whyyyy, that doesn't make any sense...
2y 9mon ago by feddit.de/u/sexy_peach in memes@lemmy.ml from feddit.de
„1% of people hoarding 99% of wealth in the world, and most of them have the same skin color and religion like me? It has to be the fault of people with a different skin color and/or religion that I’m not getting richer!“
“Have we considered blaming the people who are reviving old religions for our society’s moral failing instead of acknowledging that the political leaders of my country share my religion
Skin color: capitalism
Religion: money
Years upon years of pro-capitalist propaganda is a helluva drug.
Apparently years upon years of tankie propaganda is also a drug.
What if I told you there were a lot of folks who hate both tankies and capitalism.
In fact, most anti-capitalists are also anti-authoritarian, which leaves them out of the tankie camp.
For example, me.
Hello there, fellow anti-capitalist anti-tankie
I'm gonna list all the good and progressive things about North Korea that America needs to emulate if it wants to stop being a Capitalist Demon Machine
Thank you for reading my list!
Please give a warning for whiplash
Also, put a bullet point to start a list, because the empty paragraph doesn't appear on my end. If you want to that is!<
Cool, but then you're just a naive utopia dreamer. Capitalism is the best system we have right now, and it pays for a lot of social programs, can it be better sure but acting like communism is better is just flat out stupid.
Margaret Thatcher, is that you?
I thought she was dead, with her grave thoroughly urinated upon.
grave thoroughly urinated on
Shit, I guess people found an alternative after all
Yep, no room to innovate anywhere, everything everywhere has already been tried and capitalism won.
No propaganda here.
Social programs? But... that's socialism !
Capitalism is the best system we have right now
Citation needed. Also, curious how capitalist countries are always so eager to stomp down any attempt at trying a different system, almost as if the rich really don't want you to even believe a different system is possible 🤔
and it pays for a lot of social programs
It doesn't pay, it steals. Social programs under capitalism are possible only by exploiting the global south.
Cool, but then you’re just a naive utopia dreamer.
Not wanting to be robbed by bosses and landlords is utopia, now? And you talk about it as if it was some theory that was never tried. Libertarian socialism already exists.
can it be better sure but acting like communism is better is just flat out stupid.
Because..........? Can you even define what you mean with 'communism', or is it just some nebulous threat you got programmed to be afraid of? Not all socialists are Stalinists, which is what you seem to be implying...
Its fucking dumb to assume that the only other alternative is communism.
Living in a tribe in the jungle is better than capitalism because it's not literally destroying the world. If you're willing to consider utopian capitalism, then a utopia based on ideas that can theoretically work should be even easier.
Huh?
A big meteor strike would be worse for most life on earth than even the climate crisis, and that will happen, sooner or later. In order to prevent that, you need a pretty high tech level.
Yes and no. Yes by the time it would likely be detected on a collision course with Earth, at present, even the greatest minds can't theorize a method to neutralize an asteroid => 5km in diameter that doesn't cause an extinction event with the technology available to us right now.
However, if it were detected soon enough there may be more tenable options for preventing an impact event that are not futile. The problem is we don't have nearly enough resources monitoring deep space for our inevitable destruction and with a lot of our space tech now being privatized in the US it will be more difficult because there's no profit incentive to being prepared for our doom. At least now that NASA is active again there will be an obvious taxpayer incentive to literally preventing our own annihilation...lol
Edit to add article about early detection: https://www.planetary.org/defending-the-earth-from-impacts#:~:text=We%20can%20stop%20asteroids%20from,tends%20to%20focus%20on%20asteroids.
The point is you aren't going to stop an asteroid if you're living in a tribe in the jungle.
That's a dumb point. Might as well do nothing and continue to ravage the planet because there will be a meteorite somewhere in the next millions year.
That doesn't follow. If you care about whether or not humanity survives, those are not equivalent at all.
Sure, but my point is that capitalism may as well be George of the jungle with everything it does to trade our future for revenue growth.
Capitalism is naivest utopia. There is no invisible limbs, monopoly will eventually form.
And people who thinks it's either capitalism or communism are dumb fucks.
Authoritarianism is the real cancer upon society
It's not the '-isms', my guy.
It's people. Flawed beings making and interacting with flawed systems.
It takes people to enact policies around the -isms and to make the -isms themselves, so I dont really see the logic here.
It takes people to enact policies around the -isms and to make the -isms themselves
The OP said "...-ism is the real cancer upon society". I was pointing out that people are the real cancer of society. It doesn't matter what "-ism" you want to stand behind, there will always be issues because humanity is fundamentally broken.
humanity is fundamentally broken
I'd argue that humanity and an -ism aren't that different in this context -- arbitrary linguistic form aside, they both refer to abstract collectives.
But ultimately, I still don't see the logic in separating humanity from the systems it created and uses. Fixing one fixes the other, in bilateral fashion.
Thinking that memes like this aren't just tankies who think the ussr was a tragic loss is hilarious. This is tankie shit.
You do know the USSR was a country and not a political ideology, right?
You're an idiot if you think my comment on the USSR collapsing was talking about a political ideology...
If I see some I'll let you know.
President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
The worst hot take of this nature I've personally heard so far, in Canada: "Fuck man this customer service job pays me peanuts when I'm busting my ass! I tell ya, it's those damn Indian immigrants saturating the service industry and driving the wages down!"
Worker saturation does reduce the power of the workers. A small town strike is a huge deal, it can shut the business down with nobody around to easily replace them. As opposed to place they can be easily replaced with low cost workers, the conditions will slowly move towards slavery with every replacement.
Aren't most of the Indian customer service workers in India though? Nothing to do with immigration
Billionaires are a minority.. something like 1% of the 1% of people
You're still overestimating them 200x over. As of 2021, there were about 3300 billionaires worldwide.
That's 0.00004% of the population, or one for every 2.1 million people.
Wtf I'm a bigot now!
(not disagreeing) And due to capitalism, they and the exploited will always exist, and have the power they have. If the billionaires of today didn't exist, some other people would be in their place, and nothing would have changed. Capitalism is the root.
No matter wether capitalism or something else. People want power. Thise who have more will do anything to keep it. People fight back. reform Or social collapse. Repeat.
It's a cycle that will repeat as long as their is something to opress.
Im not saying we should stop fighting. But even if we win it will happen again.
Yeah, the focus needs to be on specific issues where we can take immediate action to improve peoples' lives. Trying to abstract things out to be about systems and ideologies just promotes complacency and paralysis. Every system can and will be corrupted. We need to identify the specific mechanisms through which that corruption is currently occurring and attack as many of them as we can every time an opportunity to do so presents itself. Wanking about some grand revolution that will solve everything everywhere just promotes inaction since that revolution will never come.
The struggle's real.
I luckily don't hear that much. I mostly hear fellow wage slaves making barely enough to slowly die repeat bullshit news headlines like "no one wants to work anymore" all the while working harder and harder for less and less. It's incredibly depressing.
When I worked at DGX, basically EVERY customer said this in response to seeing me being the only one behind the counter...
No... No, this store just has shit pay, forces EMPLOYEES to pay for parking, and is willing to fire people at the drop of a hat.
Because they would have to take their part of the responsibility for allowing it to continue, and that's hard.
Look out, plebs! Those foreign lads are going to steal your crumbs.
We need more general knowledge.
American conservatives: better defund schools and ban books so people don’t catch on to what’s actually happening. Better if they blame the gay, brown, and poor people, not us in power.
In plain view, too. For shame. I honestly didn't think I'd see it in my lifetime. I read about it in other places, but the wool was over my eyes.
Unregulated lobbied capitalism. I'm okay with capitalism and competing ideas. What I'm not okay with is some of the late stage problems we've encountered as a society. Assuming the US average person lives to be a very low of 50, we are four generations deep. Ive known two generations in my own lineage. That's not very long.
It's okay to make better systems. Even for billionaires its okay because a rising tide floats all the boats. This is something that needs to be taught better to the upper class. If these guys had less complaining workers, people willing to contribute more so in their enterprises, workers who are happy to make their products, it would be fine. Putting the squeeze on the little guy does nothing for these dudes besides some tight margins.
Coupled with a very elderly legislative body we are left with senseless greed in both trade and politics. Portions of the population just consume politics like it's a sitcom. What we're left with is a system in need of refinement.
When economic power is functionally political power, and self-perpetuating economic inequality is the default under capitalism, this is inevitable over time.
You can push against it's nature with that kind of thing, and you might see some temporary improvement, but the baked-in incentive structures will inevitably be followed, and the decline to late stage capitalism and collapse will continue.
If these guys had less complaining workers, people willing to contribute more so in their enterprises, workers who are happy to make their products, it would be fine.
I am not sure that would work. Happy people start to get self-aware and then start to make demands. People who are suffering one way or another are easier to control.
Look for example at how people behave after a war. They work together, build stuff together, do everything to manifest peace. Look at how they behave a few decades later ... it has fallen back to in-fighting. Once everything is in order again, people fight among each other. Neighbors fight for shit like wrongly places trees, some build gangs and move around to destroy stuff just for fun, etc.
Humans are shit. We are just not made for being happy.
That's probably dementia
I don't know man I just work here
in my mind, it's not even capitalism. there are rules against monopolies, and people are supposed to pay their taxes to not become unfathomably rich. these rules are just not enforced, because everyone is arguing about wether trans people deserve to exist or not. politicians need to take their job seriously. and the only way to change that is from within. join a party and do jour job properly. complaining about capitalism isn't making the situation better either.
Capitalism is the problem because it incentivizes these behaviors and allows "capital" (i.e. rich people) to control the political process. The people who are pushing the anti-trans agenda - just like the gay marriage scare of the past - are doing so to manipulate people into voting against their own interests to elect politicians who are loudly subservient to capital. It's not a coincidence that the same people, i.e. Republicans, have been pushing for trickle-down economics and privatizing social security for decades. Democrats aren't much better. In some part because Citizens United (a Republican gift to the rich) declared that money = speech, and so it's hard to compete electorally without caving in to the demands of capital. So, they do dumb shit like propose privatizing the water supply:
And this doesn't even get into the real nasty part of capitalism which is the plunder and exploitation of the global south that has gone on for centuries to build today's capitalist society.
If you have actions you plan to take that will get your elected representatives to stop doing things that makes the ultrawealthy richer and start doing things that improve the lives of everyone else (UBI, universal healthcare, equality for all) under the capitalist system we have, then go ahead and get on it. People pointing out the flaws in capitalism is not the reason you have thus far been unsuccessful. And when you call for everyone to stop criticizing capitalism, as if it is some universal equilibrium that is undeniably correct, you are carrying water for the very people you want to oppose.
Lol yes because I'm communism no power hungry people make it to the top and starve the rest. Nope never happened.
Well the other problem with capitalism is that when the wealth inevitably funnels to a few, those few can then pay scraps to politicians to keep getting richer. If you don't co-operate, well they'll just pay the other party instead. Good luck winning when guess what, they also own the news networks. They own the social media. If you think it can be magically solved by joining a party and doing your job properly then you really don't grasp the reality of the whole situation.
You've got a point, but with that attitude nothing will get anywhere... At least if you did in there's a chance for a better outcome where you get a chance to influence things
Tell me you don't understand the first thing about what capitalism is or how it works without saying you don't know the first thing about capitalism or how it works... And yet you clutch to it like a turkey voting for Christmas..
Perhaps consider looking in to the works produced by the minds who dedicated their lives and careers to the subject, rather than your own, clearly uninformed one?
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/marx-exploitation-abc-unequal-world/
https://jacobin.com/2022/06/karl-marx-labor-theory-of-value-ga-cohen-economics
Yes because how many people has communism raised out of poverty? O right I forgot how russians are stealing washers and toilets from Ukrainians and NK is an amazing place in the summer...or how china doesn't have suicide nets or social credit scores...
The only people who want communism are the idiots from the west in their nice apartments, who have never lived under communism..lol
... do you think that the Russian Federation is still the RSFSR?
O right I forgot how russians are stealing washers and toilets from Ukrainians
Russia is a capitalist state.
NK is an amazing place in the summer
The vast majority of north Korea was destroyed by the US. Maybe if the US hadn't done that, things would be better for them.
how china doesn't have suicide nets or social credit scores
Completely irrelevant to how many people communism has lifted out of poverty. The west also has issues with suicide and we also have credit scores.
If you're actually interested, read this
According to the World Bank, more than 850 million Chinese people have been lifted out of extreme poverty; China's poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 0.7 percent in 2015
you're not exactly saying the thing on the meme, but god, the line is awfully thin. capitalism IS the unfathomably rich.
politicians are doing exactly what they're there for: protecting the interets of the unfathomably rich.
The rules aren't enforced because capitalists are buying their way into politics, so much do that they've gutted the IRS. BTW, they can't even do most of their work on computers, because of lobbying from Intuit and H&R Block.
I think you have good intentions, but you miss the fact that money talks in this fucked up ecosystem.
these rules are just not enforced
And the argument for that is always because they're anticapitalist, my dude. Even if you agree with the core tenets of capitalism, it's a hard argument to claim it hasn't been weaponized in multiple ways.
But how does that make any sense in regards to trans issues?
Like, I'd get if maybe some laws weren't being brought to vote because it doesn't fit the agenda for the day, but do you really think all 3 branches of our government are so embroiled in lgbtq+ issues that they aren't making other laws? How does what politicians are discussing on social media or on television affect whether a regulatory agency is going to open their eyes and prosecute when things are put on their desk? Is the SEC (not the government, but the governments enforcers) discussing trans medicine this whole time instead of intentionally looking away from white collar theft?
The reason trans people are being targeted is because the Republican party has become a proto-fascist party. Part of fascism is to have an out-group that can be scapegoated. The best method to identify these targets is in the way they're framed.
They're infinitely strong with all the allies and lots of power. But they're also super weak and easy to defeat
This is the framing device fascists use to gain power. Of course, this target always changes and becomes more regressive. As the famous poem goes, "first they came for the communists"
The reason they target trans people is because they're an easy target. Trans people don't have the money of billionaires, the infrastructure of support, or the critical mass of people with positive opinions towards trans people. Fascism is different in every country that falls for it, so no it's not a requirement to hate Jewish people for a person, party, or country to be fascist. In an ironic twist of fate, I'd argue that the government of Israel is a fascist nation, with Palestinians being the target of fascist hate and influenced by Apartheid and Jim Crow (random aside, Jim Crow also influenced Fascist Germany and Apartheid).
Anyways, back on topic. The laws being passed to target trans people are also nebulous and vague, creating the groundwork to target the next group they choose to persecute. Historically and through stated visions, the next target will be gay people. To the gay people that believe "support LGB not the T", you will be the next target of Republican ire if you allow this attack on trans people to continue. Your observation is absolutely correct, the attack on trans people is not a whole-government operation, yet. Fascism is a merging of state and capital. As the death cult becomes more hostile towards people not in the in-group, the SEC will eventually start prosecuting trans people for securities fraud for working at a publicly traded company. It's a slow boil, don't be the frog in the water.
Lmao
Surely people have already tried the “joining a political party with good intentions” approach. Being a politician means responding to the publics ever changing concerns. You can’t always focus on whats important because thats not necessarily what the public wants, whether its good for them or not
Simple, under this system the more desperate folks undercut him. They don't see the rules of the game are what is causing that. They couldn't imagine a system under other rules, except for Stalinist nightmares. So crushing the people who undermine them is the only option they can imagine (and have been lead to believe by the preachers of hate)
Easy, they're brainwashed, exactly as planned. Watch the news lately?
When people have lived their whole lives marinating in anti-communist propaganda, they're ideologically unable to reach the obvious conclusions and instead have to substitute shit like this or lizard people conspiracy theories.
Do billionaires and millionaires count? What? Do we call them rhe financially unchallenged? /s
Ah yes, "memes"
Where is my meme status quo flavored.
Both... Both is good?
You mean blame it on illegal migrants working without paying "their share" in taxes like everyone else?
Dude... the communists on Lemmy are hilarious!
Except your logic falls apart pretty quickly.
You are choosing to blame people who are getting exploited. Either firstly they are being hired under the table to do this work under the market rate. Wouldn't this be the fault of the employer then. They are hiring such workers who are also not paying "their share". Conservatives are so quick to point at illegal immigrants as the problem but rarely the people who you know actually pay them to make living in this country possible for them.
Now what if they were stealing someone's identity to work a normal job? Its not right but identity theft is a large problem because we Americans for some fucking reason refuse to establish a national ID system. Where there are safeguards and ways to fix this but nah we are stuck with Social security numbers, which were designed merely for Social security for those above the age of 65 to claim their benefits but then it was misused by the IRS (which can we seen as fair since its a public entity in government) but then it was then abused by private organizations like banks and employers. Side tangent over, if an illegal immigrant did this they would then be paying "their share" of taxes. So your complaint is a nothing burger.
If we had an illegal immigration problem it is because there is a clear market for people who provide for them and it ain't only the democrats. Republican's Corpo rights focus is all about this and letting corps do whatever the fuck they want to do but focus on the suffering of others is their promise to their dimwitted voters (who vote primarily for abortion bans and immigration problems).
Or they blame white men since that’s also trendy.
I mean...
I get that argument on paper but I think it's more of the government's doing. Hear me out first, we could live off the grid, build our own house, our own farms, never work for a job, but the government stops us, they are the weapons of the banks and rich who enforce authority.
They gave the housing market and land to the banks. I understand many blame minorities for taking our jobs, when in reality, capitalists just hire whoever works for cheaper, and yes, that's true. But if wasn't for government regulations, more jobs could exist for everyone, or you could live off the grid.
I like to cite how many despise healthcare being tied to your job, but government involvement caused that in the first place.
We live under corporatism/fascism. Yes, the rich run everything, but they have the government be the ones to control us. You must first get through the pawns if you want the king.
You think it's building codes keeping people in poverty??
Let's try to elaborate more.
We live under corporatism where the rich have bought out everything. The banks own the land. Big Pharma runs the medical industry. And the military industrial complex runs NATO and such. We call this money lobbying.
It doesn't just affect politicians, even agencies and armies. The FDA and CDC for instance are owned by big pharma. Big pharma lobbies to these agencies to create more regulations, yet, these regulations the agencies make never seem to hurt the big guy, only the smaller companies starting up. They want to kill the competition. That's why medicine and insulin can be so expensive.
Banks like JP Morgan financed the war on terror. We came into the middle east to help their people rebuild, instead, we expanded JP Morgans banks, and drew out the war to finance them better, among many other terrible things.
There could be tons of jobs right now, but people lobby to have regulations crush the smaller guys so few monopolies have power. The government enables the rich.
So, when someone is in poverty, let's ask why from every angle possible. Why can't they have a house? Credit scores, banks owning everything, and blackrock eating up the housing market. Why can't they get a job? Not enough jobs available. Why can't they find food and temporary place to stay? Inflation, which is the silent tax making food more scarce, and no one wanting to give the poor a place to stay and help them get off their feet and become independent.
When you see all of these things, you realize that the powers that be don't want us to be self sufficient and independent from them. I don't see it as just "housing codes." More as government control. Think of the banks as the king, and the government as it's military.
Yes, I understand oligarchy and also corporate capture. Those things are bad.
What does that have to do with friends and neighbors blaming minorities?
I've talked with socialists before. They had interesting reasons to justify socialism. They talk about how minorities come over the boarder and steal jobs, but claim that it's because the rich hires who works for cheaper, that's why this happens as minorities will work for cheaper. At first, I thought it was an unbeatable argument. But, if it wasn't for such government regulations, more jobs and competition would be available for these people. And if things didn't work out for people, they should just be able to homestead like what people once did.
Some socialists believe that late capitalism has caused our recessions. They see value in work, but not the dollar. My argument is that if it wasn't for the FED causing inflation, things wouldn't be so bad. Woodrow Wilson created a centralized bank, worse thing possible. And we had presidents ban the gold standard to top it all off, that's why money feels useless. If it was a finite currency (like bitcoin aims to be) then I see great value in it.
Honesty, I'd consider myself to be libertarian at the level of federal government. But less libertarian and more constitutionalist the closer to home it gets. I don't necessarily support government, but definitely governance if so to speak.
People like Ted K were definitely smart. He believed we should go back to the Neolithic era in the sense where we have our small local communities with direct democracy. In terms of freedom, and maybe happiness, that's the best option.
No. I didn't.
He seems to be saying that we must either choose anarchism or corporatism? Or that building codes and other regulation is a slippery slope to poverty and fascism?
To be fair to my egregious summarization he kicks off by saying life would be better if people could just build homes off the grid.
Anyone can build off-grid if they want to, as long as they purchase their land and pay property tax. OP admitted to being mostly libertarian, so I think they're really just complaining about taxes. I personally think libertarianism is a slippery slope to anarchism, because taxes are what pay for roads, police, firefighters, etc.
No one ever gets my points. No one can build off grid if they want to because they have to buy the land. It was never like that if we were to go back to the U.S. in the late 1700s.
Property tax and income tax I'm against. But I said that I do believe in governance at the local level, and as long as it's constitutional. So taxes on gas for instance to pave the roads is sorta ok in my book.