And looking more broadly, how much of any given system’s death toll should be counted, and in what way. Mao caused massive amounts of death with the Great Leap Forward, which arguably would not have happened under a system that relied less on central management and more on capitalism’s distributed feedback mechanisms. Then there were purges, suppression campaigns, and land reforms that resulted in productivity losses.
But comparing that with a capitalist country that is a liberal democracy is hard. There are a lot of factors involved. Case in point: there was solid growth in China and the USSR. But we can’t make a direct comparison between them and the West. China and the USSR were playing catch up using technologies produced by capitalist countries. Take tractors, which immensely boosted productivity. Those were sourced from the West, at least initially.
Stuff like this always happened in China’s history, we can’t just say that he killed X amount of people so it’s bad, we have to contextualize everything. Also, it’s like saying that the American revolution is bad because it killed X amount of people
Representative democracy sweatin’ hard with this kinda logic.
Otto Von Bismark firmly believed that republics could never succeed, as they tended to rapidly deteriorate into horrible authoritarian bloodbaths whenever they were tried.
What do you think the death toll of flight attempts was before the Wright brothers finally got it right? Certainly not in the millions.
Whether or not you like communism, “keep trying over and over until it works” is a bad plan when failure has historically cost lives.
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And looking more broadly, how much of any given system’s death toll should be counted, and in what way. Mao caused massive amounts of death with the Great Leap Forward, which arguably would not have happened under a system that relied less on central management and more on capitalism’s distributed feedback mechanisms. Then there were purges, suppression campaigns, and land reforms that resulted in productivity losses.
But comparing that with a capitalist country that is a liberal democracy is hard. There are a lot of factors involved. Case in point: there was solid growth in China and the USSR. But we can’t make a direct comparison between them and the West. China and the USSR were playing catch up using technologies produced by capitalist countries. Take tractors, which immensely boosted productivity. Those were sourced from the West, at least initially.
Stuff like this always happened in China’s history, we can’t just say that he killed X amount of people so it’s bad, we have to contextualize everything. Also, it’s like saying that the American revolution is bad because it killed X amount of people
You’re thinking of dictatorships. If economic systems kill people, wait till you hear about capitalism.
Representative democracy sweatin’ hard with this kinda logic.
Otto Von Bismark firmly believed that republics could never succeed, as they tended to rapidly deteriorate into horrible authoritarian bloodbaths whenever they were tried.
L take.
Sometime in the future:
“Okay, our tech has advanced to the point where we can provide plenty to all. Can we abolish capitalism now and just give everyone what they need?”
“No. That would be communism, and we already tried that 500 years ago…”
Millions died? Come on - I heard it was billions. Maybe trillions.