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.

    • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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      8 months 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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        8 months 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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      8 months 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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        8 months 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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          8 months 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.