How capitalism works - eviltoast
  • TheReturnOfPEB@reddthat.com
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    3 months ago

    now you have to use your own unicycle and smart phone app at the same time but you can’t use the smart phone while on the unicycle.

    and while you must smile you are not allowed to sing.

  • johny@feddit.org
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    3 months ago

    And the way to change it is to Vote Vote Vote! Vote for the Democrats! This time they are really gonna do it.

    • Asetru@feddit.org
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      3 months ago

      If the leftish faction won every time, politics as a whole would shift left. So unironically, yes, vote.

  • superkret@feddit.org
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    3 months ago

    All you gotta do is pedal hard enough to break the chain and ride straight up the wall.
    You can make it if you just believe in yourself!

    (although in reality that wall is 10 miles high)

    • Aniki@feddit.org
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      3 months ago

      You can make it if you just believe in yourself!

      At some poinz one has to ask oneself not whether one can, but whether one should. Is it really worth it trying everything and giving your all for a company which will probably ditch you in the end, after all? I don’t think so. Don’t put in more effort than you expect to get as a result.

    • keepcarrot [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      Politicians were paid around the middle of the income scale in the Soviet Union.

      Unless you’re talking about like the occasional free beer or taxi ride for competently administering your job, which I gotta tell you, however much you think Communist party members did it… Like, have you had a job and talked to your boss and their inter-business negotiations? Holy shit

      • supertrucker@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        If I’m a government official in near complete control of billions in resources, it doesn’t matter what I take home in salary, I’m essentially have the power of a billionaire, so long as I keep my bosses happy

        • keepcarrot [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you think that a random party guy in Siberia can just say “Nope, the USSR cannot get any oil now” and nothing would be done and he’d be showered in women and coke? Or… Yeah, what the fuck are you talking about?

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      Communism works the same way, except the party leaders are the ones on top

      Therefore the best system is the one that directly rewards the most horridly destructively greedy assholes around without the slightest obligation toward the rest of society!

        • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          Name them, Captain Smug. Tell us about whatever quaint Northern European social democratic paradise that you got excited about after reading about it on Reddit, that compartmentalizes and outsources all the suffering you don’t want to know about.

          • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            I refuse to believe that someone who calls me ‘captain smug’ is seriously interested in my opinion.

            • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
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              3 months ago

              Fair enough, so without any name calling, please name some of those alternatives you mentioned.

              EDIT: you commented continously for 11 further hours after this post, without answering anyone in this thread, so i would safely assume you deserve all the name calling and more.

            • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              3 months ago

              I refuse to believe that someone who calls me ‘captain smug’ is seriously interested in my opinion.

              I’m not and would prefer you just fuck off, but since you’re still here, NAME ONE OF THOSE COUNTRIES THAT HAS A SYSTEM YOU CLAIM IS BETTER.

      • dubyakay@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        The graph highlights that during Soviet times at least 20% of wealth is in top10% hands, the party leaders and their cronies. If it was truly communism then the top10% would own 10% of the wealth. The party leaders and their cronies owned a disproportionate amount of wealth. Everyone was equal, but some were more equal among others.

        It also highlights how the erosion of social services and a lack of a federal government opposing corporate interests is to the detriment of its people.

        Authoritarianism is not the way, and neither is crony capitalism in a farcical democracy.

        • Aria@lemmygrad.ml
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          3 months ago

          For all the communism understanders reading this thread: communists still want unequal pay for unequal jobs. The experts and hardest workers collectively owning twice as much as the average workers is acceptable to all of us and desired by some of us.

          Our only demand is that you earn the money you generate, everyone earning the same is completely orthogonal and something anti-communists use to steer the conversation and misinform. It would be nice if we were more equal, but it’s not what we plan to further with our economic policy. We want everyone to own the means of production, and then you actually gotta do the production to turn that into money.

        • drathvedro@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          Top 10% owning 10% of wealth makes no sense as it means perfectly equal wealth redistribution. It is an ultimate goal, but it is not practically achievable. 20% is close enough.

          • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            It is an ultimate goal

            it isn’t though. Wealth distribution isn’t the aim of communism, just inevitable effect of it. And as such it don’t have to be exactly equal. Quoting Lenin:

            The abolition of classes means placing all citizens on an equal footing with regard to the means of production belonging to society as a whole. It means giving all citizens equal opportunities of working on the publicly-owned means of production, on the publicly-owned land, at the publicly-owned factories, and so forth.

            Also Marx:

            In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

            As you can see total equality is neither achievable nor desirable under socialism and meaningless under communism.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      they live like gods

      Miserable gods, like the ones in ancient Mesopotamia.

      The richest and most powerful of them seem preoccupied with trying to escape the world that they currently rule, whether through space colonialism or “waking up from the simulation” or the like.

      • sub_ubi@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        Completely true of the public-facing capitalists, who effectively serve as PR for their class.

        • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          You may be on to something there, though some of the quieter ones I have names for, like the Mercers or the Waltons, do seem miserable from what I know about them.

          Still, if those are outliers, unless the quiet capitalists are secretly richer than their loudest and most obnoxious counterparts, I can’t help but wonder why the richest among them are also the loudest and most miserable.

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    That looks more like feudalism.

    For Capitalism there should be multiple different money scoops, some better designed than others. There should also be a greased-up rope that leads from the unicycle-bar to the top, showing that it’s theoretically possible to rise to a different class, it’s just practically impossible.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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      3 months ago

      Capitalism is a dynamic system that evolves over time. The general mechanics of the system lead to increased capital concentration over time, so late stage capitalism starts to look largely indistinguishable from feudalism.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        It’s so lazy to describe capitalism backsliding towards feudalism as “late stage capitalism”. If capitalism actually had “stages”, you’d have to progress forward to reach later stages. Backsliding towards the feudalism that birthed capitalism isn’t some kind of “late stage”, it’s capitalism failing and feudalism reasserting itself.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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          3 months ago

          It obviously does have stages that progress towards each other, and the reason it progresses in a certain way is due to mechanics of the system. It’s not backsliding towards anything, it’s evolving under the selection pressures encoded in its rules. Incidentally, this is what the game of monopoly illustrates. Everybody starts on even footing and over time, through competition, all the capital accumulates with a single player. This happens regardless how many times you play the game.

          It’ intellectually lazy to think that feudalism just magically reasserts itself without thinking about the process that leads to capitalism turning back into feudalism.