"The USSR did many things right in combatting inequality but ultimately fell short, it however was one of the best attempts we've seen so far, maybe we should improve upon that formula instead of the ones currently leading to year over year worse inequality". For Mao Zedong you could highlight his impressive skill in unifying such a vast country as China and remodel the national identity to one of national Pride without the underpinnings of conquest and domination which has always seemed to follow a strong national identity before.

Oh look, pretty much exactly what us communists and scientific socialists, as opposed to utopian ones, have been saying to begin with.

Michael Parenti - Blackshirts and Reds:

The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.

I wouldn't say the USSR "fell short" though. They were absolutely on the right track and vastly improved the lives of its citizens over what came before, taking the region from feudal backwaters to humanity's first space explorers in just 30 years, and rivaling a 200 y/o superpower in the process.

Its illegal dissolution by Gorbechev and his western allies was opposed by over 90% of the population and was a disaster that the former Soviet states still haven't fully recovered from 33 years later.

"No one wants to have a civil discussion here with me"

"No not like that this is the literal dumbest shit ive ever heard"

Go have your enlightened centrist discussions with an ai chatbot that wont challenge you. Ever.

I've got news for you: historically, "centralised" research has led to fewer innovations in consumer technology and bureaucrats unilaterally redirecting funds away from promising areas for political reasons. For just two examples: Cybernetics was the target of a political campaign in the USSR, and their biologists denied genetics of all things and tried to promote agricultural policy based on genetics being wrong.

Alternatively, we could just look at where the USSR is now to see how well their centralised research and development efforts are going 👀

Yes, and Chernobyl never exploded because Soviet engineers don't make mistakes.

Komarov did not know he was going to die in Soyuz 1, he was excited and happy to be going up and didn't want Gagarin to get all the glory: https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/02/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage

Science was so much better in the USSR there's even a whole list of things about how much better it was: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repression_of_science_in_the_Soviet_Union

🤡

US media says socialism bad tho :clueless:

The USA partnered with the German company, Siemens, to install hidden wiretaps into the phone equipment that was used by every embassy in the world. For years the USA had access to literally everything that ambassadors from every country were saying.

Then we have the USA Congress holding a trial after it was revealed that every telecom company in the country broke the law and spied on all internet traffic and gave it to the NSA. The result of that trial? Retroactive immunity for all involved and changes to the law to make it legal going forward.

Then we have the Snowden leaks that show the NSA has chosen "market solutions" for data gathering, meaning that they will collaborate with private companies, even funding them through the network of money, so that those private companies gather as much data as they can on citizens so the NSA can buy it. They also have major partnerships to install persistent vulnerabilities that they can exploit, and there are major revelations in the leaks about how they influence which companies but which companies in order to ensure control over the startup tech that doesn't collaborate with military intelligence.

Prism, Raptor, Echelon - these are the programs we know about. There are undoubtedly a number we don't.

Then you have Oracle, Palantir, AT&T, Verizon and many other tech companies that were either founded by, funded by, or wrre revealed to be infiltrated by military intelligence.

Military intelligence influences cryptography at the highest levels, pushing for specific algorithms to be adopted by ANSI and ISO as the default recommendations.

USA spies get jobs in American tech companies. That's part of the program. High level State Department and Military Intelligence officials take executive jobs openly in companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google.

And then they lie about it, have been lying about for decades, and create clear and obvious propaganda that belies their motivations. When TikTok was being accused of being Chinese spy tech, the USA forced TikTok to give control of its USA operations to a USA tech company with executives and staff from the USA State Department and Military Intelligence. Even after this happened, they continued to publish scare articles about TikTok being Chinese spyware even though in the USA it was controlled entirely by the government.

The USA has 600+ military bases around the world, it has secret black sites in dozens of countries where it conducts torture, bio experiments, and illegal operations explicitly to avoid legal troubles in the USA (because they aren't there) and legal troubles in their host country (because they have immunity).

Compare that to China.

Do you really need to ask why you shouldn't trust the countries responsible for the vast majority of neocolonialism, and the ones currently supporting a genocide?

Just look up some of the numerous shit the CIA has done, or the fact that they collect information on every US citizen to use against them, etc. Like the 1965 Indonesian massacre of 700k to 1mil people where the CIA supplied the military dictatorship with information on them.

From my point of view, Western powers are more realistically gonna impinge on my human rights than Beijing is.

Your circumstances may be different.

Because while there are only obtuse and vague accusations that China is backdooring technology, there's no proof besides a Chinese law that says Chinese tech companies have to help authorities.

The US on the other hand was caught red handed doing what they accuse China of with the Prism system. It was caught spying on Angela Merkle. And just ask Snowdon how he feels about living in exile in Russia for exposing that.