(Any/Comrade, Tankie for the unserious)
Marxist-Leninist with Meowist leanings (cat supremacy, but love all animals)
Labor organizer. USian.
Scientist, experience in vaccines/drug delivery/chemistry/analytics/biochemistry/protection of eggs dropped from tall structures
Shame. Thanks for the heads up!
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of differences between socialism and communism.
Modes of production aside, socialism is just the transition period between capitalism and communism but does not have fundamentally different goals from communism. The goal of socialism is to reach communism. The differentiation is just a matter of how far society has progressed in that transition and their modes of production. Socialists are communists. Any differentiation outside of the above context is colloquial or otherwise a result of the uninformed misusing the terms as you have.
Nationalized healthcare in the UK != Socialism and != a socialist policy, it is a social/welfare program. Social/welfare programs are agnostic of modes of production, which is why they can exist in both socialist and capitalist economies.
Please refer to the socialism entry on Prolewiki as well as the modes of production link I added above. This is one of the most commonly confused things about socialism and communism. If you really want to say you don't like the idea of communism, you should at least be informed about what it is you don't like and don't think applies to our modern society. These are short articles that collectively take <5 minutes to read through.
What you are advocating for is social democracy.
Get a hexbear in here and their emojis could fix this right up.
There are a few clarifications to be made and some fallacies in your understanding of communism and socialism here. I'm not the one to clear all of this up, because I'm not going to put the effort and time needed into these subjects, but I'll try to guide you in the direction of some resources to help.
Some quick clarifications:
Socialism and communism are the same thing. Communism is the end goal, but you cannot just jump directly to communism from capitalism, so we fall the transition period socialism. Communists often use the terms interchangeably, but any actual differentiation is a distinction of progress, not the goals of the project.
Communism is no more extreme than socialism and politics are not a horseshoe or circle where the far ends are the worst. This is a thought-terminating notion meant to keep you boxed within the status quo so that those who are currently in power stay in power, meaning you will remain relatively powerless. The same thing goes for trying to stay in the middle of a conflict: you end up not taking a side, meaning you remain on the side of the status quo, meaning you stay on the side of the oppressor. Your oppressor. As much as people argue communism is extreme, communists can argue that "the middle" or "liberalism" or "other leftists" are extreme. These arguments are always made for the purpose of getting you to stop thinking about those topics, to stop considering their validity. They are not trying to convince you those are wrong, but that they are not worth even considering. I implore you to do the opposite: do some reading and interact with what "extremists" are saying in good faith, then decide what you believe. I'm sure you'll agree with some parts and not with others. We are all humans and most of us are of the same class. The "extremism" of communists is that we say working class people should run the world and the rich leeches should be oppressed in a sense that they cannot oppress anyone else through the use of their extreme wealth. We want to flip the system on its head to use an overly-simplistic metaphor.
Capitalism cannot be mixed with socialist policies. What you are probably referring to as socialist policies are actually welfare programs and state regulation . This is what we call social democracy, which is still capitalism. Socialism is differentiated more by who owns the means of production, how the economy is organized, and what class is in control of the state. That aside, socialists think social democracy is insufficient to curb the problems of capitalism because you don't remove the roots of the problem. Most of the successes of social democracy in addressing wealth disparity and living standards are the result of countries trying to stave of socialist revolutions at home due to their workers seeing the success of nearby socialist republics in improving the quality of life of their people. These are capitalist concessions and if you look at the social democracies that exist in Europe, you'll see that all of these concessions started getting rolled back AFTER the fall of the USSR. They were temporary relief (at home, not in their colonies), but the profit motive always demands more. If capitalism can't steal enough from the global south, it will turn inward and eat itself like the US and UK are currently doing.
On entrepreneurs...most of the time people want to show the benefit of entrepreneurs, it is in terms of innovation and small businesses, so I'm assuming this is your point? Innovation and entrepreneurs do not disappear under socialism, but the way they function does. Innovation does not always need to be driven by profit motive as demonstrated within the USSR, but there is arguably some room for profit motive driving innovation in a mixed economy like China's. The main benefit of socialism is that innovation is not at the whims of the market, which tends to act as if it is allergic to innovation, ultimately stifling it rather than nurturing it. Small businesses (and thus entrepreneurs) still exist in many socialist countries and will not be nationalized unless they grow quite big or become central to controlling an important part of the economy. In some ways it can even be easier to start a thriving business because you are less at risk of being stamped out by the "health competition" of a mega-corporation with a monopoly on an entire industrial sector. Those get nationalized, fixing the money attracts more money problem. If you remove the profit motive, this power can no longer be abused for profit. Corruption can happen under any system and has to be handled case-by-case, but you'll find socialist countries have much harsher penalties for corruption to prevent it, unlike a paltry fine that is the cost of doing business. Jail time or up to the death penalty can be applied based upon the severity and circumstances of the crime. Vietnam and China have applied this last one to large-scale corruption within the last year whereas in liberal democracies, multimillion or even billion dollar fraud cases are widespread and normal with little to no repercussions. In some cases, it is even legal!
On education...if you want more, there are many sources available in many formats. I suggest Dessalines' crash course of socialism and his reading list but there are plenty of others on here who provide lists worthy of mention (but their links are harder for me to look up). Prolewiki is like Wikipedia for socialism by socialists. Search a topic there that you want to know more about. You can also ask for resources on specific topics in lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml, and hexbear.net and you will probably get more resources than you care to consume in a year, so long as you approach them in good faith. People in these communities will only troll you if they think you are trolling them. The efforts some of them will go to in order to educate others is ridiculous (in a good way).
I hope this helps.
You give too much credit. I think it's pretty safe to assume no one but socialists and historians care (or know) enough about Deng and Zhao outside of China so they aren't likely to weigh in. Now if the question included the tinyman trigger-word, you'd have people jumping all over this post saying China bad and quoting Wikipedia until their fingers bled.
The treatment the plant in the picture received is called "air layering" that is used for propagation. You wound the stem you want to propagate, then wrap it with something moist. This leads to roots developing on that stem while it is still attached to the larger plant.
I'm not familiar with using this method to induce fruit production and it didn't look like they used air layering in the paper.
Here's the paper in the meme.
Pressurized cylinder?
Oxford Professor: Cycling is 10 times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities
That's only if you don't burn rubber on your bicycle. Put the trucks and sports cars to shame with your 2 calfpower speedster.
Nothing ever changes. Most of them don't use bidets, which is the modern equivalent to not wiping.
Damn, that's some serious shade RD throws at anarchists in the postscript.
Since we’re discussing two-dimensional models, it would be churlish not to address one popular two-dimensional model and its implications: the two-axis “political compass.”
This diagram, popular among the extremely online, organizes ideologies along a “Left-Right” axis and an “Authoritarian-Libertarian” axis. Anarchism, along with micro-variants like “anarcho-communism” and “libertarian socialism,” then lays claim to the “Left-Libertarian” quadrant, and thus positions itself as one of the Big Four.
To briefly cite some notable anarchist theorists:
The Communism of Marx seeks enormous centralization in the state, and where such exists, there must inevitably be a central state bank, and where such a bank exists, the parasitic Jewish nation, which speculates on the work of the people, will always find a way to prevail. [Bakunin]
The multitude, the mass spirit, dominates everywhere, destroying quality. [Goldman]
Nietzsche was not a social theorist but a poet, a rebel and innovator. His aristocracy was neither of birth nor of purse; it was of the spirit. In that respect Nietzsche was an anarchist, and all true anarchists were aristocrats. [Goldman]
I have no quarrel with libertarians who advance the concept of capitalism of the type that you have advanced. […] Let me make it very plain that if socialism, which is what I call the authoritarian version of collectivism, were to emerge, I would join your [anarcho-capitalist] community. I would migrate to your community and do everything I could to prevent the collectivists from abridging my right to function as I like. [Bookchin]
Anarchism is an uninteresting ideological byproduct of capitalism characterized above all by its adherents’ transvaluation of their own irrelevance into a religious virtue. I consider it a minor sibling of liberalism and fascism, sharing all of their Euro-individualist delusions of genius and grandeur.
This is all I will say about it in this context.
They still dump a lot of money into denying the genocide of Armenians. It's only ideologically consistent to support other settler colonial projects.
How am I supposed to identify all the unmarked containers of clear liquids if not by smell? You want me to drink them now??
When you said glove boxes, I was thinking about all the times I hit my head on the glove boxes and Kim wipe boxes that were mounted to the front of our hoods above the sashes.
You probably meant actual glove boxes, but it reminded me the corners of our glove box holders fucking hurt to bump your head into and I should move them someday.
It's not clear that this affected the decision to drop the bombs let alone the sole reasoning. Frankly, there was little justifiable strategic argument for use of them at that point in the war aside from as a form of intimidation against the Soviet Union. More likely the US would have dropped the bombs regardless and it was used as a justification after the fact: "the Japanese were barbaric, so this justifies our barbarism!"
Therefore they can continue to extract more from people than before. When you default, the amount owed increases significantly (doubles?).
This means more people are stuck with high payments and are required to work to continue to survive, less people getting retirement or other benefits, a larger workforce that is essentially captive to their debt and can be more easily manipulated because they are worried about making ends meet more than other things.
I see plenty of benefits for capitalists in a wide variety of industries if more people are beholden to more student debt.
I enjoyed your manifold joke and hope you still use it when you get grief.