China hasn't been communist for a really long time. It didn't truly stay communist for a long time either, it was more of an authoritarian autarky run by a nutjob.

What is is today is state sponsored capitalism. You have cronyism, nepotism, lobbying and rent seeking. All of which are also found in the US.

China's social spending is far lower than many other developed nations.

I see young people advocating for socialism a lot in Canada, but rarely communism as in communist Russia and communist China. As others have said, old style communism isn't even around anymore. Russia is a fake democracy and China is a strange blend of one party rule and capitalism.

I don't think it does anyone any good to throw around naive and simple terms like communism. Focus on issues like public healthcare, breaking monopolies, basic incomes, and so on. We'll get along a lot better that way.

canada has our own history of socialism in the form of crown corps and healthcare. why wouldnt we lean into our own successful practices?

Because they'll make you worse off the more you scale them up. It's like pointing out that a drink of alcohol with a friend led to positive results so why not lean heavily into drinking? And the answer is because it is something that people enjoy that can be tolerated in small amounts but isn't much of a strategy if the goal is a happy, healthy outcome.

That's ridiculous. The countries with the highest quality of living all have strong social programs. If you want an analogy for alcoholism look at the US. Capitalism works here, so let's use it everywhere!

I'm tempted to copy what you wrote as a response without the "That's ridiculous" part. It isn't ridiculous, it is just a factual description of reality. The reason the US can afford the strong social programs is because of its heavy commitment to capitalism. If a country is poor and weak then it can't afford to endure the pain that a strong social program causes. Poor countries just can't sustain populations of people who consume resources and don't create anything especially valuable. If you scale up the social programs too far at some point the wealth destruction becomes intolerable; there's some optimal amount of damage that can be accepted and "lean in to socialism" isn't the best strategy to find that balance because by the time the pain becomes intolerable it has already happened.

> The reason the US can afford the strong social programs is because of its heavy commitment to capitalism.

The US does not have strong social programs. It's an example of the opposite. Look at Canada and Europe for examples of strong social programs.

Some social programs are wildly overpowered, others are shells of their intention.

It’s a wide spectrum, very distributed.

Despite wanting to, you really cannot form an opinion on US social programs as a whole without misinforming someone gravely.

"communist Russia"

Go to Shenzhen or Shanghai, if that's what communism looks like, then it has already won. A few weeks ago, when I was in Shanghai, I went for a walk and saw more McLarens and Ferraris in a few hours than I've seen in New York, Berlin, and Paris combined.

They're more capitalist than we (the West) ever were. Communism is basically only something that remains in the name of the party. Their version of capitalism just has a lot more state involvement and capital controls, which lets them plan over longer time horizons more successfully and pivot to new priorities much faster.

Don’t forget, it also allows them to regularly and consistently jail citizens either zero recourse.

I promise you they wouldn’t be getting released like we have happening in the US.

Very much. Try to start a union in China and see how communist that country is. China is essentially a right-wing hypercapitalist country run by a dictatorship.

To be fair, I don't know where starting a union under Mao would get you

>when I was in Shanghai, I went for a walk and saw more McLarens and Ferraris in a few hours than I've seen in New York, Berlin, and Paris combined.

Sounds awful imo.

Yet when they want beautiful nature and buildnings etc they go here to Europe.

> Yet when they want beautiful nature and buildnings etc they go here to Europe.

You need to be joking or you never were in T1 city in China.

It's funny how this comment (which states nothing but facts) was upvoted and then some poeple were coping with reality by downvoting it.

Yeah, there are some Eastern EU countries where populist parties still milk the older voters with Soviet nostalgia. Yet, as usual, the same politicians who suggest how good things were back then are usually very happy to enjoy Western goods, freedom of movement, private property and EU funds.

But generally, people still remember the Soviet concentration camps, censorship, shortages of basic goods and the inborn corruption that came with the Soviet implementation of communism.

Communism ideologies seem to thrive among the young in (pseudo) democratic societies. That’s a paradox for me, as communism seems to exist because of the wealth distribution that capitalism creates.

Now, what the EU is doing right now with all that bureaucratic machine and the leftist social agenda, is another topic.