Capitalism always exploits someone whether the bulk of the exploitation is within your country’s borders or not. Being perfectly comfortable within capitalism comes at the expense of someone else regardless of regulation.
One, I don’t believe it has to be that way. With enough taxes on the wealthy, regulation on commerce, and social programs for the poor, I think a system of fairness can be achieved.
Two, I don’t believe that communism of any form result in a sense of fairness for anyone. I believe most humans have an innate desire to work to improve their lives, and I don’t believe communism offers the same freedom and opportunities for self improvement through honest work that can be offered by tightly regulated capitalism in combination with strong social programs.
The fact that the poor still exist in your ideal “fair” society indicates that a capitalist system still relies on exploitation. How do you make “work or starve” disappear while still being capitalist?
Communism is a stateless, moneyless society. It’s a utopian marker for people in the present day. It’s not a fixed ideology in and of itself. The Spanish Anarchists of the CNT-FAI and the USSR have very little in common but both aspired to implement communism, at least on paper. I have my criticisms but they’re not relevant.
You would be correct in saying that people have an innate desire to labor and improve their lives. Capitalism forces you to (attempt to) improve your life and shape the world through competition with your peers. If you’re disadvantaged in some way, fuck you. Work harder or die in the streets. Social programs and welfare are antithetical to capitalism. It doesn’t independently generate profit and thus is often ignored or slowly eroded over time when it does manage to manifest. Socialism/ socialist ideologies (worker ownership of the means of production) enables people to improve their life and shape the world through cooperation. It seeks to ensure everyone is able to live a dignified life and contribute according to their ability. Humans are capable of both competiton and cooperation and capitalism builds a very one sided society that demands competition. It’s a terrible way to live and alienates people from each other.
Socialism (in my perspective as an anarchist) seeks to allow people to live their lives with the maximal amount of freedom, self determination, and autonomy possible. Whether that includes markets (which I’m assuming is what you mean by capitalism, since that’s what most people who defend capitalism think it is), planned economies, gift economies, library economies or something completely different, is a better system than capitalism on a foundational level
Man I knew it was a bad idea to engage with the tankies.
Since you completely missed to part about capitalism being combined with socialism to take advantages away from the rich and give them to others, I’ll say it again: I’m talking about tightly regulated capitalism with strong socialist policies.
Your description of capitalism here is the furthest fucking thing from what I’m talking about.
Socialism (in my perspective as an anarchist) seeks to allow people to live their lives with the maximal amount of freedom, self determination, and autonomy possible.
That’s hilarious because that exactly what capitalists say about capitalism.
You’re calling me, an anarchist, a tankie? Do you even know what that word means? I know you read the part of my comment where I said I was an anarchist because you quoted it.
The combination of capitalism and socialism is called democratic socialism. It doesn’t work long term. The Nordic model is essentially democratic socialism put to practice and it’s gone well for the people in Nordic countries. They still suffer from capital strikes and other problems that are only going to get worse with time. These countries still rely on exploitation of people in the global south. Nestle is a swedish company with a terrible past. They have literally killed babies, use slave labor, and destroy ecosystems to extract wealth from poor countries. Spotify is another swedish company with a problematic track record. They’re not alone either. H&M, IKEA and Nokia have all had sketchy track records. Why do Nordic companies have so many things wrong with them if they’re companies founded in the “ideal” countries? Could it be because of inherent problems in capitalism? Nah! The system just needs tinkering, it’ll all work out don’t you worry!
I’ll concede, the social problems in these countries are much smaller than, say, the US. They have managed to increase the quality of life of their polity. It’s not perfect but it’s better than what we have and it will continue to be that way for a little while longer until capital is able to erode those collective benefits further to increase their bottom line. Which they have done and will continue to do. See Canada and the UK for an idea of what the nordic countries will eventually devolve into and then have a look at the US for something closer to the end goal.
That’s hilarious because that exactly what capitalists say about capitalism
Capitalists are right.Capitalists have freedom, autonomy, and self determination. Problem is, most of us aren’t capitalists and we don’t have access to the material resources wealth gives you access to. And it has to be that way. There are very few that the above terms apply to and the overwhelming majority of us are excluded from the benefits of capitalism. “Work or starve” is the status quo for a reason.
All of this isn’t even getting into the whole “infinite growth is impossible and it’s killing the planet” thing. Capitalism will literally be the death of us and no amount of reforms are going to stop it. Capitalism is predicated on the assumption that infinite growth is possible and necessary. There are so many destructive and inhumane aspects to the ideology that at some point, it will become obvious that it can’t be fixed. For a long time feudalism seemed like a perfectly good system that should be upheld. Sure there were problems, but it just needed to be tweaked. Do you know how that ended? Revolution.
Do you have anything substantive to say about the benefits of capitalism and democratic socialism or are you determined to have your head so far up your ass that polite criticism of the status quo makes you feel personally attacked? I didn’t miss anything about your comment and if you knew a bit more about the things you’re talking about you would see that. Instead of being a reactive anus for no good reason, why don’t you try to understand what I’m saying? It’s clear that you don’t. I’d be happy to leave some resources for you to read up a little if you’re interested in understanding what you’re defending and what you’re claiming to be against. Books, videos, articles, podcasts, just name your preferred method of media consumption and I’ll leave something for you
Woah you escalated that quickly. Breathe. You guys were having a reasonable discussion that was enjoyable for me to read until you pulled out the insults and curses for some reason.
Two, I don’t believe that communism of any form result in a sense of fairness for anyone. I believe most humans have an innate desire to work to improve their lives, and I don’t believe communism offers the same freedom and opportunities for self improvement through honest work
Historically communism allows for more improvement though. Working class people would be able to take college classes in the evenings for free. Peasant girls went from a future of marriage and housework to being able to be scientists.
It is more easy to motivate yourself to be better at your work when what you’re doing benefits everyone than to motivate yourself to be better at your work when what you’re doing just benefits some bourgeois fuck.
What would it be to have a market economy with private investments and also a system that ensures the tax system ensures everyone has at least basic housing and access to vocational schools and higher education? I don’t want to completely upend the system but tweak it so Kevin Griffin cries himself to sleep at night
Idealist. It would be easier and more viable to just have the means of production be owned and democratically managed by the proletariat than to share power in the long term with our exploited without one side or the other losing.
Capitalism cannot be regulated to become fair. Capitalism is irrational and immoral, it does not need to be controlled or reformed, it must be overcome
If you think billionaires are bad but capitalism is good you don’t know what capitalism is. You should seriously consider reading some of marx’s shorter works like Value Price and Profit and Wage Labor and Capital.
Pre-Columbian American civilizations are incredibly interesting. It’s absurd how far they got without wheels, iron tools or animals like horses and cows. I guess I wouldn’t mind listening about the Aztecs constantly.
The wheel was actually known to Mesoamerica pre-European contact. Archeological finds included toys, food preparation tools, seal rollers, and spindle whorls for textile making.
I’m a history nerd and Mesoamerica is quality content.
Now that you call it out, I agree! Bale gets a lot of praise for his ability to morph his body for different roles, but is otherwise only alright as an actor. But he happens to be in many great movies with other iconic figures which really elevates his cachet.
Affleck is pretty good. I also really liked Pattenson’s emo sad-Bruce version quite a bit more than I expected to. For me, nothing will ever be as nostalgic and iconic as the Tim/Conroy animated portrayal.
I was a fan of the dark Knight trilogy and thought no one is topping this, but Pattenson nailed it. I honestly like his Batman better now, and hope they continue with it.
That’s a public line. It’s BS. Sweeny has been actively trying to torpedo gaming on Linux for YEARS. I don’t know if it’s just “Steam is good for Valve so it’s bad for me”, or if it goes deeper than that, but it’s obvious in the last decade of behaviour.
IDK, Unreal Engine runs on Linux, can export to Linux, and the Unreal Tournament games are released on Linux.
I really don’t think he hates Linux, I believe him that he didn’t see a financial point in supporting it for their games. People seem willing to use Windows to play their games, so there’s not a strong financial incentive to support another platform.
If you want Sweeney to change his mind, get more people to use Linux exclusively. Personally, I prefer to ignore him.
What are you talking about? I’m merely showing that he has supported Linux in the past, and at least some of his companies products support it today (Unreal and EAC).
The reason EGS and Fortnite don’t support Linux isn’t because he hates Linux, but because he doesn’t see profit in it. And I don’t blame him, Linux probably isn’t profitable in the short or medium term for EGS or Fortnite.
Steam didn’t start supporting Linux because they saw short or medium term profit, it was a long term investment to keep an option open in case Windows was able to force stores to share profit on their platform. Now that Windows has kind of backed off that, they’re doubling down because the Steam Deck provides another option to increasing sales and appealing to more people.
I don’t hate Tim Sweeney for not supporting Linux, but I am a bit disappointed though. But if Linux gains enough marketshare (not sure how much we’d need, but maybe 5%?), he’ll likely change his mind. He’s interested in profit, and Linux just isn’t an attractive enough platform for that right now for EGS. Maybe that’ll change in the future.
I have never and probably will never give EGS any of my money, but that didn’t mean I hate Sweeney or his products, it just means they provide no value to me, so I’m uninterested, much like he is with Linux.
Sadly he didn’t clarify why it’s the Linux being problem here. If there are any technical obstacles, why can’t he say something’s too broken on the Linux side of things so that community or Valve could fix it?
He means Linux problem as in: not enough players to justify supporting it, while those low amount of players also account for like 70% of the bug reports
while those low amount of players also account for like 70% of the bug reports
And we have other developers saying that according to their metrics, most bugs linux players report are cross-platform and it’s only unbalanced because we’re the only people who actually bother to report bugs.
Turns out, the people who are more technically proficient and use software built and maintained by a community that necessitates bug reports, report bugs more often than the “it just (sometimes) works” OS users. Who knew?
Yup, they care about cheaters scaring away paying customers. Supporting another platform increases the attack surface of the game, at it needs enough new customers to be worth the risk.
That’s it. If Linux support doesn’t have a high chance of significantly increasing profit, and it has a risk of pushing cash cow, they’re not going to do it.
We had that happen to us the other day, it was announced a series was available dates X to Y so we figure “Ok, it’s the last day, they’ll pull it at midnight, we’ll just binge it”…
What if, and hear me out on this one, Epic Games really just love closed platforms for the built-in DRM of “secret sauce” and binary blobs to protect their intellectual property, even if the Steam Deck now has a TPM 2.0 equivalent. In fact, they would rather deprive the user of as much agency as possible to retain most of the control.
That might be a tinfoil hat take, but I stand by it.
If they do think that - and I absolutely do not claim you are wrong - Then it’s through ignorance. Developers can just as easily distribute compiled binaries for linux as they can for Windows, and even encrypt them if that’s what they want to do.
Because linux itself is free and open, it doesn’t mean you can’t run commercial software on it without it being ripped off. I mean, my work pays many tens of thousands of pounds for commercial software running on Linux, and it’s not just licencing that stops it being spread.
Hahaha. Reminds me of one of my own similar fails.
I bought this mop… I’m tallish at 6’. For at least a year I used this mop, cursing it everytime for being short. “What is this? A mop for dwarves?!” literally gave myself a bad back using it.
Until one day, something clicked, and I noticed I could extend it. Fuck my life.
My friends have the same mop as me. My mind was blown when she unscrewed the cap at the end, pulled the mop head off, and threw it in the washer versus how I’d been painstakingly washing in the bathtub and feeling like an idiot because no matter how hard I wrung it out I couldn’t get it to dry
That’s amazing, thanks for sharing your fail as I feel slightly less dumb now.
One of the best I’ve seen… was working on a track with a one of my writing partners, he’s messaging his gf who’s asking where his washing machine powder is, he replies, but the response makes him sigh deeply. Asked him what’s wrong, he shows me the message, it’s from his gf and says “babe… Do you realise you’re washing your clothes with dishwasher tablets?” 😂
Something funny I’ve seen is that in Norway it’s customary to distribute the income tax deduction over 11.5 months instead of 12, so that in November or December people only get deducted half the regular tax on their payslip. This is done to ensure that everyone has money for Christmas. It’s so dumb and beautiful that I can’t help but love the idea.
Yes that’s also very common, but that’s a little more complicated. It’s only an option for people who have had the same job for more than a year and for those who agree on settling the entire holiday pay in June even if they don’t actually go on holiday then. It varies how people do it.
Unlike Norway, most EU countries tax the holiday on accrual so it’s always without a deduction when paid out regardless of when. Norway taxes it in the payment year though it is spread over the other months.
There are pros and cons to both ways. Personally I think that EU has the better one, not because of the taxation but because it’s not necessary to accrue holiday in advance.
It won’t do anything to their market share. At work my colleagues keep asking me “Why don’t you use chrome?” or saying things like “Isn’t Firefox slow?”. They simply don’t know or don’t care to know. Also Firefox IS slow or just doesn’t work, not because it’s a bad browser but I’ve been seeing a trend of websites being designed to make it appear slow, like YouTube takes 5 extra secs on Firefox to load videos Clipcham and Adobe outright not supporting Firefox on their websites. The internet is a clown show.
This is now a balancing act to see how much they can cripple the internet for their own benefit without affecting market share enough that it hurts long-term profitability.
Lemmy really feels like early Reddit right now. I mean that in a good way. And not to flex but I’m saying that as someone with a 16 year old Reddit account haha.
Same here. I feel Reddit changed for the worse so slowly that I had completely forgotten what the glory days were like until I came to Lemmy. I forgot that there was actual discussion in the comments rather than the same ten lazy comments ad naseum.
I’m kinda surprised Lemmy is losing users since it feels like there is more engagement since I joined earlier this year.
i can’t definitively say the bots are keeping reddit afloat, but its the bots keeping reddit afloat. before i left the anime memes sub (the normal one, not one of the infinite crappy off shoots) was nothing but bots.
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