Nevoic

joined 2 years ago
[–] Nevoic@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

The comparison to the industrial revolution ignores a qualitative difference between this and that; we're in an age where automation can fully automate away jobs. When the industrial revolution happened, it absolutely did deteriorate working and living conditions for essentially everyone, however humans were still needed. It should be noted that having a system where less work leads to worse outcomes is a fundamentally toxic and broken economic system, but that's what capitalism is.

This next thought makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but we might actually not have special sauce in our organic sacks. It's possible that human-level intelligence/expertise is achievable from AI (even if it's not LLMs that get there), and it's also possible that robotics becomes as versatile as humans at movement.

Yes, AI and robots are expensive, but you want to know what else is insanely expensive? Humans. I cost my employer $150,000 a year. If they could subscribe to a future GPT6 that out performed me and my coworkers for $1000 a month that would save them a metric fuckload of money. Same thing with buying a super versatile robot, sure it might be like $100,000 for a single robot, but if it lasts 10 years it's $10,000 a year and can work far longer hours and much more consistently than a human.

What we're talking about with any non-dysfunctional economic system is utopia, a world where nobody needs to work and everything is maintained, developed, and expanded without human intervention. Under capitalism this utopia becomes a dystopia, it leads to mass starvation, lack of resource distribution, and death.

[–] Nevoic@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (14 children)

You misunderstood my argument slightly, it's not that it's "easier" for rich people, it's that it's literally impossible to risk money you don't have, and as a result of that you have exploitation of labor; stealing the surplus value of labor from a class that has no option other than to participate in wage labor.

Also the idea that there's no risk in labor but there is risk in being a capitalist is a liberal lens that fails to actually account for material reality. What's the absolute worst case for both the capitalist and laborer? That they lose all access to their money, and have to rent themselves out to a capitalist.

Put another way, the risk capitalists engage in is being demoted from the owner class to the working class. That risk doesn't justify them taking the surplus value of labor to accumulate vast hoards of wealth.

Left liberals view this as a quantitative issue, but it's a qualitative one. Profit is definitionally surplus value of labor, so no matter how small you make the capitalist's profit, it's always theft.

We need to incentivize risking capital

Absolutely, without capital injection the economy couldn't function. Capitalism by definition requires exploitation of labor, and theft of the surplus value of labor is what incentivizes capitalists to not hoard all their wealth.

It's a fundamentally broken system. Private entities shouldn't be the ones handling investment, nor handling direction of development. Those should be handled democratically by worker syndicates, the capital should be injected from the state/communities.

Essentially anytime private corporations are involved in an industry (housing, healthcare, capital injection, governance, etc.) it breaks the system. Liberals are slowly seeing these material realities unfold, and so the propaganda being fed to them is harder to buy. You don't find many people in support of private healthcare or governance anymore, and some are starting to learn about the others too.

[–] Nevoic@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (17 children)

You keep saying the word risk, and liberal capitalists do this all the time. Companies limit personal liability, so risk goes to zero there for a bunch of legal issues.

What most people are talking about is money, but not everyone has access to money. If you take two people, one born into a rich family, and another born into a homeless family, the rich kid gets a massive inheritance and "risks" 30% of it starting a business. Let's say he hires the person born into a homeless family.

The liberal conception here is that the rich person, handed a massive amount of cash for absolutely nothing, deserves the surplus value of labor from the poor person because he "risked" a small part of his inheritance that the poor person never had access to. It's a wild assertion.

This might seem fabricated, but in the real world this is how it goes, people with capital accumulate more capital. Jeff Bezos "built Amazon" with a $245,000 loan from his parents, and worked out of their garage. He then used that loan and later capital investments to hire people to actually build Amazon.

His parents could've just as easily gone the standard capitalist route, and instead of loaning the money instead valuated the company at $300,000 and assumed ~80% ownership for the company. The only reason this isn't how it played out is because parents don't like exploiting their kids, there was a biological component at play that disallowed the standard capitalist exploitation from taking place. So they offered him a deal that no capitalist in their "right mind" would offer, because it left Jeff with far too much and the capitalist with far less.

[–] Nevoic@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Sorry to say but graphic design clients are dwindling extremely fast. People will constantly have arguments about the value/ethics of AI under capitalism (less work means more suffering in a capitalist society, broken system but that's what we have). However, in the real world AI exists, and capitalists have access to what they need, even if you don't want to call what DALLE produces art.

Same goes for videography, programming, essentially anything that requires the development of skill on a computer/digitally has the potential to be massively automated. Even if you believe AI can never match human intellect because of some special sauce inside of our organic sacks, it's already producing content at the level of professionals. Not the highest level professionals, usually the lowest level ones actually, but without low-level jobs people don't have clear paths to develop their resumes/careers.

[–] Nevoic@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Access to capital isn't universal, some people aren't able to work out of their parents' garage with a $245,000 loan from them (Jeff Bezos if you're unfamiliar with his "self-made" story).

Without access to capital, you don't have access to food or shelter, let alone labor. You'd have to work a full time job (or more), plus create the entire business yourself with no access to any substantial means of production.

It's not an equal playing field, and it's not supposed to be. Capitalism is a system setup for capitalists to accumulate capital. Labor and people more generally are commodities to be exploited. The system is functioning exactly as it should, and the working class is miserable because of it.

[–] Nevoic@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

I don't think revolutions are any more likely to be fascist than socialist, historically though genuine socialist revolutions tend to lose, mostly because international capitalism can play very nicely with fascism, but not socialism.

However if the U.S underwent genuine socialist revolutions, it's an entirely different ballgame. The U.S has been the capitalist hand on the global stage for the better part of a century, constantly involved in overthrowing democratically elected governments in favor of fascist dictatorships.

With that constant capitalistic/fascistic pressure gone, and better-yet replaced with genuine socialism, you'd get a very interesting situation. You'd have genuine socialism in the U.S (probably followed by at least some socialist revolution or socialist-inspired reforms in Europe), and then rhetorical socialism in the east, marred by material capitalism. The contradictions of the global stage would intensify, and I don't think there's any Chinese theory for development in an internationally socialist stage.

[–] Nevoic@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's more counterproductive to be a non-vegan and try to convince nobody. I've had a good deal of success convincing people to go vegan. There are definitely vegans that are more successful than me, but you want to know who is always less successful? Non-vegans who rage online about vegans.

They should be the focus of our criticism, both in their own actions, and even as a broader strategy for enacting change.

[–] Nevoic@lemm.ee -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Also I'd go as far to claim malapropisms don't exist. There is no "incorrect" use of a word. I'm not a prescriptivist. Language is about communicating ideas, and I know everything I've said would make sense to a great deal of people I know.

Maybe something doesn't make sense to you, maybe because we learned different definitions or usages of some word or phrase. Neither of us are wrong, we've just hit a language barrier. This is uncommon in English, but actually happens quite regularly in Europe even with two people speaking "the same language".

Our best example of this is going from American -> British English, but it can happen within the same "dialect" too.

Now there are obviously times where you try to adopt some language someone else has, and misunderstood it, so your usage aligns with essentially nobody else's (so the word has lost all function). I know that's not the case with what I'm saying because I've had these types of conversations with enough people who have understood me, but I'm fine humoring you, and still interested where the clash/miscommunication happened.

[–] Nevoic@lemm.ee -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Feel free to correct me, most (or dare I say all) people aren't born omniscient, so sometimes we misuse words or phrases. I'm not sorry to admit that I'm sometimes incorrect about things, I used to be a staunch non-vegan for example.

what state is forcing a diet on you

The dog and cat meat trade prohibition act in 2018 in the U.S outlaws the slaughter and trade of dog/cat meat, in effect banning it as a diet.

I'd be more than happy with this exact same legislation being passed, but just for chickens/cows/pigs/etc. too. If you don't think that this is prohibiting a diet, sure. Let's just ban the slaughter/trade of cow/pig/chicken meat and say we found a good compromise.

[–] Nevoic@lemm.ee -2 points 1 year ago

It's impressive watching you repeatedly sidestep the main point, about how your view of dogs/cats is inconsistent with your view of pigs/cows/chickens.

I'm not a moral leader, I'm making points you repeatedly sidestep with ad-hominems. You can't articulate counter points, so you repeatedly attack me as an individual. It's awesome.

[–] Nevoic@lemm.ee -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The really cool thing about actually every person I've met or heard of online, in person, etc. is anytime they're not vegan due to a health issue, they can't actually say what that health issue is.

People are genuinely more open about any other aspect of their health or mental state. People more readily open up about their schizophrenia or suicidal-level depression than whatever mysterious health issue "prevents veganism".

It's cool too, because there is actually no medical issue that prevents veganism. Every major health association has come out and said a vegan diet is suitable for literally all people at all stages of life. That might seem reductive, until you realize how many different vegan foods there are. You're likely able to eat beans, lettuce, and rice (and if not, surprise, there are other vegan foods), and those 3 things alone have sustained poor people for decades. Living in a rich western country makes this vastly easier too.

It's just funny hearing the broad, fake excuse because so many people use it when it's totally incoherent by the account of every major medical association.

[–] Nevoic@lemm.ee -4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

A small sidenote too about your advice, I appreciate you trying to help, but I'm actually happy with how many people I've converted and continue to convert to veganism. I'd even bet good money that I've converted more people to veganism than you.

If you find a tactic that converts more than a few dozen people per year, let me know, but out of the two of us I probably have more actual real world experience converting people to veganism, given I'm the vegan activist, and you should consider that a vegan activist might know more about vegan activism than a non-vegan.

At least consider it as a possibility, my friend.

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