you know how libs always say knee-jerk "communism only works on paper" despite the opposite being true? i would like to crowdsource help in writing a good retort to that, that could. hopefully plant seeds in someone’s mind.

  • SendNudes [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Capitalism looks good on paper but it doesn’t work in real life. It’s just human nature. These academics talk about supply and demand curves, but after hundreds of years they still can’t even provide evidence that one exists. I’d love it if markets were free and efficient. It would make society so simple and everyone would get what they needed most. But people aren’t robots, you know? They don’t consume rationally and all the money ends up going to the guys at the top who use it to make themselves more powerful. It’s called tragedy of the commons. Markets can start out efficient, but people steal shit and force people to stop competing, which fucks the markets up even more.

      • SendNudes [they/them]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Riddling it with cliches is fun lol. I think there could be more about labor relations, but I wasn’t sure how to work it in. Like more worker perspective and less macro economic abstract stuff

        • MarxMadness [comrade/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          An approach I've had some success with is starting with a story/anecdote about problems in a big corporation and then tossing out some anti-government cliche. For example, if someone tells you about how some project they're working on at Big Company XYZ is a mess that's just bleeding money, hit them with:

          See, that's what you get working with the government: you end up wasting a bunch of money and never getting anything done.

          It's not exactly "capitalism only works on paper," but it is a concise way of questioning both the supposed efficiency of the private sector and the supposed problems with public solutions.

          • winterchillie [she/her]
            ·
            3 years ago

            am I misunderstanding or does your little statement say the exact opposite of what you’re arguing?

            • MarxMadness [comrade/them]
              ·
              3 years ago

              You aren't seriously bashing government waste and inefficiency with that statement. You're bashing private sector waste and inefficiency by mocking a talking point usually aimed at the government.

        • ass [he/him,comrade/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          i can't think of a lib cliche to coopt for that but i agree that some worker perspective stuff would be good to add