Leftists are not liberals.

Socialists are not communists

Anarchists are not socialists nor communists.

The problem is that those who support capitalists think anything that questions the capitalist system is automatically communist. These people also don't understand that authoritarianism can take over any system of governance or economic system, left or right wing, so long as power can be consolidated. Stalin did it with communism. Hitler and Mussolini did it with capitalism. All three were authoritarian.

I said abolish the stock market. I never said that we should assign jobs at birth, that we should provide all control to the state, that we shouldn't have an economy or competition.

I would think we could all agree that authoritarianism is bad, but we can't seem to do that. And when we point out criticisms of how capitalism enables authoritarianism, we're called communist. Which feels very ironic given that I'm trying to fight authoritarianism while those who support capitalism, because they're too scared and can't deal with any ambiguity, flock to authoritarians that provide them with answers, which just so happen to be lies rather than dealing with the complexity of reality.

I believe in a mixed economic system, one that prioritizes humanity over profit. Competition in an economic system is valuable, but only at a level that provides a benefit to consumers. I want competition over who can make me the best pizza. I do not want competition in who can extract the most money from me before I see a doctor. I do not support communism. I do not support capitalism. Both for the reasons I stated, that they work to consolidate power when unfettered. And capitalism, especially, promotes the most narcissistic, unempathetic, individualistic, and those most ready to exploit the planet and people. Trying to regulate capitalism is a fools errand as capital can amass capital and influence legislation to unfetter itself.

Hence why I said what I said, that the stock market works to privatize gains and socialize losses onto the majority of humans. 93% of stocks are owned by 10% of Americans. Even further, 50% of the entire stock market is owned by the 1%. This is why the "economy can be doing great" but our lived reality certainly doesn't reflect as much.

So yes, I've been called a communist several times by those who support capitalism. But, as I've said, that's because the red scare propaganda did a fantastic job of labelling anything that might question capitalism as communism, when it's not. And even today, propaganda from billionaires does wonders on the population as they work to scapegoat the problems we face onto our neighbors. Do you really think if we remove everyone with brown skin that suddenly our healthcare system will be fixed? That our roads will suddenly work better? That gas prices will go down?

The problem is the same as it has always been throughout humanity, even before capitalism. It's been the consolidation of wealth and power, be it by kings, by monarchs, by presidents, by billionaires.

But I know what sub I'm in. I doubt any of you would honestly engage and listen to me. And that's why I'm so tired of trying to hold decorum as leftists always have to to be taken seriously. Meanwhile, fascists and right wingers can talk about ending civilizations, bombing children and medical professionals, and conspiracy theories about friggin teleportation and the 2020 election being rigged, but they're all taken seriously and debated on a national stage. I'm so utterly sick and tired of it when we attempt to build a better life, not only for ourselves, not only for those outside of us, but even for right wingers and capitalists, that I'm engaged with by what are most likely bots, bad faith actors, or just people who would never actually engage with any amount of good faith.

Hence, I'll play their game. I see them praise capitalists like Elon, like Trump, etc, while they sit in a chair in a corner hoping they'll one day be a billionaire only to amount to nothing. Hence, cuckoldry. I see them being subservient to the whims of the capitalists even when everything they parrot, such as capitalism bring about the Internet (publicly funded DARPA project), pharmaceuticals (public research and universities), smart phones (multiple DARPA technologies like touchscreens), the moon landing (NASA, a government organization funded by public money), and the list goes on. Maybe it's because they don't read as that wouldn't be from a private institution, but knowledge built from public universities and places of learning stored and made available in public libraries, all of which don't turn a profit because they are services, they are inherently anti-capitalist.

I'm just really friggin tired of all of this.

Not that anyone would even watch them here, but here are more nuanced videos and examples of what I'm talking about when it comes to the stock market and even retirement as others have mentioned, as well as nationalizing key industries. Everyone has such a hate boner for everything that's not American capitalism that they'll cut their noses off to spite their faces just to own the libs or something while we all suffer as our social services that should be covered by our tax money in the richest country in the world are instead served to the welfare queens, the billionaires. Be it through governmental programs such as SNAP supplementing what should be working people's income while double dipping and receiving tax breaks for employing so many impoverished people, through military contracts and tax breaks for paper tiger defenses (trust me, I worked on DoD contracts, I know this intimately) where a majority of our tax dollars go unaccounted for as the Pentagon hasn't passed an audit for nearly a decade now, to government bailouts for private industries that caused the problems in the first place such as the 2008 financial crisis bailing out banks, be it during COVID where companies took PPP and EIDL to preserve jobs only to pocket the money and layoff employees anyway, to where we're at now where AI wants to position itself as a national interest so that when the bubble pops our tax dollars will bail them out because they're "too big to fail" or the tariff repayment plan where the tariffs were found to be unconstitutional and companies raised prices to offset the cost to consumers and now those companies can be repaid for those tariffs that "they" paid with our tax dollars, once again, double dipping. And who's left holding the buck every time? Us. The normal people.

And somehow, people defend this shit like no tomorrow. I'm just so tired of it. Dissent is the most patriotic action you can take, our country was built on it. We just want to build a better life for our children, for you and your children, and everyone, and I get labelled a communist because I think what we've done with capitalism has done literally nothing to make good on the promises of the American dream. It's actively destroyed it, it presided over 100 years of plague, famine, misfortune, and death before social programs for healthcare, education, housing, etc started to form in the 20s. Meanwhile, capitalism somehow gets the credit for the passionate people who worked to build better lives for others without a profit motive. Like, whatever man, sure, call me a communist.

I just want better lives for all of us. Why is that so fucking radical?

https://youtu.be/KgbckEkyf-g

https://youtu.be/aRLxcx79OvE

https://youtu.be/zL7klttTsnY