frisbird
@frisbird@lemmy.ml
- Comment on [deleted] 5 days ago:
Unfortunately for everyone who thinks like this, everything is political. Media, food, art and design, technology - it’s all done by people who are citizens (polites) of some state or another (polity) and everything they have access to is driven more by politics than nearly any other factor at this point. Even the desire to be free from politics is a political position.
- Comment on The Only Solution Capitalism Has Is to Sell Us More Useless Junk: Ad makers will never say the quiet part loud, but they increasingly know that we're unhappy and looking for solutions. 6 days ago:
Th exception proves the rule. Department of Transportation is not market driven. DPW is not market driven. Army Corps of Engineers is not market driven.
And that’s just the US. Look to the rest of the world and you’ll see that most infrastructure is not market driven at all.
And even in the cases where they have to get private companies to do the build, the INFRASTRUCTURE ITSELF is not market driven, it’s the talent that’s market driven.
- Comment on The Only Solution Capitalism Has Is to Sell Us More Useless Junk: Ad makers will never say the quiet part loud, but they increasingly know that we're unhappy and looking for solutions. 6 days ago:
You said universities share information in “marketplaces of ideas”.
- Comment on The Only Solution Capitalism Has Is to Sell Us More Useless Junk: Ad makers will never say the quiet part loud, but they increasingly know that we're unhappy and looking for solutions. 6 days ago:
No. But describing all social interactions as “markets” is distinctly Neoliberal brain rot
- Comment on The Only Solution Capitalism Has Is to Sell Us More Useless Junk: Ad makers will never say the quiet part loud, but they increasingly know that we're unhappy and looking for solutions. 1 week ago:
You don’t know what markets are then.
Modern infrastructure in China is built by state owned enterprises and funded by the government. There is no price competition, and the infrastructure is not sold on the market as a commodity.
“Marketplaces of ideas and information” would be places where you could purchase ideas and information and resell them. That’s what a market is. That’s not how universities work. They receive planned funding for planned research and conduct planned research according to forward looking plans without regard to the market demand for specific outcomes. Granted IP markets are layered on top of that but they pervert the entire process and they are totally artificial.
The idea that you think markets are not actual systems but just a descriptive word used to refer to various non-marker realities indicates that you are fully saturated with neoliberalism and need a detox.
- Comment on The Only Solution Capitalism Has Is to Sell Us More Useless Junk: Ad makers will never say the quiet part loud, but they increasingly know that we're unhappy and looking for solutions. 1 week ago:
Please don’t confuse actual technological progress with markets. These two things have always been separate. The intellectual property market is a huge problem for innovation, and it exists because the market system is inherently a resource control system, and resource control systems that are driven by market dynamics are huge problems for innovation.
Modern infrastructure is not built by markets. University materials research is not driven by markets.
Exciting modernization in entertainment and sports
Whut?
- Comment on it's a long distance relationship 1 week ago:
The universe is a single entity though, isn’t it? It’s not a container.
- Comment on it's a long distance relationship 1 week ago:
Best theory I’ve heard on quantum entanglement is that it’s actually holographic. What we call two particles are actually aspects of a single entity.
- Comment on Iranian parliament designates European armies as ‘terrorist groups’ 2 weeks ago:
The real meaning is incredibly applicable to Western militaries, which use offensive violence, particularly unprovoked, against civilians to achieve political objectives.
But then there’s also the problem that Western militaries literally train and organize terrorists.
- Comment on If if the subtext of america has always been government as 'Donald Trump' imposes, where did liberals go wrong? 2 weeks ago:
Yes, absolutely. Liberalism is a political philosophy and it is inherently contradictory. Liberals, therefore, as people have to cope with this contradiction and the evidence we have is that liberals cope with it by leaning heavily into one side of the contradiction and psychologically downplaying the other. Hence we get two camps.
However, the naming scheme we have today is deliberately confusing. It obfuscates instead of clarifies.
To say one set of liberals are liberals and the other set of liberals are conservatives is a corruption of language so severe that it reduces the language to utter nonsense.
For example, the liberals who we call liberals have zero idea that private property is the seat power in liberalism, while simultaneously being anti-communist in large part because it abolishes private property. But if you tell a liberal that they have no idea what you’re talking about and instead talk about “democracy”.
The liberals who we call conservatives are abundantly clear about the role of private property and they’re position on it. They openly state the private property is how liberty is achieved. But tell them that private property as a regime is a minoritarian dictatorship that flies in the face of the values of liberty and justice and they have no idea what you’re talking about and instead talk about the moral failings of the poor and how only the potential for liberty and justice matter and that we can’t use authoritarian government to ensure liberty and justice when it means limits on private property owners.
Not a single one of these people believe in the return to aristocracy under a monarchy. They both understand that private property and markets are the foundations of their society and that these things are in opposition to the tyranny of kings and nobles.
But they refuse to acknowledge that they have this common ground. That’s why Ds and Rs in Congress and in the Whitehouse have like 80% overlap in actual actions and yet the voters think the two parties are living in different universes. When GWB’s government identified a bunch of countries to invade, and then those invasions get carried out by GWB and by Obama and by DJT no one talks about the continuity. They are totally lost in their ability to analyze because they don’t see the 80% overlap, they only see the 20% difference and think “we are fundamentally different, you and I”.
That’s why we’re in the mess we’re in. Because liberalism is the only social form from which fascism has ever emerged. And communism is the only social form that has ever defeated and sought to fully destroy fascism. It was the USSR that marched all the way into and out of Berlin and purged every Nazi they could find during their administration of East Germany. It was the US and the Vatican that helped 10k Nazis escape justice and planted them all over the Americas. It was the US that insisted on putting Nazi officers in charge of NATO. It was West Germany under the administration of the Allies that allowed former Nazis to hold office mere weeks after the war.
Liberals are confused, because Liberalism is contradictory and those contradictions are now overwhelming the social system.
People cope with that by making up artificial categories and reusing the language to make it fit. It’s like a No True Scotsman fallacy. Socially liberal, economically liberal, classically liberal. It’s all an attempt to cope with the fact that Liberalism says “universal liberty” and at the same time “private property defended by all potential forms of violence, both from the government and from the owning class”.
- Comment on If if the subtext of america has always been government as 'Donald Trump' imposes, where did liberals go wrong? 2 weeks ago:
That’s not a real thing. Liberalism is a political philosophy. It has a meaning. What Americans call liberals are just liberals. And what Americans call conservatives are also liberals.$
- Comment on If if the subtext of america has always been government as 'Donald Trump' imposes, where did liberals go wrong? 2 weeks ago:
Liberalism is internally contradictory. Liberals didn’t so much “go wrong” as much as Liberalism successfully solved a contradiction (feudal society facing rapid economic growth) with another contradiction (universal human rights constrained by private property).
Liberalism was doomed to this fate from the beginning. Honestly the failure of liberals is that they didn’t abandon liberalism and adopt communism sooner.
- Comment on Is anyone else having a hard time sympathizing with Americans? 3 weeks ago:
Start claiming it.
- Comment on Is anyone else having a hard time sympathizing with Americans? 3 weeks ago:
LOL.
I always side with the oppressed. I am on the side of anyone who fights evil, but the US needs to be humbled. I bet the Russians caused this.
Fucking gold, mate.
- Comment on Is anyone else having a hard time sympathizing with Americans? 3 weeks ago:
Oh no, it was originally intended this way too. This is what James Madison was talking about when he said that the government ought to secure the interests of the opulent minority against the will of the majority.
- Comment on Is anyone else having a hard time sympathizing with Americans? 3 weeks ago:
Only the last 20?
- Comment on Iran’s Protest Crackdown Followed a China Playbook. There’s a Reason for That. 4 weeks ago:
www.jpost.com/middle-east/…/article-881733
wsj.com/…/american-spies-confront-a-new-formidabl…
Propagandists gonna propagandize.
China has successfully disrupted US spy networks in China to the point where the US is struggling to get any recon or operational foothold there.
Iran is absolutely going to look to China, as would any country, for help with breaking up US intelligence operations.
And since Mossad is literally on the ground in Iran, and Mossad and US intelligence are inextricably linked, this collaboration makes total sense and is probably the optimal path.
But keep spinning it like Iran needs help from China to learn how to kill 25% of all protestors in 3 weeks with small arms when Israel couldn’t kill that many Palestinians in 3 months with fighter jets, tanks, and a full court military press.
Eat it up piggies.
- Comment on Instead of everyone leaving NATO, could everyone else just kick the US out? 5 weeks ago:
So then America isn’t a democracy because it persecuted Assange, Snowden, Manning, and many many others over its long history, right?
Because it outlawed the communist party and persecuted every single person in every industry that was associated with the communists, black listing them and ending entire careers let alone lives, right?
Oh wait, you blocked me. Nevermind
- Comment on Instead of everyone leaving NATO, could everyone else just kick the US out? 5 weeks ago:
LOL, how silly.
Russia and China are democracies - they have systems of voting, candidates, politicians fall in and out of favor with the public, etc. In fact, China is innovating on how to get MORE participatory systems into their Republic that aren’t limited to gerrymandered popularity tests.
But human rights? You’re joking, right? Guantanamo Bay. Extraordinary rendition. Abu Ghraib. Vietnam. Cambodia. Laos. Guam. School of the Americas. Iran-Contra. Overthrowing the Shah. Operation Paperclip. Operation Gladio. CIA black sites. Drone striking weddings. Drone striking funerals for people who died at those weddings. Zero Units. Napalm. Agent Orange. Land mines. Somalia. Libya. Iraq. Afghanistan. Kidnapping a head of state. Double tapping fishermen. Spying on all communications of their own citizens. The Five Eyes spying on each other’s citizens and trading the intel back to each other.
You think respect for human rights is required for NATO membership? Do you know what NATO has even done?
- Comment on Trump says US needs to own Greenland to deter Russia, China 5 weeks ago:
I thought Trump was a Russian puppet
- Comment on What is the difference between an American liberal and a liberal outside the USA? 1 month ago:
Wait until you find out who developed the transatlantic slave trade…
It was the liberals.
You are using the word liberal to mean “moral”.
That’s not how it works.
Liberal can’t be the opposite of monarchic, fascist, communist, authoritarian, and protectionist all at the same time.
Protectionism is universal. Liberalism has nothing to say on it.
Use of authority is liberal. Have these gentlemen ever seen a liberal revolution?
You want liberal mean sugar and spice and all things nice. It doesn’t
- Comment on What is the difference between an American liberal and a liberal outside the USA? 1 month ago:
Musk funded
With profits gained from private property
a illiberal president
Who built his whole wealth on private property and is actively attacking Venezuela for the crime of nationalizing (deliberalizing) their natural resources.
that uses the power of the government to terrorize people with draconian anti-immigration policies and pushes highly destructive import tariffs
None of which are illiberal
How much does Musk receive every year from government subsidies and government contracts?
A lot. Because he owns the companies that receives them. Because the system is a liberal system of private ownership and everything else is illegitimate in their eyes.
- Comment on What is the difference between an American liberal and a liberal outside the USA? 1 month ago:
They don’t believe in hereditary monarchy, they don’t believe that private property should be abolished and that the crown should dole out land based on politics. They’re liberals who want a strong executive that can champion the private property foundations of liberalism against the democratic foundations of liberalism. Remember, liberalism didn’t start because people wanted the common peasants to control the county, it started because the merchants wanted their ill gotten wealth from their rapacious adventures to translate into political power and the crown was not willing to allow lowly merchants to usurp multiple generations of aristocratic family ties.
Musk is a liberal, not because he loves democracy but because he justifies his actions on the basis of free speech, freedom to profit, private property claims, free movement of capital, and the rights the employer. None of these things are compatible with monarchy.
Yes, there is actually a monarchist movement in the USA still, but it is very very small and very fringe and they hold that position in a way that seeks to take the current owning class, turn them into a formal aristocracy, and eliminate not merely democracy but also the liberal foundations of capitalism. It’s anachronistic and impossible, but there are some who think that way
Most conservatives just want to go back to the liberalism of our forefathers that genocides and enslaved millions, when the poor and the women and the brown couldn’t vote because they weren’t considered fully human, and where conquest was a valid legal foundation for a state.
- Comment on China Is Banning Tesla-Style Retractable Door Handles Over Safety Concerns 1 month ago:
You do realize that the US uses prisoners as slave labor to the tune of $11B annually, right?
- Comment on China Is Banning Tesla-Style Retractable Door Handles Over Safety Concerns 1 month ago:
Would you say that a government is functional if a highly biased university research project spanning 15 years determined that over 95% of people approved of their government, even accounting for the possible ways these numbers could be skewed?
- Comment on China Is Banning Tesla-Style Retractable Door Handles Over Safety Concerns 1 month ago:
Nor does China suffer the same recidivism rates, carceral rates, or parole rates that the US has. Nor does China accrue debt for prisoners tonthe tune of hundreds of dollars a day that they owe when they get out.
- Comment on China Is Banning Tesla-Style Retractable Door Handles Over Safety Concerns 1 month ago:
Uh. Friend. I hate to tell you this, but the US imprisons more people per capital than the Soviet GULAG system at its height. China has never imprisoned people at the rate the USA has. Even in the last 18 months, where the USA dropped out of the top slot in the world, it lost to Cuba who recently had a huge uptick in incarceration due to the US’s most recent attempts at recruiting dissidents. And the USA is only slightly better than Cuba on this number. And Cuban prisons are like, fully integrated into communities and don’t rely on torture and don’t have gang violence and don’t charge prisoners hundreds of dollars a day and don’t use them as slave labor the way the US does.
No. On this particular issue of locking up whomever they want for whatever reason and abusing them and letting them die and massive recidivism and a parole population that is under 24/7 surveillance that is something like 2x larger than the prison population - on this topic, the US is not somehow sliding towards being problematic. It has been this way for a century. The US is a brutal brutal regime to its own people.
- Comment on What is the difference between an American liberal and a liberal outside the USA? 1 month ago:
It’s because the default, globally, is now liberal. Liberalism was the movement away from monarchism. Conservatism was the movement to preserve monarchism in the face of liberalism. American liberals are liberal. American conservatives are also liberal. The alternatives are monarchist/conservative (generally only exist in countries with royalty still), communist/socialist, and anarchist (which has both right and left flavors, and even liberal flavors)
- Comment on What is the difference between an American liberal and a liberal outside the USA? 1 month ago:
American conservatives are liberals by definition, and liberals are right wing globally speaking
- Comment on I feel like half the neighbourhood is on fire and everyone is carrying on like everything is normal 1 month ago:
It would certainly be cathartic