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You literally left Reddit because of what capitalism did to it.
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Let me be clear, uh, you wanna know how I, uh, ruined Reddit?
Lmao what are you talking about?
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I don't even get the joke you're trying to make. Please explain.
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Yeah but capitalism also made reddit great, before making it terrible.
There’s a balance in there somewhere. What we got ain’t it tho.
There is no balance though, the shit-ification that happened to Reddit is a necessary function of capitalism. What we saw as Reddit at its best was, from a capitalist's perspective, Reddit at its worst. I'm sure you've noticed a similar process taking place in lots of other areas as well.
What we saw as Reddit at its best was, from a capitalist's perspective, Reddit at its worst.
And capitalists will allow this "at its worst" phase in order to capture the market, before squeezing it. This pattern is consistent in many industries.
Reddit was never great lmaoo
It was a pedo networking tool reknowned worldwide for it's jailbate and non-consensual creepshots. These moderators received awards from admins. Then it got too much attention and got a PR workover, burning a woman CEO at the stake to satiate the gamer-fascists before becoming a bland Atlanticist CIA sockpuppet front of bland corporate posts.
At no point during this entire thing did it ever approach anything comparable to greatness
I meant the platform more than the company.
It’s my favorite format for social media… that’s why I’m on lemmy.
communism made lemmy so where does that leave us
I guess 'a lot of free spare time in a socialized copitalism' made lemmy.
activity = (forProfit) ? "Work" : "Hobby"
That's precious..
Are you saying you used Reddit for its jailbait etc subs? Cause Reddit was much more than it’s jailbait subs.
…
Do you have a point?
Are you really trying to do that?
Of course.
It was good when it had only a few hundred thousand users, but obviously you weren't there.
no that was when it was a jailbait/creepshots/libertarian/"hacker" site. Still not good. Still pedo and soy.
I mean the stages of economic transition have been "fuedalism->capitalism-> socialism" as each one is progressively more efficient and supercedes the previous.
I may be wrong, but I don’t see socialism and capitalism as hard opposites.
I see capitalism and communism are like hard opposites with socialism somewhere in between.
Capitalism is the state controlled by the capital owners with the workers repressed.
Socialism is the state controlled by the workers with the capital owners repressed.
They are literally hard opposites. One is a bourgeoise-state and the other is a proletarian-state.
I learned that “capitalism” is an economic system, not a system of government.
So you could have a socialist state that funds essentials like healthcare and transportation through taxes with a market (capitalist) economy.
That's not a socialist state. It's a capitalist state with welfare. If the political structure of the state itself has not been reworked to put the workers in power what you're describing is just a state where the bourgeoisie (who control power) have decided to do welfare, usually for their own benefit such as reducing revolutionary energy by providing the workers with concessions (the welfare state). That is social democracy.
You do not have socialism without overthrowing the hierarchy that places the bourgeoisie as the ruling class:
Capitalism = Capitalists in power. Proles repressed.
Socialism = Proletariat in power. Capitalists repressed.
Communism = No more classes, only 1 class because the bourgeoisie have been completely phased out.
This just made China's system click in my mind. Thanks Awoo
All of this sounds at odds with representative democracy. What political system would you see working with socialism as you describe it?
Representative "democracy" alienates the common man from the political process while maintaining a semblance of democracy. For this reason it is the ideal political form for capitalism, an economic system which alienates power from the masses and concentrates it in the hands of a few.
Class interests are the primary axis on which all political activity turns. Getting the working class to
does not help them, it helps those in power.Representation is necessary as a matter of scale, though. There are other issues with small r republicanism that are more specifically nefarious, like the legalization of bribery, the tilting of power towards land owners via the senate, etc.
With modern technology I wonder how necessary representative style governments really are. Electronic voting already exists and works quite well, and is probably the most secure form of voting as long as it can be audited. Of course, at some point administration has to come down to individuals, but as long as those individuals are held accountable in some way then it seems that the actual democratic step (i.e. voting on policy) need not be mediated through representatives as is oft repeated to justify the status quo.
You might have been referring to this with republicanism, but there are different types of representation, too. Parliamentary democracies are not obligated to obey the wishes of their subjects, whereas soviet (council) democracies are a form of direct democracy, where representatives are merely delegates and are obligated to obey/communicate the wishes of their subjects. In my comment above I had in mind the parliamentary type, since that is the kind in which there is a buffer between citizens and political institutions which is used by the bourgeoisie to suppress changes which would undermine capital.
...and so what do you have instead?
First step is abolishing wage labor and private property. Transitional political forms take on some form of direct democracy, probably something similar to soviet councils.
What about the absolute lack of “representative democracy” we experience under capitalism?
I’d argue that the capitalist system is more at odds with representative democracy than other systems mentioned. Most workers have no say in what is produced, who produces it, how they are paid, how much products are sold for, etc. Instead, we end up with figurehead CEO’s and nameless investors making all of those decisions, and of course they do everything to minimize costs, maximize profits, and disempower workers so that they can collect billions of dollars at the expense of the workers who actually make their companies run. If we had representative democracy do you think we’d have billionaires?
Literally "whataboutism".
I'm not interested in how the current system is broken. That's obvious. What do you have in it's place?
Whataboutism is a meaningless brainworm which the user invokes in order to ignore their own cognitive dissonance and inconsistent standards. You cry "whataboutism" when @very_poggers_gay@hexbear.net was correct to point out your own double standard. "All of this sounds at odds with representative democracy" implies that you believe genuine democracy is something we currently stand to lose.
What you need to understand is that Marxists are not interested in imposing utopian futures on the world. "What do you have in its place?" is the wrong question. Better questions: What currently prevents genuine democracy? What are the material conditions which both produce and maintain it? Then you get to work on changing those material conditions and removing the real basis which produces the problems.
Richard Wolff, a prominent marxist academic, talks often about a socialist system where democracy is employed in the workplace. He focuses less on reforms or abolition at the state/government-level, and instead emphasizes the bottom-up changes that giving workers power and agency (i.e., making it so workers at all levels are involved in the decision-making process of the companies that require their labour) provides. He has a youtube channel and podcast called "Democracy at Work" that provides great introductions to how he views things, and he has worthwhile podcast appearances on other podcasts like Lex Fridman's, for example.
Consider how impactful countries like Wal-Mart or Amazon are in our daily lives. Their economic throughputs are larger than all but a few countries in the world, and their workforce populations are also larger than many countries. Clearly they aren't organized as representative democracies?
Another question I wonder related to this, is what exactly makes "representative democracy" the gold standard? Is it even the gold standard?
What specifically is at odds?
I would guess they're reacting to the idea of "repressing" capitalists
The people en-masse being in control. Representative democracy, by it's nature, creates a "ruling class", the representatives. Only a direct democracy asks the people what they think of each and every issue, but that is impractical in my opinion.
...and I don't feel that leaders of state owned capital are particularly any different from leaders of privately owned capital. Both are individuals in privileged positions of power that work to maintain themselves above the workers. To me it's not the ownership that matters but the fact you have a ruling class at all.
Hence, what political system is required for a truly equal society?
The people en-masse being in control. Representative democracy, by it's nature, creates a "ruling class", the representatives. Only a direct democracy asks the people what they think of each and every issue, but that is impractical in my opinion.
No, that's just our government/s. You can have representative democracy where representatives are beholden to their constituents, and where they are easily recallable if they do not follow those interests to a T. This is one of the many reforms socialists want to make to the democratic process.
...and I don't feel that leaders of state owned capital are particularly any different from leaders of privately owned capital. Both are individuals in privileged positions of power that work to maintain themselves above the workers. To me it's not the ownership that matters but the fact you have a ruling class at all.
Genuinely no offense but this is a position born of ignorance. Under a democratically run state economy the representatives only get rich through corruption. Under capitalism the owners get rich through the extraction of surplus labor value and the politicians in their pockets get rich through corruption.
Corruption is a drop in the bucket compared to surplus labor value theft. Compare how wealthy Pelosi is to how wealthy Jeff Bezos or Elon musk are. And people like Pelosi are only that rich because of insider trading, which couldn't exist under socialism.
I learned that “capitalism” is an economic system, not a system of government.
Consider for 3 seconds that what you "learned" about the world is a product of the system that produced it
Capitalism is a system of government, and in capitalist countries, they teach their citizens that capitalism is at at odds with the state and not working in conjunction with it
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'democratic' is used today a lot of the time to describe neoliberal capitalist governments that are controlled (influenced greatly) by the capitalist class
for example we can look at somewhere like the US and point out how the majority of people in government are all rich capitalists and how through lobbying and campaign 'donations' and owning the media the capitalist class controls the government
marxists call this kind of state a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (capital), as opposed to a dictatorship of the proletariat (workers)
dictatorship here meaning general 'rule' not the specific meaning that the word has taken on more recently
so 'democratic' capitalist countries that exist today are under the "rule of the capitalist class" or "dictatorship of capital"
so if you wanted an actual democratic (in the real sense of the word) government, you'd need a government which is controlled by the majority of people, that is, the workers, a dictatorship of the proletariat
under such a system capitalists cannot be allowed to have influence on the government, which is something that is not really possible unless you implement tight capital controls like they do in China
the reason being that capital flight is a very real threat to a capitalist economy, and having that power over a government lets the capitalist class dictate terms and change laws to be favorable to them despite what the majority of people might want.
so to answer your question, the only way to have a government with a capitalist system not be controlled by capitalists is through suppression of the capitalist class, if they are allowed to have influence then you no longer have actual democracy.
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What exactly do you mean by "capitalist class"?
the class of people that makes a living through ownership of capital, they do not need to sell their labor, as opposed to workers which need to sell their labor to survive.
Is that only the people that dont work at all?
it is people who do not need to sell their labor to survive, they make their living through taking the surplus labor value that workers generate. (they may also choose to work, but this doesn't change their position, they have a choice to work if they desire, unlike a worker which doesn't have a choice)
And why cant those capitalists and the "working class" BOTH have power over the government?
because one class here has more leverage over the government, and so in a conflict of interest the government sides with the capitalist class as can be seen during any economic crisis (or crisis of any kind really) where austerity measures are immediately implemented and worker rights are rolled back.
how does each member of the "capitalist class" have any more influence on the government than each member of the "working class"?
they do on average, but you'll easily be able to find a small capitalist that doesn't have more power than you to control the government.
the thing is, here we are talking classes and class interests, if those who control the government belong to the capitalist class then the government will do things that benefit most members of the capitalist class, there doesn't need to be direct control by every single capitalist for them to benefit from capitalist control over the government.
to give an example, regulatory protections to protect employees from hazardous working conditions may be removed through the direct influence of amazon or some other large corporation, but, smaller capitalist corporations also benefit from this as they stop having to take on the cost of providing a safer working environment (they can exploit their workers more fully), in this way, the government is controlled by capitalist, but not every capitalist controls the government, yet the government works for the benefit of the entire capitalist class.
Politics and economics are not independent of each other One explanation
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Bourgeois democracy vs proletarian democracy. Lenin wrote a lot about this.
Socialism is also an economic system.
Amazed that I had to scroll down this far to read this. Capitalism does not magically create a fair society through the creation of value (which seems to be what its proponents keep saying: investors generating economic activity and wealth). But similarly you could have a socialist economic system, with no real democracy. Which, as we've seen, devolves into a corrupt oligarchy. We've seemingly lost this perspective in the decades since WWII, but a solid representative parliamentary democracy and separation of powers are the best way to create and maintain a fair society. It requires some other conditions too, like good education, free press, etc. but the core is a system where power is distributed and temporary, depending on democratic processes (elections). This democratic legitimacy is what we should be defending at all costs, imho. It's not sexy, though.
As opposed to the corrupt oligarchies liberal states are.... I guess you just don't call it corruption when it's working as intended.
Capitalism is where everything is owned by an individual
Socialism is where only the means of production are owned by the state, but the individual still has private properties
Communism is where everything is owned by the state
This is not correct, I encourage you to do some more reading about how coats are made if you'd like to understand this better.
best way I've seen to tell someone to read capital lmao
You are impressingly wrong
Socialism is when the government does stuff, and the more stuff the government does, the more socialist it is. If it does a whole lotta stuff it's communism <- This is you, but unironically. Educate yourself on the subject of which you claim knowledge.
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Yes you are wrong.
That's because you dont know what capitalism or socialism is
Okay, well, I've studied everything from all sorts of marxist tendencies to syndicalism to anarchism, to classical economics, and I think you're either using terms wrong or have the wrong idea. Can you define your terms or rephrase what you mean?
I apologize if this is too blunt.
So I understand total capitalism as an entirely market driven economy with no government influence
And total communism as an entirely planned and government prescribed economy
And socialism as some of the economy is market driven and some government planned.
Viewing it entirely in economics is incorrect. All of the above can be done under capitalism. The key difference is not what form of economics are employed but which class controls power and puts the resources of the state to use.
The capitalist state is a state where capital owners hold power and use that power to exploit more capital.
The socialist state is a transitionary state in which the workers have seized power and use the state to repress the bourgeoisie and put resources to their own use.
The communist state is what occurs when capitalism is entirely defeated, all nations are socialist, conflict is eliminated and material abundance is achieved, at which point states start to stop existing as the resources within them that are put towards repressing the bourgeoisie through violence are put towards other things when there is only 1 class in society.
no more half measures walter
Okay, so extremely abridged, here is what seperates capitalism from socialism.
Under capitalism, private individuals own the means of production, distribution, and sustenance. Workers are forced to go to one of these private individuals and exchange their labor power for a wage. Capitalist profit is generated by paying the worker less than their labor power is worth but enough to sustain workers as a class. The workers are prevented from using the means of production without entering into the wage labor model through the threat of physical violence.
Under socialism, the means of production are managed in common, somewhere along a sliding scale of the people working in a workplace and democracy having control of how the workplace operates depending on the system
You'll note that these both can operate within markets, and both require at least some planning.
Video: we need a mixture of capitalism and communism is bullshit
Book: Explaining why markets are bad
Edit: this is ignoring the way the state plays a role in these economic formations but Im trying to keep it simple.
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For the record, I think before this your definition of capitalism was defensible, but then communicating clearly would require using the term "liberalism" to describe the government.
There is a difference between being a hard opposite and being mutually exclusive. They are not hard opposites, but they are mutually exclusive, like being a plant, fungus, or animal. None of those categories are the opposite of any other, and they share many interesting commonalities, but one cannot be both.
Capital-Communism would be like anarcho-monarchism, it's an oxymoron
Yeah but capitalism also made reddit great
Engineers and designers made it great. Reddit could very well exist without capitalism (see Lemmy). What fucked up Reddit was explicitly capitalist incentives.
Lemmy would not have existed without Reddit. Lemmy is a clone of reddit!
Plus reddit put all the work intro attracting users and communities in the first place, before driving them to places like lemmy.
You should probably read up on the original author of reddit, Aaron Schwartz, before claiming capitalism made it.
I know about Aaron Schwartz. His beliefs didn’t change the fact that Reddit had major VC backing and wouldn’t have existed without it.
It’s really not a hard concept to grasp.
reddit needed capital funding to get started in a capitalist economy
Bruh, reddit was created in search of capital. It grew and attracted communities in search of capital.
Reddit wouldn’t have existed otherwise.
Aaron Schwartz did not author reddit in search of capital. He created it because he thought it would facilitate internet communication. Ohanian thought he could profit off of it.
People made Reddit great, not capitalism.
When did capitalism make Reddit great? It took a while for capitalism to take effect, and it was still ok. Capitalism took effect, and it was bearable. Now it’s shit.
Capitalism made Reddit a CSAM site early in its existence
Which aspects of Reddit are you imagining wouldn't be possible without capitalism?
Reddit existed for years without capitalism.
It just wouldn’t have existed at all without VC funding.
Lemmy exists now because Reddit already existed, built the model link sharing site, and over years of ad revenue and VC money, convinced communities to gather there and then convinced those same communities to move to lemmy
Which is why they wanted a government regulated capitalism? I don't get it.
I don't think anyone's arguing that the US is a good example of a well balanced economy.
The "well-balanced" economies are still very dependent on US-lead imperialism, so that's not a convincing counter.
No, we left Reddit because of what Spez did to it.
Leadership is important when it impacts the bottom. Look at Twitter... That wasn't capitalism, it was Elon Musk.
I'm not propping up capitalism, I'm just pointing out that bad leaders can easily ruin successful and/or good things.
No, we left Reddit because of what Spez did to it.
And why did he do that?
Reddit would probably never have existed without capitalism...
Yes because people never communicated over the Internet before Glorious Visionary Entrepreneurs from the Great Private Sector took hold of it and gave us all these Valuable Products, they just sat on their ass wondering what to do with such technology like complete idiots.
I swear free market ideology is the dumbest shit you can possibly believe in, I'd sooner become a fucking Mormon.
How would you have communicated without someone owning a server and paying for it? Reddit and other centralized platforms emerged for some reason... You would have to literally make that illegal, i.e. make it illegal to host your own server and let users use it.
You can't just imagine some fantasy utopia, and compare that to the current system.
How would you have communicated without someone owning a server and paying for it?
You do realize the Internet first started being used by universities and the military, not the private sector, right? I see literally no reason why Internet infrastructure couldn't be publicly owned. It could function pretty much like any other public utility.
And would it have grown into more than that? Into something that everyone, and not just military and scientists can use?
Why not?
Sorry I just don't buy into the ideology that the free market has this kind of "magic sauce" that makes everything innovative and better.
The early Internet was filled of people doing all kinds of cool things for free just because it was interesting to do, the only thing the private sector did is provide the base infrastructure, this is something the state can easily do too. All kinds of communities, FOSS software and media popped up and none of them had VC funding or expected any money out of it.
It was only in mid-late 2000 that capital really sank its teeth into the Internet properly.
It did though? I don't know what point you think you're making but the internet did in fact grow from a technology limited to universities and the armed forces to a publicly accessible network, mostly off the back of publicly funded researchers and various techies that started their own neighborhood ISPs.
And would it have grown into more than that?
Yeah it did, on its own. Do you not know your history? Jfc libs are the most smooth-brained fuckers alive. No thoughts just vibes
How would you have communicated without someone owning a server and paying for it?
I'd probably have posted on one of the many voluntarily run forums that existed before reddit swallowed everything.
How would you have communicated without the telemasts installed and maintained by the state, which are now privatized and slowly falling apart?
A world without capitalism or Reddit. The sheer thought warms my heart. 🥰
The internet wouldn't exist without socialism lmao, and you wouldn't be able to type that idiotic statement without the state funded infrastructure that supports your internet connection.
The "free" market doesn't innovate, at the very best it creates redundancy.
Reddit itself began as a passion project made voluntarily, inspired by and built upon other similar projects.
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Competition drives innovation.
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There is no proof for this, it's just something we like to say. There is also no real way to test it - Non competing versus competing? We can however look at historical and current examples. The Soviet Union led the space race, the Soviet Union made many innovations without the need for competition. Cuba has a higher life expectancy than the us and a stronger healthcare sector. China leads in published scientific journals. Both the Soviet Union and china eliminated famines. Both the Soviet Union and china drastically increased industrial productive capacity in decades - something that took capitalists more than a century.
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Even if competition led to innovation, it also leads to incredible redundancy and waste. The idea that two people working against each other creates a better product than two people working with each other, is absurd. It has no basis in reality, it's just a vibes based thing we like to say. At best we end up with two similar products. Had they people collaborated we would have had the same amount of manpower focused on making one project - typically meaning higher quality, faster innovation. We highlight the times people choose to go against competition (The three-point-seatbelt, the Polio cure and insulin) as "good things" that had an immense influence. It is not a coincidence that when we choose to go against this competetive nature of capitalism, the gains are immense.
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Competition drives specifically innovation that increases profits, which generally means making things more shit. Jeff Bezos innovated how to fuck over his workers so they could work harder for less. Uber innovated how it could fuck over taxi drivers. The tech firms innovated how to make walled gardens, and the hardware world at large innovated "planned obsolescence".
Germany's "social" market has a high amount of homeless people. It also has a high amount of underpaid immigrants being exploited for their labor. It relies - like all western capitalist states - on the exploitation of the third world as well.
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Profit motives may have been a driver for reddits decisions, but we don't need to pretend that foss doesn't have its own share of unpopular or controversial decisions.
It's about choice and foss makes it much easier to reject and do your own thing.
Most controversial FOSS decisions are also because Capital started meddling in it.
I left Reddit because of short term decisions to squeeze money out of consumers to look good in an IPO, instead of having an actual long term thought.
You do realize that the incentives of capitalism necessitate that right?
Tell me how you were harmed by capitalism, without telling me you were harmed by capitalism.
So, capitalism?
Why'd you just repeat @Awoo@hexbear.nets statement?
That's capitalists doing things because they exist in a capitalist society. You're describing capitalism congratulations
You left reddit because of capitalism. What is an IPO? It is the launch of a business onto the public capital markets to release equity and to enrich its existing owners. What do all businesses on the markets operate on? Short term growth for the next financial quarter optimised to enrich their investors (shareholders) in the shortest amount of time possible.
Capitalism consistently destroys everything you enjoy and yet you defend it relentlessly while asking for long term thinking, which is not a feature of capitalism. When you wake up to this reality you might actually start to question "maybe the socialists are right about a few things" and spend some time with us learning what we actually believe.
But you know what happened after Reddit turned to crap? Because no one actually has to use Reddit, because Reddit is just a bunch of bored nerds and Reddit is just a bunch of forums, eventually someone realised: “wait a minute, I can code this in a few weeks and make it way less crappy than most social media. And maybe if I make it all open, a whole ecosystem of social networks can grow together”. And when Reddit turned to crap, “the invisible hand” acted and people slowly started to migrate over to lemmy and other social media and now reddit is just a bunch of bots
A few weeks?
Mate please check my profile. I have been here for 3 fucking years. Lemmy did not magically appear in a few weeks that is incredibly offensive to the sheer amount of work my comrades have put in to make it.
And calling their work "the invisible hand of the market" is also nonsensical. Because the forces driving its creation, and the rest of us communists that support it, are the destruction of the markets. There is not one single jot of profit motive involved in Lemmy. You seem to recognise some of the problems of capitalism but consistently come to incorrect conclusions about everything because you have spent no time whatsoever getting a real political education and understanding the forces at work.
And you fail to ask yourself what happens to your "market forces" alternative to reddit. In any scenario where the market is responsible for replacing reddit the market will also bring it back to exactly the same point of self-destruction through pursuit of capital. You will hurt yourself all over again.
Thank you for proving the theory.
Which is as ubiquitous in capitalism as greed itself.
You again just described plain old capitalism.
Does Long therm thought make money in the short term?