• UlyssesT [he/him]
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    663 months ago

    Capitalism is a perfect system that can only be failed in the instant that a few people come together to make more profits than they would by themselves morshupls

    • Comp4 [comrade/them]
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      333 months ago

      You see, Amazon is actually socialist. Jeff Bezos is a communist trying to create productive forces to establish a Workers Republic.

      A look into the mind of Ben Shapiro alex-aware

      • UlyssesT [he/him]
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        343 months ago

        my-hero once tweeted that he was actually a socialist, but he only wanted socialism for those who deserved it, like himself. Calvinist brainworms are a helluva drug.

        • Comp4 [comrade/them]
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          3 months ago

          Socialism for only one type of people. Where have I heard that before ? Calvinist ? Elons idea sounds like National Socialism with extra steps. Then again Elon has been mask off for a while.

          • UlyssesT [he/him]
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            223 months ago

            Calvinist

            The belief that there’s a special “elect” that is powerful because they deserve power and that the powers that command the universe favor the powerful because power is good is pretty Calvinistic sounding to me. And yes, extending that further does look awfully familiar. i-am-adolf-hitler

            • DragonBallZinn [he/him]
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              133 months ago

              Speaking of which I finally got around to reading settlers and I remember right off the bat, that it discussed that the mythology of America and “egalitarianism” really meant class solidarity among the white bourgeoisie. Even a settler bragged that America is the place where “no one had to work” (except those filthy browns of course, but they’re not people. Just the help.)

              • Collatz_problem [comrade/them]
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                183 months ago

                Reminds me of Ancient Greek utopianists, who envisioned ideal society as such, where the lowliest farmer had at least three slaves.

  • context [fae/faer, fae/faer]
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    513 months ago

    ugh, he goes on to say that what makes them not capitalist is their willingness to work with the government to obtain profits. a true capitalist knows that working with the government is bad, so the problem is that wall street and big businesses are run by “corporatists” instead of ideologically committed capitalists who shun ill gotten government profits.

    • EmoThugInMyPhase [he/him]
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      343 months ago

      There is no such thing as ill gotten profits under capitalism. If someone gives you free money with zero consequences if you misuse it, you would have to be an utter idiot to not take it. It’s why the same people complaining about crony capitalism made an LLC in 2020 and got a bunch of PPP loans and never had to pay them back.

    • homhom9000 [she/her]
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      193 months ago

      Would be hilarious if this picked up on the right and they all decoupled themselves from the government to prove they’re the real capitalist. Too bad ben doesn’t seem to have that much influence anymore.

      • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]
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        223 months ago

        They did try that libertarian township but they couldn’t agree on garbage disposal and were invaded by bears.

        The bears won.

      • context [fae/faer, fae/faer]
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        203 months ago

        his funding is from fracking billionaires, mainly, so their goal is to gut the epa and environmental regulations generally. i guess he has enough of an audience to keep funding him, but i wonder if they’ve started pulling tighter on the purse strings lately.

        • ryepunk [he/him]
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          113 months ago

          They probably could be profitable without their sugar daddy. But they would have to make serious cutbacks, like they couldn’t pay all the talent millions of dollars a year. It would actually have to worry about staff as well, they couldn’t just rely on overpaying people for a year before they quit in disgust at being a part of such a heinous organization that is basically against everyone except extreme right wing religious positions.

          So basically daily wire would implode without the buckets of cash they are handed. Oh also they couldn’t afford to buy shit loads of ad space across all of social media if they were limited by subscriber donations. Which means they couldn’t find more people watch because meema isn’t seeing ad clips on Facebook video anymore.

      • SkingradGuard [he/him, comrade/them]
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        103 months ago

        Too bad Ben doesn’t seem to have much influence even more

        Why do you say this? All of these culture warrior ghouls are backed by some of the richest people in America

        • homhom9000 [she/her]
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          113 months ago

          Not monetary influence but cultural. A lot of his base became more radical and moved on to something else so he’s just a drop in the whole sphere.

    • keepcarrot [she/her]
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      63 months ago

      I wonder what his opinion is on zionist real estate companies selling land being conquered by the government Israeli military

  • Ram_The_Manparts [he/him]
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    433 months ago

    A lot of people think that this guy “knows exactly what he’s doing” and that he’s some sort of master manipulator.

    I think he’s just a fucking moron.

  • Tachanka [comrade/them]
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    3 months ago

    The purposeful destruction of commodities for economic reasons is in itself nothing new in capitalism, but an integral part of its daily working from the beginning. It was in 1799 that Fourier first became convinced of the necessity of a new form of social Organisation when be found himself entrusted with the task at Marseilles to superintend the destruction of a quantity of rice held for higher prices during a scarcity of food till it had become unfit for use. Nevertheless, this rice had at any rate been held back in the hope of sale, and was only destroyed because it had become unfit for use. This was not yet the modern principle of the wholesale destruction of good rice, good wheat, good cotton, good coffee and good meat.

    In the same way the endeavour by combination to limit stocks, restrict production, and maintain or raise prices is inherent, not merely in capitalism, but in commodity economy from the beginning. As Adam Smith wrote in his Wealth of Nations:

    “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or in some contrivance to raise prices.” (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book 1, Chapter 10, Part ii.)

    But such a policy appeared to Adam Smith, the original voice of classic capitalism, as an offence against the principles of capitalist production, as “a conspiracy against the public.” It has remained for our day that all the capitalist governments of the world should meet together in the World Economic Conference to proclaim, with the combined voice of all the most enlightened, progressive statesmen and all the economists, the supreme aim to restrict production and to raise prices.

    - Rajani Palme Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution, Chapter 3, section titled The Destruction of the Productive Forces

    As we can see, even early on, Capitalists would do anything, including destroy commodity capital (the fruit of labor), in order to raise profits and increase prices. Some early capitalists moralized about this and saw this as somehow an affront to capitalism as a mode of production. But over 200 years of experience has shown us that this is not an anomaly, but something built into the system itself. It is similar to how the petty bourgeois detest monopoly and fetishize competition, even though monopoly is the direct result of competition resulting in “winners” and “losers.” Ben Shapiro is doing the same thing here, trying to distinguish between some kind of idealized noble “capitalism” of gentlemen in fair economic competition, and the actually existing ruthless system of exploitation we live under. But such a distinction is fundamentally illusory, and is a form of priestly apologetics for a decaying and unsustainable mode of production.

  • adultswim_antifa [he/him]
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    253 months ago

    It’s all just M-C-M’ these days for big business… Smdh they used to really care about all the little kids they lost in those arsenic factories.

  • UlyssesT [he/him]
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    3 months ago

    Not everyone in the game Among Us is there to do their assigned tasks. There are impostors there too sus

    That’s the problem with Among Us. No one would suffer imposters if everyone stopped being sus. josus-stalin

  • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]
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    213 months ago

    Stay in your “cultural politics” lane, little Benjamin. Your ass is showing.

    Pretty much every right wing “intellectual” proves in the end that they are either intentionally spreading misinformation or they are stupid enough to believe their slop. Neither is a good look. So which category do you reckon Ben falls into? Cynic grifter or useful idiot?