First of all, I love sticking it to conservative Mormons so let’s try to make this work. This promises to be great fun. On a more somber note, democratic socialism has won the ideological war and the victor is China. We can explore what that means.

The Mormons, to their credit, instituted socialism under the United Order. Various reasons are given for its failure, but let me apply Occam’s razor: Mormons are assholes. It’s just what their religion turns people into. We do know that Mormons created their own economies everywhere they went, engendering persecution from those they out-competed. Now, does that qualify as democratic socialism? Pre-Brigham Young, the church was far more democratic than with today’s authoritarian structure. They were the 19th century’s hippy dippy free love movement.

That’s right Mitt, your Joseph Smith was a Bernie Sanders with a turbocharged libido.

Now to move on to democratic socialism in the modern world, this is what scares the West about China. We can’t stop their democratic socialism. We can’t compete with it economically because it would bankrupt us. China is the United Order come to town to eat our lunch.

China’s genocide of the Uighurs is a message: This is what we care of human life, so go ahead and use your nukes. That right there may have saved billions of lives. Game over without going hot. But it was the guns that made our money good so now what? Now what, indeed. Democratic socialism, American style. It’s a brave new world. That’s why the economy is being imploded, not because of some nefarious plot. The new Cold War is theater for the Kool Aid drinkers. America is on a morphine drip, addicted to the products of democratic socialism for its very survival. Kind of like, I dunno, opium.

Joseph Smith could have invented BS and scams ....and lying and cheating..... but someone else did it first....by a long ways actually, so con man swindler Joe Smith had to settle for being the front man for the gold plates / Book of MORMON scam and then elevating himself to the (supposed) station of greatest prophet of God ever .....with those stupid/ gullible/ MORmONIC enough to buy into his Book of MORMON sham.

There was nothing democratic about the United Order. It was theocratic. There's nothing democratic about totalitarian China, either.

In both cases, the ability to unilaterally decide a path forward without contentious democratic input has efficiencies and advantages... it also has tremendous potential for horrendous abuses.

(for those who understand what socialism actually is)

JS was an authoritarian masquerading as a man of ghawd.
A cult leader.

All the rules were his rules. Backed by ghawd of course.

Good grief. Your Kool-Aid dose needs to be adjusted again.

The OP appears to support Chinese communism outright. That is extreme even by most average liberal standards in the US. And there doesn't seem to be an understanding by the OP in the differences between socialism and what Mormons call "the United order" or "the law of concecration". Not that I believe in the law of consecration (I don't). But Mormon consecration and communism are quite at odds. Ezra Taft Benson wrote a whole book on the topic called "An Enemy Hath Done This".

The OP also writes "I love sticking it to conservative Mormons so let’s try to make this work". I don't think that "sticking it to conservatives" (mormon or non-mormon) is consistent with the goals of this forum. The OP talks about America being on a morphine drip. To me, it looks like the OP is on a morphine drip supplied by CNN and other left-leaning media sources. To the OP: Please do us a favor and respect those of us here who maintain conservative values. To say that everyone here who has abandoned the mormon faith must be a liberal now is just as insulting as is your desire to "stick it to" people who don't agree with your ideaology. This doesn't promise (as you put it) to be "great fun". All it really does is display some extreme ignorance and self absorption by the OP. By all means, feel free to insult the mormon church all you want. But politically-driven idealogical-based attacks are out of bounds here.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/12/2021 10:07PM by azsteve.

Define "democratic socialism".

It would be nice if people made some effort to understand what those terms mean.

1) Capitalism; private citizens own the means of production,

2) Socialism: the state owns the means of production,

3) Communism: the state withers away and the people cooperatively control the means of production,

4) Democracy: the people make the decisions, usually through voting,

5) Democratic socialism: the people decide, usually through voting, how the state's productive resources will be used.

China is NOT a communist country. There is no communist country on the face of the earth, since none of the states are willing to surrender power. There never has been one. The most that the world has seen is socialist countries--government owns the resources--that claim that eventually they will surrender power and let communism emerge naturally. But that is mere propaganda. None of those governments ever intended to give up power.

These are empirical facts and yet people constantly want to ignore them and fall back on the propaganda, which is by definition specious. Neither China nor Russia ever had a ruler who wanted to dismantle the state and let the people collectively control the economy. I challenge anyone who thinks I am wrong to name one such truly communist leader.

When people fallaciously say "communist country," they mean socialist states that promise in some Kantian millennium to cede power to the people. There are not many of those countries left. North Korea is one: the state really does own the means of production there.

There are some quasi-Democratic Socialist countries that believe the state should own a higher proportion of society's productive resources and that decisions about their use should be made democratically. It's tempting to call the Scandinavian countries DS in that respect although I doubt the government owns even 50% of the productive capital, meaning that those countries are at least as capitalist as socialist.

Calling China "communist" is not only stupid, it is misleading. China turned away from its enormously destructive system of socialism (in the name of some eventual communist utopia) in December 1978 and has subsequently been moving with abandon towards capitalism. In fact, the private sector in China owns and manages more of the productive resources than in many so-called capitalist countries. That parenthetically means you can't even rightfully call China socialist anymore.

What China and Russia and a few other formerly socialist countries have done is move towards a combination of capitalism and dictatorship. They are best termed authoritarian capitalist since most of society's resources are owned by the private sector and the government taxes those entities to maintain tyrannical control over its citizens. So China's system is pretty much the opposite of democratic socialism: it is less socialist than a lot of so-called capitalist societies and not at all democratic.

What about the United Order? It envisaged an eventual communism, whereby private property wasn't necessary because everyone shared as needed. But that was mere rhetoric, for just as China and Russia would later prove governments (like JS) will never surrender their power. Nor was the UO socialist since the church didn't own the means of production (with marginal exceptions under Brigham Young in Utah). If anything the early Mormon experience was like modern China: private ownership of the means of production in order to generate economic wealth that would strengthen the central tyranny--meaning JS.

We really need to get out of the 1950s and recognize these countries for what they are. Otherwise we'll end up like Jordan, calling Nazism a leftist movement, suffering nightmares of Leon Trotsky, and failing utterly to understand what Orwell was on about. Because modern China and Russia, and the recent Trumpian phenomenon, are essentially the authoritarian capitalist governments of which he warned the world in 1984.

Thanks for this. Where does Oligarchy fit in? It seems to me that the ones who buy the leaders act like authoritarians too.

I can't understand why so many people are hell bent on making sure voting becomes irrelevant. They clearly do not what their children to live in a democracy.

Whether their kids can vote is much less relevant to them than if they can keep their current cash flows and lifestyles up in to perpetuity.

Oligarchy means rule by the few, be it a few people or a few families or a few business conglomerates. It's a separate question from whether an economy is capitalist versus socialist versus communist.

The Roman Republic could be called an oligarchy because only the elite families could participate; so too most early Greek democracies. Russia is an economic oligarchy since there are a handful of business networks that dominate commerce and have a lot of influence over the government. Putin isn't an oligarch per se but he gets massive subsidies from them and his interests are nearly identical, so some may term the government an oligarchy or an oligarchic kleptocracy.

The early United States was in some senses a very loose oligarchy because the franchise was limited to wealthy white men. I don't think the modern US government will be sufficiently narrow to qualify as an oligarchy even if the GOP bills are enacted. Conversely, the tendency in the economy is towards concentration because the ultra-wealthy are increasing their share of wealth and using their influence to protect their interests at the expense of everyone else.

Of course if that trend continues, the US government will become progressively more beholden to the uber-class and they could conceivably then assert oligarchic power over Washington. At that point the US may resemble Russia as an oligarchic kleptocracy.

What a pleasant prospect!

That’s what bothers me about the accelerating sovietization of America. Where’s it going to end? Already the cost structure has wiped out manufacturing. Try getting anything made here. The cost will be 3x to 10x the Chinese cost because of enormous social burdens that get paid the hard way. The funny money “what inflation?” games are going to make the day of reckoning more brutal. The commie phobia is ironic seeing as how the USA is quickly becoming the USSR.

I’ve done my share of sweatshop work. Would I trade places with a Chinese worker? These days I would, which kinda sucks to admit. Will post-empire America be a third world country, or will it be more like Greece?

But more likely, as with the Mormon church, it will keep on going in a different form. Already both are led by the very old and decrepit.

Interesting. Thanks for your reply.

I agree that Soviet communism never really was real communism. Chinese communism seems to have been replaced by a dictatorship, after the United States proved conclusively that a free market system creates abundance, whereas socialism and the feigned socialism of Soviet and Chinese communism leads to poverty. China and the Soviet Union had to adapt and accept free market economies to survive after the wealth of their economies approached zero while abundance in the US became unprecedented. What used to be called communism never worked because there was always a privileged class of people and any incentives to create wealth were prohibited by law. Whether by definition or maybe just per historical events, it seems like communism was socialism backed by totalitarian rule. I agree with Lot's Wife in that the names used to describe these economic systems doesn't make sense anymore as they used to during the cold war.

If Jesus really comes to earth and showers us with abundance and enlightenment, then maybe the law of consecration could work. But short of that, consecration won't work. Just look at all of the poor Mormons now, as the Mormon church's wealth approaches half a Trillion dollars and the church buys expensive shopping malls while ignoring the hungry. What little wealth is to be found in the poorest of African nations, what little they have is tithed as these poorest of poor Mormons in Africa send ten percent of their incomes in to the church headquarters in Salt Lake who waste that same money on prideful opulence and self-serving financial interests. Free markets are the only mechanism that have ever brought real wealth to any society. And with the gaslighting found in Mormonism, the individual church members do not pay a voluntary tithe. The whole Mormon system is a scam and the church members are deceived and tricked out of their money when they pay a Mormon tithe. Consecration is the ultimate version of that same scam.

So you are the authority who tells us what real communism is and isn't.

I think that in my first paragraph, that Lot's Wife and I basically said the same thing. When that happens, whatever we agreed-upon likely has some merit.

Soviet communism was not real communism at all. It's ironic that most of the world at one time defined communism by its apparent need (almost by definition at the time) for totalitarian control of the society when the totalitarian control was not a communist element of that society at all.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/17/2021 10:26PM by azsteve.

“Just look at all of the poor Mormons now, as the Mormon church's wealth approaches half a Trillion dollars and the church buys expensive shopping malls while ignoring the hungry.”

You won’t convince the average TBM that there’s a problem. All that money proves that the church is righteous. Maybe even as righteous as Jeff Bezos.

In the conservative cosmology, poverty is supposed to hurt. The problem with that is that we are all connected. If the poor are punished for being poor, society pays a much higher price than if it had addressed the problem of poverty directly. Stimulus checks leading to an overheated economy seems to bear that out. It was a great proof of concept for UBI and why we will never get UBI. Who will work for slave wages then?

The wikipedia gives nearly identical definition for socialism and communism. Means of production ruled by the people, collectively, obviously someone has to be in charge, hence china is ruled by a murderous regime in the name of communism and the people. Communist by the definition of communism, as for it being a advancing system, I dont think so, we are just now finding out the virus was created to kill people from a lab in woohaun, they are kidnapping muslims and reindoctrinatong them, they are stealing people's homes and not compensating them, communism destroys and steals, it doesnt build anything

There's a very old sci-fi novel (so old I can't remember either the name or the author!) the plot of which is that it didn't take long at all to escalate organ robbing as a punishment for very serious crimes to punishment for jay-walking, because those who benefited controlled the police and the courts (by giving them access to needed organs) and thus controlled the supply of organs.

China apparently allows the 'harvesting' of human organs from people whom they accuse of not following their rules, such as their rule that the Han Chinese are first in line...for everything! "If you ain't Han, you gonna be gone."

As the sci/fi story portended, access to young, healthy organs is much desired among the old, and when the old hold power, how can they resist the temptation of a fresh, young, healthy spleen, liver, kidney, lung, heart or pancreas?

Can prostates be transplanted? I bet the mainland Chinese know!

Sometimes it's hard to know who's nuttier: you or macaRooney

Well, I really do absolutely, 100% believe very little of what I say, so keep that in mind.

I'm only here to be as exmo as is exmoly possible.

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Well, I really do absolutely, 100% believe very
> little of what I say, so keep that in mind.

Yeah, try to back down now.

The politics of the People's Republic of China takes place in a framework of a socialist republic run by a single party, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

There is nothing remotely close to democratic socialism in China.
See Iceland, Denmark, and Sweden for examples of Democratic Socialism.

HH =)

I don't know if the laws in China have changed much since 2000. But one of my fellow students in my MBA program then was telling us that there were jobs advertised in Chinese newspapers that read in-part "whites need not apply". Wow ! that still shocks me. I didn't realize until then that any society in the modern world was so blatantly racist so as to publish racially discriminatory job advertisements with overt impunity.

I do like some Chinese crackers with my noodles.

And the Republican Party created corporate welfare Socialism.