.

    Yet, not knowing that we’ve been arguing with a child for the last hour and a half, we will leave the discussion with the impression that there are grown up people out there thinking childish bullshit. Don’t get me wrong, there are those people, but they are not as frequent as one might guess from the internet.