I’m commenting because there are many misconceptions about socialism and planned economies, and the two are often conflated.

Socialism can take on many forms. Just like there are many forms of democracy, autocracy, capitalism, etc. By itself, socialism does not imply centralized control. At all. In fact, the often stated goal of communist ideologies is the complete abolition of the state and self governance by the people in small communes, hence the name.

generally the means of production being owned by the workers means it is taken by the state on behalf of the workers

Yeah this has been the case in the past but it doesn’t have to be. The Soviet Union was, in my opinion, a terrible example of a democratic and socialist state.

To illustrate my point, a socialist company structure can simply distribute voting shares to the workers and thereby democratize it. If you don’t work there, you can’t have a say of what investments are made and how profits are distributed. No state or government involvement needed. No revolution needed.

Btw I’m not a hardcore socialist, I just think that there are many misconceptions about what socialism is and what it is not, which limits our understanding of what we can actually achieve when we want to get rid of the current, toxic system.

I’m not sure if you’re getting my point. Socialism is NOT about free markets vs planned economies. One of the main tennets in socialism is about the ownership of the means of production being in the worker’s hands. Basically, democratic ownership of the company you work for. This does NOT mean that companies among themselves can not compete in an open market. It’s about bringing democratic values to the economic, not just the political realm.

On the contrary, you have many capitalistic examples today of companies in private hands that can maintain a (near) monopoly on specific industries while heavily relying on government contracts, i.e. planned budgets distributed by the government.

Don’t conflate the ownership of the means of production with the idea of a free market.

Capitalism allows efficient use of resources

No. Free markets do. Socialist societies don’t have to run on planned economies, they can just as well utilize free markets just like capitalism does. It’s a misunderstanding that I often encounter in these discussions, the media over the past decades has pushed to associate planned economic structures with socialism and it’s hard to disassociate these two now.

The founder of Nordwolle is famous for his rant about the German bureaucracy. Great guy.

Airbus employees, I suppose. They have a site in Filton.

Nah you’re seeing this a little pessimistic. It’s clear to anyone that there will be political in fighting in such a case, but claiming and retaining power is not easy, especially under the conditions that Russia is in right now. Different interests will need to compete for political power, and the resulting government will surely not align with the West’s vision of democratic rule. However, these are the moments of opportunity for the people. Nobody in the country comes even close to Putins cult status. Anything can happen.

Wouldn’t it be funny if make that 180° towards democracy like the US did towards fascism? :)

A fully planned system has also shown to become highly inefficient

Nobody was arguing that.

I don’t think you understand what actually is meant by the term “capitalism”. Capitalism does not mean free markets. Capitalism primarily means the ownership of the means of production in private hands. You can come up with a system which is highly regulated, to some degree even planned, which can still be considered capitalistic.

On the other hand, it is easy to imagine a socialist system whose economy consist solely of companies fully owned by the people that work there, i.e. the workers, while the companies themselves engage in a competitive and free market. It would be just like today, except workers have a say in who leads the organization, and how, in a democratic process.

In short capitalism != free market and vice versa.

Hey very interesting comment. I have a question: in which step do you normally pay the manufacturer in your example? Is this also handled via the agent?

Hilariously that’s what every toothless Russian drunkard says when you ask them about the war.

Neither am I for the end of Ukraine.

They can threaten all they want, it’s simply not possible. If it actually was possible, they’d have done that a long time ago.

You’re wrong.

Yes, it is.

It’s doesn’t even matter if they move away. The things we want to tax them on simply can’t just move away. Gary puts it best, as always.

Not sure what you’re trying to say, honestly. Democratic values == evil communism?

In my mind, the idea of left politics is to democratize society as much as possible. Any type of Authoritarianism goes against that, including the idea of a single party with a single leader. It’s anti-democratic, and therefore does not fit into the category of leftist politics, even if they call themselves left. No racist is gonna call himself racists. And fashists neither.

Hamas wouldn’t be necessary if they stopped treating Palestinians like animals.

I was merely pointing out the fact that your no-effort comment above contributed absolutely nothing to the conversation.

That said, I’m not against nuclear power per se. However, given the fact that we need to cut down on CO2 asap, while at the same time there is a clear lack of available resources to build/research/develop every possible tech at the same time, I find it quite delusional to still push for nuclear when we can use those resources to expand on wind/solar even more aggressively.

In the case of France, the corporation running nuclear power is almost 70 BILLION Euros in debt, while expecting costs upward of additional 50 BILLION Euros for 6 more reactors…numbers that you know will skyrocket once construction begins. That nuclear plant that will be finished next year will produce the most expensive kwh in Frances history. Great outlook! Much convince.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64674131

Pretty much everything OP said is backed up by mountains of evidence, especially in the case of France. Looking it up is trivial. Without proving anything to the contrary, your own comment is lazy and useless to this conversation.