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| ▲ | _factor 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Is your name Epson? Because you’re really good at projecting. Your comment speaks droves about you, not humanity. | | |
| ▲ | afpx 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | History contains abundant, well-documented cases of ordinary people participating in atrocities without coercion. Most people will act decently in low-pressure environments and will act badly under certain incentives, authority structures, or group dynamics. There is no way to know what a person's threshold is until it's tested, but it can be assumed that most people have a low threshold. | | |
| ▲ | _factor 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Parent was implying “all” humans crave this power over others. This is patently false. “Most” people won’t act badly to attain this power, “some” will. Being placed into a position and choosing harm is not the same as pursuing it. | | |
| ▲ | afpx 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | That is absolutely against the evidence, but yes people do like to think they are naturally righteous and good. | | |
| ▲ | klaff 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | What evidence is there that ALL humans crave power over other humans? |
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| ▲ | pluralmonad 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | To be fair, it is basically one and the same. I doubt most people railing against capitalism are actually against private property. They probably dislike corporatism which only exists as an extension of the government. Very very few of us voluntarily gave up our right to hold people personally responsible for their actions, but this is forced on everyone on behalf of business interests. The corporate vale is materialized from government alone. | | |
| ▲ | Levitz 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > I doubt most people railing against capitalism are actually against private property. They probably dislike corporatism which only exists as an extension of the government. I really don't know. In my experience, it can about private property when talking about housing, it is about markets when talking salaries and work conditions, and it's just about having no idea of what capitalism even is and just vaguely pointing at economics the vast majority of the time. "Capitalism" can be safely replaced with "the illuminati" or "Chem trails" in the vast majority of complaints I hear and read and the message would ultimately make as much sense. There's not a lot of how or why capitalism doesn't work, but by God there sure is a lot of what it seemingly does wrong. | | |
| ▲ | Atlas667 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | You are displaying your ignorance with pride. Just because you don't know what capitalism is, doesn't mean other people do not know. Just because you only read sources from capitalist media platforms doesn't mean there isn't a lot of "how" or "why" capitalism doesn't work. My main message was about the profit motive incentivizing the creation of addictions for the profit of tech companies. The invisible hand may expand the development of tech, but the visible hand needs to make people addicted and unhappy. Think a little before you speak, please. Or read a little more. |
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| ▲ | QuercusMax 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Do you mean "private property" or "personal property"? These are not the same thing, and those who want to scaremonger about non-capitalist modes of production like to conflate the two. | |
| ▲ | Atlas667 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Nah, you're trying to misconstrue people. Corporatism is not a thing. Capitalists hold fundamental power over society, they collectively are the state. They own the things the rest of the people need to survive. Assuming you are a worker/proletariat: Can you survive right now, today, without interacting with a capitalist entity? Can you make your living as in food, money, housing, etc, right now, solely from your own property? Statistically not. Capitalists own most of what you require. "Corporatism" is just capitalism. Capitalists use their media platforms to say the government oppresses them equally to us. When it is proven time and time and time again that they have almost total control and influence over the government. And you buy the narrative. There is no "pure capitalism", bro. Capitalism will ALWAYS evolve into this. It's baked into the rules. This is very plain to see. Go to any main news platform, of any country, on the side of any political wing, of any other capitalist nation on earth and type "corruption" in the corresponding language. You'll be met with a flood of articles. I am against private property of production, because I know the people who need said production can also democratically run it. |
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| ▲ | measurablefunc 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The system incentivizes seeking power by consolidating financial wealth. It doesn't have to be that way & this will eventually become obvious to everyone. | |
| ▲ | anonymars 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Who said anything about government? I thought it was humans and people? | |
| ▲ | ffsm8 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Well adjusted people so not want that power over other people It's sociopaths and narcissists which want it. And as Atlas667 pointed out, it's also a direct consequence from a capitalistic world view, where it has replaced your morals. This is not in relationship to state propaganda. Multiple things can cause abhorrent behavior, and just because we've identified something as problematic doesn't inherently imply that other unrelated examples are any better. | | |
| ▲ | testdummy13 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | "Well adjusted people so not want that power over other people" There are certainly well adjusted people that would like to fix things they feel are inefficiencies or issues in their government, especially when those issues are directly related to their areas of expertise. Thinking well adjusted people wouldn't want to be in a position of power is exactly how you ensure that only bad people end up with power. | | |
| ▲ | riversflow 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Power seekers acquire power, not knowledge seekers. This is from Plato’s The Republic so about as old as it gets. |
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| ▲ | jerf 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | We've always had sociopaths and narcissists, and if you're looking to "capitalism" as the reason why they exist, you're in out-and-out category error territory, not-even-wrong territory. Now that this power exists to be had, human beings are racing to acquire it. If you think you can fix that by "fixing capitalism" you are completely wasting your efforts. | | |
| ▲ | shermantanktop 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | So if that’s not the answer, what is? Should we just throw our hands in the air and say that technology has defeated our monkey brains, and there’s no going back? | |
| ▲ | dwallin 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Given that these tendencies are not evenly distributed throughout the population, you can have structures that leverage the large mean to mitigate the worst tendencies of the extreme tails. Given that the natural state of things is that power begets more power, these are harder to build and maintain, but it can be done. In particular, Democracies and Republics are major historical examples of this. | |
| ▲ | 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | pstuart 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > All of them. At least an unhealthy amount of them. I have no desire to have power over people, except I would like it if my kids actually listened to me... | |
| ▲ | Atlas667 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You didn't say anything. People do have this power right now, they are called capitalists, they are a part of the tech/info/policing industry. You don't have this control, I don't have this control. It's not humans in general, it's literally the capitalists. Right now, today. Try and "timelessly universalize" that. It's the people who make money from this who want it. I would rather that no one particular person or group of people have that much power, and I would rather help organize society to collectively and democratically decide what goes on with this tech but I guess that proudly makes me a communist. |
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| ▲ | conartist6 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I know that it doesn't. Greed will be ever-present, yes, but that doesn't mean that it's a one-way ratchet. It's something we have to keep fighting against all the time. Greed starts out as a driver of progress, then eventually becomes an impediment to progress. The other constant there is progress! No dam will block a river forever. | |
| ▲ | Atlas667 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The definition of capitalism is the private ownership of production and its use to generate profits. I think a coerced assumption you may have of capitalism is that corruption is an unintended side effect, but it actually follows from its principles. How is a society to maintain unmarred democratic institutions when its elements are fundamentally unequal? Put more clearly: How can people have the same amount of political power when one class (capitalist) OWNS the production of what the other class (workers) need? The mythology of capitalist society paints both them as equals and the state as neutral. This is a tactic to preserve the appearance of a democratic backbone. They afford this mythology because capitalists own the air waves and they have, and can have, the most influence in the state. In fact, due to this fundamental inequality capitalists are, for all practical purposes, capitalists are the state. Capitalist societies put political power up for auction; Corruption has its highest manifestation within capitalist societies. Now to your point. Greed will never "magically melt away". Greed can only be controlled through democratic control of what permits greed in the first place. Communism/socialism isn't about magically doing or undoing anything, it's the science of creating firm and unalienable working class power. It must start with democratic control of production and local peoples councils. Greed will not magically melt away, greed must be constantly cut out by everyone by everyone HAVING the political power to cut it out. This means peoples councils will be convened at the neighborhood level, peoples courts will be manned, not by professional judges, but by rotating locally elected citizens. Council delegates will be bound by law to only, and exclusively, be messengers at higher level councils, etc. This is just a small picture of what democracy is. It is not me to say specifically how, of course, but communism does not involve blindly and powerlessly trusting political candidates, like capitalist society requires. There is a reason communism is demonized by the people who control our society. |
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