Do you support sustainability, social responsibility, tech ethics, or trust and safety? Congratulations, you’re an enemy of progress. That’s according to the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.

  • Shalakushka@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Industrialization lifts people out of poverty, capitalism sinks them into poverty by stealing the value of their labor as profit.

    Also what’s with the phrase “lifted out of poverty?” The fuck does that mean? Why is this same phrase repeated anytime some criticizes capitalism? It’s like a stock phrase or talking point that makes you sound like a robot.

      • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        That’s pretty amazing considering Adam Smith didn’t write The Wealth of Nations until well after steam engines were in use in Britain.

        Capitalism must be so powerful it can time travel!

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Modern Capitalism is more a product of the Dutch East India company, chartered in the early 17th century, than Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations which was written as a critique of the subsequent 200 years of capitalist practices.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Industrialization in the USSR didn’t happen? Damn. Where did all those nuclear power plants come from, then? What about that massive agricultural surplus? How did they develop their own computer technologies?

        • kbotc@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I’m amazed that you chose the three worst things you could have picked from the USSR. They literally stole their nuclear tech from the capitalists, did not believe in genetics, period, and created famines from their poor understanding of environmental science and lack of flexibility (Gigantic centralized serf farms are bad if the local weather isn’t ideal! , and their computers were trinary garbage that barely functioned.

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            They literally stole their nuclear tech from the capitalists

            Soviets had a hydrogen bomb before their Western peers.

            What’s more the world’s first nuclear power station at Obninsk was connected to the Moscow grid in June of 1954. The Soviets outpaced their American peers in nuclear power, rocketry, and advanced electronics well into the 1970s.

            did not believe in genetics, period

            That’s flatly untrue. And it completely neglects their role in eliminating smallpox during the 1950s.

            created famines from their poor understanding of environmental science and lack of flexibility

            https://www.nytimes.com/1983/01/09/world/cia-says-soviet-can-almost-do-without-imports.html

            the average Soviet citizen consumes about 3,300 calories a day, as against 3,520 for an American. The report showed that the Soviet diet consists of far more grain and potatoes than the American diet, but less fish and meat and less sugar.

            They ended famine in Asia. A continent that suffered mass famine every ten to fifteen years was fully fed through domestic agricultural production by the end of the 1960s.

            Stalin was so stacked with grain in the 50s that he was bailing out the English colonies throughout India and Bangledish.

    • bioemerl@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Are you sure about that, because last I checked the Soviets industrialized and their people still stayed poor as hell.

      • Not_mikey@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        What’s your definition of poor? Because by the 70s most Soviet citizens had access to modern necessities like food, water, electricity, housing and healthcare, things which some Americans still don’t have. Their standard of living was significantly higher than it was in the early 1900s and better than actual poor countries in the global south. They weren’t as rich as the western nations, but those countries had a 50-100 year headstart on development so that’s to be expected.

        People will often compare the Soviet Union to the United States and point to how much less they have and blame it on communism, but that’s not a fair comparison. A fair comparison would be to a mexico that also had everything north of Mexico city bombed out in the 1940s. With that in mind the soviets don’t seem so poor.

        • bioemerl@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Because by the 70s most Soviet citizens had access to modern necessities like food, water, electricity, housing and healthcare, things which some Americans still don’t have.

          This little comparison should be enough to get you laughed out of the room.