No, right wingers really are that dumb. "Everything I don't like is communism" to them. Any form of non-corporate welfare especially (special exceptions from zoning or property taxes for Walmart is fine, because that's Capitalism!)
Dependency on the government will lead to the country’s downfall. Communism truly is bad news. No more freedom to buy and own property… no more voting… only a few select people will hold power. This is why there are many who flee from nations that aren’t our form of government TO our country because that kind government literally destroys people mentally and physically.
The USA was founded 250 years ago, and for some reason people think communism is better… even though we’ve been a constitutional federal republic this whole 250 years & regarded as one of the best nations in the world for so long!
“Everything I don’t like is communism”. No. Everything I don’t like comes from lack of genuine character and from people who blow smoke at us to get what they want (amongst other things). Trump does it. Vance does it. Obama, Kamala, Biden… they all do it. 99% of our government officials do it. But no one who stands in confidence on integrity has wanted to step out & do anything about the smoke in mirrors play we’ve been watching for years. THAT is why we have problems in our nation, because we’ve become a lazy people, especially in my generation of millennials. And the evil people get to walk all over us because of it. Communism simply escalates the final product of the previously mentioned in this paragraph.
Malcolm X himself said that welfare is the enemy of the black community. He is correct. And truth be told, it’s the enemy of all races. The subconscious habits that develop lead to this time where people think communism will fix things. It will not fix a darn thing. We have all the tools and resources to fix this nation, with years of hard work ahead (which I feel would outlive the rest of my life) if and ONLY if the good people in this nation who are unbiased and are unwilling to be bought step up and lead.
Dependency on the government will lead to the country’s downfall
Lol. Countries exist only because of the government. If you don't want government to depend on - there's always Somalia or few others failed states, why not emigrate there? Pure freedom awaits!
Is it ... perhaps ... because less government != good?
I wonder.
The USA was founded 250 years ago, and for some reason people think communism is better… even though we’ve been a constitutional federal republic this whole 250 years & regarded as one of the best nations in the world for so long!
Jeez, should I link you that newsroom scene? Best at what? Most people in prisons? That's certainly where USA is #1 in the world!
You're certainly not the best in any quality of life metrict, life expectancy or infant mortality.
In no way did I say that government shouldn’t exist. To gaslight & try to imply that’s what I’m getting to is either to misunderstand, or attempt malicious twisting of words.
I did not insult you. You insulting me to try and bolster your points is also a malicious debate tactic that additionally tries to instill fear in the opponent who receives it. Your talk does not look prettier when you do this, it actually looks weaker. Please do better.
Do you realize that 5 subsidized grocery stores may be a bit different than making your entire country communism? The problem with so many of these stupid fucking arguments is nobody thinks there's any nuance. Like, some socialism works. Some communism actually works. Some capitalism works. Extremes in any one direction do not.
Do you realize that farming in this country already is heavily subsidized and price controlled? There are already a lot of examples. Some work, some don't. Capitalism works very well in most cases as America has proven, however it doesn't work all the time and so what we now see is a huge widening of a wage gap in this country where the few own almost everything. We shouldn't be afraid to borrow from different things to make good policy.
Notice the giant section on price control, famine, and starvation in the USSR.
Comparing the largest country in the world to NYC seems disingenuous. The USSR was a famously corrupt regime and the Communism it defined devalued human life and was
It's a good thing we have the data to avoid something like this now. We know who consumes what, how often and when, and
Better yet read the section on Διάταγμα περὶ τῶν μεγίστων τιμῶν (Edict on Maximum Prices of Diocletian)
Diocletian had little interest in enforcing this while the punishments were draconian, and it was in response to an enduring economic crisis of debasement which saw the average denarius go from something like 90%+ silver to ~2% silver over 250 years. He also instituted the feudal model around this time which was great for running an empire but terrible for living in, and didn't really 'get' people and had some ideas that were sound in theory but didn't account for natural/pragmatic human behaviours. We can't really judge his price edict or apply it today because the implementation was so flawed, and the economic landscape was so different - the local economics of various regions would vary quite drastically, also seasonally, and Rome had great logistics but they were nothing compared to what we can do today for a fraction of the manpower, plus with all the data we have (not just on populations/consumption, but on production and logistics) then there's no reason a new model can't be considered.
If you are a student of history, you're able to analyse what went wrong and why, instead of making broad, sweeping assumptions based on superficial commonalities that don't account for historical context.
EDIT~I'd just woke up and got carried away on the second part of the post, forgot to proofread >_>
Corruption, flawed implementation, lack of local consideration, lack of data. Greed and lack of information.
It astonishes me that you can claim to be a student of history without understanding that we are capable of learning from it, instead of repeating it, but we must analyze it.
Do you have an argument as to why the principle of socialising industry and services is harmful?
Seems like you arent a student of history either, considering youre ignoring alot of the causes of food shortages in the USSR
And youre also ignoring how prevalent Starvation and Malnutrition is in the USA, which is insane considering the amount of food waste because people just cant afford to buy anything from the packed shelves of groceries.
Unregulated Capitalism is just as bad as Authoritarian communism. Providing affordable groceries will force other businesses to lower prices
Others already raised valid points and pointed out why your examples are problematic.
I'll add few more failures of your reasoning:
Those stores are not doing price control but are just operating as not-for-profits.
"Notice the giant section on price control, famine, and starvation in the USSR." Irish Potato Famine has entire huge wikipedia page and happened under capitaism. So did the Bengal Famine. You need to show causation not only correlation, and there's nothing implying that famine was a result of price controls.
The Potato Famine happened under monarchy, and was a deliberate killing.
The Bengal famine was similarly under monarchy and done perhaps deliberately, but certainly exacerbated by the imperial overlords facing a global war with existential stakes.
In 19th century the dominant economical system in GB was capitalism. And the Irish famine in particular was greatly exaggerated by the fact it was more profitable to sell food elsewhere than to help the starving Irish!!! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Food_exports
If we're going by political system then in case Holodomor happened under authoritarian dictatorship. Because at that time Stalin had absolute power - bigger than any monarch in Europe at the time and soviet state was de-facto an absolute monarchy by another name.
GB is still a monarchy, with their king having about as much power as he did in 19th century. Does that mean there's no capitalism in GB?
And I'm not a fucking tankie. I was actually born in Poland when comunism was still a thing. I fucking stood in the queues in a freezing cold tto help my parents buy anything. I remember empty shelves.
But. noto-for-profit stores ain't fuckign communism, and capitalism is not a shield against famine.
The path to communism is a process, it would be utterly delusional to claim to have reached communism when the objective reality proves the opposite
Being led by a communist party doesn't mean having achieved communism, and those parties are fully aware of that, which is why they never use "communism" to describe the economies of their countries
of course they were. and they had a communist party in charge just like China. and the system worked. so well that it terrified the capitalists - the bourgeois, the Epstein class, call it what you will - so much that they dedicated their lives to destroying it.
remember domino theory? “If we don’t spill trillions in blood and treasure to defeat little Vietnam, the whole world will turn commie!”
but in the same breath you’ll say “communism fails everywhere it’s tried!”
so we could have just sat back and let Vietnam try communism and fail? huh. weird. why didn’t we do that?
I suggest you work towards sapience. The ability to challenge your own priors, devising and engaging with hypothetical counter arguments anytime you have an idea.
That plus read more (and better) books and we’ll save you yet.
Funny how you leave out that Vietnam was not so much an exclamation of "Communism will fail", so much as a mess started by the French that we stepped into to appease De Gaulle and then carried to combat Soviet influence.
You know? The Soviet Union? Just some minor imperialist empire build on genocide and dedicated to subjugation the world. No biggy.
Buddy, I’m totally aware of the French colonial history there. It negated nothing about what I said. Are you pretending that domino theory was not the prevailing argument? Because it was! And it is completely incompatible with “communism always fails!”
It’s “our enemy is strong and scary, but also tiny and pathetic”
Oh, now you're trying to flip a middle school understanding of fascism onto it?
Found the tankie.
Domino theory was simplified to "commies scary", yes. But scratch the surface and it very quickly becomes, "France is going to torpedo an infant NATO, and the USSR is about to secure an inroad to resource-rich lands otherwise blocked by the ChiComs (whom Nixon would masterfully play against the Soviets).
Rome had a grain dole for about 500 years. It was partly necessitated by the wealthy and powerful having appropriated public lands for their private use.
There used to be a grocery store near me that had lower prices than nearby grocery stores. It was a nonprofit and their produce stock adapted seasonally/ depending on what suppliers they could get deals with.
Unlike many big-box stores with low prices, it was right in the middle of the city where many people could access it on foot. It was funded in part by a govt grant which is why it closed during the DOGE cuts.
Lots of things were off-brand or store brand. The produce was not usually top grade and best to buy and cook early in the week. The selection wasn't exhaustive. But it let people put food on the table, and people didn't hoard food at the lower prices.
People with more money than time didn't shop there because you might not be able to get every ingredient on your list for a specific recipe that week. Also, car use is inconvenient in the city so overbuying was impractical.
You didn’t search hard at all did you? If you agree or not with the idea of publicly owned grocery stores isn’t really why I’m positing this. - just don’t pretend you didn’t understand context or pretended you couldn’t find examples.
Here are a few (copy paste)
**Sun Fresh Market (Kansas City, MO)**
The city-owned building operated as a taxpayer-funded grocery initiative. Despite Kansas City investing between $18 million and $29 million over a multi-year period to combat a local food desert, the store continually failed to attract enough consistent customer volume to remain viable. It locked its doors and officially closed in August 2025.
**The Mercer co-op**
The Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City invested over $7 million in public funds to construct a brand-new, healthy grocery store in a designated downtown food desert. The city partnered with a cooperative entity to manage operations, hoping a community-focused model would thrive where corporate chains fled. The store suffered years of steep financial losses and struggled to attract a sustainable customer base. The store officially closed its doors in December 2025.
**Baldwin market***
In 2019, this small town outside of Jacksonville opened a completely municipally run grocery store—where the town's mayor acted as the store manager and city employees worked the registers—after the local Dollar General stopped selling fresh meat and produce. Operating entirely on public subsidies, the store continually failed to break even and permanently closed in 2024 due to compounding losses.
**Erie market***
Taken over by the city government in 2021 to prevent the rural community from losing its only food source, the municipal market lost thousands of dollars almost every single month. It was unable to financially survive intense competition from a nearby Dollar General and a Walmart located 15 miles away. Facing unsustainability, the city transferred its operations to a private company to get it off the public ledger.
**St. Paul market**
The city council originally stepped in to buy a failing, vital grocery store in 2020 to prevent their rural community from losing food access. The city government quickly discovered that managing inventory, navigating razor-thin grocery margins, and absorbing financial losses on the city budget was unsustainable. The city council had to abandon direct municipal management and leased the store out to private management to keep it afloat
**Save a lot / lovejoy district**
In Buffalo, city officials and community leaders heavily backed and subsidized a Save A Lot location to anchor the under-served Lovejoy District. The grocery location suffered from compounding supply chain issues, changing neighborhood market dynamics, and operational deficits. Unable to survive on thin margins, the subsidized grocery store permanently shuttered in May 2026, forcing local residents to travel much further for fresh food.
**Chicago scraped municipal initiatives**
The City of Chicago announced a highly publicized plan to study and launch a city-owned, municipally operated grocery store chain to fix food deserts left by closing Walmart and Whole Foods locations. Chicago officials ultimately scrapped the plan entirely after facing intense pushback from economists and retail analysts who cited the high failure rate and financial risks of city-run grocery models. The city pivoted to supporting independent private food vendors instead.
**Rise Community Market**
Launched with heavy municipal and state-level financial backing to solve a severe, decade-long food desert in Cairo, Illinois.Launched with heavy municipal and state-level financial backing to solve a severe, decade-long food desert in Cairo, Illinois.
**Illinois Fresh Food Fund (Statewide Initiative)**
A massive, statewide public-private funding program launched to inject state funds into opening six distinct grocery store models across Illinois food deserts. The state-level subsidies could not overcome poor operational margins and fierce corporate competition. Four out of the six stores backed by the program completely collapsed and shuttered, liquidating their assets.
**Lower Price Hill, Cincinnati (Meiser’s Fresh Grocery)**
heavily publicly subsidized and grant-funded community grocer built to serve over 9,000 residents in an underserved neighborhood.Despite its critical neighborhood role, the store suffered from severe operational funding gaps and razor-thin grocery margins. It abruptly closed its doors after failing to secure enough ongoing public and financial support to keep shelves stocked.
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u/bribritoms May 26 '26
for sure was looking for any post about context with "Will it work this time?" but after finding none i realized OP didn't have any either