Dude, it worked for a billion people in China, lol.

I grew up under communism. I don't like or don't care for communism, but I can't dispute that China lifted a huge number of people out of a warlord torn mess and misery. To some extent, Soviets did the same to Russian peasants, but of course, it got perverted along the way. But all things considered, I would take communism under soviets to being a serf under the Tsar.

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TFNA 8 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Serfdom in Russia was abolished half a century before the Soviets. Moreover, the tsar himself was gone by the time the Soviets came along. Their October Revolution overthrew the tsarless regime that had been instituted in the preceding February Revolution.

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briandw 9 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[delayed]

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logicchains an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

>Dude, it worked for a billion people in China, lol.

China starved tens of millions of people for two decades, it was only after they started opening up the economy in the 70s and allowed people to own farms/shops that living standards started increasing.

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maxglute 42 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Chinese peasants been starving for 1000s of years, it took Chinese communist speedrunning development at the expense of human lives a few decades to end that cycle. Same with Russian serfs. There's a reason PRC lifespan and industrialization was significantly higher than developing peers by the 70s, well before market reforms, fail fast, break eggs make omelette etc etc.

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nekusar an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

And just how many deaths do capitalists and capitalist policies inflict? We never see *those* numbers.

This is just one instance: a hepatitis drug named Solvaldi. Costs $1000 a pill, need 84 pills for full course. How much does the drug actually cost? $300 and you can make it with the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective's chemistry reactor.

But why is this capitalist deaths? Cause 5 million people per year die from Hepatitis. And this drug is a *cure*. But insurance wont pay the $84000 needed for the cure. So they get maintenance drugs that dont cure, and those people die from it needlessly.

And the numbers are going up to 6 million a year of needless capitalist deaths, from a single drug.

We can easily look at corporate death panels, err, I mean medical insurance. Its insurance fraud if we lie, but to them, they can just deny treatment and wait out the death clock.

Capitalism is even more extractive and devastating on the populace. And instead of "capitalism causes X million deaths a year", nope, its a individual's fault. Its always the individuals fault, no matter how systemic the problem is.

	▲	phainopepla2 27 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		In order to really do the math here, you'd have to determine whether such drugs are as likely to be created under non-capitalist regimes. In other words, even if capitalism has less-than-ideal mechanisms for distributing lifesaving drugs widely (during their patent period at least), maybe it is better at creating lifesaving drugs in the first place. It's possible that the net result of the capitalist pharmaceutical industry is millions of lives saved. Without taking that account, you can't do a real cost-benefit analysis. Of course, it's probably not really possible to do such a comparison, because there are so many other factors, and state intervention is everywhere even in capitalist countries, via publicly funded research. I think the only really fair way to compare which system causes more deaths than the other is to look at overall health outcomes and lifespans.