solarpunk memes

2843 readers

89 users here now

For when you need a laugh!

The definition of a "meme" here is intentionally pretty loose. Images, screenshots, and the like are welcome!

But, keep it lighthearted and/or within our server's ideals.

Posts and comments that are hateful, trolling, inciting, and/or overly negative will be removed at the moderators' discretion.

Please follow all slrpnk.net rules and community guidelines

Have fun!

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

tsugu@slrpnk.net

ex_06@slrpnk.net

Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net

224

if you're not free to become poor, homeless, and starving, are you really free? (slrpnk.net)

submitted 3 months ago by stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net to c/memes@slrpnk.net

37 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] EfreetSK@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yes, I guess that's up to a debate which one is better (or none of them).

I'd say if we imagine housing as a scale from 0 to 100 where 0 means you're homeless and 100 means you're living in a mansion

The US way sounds like you're using the whole scale - you've quite a lot of homeless people, but also quite a lot of people living in mansions. Some people are above average, some are bellow awerage and so on.
The soviet way is like if you'd shrink the scale to 30 to 50. You have no homeless people but also no one is living in a mansion (well ... ). But also notice the best you can achieve in such system is average.

Which approach is better? I guess from "progress" point of view the US system is better. Theoretically if you're skilled and hard working, you can get above average and live better life. That's actually the reason why so many skilled and talented people fled the soviet union - in the west there was no "ceiling" for you. On the other hand, from humanity point of view though, the soviet system sounds much better - country caring about every single one of its citizens to have a place to live.

But I'd argue that maybe the 3rd way is best. Because well both Soviets and US are extremes. Soviets were ... well ... soviets. It's like "left" on steroids. Also it failed - I mean if it was such a paradise on earth, why were so many people fleeing it.

But US is also an extreme - you're like a capitalist lunapark. Even other countries from west are often horrified how you take care of people (or rather not care)

But there is some middle ground between these - you can have a system with focus on social issues but also not go crazy f.e. some scandinaviam countries

[–] amanda@aggregatet.org 3 points 3 months ago

Scandi here, sorry to tell you our system also sucks. It has almost exactly all the problems of the soviet system (queues, poor quality, corruption) AND the American system (inequality, horrible if you’re poor, inefficient focus on luxury production), but in moderation. You can call it better (I would, or I’d have moved), but it still sucks. You need a system that’s fair, transparent, efficient, and provides enough.

We have the capacity to do that, but I don’t think it can be combined with capitalism. Capitalism eats everything around it (and inside it). It cannot be negotiated with, except for at most a lifetime in exceptional circumstances, usually less.

By the way, a unique problem with social democracy is that capitalist interests have a huge incentive and ability to commandeer whatever shit implementation of democracy you have to extract profits. If you have centralised social services (housing, healthcare) they’re very very vulnerable to takeover, selling our, deregulation where private entities can cream the market and leave the difficult cases to the publicly funded variants etc etc.

Another issue is the EU, which demands universal market liberalism. The Swedish housing system with universal public housing as opposed to social housing for the poor was explicitly fucked by this after a EU court ruling demanding they operate their rental flats like profit-driven companies, which of course completely destroyed their ability to provide the service they’re designed to provide.