Capitalism has shown that it's war

By electing Trump.

Seriously, that exactly what happened. A wrench in the cabals wheels.
Of course, as I said then, he has 40-60 trillion opposed to him, so he would either be killed or compromised, and it has been a miracle of bravery and intelligence how he has done so far.
But the 40-60 trillions are really doing their work.

If we had an answer to that, we would not be living under fascism but under a benign form of capitalism.

Capitalism is simply what will always endure. It is not an ideology but the reward system of nature herself, where the combination of creative genius, exorbitant effort and determination is rewarded. It harbours all ideologies.

To the corporate monopoly question:

Make more money than them with less evil products. Daunting, I know, but doable. It would not be doable in, say, feudalism or communism, where what you could do about it is tremble in fear and thank God for your limbs.

Is this your plan? How’s it going? Me personally, I do work very hard, and right now in a creative area I get paid for. Doesn’t put me up in Google’s gnp.

Got any workable solutions.

And the internet of things is coming and they will know every single gesture you make. They will know about how you take care of yourself, where you stop to get a snack. And everyone will be hooked in from an early age.

The capitalists are right now heading us for a smily dystopia the Stasi could only have dreamt of.

Again, I recommend The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.

Trump freed Google. He allowed them to monotize. Maybe he is fucking with the other elite on some issues, but as far as Google and facebook and Amazon, he is setting them free. And they are much more powerful than most countries. Read the book I mentioned above to Pedro.
They were already able to stop government intervention in the way they are monitoring our lives. They are moving forward now into behavior modification, and getting services ready for contractual enforcement for corporate customers. Like online cars which your bank can shut off if you are late on payments, which your insurance company will monitor to see what level your insurance should be. Telemetry will track where you go to eat, so your health insurance can set rates. Everything will be a camera and an audio pick up. They will be selling all your data and able to sense everything. And Trump made this easier. That’s why when you Google now, you get products first. He is either ignorant about them, which would be a huge ignorance, or he does not care.

You aksed.

Don’t bitch and moan at me if you don’t like the answer.

Wait wait. You make a living doing something creative and… you’re complaining?

That says it all.
This is so brutally naive I am stunned.

Modern western-born socialists never came into smelling distance of even the mildest earthly hardship. They are so completely oblivious of the privilege they were given at birth that nature herself is blushing in embarrassment.

Rhetorics aside, google has been a paid catalogue for well over a decade, if you wanted to appear in it with your company in 2008, you had to pay for ads as well. In 2015, my phones illicit voice recognition was already producing ads about most things I was talking about in its vicinity. I guess Trump must be good friends with dr Emmett Brown.

Let me know if you care to actually put that in an argument form and/or respond to my post.

Are you actually saying that since I make money from creative work, I should not give a shit about totalitarian trends? about a panopticon that is much more in place already than peopel realize? the way children are being made into addicted zombies? I mean, if you aren’t willing to actually make an argument - I know, I guess it could be seen as scary - I have to guess at the above.

Hey, look, if you have some shit job, I’d feel sympathy. I worked hard but I also had some luck too. If you think Trump is going to make it easier for you to not have a shit job, good luck. If you have a decent job that matches your skills and interests, then why the fuck do you complain about left policies?

I mean seriously, come on, make some sense.

And, in case, this for some reason needs to be said, I wasn’t complaining about having creative work.

:mrgreen:

Yeah, I knew I was gonna hit a nerve.

You’re a person deeply privileged by your capitalist environment. But you want to feel like a victim.

Way to ignore the very argument of your own life, not to mention everything I said.

Where would you be under Socialism? Considering how unhappy you are with an existence that, to anyone living in Socialism would be absolute paradise, you would likely have long killed yourself.

For your information about my own situation - not everyone who disagrees with your ideology does so out of unhappiness. You’ll be hard pressed to find a happier man than me, if we’re not looking at contentedness but deeper. I like my struggle.

Its rather my happiness which prompts me to look down with a bit of amusement on your lack of gratitude for your privilege, a privilege of seeing ones own valued efforts valued by society. Thats a most beautiful gift to have. Capitalism at work.

I know what Socialism is, I grew up in it. I know what Capitalism is, Ive found freedom in it. Its good not to have to work for the state. Its good to not be on welfare. Its good that the government doesn’t control the value of my efforts. I am grateful.

I was critical of the response, not bitching and moaning.

I could have responded to your other post by saying ‘Don’t go all hysterical…’ but that would be just making shit up. This isn’t just personalities and putdowns.

I was critical of your response. It did not make clear you even understood the issues. So I repeated them. I have some sense of your beliefs. I can’t imagine you want facebook to have more power than it already has.

Where have I said I am a victim? I mentioned my job precisely because it meant I was doing well, I don’t reach even the middle class, but I am doing something I like. I would likely be doing it under a monarchy also and certainly in most of what the right calls socialist countries also. IOW this is precisely not me complaining about my personal situation. I find your response off topic and silly, point this out and I am playing victim. What are you 5? You usually don’t waste my time. I generally like the way you post, but you see the word capitalists, assume you know me, and just support other people drivel and come with no substance yourself.

Did you actually read his ridiculous response? Nah.

You’re a team player. So my post triggers you into thinking I am on the other team, since you think there are only two. So you attack me personally, instead of seeing if his post made the slightest sense. Because he’s on your team.

You assume later you know my ideology. You don’t. I don’t fit in the easy boxed and am pissed at the two sides I am told I am supposed to pick from.

The self-congratulate thing with you hitting a nerve is just snore positioning garbage.

Your comment made no sense. I pointed this out. You can show how what I said was wrong or you can keep focus on me and not deal with substance.

I could frame your posts as victim, and call it all whining about socialists, and virtue signalers and how terrible you think everything is. Who cares? I see a lot of focusing on me and not a lot of response to the issues I raised.

And whatever the faults of socialists and there are many this does not mean capitalism is OK.

It’s like I have two terrible neighbors and when I tell one not to drive his car at the kids on the block he tells me the guy across the street is giving them drugs.

My response to both is, yeah, great, the other side you think is the only possible other side is fucked up. Great, that doesn’t mean your favorite team doesn’t have problems.

It’s funny, you’re still just happy with the idea that since I have a creative job, I think I am a victim if I am critical of the advances in power of certain monopolies towards totalitarian control, even while conservatives whine about fb - though they seem ignorant in general about the power of google.

Again, read The Rise of Surveillance Capitalism, get back to me.

You have no idea what is already happening. Of if you do, you perhaps out of misguided team loyalty don’t want to say anything about it.

I hear the right complain about facebook, well guess what, they are aiming for power way beyond what they have now and nothing is getting in the way. Smart cities are coming, so even if you can keep your house clean and your phone safely not a smart one, they gonna know all about everything you and your kids and your peers do. But they’ll never be an issue cause they’re a corporation, only governments with their taxes and pc laws are a danger.

Since you can’t even bother to make a post with substance that’s the idiocy on your part I’m left with.

Team zombies meet team zombies. Where’s SErendipper when you need him? I could leave you to play with each other, like you are in the public realm, the two bears dominance posing to the mirror image.

Talk about triggered. The capitalists attack me and do not respond to points made.

They would be absolutely right that the left would respond the same way if I talked about immigration or the EU or Brexit.

Suddenly they would get personal and triggered and label me racist and fascist. And not get into substance.

Both groups seem to act very much the same right now.

Enjoy the debates with your mirror images everyone, the boxes are working well for you.

You are a good poster, I voted you one of the best, but this is stoopit K. Don’t you dare to look at your blessings?

I want you to dig into the LOGIC of it all. Of value. Not waste your mind on observing that the world isn’t perfectly accommodating any feelings of righteousness a person may have.

Can’t you see the arguments for capitalism as allowing people to exist without the blessing of their bureaucratic superiors?

Let’s pretend we can all do more than judge, and focus on the logic of value creation and freedom.

Yes, nature is hard. Excuse me if socialism fails to impress me as a way to refine it.

The typical argument against capitalism, yours included, is always akin to the absurd statement life is hard therefore we should hack it to pieces.

And Pedros argument wasn’t ridiculous or contemptible, it was, more so than your efforts, an actual attempt at a constructive point on how to tackle the problem of monopoly.

What do you think is gained by the observation that there are problems? Does this make for any value, this statement?
No. So you have no ground to look down on Pedros statement.

It is, in fact, the only solution. Make better products. That is how nature overcomes monopolies, and we are hardly in the position of considering ourselves above and beyond nature. Nature doesn’t have a government that curbs evolution because it isn’t fair. If it did, it wouldn’t really be very fertile.

Thats what happens with all states where government is valued above the citizens; impotence, barrenness.

I just read a pm from one of the people I have jousted with here and I appreciated it. Before this I had a few days to mull over this thread and found a few interesting anomalies, or what I wish were anomalies but which I see common both the right and the left when it comes to these issues:

  1. Barabarianhorde, because I have creative work, labels me privileged and therefore should shut up. IOW since I have decent work, I have no right to complain about capitalism, since I am its beneficiary. He further says I was playing victim. Before I unpack the assumptions in this ludicrous act of his, let me point out the irony.
    • One of the things the left often does is tell people to shut up because they are privileged. A white guy like me, doing adequately economically and not even gay, needs to shut up since I am privileged. Now I can expect this argument from the right also.
    • Assumption 1 – if I am the doing well in a system that is semi-capitalist, then I cannot complain about how current capitalism is carried out and what it is leading to. This strikes me as not just confused but dangerous. The people who are scrabbling to survive in any system – under communism, fascism, oligarchies like ours, whatever - have less time an energy to notice what is going on, analyze what is going on, articulate that analysis. If the ‘priviledged’ should shut the fuck up, you are cutting off one of ways we can get good feedback about what is happening. It’s also the kind of thing I expect from the left. If I am in category X, then I should shut up.
    • Assumption 2 – the only thing I should be concerned about is my paycheck. If there is a totalitarian coup, but they still want the products of my creative work, well, If I complain, I am a privileged person playing victim. (And frankly there is a good chance I would do alright under a totalitarian regime, at least economically. Again, not that I make much, but I get by on work I actually care about) But the implication that I am doing fine, so I should not be concerned about the rise of the panopticon, the already begun systematic behavior modification by social media, and their plans to control us, or really let their clients control us using the mass data collection, illegal data collection, and already used modification tech. that is happening right now. No, if my paycheck is fine, I should just shut up.
    • Assumption 3 – it doesn’t matter if I am right. IOW at least in their first round of responses, I was the issue. It doesn’t matter if something is happening that would be problematic to them. The only issue is to get me shut up. I can get this from the Left if I point out the problems of transpersons with male bodies beating all the born as women in sporting events, when they will say I am racist, white and privileged. Or if I talk about Brexit and the problems with centralizing power in the EU. The actual problems, don’t matter. It is making clear who gets to speak and making clear that we never have to look at any problems with ‘our’ system. Shut the fuck up. Go ad hom. Shut them down. I can also get this from religious conservatives if anything challenges their religions
    • Assumption 4 – pedro’s response was that I should amass enough material wealth to stop the monopolies. Note the jump. It does not matter if what I am saying is a problem. He would not care or it doesn’t even matter if he would, he doesn’t even bother to look at that. Jakob seemed to be bothered by some of fb’s actions, but it is non-issue for Pedro. The answer to any problem with modern capitalism in real life is amassing wealth and then using this wealth to control the policies of supposedly democratic nations. That is the way we control things. Become right, control society. A tacit acceptance of oligarchies. I am sure he is rooting for the oligarchy to intervene openly, like with ground troops in his beloved Venezuela. To bring back capitalism. He might want to look at the last 6 or 7 counties the US intervened openly in, those in northern Africa, to see how well that goes down for the people. Because those in power do not care about countries or people. They used to give a shit about the citizens in their own counties, but they don’t have countries anymore. FB and Google are happy to help communist regimes with their massive data collection. They are also happy to turn their info over to ‘our’ governments. If you think the capitalists as a rule are for capitalism or freedom or against communism, you’re missing what is going on. Maybe the invisible hand should have prevented this, but it didn’t and it’s not going to.

Right now these people are making products that take in sound and images from your homes. They are making smart cities, so even if you keep your homes clear, they will have enough data to know your personality, politics, likely whereabouts at any time. They have machines now, that will be working on doing behavior modification on you, that you will not consciously register. They do not care who else has this information. It will go to government, other corporations and will also get hacked and spread because they do not care about your security, privacy, rights, identity.

Me, I don’t see that as a right vs. left issue. I do see it as a product of capitalisms concentrations of power in a few hands, and conservatives should be concerned about 1) how this goes against the constitution 2) has already reduced, even more, democracy 3) goes against the views of corporations that originally were in place 4) might as well be communist

It is not better if there is huge power in the hands of corporations rather than governments, because they are just the new governments. This doesn’t mean I want to have the state control the means of production or send dissenters to gulags.

Everything is so binary, very few people seem able to think outside of binary boxes.

I see religious ideologues on the right and left.
Upon meeting a new person, they quickly determine their categories. Once you know the categories, classify them as on my team or not on my team.
From that moment forward try to shut them down.
If we are going to get anywhere, we need to be able to deal with cognitive dissonance. We need to be able to look at what is actually happening in the name of or even directly because of beliefs we hold dear. That’s true on the right and the left.
If we react simply as I am on TEAM A, that seems to be an attack on TEAM A, smash the attack by all means
Well,
The people with real power will be laughing at us.

Here’s the thing Karpel, and why not? Let’s bring it to what Venezuelans call a “you to you.”

These positions you hold, while ostensibly being about forgetting the false dichotomy or whatever, are positions. They are for some things, against some others, all in the context of certain given facts.

While the positions you hold are supposed to be against the “left and right,” purport to be, they are in fact left. They are left in a very important way: they ar the very positions that are held, and support, and lead to the direction of ressources to, the very people you are ostensibly bashing right now: facebook, China, etc. The creeps. What they need most from a polity is that they hold the positions and opinions you hold. Below the facts that you mention, there is an assumption, a base line of things necessary for your position to hold up: amassment of wealth is biased, as a natural phenomenon, to the abuse and misstreatment and even theft of people who do not amass it. It’s not about whether it does in fact do this or not, but about the fact that it is naturally biased to act this way. That’s #1. So, for instance, barbarianhorde mentions how you have an awesome job doing something you love that allows you to live comfortably, all under the system you bash and that people without these privileges would kill, do kill, to have, and your underlying assumptions come up: it is not about th final results of a given system, but the natural biases towards evil.

For an example of evil, you point to the actions of facebook, for example. It doesn’t matter that it is anecdotal, it is even possible that most big collections of capital have acted similarly, because it is not about deducing a truth from reality but rather showing a real life example of a known truth: the evil bias of capital.

Since it is not evidence but example, you miss what the evidence actually points to: th consequnces of positions such as yours. For it is only in a political economy wherein positions like yours hold currency that companies like facebook are able to operate freely in the areas you discuss with fear and abhorrence, and even tend to form th justification for those actions.

This is the big distinction between leeft and right that I have been working on since i returned here to ilp. The right is about looking at reality and deducing truths from it. The left is about already knowing truth and seeking examples of it in reality.

But I said we were bringing it to a you to you.

I do ignor the points you are trying to make. Because I have no business thre, th way you form arguments and posistions, the very frameworks you use, are not the ones I operate in. I do not understand, cannot work with, argumnts that try to derive reality from morality. I can do the opposite, so for example the terrible consequences of ratcheting up tensions with Russia over moral opposition to th people that see working with Russia as morally beneficial within a very complicated geopolitical context, or Kissinger bombing the military supply routes of the communists that were illegaly stablished outside the legal warzone. it was ineffective because Kissinger waited too long because the political capital he would have needed was demo0lishd by the left, by people who wer simply against the US and did not care about the consequences of allowing th communists ther to prevail (the ensuing genocide).

Forgive my weird spelling. a molecule of dirt has lodged itself under the “e” in my keyboard. Fucking capitalists, or whatever.