- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
You can tell that this audience is primarily American because they still defend capitalism, even after being shafted by it over and over. Careful everyone, big bad socialism is going to take your kids and your wife!
Don’t dare dream of something better, instead keep swallowing the propaganda of the state and its controlling elites.
Man socialism keeps sounding better and better they will even take those pesky wife and kids off my hands/s.
But in serious most Americans don’t know shit about socialism our capitalism they live under. Dumb fucks look at you with surprise when you mention our highway system would be considered socialist program.
Sounds interesting, what does that mean?
Roads and streets are funded 100% from taxs which make them a social program. I know not true 100% socialism but it’s as close as the United States will allow.
Also most Americans always going on especially fucking Republicans and their voter base about how the government should be run like a business. But don’t realize the government should never be ran as one.
The corruption already bad enough.
Yeah, run America like Elon runs Twitter. Absolutely brain dead
They should be forced to run their businesses as businesses - no more bailouts
All these big names seriously run their businesses like social programs.
which make them a social program. I know not true 100% socialism
This is part of the problem of people not knowing what socialism even is. Even the ancient slavery systems could have social programs (for example famed Roman grain handouts in Rome), and the first modern, universal state funded social programs were introduced in 1889 in German Empire. neither of them was by any means socialist because socialism is not when the government does stuff.
socialism is not when the government does stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq0EYo_ZQVU
Just wanted to put the clip here. :D
American here and fuck capitalism.
Hey now, that’s unfair!
As à Canadian, I can attest that we also blindly defend capitalism.
We are poor and our freedoms are exploited, but at least we’re free!
That’s right, real freedom is being able to scream into the void without actually having the power to improve your material conditions. :)
Why complain when capitalism ruins something that it created? Isn’t that how it works? Something else will come along and don’t better or differently and people will flock to it until it sucks too.
Depends on what you mean by socialism. All systems have upsides and downsides. Late stage capitalism in the US has a lot of downsides, but workers taking over the means of production does not have a good track record.
Communism does not have a good track record in places like Poland. After the absolute shithole that the PRL was, I dont kniw how you except people to defend communism.
Did they say communism? I don’t think they said communism. In fact, I’m pretty certain they said socialism, which is not the same thing unless you’re a propagandized American who licks boots.
Communism is not the only alternative to capitalism, my dude.
Absolutely correct.
Finnish person here to say fuck socialism.
What are your criticisms of how Finland is run?
If I don’t swallow the propaganda, I don’t swallow anything. We’re hungry, man.
I like capitalism. It is cool sometimes.
(Comment gets downvoted to oblivion)
Edit: would someone care to explain why there are no cases in which capitalism is cool?
Because it’s unsustainable and actively degenerates everything in its environment in pursuit of an insatiable need for capital growth.
Saying capitalism isn’t that bad is like saying early stage cancer isn’t that bad. It doesn’t change the nature of the cancer and what it will become unabated.
Is there a communism society that has succeeded? Lol
Can you name a pure capitalist state that’s succeeded without socialist elements keeping it afloat?
Follow-up: Why hand money to the leeches that do nothing but own shit rather than the workers that fuel the economy?
You didnt answer my comment.
who says the only alternative to a shafting capitalism like you have in the states is pure communism?
Most socialist states are better after their revolutions as opposed to before. The USSR went from a borderline feudal society to putting people in orbit in 50 years. Additionaly, socialist states outperform capitalist ones in similar wealth categories.
Most socialist states are better after their revolutions as opposed to before. The USSR went from a borderline feudal society to putting people in orbit in 50 years. Additionaly, socialist states outperform capitalist ones in similar wealth categories.
Did they get to the moon? /s
Anyway they aren’t around today without capitalism (modern russia) so your point is kind of useless
Workers should control the beans of production.
Rise up! Seize the beans of production!
Lol, enshitification of these services are happening because the owners want to extract as much money as possible from the users. Workers would do the same even if they owned it. How many people would turn down millions of dollars because users don’t like the change?
Yeah I’m not sure why it’s nowadays common to simplify socialism as “workers owning the means of production”. It’s not exactly wrong, but it is often misunderstood.
A company being owned by it’s employees is not necessarily “socialism”. In today’s global capitalist economy, there are worker-cooperatives as well, but they too exist within the capitalist economy and have to follow its rules, which is above all the profit motive. If you don’t orient yourself based on profit, you will be out-competed eventually.
Traditionally, when socialists talk about “workers owning/seizing the means of production”, they are not talking about individual workers or individual businesses.
Workers means “the working class”, which would be pretty much everyone (“the 99%”). Means of production means industry and the economy overall, not individual factories and businesses.
What makes FOSS special is that the software is not privately owned by anyone, not by the devs, not by a couple of programmers, not by a company. It is commonly owned, anyone can use, copy and alter the code however they want without any artificial barriers. This of course makes it a lot harder to extract money from users.
I’m realizing I may have misunderstood you, sorry! .
I think you might have replied to the wrong person?
In publicly-traded corporations, long term wealth extraction isn’t the goal. Getting sales up next quarter is. Employee-owned cooperatives are more likely to think long term. Plus, I’d vastly prefer to trust the average worker to do the right thing in a coop situation vs a manager doing it in a situation where they’re legally required (as standard publicly-traded corporations are) to prioritize the financial gains of shareholders above all other interests. Maybe you’ve lost so much faith in people that you think no one would ever choose to be slightly less rich for any reason. But plenty of people know there’s such a thing as enough, that there are interests as important as next quarter’s profits. They just don’t usually get MBAs.
Ah, yes, we can see it with all the communities running their own Mastodon servers and extracting the maximum of wealth from their users. /s
You must think that humans are inherently greedy and/or are projecting what you would do in a scenario where you’re part of a worker co-op. Most workplaces aren’t worth millions. Most folks who round themselves in a worker co-op would most likely try to better the operation for everyone.
I see you haven’t met my co-workers. Or my neighbors.
Yah, if workers own a tiny portion of the means of production, as they do now in various co-ops around the globe, they will be either (1) required to operate on the basis of profit in order to outcompete entities that are not worker-owned, or (2) cease to exist because they get outcompeted by those who operate on the basis of profit.
This forces all existing co-ops to behave in line with capitalism as a whole. The point is to overcome that system of socio-economic relations: When calls are made for workers to own and operate production, as in this meme, they mean that the class constituted by workers — the proletariat — should be in control of all productive means. Not just that some workers should start co-ops, for this primary reason.
The idea that owners would sacrifice their profits if their business were merely a co-op is, I agree, not necessarily true. (Though workers in co-ops who are directly connected to the point of value production would definitely be more willing to sacrifice profits for decisions that enhance social value.) The point, however, is to move beyond an economy owned and operated for profit and forge a society in which profit is not the basis for operation in the first place. If, for example, workers’ needs were guaranteed, the impetus for profit-seeking would evaporate, though will not be absent, at least while the artifacts of capitalist society persist in us and our institutions.
In the case of social media, the users are also the workers.
Damn, a lot of capitalist bootlickers in this thread
Commie memes on my front page? This place is cool AF
As if workers give a shit about customers.
That would be an improvement actually, because the customers of these companies are not users, they are other companies looking to advertise or buy users personal data. The users of for profit social media are in fact the product, not the customers.
Great counterpoint. This is what Reddit has been missing for the last 6-8 years: actual thought instead of regurgitation.
Workers don’t give a shit about customers because that’s how the incentive system is set up. Give workers the profits, you give them a good reason to give a shit about how clients feel.
As well as ensuring those profits will keep flowing through their retirement, and you get the long term planning incentive.
I’m reminded by that guy on TikTok
“You just lost a customer”
“Good”
You skipped over the part where he says “You think I own this business? You think I own IKEA?” implying he would care if he actually had any skin in the game which he would if his job operated as a worker co-op.
Co-ops are still capitalism.
Co-ops can be capitalistic and are capable of functioning under capitalism, but they would also work much the same under any market economy. Decisions and would be profits are democratized/socialized.
Capitalism is a system of capital accumulation with the people who own the means of production hiring workers to operate them. Co-ops are a market economy, but they’re demonstrably not capitalism because capital is distributed fairly amongst the workers doing the work. Learn the difference between markets and capitalism.
Unsurprisingly, those who manage their own small business and aren’t at mercy of a giant corporation do. So…🙄
Amazing how many people will step in to defend the ownership of everything to a small minority. They will not reward bootlicking yet yall continue.
Look, they’re just temporary inconvenienced billionaires.
What I learned from observation is that they tend to believe that, one day, they will be part of the “small minority”. The American Dream!!!1
“It’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it”
Goes without saying. Look at the profits of the companies providing essential resources like energy. They most certainly didn’t let a good crisis go to waste.
Attention, people of Bikini Bottom! You have been cheated and lied to! The gentle laborer shall no longer suffer from the noxious greed of Mr. Krabs! We will dismantle oppression board by board! We’ll saw the foundation of big business in half, even if it takes an eternity! With your support, we will send the hammer of the people’s will crashing through Mr. Krabs’ HOUSE OF SERVITUDE!
KRUSTY KRAB IS UNFAIR! MR. KRABS IS IN THERE! STANDING AT THE CONCESSION! PLOTTING HIS OPPRESSION!
What the heck does that mean?
The problem is: capitalism.
Co-ops
Yes, or at a bare minimum, CEO-proof everything and put more power in the hands of users of monolithic infrastructural utility products like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit
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Alienation isn’t limited to the workplace anymore. It has found it’s way into the platforms we spend our free time on.
Or at least have them be publicly owned common good, owned by multiple countries with editorial independence from the get go and funded through taxation. That would be a start.
No, it means that the users should own the services, which is what the F in FOSS means
Which turns the users into the workers in this equation since those services need to be maintained and contributed to.
I miss lemmy.ml before the reddit API changes. Not nearly as many bootlickers.