Not to be pedantic, but this would make you not so "pro capitalism as it comes". The ability to develop and sell houses, but not hold them (in service of rent-seeking) runs contradictory to the very core tenant of capitalism, which is private property and free markets. Socialism and supply/demand-markets are not mutually exclusive; it sounds like you're more amenable to a socialist or mixed-market system than you give yourself credit for.
Im capitalist in the belief of truely free markets. Im against monopolies or monopoly like structures. I can make a case for private equity being a cartel as well knowing how they use algorithmic platforms to price rentals thus collaborating on pricing while pretending they don’t. After all its a third party setting prices.
almost, but rent-seeking is an odd form of capitalism, because in its pure form it isn't providing value.
nothing in the real world is in its pure form, and some business are able to provide value which they cannot charge for because they can rent-seek on other areas, so there is always nuance.
but an economy where rent-seeking is the main path to wealth is an economy in really poor shape.
Rent seeking is the end result of capitalism as an economic system. The goal of a capitalist is to accumulate capital (wealth), and rent seeking allows you to do this without expending any effort. Any capitalist acting rationally within the system of capitalism will desire to seek rent.
One could argue that PE is both A. ) the ultimate form of capitalism and B. ) explicitly creates inelastic demand. A truly free market will always succumb to dominating forces that create the inelasticity (or at least that's what history has consistently proven).
That is the point. Capitalism has never included free markets in its honest definition. They are nuisance for the capital owners. But when they are forced to participate in the free market - then a big part of the surplus generated by the companies is captured by the society. See that was Marx error - instead of socializing everything, he should have just made sure that no monopolies, monopsonies and enough state capacity exist to make the unfree markets free. Send this message back in time and we will save couple of hundred of million people.
>> Not to be pedantic, but this would make you not so "pro capitalism as it comes". The ability to develop and sell houses, but not hold them (in service of rent-seeking) runs contradictory to the very core tenant of capitalism, which is private property and free markets.
I think you're right. A lot of people confuse capitalism for working for a living - because that's what capitalists want the middle class to think it is. Capitalism is really about getting capital to work for you so you don't have to. Building and selling homes is a form of working. Holding homes for rent is capitalism.
Why is it so hard to believe that disabled people can be accepted into "elite" universities? I think the article author, and many of the commenters here, are conflating "normalised behaviours" with "intelligence". As a society we have normalised pushing students into being able to complete assessments within an allotted time frame, even though the time it takes to finish an assessment isn't a perfect measure of one's intelligence (regardless of whether or not the answers were factually correct/incorrect). We have normalised allowing people who are "articulate" to take up space in society because we have collectively decided that articulate people are more intelligent, even though that isn't inherantly true.
I don't doubt that many of those students are faking having a disability to game the system in order to benefit themselves, but this article and the discussion around it are anything but intellectual.
>Why is it so hard to believe that disabled people can be accepted into "elite" universities?
?? many people would think there is something wrong with the definition of disabled if 38% of the population is disabled: more likely to be mislabeled. now, if 38% of the population is not disabled, but 38% of elite universities is, that is also something of note... is how the headline/article should be read.
then, if you live in a society with the ideological divides that many western societies show, where one side campaigns by advocating more social spending and the other advocates that it's being overdone, the suspicion is sure to emerge in some quarters that the metrics for disability might be manipulated in one political direction or the other. also makes a number like 38% interesting.
The CDC reports that 1 in 4 Americans are disabled. Sure 38% is higher than 25%, but the 38% number is the worst case scenario, two of the other universities cited only had 20% of students who were disabled, below the CDC number.
> one side campaigns by advocating more social spending
Ironically, having more social spending on 4-year universities would actually alleviate this problem if we are following the author's logic. If students weren't the ones footing the bill for their education, there would be less incentive for them to take measures to try and circumvent a system that penalizes low-performance (doubly-so because you both get a bad grade and you still have to pay back the money).
I read the headline/article exactly the way it was supposed to be interpreted. I'm also not reading that far into it, the byline literally states, "If you get into an elite college, you probably don't have a learning disability", which again, is simply not true and is ableist. Disabled people are not incapable of performing certain tasks, but they are hindered, which is why it's called a disability and not an inability.
> No one says disabled people cannot attend elite universities
The author spent the byline and first half of the article trying to explain that these universities wouldn't accept people with disabilities because they're just too elite and highly-selective. The recent surge of disabilities is actually perfectly explained, even in the article. The diagnostic criteria for disabilities has changed over time, becoming more "relaxed" as some would put it. If the diagnostic criteria expands to include more people, we are going to see higher rates of disability.
Some very important context that the researchers don't mention: during the same period that they are claiming test scores improved because of phone bans, Florida changed the way they administer standardised tests. Starting in 2024, they switched from doing one end-of-year assessment and started administering more frequent tests throughout the year in order to better gauge a student's progress and provide a tighter feedback loop. (source: https://www.educationadvanced.com/blog/florida-standardized-...)
It's much more likely that simply changing the way they administer these tests had a more significant impact on test scores than phone bans.
This criticism would be valid if the researchers had studied just one group of schools, and their methodology was just comparing before and after. But that's not all they did. They had two groups of schools, with low/high cell phone use before the ban. Their hypothesis was that the schools with high cell phone use would see a larger change in test scores (as they would have the largest drop in mobile phone usage).
We then turn to our causal analysis comparing schools with different degrees of apparent pre-ban student cellphone use, after vs. before Florida’s cellphone ban. We show that the ban increased disciplinary incidents and suspensions significantly in the first year, immediately after the district started referring students for disciplinary action for cellphone use infractions. In particular, our difference-in-differences estimates suggest that the ban increased suspension rates by 12 percent (relative to the comparison group mean) and in-school suspension rates by roughly 20 percent in the first year.
There may be other reasons to criticize the paper, of course.
Put yourself in the student's shoes: instead of being required to rote memorise every detail and hold that in your head until the end of the year, you are now only required to be assessed at the time that you are learning the material. Do you think you'd fare better on that type of test, or a test done months after you actually studied the material?
One of the first things they teach you in educational research is that standardised test scores are significantly impacted based on how the tests are administered and what the test is actually assessing.
That also depends on how the tests work. If each test covers both the new material since the previous test, as well as older material, then that would require students retain all the material, not just the recent stuff.
Or maybe the last test of the semester covers the entire semester's material, while the earlier tests only cover new material since the previous test.
A good student would do well regardless, a bad student would do bad regardless. Cell phones might help a bad student do a little less bad, but only a little.
For the middle, it really depends on the material covered. if it's cumulative, then results might not change as much. if it's "learn and forget", then it might be testing the wrong incentives.
> if it's "learn and forget", then it might be testing the wrong incentives
The thing I find interesting is that when most people talk about standardised tests, they are talking about assessments that benchmark how much trivial knowledge about a given subject one has, and this has been the standard for most of the history of the American education system. I would argue that this is a flawed way to measure a student's literacy–in any subject for that matter.
I would actually frame "learn and forget" as "learn and adapt" because I would much rather a student forget a piece of trivial knowledge, but still have the ability to figure it out on their own with the right resources than a student who can tell you the colour Benjamin Franklin wore on his 15th birthday, but couldn't explain the effects of imperialism on societies.
For much of history, we have incentivised rote memorisation of trivial knowledge and accidentally de-valued critical thinking and problem solving skills. Do you remember the backlash that schools got from _parents_ when schools started implementing Common Core in an attempt to get students to think more abstractly? While I scoff at them, I genuinely don't blame parents for coming to the conclusion that we should just do math "the way we used to do it", but I can't help but point out that this is leading to the exact decline in general literacy that we have seen in public schools over the years. Now when you start comparing the educational attainment of students in public schools vs. private schools this becomes a who other conversation that cell phones can't even begin to explain.
This is also very closely following the pandemic. I'd imagine that massively pollutes their data. I didn't see a comparison to comparable districts that didn't implement a ban.
Just from anecdata of my own kids, enforcement is nearly impossible. Phones are banned citywide as of this year but it sounds like they are still being used pretty openly.
Every time the author mentions a problem that young men face, he explains it away by saying that it stems from a society that's built against serving the needs of men, even though the outcomes affect women all the same. He mentions the college debt crisis and it's affects on men merely one breath after explaining that women outnumber men in higher education. The housing affordability crisis is also not exclusive to men. Workforce participation of men can also be explained by relaxed gender roles and more women entering the workforce while their male counterparts take on domestic work. Pretty much the only thing he rightfully identifies as a uniquely male issue is suicide. Nobody is averse to identifying the issues that men face, but be correct in what you're identifying as a uniquely male issue. This author has been making the rounds in popular culture lately and I can't help but feel like it's because he's offering an oversimplified solution to a problem that runs much deeper than how we treat men and young boys. Society consistently asks women and non-White people to take ownership of their own problems, why can't we ask the same of men?
Yeah, says it right there: women choose lower paying professions. That’s literally all it is.
The pay gap mostly has to do with what careers women choose. Most men and women earn the same given the same credentials, years of experience, and job.
Even if that's true, it doesn't really matter. The fact is that regardless of why it happens, women come out of college with more debt and less ability to repay it than men do. If you're writing out woes specifically of men relative to women, then college debt shouldn't be one of those issues.
Do they actively choose lower paying professions or do they unwillingly end up in those professions? It seems to be you're making a logical leap without citation.
Why would a gender choose en masse to earn less money?
For that to be plausible it would mean the vast majority of women choose their profession based on enjoyment with no consideration of earning potential. Which doesn’t feel all that plausible. At the very least you’d expect a study on it, any data at all.
That is not the only plausible way for that outcome to happen. It could be that both, men and women, are biased toward professions they enjoy, and, due to our economic system, the activities that men tend to prefer end up paying more. It wouldn't even need to be a "vast majority". It could be a small bias over the entire population, or a large bias over a smaller subset of the population.
At the very least, why isn't every student in the same major? Why isn't everyone working toward the highest paying field at any given time?
> It could be that both, men and women, are biased toward professions they enjoy
I would also be interested in data on this. I simply can not buy into it being biologically based. Approved social-cultural identity is the likely culprit.
An example I keep thinking about when this topic comes up, is how computer science and programming was considered "women's/secretarial" work in the early days. It's one of the few STEM areas where looking at it's history, no one is having to dig though obscure archives to find women who were buried or left off co-discover/creator list just to prove they did that work back in the day. This is in part to that profession's invisible "identity badge" being beneath a man to wear (still many males enjoyed it then and got into it, but I doubt his buddies looked at him the way they would today). Women were secretaries; computers and programming was secretarial work. Main stream (US) society looked to this as the way god made men and women at that time; these days they are working with an updated list of approved men-this, women-that and still attributing biology for things far outside the actual body.
Once home computers started marketing the machines to males a rapid shift happened, and now it's male dominated -- and paid at higher rates than when it was "secretary" work and for the "human computers" -- women who did the calculations of computers manually; see early NASA. Yet, today, its looked at as male bio-backed bias thing? It simply doesn't make sense to me to chalk it up to a biological sex difference in determining one's profession.
As far as I know, biological differences don't flip in a single human generation. But social-culturally, absolutely -- when the right incentives are there. In-power groups (e.g., current churches and religion with male deities vs ancient matriarchal religion/societies with female deities) will be able to change the owner of an "identity" type to whatever they want, including gendered Identity badges (example: boys prefer to be programmers and scientist, girls prefer to be care-takers and english majors/writers yet so many of the classic books I read in school were written by male authors) and then sell people on it being a biological sex difference. This includes making it difficult for males who want to be care-takers and nurses, they are harassed for choosing a profession not in their current gendered-approved work Identity lane. It's lose-lose all around, but not always equally.
Arguing with someone like this is just pointless. You'd argue over whether the sky is blue. You're in denial about basic tangible realities.
Damn, first time I'm hearing that women can't choose their majors in college but for some reason men can!
What kind of learned helplessness wokeist bullshit is this?
It's no wonder this country has gone to the capitalists. Idiotic arguments like this are at the forefront of every left movement. "Women can't do anything! They can't choose their own careers!" Left leaning people just like to shoot themselves in the foot and say, "I blame the right!" You could, you know, maybe fight for something and actually choose a direction in life rather than being a victim of everything.
Where's the old left that would actually fight and kill for their rights? This country fucking sucks.
My objection is to explaining away observed data with unsupported assertion.
There is a pay gap = fact
The pay gap is largely attributable to women working in fields that pay less = fact
Women work in these fields because they choose to = unsupported assertion
Dress it up in some internal dialogue you have with yourself about “left” “right” and “woke” if you wish but it doesn’t speak to my point at all. You’re just settling on an answer that feels right to you and shutting down any further thought. “Everybody knows it’s true” is pure laziness.
>Pretty much the only thing he rightfully identifies as a uniquely male issue is suicide.
Haha you must be a woman. Men are more severely punished in court for the same crimes, disproportionately lose assets and custody in divorce, get discriminated against at work on DEI terms, go to college less than ever (maybe a good idea, but opposite stats would trigger outrage), and yes they even get less sex on average. They are constantly told that women don't need or want them, they have a ton of privilege (even as they struggle). If you stand up for yourself as a man, people call you a lot of nasty names like "incel" or "Nazi".
>This author has been making the rounds in popular culture lately and I can't help but feel like it's because he's offering an oversimplified solution to a problem that runs much deeper than how we treat men and young boys.
Honestly I could not get through this article. This guy is being promoted by somebody. There are far better voices for men out there who don't mince words when describing the problems men face.
>Society consistently asks women and non-White people to take ownership of their own problems, why can't we ask the same of men?
Overwhelmingly women and minorities have been promoted literally at the expense of men. Companies give bonuses for checking off boxes, and skirt the law to put white men down. Society is not one monolithic voice. While some people have told everyone to take responsibility for themselves, the dominant political regime for perhaps the past 30-50 years (and by far much worse in the past 15 or so) has been favoring women over men on average. You can't talk about men's issues without first apologizing to women who have never seen anything but positive favoritism from the system, yet think they are oppressed. The same statement applies to the everyone vs. white men dynamic.
At some point, being mean to specific groups such as white men, or men in general, is going to backfire. But I expect the system to try to preempt that and force the issue, to further vilify the actual victims here.
> Men are more severely punished in court for the same crimes
Not the Op, but this is simply wrong for domestic killings
The majority of women who kill their partner do so in self-defense after having endured abuse from that partner. After the system fails them and the abuse finally breaks them the courts hand down ~15 year sentences[*]. When the guy's abuse end's up killing a female partner/family member, he gets around 2-6 years, because the female made him super mad and he lost control.
Agreed on the custody and asset cases needing an overhaul years ago.
But saying men have it unfair because females are defaulted to in (civil, not criminal) custody cases screwing over the guys that actually want to show up, and ignoring how women are screwed in criminal self-defense domestic killings compared to mens rage/hate/power-trip domestic killings -- is really stretching that unfair tag
[*] Don't have time to find a stat link, but its widely known and published in news articles on the topic, studies etc that come up in a basic search
The trouble with the abuse thing is that anyone can claim it. Women are the only ones for whom such an excuse can generally persuade a jury. False allegations of abuse abound. It is nearly impossible for a man to prove that he did not abuse a woman at some point, and women use this to their advantage.
While I admit that there are some men who abuse women and get attacked for it, plenty of other crimes and plenty of situations exist where being a man is a distinct legal disadvantage. Lots of places have a policy that forces police to assume that the man in the relationship is the offender/instigator in any domestic violence dispute. If you hit a woman in self-defense and don't have reliable witnesses or video evidence to back you up, you're probably going to have a hard time. There is a very clear pattern in most of society: if a woman does something to a man, they ask "what did he do to deserve it?" There are no shelters for men to leave abusive relationships, and feminists have literally campaigned to keep it that way.
Frankly I would be shocked if you could find a single crime for which women would get a more harsh sentence than men on average.
>Don't have time to find a stat link, but its widely known and published in news articles on the topic, studies etc that come up in a basic search
Basic search is not very helpful lol. You need to look past the headlines to find this kind of stuff. Women have excellent PR and everyone tries to pander to them. Government, academia, marketing, religion, Hollywood, etc. are all on women's side for the most part and cling to half-truths that paint women in the best light (while smearing men).
Are we supposed to just accept that because something is status quo, it’s permissible? The consequence for “stealing” food should never be death, ever, in any scenario. It’s also interesting that people taking and distributing food are characterised as “gangs”, this suggests that taking a vital resource and redistributing it is somehow criminal.
“Fire at unarmed crowds” and “fire towards crowds” is the same thing, what sort of semantic ping pong is this? Also propaganda =/= bad. All media is propaganda, in some languages the word “propaganda” has the same semantic meaning as the English word “advertisement”. This comment is war crime apologia.
Sure there is, but we’re not talking about firing “warning shots” at armed combatants, we’re talking about unarmed civilians, most of whom are minors. If you are sympathetic to the idea that these aid sites need to be heavily guarded, then you need to ask yourself why this level of force is necessary, because the explanation the IDF and Israeli officials are giving makes no sense. Can you imagine if we fired “warning shots” towards the homeless for lining up too early for the food bank?
So, not warning shots but targeted fire?
And is there any evidence of those combatants, amongst all the body cams and drone footage?
To be clear, I mean actual combatants, not the IDF definition of "any man of fighting age"(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Alon_Shamriz,_Yot...)
There are very good reasons for KYC, the problem here is not the government regulation, it's once again private companies being sloppy with their customer's data because sloppy is cheap and it's not their info on the line, it's yours, so there's little motivation for them to safeguard it _unless_ they're compelled to do it by law.
The people who designed a government regulation to deputize private companies couldn't possibly have known how sloppy private companies are with other people's data?
They could have designed KYC to minimize long-term storage requirements etc at some cost to what they could enforce, but a government like the US is inherently sloppy with the rights that are reserved for parties besides itself.
I think if I coloured it as [gov't] deputizing [companies], and prioritized financial banks not knowing their customers, in case they decide they get hacked, I could sort of get excited about blaming regulation.
At the end of the day it'd be hard for me to continue holding that because, on the balance, we expect companies to keep data private and to not enable illegal activity, not gov't to avoid asking companies to do things, lest they screw up.
In formal logic we would call this kind of argument a "post hoc justification". Any company who does anything payments-related is going to be primarily motivated to allow the most amount of transactions possible (including risky ones), everything else is a secondary consideration (including data security). I mean think about it, even if your company has a data breech, it's primarily brand reputation that's on the line, at that point your money has already been made. Of course, now that damage has been done there is a motivation to prevent it from happening in the future, but for companies like Coinbase who operate in emerging markets with little regulatory oversight, it's extremely hard to argue that they have are motivated to do anything besides grow and make money. After all, the mantra has always been "move fast and break things".
I never understood the anti-capitalist argument to be that it’s a top down system (and thus is why it’s “bad”), I think the critique is more that capitalism will inevitably beget hierarchies and self-reinforces them. And to be fair, some earlier attempts at socialism also begot hierarchies, but now I’m being a little pedantic.
I don't hear it referred to as a top down system either, but infer that. People talk about a world without it, or after it, as if it's one thing - which is why I described it as top down. Ie one corner stone you can remove. Like a monarchy, or damn.
And indeed, the critiques (that come to mind at least) I've heard of capitalism all seem valid at first, until I realise they also apply to socialism, communism, etc. Thus so far I don't see capitalism as being relevant as people think, and stick with my - temporary - conclusion that it's an emergent behaviour.
Do you mean trade or mercantilism? Capitalism - a system by which the means of production are privately owned - has only been dominant for the last few hundred years, broadly exacerbated by the industrial revolution (where you could easily point to "Guy who owns the big Machine").
It is, at its most fundamental description, a Top-Down system of governance and ownership (I admit, probably not the way you mean, but it did tickle me).
Dragons hoarding wealth might be emergent human behavior, but, hey, so are brave knights.
> has only been dominant for the last few hundred years
That's hard to falsify, although I'd guess people have had things for much longer, eg spears. Although this get's away from the point, and into something else.
Right now if I step out into the street, I can flag a taxi, I can buy a coffee. In each case these are direct peer to peer transactions, where the price is agreed between us based on what we both want out of the exchange. I find it easy to imagine that's how it was hundreds of years ago too, even within tribes.
The capital (money, coffee, spear), isn't really the relevant thing. It's a conduit and focal point of behaviour. That was my original point, and why I don't value a top down aspect to it (even though that of course exists in groups with more scale - societies). I would welcome a refute on that point, or if you could frame a different way of looking at it (capitalism) at the level of individuals who want to consentfully interoperate (and don't even know the word capitalism).
> Right now if I step out into the street, I can flag a taxi, I can buy a coffee. In each case these are direct peer to peer transactions, where the price is agreed between us based on what we both want out of the exchange
I agree that we can do this. I do not agree that this is, strictly speaking, capitalism.
Capitalism =/= the exchange of goods, services, and capital.
Capitalism is the system that says the people who own the property constituting the critical infrastructure of an organization - the "Means of Production" - should get to make all the rules. That's it.
If I own a big beef machine that turns cows into hamburgers, it doesn't matter that I need 50 people to run it and 200 people to box and ship and sell the patties, the fact that I am the person who had enough money to buy the big beef machine means that my word is law, period. If I don't like the way they touch my big beef machine, they go away. If they don't like how unsafe the big beef machine is, too bad. Doesn't matter how much I sell the patties for - I decide how much I pay you, and I keep the rest (not exactly peer-to-peer). I own the big beef machine, so my say goes.
I agree with you that trade will exist until the end of time, and has existed since the first time Ook had something that Grog wanted and Grog decided it was too much energy to kill Ook over it.
When I say I am "Anti-capitalist", I mean (among other things) that I do not believe Capitalism specifically is the best (most productive, least ethically repulsive) means by which to engage in trade.
None of these opinions relate to trade or even the concept of capital itself, but rather the means by which we organize it.
To the original quote: It is hard to imagine the end of capitalism, because people believe capitalism is a natural facet of human nature. It is not; it is a big beef machine.
Thanks for such a breakdown at that scale. I appreciate it. (sorry for my slow reply).
I think my view of Capitalism is over-indexed to the human to human level. Although as I zoom up to ownership and 1 to many relationships, it gets more complicated but still fits in my consent view.
Regarding your beef machine example. What you present as the owner having control over the others still seems like consent to me, in that for them consent is something they has to opt into. What I see is the leverage has changed. Ie the machine owner can chose to fire a worker. But that is them no longer consenting to work with that person. I guess we could say, 'but the worker consented to work in an environment where they thought they had some protections' for instance. Is that how you see it as being non-consensual, or am I misunderstanding?
The point on keeping the profits also makes sense to me still. If I want to take risk, I can start a business, where I reap the rewards and bear the losses. If I don't want to take risk, I can agree to work for a fixed rate, but miss out on the rewards.
For sure I can imagine to some people, they want to make a collective and share all (rewards/losses), but that still seems like either require opt in (capitalism / collective structure).
So it's no longer peer to peer, but still seems consensual at a 1 to many scale to me.
I think there is a natural valuation drop off at scale.
For instance if only one person sells coffee, I really want to trade with them. If 100 people have coffee, I'm not that fussed about an individual vendor anymore. Then they loose leverage and I gain it. Haha, sounds crass to write it in those terms, but sure you know what I mean.
Regarding this part:
> It is hard to imagine the end of capitalism, because people believe capitalism is a natural facet of human nature. It is not; it is a big beef machine.
Does my analogy of buying coffee from one person or picking from 100, fit in with the big beef machine dynamic you point out here? Or how come not? I don't think the analogies line up perfectly, but can't put my finger on where they don't align.
Separate line of thought (but to the same end), curious what you think: If humans are nature, and humans have capitalism, is capitalism not natural?
Haha, easier to talk about these things in real life, appreciate your time/efforts here anyway.
I am going to try to respond to the middle chunk later, because I don't really understand the lines you are drawing and how they map to my argument. In some sense, you are describing "The Market", which is another thing that exists outside of the means of organizing the resources. There are collective systems of governance that answer a lot of these questions, too!
To this, however:
> Separate line of thought (but to the same end), curious what you think: If humans are nature, and humans have capitalism, is capitalism not natural?
I don't care? Cancer is natural, Bifocals aren't. I don't think it's a useful framing on the question. My opinions would be the same on capitalism if it were a plot from the moon-beings of Andromeda IX vs. it being written explicitly written into our DNA. In the context of the quote, it is meant as in "It is not an objective facet of our existence, or something we must endure."
"“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
The framing of it as natural was to point out that you can't get rid of it. It would be like getting rid of people having favourite colours. We just act like that.
>"“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”
This was nice to read, although following on from my first point (this comment), I don't think this analogy fits. Kings to capitalism I mean. Kings are one central top down authority, whereas capitalism has many spheres of power which pop up wherever there are humans clustered. It's nature.
I disagree. Capitalism is a very specific, recent invention. You are living out the actual quote. I don't care if its nature - in my estimation, it fucking sucks!
Your argument works just as easily for Kings, Slavery, and every other horrible thing humans have done to one another. Capitalism is not in any way, shape, or form necessary to human existence. It would be like saying that Prime Time TV is "Nature" and worthy of almighty consideration. I pray I get to live to see the end of all of the above in my life time.
I've said my argument about as cleanly as I can! It's a complicated topic, and I encourage you to continue reading about it.
I'd guess it's more recent, since it's more recently we scaled.
With slavery, there wasn't consent. So I'm not sure that's comparable.
> I pray I get to live to see the end of all of the above in my life time.
That's kind of my point though, you can do that right? There are lots of collectives and alternative communities where you interact with people how you all agree. Or if you have a different structure, you can start it. Or do you feel differently?
There is a definition difference. What Marx defined as capitalism is a pattern of post-feudal production after the industrial revolution. It means the transformation of quantities of surplus value from wage labor, and the qualitative transformation of the surplus into capital.
People typically respond with “well using money and buying stuff in a market is just natural law” etc which isn’t “capitalism” and indeed the first chapter of Capital is all about commodity-money and primitive markets and production. These things are all pre-capitalism and have existed for as long as civilization has.
Thanks.
In your view, if people want to get rid of capitalism, or live in post capitalism or whatever, do you think that's possible?
I still think you'd need to have consent, and you wouldn't get it as some people want to take risk but some don't so would opt for no risk but fixed - limited - reward.
I ask, as just as trading is long standing, so I'd guess would be a risk tolerance (and other tolerances which factor in).
I mean under Marx's definition I can easily envision a "non-capitalist" system where most economic activity is done by solo-entrepreneurs who own their means of production. This doesn't involve any wage labor being utilized. It's not socialism but there is arguably no labor "exploitation" which is the main moral argument I suppose, and frankly close to what a lot of libertarians imagine in their head as the ideal social arrangement anyway.
Communism is supposed to be socialized ownership of the means of productions. So yeah, in a communist world capitalism would be gone (duh). In fact, you don't even have to imagine it, just look at pre-agrarian societies.
If you're arguing capitalism naturally emerges from large societies, you have to prove it and explain why. You can't just claim it based on your surface level of modern economics.
And no, anti-capitalists don't think they can remove a few billionaires from their thrones and be rid of capitalism. Your idea that they do seems most uncharitable to them.
> you can expect that one or both sides will be using drones, at least for surveillance if not for offense
How is this any different than the risk that is currently present? Surveillance technology, in this day and age is ubiquitous and cheap. Attaching it to a drone is convenient for the offense, sure, but the technology described in this article is only a marginal improvement to what a stock drone can provide.
> cameras that use object recognition to identify humans and road vehicles at long range
Is nothing more than a software improvement to a stock drone with a camera, but nobody complains about the massive proliferation of consumer drone devices.
This article, to me, reads like Red Scare propoganda. Regardless of where people are buying this technology, there are much more lethal "weapons of war" currently available to people with very little legal oversight (i.e. you can buy a semi-automatic rifle in most US states without a permit or background check).
It's not clear to me how the police will track down who operated what drone, especially if the drone operator is several kilometers away, perhaps not even near the launch site, and even if caught, only has a controller and headset.
This is much more like the DC sniper than a typical gunman.
Also we're already looking at a) onboard autonomy, so control is not needed or b) rebroadcast hardware that runs over LTE or WiFi. Satellite comms on the way, at least for the civilian market.
You created your account today on a tech discussion board where you aired a personal grievance you have against a company that has a proven track record of operating above the board and accused them of "stealing" your money. Then you complained that your post got outvoted and was no longer on the front page. You are not the only person in the world that this has happened to and you should not expect the entire internet to bend to your desires to comfort you. Again, relax, breathe, wait for Stripe to reply. You will get your money.
