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1. Embed this notice
   Leonardo Rossatto :Ryyca: (nadanovonofront@ursal.zone)'s status on Tuesday, 26-Sep-2023 18:10:30 JST Leonardo Rossatto :Ryyca:

   Num mundo não capitalista, as inteligências artificiais seriam celebradas como uma forma de nos livrarmos de trabalhos invariavelmente chatos e termos mais tempo de trabalhar nossa criatividade enquanto humanidade. Mas o capitalismo concentra renda e nos faz ter medo de perder o emprego

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Tuesday, 26-Sep-2023 18:10:25 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     que eu saiba, a china é capitalismo de estado já faz tempinho
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Tuesday, 26-Sep-2023 18:10:26 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Chaotic Princess :Ryyca:

     @Bruiserzinha @nadanovonofront

     Não. O teste fácil para saber se algo tem a ver com o capitalismo é saber se isso é verdade mesmo sob governos socialistas. A China é socialista, mas os seus trabalhadores do conhecimento temem ser substituídos pela inteligência artificial.

   • Embed this notice
     Chaotic Princess :Ryyca: (bruiserzinha@ursal.zone)'s status on Tuesday, 26-Sep-2023 18:10:27 JST Chaotic Princess :Ryyca:

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     @TruthSandwich @nadanovonofront tem sim

   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Tuesday, 26-Sep-2023 18:10:29 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     @nadanovonofront

     Como sempre, isso não tem nada a ver com capitalismo.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Sep-2023 17:02:28 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     começa fazendo o estado funcionar do jeito que capitalistas administram suas empresas (isso seria socialismo ou comunismo, em sua opinião?), depois muda pra capitalismo de estado, é isso?
     agora fiquei com dúvida sobre o que você esceveu sobre a china antes
     você parece saber bastante sobre um sistema de organização econômica que jamais foi sequer tentado. posso perguntar de onde vem toda essa experiência?
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Sep-2023 17:02:29 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     Este é o padrão histórico padrão do comunismo. Primeiro, assume o controle de toda a indústria e estabelece uma economia de comando. Quando isso invariavelmente falha, muda para o capitalismo de Estado. Em nenhum momento proporciona o paraíso dos trabalhadores que Marx prometeu, porque isso é impossível.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Sep-2023 23:54:09 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     isso, começa fazendo a economia funcionar como uma empresa capitalista, com planejamento centralizado. só que não, porque quem comanda as decisões é a população, numa democracia radical, não o CEO, e em benefício da própria população, não dos acionistas. isso comparando os modelos teóricos, já que nem a economia ultrademocrática do comunismo nem o livre mercado dos capitalistas foram jamais testados. mas o planejamento estruturado é a parte que o capitalismo adora criticar, mas adota.
     já se você comparar alguns extremos reais nos dois sentidos, o que se vê são as coitadinhas das crianças sem educação e sem saúde nos países socialistas como a noruega, em contraste com os trabalhadores bem remunerados, bem educados e com excelente saúde como no país pináculo do capitalismo. né?
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Wednesday, 27-Sep-2023 23:54:11 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     Não, começa com uma economia comandada, que é o estado que tenta tomar diretamente todas as decisões refinadas sobre o que produzir e onde. Isto é tecnicamente inviável, por isso entra em colapso rapidamente.

     O objectivo do capitalismo é que a decisão sobre onde investir e produzir seja distribuída, sendo aqueles que tomam as melhores decisões recompensados pelos retornos.

     Uma economia comandada não se qualifica como comunismo, mas pelo menos é distinta do capitalismo. Em contraste, o capitalismo de estado pelo qual a economia comandada é substituída é um tipo de capitalismo, mas não um bom tipo.

     Sob o capitalismo de Estado, as condições para os trabalhadores são terríveis, o nível de vida é baixo e a poluição é galopante. Como o governo consiste num único partido comunista, também há autoritarismo e falta de direitos humanos e civis. É por isso que chamo isso de o pior dos dois mundos.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 00:16:40 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     a estrutura de decisões que você descreve é a de companhias capitalistas e outras ditaduras autocráticas. achei que estivéssemos debatendo os méritos de estruturas de governança verdadeiramente democráticas, não as de mentirinha de um lado ou de outro.
     
     é um barato que os defensores do capitalismo adoram projetar defeitos do próprio capitalismo nos sistemas que o desafiam, mas quando o sistema desafiador mostra que dá certo, negam até a morte que sejam outro sistema que não o capitalismo.
     
     tudo bem, vamos comparar quantas crianças não têm casa pra morar em cuba e no país vizinho? quantas falências médicas em cuba e no país vizinho? quantos desempregados passando fome em cuba e no país vizinho? quantos jornalistas presos e sob tortura na europa, por pedidos encaminhados e sob acusação de publicar crimes cometidos pelos governos de cuba ou do país vizinho?
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 00:16:41 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     Não exatamente. Uma economia comandada não se parece em nada com uma economia capitalista. Todas as decisões são tomadas centralmente e não há feedback corretivo que recompense ou puna essas decisões.

     Como resultado, você recebe muitos anúncios do tipo “Por demanda popular, não haverá comida disponível esta semana”.

     É claro que, embora digam que é por exigência popular, na verdade é por decisão unilateral da burocracia, não da população.

     Este sistema é surpreendentemente indiferente ao que as pessoas desejam; pelo menos o capitalismo dá aos consumidores alguma vantagem.

     De qualquer forma, a Noruega não é socialista! Eles funcionam com base em um capitalismo bem regulamentado. Cuba é socialista e é um inferno.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 01:06:24 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     what you describe as (theoretical) capitalism is even more unachievable than the radical democracy of a worker-controlled economy in (theoretical) communism.
     in case you've been living under a rock, you may want to read about all the choice, leverage and advantages customers enjoy under capitalist Jeff's rule and inevitable enshittification. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/27/opinion/amazon-ftc-antitrust-monopoly.html
     
     do you really have any illusions that capitalist states can contain multinational corporations while they buy legislators, judges and whatnot with pocket change? if you fear a command economy, you should really be worried about this, because the trend has long been for concentration rather than competition. though you may still get the illusion of competition, and of democracy, if you don't pay much attention.
     
     in terms of human rights, people having to live in bondage one paycheck away from being kicked from their homes or from going bankrupt over a health crisis is not my notion of respect for human rights. that's not an exceptional situation under capitalism, it's the end goal.
     capitalismo é o sistema mais cruel que a desumanidade já criou
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 01:06:26 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     (Your English is better than my Portuguese, so we’re switching.)

     As I pointed out, consumers do have leverage under capitalism, due to competition. If one company chooses to raise prices or reduce production, others can swoop in to take advantage of this, and will be rewarded by the market for doing so. They can undercut the overpriced or fulfill underserved markets.

     This happens all the time. A core goal of government is to enable this by preventing collusion. Capitalism is not perfectly self-regulating and laissez-faire capitalism cannot work, even in theory. But well-regulated capitalism can and does work; you brought up the example of Norway.

     Under a command economy, all this is impossible because there is no competition. There can’t be: all means of production were confiscated by the state. If the state does not want to produce something, it will not be produced. If you don’t like it, sucks to be you because you have no power.

     A single-party communist government is authoritarian. Your vote doesn’t matter. You can’t get the government to care about your needs.

     In terms of human rights, Cuba is a grand failure. In terms of medical care, it is not one bit better than first-world nations with UHC systems. We don’t need to give up basic human rights just to get medicine.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 01:16:08 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     BTW, I wouldn't have guessed that you're not a native speaker of Portuguese
   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 01:31:14 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     yuck. how did it mangle "desumanidade"? did it get even close to "inhumanekind"? :-)
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 01:31:15 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     Google Translate is magic.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 01:42:43 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     I got quiet about norway as soon as I pointed out that capitalists deny the presence of competing systems whenever there are signs of success and you didn't respond to that. I figured you acknowledged it as true
     
     now, you appear to conflate socialism, a transitional state, with communism, the conceptual model of a radical democracy that has never been tried before, despite plenty of propaganda from all sides labeling things as communist.
     
     now, if you think norway is doing better than the us in terms of human rights and general well being because of market regulation, let me break some news for you. the "success story" of US's hoping to regulate Amazon does not speak much for capitalism, really. first of all, it's by no means certain that even the most powerful nation in the world will succeed at that, and, if it does, it will be within its own borders, where it has jurisdiction, and globalized capital won't have much trouble moving its HQ elsewhere to keep on exploiting the rest of the world while moderating slightly its exploitation within US borders. that's the best case scenario.
     
     now, if the US, the most powerful nation, has failed to regulate Walmart, and is now struggling to regulate the more powerful Amazon, what are the odds that Norway's market regulators could get even close?
     
     what makes Norway superior in well being and human rights are, well, elements of socialism, that capitalism pushers relabel as social democracy for propaganda purposes
     (tbc)
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 01:42:44 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     This is radically out of touch with reality.

     You brought up the example of Norway as a success story for socialism, but got quiet about it as soon as I pointed out that it’s capitalist. Capitalism, when regulated as it is under Nordic social democracy, works pretty well. It works somewhat less well in America, but it at least works.

     In contrast, there are zero examples of socialism working. No socialist nation has ever come close to this supposed “radical democracy of a worker-controlled economy”, so by their own measure, they are failures. There is no reason to believe that this goal is achievable.

     It’s not even close. Capitalism, when poorly regulated, yields bad results. But even these are better than the best that socialism has ever achieved. And there’s no reason at all why we should allow capitalism to be poorly-regulated.

     The example you brought up is in my favor: it shows the American government regulating Amazon.

     I wrote a blog post about the fact that socialism has never worked: https://truth-sandwich.com/2023/07/05/real-red-magic/

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 01:49:12 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     specifically, norway has strong government control over key (if legacy) industries such as oil (including facilities in Brazil, that used to be state-owned), and strong taxation directed towards public services (education, health, social security) in line with social(ist) democracy. it's these social(ist) democratic traits that improve quality of life there, while market regulation of multinational corporations remains a distant dream that risks bringing the whole thing down, not the least because the world's environment doesn't care much about borders
   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 02:00:08 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     well, yeah, it didn't have much of a chance. humanidade can translate to either humankind, humanity (as in being human), or humanity (as in being humane); but desumano is more strictly inhumane. desumanidade would normally translate as inhumanity, but I put it in a context that I hoped would suggest an inhumane humankind
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 02:00:09 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     It translates that word to “inhumanity”, which sounds about right.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 02:18:09 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     cuba doesn't stand a chance, it's been strangled for decades. makes one wonder what it is that the US fears so much to keep the stranglehold on. something to hide?
     
     the problem with your theory of market regulation limited to taxation is, as I pointed out, it doesn't stand a chance against global corporations that can corrupt even the most powerful nations. that kind of corporate power, that is the obvious end goal of capitalism, is toxic and destructive.
     
     now, let's take, for the sake of the argument, your claim that the socialist practices in nordic countries are better capitalism. why, then, do most capitalists reject proposals to adopt them in other capitalist countries by arguing that they would amount to socialism? (or, invisible hand forbid, communism!)
     
     now, we seem to agree that mythic communism has never been tried, but can you give any examples of this mythic pure-breed regulated capitalism, that I've never seen tried anywhere either? I mean, the cases we know of capitalism are either poorly regulated, that sucks, or well-regulated towards socialist practices, that sucks a little less and not for very long, because the unregulated havens enable corporations to grow like cancers than proceed to destroy anything that stands in the way of their growth or that would threaten the ideology of deregulated capitalism. so they sabotage those who explicitly reject capitalism first, and twist the arms of those who attempt to regulate them. it can't end well
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 02:18:11 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     Norway isn’t competition to capitalism, it’s capitalism done better than in some other places. The competition is Cuba.

     Social programs are not “elements of socialism”. They’re elements of regulated capitalism. The point of regulation is to align the goals of private industry with societal goals. One way to do this is to tax them and use this money to create a social safety net.

     America does it, too, just not as well, and there are specific reasons for this. I have another blog post about that, but the short version is that America is not a monoculture.

     Marx claimed socialism was a transitional state towards communism, but nobody has ever transitioned. That’s why the USSR was run by the Communist Party but the country’s name identified it as socialist.

     As I pointed out in that blog post, Marx never offered a recipe for communism, he merely described how it might be if anyone ever made it. Nobody has, nobody ever will.

     So we need to compare apples to apples: actual capitalism vs. actual socialism. There is no actual communism, so it’s not in the running.

     We could talk about how easy it is for nations to regulate international organizations, but it’s pointless because any such criticism ignores the alternative.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 02:56:50 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     you're comparing apples and sesame seeds.
     when a big market sets rules for multinational giants, they may tolerate them
     when a small market does, they just go exploit someone else harder
     
     anyway, I still get a distinct notion that you equate socialism and communist. those are not the same. communism was never tried. socialism has. it failed at some places, and it appears to be holding up at others despite sabotage. whereas capitalism... well, not really working well anywhere, is it? exponential accumulation of capital can't possibly work in finite settings.
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 02:56:52 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     This is the Communist Gish Gallop.

     1. Norway is a socialist success!

     2. Ok, Norway’s not socialist, but socialism has never been tried.

     3. Fine, it was tried in Cuba and failed, but that doesn’t count because the capitalist nations didn’t help communism succeed.

     I addressed this in that blog post you didn’t read, where I included the cartoon at the bottom of this toot. Read the post for more.

     Anyhow, it turns out that the answer to regulating international corporations is to control what they do on your soil. If they want to make money in your country, they have to follow your rules, and those rules can extend to other countries.

     For example, America can reject imports that come from places with poor labor practice and bad pollution.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 02:58:55 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     as for why I didn't read your blog post: all it showed me was "your IP is banned". I didn't find that very interesting, but I assume you meant me to read something else
   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 03:19:23 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     well, not mine. I do all my web browsing with Tor.
     when Tor is not welcome, I generally take the hint.
     but since you insisted, I tried again, and with the aid of the Internet Archive, I could give it a look. I'm unimpressed. it's not even good capitalism propaganda. the hard problems of economy are aggravated by capitalism because it (by design) promotes concentration AKA inequality. though we now have abundance, capitalism needs to and does make sure that this abundance doesn't reach the people in need. that wouldn't serve the interests of the capital. and that's exactly Leonardo's initial point in the thread. capitalism is not the solution, it's the biggest part of the problem, because it's a cruel and unsustainable arrangement. is radical democracy (as in, workers AKA the people collectively controlling the government, the state, the economy and the means of production) the solution? possibly. there's no reason for central planning to be the rule, or for it to curtail freedoms, including economic freedoms. you have a cool idea that would improve life for the people, produce more efficiently, whatever? share it, convince the people to invest in it, to give it a try. companies enable internal competition, despite central planning for a shareholders' benefit, why couldn't a radical democracy realize that this could work too? yeah, it hasn't been tried, it hasn't been done, we don't know how to get there, and we know who places the roadblocks
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 03:19:25 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     Seriously? Your IP was banned?

     I have not banned any IP’s at all. Try a VPN, please.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 03:28:59 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     now, you seem fixated on this notion of command economy, and it has indeed been a feature of all centralized government systems so far. giving up power happens to be very very hard. in order for this to work, ISTM we have to take the opposite path, starting from decentralized democratic power, with local autonomous radically-democratic communities joining forces in pursuit of common interests. but what are the odds of any existing established powers enabling such communities to as much as hatch?
   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 05:31:24 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     also, failed attempts at socialism and the rare anarcho-communism ones were, to the best of my knowledge, before the age of abundance. without abundance, economic problems are indeed tougher and little different between different systems. but with abundance, communist arrangements can focus on maintaining it and distributing abundance fairly, whereas capitalism and feudalism have to deal with maintaining the inequality they rely on by force, and only insane and unjust reasons (like monkeys piling up enough bananas for a million lifetimes) to justify them. so maybe now (or after it crumbles further) could be a good time to give them another try, or at least one try for real? are you so scared of a possibility that it might work that you'd rather suppress it? would you rather bet on a known-failing, known-unsustainable, and known-self-destructive system instead?
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 05:31:25 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     It’s a feature of initial socialist governments, because nobody knows how to make an economic system that’s based directly on the workers. We mostly imagine it in terms of coops, but there’s a reason why those don’t predominate.

     You’re suggesting some form of anarcho-communism, which has never worked at any level, not even on the small scale. And, of course, you’re trying to explain this away with conspiracy theories about the powers-that-be allowing it.

     As I pointed out in that blog post, if your desired system is so feeble that it can’t outcompete the previous one, what chance does it have?

     You can’t say, “What I propose would work just fine, so long as none of the alternatives were allowed”. That’s admitting it can’t work.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 07:38:13 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     with or without regulations, capitalism is unsustainable to begin with. its raison d'être is reinvestment for accumulation, with compounded interest that leads to exponential growth, which is incompatible with a finite anything (world, solar system, galaxy, universe, whatever). so it's not reasonable to stay put to begin with, we're not at a stable or desirable place no matter how much you wish it were so. that it requires regulation to function for a bit, confronted with the reality of corporations having grown big enough to control the national states into deregulation, only aggravates the impossibility of the present situation.
     
     I do worry that you seem to prefer to *prevent* others from even trying different arrangements, because *you* don't believe it could work, than giving them a fair chance. that's scarily authoritarian to me. not surprising, coming from someone who supports capitalism with all its horrors, but still... maybe the mistake is trying to start with socialism. marx himself criticized socialism and alerted to its dangers. it's not an end goal, but maybe it doesn't even have to be an intermediate stop. maybe we don't know the destination. all I know is that with the current system we're all screwed very soon, so we'd better try different arrangements quickly before it's too late, and maybe it already is. the reality of techno-feudalism is not a distraction, it's real, dangerous, but maybe also a potential path onto something better.
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 07:38:14 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     There is no unregulated capitalism. Capitalism can’t exist without the regulations that make it possible.

     There are people who believe in minimally regulating capitalism – that’s laissez-faire market fundamentalism – but practice has shown that this can’t work, and even theory reveals this.

     There are specific criteria required for a market to do its job. To the extent that a real market approximates this ideal, it works. But without proper regulation, it quickly deviates from this goal and becomes mired in collusion.

     I find your criticism of capitalism entirely unconvincing, because the response to any examples of capitalism having bad consequences is to replace it with better capitalism.

     There is no alternative. There are no successful cases of socialism, where the initial command economy turns into a worker-coop paradise. They either fail, switch to a bad form of capitalism, or both.

     I’m going to keep repeating this while ignoring every distraction about “techno-feudalism” or other such nonsense, because it is dishonest to criticize capitalism for traits you cannot improve upon.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 07:38:15 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     it's also a feature of pre-corporate-takeover capitalist governments as well, if you think about it. they're just a little more hands off in terms of allowing exploitation, but the power to regulate is there just the same. it allows private profit-seeking, as opposed to wages and bonuses, as an economic overhead/motivator. and that fits what I'm suggesting too, so it's no use for you to paint one specific strawman. but we know this (regulated capitalism) has been tried and is crumbling now, along with unregulated capitalism, for the same reason that a toxic presence doesn't enable the full development of others around it. if you said the US isn't sabotaging Cuba, you wouldn't be honest, come on. if you said megacorporations that are turning most countries into plutocracies and about to make the planet inhabitable for us are willing to make room for other systems that would distribute wealth more fairly, you'd be lying outrageously. of course they wouldn't allow that, it would be against their nature.
     
     and yet, capitalism is crumbling, being replaced by technofeudalism, with all the enshittification that this brings with it. it had a strong run, it took the rentists a couple of centuries to reorganize, but here they are. if we survive, we may have another shot, as the exploited "enterpreneurs" and their delivery bikes may choose to unite with other exploited workers instead of going their own way.
     it's a bit like the asteroid that gave mammals a chance to grow
   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 07:46:15 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     you know one reason, you even wrote about it, but you dismiss it as if it were some form of made-up conspiracy rather than a real one, even while acknowledging that the incentives to prevent alternatives are not only there, you are an active participant in it. they also started before we achieved abundance, and they have been largely kept out of abundance through unjust force.
     
     we're not going to converge on this specific point, are we? or on your fixation that the alternative to a fundamentally broken system must be spotless before it can be even tried, or your dismissal of the unsustainability, so essential and fundamental to the system that, if we fixed it, it would no longer be capitalism. why do you insist on something broken as if it was viable, as if we should be happy with it and stop seeking alternatives to enable us to keep on inhabiting this planet?
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     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 07:46:16 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     There are countries today which are socialist. Why are they all failures?

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 08:01:02 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     so how do you imagine the logic of accumulation of capital work, if not by hoping for infinite growth and concentration? please don't spare me of details.
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 08:01:03 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     Yes, yes, that’s Marx’s claim, but it’s nonsense. Capitalism does not, in fact, require infinite growth or whatever.

     This is a lie. A boring, much-refuted lie.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 08:06:59 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     > Demanding the impossible impedes the actual.
     I feel the same way reciprocally. I see you insisting on a discredited and impossible system, while acknowledging its flaws and wishfully hoping for fixes for its unfixable misfeatures. meanwhile, you dismiss preemptively any alternatives, for no good reason. I don't buy that package any more than you buy the potential existence of alternatives, so I suggest we agree to disagree on it.
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 08:07:00 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     There are no alternatives. I keep explaining this and you keep avoiding the inevitable fact.

     What you peddle is discredited. It has never worked, will never work.

     And all this does it get in the way of more serious people who are busy working to make capitalism work for us. Demanding the impossible impedes the actual.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 08:09:36 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     where do you imagine the term 'capitalism' come from then?
     what do you imagine capitalists strive for?
     how do they eat, and what do they reproduce? ;-)
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 08:09:37 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     Again, this is literally not any part of capitalism. It exists only in Marxist criticism of capitalism.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 08:10:42 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     why do economists of all alignments study the books in which marx describes these fundaments of capitalism, if they were as wrong as you say?
   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 08:21:13 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     profit is how capital accumulation is realized, so it's indeed fundamental. how do you get around infinite growth? how does accumulation work, if not exponentially like compounded interest rates as ROI? would capitalists settle for quadratic growth of their capital rather than exponential? linear? logarithmic?
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 08:21:14 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     “Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price systems, private property, property rights recognition, voluntary exchange, and wage labor.”

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 08:21:55 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     as shown in this very conversation
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 08:21:56 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     Because economics is the softest of sciences and is full of crap. Whole sections of the field are just politics in disguise.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 08:23:14 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     I don't understand why you keep going back to socialism. I'm not proposing socialism. it's not even in my radar. I'm not socialist. what's wrong with you? is this some kind of obsession of yours?
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 08:23:15 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     Capitalism is working right now. It’s working better in places where it’s better regulated, worse in places that claim to be socialist.

     We’ve had centuries of history showing that socialist never works. Not once. Not even a little. Not even for a little bit. Never.

     We are way past the point where you can ask me to take seriously the claim that, unlike all the other times, this time will be different.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 08:27:39 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     oh, I see, you're again trying to paint china as socialist, while denying that nordic social democracy is a combination of socialism with capitalism, rather than contradicting yourself.
     anyway, we talked about socialism just because you brought it up.
   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 08:30:28 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     yeah, I guess it does like socialism to you. typical. then you add in "command economy" and got your strawman.
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 08:30:30 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     Technically, there are proposed alternatives to capitalism that are even dumber than socialism. For example, various forms of anarchism.

     But what you’ve suggested so far is a Marxist critique of capitalism that justifies some sort of worker coop economy. Sounds like socialism to me.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 08:32:30 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     what do you expect me to say? social democracy? ;-P nah, not interested in playing this game.
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 08:32:31 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     I was kind enough to offer the example of right-wing politics masquerading as economics.

     I let you provide the example of left-wing politics doing the same.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 20:15:34 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     I'm attached to concepts, not to implementations, especially to implementations that didn't achieve the goal. I learn from them and move on, instead of getting stuck in the past like your propaganda does. Attaching strawman labels like you do is no more than sophistry to avoid debating the concepts. I'm not interested in the sort of "command economy" you speak of, don't waste your time criticizing that to me. to me, that's a bug of capitalist thinking projected onto what they (you?) don't get and fear. capitalist companies organize into central command structures, which oppresses everyone but the top, and capitalists are terrified of seeing what they do unto others done unto them. I call you on that bullshit. I propose radically democratic small-scale controls. truly democratic, rather than the illusion of democracy we live in today. I fight for freedom, I fight for democracy, I fight for human rights, I believe in collective action. I'm still waiting for your feeble attempt at explaining how accumulation of capital, the primary element of capitalism, doesn't entail exponential growth. and the reason I responded with "social democracy", because you seem to have missed the subtlety, is that though the US perceives that as some radical left wing, it's no more than center-right-wing.
   • Embed this notice
     Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 20:15:36 JST Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷

     in reply to

     • Alexandre Oliva

     @lxo

     Again, it’s not about me. They are literally a single-party Communist nation that calls itself socialist. They even call their bad flavor of capitalism: a “socialist market economy”.

     And it’s a historical fact that, as is the case for other “communist” countries, the revolution starts by confiscating private industry and replacing it with a command economy.

     This is an uncontroversial historical fact.

   • Embed this notice
     Alexandre Oliva (lxo@gnusocial.net)'s status on Thursday, 28-Sep-2023 23:49:37 JST Alexandre Oliva

     in reply to

     • Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷
     https://gnusocial.net/conversation/8773526 -> https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital is a useful intro to technofeudalism, a term that you didn't appear to be familiar with