The TikTok ban and Donald Trump's rise to power show how fragile our social media accounts are. We must normalize and invest in decentralized social media.
I just wish we had a bit more political balance here… I’m not talking about fascists, but more people that don’t blame everything on capitalism would be kind of nice…
Perhaps it is balanced you just want it to be more in line with your views?
I have never met anybody who said “yes, this community is perfectly balanced.” Everyone always thinks it needs to get more in line with their beliefs and values
While I do agree that there are other problems like racism and bigotry which existed before capitalism (based on an answer you gave in another comment) and while I do agree these also need to be addressed, I do disagree that capitalism isn’t a major source of problems of modernity.
Why?
Because the cornerstone of capitalism is to use money to generate more money in a feedback loop towards (nonexistent) “infinite money” (which is different from feudalism, roman empire or ancient Egypt which all had some sort of market without being capitalist economies).
SInce it is impossible to make infinity money, an inherent part of capitalism are the crises cycles of boom and bust.
It also makes the creation of services as an afterthought (because making money is more important) and it is also tied to the enshitfication we’re seeing today.
I think you’re calling as “capitalism” a thing that is actually “technological innovation (under capitalism)”
We’re all aware of free/open source softwares
We’re all aware that it is possible to develop technological innovation outside of capitalist framework (and again: Capitalism = Using money to make more (infinite) money)
almost all of scientific researches advances are because of passion of the researches instead of the greed of capitalism.
Yes… Everyone “needs” money to survive. But I hope you do agree that nobody in the world needs billions of dollars to simply survive.
for God’s sake, a lot of people living in “third world” dream of earning 300 dollars a month to survive and consider that making 1000 dollars a month is a small luxury (I’m from brasil and 1000 dollars is around R$ 4000 or R$ 5000 while most people lives with R$3000 or less)
What I’m saying is that, past the required money for surviving and for having a few “luxuries”, there is no need for anyone having millions or billions of dollars every month and that it would be possible to keep scientific and technological grow under such conditions because curiosity and desire for changes are part of human nature.
if it was entirely impossible for humans to develop things without being paid before, then nothing around open/free software would exist.
For real. I once had the misfortune to admit to having some Centrist ideas, and the down votes were immediate and generous. No discussion, just personal attacks.
If nearly everything currently wrong with the country weren’t due to capitalism run amok I could sympathize. But unfortunately it’s not the 1960s anymore.
Okay, buddy. It’s all capitalism. Good luck with your pamphlets! I actually like the idea of making Western nations question capitalism… This said, no. It’s not “nearly everything” wrong with the world.
Wake up, my friend. It’s 2025. Just because people in power are getting worse, doesn’t mean we can’t strive to be better.
Just because people in power are getting worse, doesn’t mean we can’t strive to be better.
Yep, let’s rake our forests and rinse our recycling to handle climate change!
If your house burns to the ground, no worries, you can just collect floatsom from the beach and build a new one!
Dude, some things cannot be solved via positive vibes and being a good neighbor, and if you want my honest opinion on it, I think pushing everyday people to be accountable for everything while the broligarchs are accountable for nothing is a big part of the problem.
In other words, you should strive to be better than an apologist for the system.
Wake up, my friend. It’s 2025. Just because people in power are getting worse, doesn’t mean we can’t strive to be better.
Except the entire capitalist system works against us striving to be better. It’s not like the American health care system sucks because the people in power suck. It sucks because to fix it you’d have to take capitalism out of the health care system because capitalism drives the profit motive within the health care system which makes it suck.
Same with transitioning from oil to renewables. Fucking Exxon knew half a century ago that climate change is a thing and will lead to catastrophic results. They were in prime position to shift from oil to renewables and reinvent the global energy system, but it was more profitable to run disinformation campaigns and actively work against the transition so they did that instead. Even now some of the oil CEO-s are like “we’re already so fucked there’s no reason to go for renewables so let us keep making that money”.
Same is now going on with electric vehicles. It’s much more profitable to sell ICE cars and fight the change instead of actually changing. I don’t remember if it was Mercedes or WV or some other manufacturer, anyway one of the big german car CEOs pretty much went “we can’t change to electric vehicles in time for the regulations. But you shouldn’t punish us with fines because we’re too big to fail.”
The list goes on. The reason people here are so anti-capitalist is because most of us see that even if we want to strive to be better we can’t because capitalism keeps dragging us down. It’s like that scene in “Don’t look up” where the world comes together to save itself and just as the crisis is about to be averted the capitalist tech bro fucks it all up because who cares if we’re risking our entire planet, there’s money to be made. Capitalism will try its best to undermine any effort that prevents maximizing profits.
Do you really think we’ll get to the 15 hour work week in 2030, like Keynes predicted? Definitely not under the capitalist system. We have empirical evidence that 32 hour work week improves productivity and we can’t even get that because the capital owners refuse to accept it. Literally something that could easily improve all our lives and we can’t get it done because of capitalism.
Nobody is against striving to be better but wanting to get rid of capitalism is striving to be better because capitalism is like a steel ball attached to your ankle. It’s just weighing down all your efforts to be better.
It sure is. It’s important to touch grass on a daily basis to stay sane. I personally go outside take a stroll and caress some leaves.
Regarding your initial point : I see “capitalism” as the family of systems that enable that kind of IT monopoly. Sure, human traits such as greed and bigotry are probably the source of evil but it seems to me they have to be tapped, and enabled. The fact that the conversation often ultimately turns back to capitalism is legitimate imho.
Yes, it is. But it’s not the only problem… In fact, there are a thousand other problems I wish we could all discuss with at least half the fervor as this topic.
I’m sorry bud, but that’s how the rumour mill worked since humans could talk.
The message your trying to bring is good, don’t get me wrong. You are trying to currently change human nature somewhat.
Not trying to get into a whole ugly thing, just curious what your pro-capitalism stance is. Because I would definitely fall into this big Lemmy category of seeing 90-905% of modern problems being rooted in capitalism. So I would (civilly!) disagree, no doubt. Doesn’t mean we can’t have a reasonable discussion!
I don’t have much time and energy for long discussions, but I just wanna share my feelings.
I feel like people here see capitalism as a very black and white thing. Either it’s there and corrupting everything or it’s gone and everything is awesome. Personally I don’t think that’s the case. In my opinion there are some cases where the market can solve things more efficiently than a government institution, granted that this market is regulated and controlled by the government. I’m against unbounded capitalism like we see way too often nowadays.
But here in western Europe, while certainly not perfect, the situation is way better than in the US. The government controls companies, gives them a slap on the wrist if they get too greedy. And while it still poisons a lot that it touches, the competitive aspect of it also makes sure that many inefficiencies are cut. In my opinion even we are not regulating it enough, and I do consider myself left-wing. But completely abolishing capitalism doesn’t make sense to me either.
I think some things are better left to the government, stuff like healthcare, public transport, utilities like water or maybe even energy. Other things are better left private (but regulated): restaurants, barbers, supermarkets, most product development like phones, cameras, cars, computers, etc. There’s a huge grey area there that I don’t really have an opinion on.
But I don’t see how a society without capitalism can provide stuff like decent smartphones, game consoles, restaurants, festivals, etc. These more “luxury” goods rely on competition to innovate and provide decent experiences, and here capitalism works better in my view.
Proving your point…about what? I was just curious to hear someone’s thoughts who went against the idea that most modern problems can be traced back to the roots of capitalism. But fuck me, right?
Public provision of services is not socialism, it’s just common sense. The first mass state pension system was rolled out by that crusty reactionary Bismarck. Every rightwing country still has fire departments and (mostly) public road systems too. Not doing it that way is just stupidity, not ideology.
What is socialism is when people doing the work have control of the means of production. Control, not a token share. One example is cooperatives. By this definition (which goes back to Karl Marx), neither the USSR nor Communist China were socialist, they were totalitarian state capitalist entitites. China still is, though less incompetent than under Mao. And this isn’t some revisionist point of view. Rosa Luxemburg and other contemporaries saw it happening at the onset.
I just wish we had a bit more political balance here… I’m not talking about fascists, but more people that don’t blame everything on capitalism would be kind of nice…
Perhaps it is balanced you just want it to be more in line with your views?
I have never met anybody who said “yes, this community is perfectly balanced.” Everyone always thinks it needs to get more in line with their beliefs and values
There are a few misconceptions in your comment:
While I do agree that there are other problems like racism and bigotry which existed before capitalism (based on an answer you gave in another comment) and while I do agree these also need to be addressed, I do disagree that capitalism isn’t a major source of problems of modernity.
Why?
Because the cornerstone of capitalism is to use money to generate more money in a feedback loop towards (nonexistent) “infinite money” (which is different from feudalism, roman empire or ancient Egypt which all had some sort of market without being capitalist economies).
SInce it is impossible to make infinity money, an inherent part of capitalism are the crises cycles of boom and bust.
It also makes the creation of services as an afterthought (because making money is more important) and it is also tied to the enshitfication we’re seeing today.
I think you’re calling as “capitalism” a thing that is actually “technological innovation (under capitalism)”
We’re all aware of free/open source softwares
We’re all aware that it is possible to develop technological innovation outside of capitalist framework (and again: Capitalism = Using money to make more (infinite) money)
almost all of scientific researches advances are because of passion of the researches instead of the greed of capitalism.
Yes… Everyone “needs” money to survive. But I hope you do agree that nobody in the world needs billions of dollars to simply survive.
for God’s sake, a lot of people living in “third world” dream of earning 300 dollars a month to survive and consider that making 1000 dollars a month is a small luxury (I’m from brasil and 1000 dollars is around R$ 4000 or R$ 5000 while most people lives with R$3000 or less)
What I’m saying is that, past the required money for surviving and for having a few “luxuries”, there is no need for anyone having millions or billions of dollars every month and that it would be possible to keep scientific and technological grow under such conditions because curiosity and desire for changes are part of human nature.
if it was entirely impossible for humans to develop things without being paid before, then nothing around open/free software would exist.
For real. I once had the misfortune to admit to having some Centrist ideas, and the down votes were immediate and generous. No discussion, just personal attacks.
And we wonder how things got to where they are.
If nearly everything currently wrong with the country weren’t due to capitalism run amok I could sympathize. But unfortunately it’s not the 1960s anymore.
Okay, buddy. It’s all capitalism. Good luck with your pamphlets! I actually like the idea of making Western nations question capitalism… This said, no. It’s not “nearly everything” wrong with the world.
Wake up, my friend. It’s 2025. Just because people in power are getting worse, doesn’t mean we can’t strive to be better.
Yep, let’s rake our forests and rinse our recycling to handle climate change!
If your house burns to the ground, no worries, you can just collect floatsom from the beach and build a new one!
Dude, some things cannot be solved via positive vibes and being a good neighbor, and if you want my honest opinion on it, I think pushing everyday people to be accountable for everything while the broligarchs are accountable for nothing is a big part of the problem.
In other words, you should strive to be better than an apologist for the system.
Except the entire capitalist system works against us striving to be better. It’s not like the American health care system sucks because the people in power suck. It sucks because to fix it you’d have to take capitalism out of the health care system because capitalism drives the profit motive within the health care system which makes it suck.
Same with transitioning from oil to renewables. Fucking Exxon knew half a century ago that climate change is a thing and will lead to catastrophic results. They were in prime position to shift from oil to renewables and reinvent the global energy system, but it was more profitable to run disinformation campaigns and actively work against the transition so they did that instead. Even now some of the oil CEO-s are like “we’re already so fucked there’s no reason to go for renewables so let us keep making that money”.
Same is now going on with electric vehicles. It’s much more profitable to sell ICE cars and fight the change instead of actually changing. I don’t remember if it was Mercedes or WV or some other manufacturer, anyway one of the big german car CEOs pretty much went “we can’t change to electric vehicles in time for the regulations. But you shouldn’t punish us with fines because we’re too big to fail.”
The list goes on. The reason people here are so anti-capitalist is because most of us see that even if we want to strive to be better we can’t because capitalism keeps dragging us down. It’s like that scene in “Don’t look up” where the world comes together to save itself and just as the crisis is about to be averted the capitalist tech bro fucks it all up because who cares if we’re risking our entire planet, there’s money to be made. Capitalism will try its best to undermine any effort that prevents maximizing profits.
Do you really think we’ll get to the 15 hour work week in 2030, like Keynes predicted? Definitely not under the capitalist system. We have empirical evidence that 32 hour work week improves productivity and we can’t even get that because the capital owners refuse to accept it. Literally something that could easily improve all our lives and we can’t get it done because of capitalism.
Nobody is against striving to be better but wanting to get rid of capitalism is striving to be better because capitalism is like a steel ball attached to your ankle. It’s just weighing down all your efforts to be better.
Most civilized countries know that there is more than one way to implement capitalism, and the current US way is a catastrophic shit show.
(segregation was a legacy of capital interests pushing race theory to justify slavery)
I wonder what else is to blame ?
Human nature? Greed? Racism? Biggotry?
There’s an upsetting number of topics… And now I’m depressed. Because life is depressing when you think about it too much, isn’t it?
It sure is. It’s important to touch grass on a daily basis to stay sane. I personally go outside take a stroll and caress some leaves.
Regarding your initial point : I see “capitalism” as the family of systems that enable that kind of IT monopoly. Sure, human traits such as greed and bigotry are probably the source of evil but it seems to me they have to be tapped, and enabled. The fact that the conversation often ultimately turns back to capitalism is legitimate imho.
So, capitalism then.
Too late, capitalism is the problenz
Yes, it is. But it’s not the only problem… In fact, there are a thousand other problems I wish we could all discuss with at least half the fervor as this topic.
But no. This is the topic.
I’m sorry bud, but that’s how the rumour mill worked since humans could talk. The message your trying to bring is good, don’t get me wrong. You are trying to currently change human nature somewhat.
Not trying to get into a whole ugly thing, just curious what your pro-capitalism stance is. Because I would definitely fall into this big Lemmy category of seeing 90-905% of modern problems being rooted in capitalism. So I would (civilly!) disagree, no doubt. Doesn’t mean we can’t have a reasonable discussion!
I don’t have much time and energy for long discussions, but I just wanna share my feelings.
I feel like people here see capitalism as a very black and white thing. Either it’s there and corrupting everything or it’s gone and everything is awesome. Personally I don’t think that’s the case. In my opinion there are some cases where the market can solve things more efficiently than a government institution, granted that this market is regulated and controlled by the government. I’m against unbounded capitalism like we see way too often nowadays.
But here in western Europe, while certainly not perfect, the situation is way better than in the US. The government controls companies, gives them a slap on the wrist if they get too greedy. And while it still poisons a lot that it touches, the competitive aspect of it also makes sure that many inefficiencies are cut. In my opinion even we are not regulating it enough, and I do consider myself left-wing. But completely abolishing capitalism doesn’t make sense to me either.
I think some things are better left to the government, stuff like healthcare, public transport, utilities like water or maybe even energy. Other things are better left private (but regulated): restaurants, barbers, supermarkets, most product development like phones, cameras, cars, computers, etc. There’s a huge grey area there that I don’t really have an opinion on.
But I don’t see how a society without capitalism can provide stuff like decent smartphones, game consoles, restaurants, festivals, etc. These more “luxury” goods rely on competition to innovate and provide decent experiences, and here capitalism works better in my view.
LOL. I’m not pro-capitalism, but thank you for proving my point.
I actually think, as one example, the US’s healthcare system should 100% be socialized.
Proving your point…about what? I was just curious to hear someone’s thoughts who went against the idea that most modern problems can be traced back to the roots of capitalism. But fuck me, right?
Public provision of services is not socialism, it’s just common sense. The first mass state pension system was rolled out by that crusty reactionary Bismarck. Every rightwing country still has fire departments and (mostly) public road systems too. Not doing it that way is just stupidity, not ideology.
What is socialism is when people doing the work have control of the means of production. Control, not a token share. One example is cooperatives. By this definition (which goes back to Karl Marx), neither the USSR nor Communist China were socialist, they were totalitarian state capitalist entitites. China still is, though less incompetent than under Mao. And this isn’t some revisionist point of view. Rosa Luxemburg and other contemporaries saw it happening at the onset.