I've seen this site a lot now on here, and it just looks like another low tier British tabloid that pumps out misleading ragebait content for clicks. From what I saw it's like the left wing version of the Daily Mail. Why is the information hygiene on Lemmy so poor? Why can't the community have higher standards on better sources?
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You're being voted for being absolutely correct
The US is far better than both China and the USSR when it comes to environmental protections. It's not even close.
Nobody needs it, but people want it because it's an interesting product by a renowned company
You sound pretty married to capitalism.
Present me something better and I'll change my mind. Otherwise, I'll go with whatever is best.
By what metric does capitalism “work”? From my perspective capitalism has
Let me run through your list real quick:
repeatedly led to fascism
There's this false notion that Marxists tend to have where they think that capitalism and fascism have some sort of innate connection, when they don't. Fascism as an ideology has no preferred economic model. Historically, all of the famous fascist regimes were flexible on their economic policy. They would allow the free market to run when it was beneficial and nationalized entire industries when they saw it beneficial.
If you're going to make a claim like this then you're going to have to provide specific examples. Otherwise, this is just nonsensical logic. Take Poland for example, the freest and most democratic era in the country's entire history is the past 30 years under capitalism. According to you, Poland has fascism waiting around the corner, but it doesn't.
always subverts democracy by creating parallel power in the hands of the rich
This is only partially true. This is only the case when the government corrupted and toothless. A country like Finland doesn't have a parallel power in the hands of the rich. There are rich people and they have influence, but they don't run the country, the people do. Clearly, this indicates that the model of government matters just as much as the economic model in a society.
kept poor countries poor no matter what economic model they adapt
Like where? I can offer plenty of counterexamples:
- Botswana and Zimbabwe
- South Korea and North Korea
- China before and after Mao
- The Baltics before and after the Soviet Union
- East and West Germany
In each of these examples, you have either the same state split into a capitalist and non capitalist model, or the same state changing their economic model to capitalism, or very similar neighbors going down different routes. In every case, the capitalist version always does vastly much better than the other models. History indicates the opposite of your claim is true, so I'm curious where you're getting this notion from.
been destroying the planet while everybody knows it’s happening for the last 40 years
This is true, but there's more nuance to this than you make it out to be. For example, capitalism has also been a big component in driving the green revolution. Free market competition has made solar and wind more economical than fossil fuels, while also providing consumer with options that are a lot more environmentally friendly. There are also countries like the ones in Northern Europe that have very little pollution and environmental destruction despite being capitalist, and countries like China and the Soviet Union who've had great levels of pollution and environmental destruction. Famously, the destruction of the Aral Sea was caused by the incompetence of the Soviet Union.
So if we circle back to your original question, in what ways does capitalism work? Well history, as evidenced by the examples I gave earlier, seem to show that capitalism is a reliable way for a society to raise its standards of living. Capitalism does make an economy more efficient, it does breed innovation, it does create jobs, it does mass produce goods for the masses well, it does lead to specialization that leads an economy to move up the value added chain, it does adapt well to changes, and the list goes on and on. I think it's perfectly valid to argue that it's a flawed system, because it is, but it's pretty self evident that it does work.
Growth on its own is not an end, it can only be a means to an end. Looks like you’re worshipping here too.
You're being disingenuous here. I clearly meant that capitalism is able to produce growth, which IS something that is important to any economy. You can't raise your standards of living if you don't have new wealth to use on infrastructure, social programs, tax benefits, and so on. I never said that growth is an end or that infinite growth is a goal, I just said that capitalism is able to produce growth, which it does.
Just wrong. Like plain lie, the soviets were the first in space.
I did not lie, your example just makes no sense. Just because capitalism breeds more innovation than other economic models, that doesn't mean societies that aren't capitalist have zero innovation. Besides, the space race was entirely run by state science agencies who were funded by their government to compete with the other. That's not a statement for socialism or against capitalism as it had little to do with economic models. It would make a lot more sense to compare what Soviet supermarkets looked like vs American supermarkets or what consumer technologies were available to Americans vs Soviets or the quality of everyday goods that people in Moscow had vs New York. You get that idea, these would be much more relevant comparisons, and I think it's pretty clear which system produced more innovation.
Not necessarily. A short read of On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs might change your mind, but if you don’t have time, just look at the advertising industry.
I read the paper, and while it was a fun read, I don't think it presents a particularly strong argument. There's nothing academic about it. There's no sources, no statistics, no data, no facts, nothing. It's literally just some guy's opinion and his only evidence is a couple of anecdotes from people he knows. While I agree with his some his criticisms against the giga rich, how certain types of workers deserve better pay and benefits, and how we should have shorter work weeks, I can't help but imagine this guy to be some grumpy old boomer shaking his fist in the air because kids these days don't have "real jobs". He has this false assumption that jobs whose impacts aren't seen directly are bullshit jobs and that any job that isn't strictly necessary is also a bullshit job.
Like I'm sure there are some jobs out there that shouldn't exist. However, the industries that he pointed as examples of this do in fact have value. The people in these jobs do generate real value even if some individuals feel otherwise. There are people willing to pay other people to do this kind of work. If there wasn't value in them, they wouldn't exist. Companies wouldn't hire all these people if they didn't see a benefit to it. Something doesn't need to be "essential" to exist, there a lot of things that we don't need that exist just because there's demand. Like we don't need the entertainment industry, but it is nice to have. We don't need luxury apparel industry, but there are people willing to spend that much for status. We don't need the beauty industry, but a lot of people want to cover up their insecurities. The same goes for advertising, health administration, and corporate law. These industries only exist because there's demand for them.
I agree here, although this isn’t exclusive to capitalism. There are many forms of socialism that include markets and avoid central planning. I am a proponent of that.
Like what?
Sure capitalist economies can adapt without government intervention, but the only mechanism is prices. For example take an oil crisis.
I mean you're right, but I had something different in mind for adaptability. I was referring to how the market is able to adapt on its own. Take for example the iPhone, when it came out the standard for phones at the time was physical keyboards, not touch screens. Yet after seeing how disruptive the iPhone was to the market, all of Apple's competitors switched to touch screens on their own without any coordination or government push.
I agree here, markets are a useful tool.
Well, that's some of the common ground you were looking for :)
Sure we’ve seen wealth creation but capitalism also fails to recognize many forms of wealth. Especially care work typically done by women such as raising children and caring for the elderly. Having free time is wealth. Having a say at your workplace is a form of wealth. But capitalism only measures wealth as exchange value.
I think this is more cultural than it is economic. Economic models only deal with material wealth. Other types of labor and wealth can only be given value either socially or politically.
What do you think about socialist market economies, where groups of individuals can start businesses just like in capitalism, but these businesses are always collectively owned by their workers? Existing worker coops have shown to be more stable and often more efficient than privately owned enterprise.
I don't have an issue with co-ops, I think they're great. However, can you provide any examples of entire economies being run by co-ops? I feel like co-ops can only ever be local businesses, you can't run a complex corporation like an Apple or Amazon as a co-op. I feel like at a certain point, you will need a hierarchical structure and clear chain of command to maintain organization, order, and efficiency. It's simple to run a grocery store as a co-op, but it's borderline impossible to do with a company like McDonald's. I think the better alternative here is to have strong labor unions and mandate corporations to compensate their workers with shares of the company they work in on top of their salaries.
Pure objective fact lmao cmon.
If you want to argue against facts then go ahead and actually do it. Trying to laugh it off doesn't make you right in the slightest nor does it disprove what I said in any way, shape, or form.
What aspects of capitalism do you like?
There's a few:
- It works: That already puts it above it's competition as it has been proven to actually sustain economies and generate wealth. Basically it's been shown to work multiple times across multiple eras in multiple vastly different societies.
- Economic growth: Market competition and profit incentives push businesses to expand output and invest, which tends to increase overall wealth and GDP over time.
- Innovation: This is something we never saw from the Soviet Union or Maoist China or any other socialist country. There's a lot to criticize the for profit system for, but one of the things it does extremely well is come up with new ideas and better products.
- Efficiency: This is one of the biggest strengths in capitalism. When it comes to generating the most value out of something, no other system deliver the same levels of efficiency, especially if there's a healthy amount of competition that's enforced.
- Consumer choice: Under a socialist system, for example, there's no such thing as consumer choice. The "public" (aka the government) decides what gets produced for everybody, and that's all you get. If you don't like it then that's too bad, and if you want to make changes then you have to go through gauntlet of government bureaucracy. Under capitalism, the economy is both unplanned and has for profit competition, therefore, there should always be variety in the markets... at least in theory.
- Adaptability: Fairly straight forward, capitalist economies tend to adjust relatively quickly to changes in demand, technology, or global conditions because decisions are decentralized.
- Resource allocation: People often think that this is a strength of a socialist system because the government can move resource where they're needed the most, but I disagree. We've seen this not be the case one to many times. Supply and demand is simply a much simpler, much more effective way of resource allocation. Wealth creation: Capitalism has been shown time and time again that it's very effective at generating large amounts of total wealth, raising average living standards in many countries.
That being said, I don't think pure capitalism is a good system. Capitalism requires strong checks and balances that make sure it's running correctly. There needs to be a strong government that effectively regulates harmful practices, enforces contracts, enforces competition, and protects the environment, workers, and consumers. There also need to be an active and educated public that holds corrupt politicians and bad companies accountable. Capitalism by itself is a good tool, but it's not a solution for everything. There still need to be government programs on top of it all to fill the gaps. Imo a well regulated capitalist economy with a strong safety net that's governed by a free, fair, and secular democratic government is the best system humanity has produced to date. This is what the best countries in history have, and this is what we should strive for.
I think they should be used as means to an end, not worshipped as the end itself.
I already told you that I'm not married to any system multiple times, you just refuse to accept my answer. I don't think any system should be worshiped. Things like economic models shouldn't be seen as religions, but rather as tools. Societies can and should mix and match whichever ideas meet their needs and work best for them. Things only start being a problem when a society becomes dogmatic with this sort of thing or some people try to force ideas that have been proven to be failures.
Pointing out historical facts is not racism you dimwit
You're missing the point. Your proposal makes zero sense for any of the parties involved. Your reasoning is not sound, your claimed benefits aren't real, and the compromise is incoherent.
It makes zero sense for Egypt to give the Sinai. That's very strategic land that keeps the Suez Canal firmly in Egyptian control while also acting as a buffer between Israel/Palestine and the Egyptian heartland.
It makes zero sense for Israel to over the Sinai as it's just a massive patch of desert. They already controlled it once before and they gave it up in exchange for recognition. That's how worthless it was to Israel. The West Bank, unlike the Sinai is actually habitable, fertile land that solves one Israel's biggest geopolitical problems, which is that the current core of the Israeli heartland is too thin and exposed.
It makes zero sense for the Palestinians in the West Bank to be ruled by Egypt which is not similar to them culturally nor is it connected to them physically. They'll just end up being a neglected after thought by the government in Cairo.
Your proposal does not answer the question of what will happen to the 700k+ settlers in the West Bank, or how any of the parties would feel about them leaving/staying. It doesn't answer how the relocation of the 2 million Gazans is going to go. It doesn't answer how the West Bank is going to absorb the 2 million Gazans, when the West Bank only has a population of 2.5 million itself, meaning that the population would literally double.
Like it's just a flawed proposal all around. I'm not sure why you're doubling down on it when you could easily come up with a better proposal.
No, I'm calling the communist society that Marxist are trying to ultimately achieve a utopia, which it is. But considering how you ignored everything and went for another disingenuous attempt tells me everything I need to know about you. I won't reply to you again.
The problem is that statement is so sweeping and general that it isnt really saying anything. You could say that about literally any part of the world.
The statement could be applicable elsewhere, but it is most definitely applicable here. Just because it could be generalized that doesn't mean it's not true or that it doesn't hold value.
Jews and Christians are “people of the book” according to Islam and the Abrahamic religions coexisted relatively harmoniously for millennia.
I'm pretty damn knowledgeable on islam. I'm an exmuslim who studied the religion for a long time and I've also lived in Iraq and Syria, I've seen these things first hand, and I can tell you, that you're not even scratching the surface here. Your understanding of islam and how it treats religious minorities under its rule is very much incomplete.
islamic scriptures (quran and the hadiths) are very explicit about the fact that islam is inherently superior to all other religions because it is the perfect word of allah. Those who don't follow it are going against allah, and therefore they are enemies of islam. The religion treats is EXTREMELY hostile to anything that threatens islam. Atheism is punishable by death, polytheism is punishable by death, apostasy is punishable by death, criticizing islam is punishable by death. There are dozens of verses and sahih hadiths that talk about how Jews and Christians are vermin who will try to corrupt the pure hearts of muslims with lies about the allah and his messenger. It specifically gives stories about Jews are lying backstabbers who should never be trusted.
Like just take a minute and read these verses in the quran:
https://quranx.com/5.51?Context=3
https://quranx.com/5.64?Context=3
https://quranx.com/5.82?Context=3
Also take a minute to read these sahih hadiths:
https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/Reference/Hadith-2922/
https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/Reference/Hadith-2767d/
https://quranx.com/Hadith/AbuDawud/DarusSalam/Hadith-4542/
https://quranx.com/Hadith/Muslim/Reference/Hadith-1731a/
This is stuff that makes Hitler blush. Antisemitism is a core part of islam, and always was from the very beginning. Pretending that islam is a great peaceful religion that got along with other religions is a delusional take that's only held by ignorant westerners who have a completely falsified image of the religion. This is the reality. islam has never gotten along well with Christians, Jews or any other religion for that matter because it's inherently against the religion to do so.
The Jew hatred seen in mediaeval and modern Europe was completely alien.
Again, this is something that's entirely false. Medieval europe was definitely very antisemitic, however, it was not worse than the muslim world at any point in history. This view you have of islam is not based in reality. Statements like this tell me that your knowledge on islamic history is very limited. The history of antisemitism in the muslim world was and still is just as severe, extensive, and chronic as Europe.
The rise in sectarian violence is relatively knew in the region and coincides, funnily enough, with the establishment of the European Zionist colony in Palestine.
I have no idea where you're getting your information from, but these statements have no historical accuracy. Sectarian violence is the norm in this region. That's literally THE defining trait of this region. You can't substitute actual factual history with ideological narratives. This idea that this region was all flowers and rainbows where everybody lives in peace and harmony while singing and dancing together before Israel showed up is not reality. That's a myth. The reality is that this region and the middle east at large has such a comically long history of sectarian violence that it make statements like this equally frustrating and silly.
Before the modern states of Israel and Palestine and even the British mandate, this area was controlled by the Ottoman Turks. The Turks had a system of divide an conquer that they used to oppress all the non muslims and non Turks to keep the muslim Turks at the top. The Ottomans would employ tactics such evacuating entire towns when there's a war nearby, but only allowing muslims to go back, not Christians, Jews, or other religious minorities. They place restrictions on certain religious groups from migrating to cities that are culturally significant to them (like Jews being banned from moving to Hebron and Jerusalem). All of this while, these people are subjugated under islamic rule where they're treated as second class citizens. It's not religious minorities, even muslims from other ethnicities like the Kurds and Arabs got rough treatment. There were so many revolts, genocides, ethnic cleansing campaigns, and wars under the Ottoman Empire that there exist lists of lists of the atrocities that they committed.
It's not just the Ottomans, if you go back to the Arab caliphates like the Malmuks, Umayyads, and the Abbasids, you'll see that they have a long history of exiling Jews, Christians and other religious minorities as well ethnically cleansing them, enslaving their women and children, oppressing them, and constantly going to wars with them in order to conquer them.If you go back even further, you'll see the Crusader states did the same thing with muslims, Jews, and others. Even the Romans did similar things.
The reason for this is because religion in the middle east has a different place in society than in the west. In western societies, religion is seen as a personal matter. You believe what you want to believe, and as long as you're not bothering anybody else there's no problem with it. At the end of the day everybody has this right as long as they except the secular system of governance. That's not how works in the middle east, your religion is your whole identity.
Your religion defines who your people are, what your public beliefs are, what your culture is, how open you can be, where you get to live, what your social status is in society, who your friends will be, who get to marry, how you get treated, and who's going to look out for you. If your religious group and another hate each other, then you have to hate the other group. If you don't then you'll be cast out and you could lose your place in society. You also have to assume everybody else from the other religious group is out to get you, and they will assume you're out to get them. If you try to get out of it by leaving your religion then you'll branded as a traitor and you'll be treated as an outcast or people will come to take your life. It's very serious, and that sort of dynamic is simply foreign to people in the west. This is why things like collective punishment, sectarianism tensions, and religious hatred are so high in the middle east. Religion just has a different meaning over there.
My point is you have no idea what communists are trying to achieve or have achieved.
You don't have any basis for this claim besides the fact you're mad that I'm openly critical of Marx and this shitty ideology. If that was the case then you would've provided your case, but you haven't and you probably won't. Communism is very much a utopia no matter how much you twist it. It's fits the definition to a T. Marx pretending his utopia isn't a utopia and then going to attack other people for their utopias is like a closeted homosexual denying their sexuality and being homophobic to cope with their reality.
Also he was an economist lol.
He was both
You're full of shit. You're just mad because I'm openly critical of this shitty ideology instead of blindly accepting it like you. Keep in mind, everything you said here applies directly to you. Instead of asking me what I disagreed with it, you arrogantly assumed that I was ignorant and can't define the ideology solely because you can't accept that there are people who understand the ideology and hate it.
I could've told you to fuck off right then and there, but I actually gave you an honest summary of what the ideology is. Once again, instead of responding to what I said, you refused to accept that other people disagreed with your incredibly myopic worldview and you arrogantly assumed that I was ignorant and haven't read any of his works. You even went out of your to insult me by calling me brainwashed, because apparently to you, that's the only way people can ever disagree with his holiness, Karl Marx.
Once again, I could told you to fuck off, but I decided to just tell you the works that I read. You could've just started a discussion based on them. Instead, you rejected what I'm telling yet again, and arrogantly assumed that I was lying because how can anybody possibly disagree with the holy scriptures of the prophet Karl Marx after reading them? That clearly impossible.
All your comments follow the same pattern of: You reject the criticism that's right in front of you -> you make a bunch of character attacks -> you pretend that I'm incapable of responding or articulating criticisms even though they're, again, right in front of you. In fact, I'm the only one who has been articulating thoughts and criticism, you haven't provided shit. You haven't addressed anything that I said and you haven't provided anything of substance of your own. All of you've done is cope with whats in front of you and attacked my character 3 times in a row without ever bothering to engage with me in good faith even once. Now you're after doing this, you're going to have the conceit to accuse me of attacking your character? You're accusing me of being incapable of engaging in good faith? What a fucking hypocrite you are.
I was waiting for you to start saying something worthy of a discussion at some point, but it's clear at this point that you're not going to do that because you're the one who's incapable, not me. I think now is the right time to tell you to fuck off.
Communism can mean many things, and many things that call themselves communism have very little to nothing to do with what Marx wrote about.
I'm talking about the original communist ideology as derived by Marx himself. I'm not talking about people like Stalin or Xi Jinping here who could be argued as not communist even though they described themselves as much.
As an aside, Marx was not just a grumpy philosopher, he was also an economist who laid the foundation for thinking of the economy in terms of power, ownership and democracy. The Marxian school of economics is still influential today.
Influential doesn't mean it's correct or has any actual value. His analysis was flawed and his proposed solutions were even worse. His work can only make sense if you accept his assumptions as axioms. A lot of people did, but when they tried to carry out what he prescribed... things didn't go as planned because, well, his assumptions were flawed. Not every philosopher deserves respect just because they're influential. Mussolini also invented a very influential ideology that's unfortunately still popular today, but that doesn't mean he and his ideology are above criticism or worthy or respect just because.
Your ramblings about “communism has always failed” leads me to believe that you are talking about Marxism-Leninism, which I also believe is outdated and dominated by dogmatic thinking, but I digress.
If you're going to reduce my criticism to "ramblings" then you're already in engaging in bad faith. You can't seem to accept that the core idea itself is flawed. It doesn't matter what flavor it comes in, the result will inevitably be the same.
Now let me rephrase: Existing socialism has worked many times, but has always been stomped out by brutal capitalist imperialism.
Why are you moving the goal posts? Communism is a specific ideology, socialism is just a general economic model. These are not the same thing. With that being said pure socialism in any form hasn't worked either. What examples do you have to prove this? Just start listing them. I'm positive that your list won't be based on actual results but on speculation and assumptions.
Also, this idea that the reason why socialism has never worked is because of US or Western intervention is pure cope. Not only does this ignore all the instances where socialism collapsed in on itself, but also ignores the fact the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent China, also tried to brutally stomp out capitalism all around the world. They toppled democratically elected government, they installed puppet dictators, they committed genocides, they invaded countries, they employed propaganda campaigns, they've done it all. Marxists always conveniently forget about the other half of the cold war. Regardless, capitalism survived the onslaught, socialism didn't. This is because socialism is simply a more fragile system that can't withstand disruption.
A brief look at the history of central and south america, and all other colonially exploited areas should show you that the system that has produced the most suffering, destroyed the most democracies, is capitalism. Let me rephrase: Capitalism has never worked.
That's such an odd, vague, and cherrypicked statement that proves nothing but makes a bunch of declarations. Why focus on South America and not the world at large? Capitalism has done wonders for China, India, Poland, Romania, Spain, Ireland, the Baltic countries, Germany, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Botswana, and the list goes on and on. Actually even in South America, countries like Chile and Uruguay have had their best economic stretches under capitalism while countries like Venezuela declined substantially under socialism. It's silly to try and reduce an entire continent to a single misguided soundbite.
Capitalism is a very flawed system, but it is pure objective fact that it works, maybe a little too well. The criticisms of capitalism were never that it didn't work, but that it has no breaks, it keeps going until things break. In terms of pure functionality, capitalism has been proven to take any economy and turn into something that's much more efficient, wealthy, and overflowing with surplus of goods. Capitalism can increase the industrial capacity of any country that let's it do it's thing. Pretending that capitalism never worked is simply just a false statement.
So again, what kind of economic system do you advocate for?
I gave you my answer, you just refuse to accept it.
You’re such a boring anticommunist proapgandist, you’ve been educated a million times in this platform and you refuse to absorb the smallest knowledge.
Lmao you're an idiot. You're NOT knowledgeable, and the fact that you're so arrogant that you think you're in a position to educate just shows how much of dimwit you are. Idiots like you seethe every time I make the most obvious criticisms of this shitty ideology because you can't prove me wrong. I bring up
If communism doesnt work, why did it take 1bn people out of poverty and save Europe from Nazism?
It quite literally did neither. The Soviet Union were literally the closest allies of the Nazis. Stalin and Hitler signed a pact and invaded Poland together. They're literally half the reason why WWII started. Things only changed when Hitler betrayed Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union, and even then, the Soviet Union did not save Europe from the Nazis. That ignores the massive contributions from the rest of the allies, mainly the US and the British Empire, who liberated the other half of Europe AND took down the other two axis powers by themselves. Not to mention that the Soviet Union didn't liberate shit, they were occupiers themselves who were just as brutal as the Nazis in a lot of ways. There's a reason why every single Eastern European country despises communism and the Soviet Union as much as they despise fascism and Nazi Germany.
Also communism is notorious for dragging societies into poverty. There's not a single example of communism taking a society into a better place then where it has left it. Every single instance in history has either resulted in collapse or revert to capitalism in some form. I assume you're referring to China's economic rise lifting 800 million people out of poverty. But if you had even the most elementary understanding of Chinese history, which you very clearly don't, then you would know that this rise started in the late 80s because that's when China officially adopted capitalism.
Mao was a true communist and China under him was well and truly socialist. This was the darkest chapter in China's 5000 year old history. Socialism was such a colossal failure that it has resulted in the biggest man made disaster in human history, the Great Chinese Famine, which killed somewhere between 15 and 55 million people. This coupled with the Great leap forward and a bunch of other campaigns, somewhere between 40 and 80 million people were killed as a direct result of Mao and his policies. This makes Mao the dictator with the highest death toll in history. All the while, the Chinese economy was in complete shambles and the country was on the verge of collapse yet again. When Mao died in the 1976, the next leader of China, Deng Xiaoping made it very clear to the public that country was going to go into a de-Maoization similar to what Khrushchev did after Stalin died.
Starting in the late 70s and throughout the 80s, Deng Xiaoping made a series reforms where China adopted capitalism and liberalized the economy. He allowed foreign investment to come into the country, he allowed people to hold private businesses, he allowed farmers to keep surplus crops and sell them for profit, he loosened restrictions on free markets, state owned corporations were restructured to have a lot more autonomy, he established "special economic zones" all over the country where capitalism ran free. China's GDP growth correlates with these reform 1:1. If you look at a graph of China's economic growth it starts and directly correlates with these reforms. The vast majority of the world, including China itself acknowledge that capitalism is what's responsible for China's economic boom.
This basic information. If piss poor propaganda and misinformation that can easily be debunked with a 30 second google search is your "education" then you take the crown for being the biggest clown on lemmy.
Europe has figured it out so has New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Japan, and so on. In fact, only capitalist systems have ever produced genuine democracies. All the socialist examples in history were authoritarian governed by an unelected ruling elite.
That's not competition. I don't think you understand what that means.
Oh the long winded “Palestine desnt even really exist” zionist guy wants to spew comments. OK.
If that's what you got from my comment then you really are an idiot.
Give this a read.
The article doesn't contradict any of the points that I made.
And you call out the Ottomans empires slavery. They abolished slavery in 1840. England in 1834. The US not till 1865 I think. You going to go after England and the US too then or is it only an issue in selective cases where its convenient for you?
The Ottomans practiced slavery for 500 years and had one of the largest slave trades in history. Playing whataboutism doesn't disprove my point, it just shows that you're dimwit who's engaging in bad faith.
. I explained my lense which is examining policy and where it is heading. I also took a stab at yours which you have confirmed. It amounts to a societal pendulum, which is of course is my very reductionist view of it.
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with looking policy or the direction it's heading. It's an okay standard to hold. However, the standard doesn't actually contradict my point which is that societies aren't static. I disagree with the notion that it's pendulum. Societies do shift back and forth from have more progressive governments to having more conservative governments. However, the iterations of each of those can be vastly different from their predecessors.
For example, FDR styled US politics in the mid 20th century and radical Republican styled US politics in the mid 19th century are both technically left wing, but they're incredibly different from each other and they have very different views and platforms. However, I think that's besides the point which is that change is inevitable. I think you can agree that this something that's difficult to argue against.
It is a common but misleading trope on many levels but does have some validity depending on how you look at it. While on the surface this may may often seem true the devil is in always in the details.
While I don't necessarily disagree with this statement in of itself, I do think it applies to you in this comment quite a bit. All of the examples that you provided are missing a lot of important context.
There are more slaves today than at any time in history.
This is true, but only because there's that many more people today. In the 1800s, the world only had 1 billion people, today there's 8 billion. At the peak of the Trans Atlantic trade in the early 19th century alone somewhere around 12 million to 15 million Africans were enslaved. Keep in mind, at the time there were other major slave trades that were just as big like the Indian ocean slave trade and the Arab slave trade. Today, most estimates put the number of slaves at 50 million people. So by absolute numbers, yes there's more slaves, but by the share of the population slavery is actually much lower than what it was back then.
they still have managed to poison every human with forever chemicals and micro plastics.
The vast majority of plastics and forever chemicals are produced in Asia. Asia is also the biggest polluter of both by a big margin.
Not to mention other future catastrophic calamities like the oceans dying off or global warming set to displace billions of people.
Trying to blame this on the US is just silly. Global warming is the result of industrialization which most of the world has gone through. US emissions have actually be steadily going down for decades now. Once again, Asia is the biggest polluter of greenhouse gasses, and the rates are actually increasing there. There's a reason why global warming has to be a global effort.
Policies are not always enforced and can be also be used for nefarious purposes.
Which is why you need to verify policy with actual data. Policy is still useful as it can tell you the political leanings of a society and the desires of the public. However, data shows how serious that society is about something or what the results were.
Of course, we later came to realize that it really was an attack on minorities which amounts to a slow burn genocide by the white nationalists.
While there's no denying that there a lot of racist motivations behind the war on drugs, I think the use of genocide here is inappropriate. Genocide is a very specific term that describes a very specific event. This term cannot and should not be used to describe any act of injustice or violence. That just devalues the weight behind it.
History teaches nothing about the computer or what things like the military industrial complex has achieved through rampant fascism around the world. While it can serve as a predictor of some human behavior it can’t explain how to handle AI. I think this is where history can’t help us even if it is fascinating to study.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what history is as a subject. We don't study to predict the future, we study history to understand the past. By learning about what the people before us did, what they went through, and what they achieved we can better understand ourselves by learning from their mistakes, their knowledge, and their success. We can recognize patterns from history that we can extrapolate on to the present to make educated guesses as to why things are happening as they are or what will happen because of what we're doing now.
Obviously history says nothing about computers or AI. However, history is filled similar situations that we can draw patterns and lessons from. Take for example, the light bulb. Before them, cities you used to rely on oil lamps for light. Each city had a team of lamplighters that would go from one streetlamp to the next lightening them on fire and making sure they have fuel. This was an entire industry and a lot of people made their livelihoods from this. But when the light bulb came around, it was simply a superior option that was brighter, more reliable, cheaper, and much easier to maintain. When cities decided to electrify their street lights, there was an insane opposition to it by lamplighters and their industry. They feared that their jobs would be automated away and they did everything in their power to oppose it. There was a lot of lobbying to ban light bulbs, a lot strikes and protests, there were even instances of lamplighters breaking electrified streetlights to send a message that they were not welcome. Obviously with time, they lost that the battle and electrified streetlights are now the standard. However, even today there are some towns and cities in Europe that still have lamplighters as remnants of the opposition at the time.
The point we have examples in history of groundbreaking technologies that revolutionized the world. We've seen how these intentions disrupted established industries and how much they hated and resisted it, how it gave rise to new industries, and how these inventions automated away the jobs of a lot of people. We can look to history to see what lessons we can take to best handle our present day groundbreaking inventions and how they're going to disrupt people's lives. I think it would be foolish to disregard history because there aren't exact examples. History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme.
This is a load of nonsense. Socialism is not a blanket term that you can manipulate to mean whatever you like, the same goes for capitalism where you turn it into a pejorative for anything you don't like. Democracy is also very much not socialism is any way, shape, or form and they have zero connection to each other.
Socialism is an economic model that revolves the concept that all the resources, property, and means of production in a society are publicly owned and managed, aka a centrally planned economy. Democracy is when the people govern themselves. There are ideologies that try to interoperate both, these are very much not the same thing. The same goes for capitalism which is an economic model which revolves around economies being run by free markets, aka unplanned economies.
Socialism is NOT state capitalism, it's NOT welfare programs, and it NOT public schools or infrastructure. A country like Denmark is NOT socialist because it has universal healthcare and public schools. In fact when Bernie Sanders called them socialist in his 2016 campaign, the PM of Denmark at the time literally came out and correct him by saying that Denmark was capitalist. An actual example of socialism would be the Soviet Union or China under Mao.
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What a shit take. You're information hygiene has to be completely cooked to defend tabloids like this. This is an objectively poor source that's basically just the Daily Mail 2.0 that pumps out clickbait.
This article is reporting on the same thing, but it is so much better:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8pz5nm6r8o
Supporting shitty tabloids doesn't become okay just because they pump out headlines you agree with, the point is the quality.