Most industries require regulations, to maintain competition, to avoid market manipulation, to maintain public health and safety, and to stop crime.
Some industries require government intervention or even participation, to ensure the existence of nationally critical infrastructure and to protect national resilience and safety.
"Pure" capitalism is just as much a nonsense as "pure" communism.
I'm a socialist because I know you can't stop it that way. It's simply impossible. They will corrupt/lobby/influence their way around it. They currently do.
What is your plan? To REALLY SUPER DUPER trust the next candidate you have zero control over?
"Democratic socialism" is not democratic or socialism. Socialism is actually democratic and prevents exploitation.
The only way to actually stop it is to not allow individuals to profit off of others. Individuals shall make their OWN assets through their own muscles. No ownership of property that allows you to reap what others sow. It's logically the only way to avoid power imbalances. And it's something that we all enforce and control through local councils.
Remember, democracy is not trust, its control.
Any group larger than a dozen is fundamentally going to have someone else controlling other peoples stuff - de facto or de jure. It’s how things scale.
"So long as the state exists there is no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state."
Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)
So, the goal is that the people must become the state directly and dissolve the divide.
And so representative systems are necessary, as you say. And representative systems are not inherently bad.
What makes them bad is the other parts of society that allow a small group of people to take advantage of representative systems.
That small group is the capitalist class. Their control of production, and their profits give them a front row with the state.
Representation is all about context.
In order for the people (AKA literally everybody) to become the state we must undo that power imbalance and let people control production themselves.
How do you propose this would actually work?
Regulations enforced by courts are the only tool functioning societies are willing to use to limit corruption, including under communism. Some forms of communism are anarchic and just assume it will work without it, but then I can say this about anarch-capitalism too, and it's just as wrong there.
> The only way to actually stop it is to not allow individuals to profit off of others.
There are many kinds of profit besides the currencies broadly recognised today. Money itself is a fungible token of power, and the very same corruption works just as effectively when it's any other form of power. It's even possible just by barter, as demonstrated by that guy who swapped his way from a paperclip to a house: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_red_paperclip
To actually stop corruption would require an incorruptible omniscient surveillance system, and I know of nobody who wants one of those even in principle due to the downside of what "omniscient" means, and in practice it doesn't matter anyway due to the lack of incorruptible people to act in this role.
> And it's something that we all enforce and control through local councils.
Ah, the small-commune model of communism. For reasons too long to go into, this limits you to roughly the tech level of the Late Bronze Age collapse. Even then, this is only even stable until someone outside your council comes along with an army, and at best they insist you use modern tech you previously couldn't import because you abolished money, at worst you're working for a 1700 AD equivalent to the Spartans.
You are doing wishful thinking. The world is not ideas the world is real.
Regulations meets deregulation backed by billionaires. They can completely fund political candidates and judges. They can carry out conspiracies to avoid and circumvent regulations. In fact they do. The powerful already are the law, dont you see? They cant do everything they want, but they do almost all of it.
Do you think politics is as it seems? The very existence of the massive power imbalance requires you to think deeper about how politics works and not believe the illusion of modern democracies.
> There are many kinds of profit besides the currencies broadly recognised today.
Your mentioning of "many kinds of profits" is ignorant, we're talking about profits and capital, it doesnt matter what the currency is. The rule is still exactly the same:
The accumulation of profits from the work of others leads to power imbalances. The type of currency is irrelevant.
And the red paperclip thing was a stunt, it is not an inherent part of modern economies. Its not "real".
> To actually stop corruption would require an incorruptible omniscient surveillance system
Nah. Blockchain can be used for managing funds. In fact the function of the state should be reduced to accounting, which almost anyone could do.
> Ah, the small-commune model of communism.
Im not talking about that. Read Lenin, real democracy requires local councils. Small communes dont work.
Honestly, dude, I can tell you know nothing about communism, marxism or even power dynamics in politics. I'm not being rude. Read about it, because if not youre just hating because someone told you to.
Like I said before: Marxism is a framework that describes the progression of society through socioeconomic theories. It implies the democratization of production. Thats whats so bad about it, according to the rich and their state. Thats why they made you hate it without you even knowing what it is.
The issue is that the stated ‘progression of society through socioeconomic theories’ is all good sounding wishful thinking, which is only actually ‘doable’ through authoritarianism.
It’s why it’s such sweet bait for people to get sucked into, and why everyone who has tried it for any group larger than can fit into a single room turns into a authoritarian dictatorship - which then usually ends up just abusing the control for their own ends. Best case. Or turns into something even worse, like the Khmer Rouge.
Not that it’s the ONLY path to authoritarian dictatorship mind you. But it happens every time.
Just look up all the ecological and environmental disasters in Eastern Europe and Russia, or the insane economic fuckups from the ‘great leap forward’ (or even going on right now!) in China for a breath of fresh air, amiright?
People be people. No system is going to magically solve these problems, but some (anything authoritarian, usually!) can certainly make them worse.