Ikr I was in a similar debate. I just gave up. I was going to type this — usually said when a person just doesn’t like to find a middle ground and keeps screaming that they are right:

“ठीके बाबा. तूम्ही महान, आम्ही लहान. तुम्हाला चार पाय, आम्हाला दोन पाय. तुम्ही गाढव आम्ही माणूस.”

Translation: Ok bro. You are great, I am not. You have 4 legs, I have 2. You are a donkey, I am a human.

and yet people romanticise and justify that shit

Wait DLSS is about upscaling right? The “features” mentioned in OP’s post are about motion interpolation that makes the video seem to be playing at higher fps than the standard 24fps used in movies and shows.

Sure capitalism has blood on its hands. But pointing to capitalist deaths doesn’t erase the catastrophic death tolls under communist regimes. It’s not a competition of “which ideology killed more,” it’s about which system actually functions without collapsing or requiring authoritarian control.

You can control capitalism with regulations. Communism historically only survives through force and collapses when markets are removed.

Yes, capitalism as a formal economic system is recent but the behaviours it’s built on aren’t. Competition, territorial control, hoarding for security, unequal outcomes all of these exist across nature (including humans). Lions fight for dominance, trees compete for sunlight, squirrels hoard food. Resource competition is older than any ideology.

Communism, on the other hand, assumes sustained large scale human cooperation without hierarchy, which has never existed stably either outside small tribes where scarcity was low and populations small. Scaling that to millions is where it collapses.

I’m not defending status quo. I support regulated capitalism with social welfare (centre-left). Capitalism needs checks, not abolition. Meanwhile Communism needs human behaviour to fundamentally change.

One system builds on instinct and incentives and the other demands we override them entirely.

That’s the difference in feasibility.

Praising few successes shouldn’t mean ignoring the other side i.e repression, shortages, lack of political freedom, stagnation, mass emigration and the fact that the USSR collapsed under its own economic structure.

We don’t have to choose between “uncritical communism” and “unchecked capitalism.” I’m centre left. I believe in a regulated market, social safety nets, labour rights, universal healthcare/education and checks on corporate power without abolishing private enterprise, scientific development or democracy. Capitalism with strong regulation has lifted millions from poverty too.

I’d rather live in a system that mixes market efficiency with social protection not one that sacrifices freedom and innovation for state control.

That’s my final comment and I won’t be reading anything further. Thanks.

Ok the USSR did pursue collective security through Litvinov, helped the Spanish Republic when most democracies stayed neutral, and tried several times to form an anti Nazi front before the West shut the door.

But at the same time, it’s hard to overlook that Molotov-Ribbentrop included a secret protocol dividing Eastern Europe and the Red Army did enter Poland in 1939 and annex those territories, followed by mass arrests and deportations. Even if those regions had large non Polish populations, the incorporation wasn’t a liberation but a was state occupation under Moscow.

So I think both things can be true: the USSR was strongly anti fascist in the 30s and tried to prevent war, and also, once diplomacy failed, it chose realpolitik by cutting a deal with Hitler, partitioning Poland, and expanding westward until 1941. The switch to the Allied side happened only after Barbarossa, not out of ideological unity but because Germany attacked.

I gave up on the comments below. I saw a lot of them with myopic vision and simplification of ideas. Their general idea is “Billionaires bad — Capitalism bad”. “Communism good — No Billionaires” while completely ignoring the fact it results in poor qualify of life lack of technological advancements, lack of freedom, doesn’t allow democracy to exist, and is just a utopian vision.

A pure left or a pure right ideology cannot exist when there are differences in opinions and ideals. We will always get something in between.

Whose space program caused significant dent in their already broken economy just to compete with the US. Won’t call that thriving.

Also China is not socialist. It is state a owned authoritarian capitalist country at best. It just calls itself is socialist but ranks no. 2 in total number of billionaires after the US.

And during both regimes’ socialist/communist eras, each country’s individual death toll, as a result of the economic policies and the authoritarian regimes, was more than the Nazi holocaust. I won’t even call that a thriving civilization let alone thriving of science.

Great job editing your comment after I post my reply.

I know more about nature than you clearly do. I was a professional wildlife photographer for a long time and have travelled to various places, studied a lot of animal behaviour and have been around people who are professionals in this field. So yeah… I won’t be taking shit from a person banging a keyboard in their mother’s basement.

Did I ever say capitalism is good? I am saying extreme ends of both economic systems are impossible if you want a free and thriving society.

I am not saying capitalism is great.

You guys ignore the very fact that socialism and communism is a failed system because they are so extreme in its nature. You have to make people believe that the opposite is worse. Capitalism is failing today because it is going towards an extreme, both are the 2 sides of the same coin. Having the best of both worlds is what will create balance. The capitalism from 50 years ago and capitalism today are vastly different. Because earlier we were either centre-right or centre-left.

technology and science would thrive and prosper in a cutthroat society where people kill and steal from each other over any tiny advantage they can get?

It definitely didn’t thrive under socialism.

Ever wonder why there are fights over territories, mates, food, water? Even trees fight other trees for the groundwater. Even when pet dogs have abundant food supply, they still hoard as much as they can when they are given something to eat and not hungry. It is just unsaid in nature because obv there are no agreements, MoUs, or money involved. When a Tiger has control over a territory, most other Tigers agree to it until some other challenges it.

all work in tandem

It is the ecosystem that works in tandem when you zoom out from an individual living being level.

I gave you a plethora of actual evidence of human rights in an actually existing socialist country

Yeah, Cuba. Where everyone is poor w/o any major scientific and cultural influence in the world.

And yeah, USSR. They did try to influence the world but its internal economy was so shit that it couldn’t even exist for 100 years and was a one party authoritarian regime. In the end it started to shift towards to capitalism. Also they supported the Nazis during Poland’s invasion. The population who was so frustrated with their country that they toppled the Berlin Wall when USSR was collapsing.

But please elaborate: why is the nationalization and collectivization of means of production so vulnerable to greed?

Because the very nature of life I explained to you earlier. Life evolved in such a way that it is the survival of fittest, which requires hogging up all the resources as much as you can. Greed is ingrained in every living being’s DNA.

Even you are greedy to want to divide all the wealth equally because for you it might be the only way to get richer than you currently are. It is not a matter of if being greedy is right or wrong, it is a matter of if your greed is so high that it destroys other people’s lives and where to draw that line as a civilized society.

All the “center-left checks and balances” with strong union membership in the 1960s-1980s disappeared overnight

They never existed in practice in the U.S after the collapse of the USSR because communism failed and thus the perception swayed towards the extreme capitalist way. Later the extreme lobbying by the wealthy and anti-left got rid of the whatever regulations of systems that didn’t allow them to be absurdly rich. It is called lobbying in the west while we call it corruption.

Before that when the governments didn’t used to only work for the wealthy, the system was performing better than any other one. Europe’s War Torn economy was improving, The US was in its golden economic age and all this while people overall had more rights and freedom than any socialist and communist regime. It started to go haywire when the extreme capitalists started to take over and the government stopped working for all the people but only for the rich.

There is no point in living in an extreme capitalist and a fascist country nor there is a point living in a poor socialist or communist country.

Communism is just impossible to implement. It only takes one human’s greed to destroy the system. Center-left is far more plausible where the economy is capitalist with lots of checks and balances to counter extreme capitalists’ greed and the state having control over essential industries and important parts of the economy (energy, water supply, transportation, education, healthcare and stuff) while abolishing religious systems to nil the discrimination on that end.

The entire concept of life itself is very capitalist — You have to exploit all resources available to you so you can survive and thrive. Only some species share resources — that too if they are in abundance for them.

Blame folks like Jobs and Gates for this and all other tech giants who made technology extremely user friendly instead of educating the masses how to actually understand and use your computer safely. Now they are just sheeps.

This, with a much more reasonable allowance sounds a bit like your so called ‘better solution’.

That is exactly what I said. Couldn’t put it in better words. Exemptions. Only difference I said is exempt the amount upto, let’s say, what a family of 3 people needs for let’s say 3 years. That way the inheriter won’t have to pay a superficial tax while still maintaining a livable lifestyle. Charging inheritance tax on poor people (however little) puts a lot of burden on them for something they are not willingly earning or purchasing. Charging millionaires and billionaires with inheritance tax is better as there will be a continuous cycle of wealth redistribution and thus they won’t be able abuse their powers. But wealth tax is more efficient that way as it would prevent someone becoming obscenely wealthy in the first place.

Taxing the poor has never worked, they will hoard more unaccounted whatever wealth they have to avoid those taxes rather than owning real estate, shared, bonds, etc and participating in the economy. No one likes paying taxes — especially on something which they are not willingly earning or purchasing.

And how do you pay that price? With money. This is pure sophism.

Also you pay VAT and GST only once — so it is not an example of double taxation. These have been designed in such a way that the only the final customer pays tax on it as the final entity in the supply chain. Whatever VAT/GST the retailer, supplier and the service provider paid is refunded by the government in the form of ITC (Input Tax Credit).

You don’t pay VAT/GST on the money, you pay it on the product’s price (and you can avoid it if the receiptent agrees to get paid in cash and don’t show it in the books). For assets, you are buying it with your money that you have already earnd that has been already taxed. You also have to pay a stamp duty to the government when you buy any asset, you pay registration fees, you pay all the property & Municipal taxes and when you sell it, you will be paying a capital gains tax anyways, so what’s the point of charging an inheritance tax?

Simple question to you: My networth is just 100k USD, I inherited 500k USD (current market value) house from my parents, and the inheritance tax is at 20%, wouldn’t I lose all my existing money and assets I for something that is just worth 500k USD as an unliquid asset? To sell that house you will have to find a buyer which is not an easy or cost-free task. If the house doesn’t sell, you will be paying property taxes anyways, and once you sell it, you will pay the capital gains tax as well so what’s the point of inheritance tax?

What I think is a better solution: Define a certain threshold where the value of inheritance is above a level where the person inheriting becomes wealthy beyond their and their family’s actual needs, and distribute that wealth among the lower income people in the form of permanent housing.

But I don’t think it would make any difference. What would actually secure the account is the internal account password which both Signal and Whatsapp already have.

If a phone gets stolen, you can easily file a complaint, get that sim deactivated and a replacement within an hour. Put it in another phone and logout of any accounts from the stolen phone. If the stolen phone has a lock, then it is pretty difficult for a random thief to extract the data from the phone.

Source: My phone was stolen in 2014 and had my brother’s phone number in it who was in another country. My parents lodged a complaint the next day, deactivated the sim and got a replacement in 3 hours. My phone didn’t have a lock but thankfully I did not have any sensitive data on it and I reset my google account password ASAP after I lost it and logged out of all devices. I still use all the important accounts that were on that phone till this date.

So I doubt the new measures will be any useful given that you already need to verify your govt id and biometrics to get a phono number in the first place.