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Liam's avatar

The old Soviet Union never outperformed the United States. China is outperforming, but certainly not because of Mao's vicious marxism, that killed over 40M, and which was abandoned in the 1970's. It took less than ten years for Vietnam to abandon that framework, when they realized it produced garbage outcomes.

For the past three decades, China has been more capitalist than the United States, hence the higher rate of growth. China is employing capitalism as its mode of production, not communism. There is no centralized management.

It is true the CCP takes a stake in the largest companies, but that is because the CCP is a mafia group that enriches itself through plunder. These are just silent investments, in which the company is permitted to operate, without hassle by the gangster party, if it funnels money to the pockets of members...through their "shares" which of course were never bought but demanded.

And historically, centralization leads to tyranny. There are only two types of people who gravitate towards the centralization of the state: 1. Power hungry, neomarxist, postmodernist thugs. 2. Arrogant academics who yearn for the opportunity to impose their will upon others, and micro manage their affairs because they believe their superior intellect can create a grand utopia.

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Steve P's avatar

Richard Wolff talks about an America with worker-owned businesses as though all the same businesses we have would still exist. Like if we went back in time and removed right to private ownership and control, there would still be an Apple, Tesla and Amazon, there just wouldn’t be a Jobs, Musk and Bezos. Marxists reliably underestimate the value of entrepreneurs. You can tell by the way he described owners by saying “you put in some money, some time and some energy, but so did the workers…..” First of all, no. The workers did not put in any money, and as a matter of fact, the business owner fronts the workers salary. The worker doesn’t get paid based on profitability or based on when the business collects its receivables. Secondly, the cocktail of traits and skills required to turn a thought into a billion or trillion dollar company is one of the rarest on the planet. Take away the incentive for these unicorns to pursue their dreams and the whole world will suffer.

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