recovering hermit, queer and anarchist of some variety, trying to be a good person. i WOULD download a car.
i mean, at the state level blue states are both not trying to get queer people killed, and are expanding access to resources. blue senators aren’t voting with the anti-queer positions on the federal level. they aren’t safe, but complacency and support are not the same thing, and the outcomes for actual people are materially worse in places where republicans have control.
that’s such a wild thing to say lol. if you’re looking at the world and it seems self-evidently simple, you are missing something.
you know, i’ve felt a similar way before. i thought that i had discovered some terrible truth, that everything is meaningless and its not worth it to try pursuing something that’s ultimately without purpose. then i got treatment for depression, and i can scarcely imagine living that way now. i still fundamentally believe that its basically all meaningless, but it turned out that my lack of drive and passion for life was far more related to the concentration of neurotransmitters in my brain and harmful patterns of thinking that it was to any coherent belief about the nature of the world, and that there is quite a lot to enjoy about being fated to die and become nothing. i’m not saying you necessarily have depression or something like that, i just remember feeling the way you describe, feeling absolutely convinced that it was the only rational way to feel about living in a world like this, and being proven wrong. with the right treatment, i found that i was unable stop myself from feeling motivated to do the things i wanted to, unable to stop myself from finding joy and fascination in the small moments of my days.
some healthy self-deprecation is definitely nice, but the eldritch implications of somebody representing their intelligence as convertible to a temperature value transgressing thermodynamic law intrigue me more.
somebody talking about their IQ would be a major red flag for me lol
i don’t know why they need to be mutually exclusive. individuals in communities with other individuals are what comprise a system. its all built from people.
that’s far from what the study says. there is no research on the effects of plastic chemicals in human beings cited in the study, the vast majority of the data is in rats and mice. saying that its responsible for trans people requires some very large leaps of logic that aren’t supported by the data or the conclusion of the study.
we have a great deal of anthropological evidence that other cultures conceive of sex and gender in wildly differing ways, both through history and in the modern era. gender identity is a complex social and cultural phenomenon, not some essential trait of the human body with a basis in endocrine function. maybe i’m just sensitive to this shit, but i can’t see somebody making a claim like this without just fundamentally misunderstanding what being trans is.
…Are a thing. They’re around. But the vast majority of people in the US (much less Europe and other developed countries, with developed public transportation) have easy access to fresh food. This…just isn’t a huge deal. It’s a public policy tweak away from being solved.
you can’t be serious about this, right? have you done any research on this at all? vast quantities of people live in food deserts in a ton of places. 23 million people. and its suspected that that figure is under-reporting.
you make a bunch of comments about being essentially fine with monopolies, which i’m going to just ignore, because if you can’t understand why entrusting so much of the things we consume to a couple megacorps is really dangerous i don’t know what to tell you. historically that doesn’t tend to lead to people having a great time, and all evidence suggests that the people working for those corporations are suffering pretty bad right now. we actually have quite a few protections in place to theoretically break up monopolies, specifically because they’re known to cause lots of suffering for people.
…In countries that are resolutely authoritarian or anarchic, and non-capitalist. I hope some day China escapes it’s authoritarian tendencies, and Africa manages to pull itself together. If they just establish functioning market economies, then the problem is solved.
i genuinely can’t believe this one lol. you are actually going to pretend that market forces aren’t the explicit driving factor of slavery in these regions. their work is directly linked into global supply chains, you bought the slave labor phone with dollars, how is that possibly something that can be solved with a market economy? the market economy is already there, and it has driven human beings into bondage. whatever. if a country is the target of rampant resource exploitation that directly enriches corporations existing under capitalism, its not non-capitalist. and even if it were true that countries that are “anarchic” or “authoritarian” weren’t capitalist by their participation in the global system of capital, the way the government got that way is not some accident of history. the exploitation started with colonial expansion, and it never stopped. rich countries pillaged these places, enriching themselves even further, and then you go and blame them for being unstable enough to continue pillaging.
Exploiting those noncapitalist countries. Shame on them. I have no problem punishing them accordingly.
is the US noncapitalist? nestle is doing this in impoverished regions of the states too. sometimes not legally, but mostly while protected by the US government.
And there just isn’t a form of government where everybody gets what they need, and nobody has proposed such a government, or a path to get to it, so it’s kinda fucking irrelevant, isn’t it?
now i know you really haven’t explored these ideas at all lol. that’s just marx. from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. he actually did propose such a government, and laid out a pretty detailed roadmap to get there. the failures of that system are well described, but nah man, there are a ton of proposed models of government based specifically about getting people what they need. that you seem not to have heard of them doesn’t really make your defense of capitalism seem well considered. wouldn’t it be nice if the government gave everybody what they needed? why shouldn’t that be our goal?
No, reality is causing massive human suffering, and capitalism is the single best tool we have to ameliorate it.
fuck that noise. the specific suffering caused by capitalism are not natural consequences of our lives as humans. there are identifiable harms caused by structures that extract resources from places without any to spare. the “developing world” is often in the state they’re in because capitalist governments took all their shit and kept all the profits.
Famines, again, were completely normal until relatively recently.
this one’s just ignorant. the frequency of crop failures in india increased drastically under British control, and there is fairly solid research to support the assertion that the extraction of wealth and food from the region by the East India Company directly led to the famines there. that is not to mention that the resource extraction capitalism has driven worldwide has made crop failures a lot more likely, and increasingly so, as we continue to ramp up our fossil fuel usage, despite knowing about the very real dangers of climate change for fucking decades.
Until you have an amazing vision and a bulletproof plan to achieve it, you’re just whining.
nah. i don’t need those things. i can criticize the many many flaws inherent to the current economic system without having a perfect alternative available for you. not that i don’t have any alternatives. again, there are so many fucking books on this stuff its insane. i know you seem to think that capitalism is not responsible for the many things capitalism is directly responsible for, but capitalists of yore fought tooth and nail to keep slaves, to work people impossible hours under unsafe conditions, to deprive people of food, water, and shelter, and they are continuing to do so to this day. the only way that’s gonna change is if we make it change. the only way we’ve improved things through the past is by directly opposing the ability for single dudes to own all the land and all the stuff and all the tools to make the stuff, and the same is true today. but you go ahead, have fun licking that boot.
if you don’t want to acknowledge the vast swaths of the human population for which options are strictly limited by capitalism seeking profits, i genuinely don’t know what to tell you.
food deserts, where the most impoverished people in the country are forced to eat processed foods because the nearest produce isle is miles away. the complete market domination of amazon. local repair shops being subsumed into corporate enterprise. planned obsolescence. the fact that nearly 100% of the vast variety of cereals you’re referring to are produced by like two corporations, alongside the vast majority of the products you see in grocery stores period. the fact that all the grocery stores are large corporate chains. the fact that nearly every single piece of consumer electronics you have in your home is almost certainly made from resources extracted by actual real life human slaves. nestle sucking up all the water from already drought stressed areas, and also more slave labor, this time with children. millions of tons of single use plastics funneled into our oceans. the fact that our access to life-saving medication is dependent on our wealth, rather than our need.
Overall, when I compare the system I’m living in with the alternatives that we’ve tried in the past…well, it’s very much a no-brainer.
i would encourage you to apply your brain to the situation. i understand, you find yourself in a comfortable position, where the luxuries of modern capitalism have availed themselves to you. not everybody is so lucky. capitalism is currently causing massive amounts of real human suffering. everything you buy, everything you’ve mentioned, has been made possible by widespread ecological destruction, rampant pollution, and exploitation, all of which have a cost in human lives.
the history of capitalism is also not so rosy. the East India Company commiting horrific acts of violence against the people of India, and contributed to massive famines that killed 15 million people. the slave trade being directly powered by capitalist interests. banana republics like in Guatemala, where the US government helped the United Fruit Company, now Chiquita, actively coup an elected leader and install a military dictator in his place to protect their monopoly over fruit farms. many South and Central american governments still suffer from the consequences of US backed dictators, as a direct result of the US government putting the profits of fruit companies over the lives of millions.
even if this is the best system we’ve ever devised, uh… its really not that fucking great for a vast quantity of human beings. the status quo causes immense amounts of human suffering, and will cause even more as we spiral into climate catastrophe.
uh huh. because our current system has definitely demonstrated that shitty companies fail, right? i don’t know how you can look at the landscape of modern corporations and come away with the thought that capitalism has in any way increased our freedom to choose, or that that really important part actually in practice weeds out shitty business practices in any way.
what companies do you like? are any of them the large multinational corporations swallowing up every speck of available market share and spiraling us towards climate apocalypse? if so, you’re wrong.
food insecurity is a huge problem in many places today, including in some of the wealthiest countries on the world. there aren’t too many communist regimes around to blame for it anymore.
how are being a capitalist and despising the direct product of capitalism compatible lol?
lots of people thought Jung was bullshit way before JBP came around.
nuh uh
i mean i get the impulse, but if we were to blindly trust any sort of knowledge system, science is the one to trust, right? like, any downsides of trusting scientific consensus are necessarily larger when trusting information sources that aren’t scientific, and if you follow through with trusting science blindly, you might ignorantly begin to believe that empirical testing and intellectual honesty is necessary for determining the truth of your beliefs!
we aren’t talking about millionaires? at least i’m not. this whole thread is about billionaires why would you think we were talking about random celebrities? like maybe this argument would be relevant somewhere else but i’m genuinely confused, we’re talking about Bezos and Musk here, not actors?
No, because wealth isn’t who you are, it is what you do. You own a business, you run a company, you are an investor, you are a politician. Every method of acquiring or keeping personal wealth beyond the physical things in your house, the physical possessions you bought with your money and the money itself, relies on your ability to own something that other people use. You inherit a company, you rent out property, you become an investor. All these things rely on you maintaining ownership over information, property, and systems. That isn’t a passive choice. That is supporting the enrichment and maintenance of systems which currently represent the largest danger to living things on this earth in the last few thousand years, ecocidal and homocidal systems of oppression which represent a grave threat to countless species on earth, and contribute to the death and illness of millions of human beings. Being as wealthy as a billionare represents the hoarding of such a massive quantity of resources that actual human beings are starving to death or living in desolate poverty in the modern era. The failure to put our vast resources towards alleviating human suffering, ending poverty, ending disease, ending hunger, ending war, ending climate change, are the direct result of a system like this, which concentrates so much wealth in the hands of so few. No. Wealth tells me a lot about who somebody is as a person. A wealth like Elon Mush or Jeff Bezos is the direct result of horrific exploitation, bigotry, and cruelty whose impact can be felt on the scale of nations. Billions are diverted into the pockets of individual men, instead of towards the common good. People starve as Jeff Bezos flies a dildo into space. People die of preventable illness while Elon Musk buys a piece of the internet millions of people use to talk to each other. And they own enough of the world that they can steer public policy.
Even if you don’t agree with me here, this is why people want Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to die, because they are the beneficiaries of a system which grants them massive undemocratic influence on the fate of billions of people. We all have to care about this fuckers, because the infrastructure they control shapes the course of our lives. Tell me, who would you trust with that amount of power? Why should any of us tolerate this kind of control over our lives? How are we served by systems which fail to prevent the deterioration of our biosphere, the health and safety of our loved ones, and the privacy of our lives? Maybe you don’t believe that men like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are this way, or you believe that there is no other way for the world to work, but others think differently. Who believe that wealth on the scale of a billionaire is itself a danger to our lives, that such power should belong to nobody. That if we are faced with the opportunity to save lives, make people happier, healthier, and safer, refusing to put our resources towards that goal is by itself an injustice. Naw, fuck Jeff Bezos. Fuck Elon Musk. The world would literally be better off without people like them.
haha. right, sure. wealth is an immutable characteristic. you have like, literally no understanding of history or politics, do you? i can understand not agreeing, but to make a statement like this you have to have fundamental misunderstandings about what ideas like “race”, “religion” and “ethnicity” even mean. thanks for that. really funny comment.
like, maybe that’s true, but i’m unsure if we have enough data to back that up as the main explanation for why people are hesitant to changing platforms, or if they are. maybe people have been brainwashed into staying on Facebook or whatever else, or maybe it was the first of its kind, and all its competition has been subsumed into it by monopolistic business practices, and people haven’t had any alternatives for a long time. maybe institutions and systems are very difficult to stop once they get going.
i dunno, i’m really just not convinced by arguments like this. its taken quite a bit of time for our understanding of social media and its impact to become evident, and movements like the fediverse are building up steam for a reason. its seems more likely to me that you and i are simply early to the party.
my position isn’t “we are forcing normal people to understand scary programming things”. that would imply i think that people can’t understand this stuff. its “we are engaged in communities where the structure and function of internet infrastructure is a topic of concern, and most people aren’t”. they aren’t being exposed to challenges to corporate infrastructure. they aren’t engaging with critiques of for-profit industry. but that is changing. people are more aware of the ills of social media platforms today than five years ago. hopefully, that trend will continue. i think that the only problem really is that more people don’t know there are other options.
ugh. you’ve pressed enough of my buttons to warrant a response.
the idea that hieroglyphs are in some way inferior to modern writing systems in an objective way is flawed. hieroglyphs were a diverse writing system comprised of phonograms, logograms, and ideograms, and they could be used contextually to record a rich and complex language as fully featured as our own. the ancient Egyptians wrote their dreams, legends, and histories in this text for over 4000 years. the idea that our modern languages are somehow “better” than ancient languages is to misunderstand what language is.
the idea that there is a “”“correct”“” way to use language is flawed. the field of linguistics recognizes a vast diversity of languages, dialects, sociolects, and even idiolects that vary from each other in many interesting ways. collapsing that diversity into a single “correct” way to use language is nonsense, and has historically served to exclude those whose dialect is not supported by powerful institutions. just because people aren’t speaking like you are doesn’t mean they’re speaking wrong, or “rudimentarily”.
instead of catastrophizing about how new ways of communicating might end the world, as people have done literally since we started to write down things, linguists have studied how and why emojis exist, and, unsurprisingly, its not because people are getting stupider or something like that. its because they’re useful for conveying non-linguistic social information in informal written communication. without the non-verbal queues, vocal tone, and other contextual information that exists in spoken language, emojis are one of many ways to add context that can’t be represented through text alone. tone indicators and emoticons serve similar roles.
this is cringe. small changes in the structure of our informal written communication are never going to be the big, important thing you seem to think they are. if you’re this passionate about language that you think it can be ruined by funny little pictures, learn some linguistics. nobody who knows anything substantive about language shares your concerns, because they’re too busy studying the interesting new cultural phenomenon and what it might mean for our understanding of human communication.