I’m sure that’s part of it. Antifa is definitely not well structured, and anarchists could probably be opposed to any official organization.
Let me put it this way, the post talks about a journalist who investigates antifa, which the op of this comment chain mocked because they’re not an organization. But, this is an argument of semantics, and the post didn’t use that word to begin with. Regardless of what you call antifa, he’s trying to investigate and see what they’re about.
It’s a very dishonest way to deride people. If you don’t mind me asking, if you don’t think the word organization is appropriate, what’s better? I mean I just say group, can’t really be wrong going that general but it also doesn’t say much. Like, when you said “people who participate in Antifa…”, what type of thing are those people participating in?
The weird thing is I get cover art and hardware transcoding with Emby but I’ve never paid. I know it has it because 4k playback was lagging until I enabled it 🤷♂️ and it would be weird to imagine emby without cover art of any kind. Doesn’t every media app just scrape by title? Is this referring to something else?
I also use the native emby app on my phone, I think my smart TV has it too, unpaid. Man, I’m really confused about their paid features lol everything I think would be needed seems to be in native Emby as well. So weird.
Good to know though, I could see downloading for offline use being very useful for travel and stuff.
Emby or Jellyfin?
I feel like your interpretation of my comment is really off. I’ve never had issues with paywalls, and the reason I said the ad thing was my only gripe was because I thought I didn’t have to explicitly say it wasn’t a big deal. I haven’t had any problems that make me feel like I owe it to myself to find something better, because my Emby experience has been great.
The point of my comment is that I’m curious what I’m missing out on, since people’s problems with Emby don’t really line up with my experience.
I find this comment thread horribly ironic, and I hope I can show you why without starting an argument because this is genuinely kind of funny.
Fascism is when a state achieves (or attempts to achieve) totalitarianism through corporatization. All corporations are chartered and controlled through the state, and private industry becomes corporatized.
One of the ways they did this was through legitimizing specific channels of distribution, and labeling all who take a more independent route as illegitimate. Farmers, for example, were coerced into selling their products to state distributors, and pressured out of independent channels. Likewise, farmers who weren’t part of the state organization were often treated with suspicion and derision.
Basically, if you were a _____ and did _____ things, but were not part of the _____ organization, then you weren’t a real ______ no matter how good you are at _____.
Anyway, antifa is a real thing that exists, and that’s the thing people here are talking about. They’re a group that has identifiable goals, and they work together under the label. It’s really funny to me that so many here are appealing to “they’re not even a real org” in the face of dissent, because that’s one of the most fascist mind sets that exist commonplace today.
I keep hearing this, but my emby server has been running strong for a few years now without issue. My only gripe with it is the emby premiere ads that take up a lot of home screen space, but I got rid of it with custom CSS that you can put in emby settings, doesn’t even show up on the phone app anymore.
I’ve heard Jellyfin implemented features that emby puts behind a paywall too, but I’m not sure what. Care to fill me in on what I’m missing?
This was my experience with micro usb, and everyone seemed to agree they were total shit. As for USB-C, I’ve never even heard of someone having trouble with the actual cord. Generally the issue is that there is lint or something in the charge port. I don’t think I’ve ever thrown out a USB-C cord, to my memory.
In short, check for lint, and if that’s not the issue then yeah it really might be your phone. Mind if I ask what kind of phone you have?
I took a look at your comments purely because his reply made me curious. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your comments. The only downvoted comment of yours I saw was that Trudeau has the worst approval rating ever, which is a matter of record, not opinion.
It’s not on you, you’re fine. I’ve had a similar experience here, people just don’t seem to be able to take disagreement as anything less than personal
This doesn’t really address what he said.
Instead of berating him for not leaving a robust enough comment for your taste, why don’t you ask for more information? Calling capitalists uninformed or rent seekers is way more unfair than alluding to historical or economic evidence to the contrary. The latter clearly leaves itself more open to good faith discourse, getting nothing out of it has simply been a failure on your part
had a famine in the 30s during the horribly botched collectivization of agriculture
which implies that non-collectivized agriculture was doing a good job considering the significant upswing in the 20s. After the civil war, non-collectivized farms were doing a good job.
All in all, you’re frustratingly bad at arguing anything coherent, and it’s clear you don’t actually care about proper definitions.
This response makes me think you didn’t really read my comment very closely considering I literally explain the etymology of the word “public”. Socialism is the public ownership of the means of production, and there’s good reason to consider that state ownership given the history of the word and its use over time. I don’t think I’m incoherent, I just think you don’t understand, otherwise you’d actually address my comment instead of restating your position and implying I’m stupid for not agreeing. I honest to god do recommend taking my comment a bit more seriously and rereading it. Really try to look at what I’m telling you, and if you disagree, I’d love to see you actually point out what’s wrong with my comment.
You’re never going to convince me I’m out of line here unless I can tell from your response you actually took in what I was saying, because honestly, you really didn’t have to read much of what I said to generate the response you made.
I wasn’t referring to 30s and 70s as time periods, but the actual life expectancies.
Oh, I must have assumed you meant otherwise because the USSR never reached that high of a life expectancy. They peaked in 1970 at 68 years old, at which point it trended down again. Russians never reached a life expectancy of 70 until 2015. You should also consider how volatile that graph has been in general, it simply isn’t good for a state to have that much influence over the life expectancy of all of its people.
That little bump in 1985-1990 correlates with the reign of Gorbachev. He implemented policy that gave more autonomy to enterprises (less state control), and allowed for foreign trade (opening the market, again less state control). This included giving way more autonomy to the collectivized farms, as well as allowing for private farms for both personal use and for sale on the market - in other words, he de-collectivized. Given that the central authority in the USSR was the state, you could also say the central authority has less control, and thus they decentralized.
Compare this the the US life expectancy of time. It’s much less volatile for one thing, it’s a very steady incline. They also actually did reach a life expectancy of 70 by 1970, they had it by 1965 in fact.
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Honestly, we totally agree on quite a bit here. We obviously both don’t advocate for Stalin himself, and we totally agree decentralization is a good thing. It’s just strange to me that in the case of the USSR you don’t see how the act of decentralization was literally being less strict on collective control and more lenient on private control - in other words, being less strict on socialist policy and being a little more lenient on private ownership.
it’s also important to acknowledge that many parts of the USSR did work
It’s also important to acknowledge which parts worked, it’s also important to acknowledge why they worked. When farmers were given private ownership, they had more freedom of choice in how to manage it, which is really important to have on farms for a myriad of reasons I can get into if you want. But in any case, they were better able to feed themselves as well as bring more product to market. Surplus on food and freedom of distribution means less hunger.
However, this cannot be meaningfully achieved in a top-down system like Capitalism.
Take farming as an example since it’s on topic. Capitalism is the private ownership of the means of production. In 1985-1990 USSR most privately owned farms were small scale and personally managed. What’s more top down, a guy owning a plot of land and doing what he wants with it, or being assigned to work a plot by the regional agriculture authority, who answers to the ministry of agriculture, who answered to the council of ministers, who answered to the Communist Party leadership?
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Private Property Rights require a state while public property does not
Public Property: something owned by the city, town, or state.
I understand that the line is blurry on whether public means “of the state” or “of the people”. For example, the Romans saw the state to be in service of the people, so “public works” were state works for the people. They also saw the republic as a government of the people, so state projects were of the people either way you take it. This is exactly the same in our democracy, public spaces are managed by the state, on behalf of the people, but the democratic state is also a government of the people, so it’s effectively redundant in the modern context.
In any case, I don’t exactly think the distinction matters. As soon as a large group of people (the public) see the need to come together and make decisions and how to manage certain things and/or how to cooperate to get something done, a government is formed. When the Romans did this, they literally didn’t have a distinctive word for it, which is why they basically just called it the “public thing”, the group that handled public decision making. The nature of the Roman “public thing” swayed in and out of meaning of for the people, by the people, in service of the people, in command of the people, and it was never exclusive to one of those things.
Private property demonstrably does not require a state to exist, because that’s not always how property rights are handled. In this early period of Rome, the state could purchase and grant rights, but so could private citizens. If the people of Rome wanted a plot of land to themselves, the legal way to do so would be through a legitimate exchange with a private owner. Property rights are granted by whoever holds the property rights, private or public. Modern nations technically own the land they claim, which is why they grant access.
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The far more important distinction are the things that which the people don’t decide need collective cooperation. That’s what we call “private”. To be privately controlled, you can’t be under the control of the collective or the control of the state, which is precisely why “private” is the antithesis of “public”. In the context of Rome, centralization would be to make it part of the “public thing”. So, if the people and senate of Rome decided to bring the whole market under the control of the people the way they did the army and roads, they would have been both centralizing control of the market and technically socialist, as the means of production would been publicly controlled. The USSR was socialist for exactly that reason.
I didn’t say the workers decided things, I said they had a right to, and then alluded to the diplomatic issues that creates… In fact, I heavily implied they can’t realistically make decisions when I said the group decides things on their behalf.
Central Planned Economy: an economy where decisions on what to produce, how to produce and for whom are taken by the government in a centrally managed bureaucracy.
In socialism, the market is controlled by the state. This fits the definition of central planning perfectly.
In capitalism, the market is not controlled by a centralized bureaucracy.
Okay I see what you mean. You agree attempted, but never achieved, I see that now. I’m sorry for misconstruing your argument, but I still take issue with your assertion that things got drastically better. That’s a big red flag to me and tends to be a sign that someone is having a big misunderstanding.
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The Soviet Union doubled life expectancy from the mid 30s to the mid 70s
While true, it is essentially a lie by omission to leave out other key details. For one thing, if you think about it, what kind of conditions would one have to be in initially to make doubling the life expectancy even possible?
The Russians were in horribly dire straits. Life expectancy fell from 37 to 32 from 1930-1935. The chief cause was forced collectivization of farming by Stalin. Privately owned farms were confiscated by the state, and were horribly mismanaged which resulted in famine. Socialist policy directly caused that famine.
Life expectancy started going up again in 1935 after they relaxed grain procurement quotas, decentralized, and opened up private plots. This is the scaling back of socialist policy, and the implementation of capitalist policy. Capitalism policy is to thank for stopping the famine.
had constant GDP growth until it liberalized and collapsed
The US has had exponential growth, rather than linear, along with many of its allies. Russia also supplies a large percentage of the world’s oil, you’d have to make fucking up an art to make your GDP go down with a supply like that.
guaranteed free Healthcare and education,
Both were an improvement considering I don’t think much was their for either before, so I’ll give ya that.
and had mass housing initiatives
These came in response to a housing crisis caused by inadequate supply of houses when the USSR nationalized it under the Central Board of Architecture. The housing initiatives did help, but the housing problem was never solved, and it was a problem created by them.
It had far lower wealth inequality than before or after its existence
Because he killed the rich people, and no one had anything. Equality is not an intrinsically good quality, especially when it means everybody is equally impoverished.
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I guess this is why I find the observation that communism has never existed pretty naive. Socialism, in its most honest representation, is really the state ownership of the means of production. The way Stalin held ownership in common, was to collectivize it under the state that all citizens are part of. If we are trying to achieve a stateless society, then holding ownership in common is an antithetical goal. Every step the USSR took away from common ownership was a step towards private ownership, and therefor a step towards capitalism.
Socialism means workers collectively own the means of production, and it isn’t synonymous with central planning.
This can only be true if you stop thinking at the end of the sentence, without reading into any of the implications, or any circumstantial cause and effect.
If the workers collectively own everything, then that means that every worker has just as much right as anyone else to make decisions on how the process plays out. This means that the group has to come up with a way to make decisions. Since the group has to make a decision, and everybody has a right to make decisions, the group is effectively making decisions on behalf of those in the group.
If the workers collectively own everything, then that means they have to work together and organize to get things done. This means that the group has to come up with a way to organize. This means that the group will be deciding on behalf of those in the group what work is done by who.
If the workers collectively own everything, that means the workers have to decide what rules or laws to follow, and how to enforce them. So now the group has to decide by what convention it’ll hold its members accountable. If it wants to hold members accountable, it implicitly has the power to do so.
A group with decision making power that enforces law among its members is a central authority.
A central authority with power over the market and all decision making is central planning.
Your description of capitalism legitimately sounds like mental gymnastics. You can call anything centralized if you reduce the context to only itself. That is dishonest, the context here is the market. If a market is centrally planned, then all aspects of the market need to be centrally planned by the same unit. That’s what central planning means. A disunited group of private entities all planning things for themselves is absolutely not an example of central planning.
Sure, and capitalism has never existed either, only specific forms of libertarian-constitutionalism 🤷♂️
Now, if you can see how silly what I just typed is, you should be able to see how silly it is to claim communism has never been tried. You say yourself that Marxist-Leninism is a communist ideology, so if it’s being attempted, then it’s valid to say a form of communism is being attempted.
Do you consider drastically improving upon previous conditions to be a miserable failure?
All of the citation needed. Don’t make the mistake of including the goals of outcome as part of the definition, that’s just cheating. Op obviously rejects the idea that it makes things better, you can’t just assume it a priori.
I appreciate your comment and defense a lot. You seem like a very kind person and you’re very straightforward with your words, I like that. I’m telling you that not just because I believe it’s true and you deserve to hear it, but also so you don’t take it the wrong way when I tell you that, well, I’m sorry but I found your comment a bit condescending too. And I don’t blame you for it! Truly, I get it. You are referencing the fact that I’m on the hunt for the truth on Google, and it’s fair enough that it paints the picture in your head of a young, maybe naive, person on the hunt for the truth of this nebulous area of private and public ownership. I guess it’s not really far from the truth either lol. But, the context I haven’t shared is that I actually am very educated on this. I studied economics, history, philosophy and political science in post-secondary for two years before graduating (with a different major) and a minor in philosophy. Outside of school I’ve actually read heaps of books pertaining to the general theories the revolve around the distinction between public and private, from anarcho-capitalists to totalitarian-communists and everything in between.
The reason I don’t share this context and why I choose to reference google, is because after all this studying I’ve come to see that most conclusions drawn by these intellectuals can be demonstrated very easily by using commonly accepted definitions. Most misunderstandings can be contradicted by people’s own language or easily accessible sources, so that’s what I try to do. It seems a lot more favorable to do a simple “premise -> premise -> conclusion”. Besides, it just seems like a waste of time to open up a physical copy of some philosopher and manually re type something to quote them, just to come off as as grand standy, or just get told they don’t like who I quoted, or have the comment not even post to begin with because Lemmy has issues with long comments.
I’m sorry, that’s enough about my frustrations for one comment lol. I just wanted you to know I don’t come from a place of naivety or ignorance on the topic before I respond to your insights, because I think the assumption of ignorance has prevented some people in this thread from reading what I’m saying in good faith. I also do think you’re mostly spot on in what you say. The only exception might be that while I am familiar the distinction between public traded and private organization before, I don’t think that distinction applies here. After all, you’re totally right, things do change based on context :) I’ll try and show you what I mean.
My original comment’s purpose was to show the flaw in using capitalism as a catch all term, especially when it comes to medicine. The most commonly used definition of capitalism refers to private ownership. You’re absolutely right that private can refer to not being publicly traded, but private ownership refers to “being owned by a private individual or organization, rather than by the state or a public body”.
Regarding the term public, when things are open to the public, they are open to us because we are members of the public. Public places are open to members of the public. We are members of the public, public refers to the state, and we live in a democracy and are thus members of the state. People who are exiled are not free to trade in stocks because they no longer are a member of the state that holds them. Exiled folk are not free in public places because they are no longer a member of their public, and are banned from visitation so they’re sent elsewhere.
Recall the definition of Corporation I provided before, specifically that it’s “chartered by the state”. This means the government and the government alone establishes corporations as legal entities, and sets the parameters by which they can do so. They exist as part of the state, but operate separately from the government, under parameters set by the government. That’s the distinction that’s made when you call Microsoft a private organization, the business isn’t controlled by the state directly, but government and corporations are both part of the state, and they certainly influence each other a lot right now.
This can also be seen in the etymology of the word itself, along with the history of how modern corporations came to be. “Corporation” comes from latin corpus, meaning corpse, or “body”. A body that’s chartered by the state, a body of the state. The reason the etymology took this path can be seen in how corporations evolved with time. The publicani of Rome is sometimes considered the first corporation to exist, which were independent contractors that performed government services. The Dutch East India Company found the first stock exchange, and was a corporation owned and controlled by the Dutch senate as well as others.
Now, considering where corporations evolved from, and the amount of easily identifiable government-corporate collusion today, I think corporations land far closer to being an independent arm of the state, and publicly owned than representing the private ownership represented by capitalism.
Now, just to nip it in the bud, you might infer that this means that corporations are socialist. Well, kinda, but also no. Characteristics of corporations can be seen all over early modern socialist philosophy, including syndicalism and trade unionism. But, if socialism is the public control of the means of production, and corporations are controlled independently, it doesn’t quite fit, right?
The context between these two areas is tricky, and your understanding makes sense without the additional context. Sadly, we’re terrible at naming things.
You and I couldn’t agree more. I guess it would really help if people incorporated (heh) the word corporatism into their vocabulary. We could freely disagree on the nature of corporations and their relationship with public and private ownership and control, while still distinguishing companies like Microsoft from ma and pop shops with clearer language.
At the very least, I wonder if you can agree that there’s enough reason to take issue with blaming all issues on capitalism alone, when there’s so much more to it. Feel free to let me know what you think :) I know it was still a really big comment but, yeah, like I said, there’s a lot to it lol I really appreciate it if you’ve even read this far
And yet, android is still not what people mean when they say they’re running Linux.