Notices by Truth Sandwich 🥪🇺🇸😷 (truthsandwich@qoto.org), page 3

@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.

@freemo

Jo is an asshole; I blocked them some time ago. But the existence of assholes is not an excuse to become one.

Nobody is being forced into fascism.

@freemo

Again, no. It's an excuse, not a reason.

You have to already be a bigot.

@admitsWrongIfProven @freemo

As I said, it's because bigotry doesn't come from bad experiences.

@freemo @admitsWrongIfProven

You don't go from not being a bigot to being bigoted against a particular group. You go from being a bigot to finding groups to be bigoted against.

@freemo @admitsWrongIfProven

Wait, you think there are no bigots in the DNC?!

@freemo @admitsWrongIfProven

Look at white supremacy: yes, it's bigoted against various groups not considered white, but it overlaps heavily with misogyny, homophobia, and other non-racial forms of bigotry.

This is not surprising if you realize that the bigotry is the common factor. Once you're a bigot, who you're bigoted against is contingent.

If you look at the shitshow after the primaries that chose Obama, you can see that plenty of Democrats showed bigotry against women and against Black folks (and, often, both: witness the current treatment of Harris).

@freepeoplesfreepress @freemo @admitsWrongIfProven

It's not bigotry to "discriminate" against bigots. It would be bigotry not to.

Fundamentally, bigotry requires making the mistake of believing that background characteristics -- the stuff people don't chose for themselves, can't change about themselves, and has no moral importance -- define tribes that are in competition.

The core of racism isn't the false belief that race X is better than race Y, it's that races even exist in a way that is morally relevant. Race is not a biological fact, it's a sociological construct, and it's morally neutral.

@freemo @freepeoplesfreepress @admitsWrongIfProven

No, actually, it would not. Bigotry isn't defined as any hostility towards something, but specifically as unjustified hostility.

Hating Nazis is entirely justified. Failing to hate them would be bigotry.

@freemo @freepeoplesfreepress @admitsWrongIfProven

No.

@HistoPol @futurebird

None of this is true.

Bernie Sanders called for forced nationalization of industry, which puts him to the left of the far left in Europe.

The socialist populists accept support from Russia and openly brag about “the revolution”.

@jhavok @vidar @futurebird

Yes, and that’s why the USSR was such a success… oh, wait.

As I point out in the essay, Marx was a better diagnostician than clinician. And, frankly, he’s not even that great at the former.

@jhavok @vidar @futurebird

I said better, not great. :-)

Marx’s various criticisms of capitalism had factual errors, such as his much-repeated claim that capitalism requires endless growth.

This isn’t a minor mistake, it’s used to justify his theory of history. If capitalism literally requires the impossible, then it’s obviously doomed.

Since at least the days of Marx, communists have been insisting that communism is inevitable and we shouldn’t even try to avoid it. This triumphalism reeks of the Borg’s “You Will Be Assimilated, Resistance Is Futile” intimidation technique.

And yet, each time it’s tried, it fails. It fails hard. Maybe we should take a lesson from this.

One of the stranger strawman arguments applied to me elsewhere in this thread is that I’m denying that capitalism can be replaced.

As I said, we can imagine post-capitalist economies driven by technological innovations we currently lack, such as a post-scarcity world where labor and wealth are disconnected. If anything, ChatGPT has forced us to think about this.

But curiosity about such possibilities is not the same thing as a belief in their inevitability, or even their goodness. I can think of at least two SF stories describing post-scarcity dystopias, for example.

@vidar @jhavok @futurebird

It’s nonsense on every level. The fact that a system can drive down costs doesn’t mean it can drive them down to zero. And that’s not what we’re seeing anywhere. It also says nothing about the cost of resources for labor to convert to goods.

Moreover, all societies engage in distribution (I reject the notion of “re”-distribution because that falsely implies that any initial distribution was somehow natural). although no society has ever gotten UBI to work on any scale.

@vidar @jhavok @futurebird

Again, none of this happened. In America right now, companies are struggling to attract labor. Real wages have increased, faster than inflation.

What actually happens is that industries can reach a steady state, neither growing nor shrinking.

@vidar @jhavok @futurebird

Automation is not incompatible with capitalism.

@Alon @vidar @futurebird

Exactly this.

Communism predates Marx and it was a failure long before he ever put his stamp on it. It remains a failure.

Marx was wrong: capitalism is not ever going to transition to socialism and then communism.

We know he’s wrong because people tried to turn his theories in to fact. And they failed, failed, and failed.

@Alon @vidar @futurebird

That essay lists examples of attempts at communism dating back to 1800.

@Alon @vidar @futurebird

I’m sorry, no, that’s just not true.

Sanders honeymooned in Russia and has allowed himself to be used for Russian propaganda at least as far back as the 1980’s. (See linked article.) His recent criticism is focused on the fact that Russia is no longer communist and is instead run by oligarchs. In other words, he loves Russia and wants to bring back the good old days.

Sanders has recently carried water for Putin, arguing that he has “legitimate concerns about NATO expansion) while his allies (the JD’s) have voted against Ukrainian aid.

As for endorsing Clinton “strongly”, that’s a lie. He claimed his loss was due to rigging and he had his surrogates pimp for spoiler Stein. (Receipts below.)

Like I said, I’m not the first to recognize him as our Thalmann.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/world/europe/bernie-sanders-soviet-russia.html

@sarfeo @futurebird

Let’s rule out one possibility immediately: communism.