My bad: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=f1b1f2dfb9c92c8aae42188a9e00ab305ee22085

I don’t think it’s crazy in the slightest and see no reason why it “would never work”, it’s just not a conservative idea. Why did you feel the need to minimize it so?

Not the intention. How would you prefer I had responded?

The argument is when there are more than 2 options a majority of people would not have selected the “winner” over any of the other individual losers. Therefore majority rule is an illusion, democracy is self-contradictory!!!

However, by reducing the options to just 2 you no longer have the same result and “democracy” is more “self-consistent”. You can do this in a fair/Democratic way by “simulating” the pairwise interactions (IE ranked choice voting, pairwise majority rule, etc.) or by establishing a false dichotomy (2 party systems, left v right spectrum, etc.).

This is not ‘not a thing’ but it’s a really old idea and is largely solved (ie. Distributed networks like the social media platform we are currently on, or stuff like this).

However, the claim isn’t entirely misplaced as modern social institutions refuse to implement any of those methods because it would be against their best interests as those in power are deeply unpopular (yes, especially your favourites whoever that may be). So yes almost all “Democratic” systems you interact with on a daily basis are inherently self-contradictory on the most cursory of examinations, but they dont have to be.

Yeah, the longer it takes the worse it gets. That’s one of the points the parent meme is getting across. But that response tells me you missed what I was saying.

Reread and try again.

We’ve been living in an authoritarian right wing country for 25-50 years. Historically the tactic of “we must sacrifice [insert marginalized group here] or it’ll get worse for us all!!!” has been very effective.

I find it very hopeful that this was the year that people were finally very vocally opposed that tactic and think it’s a good sign going forward that things might actually get better. However, that is reliant on people like you waking up to the fact that no amount of time and effort put into reinforcing the sacrificial machine will ever change its fundamental nature and that what you view as “being entitled brats” is often simply refusing to participate in the death, enslavement and marginalization of others.

Is active resistance better? Yes! But token resistance while actively reinforcing the authoritarian right is worse than nothing. The vast majority of those “opportunities to volunteer and donate” are doing just that; a $5 donation to “lesser evil INC.” is still actively funding evil.

Your frustration and anxiety for the future is perfectly valid, and I appreciate that you are at least a little mad about the state of things. But I would ask that you step back, reevaluate, and redirect that rage and start punching up instead of looking for who to punch down at.

1. Get started. Don’t waste both our time with numbers pulled out of your ass and wild speculation. So long as the Soviet Union is our example, how many hours of work did it take to purchase a vehicle? How many hours would you actually need to stand in the “banana line”? Was that even a thing?
2. 5 year plan was a perfect example because it highlights that maybe “productive output” isn’t the best/only metric to judge by ;)
3. Sure, I’d argue that’s a bit different but fair enough. However, you should look into if it was better or worse under communism and whether that was a causative effect or correlative with other events going on at the same time?

1. “Under comunism every one is equal” No. It follows the “from each according to their capabilities, to each according to their needs” idea

2. The “phenomenon” you describe is not the cause nor related to the causes of famines within the Soviet Union or China.

3. Compare “production output” from pre-soviet to Soviet Russia. It was one of the most rapid and dramatic increase in productive output in known history. The first 5 year plan saw gross industrial output increase by 118%.

4. “It also creates parallel economies of bribes and favours because well connected and productive people still want to be above every one else, this gives unfair advantage mafias and criminals.” That very accurately describes the post soviet kleptocracy and modern Russian capitalist state.

5. “In my opinion, no pure system is good if it’s comunusim or capitalism. You have to have a bit of everything” then it stops being communist or capitalist at that point but something else entirely like socialist, syndicalist, communalist, etc. putting every possible form of socioeconomic organization on a capitalist-communist spectrum is extremely reductionist.

Overall wildly inaccurate, uninformed and heavily biased take. Second paragraph shows you have good opinions and solid instincts, you should work on making them a bit more informed.

International history is filled with examples like this. The history of the Russian gulags is probably the most stark example, they were actually pretty decent (comparably) before everything outside went to shit…

Except that’s not even how most bus systems work because most of them are majority funded by taxes with fares originally meant to serve as a stopgap but then slowly converted into a profit engine (usually after privitization). Fares are a way to gatekeep a service which your taxes already pay for, which I would argue, is by itself a form of theft.

As an example check out the latest MTA report only 26% of funding comes from fares, and that ones a bit in the higher end from what I’ve seen (NYC public transit, picked as the example a it’s recently been in the news for issues with fare evasion)

All that aside, it’s also worth noting that fare increases are extremely unpopular and it’s not that easy to increase them without potential serious backlash (ie the mass protests in Chile a few years back that were in part set off by the fare hikes.)

But it’s not free, just because you aren’t paying in money doesn’t mean you aren’t paying for it in other ways.

There’s “if someone wants to use my work, they should pay me for it” and there’s “intentionally sabotage the work/service provided in order to extract more profits.”

It’s wild to me that this is so often called “just business” when, described this way, it’s textbook racketeering.

Why let you choose one when you can be both customer and product!?