Hey now. That “emerald mine in apartheid South Africa” but is not true at all. He benefited from being the son of a rich white guy in apartheid South Africa. The emerald mine was in Zambia. He materially benefited from colonial rule in TWO countries.
I would say that the country that has built 45,000km+ of high speed rail network, has a home ownership rate of 90%+, and has virtually eradicated extreme poverty within it’s borders is objectively better than the country with one of the highest per-capita prison populations in the world, and ~600k homeless people it can’t take care of.
Most of you would’ve failed even with those starting conditions.
If you think you can build a billion-worth company, go and do it. VC money can be secured these days with a half-assed power point presentation. You won’t be owning your entire company and someone will make even more money than you, but in just some 10 years you’ll make yourself and someone else a few billions. Then you’ll have a billion or so in starting capital and you can go become the richest human in existence. Clearly, if you’re capable of all those things, you should be already on your way to success instead of complaining on the internet.
The socioeconomic usefulness of the system allowing for such lifepaths has not been debated. Instead the message enviously pointed out that becoming rich is only possible by being rich in the first place. My argument is that if you’re capable of taking less than a mil and making billions, there’s a system in place already that will allow you to do just that and become famously rich in the process. So, your complaint is invalid. And you’re not anti capitalism, you’re just jealous.
The main thing sitting between me and being a billionaire is my conscience and moral values. I’m of the opinion that to become a billionaire you must necessarily have psychopathic tendencies.
For example: No way I could stand up on stage and bullshit my way through a Cybertruck reveal knowing it’s all lies and unfinished ideas.
Not just billionaires, there’s research showing that a high percentage of senior executives are likely to be psychopaths. Capitalist system selects for this behavior. People who are willing to lie, cheat, and step on others, are the ones that are rewarded and get ahead. Honest people with morals get filtered out along the way because they aren’t willing to do what a psychopath would do to succeed.
I’m pro universal basic income and a 99% tax after something around a few mil of annual income. I’d generally advocate for a societal system where such wealth accumulation by an individual is impossible.
“Lefties” like you make me sick to my stomach. You can only whine your jealous tears and complain about the housing market. You’re the reason everyone thinks the left are a bunch of idiot kids in colorful clothes. In a utopic communist society you’d be leeching off while whining about how everyone keeps working even though it’s clearly unnecessary.
The Cold War had only a brief pause before the pivot to Asia. The US tried to foment unrest in China by funding and organizing terrorist cells in Xinjiang, and when those efforts failed it concocted and promoted a genocide narrative. Antony Blinken is still pushing this slop, just last week.
We see here for example the evolution of public opinion in regards to China. In 2019, the ‘Uyghur genocide’ was broken by the media (Buzzfeed, of all outlets). In this story, we saw the machine I described up until now move in real time. Suddenly, newspapers, TV, websites were all flooded with stories about the ‘genocide’, all day, every day. People whom we’d never heard of before were brought in as experts — Adrian Zenz, to name just one; a man who does not even speak a word of Chinese.
Organizations were suddenly becoming very active and important. The World Uyghur Congress, a very serious-sounding NGO, is actually an NED Front operating out of Germany […]. From their official website, they declare themselves to be the sole legitimate representative of all Uyghurs — presumably not having asked Uyghurs in Xinjiang what they thought about that.
The WUC also has ties to the Grey Wolves, a fascist paramilitary group in Turkey, through the father of their founder, Isa Yusuf Alptekin.
Documents came out from NGOs to further legitimize the media reporting. This is how a report from the very professional-sounding China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) came to exist. They claimed ‘up to 1.3 million’ Uyghurs were imprisoned in camps. What they didn’t say was how they got this number: they interviewed a total of 10 people from rural Xinjiang and asked them to estimate how many people might have been taken away. They then extrapolated the guesstimates they got and arrived at the 1.3 million figure.
Sanctions were enacted against China — Xinjiang cotton for example had trouble finding buyers after Western companies were pressured into boycotting it. Instead of helping fight against the purported genocide, this act actually made life more difficult for the people of Xinjiang who depend on this trade for their livelihood (as we all do depend on our skills to make a livelihood).
Any attempt China made to defend itself was met with more suspicion. They invited a UN delegation which was blocked by the US. The delegation eventually made it there, but three years later. The Arab League also visited Xinjiang and actually commended China on their policies — aimed at reducing terrorism through education and social integration, not through bombing like we tend to do in the West.
Let me guess, Tiananmen square was a totally justified response to CIA instigated unrest too? How about you link to a single source from any reputable news agency anywhere around the world instead of random shady sites that totally aren’t propaganda? And to be clear, fuck the US government too, but China isn’t exactly a bastion of free expression and journalism either
How about you link to a single source from any reputable news agency anywhere around the world instead of random shady sites that totally aren’t propaganda?
Sorry, I don’t have any MBFC-approved sources for you on hand. I think you’d just ignore them or move the goalposts if I posted them anyway. I doubt you have an understanding of how our own propaganda works.
Oh hey look, guessed it in one. And note that I said anywhere in the world, but sure they’re all cia psyops, that’s a very reasonable take. Have fun licking that boot, just because America is authoritarian doesn’t mean you should trust what their opponents say about their own bad behavior, that’s as ignorant as ignoring the crimes of the west
Telling funny stories to the first person or two, so people join to: “-and it was full of corn! Hahaha really? What about the racoon? Oh uhh nevermind” and have to wonder why everyone got quiet as soon as they joined.
we got enough political BS all over the platform. But sure, I guess people who don’t want to see repeated “capitalism bad” in every community in every post should just leave lemmy.
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