Your point is that central planning was a failure.
That's mostly orthogonal to the regime, even if it's easier to do with a totalitarian system. We could imagine central planning with a democratic system, one could even argue that we have bits and pieces of central planning in most of our governments, especially in agriculture and fields that make no money but are critical to a nation.
>That's mostly orthogonal to the regime, even if it's easier to do with a totalitarian system.
Yeah, that's basically my point: that totalitarianism isn't necessarily "unsustainable" at all. The US could become totalitarian and stay that way for centuries.
In many ways the USA has been totalitarian for its entire existence. Not in the same way as the DPRK or the Soviet Union, sure, but in its own special way.
Consider that for nearly the first 100 years of the USA's existence (just under half of its existence), black people couldn't vote. To black people, the USA had been an extremely authoritarian state that entire time, especially if they were enslaved, obviously.
Consider that half the population (women) didn't get a constitutionally guaranteed right to vote until the 1920s. That's 144 years of the USA's existence!
Consider that even after these constitutional amendments, the USA was still an extremely authoritarian state in many ways. Black people forced by law to use other facilities until within the last 60 years, then still facing pushback due to things like Massive Resistance and simple racism.
Consider that the USA had concentration camps for Americans that happened to have Japanese heritage within the last 100 years.
Consider that the USA today has the sixth highest incarceration rate per capita.
Now that's just laws and whatnot. There's the other side of the coin, which is the massive political and actual power wielded by American companies, particularly in media and news.
George Lucas once argued that Soviet filmmakers had more freedom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWqvaMEFIdI . He pointed out that Star Wars was supposed to be a straight up blatant reference to the American intervention in the Vietnamese revolution, with the Empire being the Americans and the Rebels being the communists. He points out that he would never have gotten than movie approved if he had made it more obvious. Which reminds me of another blatantly totalitarian phase of American history: McCarthyism. (he doesn't mention vietnam in the above video, he mentioned it later in an interview: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2005-05-18-050518...)
Then we have stories like we're discussing here, the general day to day interaction Americans have with their police of various agencies. Police are out there straight up murdering innocents, such as Breonna Taylor, with basically no repercussions.
So the USA is no Soviet Union, there may not be gulags and secret police... but there is the NSA, there are local cops simply arresting people that criticize them with no consequence, there is the legislated absolution of constitutional rights within 100 miles of any border (the majority of the populace living in places like this). There may not be one party... but there might as well be, outside of culture war issues both falling in line for corporate, oil, telecom, and war interests.
In short I argue that while the USA is not "blatantly totalitarian" like the DPRK or the USSR, it is totalitarian in another, almost more sinister way. It's more intangible, difficult to argue against. The movements that come up against it, such as Black Lives Matter or Occupy, often fail to outline clear demands, because it's just so damn vague what the problems are all. Or perhaps they're just so widespread.
I think you're totally not understanding what the term "totalitarian" means. It's not the same as "authoritarian". Authoritarian systems have been around since rulers became a thing, but Rome, various medieval kingdoms, etc. were not "totalitarian" by any means. It's entirely a product of the 20th century.
I reject that USA has been a totalitarian cause it has had slaves or women has not always been allowed to vote.
I think you must look at the way the rest of the world was during the same time to get a honest picture of the "totalitarian state" of USA.
Hand pick some historic situation and then comparing versus a "Perfect World" (and since USA was not as good as this Perfect world.. then it must totalitarian/evil/..)
This is not an honest way to frame the argument
Throughout the more than hundred thousand years humans have been organizing societies there is ample evidence for vastly more egalitarian societies than anywhere close to what the usa has achieved. I'm not comparing to a mythical utopia, I'm framing within the definable boundaries of human history.
That's mostly orthogonal to the regime, even if it's easier to do with a totalitarian system. We could imagine central planning with a democratic system, one could even argue that we have bits and pieces of central planning in most of our governments, especially in agriculture and fields that make no money but are critical to a nation.
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