• mindbleach
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    1 month ago

    It may surprise you to learn that selling goods and owning things is not the same as abolishing capitalism.

    • kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 month ago

      Fundamentally you do not own anything under capitalism, how would you create ownership if capitalism always steers towards what makes the most profit?

      • Koarnine@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 month ago

        Apologies for the long comment you were fully within your right to haphazardly essentialise about the state of affairs, sometimes we just want to complain. Its just about the audience really, and it can be so difficult to distinguish between bad-faith actors and those who are being snobbish in their response to you when you have the wrong audience for your rhetoric.

        It really depends on your audience, unfortunately the majority of people you speak your rhetoric too will not have 10% of the basis in knowledge required to make a consistent logical leap between neatly packaged concepts. Especially when many of those concepts have been prepackaged to the audience as inherently deserving of ridicule. Whereas the core ideas of most of those concepts are agreed upon across the political spectrum.

        Its far easier to argue against the Friedman Doctrine, the idea that “The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits”, than it is to argue against capitalism itself in an optics sense.

        Again its easier to argue against the current state of things, often colleqioully known as ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘late-stage capitalism’, than it is to argue against capitalism. Even if that implies the same as what you said (that capitalism tends towards or has tended towards inevitability), it will be received much more graciously as an observable fact of the current state of affairs.

        The Trump camp argues against the current state of things very effectively, despite intentionally identifying the issues incorrectly and pushing them in the worse direction. Because most people can identify the current system is broken, and most want to believe they can help to make it better. If they are given the right framework, debunking common misconceptions, blaming ‘late-stage capitalism’ for example, corporate elites, info about PACs and lobbying (how capitalism undermines democracy through bribery), then they would hopefully come to the conclusion themselves.

        My point being, while its not always your responsibility to meticulously articulate (some of) the core fundamentals of your ideology; if you hope for effective praxis then approaching people where they are at is necessary. Otherwise you risk appearing out of touch and facing (however (un)justifiable) pre-prepared ridicule potentially harming the ideology further through vibe association.

        When your audience is non-leftists (liberals), argue against corporate greed and for real social responsibility for wealthy and corporate actors, who should be providing their fair share to society first. Then argue for state ownership of public services, some services should not be ran for profit and instead for maximising public good (public transport, healthcare, energy, water, etc.). Argue against nestles actions in flint for example, or healthcare costs. These are all easy wins, argue against the big monopolies making us pay more for worse services, argue they should be broken up to allow competition.

        Like I say though, you are within your right to complain and not explain, just don’t be surprised when you have stinky libs acting smug and being arbitrarily obtuse.

        Also, don’t be dissauded by the humiliation, that is their strongest tool in making us powerless.

        I’m reminded of a quote from Yuri Bezmenov:

        “I realized that the purpose of propaganda was not to persuade or even to deceive, but to humiliate. When a person hears lies of the most absurd kind, and can say nothing in return, eventually he will be emotionally spent and conquered, and will not feel that he has any right to say what is true, or that there is no one who will care. Once this has been achieved, liars can move on to action, to do whatever they please without a whimper in response.”

          • mindbleach
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            1 month ago

            Never wonder why you struggle to make your ideas catch on.

            • kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              1 month ago

              Accurate, leftists like make actual arguments and liberals like you either respond with “nuh uh” or your favorite corporate sponsored anticommunist red scare era propaganda piece

              • mindbleach
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                1 month ago

                You lead a rich inner life.

                Your comment was such nonsense that it did not parse. I’m not about to peel apart what you intended, and what little it has to do with reality, when the premise is the central fucking opposite of what defines capitalism. Ownership is kinda the whole idea? Like, to an absurd degree. Addressing the equivocation needed to make your absolute declarations justifiable is even now a huge pain in my ass, when just saying ‘what the fuck are you talking about?’ is met with ‘wowww nice counterargument’ and wild grasping about… corporate red scare propaganda? Fuck off, guy.

                All of this, because I suggested you obviously can and do own things… like mass-market products. Games, for example. Any game on a cartridge, you plainly own. You have to disappear completely up your own butt to insist otherwise. So when you insisted otherwise, out of fucking nowhere - a brief ‘that doesn’t even almost make sense’ was being polite.

                • kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                  1 month ago

                  You could previously own things until capitalism did its thing and took it away, explain how exactly are you going to remove the profit incentive for perpetual profit.

                  • mindbleach
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                    1 month ago

                    This is what I’m talking about. You mean “inevitably,” which, no. It’s pretty evitable. Laws work, actually. Other mediums faced this exact same bullshit - everything from books to records to movies - and for a century, the answer was ‘shut up, brand.’ We can and obviously should restore that to software, the same way it still exists for, like, every other possible category of object. Even the spate of rent-seeking across other industries does not somehow make ownership impossible. It’s a trend people hate, it’s been stopped before without la revolucion, and it fucking obviously isn’t “fundamental” if you now acknowledge things were different before.

                    And of course you follow up this sentence fragment with a completely unrelated demand for a total solution to a systemic obstacle described in broken English. Terse dismissal isn’t “liberal brainrot.” It’s recognizing the bullshit asymmetry principle. You can spout this kind of single sentence assertion and demand, not even bothering to check your goddamn spelling, and then spit on any effort to address why it’s just plain junk.