At the end of the day, as an engineer, you will always be as replaceable as any factory worker. If the market wants cheaper worker, they will just layoff a bunch and hire again with lower salaries.
There is life outside your job, you only live once.
> Borg also said South Asian laborers working on NEOM were “fucking morons” so “that is why white people are at the top of the pecking order.” He also said Gulf women were “tranvestites.”
This is slavery which is the opposite of a free market. On a free market everyone's freedom is protected.
This might be the most misunderstood aspect of what a free market means. It does not mean that you're free to violate freedom of others. It means that everyone is free to buy and sell any product or service while consenting to do so under full information symmetry. You're not allowed to violate others right to do so; using violence, lying or any form of dishonesty, which happens in this case.
I'm not saying that free markets solve everything. For example, a worker might accidentally sign a contract which turns out to be exploitative. Which means that the laws about exploiting or harming anyone must override any free market contracts.
The contradiction I see is that the free market you mention needs a some organism that ensures violating other rights is punished. And this goes further, as far as anyone has resources to buy this same organism they will not suffer any consequences. That's what happen now in most governments. The state is just a way to protect billionaire's interests.
I am of the opinion that the Free Market is a fiction which has never existed and can never exist. The belief in a fictitious "Free Market" which is just a platonic ideal, is equally as ideological as a Marxist belief in a "new man" that arises from living under Socialism, however one of these ideas is considered hocum and the other is orthodoxy that is taught in elite universities.
People who defend capitalism will point out that "well there is some market inefficiency (government interference, authoritarianism, subsidies) that actually makes this not real capitalism". In this example Saudi Arabia is a monarchist petrostate spending government money on stupid projects, so that's actually "not capitalism".
This is the same as the meme of people saying "not real communism" when someone asks how they feel about Lenin murdering a bunch of people.
Instead we should understand that capitalism is about private ownership of property, NOT a fictitious "Free Market" as Milton Friedman tried to re-center the conversation around. Understanding that capitalism is about ownership, and not markets, makes it clear that authoriatrianism and capitalism go hand-in-hand, as a strong and violent government exists to enforce the property rights of the owning class. The power structure of Saudi Arabia is fully compatible with capitalism as it exists throughout the "west" or the "free world".
Public ownership or private ownership, the capital owning class is going to fight for power. The difference is, almost all societies put the power over military and laws and taxation in the hands of the state. With public ownership (read state ownership) the incentives for the capital owning class is to control the state and the means to force (tax) people to pay for ridiculous projects like this Saudi line city in order to save their asses. The private sector can’t legally force me to pay for their projects, whereas the “public” sector can.
> The private sector can’t legally force me to pay for their projects, whereas the “public” sector can.
What's stopping them from hiring a private military and enslaving you? Who will stop them? The government which they control in this scenario?
Power is power, whether it is private or public.
The main reason I argue with people on here and come across as annoying is that the reflexive defence of capitalism by people living under it is conditioned into them by society. I would like for people to recognize that "our guys" do a just as much harm as "the bad guys over there" instead of rushing to justify some atrocity because well, it's our atrocity.
> Who will stop them? The government which they control in this scenario
The private sector does not control the government in this scenario. That is the difference. The private sector only controls its own property. Now if there is public ownership of property, then yes the capital owning class will resort to controlling the state to control the property, and thereby controlling the military to enforce the rules the capital owning class wants.
Where I live, the U.S. Military (and the constitution by which they swear an oath to defend) is stopping them. That is the importance of the word “legally”. There is a role to play for state governments, and that role is solely to protect the individual liberties of its citizens. Not to provide services or products. Tesla doesn’t send policemen to my door to intimidate me to buy their cars. But if I don’t pay my taxes…
I agree with a lot of what you're saying. I don't think private firms need to be as ham-fisted as sending cops to your door though.
If Tesla wants to increase car ownership, they just need to control a few key politicians to dismantle alternative forms of transporation.
In an ideal world, liberal democratic governments would keep corporations under control while ensuring our individual rights, and corporations would provide goods and services at the lowest, most efficient rate. This is not the case in reality unfortunately.
The only way politicians have the power over dismantling alternative forms of transportation is if the government has any control over building and maintaining transportation infrastructure, idk something like a Department of Transportation. Same goes for agriculture, finance, labor, healthcare… When we provide the government with these powers, it is within the self interest of corporations to control the politicians. If the politicians have no power to change these things, there is no use in corporations bribing them.
This is becoming a circular argument. The corporations bribe the politicians because the politicians exist and have power. If the gov't didn't exist, the corporations would directly have power over you instead of indirectly. They would essentially be the new governing body. My entire point has been that power is power and authoritarianism can be private or governmental.
Ultimately, I have seen millions die of starvation in one system and not in the other. So I'm going to take the latter. You argue the semantics and whatever terms you like.
I went from one to the other and life got better. Maybe you can’t pick but it turns out I can. Up to readers whether they want to be like you or like me.
Just want to point out private ownership of property, in the common sense, is also existent on socialism/communism. That is very different from private ownership of the means of production.
When I stayed in the hospital for 2 weeks without being able to move, nurses where doing everything for me. I remember how much I cried over that when I left the hospital, how much grateful I was. They all just looked like angels to me.
> Not sure how we can have a "peaceful and happy mind" while everyone outside of our little bubble suffers. This line of thinking is, to me, an example of why we'll never fix any of this.
I agree with you that this individualistic line of thinking will never fix the systemic issues we find here. But I challenge you on your conclusion, "That's why we'll never fix any of this". There should be another "line of thinking" that will fix stuff. What is it? Maybe something not individualistic, aren't people able to cooperate?
> Folks, remember we're all in the same boat!
By "we" in this sentence I understand you mean ones reading this, or interacting here. Just want to point out that, there are people out of this boat. Their interests are protected by the State and they never, never had to do a 8h work shift.
Hi, I'm curious about your alternative model for capitalism. How does it aim to change the logic of capital accumulation? Since companies are driven by profit, the entire system revolves around capital growth and competition, which ultimately leads to the emergence of monopolies and billionaires. How does your model address these issues?
The principle we hope will work is to out-compete abusive platforms. Textbooks say capitalism requires realistic future profit and growth. The goal is to show Wall Street that profitability of Big Tech advertisement model is doomed.
Forming non-profit collectives we aim to organise alternatives which are superior to existing offerings. So you still end up with a monopoly, just under democratic governance. This is in-line with the thinking at European Commission level, DG Grow [0]. We are trying to invent the tech to form digital collectives which scale beyond millions. Very hard. Plus collective decision making. Then you have self-sovereign citizens owning these collectives, not markets.
By design Tribler is self-organising and self-scaling. We have build a DAO using shared Bitcoin capital [1] with one extension using fancy crypto based on FROST [2].
If you are worried about users holding the DAO hostage by not signing cooperatively, you might want to check out ROAST which is basically FROST done in rounds in such a way that you can withstand some malicious participants.
If advertising model is doomed (so far all the signs suggest otherwise), wouldn’t “big tech” just adjust models? What makes you think they just go away?
I’m not sure why technology is the “solution” to an alternative… people seem to just want good content delivered well. Content creators want to make as much money as possible. And that’s for “honest” content… the internet is filled with disinformation and people trying to spread conspiracies, recruit for X, or otherwise mass influence the entire population.
How a decentralized Bitcoin based model magically get us amazing content, something people want to use, and minimization of negative forces? Why is technology the key issue?
Indeed, its not about the tech. Changing the business model is key.
It might be hard to re-imagine the content industry without the current monopolists. Linux showed how disruptive an open model can be.
See here a description + full implementation of a music industry based on Creative Commons content. Artists release their music and receive direct Bitcoin donations from fans. 100% artists, 0% music label, 0% Big Tech, 0% credit card fee. It's a Bitcoin DAO with Spotify-inspired music discovery.
Indeed, its not about the tech. Changing the business model is key.
It might be hard to re-imagine the content industry without the current monopolists. Linux showed how disruptive an open model can be.
There is a stark difference between the case of Linux and content. In the case of Linux, ROI is measurable in dollars. In the case of content, value is in large part the perception of customers.
This is going to be very difficult in the particular use case of news media, which is arguably the most critical area. We're already in a situation there where "value" is in the form of the strengthening of biases and misinformation.
The point here, is that to succeed, Tribler might have to find a niche where superior value generation becomes undeniably obvious to some sizable segment. (Perhaps music can serve this function.)
I think the advertising model is bound to collapse once GPT agents / assistants progress to the point where anyone can set one up to do a lot of their internet searching for them. The GPT will take your query and provide you an answer, bypassing both search engines and websites. If you control the GPT, then of course you can simply use one that distills whatever it finds into useful information free of ads. If it is designed to be able to evaluate product listings, it can simply find you the product you are actually looking for, bypassing sponsored results. Once the technology reaches this level of capability, any trend toward wide adoption will pull the rug out from under most forms of web advertising.
I have zero faith in this direction. How will you pay for the GPT agent operations? These things are expensive to run, which means there are going to crop up cheaper ad-supported alternatives and we're back to square 1.
They’re expensive to train, not to run. A technical person could produce and run the kind of agent I’m talking about today on pro-sumer hardware. It would take a lot more effort to make something that non-technical people can use.
Well, sure. Technical people even today are able to run ad blockers and pi-holes and use DDG or Kagi or what have you. But what will non-technical people do? They will have to buy a device with a hardware accelerator, and ad people are going to get into that game just like they are with smart TVs today.
While we have a socio-economic that values market and profit over social benefits we will keep this going just because it's cheaper. (and also because there is some big people gaining lots of money with it)
> No one wants to work at the DMV, no one dreamed that in their child hood. But we need people to do it... he's speaking out against them going home and sucking down film, tv, tiktok rather than DOING things that enrich their minds and bodies.
That same DMV work + household chores + family would not give time and energy enough for someone to participate actively in whatever kind of activity by the end of the day. I agree mostly that doing things is better than just consuming, but unfortunately the bigger part of the population just aren't able to do it.
>>> That same DMV work + household chores + family would not give time and energy enough for someone to participate actively in whatever kind of activity by the end of the day.
Does no one read any more?
This is the very nonsense his essay rages against.
You leave work and:
Buy yogurt on the way home, make sure your kid does piano practice and watch soccer on TV.
-- OR --
You buy milk on the way home, make yogurt with your kid, play soccer in the back yard and then amuse yourself by playing music in the evening.
Same time investment, less money spent better engagement and an enriched life.
Last years inflation was 10% in my country. I only got 3% raise because having higher raise would "increase inflation". I'm still able to afford my lifestyle but I don't have the same from 4 years ago.
Which country is that? And who made that excuse that you quoted about inflation? That sounds like something that would be very weird for a private employer to say; so I assume you might be in the public sector, or something with very highly regulated wages?
GDP is a monetary measure, it measures market value. So most of regular infrastructure does not add anything to GDP, public schools for example. Positive GDP is an important measure on Capitalist system but it does not reflect fully in the life of most poor people.
> Depending on the lifestyle (or parts thereof) in question, this may not be a bad thing. Certain lifestyle (aspects) may be imprudent,
I guess he was talking about people that cant afford a 70000 truck at first place. Some people on rich countries like Brasil, 11th GDP in 2022, were just not able to afford food.
> So most of regular infrastructure does not add anything to GDP, public schools for example.
But building a new school, or bridge, or factory, or repaving a road to fix potholes, does add to GDP.
GDP is a measure of economic activity, and having positive activity is generally a good thing. (Though some is not: if there's an oil spill, that will increase economic activity due to having to spend money on the clean-up measures.)
> Positive GDP is an important measure on Capitalist system but it does not reflect fully in the life of most poor people.
If you think poor people have a hard time with positive GDP, do you think they'll have a better time when it's negative?
The problem is that GDP doesn't measure the distribution of economic activity.
And reducing economic inequality might reduce GDP even as it improves the lives of poor people. Forcing people to work harder is good for GDP even if it isn't the best thing for the workers.
Is America gaming and overemphasizing GDP? I don't think so. We have all kinds of economic measurements, and the one most people seem to be discussing today is inflation.
As long as we don't go stupid and braindead, and consider the overall economic picture, we'll do fine. We also can't ignore the best data that's collected or consider it conspiracy-laden fakes. But we also need to have enough skepticism to make sure our numbers are legitimate.
There's certainly people who fail on both sides. Overly trusting one number (ignoring all others) for the sake of their arguments. Or alternatively, ignoring inconvenient numbers (well, inconvenient for their side of the argument).
There is life outside your job, you only live once.