Lemmy political pov: the universe should be free and open source
It specifically needs to run Linux… also there is a literal war about which distro it should use
Debian. It should run debian. We should genocide arch users.
You will never stamp us out btw!
They don’t call us the bleeding edge for nothin’
Ultramarine Linux: die heretics!
In the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, there is only distro wars
Dual boot temple OS
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Finally, the sweet rest I long for
Death to arch!
I use arch btwDerpian
Hannah Montana OS
Actually it’s not an OS. And what you call "Hannah Montana is actually Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana or as I’ve started calling it Miley Cyrus + Hannah Montna.
every time i see an argument about what distro to use i’m like “why the hell would anyone run something other than mint unless they’re in the fbi most wanted or they hate free time”
Because apt sucks. Pacman for the win.
Because I use KDE and they killed that spin years ago. Also LM is bloated in my opinion so I prefer installing only what I use/prefer vs the kitchen sink approach of Mint.
Also portage > apt
Fetch, unpack, configure, compile, install, qmerge, clean
OpenSUSE Thumbleweed
Because I have hyperphantasia and don’t like tasting mint every time I turn on my computer.
War is over. It’s Gentoo.
Most united the Linux movement has been.
I think lemmy has all the mentioned
All of those have all the mentioned, they’re purposefully exaggerated stereotypes
And money shouldn’t exist.
All your comment gives me is “unfathomably based”
This is objectively based
I will
git cloneuniverseI think it would be the same as Reddit
It’s the algorithms. Except 4chan where that’s just how it do.
4chan was simply where everyone banned for extreme views everywhere else went because there were no rules or close to none.
Now as algorithms of social media sites have been chosen to dictate our daily news cycle, discussion topics and visibility of culture by engagement metrics alone, as are dominated by flashy, extremist content that appeals to our lowest instincts. Before humans curated content by trying to use human reasoning instead of relying on instinct alone. I think we have taken a step backwards in evolution culturally.
The internet and its devastation upon the human race.
I don’t think it’s the internet. I remember 90s internet because I’m old apparently. Forums, mailing lists, blogs were the dominant form of internet media. And while trolls and bad people existed it wasn’t nearly as bad. People found together in interest groups and things mostly went fine. It was really when algorithm based browsing of content became the norm that things changed.
In my opinion the reason is that it is engagement driven instead of topic or content or interest group driven. And the strongest and most reliable form of engagement is anger and rage and overexaggeration. So we see a lot of that and people who are good at that become the loudest and most popular. It also incites anger towards others and thus splits societies. Fashists and populist thrive. We need to regulate social media ASAP.
They don’t know that it be like it is
Redditors are communists? News to me.
Image from 2021, I was on reddit then, I am a communist. Checks out
They mixed up Lemmy and Reddit, Reddit is full of alt-right bigots
Lmao this is just as ridiculous as them saying Reddit is communist. Massive exaggeration in both cases
Can agree. On Lemmy now and I can feel the ghost of Marx over my shoulder whispering about the proletariat.
They follow me around and Downvote me, like literal ghosts…
Lemmy is tankie heaven
Case in point lmao
I was at +20, now at 3… Thanks tankies
It baffles me that there are actually people who complain about being downvoted
You misunderstood me, I complained about downvotes being used as a political way to stomp me down (and make my comments invisible) by organized groups on a forum that should not be political.
If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you’re the asshole.
That’s the likely explanation, but not the only explanation.
Or you surround yourself with assholes, or you are yourself an asshole.
One of them is a lot more likely.
Alternatively, it can also mean there are a lot of assholes around. Especially of the tankie type. I just got downvoted from 20+ to 3. Will probably end up like -60 just for saying tankies suck.
COMUNISM IS A GREAT IDEA. what a shame their leaders are ALWAYS THUGS who spend YOUR MONEY IN MIAMI
Hexbears can’t downvote, fun fact. There are others, though.
Go somewhere else then ya big baby 😭
Nah liberals make up the majority of Reddit, the rightoids are just more active politically.
That was the goal at least.
Lemmy is full of anti-drone bigots too
People with extreme views are also more vocal, so that’s what you see. That’s why social media is bad for you. If gives you a very distorted view of the world. Most people are able to look at politics with nuance.
This, plus everyone is concerned with engagement. If I say a perfectly normal statement on Facebook or X or whatever, no one will care so no one will comment or interact with it. If I say that Jesus wants us to make America white again, even the people who disagree with me will only be boosting my message by commenting.
Jesus wants us to make America white again
I love this. It’s so dumb in so many different ways, but I can easily see people unironically saying it.
Reminds me of
Of course the Bible was written in English. How else would Jesus, the greatest American ever, write it?
I mean, he would believe it if he was a Mormon, the most American Religion.
This is (was) literally Mormonism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_teachings_on_skin_color
This is so true, I had a phase in my life where basically all my political social interactions were reading other people’s takes on reddit. After a while I found a job and after getting to know people there I realized how insane the takes on political stuff in internet are.
anon eats world lol
Discourse evaporated when the rightwing and Faux “News” declared “compromise” as blasphemy. That’s why so many moderate Republicans will still vote along party lines, despite knowing the candidate is batshit crazy. To vote Democrat is to commit suicide to those people.
Edit: was trying to get this comment done before kid woke up from nap and barely made it. Fixed the faux pa.
Why “Fawx”?
Right? More like Faux news.
I’ve only ever heard left wingers claim that compromise is ‘blasphemy’ or that “center politics” is just for people who are too afraid to admit they are right wing.
Fuck, there’s even memes abotu being centrist is being OK with half the holocaust or the KKK.
Your comment is exactly the insane shrill partisan hackery that is the problem.
BAM - just immediately guns blazing accusing the other side of what your side is guilty of.
I was raised in a particularly right wing environment, grew up with those values, and have shifted dramatically leftward in my adulthood, and I can say with absolute certainty that you’re either lying or willfully ignorant. Are parts of the online left prone to litmus tests? Yes, but most often in the sense of “hey, I’d appreciate it if people who claim to be in my corner don’t join hands and sing Kumbaya with people who want to eradicate my particular minority from the face of the Earth, please.” They’re a reaction to intolerant right wing fanaticism, rather than a statement of intolerance themselves. You have to go all the way around to the extreme fringe of tankies way out on the left arm of the political-alignment horseshoe to find a level of ideological fervor equivalent to what is now mainstream in right wing politics. The right pioneered single issue voters with the Moral Majority way back in the Eighties, and have led the charge on (sometimes literally) demonizing their opponents since the early days of talk radio. I know, because I was there.
If the modern left doesn’t really want to try and find common ground with a right wing that views them as something between subhuman scum and actual literal hell spawn, I’d argue that’s entirely the right wing’s fault.
The reason people say that is because a lot of the time these centrist people just vote Republican every time. They’re not really independent and as much as they say they don’t fully agree with people like Trump they keep voting for him despite everything he’s done.
I’ve always been curious to when people will realize that voting Republican or Democrat is really the same thing. They both grow government, one side just happens to want to take away a particular set of liberties while the other side wishes to take a different set. In the end nothing changes because we’re too scared to vote for a candidate who actually cares because they have “no chance of winning.”
This was obvious ten years ago, I thought the internet would have caught on by now. Perhaps not though, because since they’re so similar they HATE one another because they really dislike that they have many of the same views so the ones they differ on are so extremely upgraded in importance.
Note: I know I’m not the first or only one to figure this out, plenty of people realize this, so no offense to you. I’m just surprised the truth is such a niche category online, in-person, in the media, etc…
This “truth” hasn’t caught on because it’s complete bullshit. What set of liberties does left want to take?
If this isn’t a joke, and you’re on the left. Then learn the values of your own party.
Liar.
He certainly didn’t lie about the meme.
Death penalty. I know only two “modern countries” with it: USA and Belarus.
Parts of the USA have banned execution. Feds don’t really do it either.
Death penalty for a meme? Or what are you saying? I’m not really sure how that relates to my comment.
But Belarus is adjacent to Russia so I’m sure they’re probably terrible, backwards-ass people who should be bombed off the face of the earth or something. /s
It doesn’t even matter. Hard right and hard left are all just fucking nut job low IQ idiots with different flavours of asshole populism.
Horseshoe theory is as clear as day to anyone not on the extremes.
MuH bOtH sIdEs
One side wants to kill black people and ban non binary and trans folk from the public square
One wants people to see doctors and not starve.
BuT bOtH sIdEs
One side is pure good and does nothing wrong! The other side is evil!
One side is cartoonishly evil, openly calling for eradication of their enemies and those they dislike with language drawn directly from Hitler. One side is the relic of a busted status quo. ObViOuSlY tHeYrE tHe SaMe.
Nobody cares, dude. The quiet part is out loud, you don’t have to vote or like dems, but running this purposefully disengenuous BoTh SiDeS defense for the right just shows you’re batting for the fascists.
It looks like you have expressed an opinion. Unfortunately, it makes you inherently skewed, therefore you’re objectively wrong because something something both sides. Now, only I remain perfectly correct at the exact center of everything, and you go down the slide of shame.
It was right wingers and centrists who allowed the holocaust to happen… source: rise and fall of the third reich
True. But it was left wingers who killed millions of Russians in gulags, who committed the Cambodian genocides, the long marches and purges of Maoist communism.
So maybe there’s something to be said for moderation eh?
I’m not a communist, social democracy is the way.
Yes, I agree! It’s the OTHER guys who are to blame this!
Like, share and retweet BTW if you want them prosecuted for their crimes.
Enlightened centrist moment
There’s a reason you’ve never heard the term “enlightened partisan”
You heard a compliment? A moth nosediving into a campfire is more enlightened than centrists are, the reason only centrists get called enlightened is because it’s a sarcastic remark
Luckily, sarcasm is my love language.
Now stop sweet talking me, you handsome, intelligent bastard.
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I remember when those crazy Democrats got a bunch of their voters to storm the Cap- oh wait…
You’re acting like this didn’t literally just happen.
They also definitely never bombed the Capitol.
Those are all right wing conspiracy theories.
All of those things did happen, but they are worlds apart from Jan 6.
Your first link is clearly a peaceful demonstration; they didn’t even damage any property as far as I can tell. The article calls it “civil disobedience,” and apparently the vast majority were arrested for “demonstrating in the Capitol”. I shouldn’t have to remind you that the Jan 6 insurrectionists destroyed property and murdered people with the express intent of taking over government.
Your second link is again a peaceful demonstration. People were again arrested for “unlawfully demonstrating”. There is no mention of any destruction of property or injury. And again, they were not trying to seize the government.
Your third link is closest. There was obviously destruction of property and while no one got hurt, someone absolutely might have[1]. But even then, this was not an insurrection by and for the Democrats; it was from a fringe left group. Democrats immediately and to this day condemn the attack. Jan 6 was orchestrated by the leadership of the Republican party, and still receives support from said leadership.
Anyway, this is you:
[1]: The bombers did make an effort to not hurt people: they gave 30 minutes notice, and the explosion happened in the early hours of the morning. But something could still have gone wrong.
Ah, yes, but the point is that we went from “Democrats would never…” to “Democrats actually did (but it’s different)”.
As for January 6th, none of the protestors had actually planned to enter the Capitol, and neither did Trump tell them to. He only told them to march towards the Capitol building to “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard”.
The deaths that occurred that day have all been ruled as accidents, i.e. nobody was deliberately murdered.
The damage, which was initially reported as likely exceeding $30 million was later quietly corrected down to only about $1.5 million.
Basically, almost every single thing you likely believe about that event has been blown wildly out of proportion, but you probably never heard about any of this because outrage is what sells clicks and ad impressions, the truth doesn’t.
Well, anyways… I guess this means I’m not quite as enlightened and morally superior as the guy in your meme.
Yes, Trump and the GOP party leadership spent months plotting to overthrow a legitimate election, but when it came time to do so, one line in a speech sounded nice. Then the protest started getting violent and destructive. To be clear, they were doing this for him (in the sense that they wanted him to continue to be president). He could have shown up and told them to stop and they would have. But he didn’t. He made no meaningful attempt to stop it at all. He did, however, say something nice earlier in the day. That’s true.
Yes, I said murdered when I should have said manslaughtered. Sorry. The protest was still violent. I’ve seen the footage; they managed to make me feel sorry for a cop.
I did never make a claim as to the level of damage. I’ve never really thought about the dollar amount; it’s more about the fact that they broke in. If someone broke into my house, I wouldn’t be worried about the dollar amount of the damage. I’d be worried about what that means about their intent.
You are being obtuse. None of the differences you’ve pointed out are salient. None of the similarities you have implied are. The post you replied to never said “Democrats would never…”, nor did I. And I disagree that Democrats actually did. The examples you gave are nothing like January 6th, except in facile similarities like the location of the events. I will say though, I agree that you aren’t enlightened or morally superior.
The examples you gave are nothing like January 6th
My point was mainly proving that the idea that “Democrats would never storm the capitol” was wrong. Yes, January 6th was perhaps still more violent than Democrats’ previous attempts to do so, but if it’s about the amount of violence each party is guilty of, all we have to do is look at riots in the wake of George Floyd’s death that happened a mere 6 months later in many cities across the US, and continued for a very long time. Those protests caused far more death, injury, and property damage than January 6th, and while you could claim that they weren’t political in nature, it is a fact that it was overwhelmingly Democrat politicians who supported them, and Democrat voters who attended them.
I’m not really keen to get into an argument about which party is responsible for more violence, since counting up dead bodies seems rather sordid and probably won’t help much anyways to convince either of us to change our opinion on anything, so I propose we call this one a draw and simply say “both parties are perfectly willing to use violence in pursuit of their political goals and have clearly demonstrated this in the past”.
This site is SO much better than reddit. On reddit your downvotes would have hidden the truth that people over there don’t want to see, but here we can just see the truth and how many people were pissed off that you tried to get their heads out of the sand.
Uh… okay? Not sure what you’re getting at, the only thing that tells me is that you’ve never actually taken a look at the modlog or you would know that banning and censorship are alive and well on here as well, but in Lemmy’s defense, I will say that at the least they ARE more transparent about it. On Reddit, you can’t even see what was removed without third party hacks, and those never catch everything.
“Don’t support a genocide” and “Hang Mike Pence”
Same diff
Still, some people called conservatives criticizing the display hypocritical, as similar effigies were made of President Barack Obama during his time in the White House.
Which conservatives would likely in turn point out as being hypocritical, since Democrats used to literally lynch black people up until the Civil Rights era.
At some point you gotta realize that 95% of politics is literally just the “Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man” meme.
…prosecuted for their crimes.
It’d be nice but unfortunately there’s too many batshit republicans in office to pass any laws for that to happen.
Like I said, it’s the OTHER guys who are at fault for this.
Therefore, we need more prosecutions and also guillotines. There can be no peace on earth until the other guys are all dead.
There are more batshit insane Republicans then there are batshit insane Democrats.
Now happy?
“Even if we are sometimes bad, the other guys are always worse.”
Can’t wait for you to start using them. Or are you going to keep posting sarcasm to hide the fact that right wingers are terrible people?
Yes, the OTHER guys are terrible people. If WE did something terrible, it’s only because THEY forced our hands by being terrible people first. But they started it!
Seriously dude, there are 5-year-olds out there who are more mature than you.
What a weird way to express butthurt. But you do you I guess
Thanks for proving my point.
THIS… Literally, god forbid we try to have reasonable debate and actually listen to the other side. All this “my way or the hogh-way” BS is fucking annoying…
What, you don’t agree with the FACT that the other guys are a bunch of despicable low lives and criminal child abusers for whom death would be too merciful of a punishment? Fuck outta here with those conspiracy theories, you just want to enable them.
Bro what? 😆
😉
The media has tried very hard to normalize extremism.
Funny key then
Ducking autocorrect I meant: Don’t let them.
It’s actually hilarious that “don’t let them” got autocorrected to “Funny key then”
The any key wasn’t enough now I gotta worry about the funny key too!?
Right wing extremism*
You don’t see actual leftism being discussed at all, specially on US media. At the very best best they are discussing those democrat ideas that sound great on paper but are never ever implemented because compromise.
Enlightened centrist thoughts intensify
People even use centralism as a weapon as well though. They push the idea that the correct position in any debate is slap bang in the middle. Sometimes there is a demonstrably correct answer, and sitting in the middle is a bad thing.
But they’ll argue to the death that sitting on the fence is the best thing to do in every situation. I’ve had people claim that the Ukrainians should just negotiate with Russia (assuming that would be even be possible) because that would be the middle option between fighting them and surrendering.
I like to break out this when people claim centrist/moderate is neutral. Nazi’s: kill all Jews and Aryans. Non-Nazi’s: don’t kill Jews or non-Aryans. Moderates: let’s compromise and just kill Jews instead guys.
If 9 people sit at a table with 1 nazi and none leave or make the nazi leave, you have 10 Nazi’s sitting at a table.
If you try to compromise between two moral/legal viewpoints, you’re still supporting the worst side
Interesting turn of phrase. I’ve read “if not Nazis are sitting at a table and someone else sits down and they’re not a Nazi, you’ve got 10 Nazis sitting at a table”
I like yours better. looks like it’s closer to the original German too.
(assuming that would be even be possible)
Putin will not let Russians negotiate anything.
Well yes of course there is that.
But even if they were possible it would not be an appropriate response. The centralist position in this case is barely any better than the defeatist position. Ukraine still ultimately ends up losing and Russias choice to attack is justified. After all what they’re after in that scenario is gained land.
I’ll go even a step further, there is usually a correct answer. Like, objectively provably correct answer.
Politics, a long time ago, was once about civilly considering what spending and infrastructure actions to take as well as taking into account what can be done for the future.
But that’s enough about The High Republic era, here in reality its always been a bloodbath.
I blame the American political system which seems purpose designed to be dysfunctional. Europe had perfectly normal political debating until about the mid 1980s, when people started to see American style politics on the news and that gave them the idea that they could act like that when they became politicians. Then 2001 happened and suddenly they could do whatever they wanted if they just blamed it on terrorists.
And then of course Trump came along and taught them that you can straight up just lie about things.
Europe had perfectly normal political debating until about the mid 1980s
Did you miss all of European history from neolithic times to 1950? They have been at each other’s throats the entire time, starting 2 huge wars that dragged everyone else into it. Plus all the other Europe only wars.
Even after 1950 there was… the Cold War. Europe was literally divided in two parts with nuclear weapons pointed at each other. If you think Europe was civil, you are only looking at a few political parties in a few Western European countries for a few decades.
Only one part of our political system has led to the current polarization, but it was enabled by a series of media developments going back to the 1980s with the abolition of the fairness doctrine, the subsequent rise of right wing AM talk radio, the invention of cable TV which catered to niche markets for the sake of advertising, the creation of Fox News --by an Australian who’d made his fortune in British tabloids-- and then finally the rise of social media which in turn fragmented media audience --what advertising companies like Google and Facebook sell to advertisers-- into ever tinier and increasingly homogeneous target groups with the result that cultural identity is now more important to how citizens make decisions than are actual policy issues.
To see that this is true, one need only look at the fact that people almost never change their minds about anything on the basis of facts or evidence for the very good reason that they don’t form their opinions on the basis of facts and evidence in the first place and instead rely on cultural identity as a guide.
Centrism is a sign of a healthy, functioning Democracy. People are allowed to hold nuanced beliefs that don’t line up with yours and this “enlightened centrist” bullshit is just pure tribalism from people on the far fringes. You are contributing to creating an “in group” and an “out group” which historically has worked out very well for persons living in Communist and Fascist societies.
I get what you’re saying, but an “enlightened centrist” is someone that argues for compromise between a sane position and an insane or evil one – their “middle ground” is still awful.
A “centrist” take between two relatively sane positions isn’t enlightened centrism. “Moderate” used to be the word for that, but given how extreme the political discourse has become the meaning of that word is changing too. You’re better off qualifying what positions you’re moderate on and how, or people will make unkind assumptions.
That’s the cartoon, but it’s not accurate. A centrist is just someone whose positions aren’t strongly correlated with each other the way they tend to be on both the left and the right. Like there’s a reason I can accurately guess your position on abortion and climate change if I know whether you live closer to a Cracker Barrel or a Whole Foods; a centrist is just one of the people whose position on abortion isn’t strongly correlated with their position on climate change.
That’s not what a centrist is, lol. People tend to have similar stances on seemingly unrelated topics because the underlying knowledge and values required to coherently support one view can be applied to others.
As an example: someone who is anti-racist is also likely anti-homophobia, as usually those stances are both related to anti-bigotry.
Centrism, however, seeks to pay attention to both sides as equally valid, regardless of the merits of either position, and then seek compromise as a way to maintain the status quo. Centrism is, in all reality, the most privileged position one can take, as they seek to avoid change and preserve their already stable way of life.
Valid question here, how is what crashfrog described named?
Usually what crashfrog described is someone who only has positions as a relation to others, and is described by their lack of alignment. This person would likely be called an Independent if they held strong, multidirectional views (like a Libertarian that loves the idea of universal Healthcare and UBI), and as such doesn’t align with any mainstream party. If they hold relatively weak, multidirectional or otherwise views, they would be considered “moderate,” though it’s worth noting that the Democrat party is the moderate, liberal party, and as such the republican party and those between the democrats and Republicans are not moderates, but right-wing.
That’s why it gets messy, the US only has right wing parties of varying degrees.
That’s not what a centrist is, lol. People tend to have similar stances on seemingly unrelated topics because the underlying knowledge and values required to coherently support one view can be applied to others.
Sure, that’s what you’d expect, reasonably - everybody you talk to is really online and politically informed, so their political views highly correlate.
But most people aren’t politically informed, so their political views don’t correlate. People in “the center” don’t hold the median view on every issue; they tend to hold an eclectic mix of right and left wing views. Against climate change and against abortion, etc.
This is increasingly disappearing. More people are getting more involved politically, regardless of level of political education. Centrism, the idea of accepting both sides as valid and coming to a consensus, is typically a position held by conservatives that do not wish to out themselves as such in the company of liberals.
This is increasingly disappearing. More people are getting more involved politically
Sure, but more people are born every day (and people die every day, too.) Individual people probably increase in political sophistication over time but that doesn’t mean the population does, at all.
Centrism, the idea of accepting both sides as valid and coming to a consensus, is typically a position held by conservatives that do not wish to out themselves as such in the company of liberals.
Has a single person who identifies as a “centrist” told you they feel that way? No? Then why are you so quick to believe it?
Well, US is not a functioning Democracy, and centrism in US means “pretty right wing but pretends not to be”.
You’re missing the point of “enlightened centrism”. The whole point is that it isn’t actually attempting centrism, just a (almost exclusively) far right wing ideas with lipstick on.
that sounds exactly like what a radical leftist would say. is anything right of your viewpoint “far right” too?
Except when the political climate is between slightly center left and extreme far right “centrism” ends up being pretty far to the right instead of actually in the center.
Being center of left and right means being about where the Democractic Party in the US is. Anyone who considers themself a “centrist” between Democrats and Republicans is right-wing because the GOP is so far, far right and the Dems are so center-left.
Dems are so center-left.
Your dems are more right than Union of Right Forces and Republican Party of Russia back when they existed.
Yeah, it’s a big tent and I was being generous.
I can probably come up with issues Democrats are further to the left than most other countries on. Abortion, for example.
Abortion isn’t a left/right issue, but a socially progressive/conservative issue. Left/right are being used in this context to refer to economic composition.
As leftism is historically the revolutionary position, and rightism the conservative, you can technically call abortion protections left, but in this specific context economics are at play.
That’s where the whole idea of “socially progressive, fiscally conservative” positioning comes from.
“Anyone who is a centrist should be brutally murdered, including all of their friends and family.”
Versions of this have been posted repeatedly on various lemmy instances during political debates.
Its probably because extremists don’t feel comfortable expressing their views in their everyday life, so they do it online instead, where they have some anonymity or at least don’t face the same backlash as they would if they were to voice their opinions at work or at a bar or something.
Also, controversial takes get more engagement, which means more ad revenue.
Internet also helps gather these people together.
In the past if you were a “weird person” you would not find too many people that resonated with you and eventually many would just “normalize”.
Now doesn’t matter what kind of shitty take you have, there are always some group of people who thinks the same and will echoing each otherDO NOT FUCK THE TOASTER
But how am I supposed to praise the Omnissiah?
There are no laws against the Toaster, Batman.
The omnissiah demands it though
toast.ooo disagrees
Social media politics is confirmation bias by design.
A few of my opinions that are less popular here:
- Unions are not a perfect solution.
- landlords are not inherantly bad and it’s not a “sit back and cash in” type of job.
- Bridled Capitalism is a better system than the comunism we’ve tried so far.
I have no desire to debate any of those here. I talk politics with friends and in person and I try to remain skeptical especially of facts that happen to go my way.
One factual point: we haven’t tried communism, we tried socialism. Communism was more of a faraway ideal.
Not debating substance of the claims, as debate not asked for.
And most communist states have actually just been fascists. Like, the USSR and China didn’t really have the people owning the means of production, or anything near equality, egalitarianism, or fair wealth distribution.
Actually, I don’t have numbers on China, but in USSR throughout most of properly recorded economic history 10% of the wealthiest people owned about 20% of all money in the country, give or take depending on the year. In modern Russia, it is about 65% from what I remember, and that doesn’t include offshore funds of the oligarchs.
Also, they weren’t fascist by any definition. Authoritarian - yes. Fascist - no.
Not arguing for anything here, both countries could be way better, but your claims are wrong.
Thank you! Even worse than I remember.
It doesn’t make sense to call a semantic claim factual. I’m fine with trying to push a different definition for Communism, but by the common understanding of the word, the USSR, (past) China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc., were or are all Communist states.
The word “communism” is clearly and explicitly stated by original commenter as an economic system (“Bridled capitalism is a better system than communism”) and not ideology, as per definition you try to give.
USSR, China, Cuba, Vietnam etc. had socialism as their economic system, and that’s an encyclopedic fact, not semantics.
Communist-ish.
Also Dictator-ish.
Unions are not a perfect solution.
A perfect solution does not exist. I don’t see anything too controversial about this unless you’re implying that unions are somehow the problem. I would agree that trade unions would be better. But more ideally workers owning the means of production would be best. Though possibly still not perfect.
landlords are not inherantly bad and it’s not a “sit back and cash in” type of job.
Good landlords exist. That however does not mean that landlords are generally good. Or that the sentiment against them is undeserved. Or that we should have landlords in the first place. Far too many sit back and cash in, as you put it.
Bridled Capitalism is a better system than the comunism we’ve tried so far.
There is no such thing as unbridled capitalism. Capitalism is always serving someone. But it’s never the laborers or workers. Also Leninism != communism. (Yes they like to call themselves that and democratic. But that’s never made it true.) And no, capitalism hasn’t been much more beneficial in practice than leninism. This is not a defense of leninists. Far from. Just pointing out the pot calling the kettle black. Realistically there’s little to point to capitalism being any better than mercantilism that came before.
Sometimes views can be unpopular because they’re uninformed. Which, not wanting to debate this sort of thing definitely points to. That said, I have a bigger issue with not being able to debate/defend my views, than how popular they are with group X.
Not debating is mostly about what is beneficial for me. Interpret it as you will, I’m a happier person not trying to convince Internet strangers that they haven’t theorically solved the puzzle of how to organize society.
There’s not much interpretation to be had. Though, thanks for permission I guess?
The problem with the first two things is the message seems to be that all bosses are bad and all landlords are bad and you should hate them all.
The owner of my company pays more than I’ve ever made in my life (like double), gives us a ton of freedom, has stated that if things are slow he’s fine with people chilling. Half of the time I walk into the warehouse, everyone is playing on their phones. We’ve also got a pickleball court. He pays for 75% of health insurance and buys everyone lunch once a month. I also know that he payed for a coworker’s legal fees when they were trying to get their kids back from their drug addicted mother.
All that, and a few weeks back some guy was trying to get people to unionize because he read something on the internet.
The problem with that entire message. Is that you’re misrepresenting what was said, to the point of making a strawman. And then misrepresenting an anecdote as evidence to prove a trend far far larger than it. One that all actual evidence paints a completely opposite picture.
I literally said good landlords can and do exist. Similarly isolated good bosses and CEOs can exist. But they are very isolated. To the point that they’re not representative. Where I work, my direct boss happens to be generally great. It goes heavily downhill the further up you go. Our CEO is feckless. 3rd generation. More interested in investing and financing with the money his inheritance provided him than running the business his family built. Which is much more the norm.
If your companies owner is really that great, you should stop taking them for granted. They aren’t representative in any way. Definitely not of any larger companies. I’m guessing yours is positively tiny. That tends to be where the better ones are. Because power corrupts.
When I said the problem with the first two things, I was referring to the concepts laid out by the person you replied to. I wasn’t saying the problem with the first two things you said.
Our revenues are about $20m/mo, we’re not massive but not tiny. I don’t take anyone for granted, not sure where you got that notion.
My point is that while there is a clear problem with both, it doesn’t represent everything. Social media tends to boil things down to oversimplifications and people will charge forward without thinking critically.
While that is true. Everyone seems to let perfection be the enemy of improvement. If the portrayal of anything different isn’t a utopia, people will scoff at it and say that it isn’t worth it, even if it is lightyears ahead of the current shit system.
This is the frustration I had with so many people back when the ACA was the issue of the day.
Like, sure, there are issues with the ACA, single payer, universal healthcare, etc. but at the same time, look at privatized healthcare, where the wealthy have no issues and get the best care and want to maintain the status quo, the middle class are forced into lower classes by medical expenses, lower classes are just sort of expected to quietly poor themselves to death, and the actual poor get underfunded state provided care…that the upper classes loudly complain about having to fund with “their” taxes. It’s a system that’s been corrupted into a socio-economic instrument of control by ownership classes to maintain their grip on both the money of the country and the lives and upward mobility of everyone beneath them.
But yeah let’s not try anything different because your wait time for your sore throat might be a few extra minutes.
I live in belgium where it is 4€ to see a doctor and maybe 50€ to see a specialist.
Wait times are 1 day max. Wait times for a specialist are usually a month.
When I was employed by a big hospital living in the US, my wait times were triple that even with “great health insurance” and I would pay $350 for a checkup with something routine like shot updates or an STD screen.
That’s because there aren’t so many people in Belgium (yet). In Germany there are specialists you come on a waiting list and tell you that you perhaps get a seat in 2 years. Some don’t even have a waiting list anymore. For rheumatologist I wait for 3 months minimum, as a regular patient there.
That literally doesn’t matter. What matters is the ratio between doctors and specialists to people.
If nurses and doctors are tightly controlled (like in the US) and refused entry to the profession on graduation on the basis of “keeping wages high” (and then reducing their wages anyway) like in the US with the licensing board, you will ALWAYS have horrible wait times because they purposely radically understaff hospitals.
For example, in Belgium, dentristry ia rate-limited by having extremely strict entry exams such that they have like a 5% pass rate purely to try to not flood the market with dentists. Now it is almost impossible to find a dentist without an “inside connectin.” It means dentists are almost unanimously rich, but at the expense of the people. This is not so for doctors.
I don’t know what the licensing system is in Germany or what the study requirements are. In america, this is purely a capitalism problem. Hospitals are almost all for-profit. This means that they will intentionally run on the most barebones crew necessary and work them past the bone in order to extract the maximum profit per-patient (same thing is happening in almost every single manufacturing industry). There are mass strikes and quitting by nurses and doctors because they essentially get 14 days off per year and have to work 12-16 hour shifts, 60 hours a week because the hospitals are so ridiculously understaffed to increase profit. Doctors are salaried and often don’t get paid for their extra hours. The same waiting lists exist in america for certain specialists, by design. Whatever problems there are with the medical system in Germany, I promise you they are much worse in America.
It’s a system that’s been corrupted into a socio-economic instrument of control by ownership classes to maintain their grip on both the money of the country and the lives and upward mobility of everyone beneath them.
I can only give the Pickard facepalm to this comment.
Social media politics is confirmation bias by design.
Confirmed
I haven’t raised rent for my tenants for 3 years and dropped it during the pandemic. I repair everything in the house as fast as humanly possible. I added AC to the house and replaced my furnace with a heat pump to reduce the carbon footprint in efforts to increase my tenants comforts.
I will eventually move back into the house when I move back to the states. So I want to make sure anyone who stays there is happy and keeps an eye on my house.
People here call me a pig or scum. Good thing other peoples opinions don’t matter to me. I just want to point out that some of us are not here to make a buck.
The criticism isn’t really supposed to be about how nice or not nice you are anyway. The landlaird bad meme is just a good way to open people’s eyes if need be and allow people to vent which they have the right to. The fundamental problem is with the ownership of an asset that is a necessity. And probably the fact that it even is so commodified.
Crazy how that information never comes through in these initial messages. It’s almost like it’s a bad message, and serves only to further polarize each side.
it’s easy to just clump everyone into a single category and then point at it and say ‘that box bad’. it’s also a mental shortcut our kind has taken throughout our history and, for better or worse, it has served us.
the alternative would be to actually take a step back and do some thinking instead of just agreeing with the hivemind. that takes effort, and it’s significantly harder to find someone to agree with you on a fine-tuned idea. hence ‘me smash landlord’. it also introduces the risk of becoming to trusting and getting burned by a bad landlord you would have judged as good. human adversity to risk plays a big part in favouring heuristics as well.
it’s way easier to catalogue the kind of landlord you present here as a corner-case, no true scotsman, in order to prop up the general idea. for what it’s worth, I don’t think anybody is doing it out of any explicit form of malice.
When you make the youth the proletariat, the proletariat is less mature, yeah.
Bridled capitalism only exists in the 1st world nations who exploit the rest of the planet. Ask africans, south americans and others about it. I have never personally seen this “good capitalism” you talk about.
It’s even starting to show its ugly face to you guys. Good luck if you think it can stop fascism.
removed by mod
Holy strawman. Ironically, by reducing all those platforms to one extremist opinion he is doing exactly the same thing he is whining about.
It’s an exaggeration about the stereotypical opinions from those platforms
Except unless you look very deep down somewhere, it’s exactly that. Those stereotypes exist for a reason.
No, not at all lmao
Lighten up Francis. It’s just making the valid point that our current politics are highly polarized and that there are a lot of very vocal crazies on the extremes.
Not all stereotypes
The more extreme someone’s views, the more likely they are to talk about them.
People with moderate views generally avoid talking politics as much as possible.
Plenty of people with moderate views are passionate about politics and love to talk about it. Its just that they talk about boring stuff like policy positions and numbers.
Or they say mainstream positions like “there are only two genders”, “it’s too late to stop climate change”, “liberal capitalism is the best economic system”, and “police are here to protect us”
Those aren’t mainstream positions at all, except maybe that last one (if you don’t live in the US)
I think it’s also that the more you talk about and involve yourself in politics the more you get radicalized, it works both ways
Not necessarily, being around people who are obsessed with politics is a good way to put you off politics.
Being on Lemmy is bad enough sometimes.
Fucking amen to that. I thought Reddit was shrill with the politics.
That’s ridiculous, everything is political. There’s no such thing as people who don’t like politics. You’re just a politics lover in denial.
“I just don’t like the arguments”
“Oh, so you wanna get along with bigots and fascists?”
Loving his argument. If you don’t partake, you’re an afficionado in denial. 😂
Or maybe you just claim you don’t like politics because you don’t wanna get called out for your objectively wrong opinions 🤨
I hardly have educated opinions on politics as I’m not interested enough to partake. So yeah, my opinions would probably be wrong as I simply do not know better.
So I do the logical thing, and don’t attempt to talk about something I’m not educated in.
That doesn’t make me a fascist or a “politics lovet in denial”.
I think mostly people claim they don’t like politics because they’ve been brainwashed by propaganda into thinking that anything normal can’t be political. That’s why the measure of how political a thing is depends on how normal it is.
Depends on the person and how well they are aware. Ive had discussions with people who were all over the place on the political spectrum. In the end with some i had a calm talk and exchanged ideas, that have made me realise things that could lean both ways and in others i left angry, but not changed because i was aware what was happening with me, emotionally, because of the discussion.
It isnt for everyone, ill grant you that, but self knowledge and being open to new ideas is key when talking about mundane politics ( and not extreme topics )
but self knowledge and being open to new ideas
That’s already ten steps ahead of the average political discussion.
Touché
You can tell that this is about pre-Elon Twitter lmao
Yeah post Elon Twitter is “B-but cis is a slur!” As elons fee fees got hurt
I dunno but northern European socialism is looking pretty ok to me lately.
They’re voting in anti-immgrant right wing politicians. Same with Germany, Spain, and France
That’s not a fiscal policy. A country or block of countries can be right about 1 thing and wrong about others.
It is though. Guess what the number one Argument made against migrants is.
The number one argument made against migrants is whatever that person thinks sounds the least like “I’m just xenophobic”
Right but the politicians argument is always “our social system cant afford it”. A fiscal argument.
That doesn’t make it a fiscal policy
If it relates to the governments expenditures then it is a fiscal argument. If the policy is based on such a fiscal argument then it is a fiscal policy.
Seems to be that they’re not integrating here and creating a parallel society and increase in crime.
If there’s one thing the right are good at it’s indoctrination. They co-opt spaces and then use them to infect people with their mindset.
And damn is it ever effective. Someone close to me is normally a leftist – she proudly supports her union (and unions in general), is strongly in favor of LGBT+ rights and environmental protection, mistrusts most political parties as they’re too much in bed with big business etc.
However, she also hangs out on 9GAG, which apparently has been pretty much taken over by the right. This has greatly affected her views on immigrants since she’s exposed to unchallenged right-wing drivel every day. It was “fun” when she told me how refugee facilities are hotbeds of violent crime and then it turned out that the unspecified statistics she was basing this on were mostly about violence against refugees.
(Not that those camps perfectly safe by themselves but not in the way right wingers make it sound like refugees and immigrants (who are conflated) are all violent anarchists who are above the law.)
Recently she just had to share this “joke” with me. The whole thing consisted of two police officers with Turkish names finding a generic German name exotic. That was it; I couldn’t find any punchline in there, just a “the immigrants are replacing us” message. I’m just writing for the day when I hear the word “Überfremdung” (“overforeigning”, a standard term of the far right) out of her mouth.
It goes on like that. Politically she’s convinced that the Greens are completely unviable as a party and the worst part of the current government – the FDP (our liberal party for rich people) gets no mention despite being diametrically opposed to most of her core views. Ricarda Lang (a Green politician) being fat is much more important and will never get old.
I have no idea how to counter this but I’m afraid that she’ll drift off into the hard right with time. She seems unwilling to accept that her main source of funnies is also chock full of right wing propaganda.
My old working class neighbourhood used to be relatively safe, now it isn’t. A major demographic change occurred. It’s not hard to see what happened.
This chronic inability by some on the left to acknowledge that mass immigration does at least some damage to the social fabric, is part of why the rightoids are winning. People on the ground can see it, and shouting to the contrary from ivory tower PMC liberals who consider themselves lefties is not going to change that.
In Canada we are undergoing a collapse of the healthcare system and a shortage of housing.
But if you say “maybe bringing more people into the country when we can’t house or care for the people who are already here is a bad idea,” suddenly you’re a racist.
Immigration policy has real effects on the lives of current citizens, and it is not racist to acknowledge those effects.
That is part if the problem. The other part, at least is my country, is that the left is failing to present a believable alternative. Idealistic rhetoric from an ivory tower doesn’t convince people their practical problems will be solved.
Yeah this seems to be the case all over.
Something about a fence and the colour saturation of the grass
Denmark is tearing itself apart, we have a total right-wing government tearing down public infrastructure and institutions. Mere days ago, pensions for lower class workers, which were promised by the last government in 2020, have been cancelled and 60 year-old people who are falling apart have been told to go back to work. 2 years ago we lost a national holiday under the guise of ‘the economy’ but the ‘the economy’ was just rich people wanted lower taxes and they got it. Our PM us a US puppet, or at least acts it. Car infrastructure reigns supreme, gets all of the funding. Rail projects are cancelled for being ‘too expensive’, despite being a fraction of highway expansion projects. Jobcenters (and consequently all people who are too sick to work or work under special circumstances) are being handed over the municipalities who are completely unequipped to handle the burden, and have only so far been doing it because they had to by law and even then did a really shitty job of it. Our entire public healthcare sector is bombed, there is no help to get. If you get cancer, tough luck, roll the dice. GPs generally just don’t care and will diagnose you with anything to make you leave. Emergency lines are staffed by old farts who can’t speak properly and will tell you that no, actually, it’s totally normal for a person of your age (25 then) to spontaneously bleed from the anus; don’t worry about it!
A Ukrainian refugee wrote a lengthy blogpost on r/Denmark about how he was met with nothing but contempt and racism at every step of the process here, and the comment section was full of “No; our institutions treat citizens like that, too. Welcome to Denmark.”
Can’t speak for the others, but Sweden is definitely doing better than us at this point in time, but I am hearing it is also on a similar decline.
It feels like the internet paints Scandinavian countries as a social paradise when in reality they have extreme problems with racism & require you to conform to the norm to a high degree, have a massive issue with wealth inequality & corporatism (although unlike the US you’re not completely ruined if you’re poor), and a lot of other things people complain about when referring to America (but obviously they don’t come even close to being as ass backwards as the US in most regards).
Seriously, Sweden has the 12th highest wealth inequality of any country in the world, it ranks worse than Russia, the US, India, etc. Denmark and Norway fare far better in this regard, but they’re still the highest in Europe along with Germany and the Netherlands (excluding Ukraine, Russia, and Turkey, which are completely fucked in their own right).
If you want country that actually comes close to meeting “social” criteria, go to an eastern European country like Poland or Czechia or Slovakia or Albania. Now, you’ll get shanked if you appear even slightly gay, but otherwise it’s pretty great; people don’t steal (theft/robbery rates are EXTREMELY low, the lowest in the world probably), sexual crimes are low, there’s not a culture of fearing for your safety constantly like in other places (you can walk alone at night in Albania!), eastern European countries are often ranked as some of the safest in Europe (shocker) and people in those countries generally feel safer, it’s a lot more equal due to all that communism and stuff that happened, everything is inexpensive (although your income will be a lot lower too), it’s very easy to find employment if you’re skilled due to shortages. Poland has especially been growing economically and now getting better politically. Plus, Albania only has the third highest rate of cocaine use (behind the US and England/Wales, of course)!
But generally internet people don’t even consider eastern Europe as a viable option to move to because it’s too poor and nonwhite for them lol. Oh and I guess not being able to be gay in public is pretty bad.
I mean it’s not like most people wanting to could move to the EU regardless, they’d be lucky to get in anywhere (yes, even Hungary). It’s extremely hard to get in unless you’re a highly skilled worker or you have a claim to citizenship/residence by descent from having e.g. Italian/Lithuanian/Hungarian ancestors or recent German/Slovak ancestors or the likes.
No country in Northern Europe has Socialism. They have a strong social welfare system on top of a capitalist economy. Aka Social Democracy. Not even close to socialism.
Socdem countries are great for the people living in them but they rely heavily on the exploitation of the global south. The devastation of capitalism was simply exported to people who had no other choice but to accept it
This is the talking point anyway. I’m not convinced that it’s necessarily true however. The underlying assumption is that you can’t have Nordic-style socdem countries without the exploitation of other poorer countries, but I don’t think this has been shown at all.
It has definitely been shown. Have you ever seen a capitalist country (which socdem countries are ultimately) that relies entirely on its own local resources. One that does not do business with exploitative global corporations? You can’t find one because it doesn’t exist and can’t exist. Capitalism relies on constant growth and you cannot constantly grow when your resources and labor force are limited so they find more resources and labor forces elsewhere eventually.
Think of it like this, if a business does not grow it stock value stays the same and investors gain nothing. So the business must grow or investors might pull out or invest in the competition that is growing causing the business to fail. So when a business cannot grow because it lacks the local resources and labor force to do so it must find it somewhere else. Usually this happens when a business realizes it can profit more of it finds cheaper (more exploitable) labor from more desperate people in order to outcompete competition. It is inherent to capitalism that it must expand it must grow or it fails.
So from this you can extrapolate that a capitalist country run within its own means will eventually stagnate and either give into the capitalist push to expand beyond its means or economically collapse.
Classic leftist wall of text I know but these things are hard to explain in simple terms without making them inaccurate in some way or making them too unclear.
Related but a bit off topic for those who are interested:
Socdem countries are also doomed eventually stop being socdem at some point. There’s this thing big capitalist do where when the government does something they don’t like they’ll just stop investing in things as a form of protest causing huge economic dips. Eventually as these capitalist under a socdem society realize their profit margins are thinning and they have less to gain from exploiting the global poor they will look for more local ways to increase profit such as repealing workers rights, crushing unions, and involving themselves in government because it’s always cheaper to change the law than it is to change the business.
Eventually all socdem countries will reach a point where their capitalist will either leave because they can profit more elsewhere or threaten to leave as leverage for “making business more profitable” by throwing away everything that makes a socdem country a socdem country. The reason this happens is because capitalist will always have a motive to reduce workers rights as well as the privatization of government works such as healthcare in order to profit more. It is inherent to the system
Socdem countries are great for the people living in them
That’s sorta the whole job of a country afaik
except for China, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, and many African countries
Not sure what you think their job is if not make the lives of their citizens better.
Not that all of those are doing a very good job
Northern Europe is Capitalist with safety nets, not Socialist. Regardless of how well or poorly they are doing (they seem to be declining in many metrics they lead the rest of the world in), if you want to advocate for adopting some of their successful policy, call it Social Democracy.
Socialism isn’t “moderate safety nets,” it’s an economic system based on Worker Ownership of the Means of Production.
I pictured literal sheep in Halloween masks at first. I thought it was just insane person Facebook.
If I did see a whole flock of sheep in Halloween masks, I would have something to say…
I may have come here to say that last thing isn’t political at all, then realized I’m an idiot.
