KoboldOfArtifice

What happened in the Soviet Union is more complex than that. I want to emphasize that I don't support the majority of actions of the Soviet government and virtually none of the Stalin government in particular, but it is important to understand how society got where they were.

First and foremost, it is wrong to think that absolute power in a few people is absolutely necessary in this system to work. The reason that the Soviet Union fell into an authoritarian dictatorship is a result of their attempt at rectifying the old system. A strong believe specifically in Marxist-Leninism is that the only way society can move onto true and free socialism is if first, the bourgeoisie is completely and utterly removed from existence. They believe that if anyone still has a semblance of capital based superiority, that capitalism will always have a ground on which it will rise again, no matter how good their society might become. This lead to the believe that, "for now", society needs to be led with an iron fist by idealists who know what's good for it. This obviously fails once anyone with the will to abuse this system gets into a position of such power. There was no plan to get rid of them, no clear mechanism that would enforce their path towards the dissolution of this authoritarian state as was promised and finally no way out of it.

Socialism doesn't need to mean that an authoritarian government owns everything forever. If that were the case, you'd effectively be no better than under capitalism, as all that has happened is that an elite above the worker class has taken control and the worker class is forced to accept it's role in their plan. Even in the Soviet Union, one of the most famous planned economies in history, it was meant to be a temporary state just to set up a stable system and then transfer it into local worker ownership.

What has been shown to work well is at the very least the concept of a cooperative ownership where the workers own companies collectively and benefit from the profits together. While they aren't incredibly widespread, they exist even in countries like the US. Most of them are found in the agricultural sector, but you even have examples of more widespread application of the concept in companies like Mondragon in the Basque region of Spain.

The specifics of where these should ultimately go would completely blow up this conversation and there are better people you can talk about it with than me (just don't try it on hexbear), but the point, in short, is that no, Socialism doesn't imply any of those points you mentioned, but yes, attempts and supposed attempts to instate it have ended in system supporting these things. That doesn't mean that they are intrinsic to Socialism though. There are many factors that play into why it has historically failed and it serves to note that a major part that has made the development of a socialist society near-impossible, even in a good willed system, is the extreme pushback this has received from countries that were capitalist and where the elite was afraid of losing their advantage.

I think the problem just comes from dissatisfaction with the government. If I lived in the US, I'd have my own gripes with paying taxes to be honest. Where I live I'm still not 100% satisfied with it, but not because I don't want to pay them, but because I feel like they could be used better.

The difference to me being that I feel like it's something that can be reasonably fixed here whereas people struggle with believing the same in the US. Then again, there's people who don't want to pay taxes even here, so I guess there's just a general phenomenon going on.

Part of it seems to also just be a lack of social cohesion. People feel so incredibly negative to the thought of their money going to someone they don't know personally because they don't imagine them as people to be empathetic for. I've got the advantage, if you want to call it that, to have lived in poverty, to have had health emergencies and to have required government assistance to help me achieve my goals. I've seen first hand why these systems are critical. It makes it a lot easier to feel like these taxes are going somewhere good.

Literally none of these are an implication of socialism.

Some of these, like taking away all food, are explicitly anti-socialist. Just because states that acted under the name of a socialist government did many of these things, that doesn't mean that they have anything to do with socialism. That's like acting as if the current Chinese government were actually socialist instead of being a capitalist oligarchy, or like the Soviet Union under Stalin was anything but a hyper-authoritarian quasi-fascist military regime.

Socialism is expressed in socialist policies in states in Europe too and while it certain somewhat increases the tax burden on society, it alleviates the grueling effects of wage slavery and lack of access to food, as well as in especially well developed cases, allowing for greater personal expression than can be true otherwise in capitalist settings.

Claiming that having to move only happens under authoritarian regimes, completely besides the point of whether or not that is relevant to socialism in general, is in complete disregard to the constant forces exhibited by uncontrolled capitalism, forcing people to move, eat whatever cheap crap they can get and, believe it or not, experiencing how loved ones and acquaintances disappear, not due to the government taking them, but due to the for-profit society grinding them down into addiction, depression and death.

Note that in no way I wish to support any military regime or other undemocratic government. But socialism is the policy of putting the government to work to support society, by having everyone partaking in society assist in supporting those that need it. What you listed is not representative of that ideal and only serves to show the degeneracy of the governments that did so in the name of socialism.

Your point specifically doesn't stand. Not the one you made in your comment. You're getting incredibly upset over being corrected when the correction was genuinely well meant and important to the discussion at hand. I'm sorry that this is something that angers you, but your hurt feelings don't change the fact that what I'm bringing up isn't pedantry but a correction on a misconception which is being propagated for political gain.

I know what events you're referencing and misrepresenting, yes.

The correction was entirely on point because the framing of this being an example of rampant inflation and thus a major governmental failure is misinformation propagated by the Republican party.

While it is certainly imaginable that the erratic pricing of eggs in particular could have been handled better by the Democratic government, it's entirely false to present it as just one example of a wide reaching problem as the price increase in this case is unique to this product. Inflation has been happening and is comparatively high, putting a lot of pressure on lower income households, but it is not effectively apocalyptic as it is presented here.

Your response is completely unwarranted as in no way was I even attacking or talking down to you.

Inflation describes the decrease of the value of your money. When a currency is affected by inflation, all prices go up as you require more of that money to equal the same worth of goods.

If eggs shot up to a price of 8 or so bucks and then went down to 2.69, you weren't being affected by inflation as it is unheard of for a currency to suffer such insane inflation and then immediately recover from it.

What happened in your case would have been a large shift in supply and demand, possibly brought on by the mentioned problems in the egg production, or price gouging by whoever was selling these. Possibly also just a mix of those.

In no sense did I say that other people's dislike for their games is a problem. I take no offense to that. I myself am literally of the opinion that the newer AC games are hard to enjoy and insulting to the players time.

Nonetheless, I can acknowledge that it's a source of comfort for some, even when I fail to enjoy it. Making them feel bad about it just isn't OK.

I'm sorry, but "Really? Ubisoft though?" is not just rubbishing Ubisofts practices. It's condescending to OP.

The fact that just because I criticized your choice of words makes you assume that it's in defense of my own tastes is unreasonable too. Is there not a chance someone might sympathise with someone without sitting in the same exact boat as them?

Point is, many people would feel bad about being approached the way you did and it is not exactly unreasonable to think that they would.

There's so much attempted shaming in these comments. People like some of their games and some like them a lot. Even if you don't feel like they're the best, Original and Odyssey still carry the attachment people have for Assassin's Creed and Anno 1800 has no real direct comparable alternatives.

Stop trying to make people feel bad for just wanting to enjoy something they like when they are the victim of these companies trying to make their life harder. The fact that Ubisoft treats their customers like trash isn't something to rub in someone's face, it's too bad that some people's hobbies are locked behind something like that.

Most games don't even try to be reasonable about stuff like that, so it's not really your fault. BG3 often enough fails that itself, but it clearly does it's best to consider stuff like that.

Hope you have fun with the rest of the game, it's amazing fun. And trying to really roleplay a bit and get into the character interactions is rewarded a lot both throughout the game and at the end, so keep at it.

From the perspective of a DM in a real DnD game, the enemy would simply not have an incentive to follow you. It wants to guard the forge, not kill you at any cost.

If you really wanted to, I'd have let you go that way, but I wouldn't just let the creature run into suicide or abandon it's only task for no reason, so I think BG3 does this fight really well. Especially because this is actually a fight where using the environment can make the fight much much easier and there are environmental clues before the fight that hint towards a weakness in the boss.

It's a bit harsh to put such words in their mouth. They said their sympathies lie elsewhere, not that he deserved it.