But in this case this is not about politics, it's about local power and local control, and Laos government have very little of either of it. Laos communism and Vietnam communism are very similar, but you don't here the same about Vietnam, because Vietnam is easier to control due to geographical terrain and investment by USSR and china after the vietnam war. Laos still have areas with unexploded personal mines and ammunition (the "joke" there is that US pilots couldn't aim for shit, the reality is that vietcongs used Laos jungle path to encircle US soldiers, and so the US made those path unusable). Laos have way less roads, rougher terrain, and mines. You have basically local feudalism. Imagine colombia, but ten time worse.
They are culturally very close, and have the same theoricians. That's enough for 'very similar', just like US and UK have a very similar brand of capitalism, despite UK having a better Gini coefficient, a way better press freedom index and higher life expectancy.
As opposed to capitalism, which as we all know works flawlessly. The free hand of the market keeps everything running smoothly. There’s always competition for the benefit of the customer, never collusion. There aren’t just a few bit players controlling everything, everyone has equal opportunity. And of course who can forget trickle down economics, where giving more money to the richest people made every one of us richer.
Capitalism’s most outstanding feature is that no matter how hard it tears one’s asshole, it keeps people begging for more with the false promise that they too one day will have their turn as the selfish oppressors doing the pounding, and that’s a good thing for everyone actually, for some reason.
Is there any ideology applied societally at the scale of those two which hasn’t failed to deliver?
Capitalism doesn’t preach to be a solution for monopolistic behavior of actors that accumulate too much power. It’s a known downside of capitalism that has to be actively managed by the state.
Capitalism has still delivered with massive success in China, the US, India, Europe, etc etc. It hasn’t “failed to deliver” in any of those places.
So in other words, communism pretends to solve the problem of power accumulation but doesn't, while capitalism doesn't even claim to do so (and only occasionally even sees it as a problem at all)
> Capitalism has still delivered with massive success in China, the US, India, Europe, etc etc.
Ah yes, the “massive success” where people can’t afford a place to live, struggle to cover basic necessities, are increasingly lonely, radicalised, unhappy, depressed… But hey, at least you can look at cat videos all day while enriching a small number of individuals who don’t even allow you the dignity of not having to piss in bottles as you’re making them more money they will ever be able to spend.
This was precisely my point. No matter how much mistreatment there is, we can always count on someone coming out to ask for more.
> Nobody is struggling to find enough to eat in Europe or America
Respectfully, you need to get out more. I recommend you go volunteer at your local food bank.
Or at the very least go into Wikipedia and search “poverty”. There are pages for individual countries. And yes, they very much include the US and Europe.
> If you like communism so much
I’m not defending communism, I’m arguing capitalism isn’t a panacea. The world isn’t black and white.
You just moved the goal posts, OP didn't say there weren't people struggling with homelessness, I think he was saying that famine or dying of lack of food is basically 0% in Europe or America. "Enough to eat" is poorly phrased, as we eat too much already.
I haven’t even hinted at homelessness, so what the hell are you even talking about? Do you think they serve homes at food banks? Do you think every poor person is homeless? Do you think anyone with a roof over their head isn’t poor? Do you think you need to be literally dying of hunger to be struggling to eat? An abundance of food in a country does in no way mean there aren’t people in that country going hungry, and to believe otherwise is to be both deeply uninformed and privileged.
I used to volunteer, for many years, at a local food bank until 2 years ago.
And no, nobody is struggling to find enough to eat in Europe. These people go there because they chose to not participate in contributing to society the basic minimum. They do not work, they still receive money from the state, they have shelter (if they want, which many times they don't because they need to follow rules they prefer not to follow), they have food - that's exactly what your example provides them: food - they have medical care, they even have drugs freely provided by the state (methadone).
All of this is done by capitalism. All of this abundance, that even allows to provide immense benefits to those that choose not to contribute to society, comes from the extreme productivity enabled to capitalism. To the point where the state is these countries, can take 82% of what every worker earns [1] (this is the real example of France, BTW) to give to those that don't work and to invest in public projects that at best are severely mismanaged, and at worst not needed at all.
All this ridiculously high productivity and forced profit sharing, is made available by the free market.
> I used to volunteer, for many years, at a local food bank
So did I.
> And no, nobody is struggling to find enough to eat in Europe. These people go there because they chose to not participate in contributing to society the basic minimum.
Your disdain for poor people and uninformed take frankly make me question your honesty regarding working at a food bank. Clearly you were never friends or cared to learn the stories of the people in need.
> that's exactly what your example provides them: food
You mean you never had to turn someone down because you ran out for the day? I’m smelling more bullshit by the sentence. Were you working at a food bank in the rich neighbourhood of a rich city of a rich country?
> they even have drugs freely provided by the state (methadone).
Ah, there we go. Associating poor people with being drug addicts. I was wondering when that was coming.
You have all the exact same talking points of the people who were born lucky and never really struggled, who want to defund social programs but offer no alternatives. Zero empathy.
Yes, there are people who game the system. If you think people choose to live in poverty to do so, I don’t believe you’ve ever been in contact with those communities, you’re judging them from a safe distance.
> Were you working at a food bank in the rich neighbourhood of a rich city of a rich country?
Yes, I was working in food bank in a rich country. That's what all capitalist European countries and USA (you know, the ones where you claimed above people didn't have food), are: rich!
> You have all the exact same talking points of the people who were born lucky and never really struggled,
Yes, I was born lucky: My parents were hardworking blue collar workers receiving the minimum wage for most of my childhood and guess what: they still managed to provide me all that was needed and put money aside for themselves so not to depend on any handouts. So, yes, I lived a very lucky privileged life that anyone that lives in a capitalist country and is not afraid to work can also have.
> you know, the ones where you claimed above people didn't have food
You are being dishonest. That was not the claim.
> My parents were hardworking blue collar workers
Did they pull themselves by their bootstraps? You’re engaging in what is called the hard work fallacy.
> guess what: they still managed to provide me all that was needed and put money aside for themselves so not to depend on any handouts.
What year was that again? Want to go check some housing prices and the wage gap between now and then? You sure were lucky one of your parents didn’t get sick with a fatal chronic illness as you were growing up, burdening the other with ever rising health costs which bankrupted them through no fault of their own. Tell me, were any of them ever racially profiled and were thrown in jail on a bullshit charge, making them lose their job and fall into ever increasing debt?
I have no doubt you faced some hardship. But make no mistake, you had advantages that many people did not have, and it was down to blind luck. Believing that other people deserve what they get because they are lazy is a selfish view that cuts your nose to spite your face. Your parents and yourself shouldn’t have faced any hardships, and neither should the people living in poverty now. You’re blaming the people with no money instead of the people hoarding all of it, as they get ever richer.
I’ll say it again: Capitalism’s most outstanding feature is that no matter how much mistreatment there is, we can always count on someone coming out to ask for more. That’s exactly what you’re doing. Break the cycle.
Food is not the only basic necessity people struggle with. By the way 14% of US households suffered from food insecurity in 2024 https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details?pubid=1136.... On top of that the poor are overweight and obese because cheap food is ultraprocessed, unhealthy and designed to make you addicted to it.
>Tens of millions of people from all over the world are costly flocking to those countries for a better life;
Of course the west and specifically the US have absolutely nothing to do with the material conditions of those countries.../S
> If you like communism so much why not move to somewhere like North Korea or Cuba, the most communist countries in the world?
And if you love capitalism so much why don't you move to the US? Oh wait, they just halted VISA applications for 80 countries and don't want to let in any immigrants...
> Of course the west and specifically the US have absolutely nothing to do with the material conditions of those countries.../S
Of course we do. We provided close to 5 trillion USD in aid to those countries since 2000. Unfortunately, the mentality and culture of these countries is so counterproductive that even with that immense amount of help from Europeans and Americans, they still manage to still live in terrible conditions of deprivation.
I say it's best to cut all aid and let them finally understand they need to take care of themselves. That would probably finally institute the free market mentality they need to finally fix their own issues.
this really has little to do with communism. after all the vietnam war etc concluded, that area kind of got left to itself by the powers that be.
It's a small country that was given a political system to be a client-state of a hegemonic regional power, and then the hegemon abandoned them, they don't have valuable resources like crude oil or gold, and they end up with underdeveloped state institutions. they aren't really failed states, but more so "unfinished" states
similar examples include belize, papua new guinea (abandoned by australia), East Timor, vanuatu, djibouti, maldives etc. some marxist, some british, portuguese, french, etc
in many of these countries you really can do what you want. belize is not much more than a forestry plantation with 19th century english corporate law and a few bars in the capital ("Belize City").
Laos is a pretty odd state. I looked up their official news site once expecting to find North Korea style propaganda, but it was instead surprisingly straightforward about a lot of day to day problems.
I also had some contact many years ago with their one Linux/Free Software enthusiast.
My impression is that it's a fairly weak state, and the main reason the communists are technically still in charge is that nobody really wants the job of ruling Laos particularly much.
No, capitalism is about capital owners having control about what is produced and how it is produced, and we have exactly that, especially since Friedman "shareholder primacy" theory, which, at least to me, looks like the ultimate form of capitalism (capitalism != liberalism, which is about markets and exchange, not about production methods).
Communist countries however are never about communal ownership of production method. I think there is reasons for that: communism is not only about production methods, but also about the "march of progress" and other philosophical theories that are more or less dumb (some are very effective analysis tools, some are very less so), and communist leaders pick and choose what they want from it.
It's not. But that the system we're currently under. In a better world, you'd have employees, local government, consumers as well as obligation owners on the companies boards.
Because they created the production; it they couldn't control it then they'd have no incentive to create it and there'd be no non-state-owned businesses, exactly as happened when China was fully communist and still happens in North Korea today. Capital doesn't grow out of thin air just from "working"; the only people who think it does are those who've never tried to build a successful business.
of course people are also resources in this framework, and "something stupid" could be providing insurance/healthcare/pension etc - unless a tyrannical (/s) government forces them to do otherwise
This probably has more to do with a power vacuum in which lawlessness arises instead of the ideology that is at power.
But in this case this is not about politics, it's about local power and local control, and Laos government have very little of either of it. Laos communism and Vietnam communism are very similar, but you don't here the same about Vietnam, because Vietnam is easier to control due to geographical terrain and investment by USSR and china after the vietnam war. Laos still have areas with unexploded personal mines and ammunition (the "joke" there is that US pilots couldn't aim for shit, the reality is that vietcongs used Laos jungle path to encircle US soldiers, and so the US made those path unusable). Laos have way less roads, rougher terrain, and mines. You have basically local feudalism. Imagine colombia, but ten time worse.
>Laos communism and Vietnam communism are very similar
No they're not; Vietnam scores much higher than Laos on any measure of economic freedom/property rights.
They are culturally very close, and have the same theoricians. That's enough for 'very similar', just like US and UK have a very similar brand of capitalism, despite UK having a better Gini coefficient, a way better press freedom index and higher life expectancy.
As opposed to capitalism, which as we all know works flawlessly. The free hand of the market keeps everything running smoothly. There’s always competition for the benefit of the customer, never collusion. There aren’t just a few bit players controlling everything, everyone has equal opportunity. And of course who can forget trickle down economics, where giving more money to the richest people made every one of us richer.
Capitalism’s most outstanding feature is that no matter how hard it tears one’s asshole, it keeps people begging for more with the false promise that they too one day will have their turn as the selfish oppressors doing the pounding, and that’s a good thing for everyone actually, for some reason.
Is there any ideology applied societally at the scale of those two which hasn’t failed to deliver?
Capitalism doesn’t preach to be a solution for monopolistic behavior of actors that accumulate too much power. It’s a known downside of capitalism that has to be actively managed by the state.
Capitalism has still delivered with massive success in China, the US, India, Europe, etc etc. It hasn’t “failed to deliver” in any of those places.
So in other words, communism pretends to solve the problem of power accumulation but doesn't, while capitalism doesn't even claim to do so (and only occasionally even sees it as a problem at all)
> downside of capitalism that has to be actively managed by the state.
And all governments in the world seem to be doing a great job at this! /s
> Capitalism has still delivered with massive success in China, the US, India, Europe, etc etc.
Ah yes, the “massive success” where people can’t afford a place to live, struggle to cover basic necessities, are increasingly lonely, radicalised, unhappy, depressed… But hey, at least you can look at cat videos all day while enriching a small number of individuals who don’t even allow you the dignity of not having to piss in bottles as you’re making them more money they will ever be able to spend.
This was precisely my point. No matter how much mistreatment there is, we can always count on someone coming out to ask for more.
[flagged]
> Nobody is struggling to find enough to eat in Europe or America
Respectfully, you need to get out more. I recommend you go volunteer at your local food bank.
Or at the very least go into Wikipedia and search “poverty”. There are pages for individual countries. And yes, they very much include the US and Europe.
> If you like communism so much
I’m not defending communism, I’m arguing capitalism isn’t a panacea. The world isn’t black and white.
You just moved the goal posts, OP didn't say there weren't people struggling with homelessness, I think he was saying that famine or dying of lack of food is basically 0% in Europe or America. "Enough to eat" is poorly phrased, as we eat too much already.
I haven’t even hinted at homelessness, so what the hell are you even talking about? Do you think they serve homes at food banks? Do you think every poor person is homeless? Do you think anyone with a roof over their head isn’t poor? Do you think you need to be literally dying of hunger to be struggling to eat? An abundance of food in a country does in no way mean there aren’t people in that country going hungry, and to believe otherwise is to be both deeply uninformed and privileged.
[flagged]
I used to volunteer, for many years, at a local food bank until 2 years ago.
And no, nobody is struggling to find enough to eat in Europe. These people go there because they chose to not participate in contributing to society the basic minimum. They do not work, they still receive money from the state, they have shelter (if they want, which many times they don't because they need to follow rules they prefer not to follow), they have food - that's exactly what your example provides them: food - they have medical care, they even have drugs freely provided by the state (methadone).
All of this is done by capitalism. All of this abundance, that even allows to provide immense benefits to those that choose not to contribute to society, comes from the extreme productivity enabled to capitalism. To the point where the state is these countries, can take 82% of what every worker earns [1] (this is the real example of France, BTW) to give to those that don't work and to invest in public projects that at best are severely mismanaged, and at worst not needed at all.
All this ridiculously high productivity and forced profit sharing, is made available by the free market.
[1] https://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/taxing-wages-france.pdf
> I used to volunteer, for many years, at a local food bank
So did I.
> And no, nobody is struggling to find enough to eat in Europe. These people go there because they chose to not participate in contributing to society the basic minimum.
Your disdain for poor people and uninformed take frankly make me question your honesty regarding working at a food bank. Clearly you were never friends or cared to learn the stories of the people in need.
> that's exactly what your example provides them: food
You mean you never had to turn someone down because you ran out for the day? I’m smelling more bullshit by the sentence. Were you working at a food bank in the rich neighbourhood of a rich city of a rich country?
> they even have drugs freely provided by the state (methadone).
Ah, there we go. Associating poor people with being drug addicts. I was wondering when that was coming.
You have all the exact same talking points of the people who were born lucky and never really struggled, who want to defund social programs but offer no alternatives. Zero empathy.
Yes, there are people who game the system. If you think people choose to live in poverty to do so, I don’t believe you’ve ever been in contact with those communities, you’re judging them from a safe distance.
> Were you working at a food bank in the rich neighbourhood of a rich city of a rich country?
Yes, I was working in food bank in a rich country. That's what all capitalist European countries and USA (you know, the ones where you claimed above people didn't have food), are: rich!
> You have all the exact same talking points of the people who were born lucky and never really struggled,
Yes, I was born lucky: My parents were hardworking blue collar workers receiving the minimum wage for most of my childhood and guess what: they still managed to provide me all that was needed and put money aside for themselves so not to depend on any handouts. So, yes, I lived a very lucky privileged life that anyone that lives in a capitalist country and is not afraid to work can also have.
> you know, the ones where you claimed above people didn't have food
You are being dishonest. That was not the claim.
> My parents were hardworking blue collar workers
Did they pull themselves by their bootstraps? You’re engaging in what is called the hard work fallacy.
> guess what: they still managed to provide me all that was needed and put money aside for themselves so not to depend on any handouts.
What year was that again? Want to go check some housing prices and the wage gap between now and then? You sure were lucky one of your parents didn’t get sick with a fatal chronic illness as you were growing up, burdening the other with ever rising health costs which bankrupted them through no fault of their own. Tell me, were any of them ever racially profiled and were thrown in jail on a bullshit charge, making them lose their job and fall into ever increasing debt?
I have no doubt you faced some hardship. But make no mistake, you had advantages that many people did not have, and it was down to blind luck. Believing that other people deserve what they get because they are lazy is a selfish view that cuts your nose to spite your face. Your parents and yourself shouldn’t have faced any hardships, and neither should the people living in poverty now. You’re blaming the people with no money instead of the people hoarding all of it, as they get ever richer.
I’ll say it again: Capitalism’s most outstanding feature is that no matter how much mistreatment there is, we can always count on someone coming out to ask for more. That’s exactly what you’re doing. Break the cycle.
Food is not the only basic necessity people struggle with. By the way 14% of US households suffered from food insecurity in 2024 https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details?pubid=1136.... On top of that the poor are overweight and obese because cheap food is ultraprocessed, unhealthy and designed to make you addicted to it.
>Tens of millions of people from all over the world are costly flocking to those countries for a better life;
Of course the west and specifically the US have absolutely nothing to do with the material conditions of those countries.../S
> If you like communism so much why not move to somewhere like North Korea or Cuba, the most communist countries in the world?
And if you love capitalism so much why don't you move to the US? Oh wait, they just halted VISA applications for 80 countries and don't want to let in any immigrants...
> Of course the west and specifically the US have absolutely nothing to do with the material conditions of those countries.../S
Of course we do. We provided close to 5 trillion USD in aid to those countries since 2000. Unfortunately, the mentality and culture of these countries is so counterproductive that even with that immense amount of help from Europeans and Americans, they still manage to still live in terrible conditions of deprivation.
I say it's best to cut all aid and let them finally understand they need to take care of themselves. That would probably finally institute the free market mentality they need to finally fix their own issues.
You can not be serious. Did US hegemony start in the year 2000? Where did you fish that 5 trillion figure from? Here maybe skim through something like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
this really has little to do with communism. after all the vietnam war etc concluded, that area kind of got left to itself by the powers that be.
It's a small country that was given a political system to be a client-state of a hegemonic regional power, and then the hegemon abandoned them, they don't have valuable resources like crude oil or gold, and they end up with underdeveloped state institutions. they aren't really failed states, but more so "unfinished" states
similar examples include belize, papua new guinea (abandoned by australia), East Timor, vanuatu, djibouti, maldives etc. some marxist, some british, portuguese, french, etc
in many of these countries you really can do what you want. belize is not much more than a forestry plantation with 19th century english corporate law and a few bars in the capital ("Belize City").
Laos is a pretty odd state. I looked up their official news site once expecting to find North Korea style propaganda, but it was instead surprisingly straightforward about a lot of day to day problems. I also had some contact many years ago with their one Linux/Free Software enthusiast. My impression is that it's a fairly weak state, and the main reason the communists are technically still in charge is that nobody really wants the job of ruling Laos particularly much.
Is there anything that capitalism did that is different from what it preaches?
No, capitalism is about capital owners having control about what is produced and how it is produced, and we have exactly that, especially since Friedman "shareholder primacy" theory, which, at least to me, looks like the ultimate form of capitalism (capitalism != liberalism, which is about markets and exchange, not about production methods).
Communist countries however are never about communal ownership of production method. I think there is reasons for that: communism is not only about production methods, but also about the "march of progress" and other philosophical theories that are more or less dumb (some are very effective analysis tools, some are very less so), and communist leaders pick and choose what they want from it.
Why is capital owners controlling production desirable?
It's not. But that the system we're currently under. In a better world, you'd have employees, local government, consumers as well as obligation owners on the companies boards.
Because they created the production; it they couldn't control it then they'd have no incentive to create it and there'd be no non-state-owned businesses, exactly as happened when China was fully communist and still happens in North Korea today. Capital doesn't grow out of thin air just from "working"; the only people who think it does are those who've never tried to build a successful business.
Because of incentive alignment. They are the only ones incentivized not to do something stupid with their own resources.
of course people are also resources in this framework, and "something stupid" could be providing insurance/healthcare/pension etc - unless a tyrannical (/s) government forces them to do otherwise
How does Elon Musk fit into your framework?
Why though? The essence of communism is banditism
Same with capitalism, as we are witnessing now in US.
Or with any -ism for that matter.