It’s possible that Lemmy in general is leftist because the people who came here wanted faster and more effective moderation against hate speech whereas more right wing people didn’t have a particularly strong need or desire for moderation.
Except now the pigs encouraged to provide more of whatever he’s selling in the future, ensuring you’ll always have access. More importantly though, everyone else sees the high return on investment and wants to get in on the action. The pig can try to stop them, but short of government interference (at which point he’s not a capitalist) he won’t succeed for long.
Eventually they’ll compete and offer quality and novel services for reasonable prices. They’ll still be making high return on investments, but if you’re paying it means that this thing is important, and a high roi ensure its continued production.
The alternative is you’re forced to pay through taxes, you only get one option, and there’s little to no incentive to provide a quality good or service at all.
To be clear, I don’t hold the opinions that I’m talking about, it’s just that they seem to be internally consistent and have an identifiable origin.
If you strongly identify with your race or culture, and another race or culture threatens to conflict with, up-end, or destroy it, it makes sense to dislike/distrust that second race or culture. That’s what some people could perceive Mexicans or black people to be doing.
I’m sorry if I misjudged, but it does feel weird. The only thing that makes Israel unique (including any human rights violations, everyone does that) is its ties to Judaism. I just don’t know what either Isreal or jews did to warrant a meme like this when so many like them never get memes made of them.
So why are people so interested in Israel then? What makes it more interesting to everyone than every other country that’s committed atrocities?
I’ve seen some antisemitism stuff on here and I can’t help wondering, why jews?
What’s special about Isreal that makes you so invested? I could understand reasons to dislike Mexicans or blacks (at least, for americans), but jews? There’s so few of them and they don’t have a large impact here of any kind.
Is it entirely those theories about jews controlling the world behind the scene? If it is, do you have an elevator pitch for why you believe those theories?
To be clear, I’m not interested in joining and I suspect I’ll strongly disagree with a lot of what you say, but I want to know where you’re coming from and why you think/do what you do.
Which part of the first amendment shouldn’t refer to companies (or other artificial entities)?
I guess I can’t imagine a better system.
If people want propaganda there’s literally nothing that could stop that.
Sure, every major news outlet is biased, but people can read what a variety of outlets have to say and synthesis the truth from that (there was an AI that did that a while back that was pretty cool) or people could much smaller sources (even one person) that’s good at research that they somewhat trust and get their news there. The important thing is just that the government doesn’t interfere and everyone’s free to say whatever they want.
I don’t like that news sources are corrupt, but they have so much power and influence that someone’s going to figure out a way to bribe them no matter what.
Are you opposed to freedom of the press? Because what that gets you is press that exclusively peddles whatever the government (which is evil and seeks total domination and control) wants. Perfect for totalitarians in exactly the same way Lenin is saying a free press is perfect for the bourgeoisie, except to a far greater extent.
You might also argue for no news at all, but that also seems like an opportunity for the government to craft any narrative they want.
The best solution is to keep the government out of it and allow people to choose whichever news source they want. Allowing people to provide financial support to sources they like could even help that source grow and reach new people. The result is a flexible, continuous, and democratic system of determining which news source best satisfies the interests of the people. This is just applying capitalism to the news.
Granted this isn’t a system without its issues, but those issues can be handled by people realizing one source is corrupt and switching to another. The issues in other systems (which are really the same issues, corruption and biases) are entirely uncontrollable and without solution.
I might have the wrong definition of fascism, but I typically think of it as extreme government overreach and control. Capitalism, however, needs a free market and free-will exchange, both of which government restrict.
If you wanted to argue that capitalism inevitably devolves into fascism you might be able to, but I suspect that any economic system would just as easily devolve to fascism.
In order for capitalism to devolve into fascism, you’ll have to corrupt the government (otherwise there’s no way to override free will exchange). However, what exists in capitalism that makes this easier/provides additional incentives for this? Every system with a government will have powerful people who want to manipulate the government for more power.
Employee and employer isn’t the only thing in an economy, and competition in other areas is very fruitful for everyone.
As for this area, yes, there’s a pressure to try to exploit workers, but you can’t exploit them too much or they won’t work for you, competitors will steal them, they’ll go off and found their own business, they might even form unions to apply extra pressure on you. There are lots of competing forces here.
Wouldn’t all the problems with a monopoly be 100 times worse when done by the government? You remove any potential for competition, government officials would still act in their own self interests (as they always have and always will), the government maintains their power through military force, there are no laws or legislations to stop them, it’d control everything it possibly could, and any objections are met with legal punishment.
I’m no fan of monopolies, but a totalitarian government (which is what every government strives for) is much worse.
Capitalism is all about mutually beneficial, free-will exchange. When you engage in a transaction, it’s because you believe what you are giving up is worth less to you than what you are receiving, otherwise you wouldn’t engage in the transaction.
One valid use of government power is punishing people who murder, and I’m not exactly sure what power cartels have outside of that.
I googled it and the Wikipedia page said they’re inherently unstable, but I don’t know how reliable that is.
In any case, I don’t see how my second example isn’t a cartel itself. All the bread companies are colluding to set the price of bread artificially high. The problem is there isn’t much to stop new competitors (or to stop members defecting).
If one company decided that the average bread should cost 50 bucks then I’m going to buy someone else’s bread and that company loses a lot of money.
If every company decided that the average bread should cost 50 bucks, that’s an extraordinary opportunity for a new competitor to come in with reasonable prices.
If none of the winners offer you a job, make your own, or acquire some marketable skill. You have options and opportunities.
There aren’t as many options for housing as I’d like honestly. I’d prefer less regulation to allow for lower quality, cheaper housing. As it stands though, you still have options and the ability to improve your living conditions.
Insulin prices would be a lot lower if more people were allowed to produce and sell it.
Monopolies are pretty dangerous, and I’d like to avoid then as much as possible.
I think that they’re generally created and sustained by government intervention though. Bailouts, legal fees, red tape, price controls, exceedingly long copyrights, they all hurt new competitors more than established ones.
That leads to a beauty of capitalism though. People prioritize profit, yes, but with competition, the way to make a profit is to be appealing to people. You make a profit by providing the best good or service at the best price. This means that the people who have the goal of profits also have the goal of pleasing their customers.
There’s a quote from somewhere that goes something like this “capitalism takes the most ambitious, selfish, and capable people and forces them to stay up at night thinking about what everyone else wants”.
Not everyone in capitalism is a winner, and that’s ok. The big advantage is that the losers are usually offered the opportunity to work and make a living.
The alternative is crossing your fingers and hoping the government (or whatever body is responsible for distributing pay) gives you what you need. If they don’t, tough luck, there’s nothing you can do about it.
That’s actually where democracy came from. When guns came along, it became extremely cheap and easy to turn every random peasant into a soldier. This meant that you essentially always had to have the will of the people on your side.