@Moon and as usual, the reasoning for creating a corporate monopoly over the technology is "this technology/industry is too dangerous to be left in corporate hands unwatched", and the hand-in-glove with the TLAs begins. Later this is also called "capitalism".
@aven@Moon I fully agree with you but I wonder if it doesn't make sense to just embrace this term and see "capitalism" as "that bad and evil thing we have now". The market anarchists are doing this (see the book " markets not capitalism ") and I found it very easy to get people to agree to 99% of what we'd think of as " capitalism" in bar discussions as long as I never used the C word.
@lain@Moon It's tricky, and I can see the merits of both approaches:
On the one hand, you're right that "capitalism" acts as a thought-terminating cliche, similar to "Ayn Rand". It's been brainwashed into people that capitalism = everything that is evil, and socialism = capitalism minus the bad parts and no bad side-effects.
It's similar to Objectivists trying to salvage the word "selfishness" as a virtue with their unusual definition, trying in vain to fight the cultural current that selfishness = harmful greed. I think that one is a doomed battle and a silly hill to die on. A bit cult-y, too.
On the other hand, words have meaning, and they will and already do come for the word "markets", and you end up on a treadmill of words for them to redefine. I remember (and attached) a ridiculous TIME Magazine cover. If you cede word after word, the orwellians win. It's the problem of accepting their framing in order to debate them, and thus inevitably losing, as their argument is built into their framing, and they'll keep reframing it further and further, because that's where you cede.
It reminds me of a Michael Malice thing where he describes that they make the topic of the debate "Which sex position should I do with your wife?", where the correct answer is not to debate on those terms (definitions).
@lain@feld@Moon copyright and patents aren't capitalist, which is something a lot of groups get wrong. Copyright and patents are also a form of paying the government to receive anti-competitive advantage.
@lain is 100% right on this. If you actually want to have a meaningful conversation with "the other side" it is best to avoid terms that have lots of emotion connected to them like "capitalism" and "socialism" often I have found my political "enemies" also opposed big government protection of those currently in power, just for example
@aven @lain @feld @ademan @Moon that's one reason I've been trying to speak of "freed markets" rather than "the market" or "the free market" to make it more clear that the world economy as it currently exists isn't what I'm speaking of.
@gnu2@feld@lain@Moon@ademan the problem is that cedes the ground to the liars, and then they'll lie about "freed markets", repeating the cycle. Except since they didn't encounter resistance, it'll become easier for their Pavlovian word-association game to stick, and they won't be regarded as liars.
There's a certain element of "pick your battles", but the very situation of words being redefined at will and people just going along with it, is insane and untenable. If you just play their game and go along with it, you'll retreat until you're driven into the sea. Which is their goal: banning people from social media just doesn't seem to make them disappear, they need to be banned from real life.
Liars must not prevail. "Journalists" who support these lies should be regarded similarly to the tobacco executives lying to congress saying cigarettes are not addictive.
@aven@feld@gnu2@Moon@ademan I do wonder if there's any thing left to cede here, when 90% of the public already think they know what it means and 95% of economists are Keynesians.
@itzpaquet@Moon That's a worldview where all government is the source of all rights. Where rights are actually just permission slips from government that can be revoked at any time. That's fascism.
Americanism holds that rights come from God / Nature's God / Nature. That rights are Natural Rights, and that governments are established by men to secure those pre-existing rights. And that if the government violates those rights, it is the right of the people to overthrow that government and establish a better one.
@itzpaquet@Moon The right to private property stems from the right to self-ownership: the right of ownership of your own body, and thus the labor your body can do. The goods you produce with your labor are yours to trade as you will (free market).
Monopolies generally require government intervention to create, and are staples of socialism, wherein that monopoly becomes nationalized. A socialist nation has no need for many competing redundant organizations for making a particular good, so they merge them all into a single monopoly as part of the planned economy. Socialism is full of monopolies for this reason. If you don't like the shitty service of the monopoly, you are pressured to not complain and take the abuse, as it is un-patriotic to complain. For a recent example, see the NHS in the United Kingdom.
@aven@Moon capitalism is an ownership model, which depends on government intervention. markets are subjects of capital under this system. monopolies are natural outcomes of this type of economy.
@aven @Moon @lain @feld @ademan the very nature of language is that definitions change over time. The whole idea that "words have meanings" is both ridiculous and obvious. On that note most linguist actually track the use of "Capitalissm" first to Karl Marx and his comrades meaning control by those with large amounts of capital. So either way it's just arguing for the sake of arguing, if that's how you get your jollies so be it, but it's not how to change hearts and minds.
@gnu2@feld@lain@ademan >the very nature of language is that definitions change over time
Bullshit Motte and Bailey. Not long ago I started watching a video on "No-Till Agriculture", and the guy said the same thing, that "definitions change over time". He went on to say that his definition of "no-till" was "anything that improves the quality of your soil over time. That includes tilling, if you have clay soil. He was full of shit, and in that statement, so are you. (or does "shit" mean "goodness"? Who's to say?)
>So either way it's just arguing for the sake of arguing, if that's how you get your jollies so be it, but it's not how to change hearts and minds.
When words don't have meaning, there is only violence to resolve conflicts. Violence doesn't change hearts and minds.
@gnu2@ademan@feld@lain inevitably that attitude devolves into Word => Thing good. Otherword => Thing bad. And propagandists pull the strings like it's Animal Farm.
Maybe the mRNA "vaccine" is really a vaccine, if we change the definition. Maybe Pluto isn't a planet. Maybe a recession isn't two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Maybe rising prices across the board does not constitute inflation. Maybe "radar ghosts" do constitute an act of war by the North Vietnamese against the USA, so we can go into the Vietnam War. Maybe they didn't do Gain of Function research in Wuhan, they just did an identical thing, but it doesn't fit the definition.
It's very convenient for definitions to change over time, especially rapidly when it benefits a nation-state looking to justify a war.
Now I'm not saying the cannot naturally change as well, but what we're talking about is intentionally manufactured top-down.
@aven@Moon capitalism emerged during the colonial period of early modern europe. markets existed before the phenomena of joint-stock companies and absentee ownership were created. markets do not depend on this western concept of property to function, but the capitalist ownership model does. without the threat of violence, there is no natural mechanism to enforce the absentee property rights which are necessary to construct a monopoly.