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[–] 35 points 1 year ago

Surveillance capitalism

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  • [–] 100 points 1 year ago* (20 children)

    To be fair experimenting is good. It's still better than feudal system. I just wish we experimented with other models once in a while too.

    I will read a sci-fi novel thousands of years into the future with fantasy-magic system, and economic model is still "21st century capitalism but we replaced the word money with credits so it's future now."

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  • [–] 43 points 1 year ago

    Capitalism exists to replace feudal systems. It’s easier to have kings, and to have a handful of them so they aren’t fighting as much for a single spot, when you convince the average idiot that now they can also be a king and its their own fault that they aren’t(or better yet, another person’s fault as you oppress them both).

    When all the people who had gotten rich by being parasites because of who they were related got afraid they just changed the rules so that it wasn’t ahout blood relation anymore(on paper) but they still had all the money they’d stolen. Nothing functionally changed.

    The entire system “the rich get everything they want and no one gets to stop them” does not have a good version. It’s fucked every single way.

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  • [+] 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)
  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    Would be harder to explain it away if they weren't brutal undemocratic regimes though

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  • [+] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)
  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    What relevance does the US have here

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  • [+] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)
  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Why do you think it's the US specifically and none of all the other capitalist countries?

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    Maybe because of this?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change

    No need to read the entire article. Just skim through it a bit.

    Btw, I can attest that the 1964 regime change in Brazil was real because I live here and we study the military dictatorship period in middle/high school and the theme is still relevant to this day (hence why we jailed Bolsonaro). (Edit: I forgot to mention that the reveal that 1964 had a hand from operation condor is recent. it was just a "leftist hoax" before but, "today", the papers of US involvement in Brazil's coup made the "leftist hoax" not be a hoax anymore)

    We will need to wait a a few more decades before going public that US also interfered with our politics on the impeachment of Dilma and raise of Bolsonaro to power.

    But at least Obama government bugging Dilma's phone was true

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/7/5/us-spied-on-brazilian-president-and-top-officials

    https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/246869-wikileaks-nsa-spied-on-brazils-president/

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-25441408 (Angela Merkel was another target for spionage from NSA).

     

    Also, did anyone ever mentioned that the only country who used nukes in wars up to this day was US? the country that bombed 2 civilians cities for "research purposes"?

    If Russia and France didn't got their bombs in time, I can almost assure you that history would be different a lot of other countries would receive radioactive democracy blessings from US intead of the "boring" democracy US employs in the world nowadays.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    It just seems so US centric that it's always the US this the US that, there's like the whole rest of the world too but the discussion always is "socialist country do something bad" "well what about the US???". Like goddamn

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Why do you think it’s the US specifically and none of all the other capitalist countries

    then you go about

    It just seems so US centric that it’s always the US this the US that, there’s like the whole rest of the world too but the discussion always is “socialist country do something bad” “well what about the US???”. Like goddamn

    Can you first decide if you are talking about capitalist countries (as stated first) or socialist countries? Or are you going to be moving goalposts?

    I wrote a direct and on the point answer on why do some people think it is US specifically.

    As pointed out, US backed coups and regime changes (unless you want to argue that these facts are untrue).

     

    Now, if you want to go about other capitalist countries, then France and UK have their hands on some regime changes as well over the years.

    Although this wkipedia entry doesn't look as bad as the US' one, only a fool would think that France has good intention about their interference in the middle east:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_France#Middle_East

    Even my country, Brazil, has some dirt on it by being an economical powerhouse among Latin America.

    We did try to make comercial relations that mixed both the style of EU (Mercosul) with our neighbors and also similar to China-african countries relation as we did with Cuba by bringing Cuban physicians to work here while we helped them economically (but I'm sure there was some strings attached. we aren't saints and nor do we pretend to be the savior of free democratic world).

    But we do know that, if left unchecked, we could derail again into being imperialist or into being a dictatorship (again, we just jailed Jair Bolsonar for trying a coup d'etat to make another military dictatorship in the shape of the 1964 that happened).

    Speaking of Bolsonaro, one of the first things he did was to cut out the deal Brazil had with Cuba because our Brazilian physicians don't want to work in the countryside (they claim the pay is low or that municipalities may freeze payment over months) but at the same time, they didn't wanted anybody else in that market-share (in this case, Cuban doctors).

    So it is all shitty situations around and no one is a saint.

    I hope it does satisfy your desire for a "nobody is a saint", but, keep in mind that in terms of actual harm, US and Russia are the greatest danger right now.

    US and Russia together have around 90% of nuclear warheads of the world.

    If they even (hypothetically) join political forces and "work as one country", then they could bomb whatever the fuck of whatever country with almost no pushback.

    Though I still think that America is more trigger happy (pun intended) than Russia.

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  • [+] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Not disagreeing with you any bit, but I want to clarify that by "Brazil being imperialistic" I meant how we expanded our territory during the 1800s and our "most recent war" at Paraguay around late 1800

    (btw, I had to search the date and found that our last "recent" territorial war was probably the Acre war (1899), a few years after Paraguay war -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Brazil )

    I don't disagree with you that we were and are exploited, but we surely expanded our territory by a lot of land-grabbing in those wars (even tho I recognize these were old times).

    In that specific sense that I meant we once were imperialistic (Sem falar que Dom Pedro era imperador né?! hahahaha!)

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Would be harder to explain it away if they weren’t brutal undemocratic regimes though

    They aren't though.

    Cuba passed a new constitution by referendum in 2019 with 90%+ in favor.

    A common perspective I've heard here in Vietnam is "socialism means the government has to represent everyone". (Another common perspective is that the party is openly corrupt and not meaningfully democratic. Those typically aren't held by the same people)

    Most every Chinese would tell you 1. Democracy is important. 2. The CPC represents my views via democracy.

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  • [+] 13 points 1 year ago (10 children)
  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    According to whom?

    According to Marx, Engels, Lenin and any other respectable communist.

    Capitalism is a historical progression rather than something you adopt willy nilly, and it has expanded productive forces significantly allowing us to produce stuff far more efficiently in far higher quality and complexity. With feudalism, it's mode of production was far more individualized, with peasants essentially producing for their and their family's subsistence only, and artisans in guilds would only work in small groups, limiting to what they can produce.

    Therefore, this expansion of productive powers in capitalism in theory leads to better life quality, less socially necessary labor time to provide for everyone, less mortality given how we can now produce things like insulin in complex labs, etc.

    Keyword is in theory - in practice, everything else in the system goes against that, leads to overproduction and having us proletariat work for much higher hours than is socially necessary, it concentrates wealth to private owners giving them immense political power. That's what communists are trying to do - progress forward so we produce not for profit, but for use based on need which would solve these issues.

    Btw, comparison between feudal peasantry and proletariat is flawed - peasants were based in countryside and essentially were the middle class of it, owning a small amount of land that they worked for themselves. Proletariat are urbanized, work in factories they don't own and produce for thousands of people. A more apt comparison in work hours would be proletariat vs guild apprentices - their exploitation and work hours were essentially the same and this system was precursor to capitalist wage labor.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Who has switch over from feudalism been a disaster to?

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  • [+] 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Do you think mining workers had it better under feodalism? Not sure things went worse for them because of capitalism, mining was always a dangerous and shitty job, often done by slaves or convicts because of how shit the conditions were.

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  • [+] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Mining conditions are all over the place right now. Some workers have it good, with good compensation, perks and with a lot of attention paid to safety and others live in horrible deathly conditions and are practically slaves

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  • [+] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    We're talking about how not all conditions are the same, you can't just discard some conditions because they differ from the point you're trying to make. Some miners have it really good inside a capitalist system, same as some might've had it good under feodalist system.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The unmitigated disaster part existed under feudalism also. Capitalism is slowly turning back into feudalism, which is kinda why it sucks so much now. I hate capitalism, but feudalism was worse.

    Fuedalism with a fuckload of democracy might work. But it always turns into a bloodline thing.

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  • [+] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    Its also not hard to believe if you ́look at the continuation of power across much of Europe. Its not a 1:1 comparison but lots of families of feudal lords are still wealthy and powerful today if they didn't completely fuck up. The power has spread out but has concentrated in other ways.

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    [–] 37 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Blue Raspberry Capitalism. No, wait... Peanut Butter Capitalism

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago (13 children)

    What the fuck even is "stakeholder capitalism". You mean the people with money???

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  • [–] [S] 34 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    It is the fantasy that corporations can serve the interest all stakeholders (employees, customers etc.) rather than a minority of shareholders as is currently: https://www.investopedia.com/stakeholder-capitalism-4774323

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Sure. That can happen when all corporations have a legal duty to all shareholders stakeholders and they all have an equal right and access to influencing/suing them.

    It really just sounds like hand wavey bullshit.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    I wouldn’t say it’s a fantasy, it’s just a currently different cultural perspective that is being taught to the next generation of business leaders.

    Some people are bought into the idea, but unless the actual laws change it’s not so easy to legally be able to prioritize the needs of all stakeholders equally.

    I personally don’t see stakeholder theory as the “fix”, but it’s a good start to get more ethical capitalism that’s not actively hurting the planet, workers, and communities.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Well all the business leaders who think that's a dumb cultural perspective just bought all three branches of government.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    They got what they wanted, but will they like it and will it stick? On a technical note things can improve and the three branches could flip back within 15 years at the most. For that to actually happen though people need to start feeling progressive wins now.

    For that reason, the focus should be on trying to implement all the progressive programs we’ve been wanting federally, to be at the state level instead. States will likely need to be willing to go into debt to fund these programs, but if they do then the people living in those states will be much better off than they are now. Many people living in purple and red states will be much more likely to want those progressive programs when they actually are seeing how successful they are in Blue states as well.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I assumed it meant capitalism where everyone is a stakeholder of the company they work for or something like that.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    soon they will get the one they really want, fascist capitalism.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    working as intended

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