Just to commenting to keep the knowledge: There are other projects that can de-drm audible. Amazon probably knows this and tolerates it. In fact, a long time ago all downloads on Linux did not have DRM. Those days are gone, but this github.com/mkb79/audible-cli should work.
As soon as you have ‘activation bytes’ many tools can play and convert the downloads.
I feel like a lot of people wanna short it out of spite and a whale is gonna squeeze them out with a big buy like 2 weeks into trading. If puts are cheap I might grab one just for fun. It’m curious to see how WSB plays it.
Post GME prob have bots shilling it to lurkers wondering the same thing
After the price falls, I see them having a future as a data company. They already have 1 customer paying them $60m annually. Regardless of it’s future, they have over a decades worth of data in many areas. Spez already got his though.
Thats a good point, however I don’t forsee users staying there for long. So as you said they will have to milk their data for however long. That requires them writing good contracts that don’t give everything away all at once, as I’ve seen done in some companies I worked for, as well as maintaining a demand. But I don’t see any way Reddit can grow from here, their cattle users, as well as moderators are being treated extremely poorly. They are the product and Spez is doing his best to destroy his product.
Edit: Reddit reported its 2023 revenue was $804 million. Net loss was $90.8 million in 2023.
If I understand this correctly operating costs are ~890 mil. In order for them to be valued at 10 billion, they would have to at least bring in 100 mil profits. So they will have to increase annual contracts by 200 mil, or cut costs by 200 mil. All while maintaining user base happy. If they decide to cash out completely and live off the data they already own, they could probably cut costs drastically, let the website go to shit and hope they can live off of contracts for access to their already existing data for however long assuming they don’t fuck it up as mentioned. Also in that scenario ad revenue stream would go down.
Companies like Tesla can survive high valuation with no dividends, well, it’s a meme stock, but also the possibility still exists that they will pay out. There is already a lot of bad will against Reddit, and I see no way Reddit can grow and pay decent dividends unless they spin in a drastically different directiong.
Maybe, but I think it’ll take a bit longer. Reddit’ll be given some artificial value, then the initial stock will be flogged at 80% of that to make people think they’re getting a good deal, so loads of people will buy it, then the price’ll shoot up, so loads more people will buy that; meanwhile Spez’ll cash out his billions then when the true value of Reddit is realised there’ll be a “correction” - i.e. a crash, and the last bunch of suckers to buy will be sitting on a huge loss that’ll take years to recover from as it slowly inches back up by a couple of percent a year.
Lol, european here from country that got buttsexed by ussr back in the day. Fuck off with communism. Period.
However. Socialism is something hella important and should baselined across the world. People need safety net in their lives.
Funny thing is, if you say “socialism” where I live a lot of people will bare they fangs at a commie. But shorten it to social and all people think of is said safety net. Suddenly no problem. Heh.
You do realise your aversion to communism is just the same as Americans, right? Like the USSR has more in common with the Nazis than any actual implementation of a classless, hierarchical less, stateless system.
Shit, like the name is literally the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
To quote Stalin himself from a 1936 interview with Roy Howard
Our Soviet society is socialist society, because the private ownership of the factories, works, the land, the banks and the transport system has been abolished and public ownership put in its place.
[…]
Yes , you are right, we have not yet built communist society. It is not so easy to build such a society.
Re-think your fear of the word communism and wonder why you’re fine with socialism despite it literally being what the country you rightfully dislike called and viewed itself as.
It’s similiar, not the same. From what I recall, Americans didn’t have their country violently buttfucked behind a curtain, something that is still visible where I live - thankfully less so in the country itself, but it’s still embedded into people. And I don’t fear communism. I despise it. I do admit, maybe unjustly. Hard to feel otherwise though, seeing effects of one of the greatest, or at least highest scale shots at it’s implementation.
However, yeah, my definition of socialism must be fucked, will educate myself further before making fool out of myself again. :|
Why is it bad for people to want more in Communism? Do you think once a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society would be reached, people would want to regress?
This is an aspect I’m genuinely curious about (as someone who is relatively uneducated on this subject) because my answer would be that yes, there will definitely be people who want to regress. There have always been individuals who are willing to sacrifice absolutely anything to obtain more material wealth or power. They’re a minority, but their existence has to be assumed and accounted for. For all of capitalism’s failings, one of its strengths is that it does give these people a path to follow that produces (some) benefit to society. How does a fully-implemented communist society deal with these individuals without them subverting and corrupting the system?
I think a big misconception on your own part is that Communism would put a ceiling on people. It would, perhaps, in the sense that it wouldn’t let people lord over others, but it would absolutely not prevent people from working to improve their own material conditions. In fact, that’s one of the base assumptions made by Marx when proposing a Communist system!
The goal is a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society, where you can get what you need from what you can give. It isn’t a society where everyone lives in a 700 Sq ft 2 bedroom apartment made of concrete, it’s a complex system meant to be built up towards, that would allow people to work on whatever they want and get whatever they want by working for it, as long as what they want isn’t a business to lord over people.
Thanks, I guess it’s the “get whatever they want” part that doesn’t make much sense to me. What if what I want is astronomical, and I want to get it by doing as little work as possible? Who says whether I can or can’t have it?
What’s an example? A gigantic mansion? You’d probably have to build that yourself, society likely can’t prop up everyone who wants a mansion, but if you build it yourself it would probably be seen as fine.
Again, Communism is an extremely democratic form of economic organization, so if the community deems it necessary to give you a mansion and has the Means to do so, then it can happen.
Communism is a far-future society, however, which is why Socialism is more known about and defined. Socialism however still has issues like having a state at all, so it’s not the end of history either.
Interesting, thanks. I guess a major element in how feasible that would be is in the administrative structure a community would use in deciding who gets what materials. Obviously if it’s a representative democracy, there’s huge incentive for corruption of the representatives if they have absolute control of who gets what. Wouldn’t this be considered a state, though? I guess statelessness is another aspect that doesn’t make much sense to me.
It can’t just poof into existence. The job of a Socialist state would be to build up the productive forces and create the frameworks for such a society to use after the state whithers away, so to speak.
Among Socialists, yes. Among Anarchists, no, as they seek to directly implement their goal from ground zero. Marxists tend to disagree with this as impractical, but there is a ton of developed Anarchist theory, specifically Anarcho-Communist theory, that goes over how society would be laid out. Usually via networks of Mutual Aid and Direct Democracy.
I see, thanks. That’s something I’ll have to look into further, because it seems to me that it’s really a prerequisite for a functioning society. I appreciate you going over all of that!
No problem! Both Marxism and Anarchism have developed online resources you can use for free reading, Marxists.org and theanarchistlibrary.org are both fantastic sources.
That’s not how human nature works. You really think you can sit there and tell me that someone who did 10 years of school and has the knowledge to operate and save people should be getting the same as someone who’s job is to cook you fast food? You live in a fantasy land where the Star Trek replicators exists. No one is going to do more work for the same amount as someone who does less. Society doesn’t work this way.
That’s not what Communism is, though. Even Marx says that Skilled labor is represented in value by that which labor power is required to recreate it, ie training adds value to labor.
Cool, so what is that value then? Bigger home? More land? Larger car? You see where I’m going with this right? Cause if you’re not going to reward someone for doing more, then they’ll just do the least…and if you do reward them, then isn’t that just capitalism with more steps?
In earlier stages of Communism, they can receive more labor Vouchers as representative to the value they create, ie in comparison to Socially Necessary Labor Time. In higher stages, the effect of training is more diminished as production must be even higher to reach such a status in the first place.
Either way, you hint at thinking Capitalism is when people are paid wages, which is incredibly wrong.
Capitalism is a Mode of Production by which individual Capitalists buy and sell Capital, and pay Workers wages to use said Capital to create commodities. It is not the only form of economy where people can be paid, it’s a specific model that arose alongside the Industrial Revolution.
People get paid in Worker Co-operatives, yet those are Socialist entities. You don’t need a Capitalist to be paid to work.
Not trying to be rude, it’s just a huge misconception here.
You’re first paragraph just described basically capitalism though, just instead of money it’s work vouchers. The other issue is you’ve now just told that doctor he has to work even harder to get slightly more than the guy who flips burgers.
It doesn’t. Capitalism is a specific mode of productuon with individual Capital Owners, if Workers share ownership it’s Socialist. Secondly, who says it would be slightly more? You? Why?
Again, you assume a doctor will want to be paid the same for his hard work as someone who flips burgers. Or what about a heavy equipment operator or a brick layer? The reason communism never can work is because people do not want to do something without the appropriate returns for it. This isn’t some magical formula it’s human nature.
I don’t assume that, you are, lmao. You can get higher returns for different labor, as labor has different value given by that which is required to replicate it (in other words, training increases value).
I really think you should just read Marx at this point, it’s clear that you don’t understand what we are even talking about so this conversation is useless.
You’re entire argument (and communism)hinges on people willing to work harder than others and receive the same benefits as someone who does not work as hard. It’s literally what you have stated just in this talks. Communism works on paper, and in a world where star trek replicators exists, but not in reality.
That’s the whole point of communism is for everyone to be equal, and for everyone to own everything and not own anything at the same time. That’s the entire foundation.
Our mutual value is for us the value of our mutual objects. Hence for us man himself is mutually of no value.
Communism assumes all men are equal, and all labor is equal. All things belong to everyone and no one.
This doesn’t work in reality, people want to get more than others if they work harder.
No, the point of Communism is not for everyone to be equal and own nothing at the same time, holy shit that’s the literal opposite of what it’s about. This is a long section of Critique of the Gotha Programme, and its critical that you read it.
“But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.
But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
Marx is not saying that everyone is equal, he’s advocating for improving the productive forces so that Communism can eventually be achieved. You’re trying to critique higher stage Communism on the problems faced by lower stage Socialism, which is extremely frustrating to see when you’ve been repeating the same wrong statements over and over.
To be quite honest, it seems to me - and I can be wrong - that it simply substituted power of wealth for power of position. Where I live I know that during occupation people were deemed as important based on where they worked - because where they worked dictated what they could steal obtain, be it items, access or favors.
There always will be someone on top, one way or the other. In capitalist society, it’s the guy who has the most money. In co- … socialist…? society it’s the guy with most connections.
The problem is that people point to the problems of the USSR and say it’s because of communism, but when the USA does similar things, it’s just them fucking up, not because they’re capitalist. It’s a double standard hinted at by OP.
The problem with the USSR was not that they were communist. I think that communism worked well for them, which magnified both their successes (beating nazis, reducing poverty, increasing literacy, getting to space, etc), but also magnified their mistakes (suppressing religion, art, etc).
It fit USSR interests to say that they were the standard bearer of communism back in the day. It fit US interests to say exactly the same. Neither had any reason to think about how the word was used prior to the USSR and if it actually applies at all.
It’s no wonder that people who lived behind the Iron Curtain have just as bad an understanding of communism as people in the US. The USSR certainly didn’t want you reading theory outside of Marxist-Leninist material.
So it’s actually a pretty interesting read but I think this paragraph gets the idea across pretty well:
(Obv out of context)
Most current antisemitism in Eastern Europe is closely related to these debates, as nationalists strive to “fix” their nations’ collaboration (or in the case of the Baltics and Ukraine, participation) in the Holocaust with revised paradigms that equal everything out. One of the poisons of ultranationalism is the perceived need to construct a perfect history (no country on the planet has one of those). Another is hatred of local Jewish communities who have memory, or family, or collective memory, of nationalist neighbors turning viciously on their neighbors in 1941, and of the Soviets being responsible for their own grandparents or parents being saved from the Holocaust. In America, this would be akin to someone hating African Americans for having a different opinion of Washington or Jefferson because they were slaveholders.
Believing that the Nazis, who systematically gassed millions as a part of their ideology, is at all akin to any of the atrocities committed under the Soviet Union is historical revisionism in order to downplay the crimes of the fascists and, what you can clearly see in this thread already, foster anti communist sentiment with barely a reason why.
A Jewish linguist/historian/activist talking about how equating the Soviets and the Nazis is rhetoric used to justify current and past antisemitism including holocaust collaboration.
You don’t know a lot of the history of bourgeois democracies if you think you can’t compare the worst the USSR has done with what bourgeois democracies have done.
Maybe you’d want to do it to stop taking part in holocaust trivialization, but you also insulted the Dovid Katz essay so IDK.
Maybe you want to drop the fud and trying to inject the holocaust into a comparison as means to discredit a point when it was never made in the first place. There’s no defending the USSR or ML, so I’m not going to bite and engage in an argument designed to downplay the evils of it.
And that essay was utter wank filled with needlessly gratuitous language that languished on for countless paragraphs. It easily could have been condensed into a paragraph or two with some historical examples thrown in to justify the argument.
There’s no defending the USSR or ML, so I’m not going to bite and engage in an argument designed to downplay the evils of it.
Lol, yes there is, and it is a very simple argument:
A transitional state moving towards communism is less violent than a capitalist state.
All large anarchist attempts at governing were basically the same as the USSR under war socialism(Catalonia, which started much more industrialized, and lost, because of, among other things, anarchist organizational failure) or worse (free state of Ukraine, which led to a wave of pogroms because they refused to suppress reactionary elements))
Socialism is not “Social Safety Nets,” and if you were knowledgeable about what you were talking about, you would say Socialism and attempts at Communism. Socialism is Worker Ownership of the Means of Production, and the USSR was a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Communist party had stated goals of reaching Communism, a Stateless, Classless, Moneyless society, by using Socialism. They never made it to Communism.
The USSR of course isn’t the only form of Socialism, and isn’t the only method to achieve Communism, but what you just said makes absolutely no sense.
Do you think that maybe people begin to understand what you’re talking about if you refer to Social Safety Nets as Social, not Socialism, because Social Safety Nets are not in fact Socialism?
As a side note: terrible choice to use rape as a casual term for doing something bad. Be more empathetic.
I would normally be afraid to enjoy Taylor Swift’s Jet™ memes out of fear of being accused of misogyny, but my Swiftie relatives have already accused me of that simply because I don’t like her music. So bring 'em on!
If you like that character just go watch some Nina Hagen music videos instead.
She was the inspiration for the character, she's the original punk opera prodigy, she's crazy and she was once a strong contender to be the german voice of marge simpson.
Smack Jack, So Bad, Naturträne, Imma Lauter are all tracks I still listen to a lot. Her recent cover of 16 Tons is great too.
Maybe I’m dumb but I don’t understand the “format” - are the top and bottom sections of text supposed to be related to the middle text? Why is the text over a bottle of alcohol?
lemmy.ml
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