Remember kids, Tankies wants to undermine democracy - same as facists.
this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
1559 points (99.9% liked)
196
16574 readers
1863 users here now
Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.
Rule: You must post before you leave.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The Soviet Union did not kill all those nazis out of the goodness of their hearts, but rather because they were in active warfare with Nazi Germany and thus needed to kill a large number of nazis to win the war. Throughout history, authoritarian "socialists" have backstabbed, betrayed, and otherwise killed anarchists and democratic socialists. I absolutely do not trust tankies to fight against fascism in the United States or Europe in any effective manner. Russia and China are not friendly countries to queer rights, though being gay is legal in both countries they do not have any anti-discrimination laws that apply to queer people and the reason there are fewer hate crimes is simply because they don't count them. Russia and China are also not socialist, Russia is an explicitly oligarchical capitalist Presidential republic and China has a mixed economy that heavily relies on markets with private owners. This is honestly a good part of the reason I'm suspicious of tankies, the United States sucks but that doesn't mean that every nation that opposes the United States is automatically good.
From what I can tell, China has a low rate of hate crimes against queer people in general, though the culture still has issues with enforcing conservative gender roles (as does basically everywhere else, this isn't a China-specific problem). For happiness, the data I could find generally pointed to the United States being happier, but I think that measuring such a thing is difficult and rife with systemic issues (Source). China has significantly better homeownership statistics than the United States, I agree with you on that. The United States and China seem to have a comparable number of doctors per capita, with the United States having significantly more nurses. Healthcare in the United States is significantly more expensive, though I think that's a somewhat unfair comparison as the United States is uniquely bad in this regard; there are other nations with similar political and economic systems to the United States with significantly better healthcare.
I think saying that Biden is failing is an overstatement. Biden has made very unethical decisions regarding Israel in recent times but has also been a very pro-labor president, his NLRB has been possibly one of the most pro-union iterations of the institution in its history. Biden's approval rating is poor, but that's typical of modern U.S. presidents. In terms of the general election Biden is polling fairly evenly with Trump, but this far out from the election that could change drastically, and Trump himself is drowning in legal issues that are drastically reducing his ability to campaign. I'm not sure how the 2024 election is going to go, but I think Biden has a decent chance.
A mixed economy is viable, in fact, it's probably the best type of economy. Most nations that are economically successful have mixed economies. My main problem is that China claims to be a socialist economy when it is not. China has private companies, which are owned by a private owning class. China has a stock market with major stock exchanges, and though its government exercises greater control over private interests it still has private interests. An economy that would at least be far closer to socialism would be one where private ownership of corporations was illegal, all corporations would either be employee-owned or state-owned and within employee-owned corporations, there would be regular elections to determine upper management and to make important decisions. There are other models of how to build a socialist economy, but none of them involve private ownership of economic structures. Beyond the non-socialism of the economy, I also believe that China is not a proper democracy. The only roles that are directly elected by the Chinese people are local legislators, who then vote for the legislators above them and so on. I am strongly against this form of democracy, as it leads to enough abstraction that by the time you reach the national legislator there is a strong chance the local people don't even know the people being elected. In my preferred model for a representative democracy, the voters vote for every level of the legislature.