DBWI: What if capitalism won the cold war?

@CaekDaemon - very very true!

Solar and wind power, SOCNET, space exploration...when people are free to work together and not beholden to conservative corporate heads, they can achieve wonders. SOCNET especially.

Chile’s pretty amazing, alright. Before the greater spread of Socialism, it was decidedly mixed. These days, though, it’s the equal of any of what used to be called the First World. And innovators flock there - Steve Jobs got his start with the Santiago Communications Union, and he helped with many of their most innovative products.

They have grown alot fairer toward the LGTBQ+ community...

Meant to say earlier - under capitalism I doubt you’d have had representation like we have these days. As one example: superheroes. I doubt you’d have seen Wonder Woman being confirmed as bi (and in the cirrent run, in a relationship with Etta Candy) if it had been executives running DC rather than the writers and artists as OTL. Or Kara marrying Lena in the Supergirl TV show :p
 
Steve Jobs got his start with the Santiago Communications Union, and he helped with many of their most innovative products.
...who? I am familiar with many great minds of the computing industry - Torvalds, Gates, Berners-Lee and many others - but not with this man. Do you instead mean Steve Wozniak?

OOC: Remember, Jobs was a businessman, not an inventor. Wozniak was the real brain at Apple, because he actually created the Apple I and Apple II; Jobs only sold the thing and managed to get the plastic case for the second done. He was a businessman, not a programmer or hardware engineer. Think Edison and Tesla. In this universe Jobs is most likely some manager somewhere of little fame indeed, whilst Wozniak would be one of the most acclaimed computing minds in the world :p Compare that to Bill Gates, who was actually "in the trenches" so to speak, working as one of the programmers during Microsoft's early days.
 
...who? I am familiar with many great minds of the computing industry - Torvalds, Gates, Berners-Lee and many others - but not with this man. Do you instead mean Steve Wozniak?

Yes! Yes I did - damned autocorrect...

OOC: Remember, Jobs was a businessman, not an inventor. Wozniak was the real brain at Apple, because he actually created the Apple I and Apple II; Jobs only sold the thing and managed to get the plastic case for the second done. He was a businessman, not a programmer or hardware engineer. Think Edison and Tesla. In this universe Jobs is most likely some manager somewhere of little fame indeed, whilst Wozniak would be one of the most acclaimed computing minds in the world :p Compare that to Bill Gates, who was actually "in the trenches" so to speak, working as one of the programmers during Microsoft's early days.

OOC: Point :p Nice one.
 
Yes! Yes I did - damned autocorrect...
Ah, autocorrect. I would suggest submitting a request to pull the latest dictionaries from your local SOCNET distributor...hmmm. That should be the following command sequence in terminal:

Code:
$ sudo apt-get update dictionary

And you should be right as rain!
space exploration
...and speaking of space exploration, has anyone visited the Korolev Museum in Baikonur? I've been meaning to go and see the memorial for the father of spaceflight, as well as the exhibits of all his wonderful creations, but I would like to hear what you all have to say as well! :D
 
I am not convinced. I have seen the photos of the degraded forests in Northern America and the black fields of China.
Sure now there are some regions which leverage the State resources to get better but I can't help but think that if people had had the choice of operator, and more leverage against companies, you could have seen greener energy sooner. You wouldn't have had to wait for the Milan, Marseilles and Nice communes to pave the way in 2003 with the biggest clean solar field and the Irish Republic and their windmill in 1994.
Pushed by the market, we could have been fully green by 2000. But we'll never know

Not really. Companies are basically much like feudal systems in nature. The super-rich were disassociated from common-living as most royals were years ago. Furthermore, as we saw during the transitional periods, most of the older folk really did not care since they figured they;d be dead by then and it wouldn't be their problem
 

manav95

Banned
Imagine what would have happened if the stagflation crisis of the 70s had led to the election of Thatcher, Reagan, and other hardcore capitalists to power in the West.

Eurocommunism and the American libsoc ideology of Premier Sanders and Secretary Chomsky enabled a more innovative, productive socialism that gave workers far more freedom than under the oligarchical capitalism or stagnant nightmare of Bolshevism. People are now looking forward to the day when they no longer have to work, giving them endless time for leisure and self development. Technology like SOCNET could have fallen in the hands of the capitalists, enabling them to replace countless workers, decimate the unions, and hoard all the wealth for themselves. The world today could be hurtling into a new Gilded Age and an era of environment destruction/climate change.
 
Technology like SOCNET could have fallen in the hands of the capitalists, enabling them to replace countless workers, decimate the unions, and hoard all the wealth for themselves. The world today could be hurtling into a new Gilded Age and an era of environment destruction/climate change.

Very, very true. While automatization is a great thing in improving the lives of people and giving them more free time for self developememt and fun under socialism, it would destroy the groundstone of the existance of millions and lead to mass unemployment and poverty, under capitalism. This is the cruel amd cynical nature of capitalist society: Production increases, but wealth becomes more and more centralized by this and peoples lives get worse.

When I learned about this fact im school, I realized how lucky we really are that socialism allready succeded in most of the world. Though there are still many problems and wealth gaps between the former first and third world, things like depletion of our biosphere and world hunger are things of the past (and I'm a bit proud to say that our European Socialist Union played a vital role in ending those horrible things). If capitalism had won, our lives would be so much worse. I'm not even sure if we had the 20 hour work week, yet. I'm not a big fan of parades and prestige monuments, and all those pathetic songs and poems about the communist party in Russia, China, etc. from the past, seem quite funny to me now. But we should really be gratefull about the actions of countless concious workers and peasants, of normal working people, who risked and often even gave their lives, to build a better world them, their children and ultimately us. Of course many mistakes were made, like in the Stalin era USSR or maoist china. But ultimately the better world is here now. And some people say, we can have full communism within a few decades (well at least technologicly, hopefully geopolitical issues can be solved, too).

Sorry now me myself became a bit pathetic :)
 
Somebody here mentioned climate change... You know that this is covered up? Few people seem to accept the so-called "set piece diagram", but it is real!
 
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Somebody here mentioned climate change... You know that this is covered up? Few people seem to accept the goal-by-corner diagram, but it is real!

Yes there is still somewhat of climate change, but its heavily countered by the 'International council for environmental conservation' of the UN, where allmost all nations are members in. And the real threat to our biosphere, which was very prevelant in the 70s and 80s, is over now.
 

manav95

Banned
Yes there is still somewhat of climate change, but its heavily countered by the 'International council for environmental conservation' of the UN, where allmost all nations are members in. And the real threat to our biosphere, which was very prevelant in the 70s and 80s, is over now.

It also helped that the USA underwent a necessary period of chaos to convince people of the failure of socialism. After the disaster of President Wallace from 1969-1977 and the failed experiment of neoliberal economics and monetarism under Reagan, the country elected Bernie Sanders and the Progressive Socialist party to power in 1980. This led to a short period of nasty civil war between reactionary conservatives and progressive/libertarian socialists, ending with the Peace of Denver in January 1982 and the calling of the second Constitutional Convention. This enabled the creation of a new socialist Constitution and the creation of the USSA(because one S wasn't enough for Americans anymore). Since then, the USSA has led the world in creating a green economy powering new factories and other industries.
 
Quite frankly, impossible. For the simple reason that the core of capitalism: in which individuals all make their own choices without constraints, is simply a recipe for disaster. The human brain is simply incapable of planning for the long term, as there were no evolutionary pressures for that for most of human pre-history. Hence the need for the government (headed by experts who are also far enough removed from the day to day living to see the bigger picture) to step in and stop [most] people from doing dumb things.
 
Quite frankly, impossible. For the simple reason that the core of capitalism: in which individuals all make their own choices without constraints, is simply a recipe for disaster. The human brain is simply incapable of planning for the long term, as there were no evolutionary pressures for that for most of human pre-history. Hence the need for the government (headed by experts who are also far enough removed from the day to day living to see the bigger picture) to step in and stop [most] people from doing dumb things.

Well...thats wrong. The working masses, workers, peasansts, working intelligenzia and petit burgeoisie are forced to work, and mostly even to do it in a special field (because of wage slavery, subsistence farming, etc.).
 
Quite frankly, impossible. For the simple reason that the core of capitalism: in which individuals all make their own choices without constraints, is simply a recipe for disaster. The human brain is simply incapable of planning for the long term, as there were no evolutionary pressures for that for most of human pre-history. Hence the need for the government (headed by experts who are also far enough removed from the day to day living to see the bigger picture) to step in and stop [most] people from doing dumb things.

Well...thats wrong.

Very much so. And that's not what modern Socialism is, just look at Europe and the Americas - it's the workers who run industry, not government. As I said, primarily a Syndicalist economic model.
 
Well...thats wrong. The working masses, workers, peasansts, working intelligenzia and petit burgeoisie are forced to work, and mostly even to do it in a special field (because of wage slavery, subsistence farming, etc.).
The masses were oppressed & enslaved precisely because of the so called 'freedom of choice' that capitalism promised, which takes advantage of the lack of organization of information that the masses operate under on a regular basis under the capitalist system. Therefore, the average wage slave was too busy trying to scrabble for an existence while being bombarded by propaganda from their oppressors on what they next short term decision they should make, usually dumb ones that merely puts more chains on themselves.
Very much so. And that's not what modern Socialism is, just look at Europe and the Americas - it's the workers who run industry, not government. As I said, primarily a Syndicalist economic model.
And those models still have people who actually could see the big picture in position where such info is needed, expect unlike capitalism the positions in those cases have much more checks to prevent oppression and abuse of information asymmetry.
 
And those models still have people who actually could see the big picture in position where such info is needed, expect unlike capitalism the positions in those cases have much more checks to prevent oppression and abuse of information asymmetry.
Well, as @theg*ddam*hoi2fan was saying, you technically have people in charge to check the free market in the French economic zone but the economy is run by a serie of small to medium companies ran by their worker committees and everyone belongs to at least one local committee taking care of the local civic life. Granted, it's fairly recent, up until the mid 2000's, it was a lot of state run companies but those little worker led startup made big successes
 
This isn't a what if, this is actual history. Most "so-called" "socialist" states have wage labour in the form wherein surplus value is exploited. They are literally capitalism. I don't care if you claim I have a legal freedom of speech or not, i can see it in the foremen, the commodities offered for sale exactly like my children will be, I can see it in the moribund trade unions that never back a local strike, I can see it in the parliamentary cretinism of all the parties and ideologies, I can see it in the Syndicate boards which have never in living memory held a recall.

I know posting this breeches my ASBO; so will posting this, "Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system!’”" Marx 1865 VPP 14.2

Bring it plod, you can't do worse than what we've all done to ourselves: sell our futures for a mess of pottage.
 
Hmmm. It's an interesting idea, if a bit disturbing. I'm just trying to work out how far back one would have to stick the POD to make it work out. Maybe if the USA poured a ton of resources into securing a power bloc in western Europe right after the second World War? Even then, though, the USSR was in a better place logistically to help rebuild the bombed out continent, and the people of said continent wouldn't have been enthusiastic to accept more capitalist government given how badly their previous governments had failed them. It would have required some serious determination on the part of the USA, and I find it hard to believe that any capitalist nation of the time could have organized such an effort, much less the isolationist and reactionary USA.

Maybe if we go further back, somehow cripple the USSR in its early days? But then you don't get a Cold War in the first place. Unless it ends up being between the USA and the PRC. That's an interesting thought, actually - a more radical PRC, with a less intelligent leadership, against a more aggressive and active USA. In that situation, and if Europe falls to capitalism early, then you might see a capitalist victory. Yeah, I think I'm going to go with that. Stick the POD sometime around 1917, make the Russian Revolution go differently. A weaker, non-socialist Russia leads to an even more aggressive Imperial Japan, leading to a more brutal conquest of China, leading to a more radicalized Chinese Revolution. The Cold War proceeds from there.
 
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