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.
Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low-quality!
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)
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.
as well as condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
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).
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)
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.
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
ID: A Sophie Labelle 4 panel comic featuring Stephie in different poses, saying:
Landlords do not provide housing.
They buy and Hold more space than they need for themselves.
Then, they create a false scarcity and profit off of it.
What they're doing is literally the opposite of providing housing.
If the landlords do not provide a service, you're welcome to go to the bank to approve your loan, buy or build a house, maintain it, pay back the loan and deal with delinquent renters and sell it when it's time for you to move out. None of which concerns you as a renter.
It is a massive PITA and it's a so-so store of value at best. That there are assholes who charge you through the nose for the rent doesn't mean it's a landlord problem. It's an asshole problem.
Bull-fucking-shit.
20 years ago, houses in my neighborhood were selling for around $50k. Those same houses today hold a current market value of over $800k.
For comparison, the value of the USD has lost roughly 40% in value over the last 20 years, meaning if the houses in my neighborhood were only a "so-so store of value" (tracking inflation) they would be worth roughly $80k today, 10x less than the current market value.
For another comparison, if you put $50k into an index fund that tracked the S&P500 20 years ago, it would be worth roughly $350k today. That's not even half of the return houses in my neighborhood are getting over the same time period.
Sure it costs a lot of money to maintain a house and pay taxes and insurance over that 20 years and that's going to eat into those returns. But I can guarantee you I'm paying more than that to rent a similarly-sized property, which you would be doing anyway if you didn't have the capital to own a home.
You're sure living in a real estate bubble. Not going to last, thankfully.
A lot of people will probably doubt this when living in the middle of the bubble. But it has happened elsewhere already. China's RE bubble has melted down spectacularly and their economy is still deflating despite massive government stimulus. I imagine this will be the fate of the American Everything Bubble too, albeit we can't know when it will happen. The last deflationary episode around 2014 coincided with the meltdown in the American shale oil industry, which as we well know is going to happen again with the decline of the Permian - maybe this will start the bubble bursting.