There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

davel

@[email protected]

Pronounshe/himDatetime FormatRFC 3339

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

davel , to memes in class war
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

The mortgage tax advantage is just one component of it.

After WWII we made (mostly suburban) homes be retirement investment vehicles for (almost exclusively white) working class people. That was a terrible choice for all future generations of the working class. Now most people (white or not) are priced out. It’s been great for the boomers and the real estate & finance industries, though, thanks to asset price inflation.

From Michael Hudson’s https://wallstreetonparade.com/2015/08/michael-hudsons-new-book-wall-street-parasites-have-devoured-their-hosts-your-retirement-plan-and-the-u-s-economy/ (PDF):

The Bubble Economy vs classical industrial growth

The stock market is not the largest part of the economy whose prices are inflated by bank credit. As the biggest asset category, real estate is by far the largest market for debt. The Federal Reserve’s quarterly Flow of Funds statistics show that by 2007-08, about 80 percent of new bank loans were real estate mortgages. Most such loans are to buy property already in place, just as most stock market transactions are for shares long since issued.

The effect is twofold: it inflates asset prices ranging from real estate to entire companies, and yields banks interest that imposes a carrying charge on buyers. That is what makes bubble economies high-cost. Housing prices are inflated, requiring mortgage debtors to pay more. Companies borrow to buy other companies, increasing the volume of corporate debt simply to finance ownership changes. And education is financialized, enabling students to afford higher tuition costs by committing to pay monthly debt service out of what they earn after they graduate.

The resulting financial overhead consists of claims on the economy’s actual means of production. Yet most people think of these bonds, bank loans and stocks and creditor claims as wealth, not its antithesis on the debit side of the balance sheet. This inside-out doublethink is a precondition for the bubble economy to be applauded by the mass media, keeping its corrosive momentum expanding.

From the corporate sphere and real estate to personal budgets, the distinguishing feature over the past half-century has been the rise in debt/ equity and debt/income ratios. Just as debt leveraging has hiked corporate break-even costs of doing business, so the cost of living has been increased as homes and office buildings have been bid up on mortgage credit. “Creating wealth” in a debt-financed way makes economies high-cost, exacerbated by the tax shift onto labor and consumers instead of capital gains and “free lunch” rent. These financial and fiscal policies have enabled financial managers to siphon off the industrial profits that were expected to fund capital formation to increase productivity and living standards.

davel , to worldnews in O.J. Simpson, Athlete Whose Trial Riveted the Nation, Dies at 76
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

The Juice is out of juice 🤷 What a waste of our collective time and attention that piece of shit was.

davel , to memes in Accurate
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Preliminarily: For better or worse, !memes doesn’t exclude politics, and it has been that way since before I even created my Lemmy user account. As far as I’m concerned, the comm is what it is. It’s been here since Lemmy’s inception, and !nonpolitical_memes was created three years later (also before my time).

I believe that people who upvote it do it not because they laughed, but because they agree with the political message. And I don’t think memes should be like that.

I agree with you that many people (up/down) vote on political memes not for the quality of the meme but for agreement in the politics. I was on Reddit for over 15 years and made the same observation as you. I, too, am not a fan of low quality memes bubbling to the top on account of their political message, and I personally don’t upvote them. One could try to argue that this behavior is a Reddit holdover, but I suspect that it’s human nature. Just look at how low-quality political cartoons often are in newspapers.

If someone wants to create a political meme community (of whatever political stripe), where the mods aggressively remove low quality memes, they certainly can, and I wish them the best of luck.

I understand that you don’t like the politics of !memes, and I do sympathize with your frustration with the low-quality memes. We can’t police people’s voting motivations, so—unfortunately for you and me—the low-quality memes are not going away. The politics reflect the community, and if the politics don’t reflect you, then it might not be your community. Just block/unsubscribe and move on.

davel , to asklemmy in How do you Lemmings like your tea?
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

I was going to make a joke about this being a trick question, as caffeine is poisonous to lemmings, but my preliminary research suggests that rodents and humans have a similar tolerance.

davel , to worldnews in Vietnam sentences real estate tycoon Truong My Lan to death in its largest-ever fraud case
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

gui-better porky-scared

davel , to memes in I've questions
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Thanks, it has pockets!

davel , (edited ) to asklemmy in Will China beat America in the artificial intelligence race?
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

You say you don’t like authoritarianism and that China is authoritarian, but you haven’t defined what authoritarianism is or why you don’t like it or why China is it. You prefer the US’s dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (which research shows to be an oligarchy and hardly democratic at all) over China’s dictatorship of the proletariat, which practices democratic centralism.

Domenico Losurdo, 2004: Towards a Critique of the Category of Totalitarianism

davel , to worldnews in US has seen no evidence that Israel has committed genocide, Defense Secretary says
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: Calling for people to be killed

Reporter, please learn the difference between a people and a state.

davel , (edited ) to asklemmy in Will China beat America in the artificial intelligence race?
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Are you implicitly admitting their critiques are 100% correct?

I am not.

They are actively genociding people and don’t believe in freedom.

They are doing no such thing. I’ve already covered these in my other comments in this post.

davel , to asklemmy in Will China beat America in the artificial intelligence race?
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

They hate us for our freedoms no-oil

davel , to asklemmy in Will China beat America in the artificial intelligence race?
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

I don’t know what those are, but do you mean this video? [REUPLOAD READ DESCRIPTION] American DEBUNKS All Major Western Propaganda on Uyghurs and Xinjiang

davel , to asklemmy in Will China beat America in the artificial intelligence race?
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

The relationship they had with the country I grew up in was not like that, it was more like pay off corrupt politicians, so China can economically exploit it.

[Citation needed]

There is a difference between an imperialist state like the US and an anti-imperialist — and until recently imperialized — state like China.

The US has over 750 overseas military bases around the world, and is building more to further encircle China. Meanwhile China has one anti-piracy base in Djibouti.

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/9952370b-6e3d-4535-b64a-4d055b6c4195.webp

davel , to asklemmy in Will China beat America in the artificial intelligence race?
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Why do you hate them less than the CPC?

davel , to asklemmy in Will China beat America in the artificial intelligence race?
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

It’s bold of the US to fund & organize terrorist attacks in Xinjiang and then fabricate a genocide narrative around it lemmy.ml/comment/10145782

davel , (edited ) to asklemmy in Will China beat America in the artificial intelligence race?
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: Genocide denial

We do in fact deny genocides that are made up bullshit, yes. Copypasta time.

The US’s “Uyghur genocide” (“cultural” or otherwise) disinformation campaign has already been debunked several times over.

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.

https://lemmygrad.ml/pictrs/image/11da4f3e-9f83-45e4-88db-826ee0c5b1c6.jpeg

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •