OK but there are actually great uses for blockchain that are completely disconnected from anything you typically see
For example, banks may begin using blockchain for maintaining their internal ledgers. It will help solve a ton of issues around reconciling the transactions from all over the globe
Blockchain has reasonable uses. Really good ones. Crypto and nft bros just completely ruined the image of it
EDIT: I love all the comments demonstrating how little people understand about blockchain. Bitcoin was not the first blockchain, nor is its design the only type of blockchain. Assuming that all blockchain looks like the crypto/nft paradigm is just showing your ignorance.
It’s distributed so no single entity can take it down. Among many other possible benefits depending on architecture and infrastructure.
It’s far more complex than coins and NFTs. Blockchain is like a new internet. Coins and NFTs are like those shitty GIFs you used to see everywhere. Evocative of old internet, but not the internet itself.
Distributed databases have existed for decades. It’s how large healthcare systems maintain electronic health records for their patients across dozens of hospitals in real time.
Simple, it’s not. If it were, they’d have been using them for decades (blockchains were invented in the 70s).
The consensus algorithm, which is not the blockchain itself, was invented later. But banks don’t need to reach concensus with themselves. They all maintain their own data, and heavily guard it. So the only bad actor they could have is themselves. And they banks all keep watch each other.
This isn’t true: there are not-distributed blockchains.
The definition of a blockchain is a ledger where every entry is cryptographically signed with a hash of the current entry plus a previous entry. There’s no requirement that this be at all distributed. In fact, QLDB uses a non-distributed blockchain as its audit log.
Blockchain are often used in distributed systems because of the verifiability of the records; its a way of providing security of history in a fundamentally insecure environment. But there’s no requirement that they be distributed, and they add value in non-distributed environments as well - in any case you want to be able to review a history of changes and know that someone hasn’t been cooking the books, for instance.
I’ll give a real-world example. One place I worked we had databases that had data constantly streaming in from many different sources. Something that would frequently happen would be some data issue that would break applications; often, this was bad data from sources outside of our control. Ops*, who’s only priority was to get the applications back up and running, would often track down and directly modify records and fix the data. The issue was that some time later, sometime days later, a customer would call and complain about data being incorrect. By then, it was impossible to figure out what had happened: did we get the wrong data from the source? Did one of the import processes mangle the data? Did someone poke around in the database and change the data? We had no way of telling, and investigations would take many hours, often from several senior people, who would frequently in the end have to shrug and say, “we don’t know.” There were lots of things that could have improved this, with varying levels of success, but a global audit log would have been the first step. A verifiable audit log would have been better, because often it’d come down to us being convinced the data a third party was giving us was bad, and it became an our word vs. their word since we shared the same client. If we’d had a blockchain layer through which every transaction was recorded, we could have rolled back in time and figure out exactly how a record came to be what it was and been able to prove it to the client.
Blockchains are awesome. People who say otherwise have their heads up their asses, and are unable to differentiate between blockchain the technology, and the sometimes questionable uses they’re put to. Iron is used to make guns and bombs; that doesn’t make iron bad.
Thank you for being in this thread. I felt like I was taking crazy pills with all these other replies. So many people think bitcoin was the first blockchain. And that the paradigm used by crypto is the only type of blockchain there is.
I will never forgive tech bros for making blockchain a buzzword tied exclusively to crypto and NFTs. The amount of lost potential is infuriating
How can you trust that the database is really append only? Blockchain provides a way to verify the state of the database and the ordering of the transactions. Beyond that, not much benefit to be had. However, for certain situations, that is a very big benefit!
Sure! So some students of mine were working on a multiplayer video game that was started by a different group of students the previous semester. The first group of students made a design choice that, to over-simplify, basically tracked achievements and milestones on the client side and then synchronized those achievements to the server. Players could cheat the system by sending malicious packets of achievements to the server. Some achievements could only be completed by a single person in the game, so this was a big problem for the 2nd group of students to overcome. Faced with the choice of rearchitecting the game to be more authoritative on the server and less resilient to frequent disconnections, which affected some aspects of the game, or creating a logical and verifiable sequence of in-game events on the server side. The students went with the latter, and implemented a Lamport clock using a blockchain to verify the authenticity of the events, and prevent a rogue student from updating the game later to give themself a bonus. Basically, along with needing an authoritative sequence of events that is protected from user interference, it also needed to be protected from developer interference.
It was kinda similar to that situation a few years back of the EVE online developers playing the game and giving their guild members certain bonuses and special in-game items. The solution there was to fire the malicious developers, but I can’t exactly fire an entire class of students from an educational project.
EDIT: What seems to be the problem here? I was asked to name a situation where a blockchain would be useful and I did? It’s a computer data structure, there are pros and cons that are context dependent like any other data structure. It I so weird to me to receive downvotes because of the politics surrounding a data structure.
To your edit; it was a great example, but if you say anything positive about blockchain (or Apple, or capitalism, etc) you’ll likely be heavily downvoted on Lemmy.
But yeah, like others have said in this post, it had a bad light cast on it due to the jpg and gif NFTs. Folks started to realize: “wait… this token just contains a link to a web server hosting a jpg file??”
Well, yes. But also the rights.
“The heck you mean ‘the rights’??”
I mean, your Drunk Monkey in Teal Color Theme artwork is yours to use, you’ve purchased the license in the form of an NFT.
“But it’s just a link that anyone could just copy!”
Well, that would be stealing.
So NFTs in that regard are like any movie or TV show, or video game you rent or purchase. That utility may or may not seem to have any value to any one person, but it is a utility, and a pretty cool one if you ask me. But the usage, its implementation, is what matters. Whatever that usage requirement is for the individual or business, blockchain will do it well. Even if it is used to license junk.
Dude, my name literally contains “coding” you made the assumption I didn’t understand it…
Yeah banking needs to be controlled because what if something goes wrong, you can’t be this dense, stolen credit cards, stolen identity wring transaction, what if the validators disagree what is the truth ala bitcoin split?
Blockchain is woefully inadequate to manage finances…
I have literally explained to you what I meant, there is nothing to admit, lmao.
This is the issue with cryptobros you just think you are so much smarter than everyone else, and everyone else must be stupid and just not understand how crypto works.
Meanwhile you cant even see the huge flaws with the technology, you think " just wait and don’t be dishonest" while there is a disagreement and unrecoverable split in the network is a viable solution… fucking hell that’s such a childish take
When was last time a fork caused an unforseen problem in a popular blockchain?
There are plenty of things about blockchain technology you could have mentioned that are not yet perfect (privacy, scalability, accessibility, governance, regulation, interoperability etc.) but the best attack you have is that cryptography is meaningless.
Meaning, in a DB, the admin could change roles and modify anything.
Database triggers can have bugs, and we generally don’t let third parties log into the database directly because it’s a huge attack surface
In blockchain, without a key you’re cryptographically locked out. The only way around that is if the network as a whole changes their code to a version that allows something like that
It’s just a ledger where every entry is signed by a private key. That’s a fantastic structure for certain specific use cases…
i for one would have liked a media licensing system that operates agnostic of any centralized authority
for instance, irrefutable and independently verifiable proof that you own a valid software, music, or visual art license and are therefore immune to prosecution for piracy.
A registry of licenses like this could shield creators from copyright claims on social media applications such as youtube. Could also automate revenue sharing and royalties for artists whose works are used in derivative media so the people who actually perform the work get paid. Would be nice to cut the publisher middleman out. And there is absolutely no reason there has to be anything like a “proof of work” system burning down entire fucking rainforests’ worth of energy to verify every single gods damned transaction because this sort of system isn’t for trading shit, it’s strictly for proving a valid chain of custody between producers and consumers and you don’t need megawatt-hours to just fucking LOOK SOMETHING UP.
imagine if, for instance, fucking warner brothers couldn’t “takes backsies” content that they SOLD to end users through a distribution network; the license is yours, and anyone can look up the fact that the license was sold to the user id you happen to control.
imagine if, for instance, you buy a video game through a digital distributor like steam but then the store goes out of business and no longer exists to serve you a copy or recognize the sale, but on this massively distributed and decentralized database you can prove that you did indeed compensate the developers of that software and thereby legally acquire entitlement to access it in accordance with the end user license agreement.
imagine if ownership of stuff you bought fair and square can never be taken away from you
Well, if those licenses are entries on the blockchain, they could be transferred on the blockchain. You could sell your game used when you’re bored of playing it. You can’t play it after you sell it but someone else can. Publishers hate resale markets though, when people buy used games they don’t make any money. So they’ll probably never go for this.
Not really. You backup you keys like a normal human. Or create any of those new account abstraction keys that are tied to another account, or anything else.
Not really. You backup you keys like a normal human. Or create any of those new account abstraction keys that are tied to another account, or anything else.
You can lose access to regular accounts as easily as to a blockchain. In fact, losing database of your password manager is even worse, because even if you have backups, they're not going to be complete.
With a blockchain all you have to worry is your private key. And you can write it down on a piece of paper, if you want, and put it away in a safe or a bank vault or something. Then, if you use it to restore your access years later, nothing will be lost.
"There are 2 types of people in the world: those who make backups, and those who don't make backups yet."
As people said, you can backup your private keys to a flash drive. You can put them in a safe deposit box. You can give them to your lawyer or other fiduciary with a legal responsibility to act in your best interests (who also knows how to protect digital property if they keep digital copy). You could write it with lemon juice onto the back of the Declaration of Independence at the National Archives. You could have a laser thingie that displays it on a wall surgically implanted into your arm. Pretty much all the ways people protect gold or cash in the real world you can do with a piece of paper with your private key.
I feel like here you get to the NFT problem of having proof of ownership of something doesn’t mean much when that thing is being hosted on servers you don’t control
so if you have an entry with a licence for a steam game, and steam gets closed, you are out of luck
it’s that holding a license for a game entitles you to operating a copy of it regardless of where you bought it.
it’s the whole basis for why emulation and ROM images were LEGAL
because you had a right to retain a backup of the software you own through the license.
with an independent licensing infrastructure, if GoG closes you can take your licenses with you, download the game from anywhere, and if anyone tries to charge you for stealing it, you can just present your license: “See, i bought it fair and square.”
if i bought a dryer from SEARS, it didn’t stop being mine when SEARS closed.
NFT’s don’t show you have proof of ownership of anything other than the NFT. Think of all the people who got their metamask account hacked and lost all their apes with zero recourse.
Why would anyone want anything required for daily life attached to something so insecure and irreversible as that?
imagine if, for instance, you buy a video game through a digital distributor like steam but then the store goes out of business and no longer exists to serve you a copy or recognize the sale, but on this massively distributed and decentralized database you can prove that you did indeed compensate the developers of that software and thereby legally acquire entitlement to access it in accordance with the end user license agreement.
What you’re arguing for is forcing the distributor to distribute in perpetuity, which has nothing to do with how you show ownership of your license.
Right now, I can show steam I’ve purchased, say Delistopolis, and they will agree I am indeed perfectly allowed to have and play it. But they are not required to provide me with a copy.
Only the keys need to be stored cryptographically, really, because the game files themselves are nigh inevitably available on torrenting networks. it’s inevitable that people are going to rip backups of all game files for the delicious delights of datamining and as long as enough of them will seed them (which shouldn’t be a problem as long as there’s any INTEREST in a game existing…) that availability never arises as an issue. And if it’s not popular enough to put there, it’ll probably end up on The Internet Archive.
Would be nice if there were an infrastructural ‘backup of last resort’ such as the library of congress, which is something the LoC already does for other audiovisual media. It’d just be nice if that service were extended to software.
So more of a blockchain KMS then? I don’t see how you could construct such a thing.
The requirements of allowing a publisher control of their game for some time (for example, allowing them to retract some keys when violating the EULA, but not all keys when “unpublishing” a game), but also allowing people to resell keys, which are somehow publically accesible but only for the legit owner, and the owner has to allow third-party acces without publically sharing a private key.
This is the age-old identity problem with blockchain. It’s all well and good that Bob’s name is written on a smart contract, but that doesn’t remove the issue with how to identify Bob.
All such copyright licenses are rooted in local jurisdictional law, so your country’s copyright office should be the authority because anything else means the courts can tell you that your on-chain transactions are invalid
Blockchain is only potentially useful if there’s no single entity that can be trusted. If banks can’t even trust themselves to manage their own internal ledgers, they have much bigger problems to deal with.
Trustless systems aren’t a bad thing that has to step in when the good thing fails. Trustless systems are inherently better because you don’t have to trust a bank (or anyone for that matter).
Additionally, ledgers can be gamed/corrupted/falsified. This is significantly more complex (bordering on impossible) on the blockchain.
There are often easier, more reliable, and far cheaper ways to achieve the same things without using a blockchain. Some of the principles are even used in normal web browsing to ensure secure untampered connections.
Blockchain just solves a subproblem that only arises when there’s no appointed central entity.
I was hedging against a particularly snarky commenter showing up. You can do a 51% attack and theoretically corrupt it. In practice, that’s much more difficult.
You dont need 51% attack to corrupt a ledger. Just enter incorrect info and the ledger is wrong. Not a damn thing a blockchain can do about that. Same issue is with any trustless system where you have to trust someone to input the correct info/do the agreed thing/ship the ordered physical item.
Just enter incorrect info and the ledger is wrong.
The concept behind cryptocurrency is that the ledger is the info, because you’re right, a half-assed blockchain ledger used for external (e.g. cash) transactions doesn’t really solve the root problem. Proof of work is fucking stupid though, and it has (rightfully) ruined the perception of blockchain technology among those who can see past their own crypto wallet.
You can implement public or semi public ledgers without Blockchain. That’s what banks are doing already by sending huge CSV files internally and externally. Blockchain is not a technology of zero trust. It’s close to the opposite. You trust a few peers and blindly trust everyone they trust. That way you trust a network that you know nothing about and if the network decides on a common truth that you are convinced is incorrect, there is nothing you can do about it. The consensus always wins and there is no single entity to complain to and get it fixed. This is great for making sure that many actors need to be bad actors in order to have the whole system fail. It’s bad if you don’t trust anyone and want to make sure that your standards are always observed. From a technology standpoint I love the concept of Blockchain. But use cases that are not forced are few and far apart. Too few for the amount of hype it receives.
so I put my trust in software instead. And by extension its developers. You’re saying of all people, we should trust some programmers above all else. You know, the “move fast and break things” guys.
As a programmer myself, this thought is both terrifying and hilarious.
As a fellow programmer: what kind of doomer take is this? I don’t have any opinion on the efficacy of blockchain technology, but all of us put an immeasurable amount of trust in software every single day. And it’s not like current banking practices are different in this regard, either: blockchain tech requires faith in the software implementation, while contemporary banking requires faith in banks and the software they use (including a borderline unmaintainable COBOL stack, from what I’ve heard).
Agreed, audits are beneficial in virtually every situation. I just think that, of all the well-formed arguments to be made against cryptocurrencies (especially PoW coins), the fact that it is software isn’t one of them. In my opinion, fueling distrust of software in general is ill-advised.
The distruss to software is not against all software. Blockchains are usually advertised as trustless, so the argument against that has to be made as you have to trust the devs. The trustless argument is weak on other fronts also, but this is one side of the issue.
because problems in the bank’s software are the bank’s responsibility. If they lose my money, it’s their responsibility to get it back. Cryptocurrencies are the exact opposite, by design. If you’re fucked, you’ee fucked. unless of course half the participants decide to fork, half don’t and you end up with two “currencies” out of thin air.
Blockchain has been around as a technology for nearly two decades. If financial institutions thought it could help them you can bet they would be all-in on it by now. As it is, blockchain has no significant advantages over traditional financial ledger systems, so what incentive is there for them to use it.
It’s not something new or cutting edge any more, just waiting for a bright spark to discover the technology and put it to use.
Well, why would banks replace the system which allows them to charge fees for every other interaction with their services? A blockain solution would allow multiple different banks (and, possibly, even regular people) to access the data with no middlemen, and, therefore, no fees. Or, well, no fees that directly end up in the bank's pockets as profit, that is.
Getting rid of that is bad for business. So, unless something magical happens and the EU, for example, pass a law requiring the banks to switch to a more de-centralized, more fair system, it's not going to happen.
That’s kind of my point. Blockchain evangelists have been banging the drum for many years saying “This is a perfect fit for the financial industry. Why won’t fintech wake up and recognise that?”
When in fact fintech took a long, hard look at blockchain a long time ago and decided “nope, there’s nothing here that would tempt us” outside of a few very niche applications.
Rather than resorting to that age-old cry of the cult member “do your own research!” can I respectfully suggest that if you’re aiming to change somebody’s mind, the onus is on you to provide the evidence, not on them. By all means take hours out of your day to search google and compile a list of things that you think will convince me. Me, personally, I have better things to do with my life.
I didn’t ask them to do their own research. I asked that, if they are skeptical of a claim I made, either do a simple Google search to check if it’s very easily verifiable, or ask me directly instead of immediately saying “you’re wrong because I would have heard of it”
Like, I’m happy to provide citations when requested, but lemmy isn’t a scientific journal where I’m expected to provide every source for my information up front
How do you see memes like this? Because I see them as lame and sad, especially since we have been seeing them for 10+ years now and they are still the same. But apparently you think blockchain has reasonable uses.
I think he is most certainly right. People that think otherwise should go back to their bar order another one and keep ranting about it to their half dead drunkard friends.
No, it’s shitting on blockchain too. The only options are “don’t use blockchain” and “stop making crypto” which is misguided. I agree with the sentiment about crypto, not about blockchain
If you nitpick sure. But in practice crypto is the part that makes blockchain work.
There was a trend to try to separate them many years ago, because some people believed that was the way to push the technology forward - to focus on the blockchain part and try to hide the crypto part that has a bad rep after it was abused in the media as what only criminals use. But it failed. We shouldn’t hide the crypto part, but push it forward. That strategy worked! Today we have approved bitcoin etfs which is crazy amazing! And when eth ETF is approved, then all of them will have to be. This is the way.
I have no idea why you are going to the failed arguments from almost 10 years ago.
You are just simply wrong and I don’t have the energy left to keep digging up the resources to prove it. Go read my other replies elsewhere. There are even people in this thread who have written long comments detailing the same things I’m saying. You do not understand the history of blockchain, only crypto. You do not understand the underlying technology, nor what differentiates the concept of a blockchain from the type of blockchain used in crypto. So I’m done. Too tired of showing people the truth when they refuse to entertain anything but their existing position.
You think you are right because you found some niche situations in where your opinion is valid. But you don’t realize, your opinion is still just an opinion and this opinion is weak af.
You don’t need to imagine what I understand and what I don’t understand after our brief exchange. You have no clue who I am, so don’t try.
You are completely missing the point. Which is normal if you had to pull stuff from Google to find a small example where in some abstract sense you might be right. Attacking me, a person you know nothing about, is weak.
Using a blockchain to maintain their internal ledgers means they have complete control over that blockchain, so they can manipulate it all they want. Blockchains aren’t magic.
A blockchain won’t solve incorrect transaction information any more than an audit log in this case. This is an entirely internal process controlled by the bank and access would be restricted, so they couldn’t just edit audit logs. How do you think a blockchain would be used to improve this?
The actions that an employee could perform would be limited by their private key’s abilities. Blockchain can be preventative. It’s not only for retrospective analysis.
The actions that an employee could perform in any database would be limited by their account permissions. Blockchain doesn’t change this. I pointed out a retrospective mechanism because a completely internal blockchain wouldn’t prevent tampering either.
It’s not complicated at all. It’s basic database access management and it’s been a thing for decades without issue. If external access is required then those parties are given restricted access appropriate for their job and their actions are logged in the audit log in case any inappropriate actions were taken by them and need to be reviewed/reversed. These are solved problems and blockchain adds nothing there. The only case that blockchain helps is in a system where you have a large number of random participants and you want transactions to be enforced by work done/computing power or stake. This is why cryptocurrency has been the only practical use case for blockchain, with the word “practical” doing a lot of work, hence the diagram in the post we’re all discussing.
A human only needs to get involved for manual database changes. The vast majority of database transactions are carried out by code. The same would be true for blockchain. Again, it’s not magical. I will ask you once again: how do you think a blockchain would be used to improve this? The blockchain as used by bitcoin allows everyone the same access, but uses compute power as a consensus mechanism in the hopes that statistically most participants would be running the same code to keep things legitimate.
How do you propose a bank does this internally? You’ve yet to answer this question I asked a few posts before and instead opted to list proposed use cases like a brochure advertising blockchain. This is what I usually see with blockchain evangelists, repeating talking points that they themselves don’t understand. Like seriously, what is “renewable energy tracking” supposed to mean?
“Security is self-administered” through magic, huh? No central authority chooses who can join, which is an aspect that I’m sure a bank would love for their private internal database (this is sarcasm by the way)… “the power of public-private key cryptography” is something you clearly don’t understand. Are you aware that you used “the power of public-private key cryptography” to visit this site over HTTPS and that it had nothing to do with blockchain? Public/private key cryptography is a tool used for many different purposes and by itself has nothing to do with access.
Compute power is what bitcoin still uses and how it regulates transactions. I didn’t say it’s required by blockchain, I gave it as an example of how consensus is reached. The other common method is proof of stake, but that still doesn’t make sense in the context of a completely internal database. Who is staking, what are they staking, and how does that prevent fraudulent transactions in a bank’s internal database?
I looked at the energyweb site and it’s marketing fluff. When it comes to tracking things on blockchain, once you cross the physical-digital barrier, you end up having to use trust. So you want to verify that the electricity you got is renewable? Well you have to trust the entity that gave you that electricity because the blockchain will only verify that you made a transaction with them and that they made transactions with others (e.g. suppliers), but it will not verify the good/service itself (in this case, electricity). I can send electricity your way which was generated by a gas generator, but how could you tell this from the blockchain? The answer is that you can’t, you can only tell that I have made a transaction with you. The smart contract will include a trusted entity which tracked the electricity being sent which the smart contract can look up that the value matches the agreed-upon value. Again, none of this verifies that the electricity is renewable, you are relying on plain old trust.
No central authority chooses who can join, which is an aspect that I’m sure a bank would love for their private internal database (this is sarcasm by the way)…
Anyone can join the blockchain, not anyone can join the Bank. I’m assume you are being deliberately obtuse rather than the alternative.
Public/private key cryptography is a tool used for many different purposes and by itself has nothing to do with access.
Yes, but combined with blockchain it is used for access.
proof of stake, doesn’t make sense in the context of a completely internal database.
Yes it does. You can use a public blockchain protocol for completely internal data, then interface at a later time with that public protocol.
Who is staking,
The validators
what are they staking,
Usually the network token
and how does that prevent fraudulent transactions in a bank’s internal database?
Because internal transactions are validated and can be confirmed by external stakeholders (investors, depositors, regulators etc.) on a real time basis. No more Lehman Brothers.
I looked at the energyweb site and it’s marketing fluff.
When it comes to tracking things on blockchain, once you cross the physical-digital barrier, you end up having to use trust.
Energy Certificates are about transparency more than trust.
So you want to verify that the electricity you got is renewable?
More that you want to prove to everyone that you are buying renewable.
blockchain will only verify that you made a transaction
IoT devices provide trust in the data. TSOs confirm the official values at a later date.
I can send electricity your way which was generated by a gas generator, but how could you tell this from the blockchain?
Because the IoT device reporting to the blockchain is built into a solar panel, not a gad generator.
Also neighboring sources of energy will display similar data. Anyone running a gas generator to replicate a solar profile will be losing money hand over fist.
I love how you can’t provide even a single example of useful Blockchain functionality. Doesn’t mean it *doesn’t exist, but says something… And no, “banking” and “internal ledgers” is not detailed enough to be a sufficient example.
I linked you to my other comment where I provide FIVE links to the thing you said I “can’t provide”. I had literally already provided it elsewhere. So that’s where I sent you. Excuse me for not retyping the same thing for every single person.
I don’t owe you my time. I provided a one-click path to what you asked for but you couldn’t even be assed to ponder why I linked you that comment.
But you should already be filthy rich at that point, so who cares 🤷♂️ the choice is largely irrelevant after a few years and, regardless of which option you choose, you should be well into the millions after a decade.
Steps let me build up actual wealth over the course of just a year or two. Breathing keeps me comfy my whole life, but I can’t be really wasteful for a few years.
Also should be noted, if you took that 1 mil and just put it in a bunch of high-interest savings accounts, you’d be averaging a little over $3k/month just in the interest earned.
It does make me wonder, at what point is the guaranteed $x a month a better call than one lump 1 mil?
You don’t need a degree in finance to do this calculation. You are simply looking for the present value of a stream of income.
It depends on what interest rate you think is “risk free”. Right now treasuries range from 5% to 3%. Just divide the yearly dividend (12 * 50) by that interest rate. $50 per month risk-free in perpetuity is worth $12,000 to $20,000.
The average human takes 20000 breaths per day. For comparison, the average American take 4700 steps a day so steps actually win since the break even point is around 4000 steps.
Good point, but when you run the numbers that works out to $1000/day for breathing and $1175/day for walking. With $1000 a day you won’t need to take those steps anymore. Bonus, as you gain weight you’ll presumably need to breathe more so you’ll gradually make more and more money right up until the heart attack. Truly a passive income at its finest.
$1175 for the average person NOT being paid to get more steps in. I would watch a 2 hour movie on the treadmill instead of going to an 8 hour work day. Not including any other steps it would average around $3370 dollars there. Or just listen to music, watch a TV show, whatever it was. I could do that 3-4 days a week, make more money and stay in shape.
Bacteria multiply crazy fast… as long as the food source was uninterrupted I’d almost guarantee you most people’s microbiome would be fully recovered in just a few hours and they’d not even notice.
And the big thing that fucks people up is not only the high loss but also the antibiotics slowing or stopping additional reproduction. That keeps the population depressed for an extended period and then you get the shits.
They would probably feel bad for at least a week or two since half of everyone they know also died. On average, of course - maybe some folks were just lucky and no one they knew died so they might feel grateful to the dice rolling entities.
I think is depends on which micro-organisms get destroyed.
The snap didn’t always kill 50% of the people in an area. Sometimes it was just one or two people out of dozens and other times it was all except one person in an area.
How do the forces behind the infinity stones classify and quantify different micro-organisms? would it treat the good kinds and bad kinds equally? Would it distinguish between different kinds of micro-life at all?
I said this farther up in the thread, but in some places the infinity stones killed all except one person in an area full of people, and in other places it was just one or two people that got dusted out of dozens. What if it’s a situation like that inside of people’s gut biomes? Like some people getting all their good bacteria killed and some people only getting their bad bacteria killed?
How long can gut microbiomes survive after the host is dead? Wouldn't a dead host essentially mean near 100% fatality for the gut microbiome meaning that anybody killed by a Thanos snap would also mean a 100% kill rate of their gut bacteria, leaving any survivors to basically keep all 100% of their gut bacteria?
Well the implication in-universe is that the actual snap was killing 50% of all life, not any death afterwards. If we’re counting bacterial life as individual living beings in this 50%, then it shouldn’t matter whether the host itself got snapped or not, since the bacteria are “separate” and would be left behind after a snap…
Right so then couldn't it follow that human survivors may have no impact on their gut bacteria? If there are only two people and their microbiomes, and the snap kills 1 person and their entire microbiome, then the surviving person would have no or microscopically small impact on their bacteria assuming an even distribution of bacteria across the two people. Basically the OOP is assuming that of the people that died, half of their bacteria would survive, impacting survivors' microbiomes, rather than assuming 100% of bacteria would die with their hosts, leaving the surviving population's bacteria intact.
Even better, your microbiome covers your entire body (anything exposed to air) and into any organs that are part of the waste processing system.
So briefly after the snap you would see a vague outline of the creature, with a well defined digestive tract (mouth to anus), eyes, nose, ears, sinus system, and bladder. Because bacteria, viruses, and fungi are all quite small, the cluster of gut organisms would probably fall, and the rest would drift away. Imagine being in a crowded space and just breathing in all those bacteria, viruses, and fungi… 🤮 I bet a lot of people would die from infections.
If the creature had any parasitic infections, like a tapeworm, that could also be left behind.
Our doubling time isn’t that bad either. We reached 4 billion in 1970s. If we round up the current population to 8 billion that’s about 50 years. That’s all that thanos would add by the snap. Even less probably because we have better medicine now so it would be easier to reach that number.
I kind of expect developed countries would maintain the current trend of being slightly below replacement value. Probably depends on the psychological impact of the snap. People tend to have fewer children when they know the ones they have are safe.
It depends on how the snap worked. It was 50% of all life in the universe. Was that 50% of every species? Or just 50% of all living things? If it’s the latter it’s possible some species were missed entirely while others were completely wiped out.
But no one lost 50% of their own cells, so clearly if it’s alive and can be classified as a single organism. Is the gut micro biome an independent body of organisms, or is it just like any other organ of the human body, and thus would have been unaffected by the snap?
Either everyone lost almost exactly 50% of their gut biome, or, about half of all living organisms lost 100% of it, or, no one lost any part of it. Those are the only three possibilities.
The more interesting question is were viruses affected? Or did the magic stones not consider them life?
Depends on the micro-biome actually. An expert chef that’s always taste-testing new things would have a very healthy micro-biome, but a lot of autistic people that only like eating a very short list of things would have their micro-biomes wrecked really bad
It’s probably still perfectly safe to eat. It likely just tastes like hot garbage. Frozen food doesn’t technically expire, it just slowly gets more and more freezer burnt that degrades the quality and taste. It remains perfectly safe to eat indefinitely, however.
“Preparation purist” is wrong. You don’t boil the tea, you steep it in hot water. For some teas, like black tea, you usually boil the water before pouring it over the tea, but other types of tea use water that isn’t as hot (e.g. around 70-80°C for green tea).
Also, if you actually want to be an ingredient purist, tea must be made from the leaves of Camellia sinensis (or a closely related species).
In some countries where tee grows naturally you can found riviers and pond where the water carried tea leaves fell from the tree, which give naturally to the water some aroma.
The meme is terrible and shows the creator has taste buds that probably can’t distinguish between gutter water and tea (especially after it’s been BOILED a few hours).
I’ve been to a workshop about green tea recently and you can prepare it with any water temperature. You can make it with cold water, it just takes longer. You can even place ice cubes into the can, put tea leaves on top and let them melt
Yes, sun tea is tea. I’d really like to see this meme done by someone who actually knows something about tea (and doesn’t think it involves boiling tea leaves)
Why do you think that the Chinese way is the only way to prepare authentic tea? It’s so weird dude. We have an ancient tea tradition in India. That’s my point. That a purist might think this method as the proper way too. And it’d be just as valid.
It’s not weird at all. China invented tea (Camellia sinensis). The cultivation techniques, the drying and fermenting, and the brewing techniques for various types of black, white, green, and oolong tea. They named it, too. Both “tea” and “chai” are derived from the Chinese word for tea.
Tea wasn’t cultivated in India until the nineteenth century, when it was introduced by colonial British who literally stole tea plants and seeds from China in an act of corporate espionage. At that point in time, China had been cultivating tea for multiple millennia, and exporting it around the globe for several hundred years. India initially produced CTC (cut, tear, crush) tea on colonial plantations for export, only later (in the 1900s) selling tea to the domestic Indian market, when the practice of adding CTC black tea to masala chai took off in India.
What’s weird is that you’ve bought into some kind of alternate history where India invented tea.
I’m not the one who’s trying to change history here. We know that the Chinese have the oldest recorded tea consumption. Doesn’t make that the only valid way of doing it. It’s like saying that there’s only one authentic way to cook a potato, which is whatever the first person did with it.
And about whatever you said about tea being a new thing in India, it’s not accurate. It was first mass produced after the British came. But it actually goes back quite a bit. Camellia sinensis var. assamica is actually indigenous to the Assam region of India, and not “stolen from the Chinese”. Some think that some tribes in India (Singpho, Khamti) have been consuming tea from at least the 12th Century, though they had a different name for it. Some (A Revision of the Genus Camellia by Robert Sealy) think it goes back further, but idk about that.
But honestly, that’s not even the point. Why did you even feel the need to type this comment? Even if it was a 200 old tradition, that’s a pretty long time. And it should be accepted as a valid way of brewing. I’m not even disputing anything. I simply pointed out that there are alternative traditions. That the world isn’t fucking black and white. Seriously dude, when did I say anything that claimed that Indians invented tea? This isn’t twitter, no need to do this shit here.
Coffee beans aren’t true beans. They are the pit seeds of the coffee cherry fruit, similar to other stone fruit such as cherries, peaches, plums, olives, and dates.
You hit the issue, theyre confusing tea, a specific plant, with an infusion. Herbal tea is more correctly called an herbal infusion. Tea is a type of herbal infusion.
… most dictionaries record that the word tea is also used to refer to other plants beside the tea plant and to beverages made from these other plants. In any case, the term herbal tea is very well established and much more common than tisane.
Furthermore, in the Etymology of tea, the most ancient term for tea was 荼 (pronounced tu) which originally referred to various plants such as sow thistle, chicory, or smartweed, and was later used to exclusively refer to Camellia sinensis (true “tea”)
I think the confusion come from the fact that in many languages and cultures the name for tea and plant infusion is the same. Tea is name plant infusion because it is among the go to infusion if no plant is mention. But then in these language the name for “herbal infusion” or “herbal tea” does not contain the name of the specific plant “tee”. This or the languages got it wrong. Yes, I go that far.
This standard is not meant to define the proper method for brewing tea intended for general consumption, but rather to document a tea brewing procedure where meaningful sensory comparisons can be made.
I came to say the same thing about Camellia sinensis, thinking “am I about to be more of a tea purist than is even encapsulated in this chart?” So I’m glad somebody else got there first lol
It depends of the kind of tee your using. Once I bought the wrong type of turkish tea and next thing I now I’m boiling my tea during month so I don’t drink a slighty darker version of hot water.
Thank you. I am horrified that I had to scroll past a discussion of “is pho tea”? to get here. The so-called purist has never even made a proper cup of tea! So obviously pho is NEVER tea, since stock is extensively boiled.
Please put an NSFW tag on this. I was on the train and when I saw this I had to start furiously masturbating. Everyone else gave me strange looks and were saying things like “what the fuck” and “call the police”. I dropped my phone and everyone around me saw this image. Now there is a whole train of men masturbating together at this one image. This is all your fault, you could have prevented this if you had just tagged this post NSFW
In the heart of a dense forest, nestled between towering trees and hidden beneath the earth, lay a cave. It was rumored to be bottomless, its depths shrouded in mystery and whispered tales of the unknown. Many dared not venture into its darkness, fearing the unknown that lurked within.
One fateful night, Mark, an adventurous soul with a penchant for exploration, decided to defy the warnings and delve into the depths of the cave. Armed with only a dim flashlight and his smartphone, he stepped cautiously into the yawning mouth of the cavern.
As he ventured deeper, the darkness enveloped him like a suffocating blanket. The beam of his flashlight struggled to pierce through the thick shadows, casting eerie shapes upon the damp walls. Yet, despite the oppressive darkness, Mark noticed something peculiar – his phone’s signal strength was steadily increasing.
With each step he took into the abyss, the bars on his phone climbed higher, until he was met with a full five-bar connection. Astonished, Mark paused to check his phone, expecting to find some rational explanation for the sudden surge in signal strength. Instead, he found himself greeted by a stable internet connection and lightning-fast WiFi speeds.
Intrigued by this bizarre anomaly, Mark pressed on, his curiosity overriding his sense of caution. The deeper he ventured into the cave, the stronger the WiFi signal became, until he found himself in a chamber bathed in an otherworldly glow.
Strange symbols adorned the walls, pulsating with an ethereal energy that sent shivers down Mark’s spine. Yet, amidst the eerie ambiance, his phone continued to buzz with notifications and messages, as if beckoning him further into the unknown.
Driven by a mix of fascination and fear, Mark pressed on, his footsteps echoing through the silent chambers of the cave. But as he ventured deeper, he began to notice subtle changes in his surroundings – whispers echoed through the darkness, and shadows danced just beyond the reach of his flashlight.
Despite his growing unease, Mark was determined to uncover the source of the mysterious WiFi signal. But as he rounded a corner, he stumbled upon a sight that froze him in his tracks.
Before him stood a towering figure, its form shrouded in darkness. Glowing eyes peered out from the shadows, fixating on Mark with an intensity that sent a chill down his spine. Yet, despite the fear that gripped him, Mark couldn’t tear his gaze away from the figure.
In a voice that seemed to reverberate through the very walls of the cave, the figure spoke, its words dripping with malice.
“Welcome, traveler, to the heart of the abyss. You seek the source of our signal, but know this – once you have crossed this threshold, there is no turning back.”
With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Mark realized that he had stumbled upon something far beyond his comprehension. But before he could react, the figure lunged forward, its outstretched hand enveloping him in darkness.
And as Mark’s screams echoed through the depths of the cave, the WiFi signal continued to pulse, a beacon of light in the heart of the abyss, beckoning others to venture into its depths, never to return.
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-███ is to be contained within a secure research facility located in ████████ National Park. Access points to SCP-███ are to be monitored, and unauthorized entry is prohibited. Exploration of SCP-███ is restricted to Level 3 personnel or higher, equipped with GPS tracking devices and standard exploration gear. Psychological evaluation is mandatory for all personnel before and after exploration.
Description: SCP-███ is a cave located within ████████ National Park, with an entrance disguised as a natural rock formation. The interior of SCP-███ exhibits anomalous properties, including the presence of a WiFi network with fluctuating signal strength.
The WiFi network is broadcasting from within the cave and has no identifiable source. The signal strength increases the further one ventures into the cave, peaking at approximately 200 meters below the surface. GPS devices and compasses can malfunction within SCP-███, and individuals may experience disorientation and temporal distortion.
SCP-███ was discovered by a hiker (Subject-███-Alpha) who became lost approximately 1 hour after entering the cave. The Subject utilized a smartphone equipped with a signal strength tracking application to navigate SCP-███. They failed to return, prompting Foundation intervention.
Efforts to locate Subject-███-Alpha within SCP-███ have been unsuccessful. Further exploration and research into SCP-███ are ongoing to understand its anomalous properties and potential hazards.
This would be the day that I die. And it comes out with some serious force like Katy Perry getting absolutely blasted to the floor? But the person who opens it is some old mayor or something. My entire life would have a point.
I got a milkshake a while back, in a plastic container, with a plastic lid, for some reason it also came with a plastic spoon, and a paper straw, since they are cutting down on plastics…
>receive hot cakes in plastic container, with six individually plastic wrapped teaspoons of butter and a plastic tub of high fructose corn syrup and a large plastic cup of orange juice
>throw away plastic straw
>pull out reusable metal straw
>I’m saving the environment one breakfast at a time
Ha ha in France they just stopped giving you straws. The paper cup for the drinks just said on it something like "To drink, remove lid and lift cup. You’re not an infant " lol
Now they have those reusable cups and fry holders, which are suspiciously smaller than the paper ones
Only thing I noticed that was single use plastic was the little tub of sauce
Yeah only thing is those cups are like that because people have cup holders in their car or walking with open hot drinks. So calling them an infant just cuz they don’t want to sue their company burns is a bit short sighted. Weirdly bad marketing that they should overlook that as one of the most common demographic getting a packed breakfast in the morning
do they though. I don’t think I have seen them carry their own. After all if every place as a straw then you dont need your own. But that is an easy fix for them.
I know this probably isn’t the best place, but I really hate the way paper straws feel, but I also hate being handed a any straw when I can just drink straight from the cup anyway.
In my community, most of the lids are biodegradable. Still not great (require an industrial composter), but at least if it is left out, it does breakdown somewhat faster than “never”
Like, I have a buddy who’s a communist, and we agree on everything. I come on Lemmy and say I don’t agree with the most extreme forms of socialism and communism, though, and I get straight up shit on and banned as if I said something incredibly offensive.
Oh I’m well aware. Hexbear seems to be the biggest hive of bastards I’ve encountered on all of the federated instances. Every hexbear post I see is either super right wing or just insanely cringe My Little Pony type stuff.
Hexbear users can be obnoxious, but they’re not “pedo right wing shit heads.” Ask them what they think about pedos and right wingers.
To clarify my tone, I’m not some scoffing, irony-poisoned debatelord, and when I say “it’s wild” I’m not rolling my eyes sarcastically, I’m genuinely surprised to see this shit.
I can’t keep track of this one-dimensional political spectrum people keep using. I thought tankies, socialists, communists, and liberals were all considered left wing, but I keep hearing things about some of these groups being on the right instead.
Hexbear is more or less a 4Chan equivalent, sharing the same memes and single image posting behavior. They exist to make left leaning people look bad.
Their supposed communism is equivalent to start an argument online with “as a black man”
Just a bunch of right wing trolls.
Tankies are right wing authoritarians, and don’t believe any of the left wing political they use as a vaneer. Its like how the Nazis were National "Socialists "
Theres a reason they support modern day Russia and China, two notoriously far right nations
This is the take that bothers me the most, as if the most aggressive and outspoken faction of any group exist only to drag the more respectable members down by association.
I would be one thing to say, “I don’t understand that group”, but it’s quite remarkable to say, “I understand that group so little that they must be the opposition in disguise”
See, this is exactly what I mean by “I understand them so little that they must be the opposition in disguise”
If you tried at all, youd understand that they’re position on “modern day Russia and China” is based on the idea of critical support. They evaluate policy decisions against “does this bring the working class closer to solidarity or not”.
I.e. on the Ukraine war, their position is basically “U.S. Involvement in any war is a net-negative to worker solidarity in the country of question”. None there support Russia’s invasion, but they think Americas involvement spells the end of any socialist coalition to begin with.
But again, “I understand them so little they must be a part of the opposition”. They have a different (definitively leftist) understanding of the war than you do. Doesn’t make them right-wing.
They evaluate policy decisions against “does this bring the working class closer to solidarity or not”.
When it comes to Russia bombing their cities and raping their women and children, is that positively or negatively influencing working class solidarity?
Yeah, well when Hexbear hears that wives and daughters are being raped and says “giving Ukrainians weapons to help them defend their families from being raped is bad for worker solidarity”, it makes Hexbear look like a bunch of rape apologizists.
Basically the only difference between ML and the alt-right is that the alt-right wants violence against “libtards”, and ML’s want violence against “shitlibs”, while being insufferably snobby about pretending to be morally superior because they didn’t use an abliest slur.
It’s like you just took a fascist and put them on a liberal’s moral high horse.
Nah, I think what you mean is that’s the only relevant difference to you. Nevermind that MLs have a body of economic theory, if the most important detail about them is their willingness to use force then I think it’s fair to suggest your prevailing ideology isn’t socialism at all, it’s liberalism. Not that you can’t be socialist-leaning, but if the only difference you see between MLs and far-right conservatism is violence, then you seem blind to the thing that you have in common with them.
I’m all for Marxism, but I haven’t observed the “body of economic theory” having any relevance, except as a snooby self-righteous justification for authoritarianism and violence.
Even if you were to strip all moral interpretation away, violence and authoritarianism is unstable and ineffective. ML’s in practice are fake progressives, because they don’t even care for finding a stable effective solution. The progression of society is no longer the point.
From their perspective, all states (especially western liberal states) use violence to enforce their capitalistic order. “Authority” is broadly interpreted as ubiquitous, and all successful revolutions have been to some degree violent.
Not to suggest all authority and violence is the same, but to them, the liberal apprehension to utilize violence is a self-imposed handicap that not even their opposition undertakes.
Similar to leftists frustration with establishment Democrats from using their majority to enact progressive reform.
To them, the only distinction left is the economic structuring that violence is utilized on behalf of.
Again, not my personal position, but this “auth communists are the same as right wing authoritarians” is just willfully ignorant.
** And take notice that while ML’s claim to not support Russia, they’ll often jump to Russia’s defense, despite Russia funding alt-right and neo-Nazi movements in America
Because to them, US/western capitalist hegemony is the global opposition to all socialist movements. That Russia is not a socialist state doesn’t change their desire to see western hegemony weakened to make possible broader socialist solidarity.
So it sounds like the plan is support fascism, for what? To sacrifice who knows how many women, trans people, genderqueer people, POC, just so after society falls there possibly might be a Hail Mary throw at achieving communism?
Certainly not “support”, no. But frankly, the US has repeatedly been the ones to arm the fascists. That the US is getting involved in this particular fight has probably more to do with their opposition to Russian influence than any stand for justice or protection of the innocent. To say there isn’t much trust in the US acting in anyone’s interest except their own would be a monumental understatement.
I would say (everything beyond this point is my own speculation, since they aren’t here to answer your question), they would rather a treaty be struck sooner rather than later, which would mean the US easing up on lethal aid. I think their general position is that not Russia, Ukraine, nor the US have the interests of the actual working class (or women or LGTBQ+ people) in mind, and the sooner the war ends the fewer people die and the sooner the real work of fighting for those rights can begin. But there will be nothing good about the reconstruction that happens after the war. Ukraine will be beholden to US interests and perpetually in the middle of a geopolitical conflict with Russia for the foreseeable future (no matter what the resolution of the war is). The whole situation is shit, but “let them fight until the bitter end” is probably the least empathetic take I could think of.
I really hate that anything less than “Russia will loose at all costs” will get you lambasted with accusations of simping for Russia. There are precious few here who are willing to acknowledge that there are no good options with this war. I guess it’s easier to let the anger drive decisions when there are no satisfactory solutions to the conflict.
Go ask them for their opinions about Russia and China. You’ll get unanimous agreement that Putin is a homophobic capitalist reactionary and Russia is not a socialist or left-wing state. For China, you’ll get disagreements, but most of the takes will be pretty nuanced either way. Some believe Deng’s reforms were necessary to avoid economic strangulation, others are deeply suspicious of the direction China is headed.
On hexbear, geopolitics exists as whatever hexbears feel like owns the shitlibs the most at that particular moment.
Sometimes, Russia is just months away from a well planned and strategized victory, against an evil Nazi Ukraine.
Other times, everything is a mastermind NATO move that’s all benefiting NATO, and Ukraine is just the meatgrinder victim.
What feels most alt-right about hexbear isn’t any particular position, but the fact that there’s no particular position. No logical cohesiveness, no rooted in solid reality. It’s superfluid ever changing dream reality.
I think the parallel with right wing extremism is because they’re both pushed by the CCP. They use a divide and conquer approach via LLMs on social media to weaken political opponents.
This is the take that bothers me the most, as if the most aggressive and outspoken faction of any group exist only to drag the more respectable members down by association.
Eh, only a small minority of hexbears are fascists, but almost all hexbears tolerate fascists. All the fascists have to do is walk in and say “NATO is bad, Ukraine is bad, libs are bad, vote for Trump because he is a big lovable goofball” and the other hexbears are like aight let’s own the shitlibs.
only a small minority of hexbears are fascists, but almost all hexbears tolerate fascists
A huge portion of hexbear users are trans or otherwise LGBTQ. Ask them what they think fascists want to do to them. Fascists also massacre socialists — often with American support, as in Indonesia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, El Salvador, Argentina, and Bolivia. Ask them how they feel about this. Hexbear users do hold some complex views on topics like China and Russia, but they have reasons for this and would tell you if you asked. You should consider talking to them, instead of making things up about them in an authoritative tone of voice. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a hexbear user who doesn’t want Trump dead or in jail.
A huge portion of hexbear users are trans or otherwise LGBTQ. Ask them what they think fascists want to do to them.
Maybe I should ask Jessica Watkins, who explicitly supported fascists, and is now being misgendered and put in the wrong prison by fascists, for supporting fascists.
Trans and genderqueer people can be just as stupid as Cishet people and vote for the leapords eating faces party. It’s not like fascism actually benefits people, it’s predatory to vulnerable people.
You should consider talking to them, instead of making things up about them in an authoritative tone of voice.
I have interacted quite a bit already. I got lots of animal poop pictures and a lot of people requesting that I post a picture of my genitalia.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find a hexbear user who doesn’t want Trump dead or in jail.
I’ve seen a number of comments from Hexbears supporting DJT and not a single comment expressing this.
You’re reaching for some “fascists always pretend to be joking until they’re not” thing, but the Hexbear community originally formed around a deeply irony poisoned socialist comedy podcast called Chapo Trap House, and hexbears themselves are unsurprisingly also very irony poisoned. On top of that they were an insular unfederated community for three years, with no reason to make their banter intelligible to outsiders. They have a rich set of in-jokes and an emoji list a mile long. Your exposure to them is probably one thread where you argued with them and ten threads of lemmy.world users making shit up about them in absentia.
The podcast Chapo Trap House basically disowned r/chapotraphouse, so pretty much for the poisoned irony getting out of hand.
It feels like r/the_donald, which was also irony, until it wasn’t, and suddenly the internet is swarmed with “ironic” Trump memes until he wins the actual presidency, stacks SCOTUS, which rolls back RvW.
Maybe 10 years ago I would be down with all this irony. But there are real life consequences harming women right now, that are not so ironic.
It’s time to wake up, grow up, pay attention to the consequences and decide if irony and chaos is worth incidentally supporting fascism.
Here, I grabbed one for you, full of sus-looking comments. Just pick one and I’ll ask the user what their sincere thoughts are. It’s a thread from three days ago about trump’s mugshot. hexbear.net/post/422814?scrollToComments=false
Yeah, people say right-wing when what they mean is authoritarian. There’s a guy named Bob Altemeyer that has been studying authoritarianism for decades and he makes a distinction between left wing and right wing authoritarianism.
That’d make sense, but there’s a good deal of stuff typically considered left wing (like antimisinformation and gun control) that is authoritarian too. Nothing inherently wrong with that, as long as it’s handled fairly, of course.
The troll in me kinda wants to see how people would react if I started calling them righties for wanting to stop hate speech, but I think I know better.
Society requires a socially agreed upon level of authoritarianism to enforce the socially agreed upon ruleset. No system of organisation or control is absent from authority, but trying to conflate functional social authority with forced authoritarianism has been something I’m seeing a lot more from fascist thinkers.
Authority: When the majority tell the government how they wish to be controlled.
Authoritarianism: When the government tells the majority how they will be controlled.
Huh… I see you set a bit of a rhetorical trap there, where disagreeing or countering would make me seem like one of these fascist thinkers. Nice. Might not have been intentional though.
Anyways, I see them as different steps along the same spectrum. Authority is a component of authoritarianism, but the presence of authority is not necessarily indicative of authoritarianism. Authoritarianism is authority taken too far.
On that topic, non-authoritarian authority is not always a good thing, nor does good authority necessarily stem from the will of the people. Sometimes the masses really don’t know what’s best. That said, democracy is probably still the best paradigm humans can manage on a long term.
Whether the will of the masses is “right” or “wrong” is irrelevant, society as a construct is one of cooperation for mutual benefit and improved quality of life through cedeing control and authority to those who represent the will of the majority, so if the masses managed to corral themselves into society then the understanding of the benefit of cooperation is strong in the social consciousness.
A result of this is the understanding that anything that works against the will of the masses to benefit from cooperation is unsustainable because it involves exploitation of the least protected sections of society.
This means that anyone trying to abuse and mismanage social systems for their own selfish benefit (emotional, financial, or otherwise) are objectively harming society. Ergo, anything that restricts the will of the masses by allowing selfish minorities to exploit their way to wealth and power and to further let them diminish the capacity of the majority to benefit from social cooperation is forced without consent, we call these actions “fascist”.
Fascism was the default social structure, he who controls the resources controls the society, but instead of that being an elected government of the populace it was one guy and his family that abused their position to maintain that position however possible from the first time an ape stole another ape’s rock to a king stealing another king’s country.
Society has slowly been slowly wresting control from the selfish individual to support the masses as social consciousness grows, democracy was one of the biggest steps in that direction of taking the power out of the hands of fascists and putting it into the hands of the people. But it’s a work in progress, and those that are selfish and want to hold back the progress of social benefit are thusly called conservatives, because they wish to conserve the ability to abuse society for chance to gain more wealth and power than other people as opposed to contributing to society to increase the wealth and power of all the people.
Many of these fascist systems still exist and will take a significant about of time for society to claim more control away from fascist actors, there will always be an ebb and flow of fascism and selfishness in society but that lessens as time goes on. For example, the Democratic electoral system of the US government has been unable to avoid the influence of fascism over the years as evident by legal voter disenfranchisement through first past the post, non-preferential voting, gerrymandering, the electoral college, attempts to limit and remove citizens rights to engage with the electoral system by de-funding postal services and limiting mail voting, etc. These are all fascist claw backs attempting to regain selfish control over societies power structures for their percieved personal benefit.
Capitalism, a system integrated into almost all modern world cultures and societies is also a fascist concession that is a middle ground between kings owning everything in their kingdom to personal ownership and control, of course exploitation is still present under capitalism, because capitalism is just a stepping stone to a socially beneficial system not an end point of social development, it is also one of the last bastions of fascist control over wealth consolidation.
I could go on about how all these developments relate to issues in the social order and the inability for individuals to develop cognisance of the nuances of societies current place in human development but it’s starting to feel like rambling.
If anything I hope that something I said resonates and provides context and understanding of the complex weave that is human social development.
Kinda skimmed because that’s a really long essay, but:
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
Fascism is a fairly specific thing. It’s not just anything that’s not democracy. Overapplying the term is a tool that allows you to condemn reasonable stances as absolute evil. Note that reasonable, used here, does not mean ideal or without caveats. If you can condemn every stance other than your own as absolute evil, that is radicalization. Radicalization can have its use, but it’s a dangerous thing. It needs to be focused. What is “Punch a Nazi” when capitalists are fascists too?
I understand that definition of fascism, and you should read the rest of my post for a better understanding of how that fascism operates in modern society. Nothing I’ve stated goes against those definitions, they’ve just been tempered with the context of modern society.
And yes, capitalism is ‘fascism lite’ if you want an analogy. Profit as a concept is inherently exploitative for the purpose of building wealth and power to exploit more people; power that is used to exert authoritarian control over those who rely on that person’s willing distribution of their excess resources, and will eventually give way to systems that are better focused on social equality.
and will eventually give way to systems that are better focused on social equality.
That’s one part that I’m not convinced about. I think it can and will happen in isolation, but whether it is stable in the long term and spreads to other countries is another.
One thing that I notice with the communist/socialism gang is that they often simultaneously have faith in the good of mankind and condemn all pro-capitalists and western politicians as evil. Reality is more nuanced, of course.
Anyway, I expect it will be the most robust political and economic systems that will survive and prosper. There are many big challenges (eg. climate change & competition for limited resources), as well as intentionally thrown spanners. Often it has been, and no doubt will continue to be, those who wield the biggest sticks that get to dictate or influence the rules.
My personal hope is that China walks peacefully forward toward a healthy form of socialism and is able to lead the world by example. I have my doubts, of course.
It’s already happening in other countries, other first world developed countries have universal healthcare, are looking at reducing full time working hours, implementing UBI not to mention more robust and fair electoral systems.
America still has a very strong Conservative grift slowing the country’s social progress, but the need for the masses to survive will always outweigh the need for the individual to be greedy so movement towards social benefit is slow but inevitable.
I’m in one of those countries (no UBI experiments yet). We have worker’s councils in large companies and unions, but there is still significant income and (more-so) wealth disparity. On the whole, this is one of those rare cases where the US has helped set-up a better and fairer system abroad than they have at home.
Perhaps the best thing that could happen to the world would be for the US to reform itself - healthcare first. I have bigger doubts here than China, though.
Until such time as they are truly working toward fair democracy and human rights at home and abroad, I think we need more bulkwards against US corporate interests (similar with other countries). Basing international trade purely on business interests and political whims doesn’t seem ideal - perhaps we need more principle based international trade, with incentives to improve.
You talk about fascism as if it’s the pervasive force of evil. Fascism is a relatively recent phenomenon, a specific manifestation of evil. I believe what you’re talking about is greed, or hunger for power.
Nothing about fascism is recent, fascism is born of greed and hunger for power, but the act of engaging in self imposed authority through control of power and resources is fascism. I don’t think of it as good and evil, these are just the actions of people, selfish vs selfless. Society is humanity moving away from selfish towards selfless, movement in the other direction requires engaging in fascism.
“In popular discourse, the horseshoe theory asserts that the far-left and the far-right, rather than being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear continuum of the political spectrum, closely resemble each other, analogous to the way that the opposite ends of a horseshoe are close together.”
There’s not many all-in on authoritarianism that aren’t extreme left or right economically.
The political compass is better than a one-dimensional spectrum, but it’s literally twice as complicated.
You can pretty safely plot a symmetrical U shaped line running through the political compass and find almost everybody. That’s why one-axis works well for describing the political climate of the USA, it’s mostly in the right half of the political compass sitting on this line.
So tankies are very Communist (left) and necessarily very authoritarian to achieve their goals.
They represent the other half of the political compass that Americans usually do not see. So people on here frequently get confused when exposed to tankies.
And you also have the tankies talking about the Bernie-Sanders-style/social democrats (found at the vertex of our U shape) as “right” because if you follow the U line, they would be.
in most of the world, “leftist” implies that you are anti-capitalist, while “liberal” implies that you support capitalism. Leftists believe workers should control production, while liberals believe owners should control production. Liberals might be “left wing on cultural issues” but it’s a lot less consistent among liberals than among leftists. You can find, for example, a large number of anti-trans liberals, but you’ll have a harder time finding anti-trans leftists.
That still doesn’t tell me what a liberal is. How do you define liberal? At best, what I’m getting from that is “a liberal is someone who supports capitalism,” but that makes Donald Trump a liberal.
in America, “liberal” also usually implies “left-wing on cultural issues,” which excludes Trump — but like I said American liberals are a large group and aren’t always consistent on cultural issues. I’m also necessarily being kinda reductionist because political labels are pretty messy and hard to pin down. I chose to reduce it in a way that highlights the main disagreement between leftists and American liberals because I think that’s the most clarifying.
I don’t think highlighting the disagreement between “leftists” and “liberals” is very clarifying here. That kind of clarification tells me “liberals are leftists except for the differences highlighted,” but the differences highlighted seem to be everything that makes a leftist a leftist.
Google tells me that liberal means socially progressive (i.e. culturally left) and promoting social welfare.
How does your definition differ?
Please don’t tell me it’s just “they’re not always progressive and don’t always promote welfare.” : )
Alright, this is probably gonna go in an endless cycle of “Are they this?” “Well, not necessarily…” that isn’t going to go anywhere. Thanks for trying, have a nice day.
I gave you one. “Liberals” support capitalism, but in America specifically “liberal” also implies that they trend toward supporting more safety nets than “conservatives” and being more “left wing on cultural issues,” but neither of those is consistent and it’s a spectrum. The main uniting trait of “liberals” in the world is support for capitalism.
*PS I have a meeting in 5 minutes so I can’t continue this
Extreme left-wing ideology is indistinguishable from extreme right-wing ideology. They both want to kill lots of people, and if you aren’t on their side you’re on their shit list.
Go on. What’s ironic about my statement and what you just brought up? Why do you think me saying that there are a lot of commies here, has anything to do with my view on what happened in Tiananmen Square?
? your comment makes no fucking sense. Why do you people try SO HARD to have a dissenting but relevant opinion constantly? its tiring, go fuck yourself.
There were multiple perspectives represented among the protesters. Some waved slogans for democracy, others had framed paintings of Mao Zedong. The protests went on for months and were not a unified, centrally organized affair.
*I have pictures, mentioning this at the top because apparently no one reads this comment
I’m not the person you replied to earlier. I don’t know how the Soviets factor into this, and I don’t think it’s necessarily ideological to mention a concrete detail about an event. Established, western, non-communist, non-china-supporting media sources covered the protests in person for months, and their reports and pictures show a spread of perspectives among the protesters. Deng Xiaoping’s government had detractors from multiple directions.
Back when I worked at IBM, there were a bunch of flags hanging in the cafeteria that represented every country where IBM did business. We often wondered, why wasn’t there a Nazi Germany flag? After all, IBM did sell a ton of machines to the Nazis to keep track of Jews and other undesirables, in order to commit genocide. I wonder why IBM wouldn’t want people to know about that? /s
“In February 2001, an Alien Tort Claims Act claim was filed in U.S. federal court on behalf of concentration camp survivors against IBM. The suit accused IBM of allegedly providing the punched card technology that facilitated the Holocaust, and for covering up German IBM subsidiary Dehomag’s activities.”
Sadly, a majority of the lawsuits brought up against IBM in connection with it’s dark past get dropped.
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