this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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Lefty Memes
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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
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That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)
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That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
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Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
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Decade by decade, have more things be run by the government rather than for-profit enterprises.
For example, in the 2020s, the US could transition to a Swiss-style healthcare system. In that kind of system, everybody would have insurance provided by a private company, but the most basic plan would be very cheap and offered by every company, and there were subsidies available so nobody in the country was uninsured, no matter what their financial situation. The US could also have a government owned bank that operated out of every post office that provided extremely basic banking services with zero fees. Private banks would still be able to compete with that, but they'd have to compete on extra services that the government bank didn't offer.
In the 2030s you could tackle education and housing. All state-owned universities could offer education with a $0 tuition and all textbooks available digitally for free. Maybe for some majors you'd have to agree to provide some public service to offset the cost of that education. Like, a doctor might have to agree to serve for 5 years in a remote area that typically doesn't have good medical coverage. Or, a lawyer might have to spend 5 years working as a public defender. For housing, the government could buy and own housing. Any citizen could get an apartment and pay a low monthly rent directly to the government. Subsidize that rent so that if someone couldn't afford to pay any rent, they could still live there. Private homes could still exist, and would be more spacious and more luxurious, but everybody would at least be able to start with something decent.
Then you could tackle transportation. Tax private vehicles and use that to fund public transit. As transit got better, fewer and fewer people would feel the need for the luxury of their own vehicle, but those who did could continue to subsidize public transit for the rest (instead of the current situation where cities subsidize drivers).
Then you could look into food. Maybe everyone gets the equivalent of food stamps. Maybe instead of throwing money at private farmers to grow corn, making corn so cheap that it's almost free, resulting in awful things like high fructose corn syrup in everything, the government could be responsible for some basic crops, and allow private farmers to grow specialty things / luxuries.
Media would be easy -- just set up something like the BBC but for the US. Most other countries in the world have something similar.
Bit by bit, just chip away at all the for-profit things and allow the government to either take it over entirely, or to provide a bare-bones version that was available to everybody, while allowing people to keep running their own private for-profit ones that offer a more luxurious experience for people who want to pay more.
Who has these things happen and how?