Agreed. Have a good one.

I agree with all your points on Communism. At least in terms of how it’s been implemented, at least in name, by the Soviet Union and the PRC it has been as extractivist and imperialist as Capitalist nations.

Though one can’t really divorce the conditions in countries such as Nigeria or Bangladesh from Capitalism. The Global North’s standard of living requires the conditions there to exist, the Socialist with Totalitarian Characteristic nations at least keep their poor conditions mostly in house (albiet with some local imperialism, and the PRC has recently started expanding outside it’s borders though mostly infrastructure and resource acquisition so far.)

They’re not quite two sides of the same coin as the goals for growth are expressly different but neither cares for social connections, a sense of belonging, society in the real, let alone the environment.

Those still to be solved problems may also be the result of governments. Those problems would likely shrink (albiet be replaced by others) when there aren’t global systems of power and exploitation pushing to keep extracting resources from a corrupted Global South, polluting as processed by an overworked Asia, into commodities to sell to underpaid and liminally employed citizens of the Global North for them to destress and feel a fleeting sense of meaning in our increasingly atomised societies.

More Anarchist, I think that we should try to disengage from states and their power structures and treat people with respect and autonomy. Try to bring thee principles into daily life and interactions and live as much of a better alternative as I can.

Devolution of powers is a fine first step to work towards if engaging electorily, but that’s a long way from the be all and end all of political ideology.

Thanks for the detailed responses.

Sounds like, to me, that you have a bigger issue with government than Socialism or Communism themselves. Are you much of an anarchist?

We can at least agree that it was a dictatorship under Stalin, right?

Does Kerala (though only a state and receives national funds) or Allendé’s Chile (Overthrown by US supported military coup after a couple of years) count, or do they not for the reasons in brackets or others?

Ironically in the 19th centuries Europeans were all clamouring to have definitive proof that Homo Sapiens evolved within their borders to prove that they were the greatest and most fully evolved humans.

Out of Africa had to work pretty hard to become accepted.

And is very much based on skeletal records.

Subway in Europe does the veggie pattie and that is fire. Can’t find that automatically in non-Europe Subways.

Snape is the best part of the latter books. He’s well rounded, motivated, and a fully fleshed out character.

The rest of the world and half the people in it feel like cardboard shuddering in the breeze by that point.

The plot twist was that Snape wasn’t a traitor, and killed the dying Dumbledore to save Draco Malfoy from becoming a murderer.

It also has about 4x the population, and doesn’t pollute 4x more.

Plus it’s still the largest manufacturing hub in the world. Europe would pollute a lot more if we hadn’t exported a lot of (some might say too much) of our industry to the developing world and China over the last 50 years.

Yeah, because starting up a new restaurant is so easy to turn a profit turning away customers is a good idea? Am I right?

Can the wizards time travel?

Can they rewrite the rules of physics on any scale (temporal or spatial)?

Because if the answer to either of them is “yes” then I think the fantasy folks have the edge.