I’ve visited the museums in China, truly among the most inspiring places on this earth. The world’s largest and most powerful country is also its most free.
I’ve visited the museums in China, truly among the most inspiring places on this earth. The world’s largest and most powerful country is also its most free.
Not really.
The fundamental critique of capitalism is that not even the capitalists are really in charge. Marx lays out quite thoroughly in Capital that the profit motive is what’s actually in charge, and the capitalists are just along for the ride, and that any attempt by the capitalists to flex their power in a way that the market cannot abide will result in them losing their privileged status and being replaced by a different capitalist who will better serve the needs of the profit motive.
By contrast, socialist systems are run by people. That makes them flexible and able to serve the needs of society in a way that capitalist societies simply aren’t. And yes, people are capable of mistakes, failure, and betrayal; but so too are they capable of insight, success, and solidarity. The best of existing socialist societies past and present is when they buck the demands of the market and provide for their people in ways that capitalist societies don’t, and the worst of socialist societies is invariably the things that they are required to do in order to maintain their existence on a predominantly capitalist world.
The worst things that happen are when students lock the door to a building, or when fascist counter protestors (often in police uniforms) show up and escalate shit.
Americans live in one of the police states of all time. Capitalism can only produce this result, there is no alternative, because the ruling class knows just as well as the socialists do that the contradictions will only keep getting worse and the protests will only keep getting bigger but of course instead of wanting to change the equation to produce a different result like the socialists do the capitalists want to cling to power by any means necessary.
Those are the rules when you’re occupied by a foreign military. Imagine if Russia had control over all of Ukraine - people in occupied Kyiv would be justified in attacking Russia, but Russia would not be justified in retaliating against the Ukrainians.
If Israel wants to make it so that the Palestinians don’t have every right to retaliate against them, they would have to end the occupation, the blockade, the settlements, etc.
I think they assumed that Israel wouldn’t be so bloodthirsty as to put the hostages at risk, which would give them a bargaining position so that once they weathered the initial retaliation they would be able to get concessions such as allowing Palestinians to leave Gaza, ending the blockade of Gaza’s ports, ending Israeli control of Gazan water sources, etc.
But as we’ve all learned since then the IDF has an explicit policy to kill Israeli civilians if it looks like they’re about to be captured, and Israel’s political leadership simply aren’t put off by the possibility of killing every single remaining hostage in their campaign to flatten Gaza.
Like all things it’s a spectrum. This conflict has been about 1% a war between Hamas and the IDF, and 99% the IDF indiscriminately killing civilians.
Israel is an occupying/besieging force and Hamas’ attack against them was justified morally, ethically, and under international law. Israel’s retaliation against the entire population of Gaza is completely unjustified, and completely illegal.
My parents have “the new minivan” and “the old minivan,” I guess that’s what happens when you adopt four kids and two dogs.
clay that was fired after impression
New record format just dropped.
(this is a facetious post, making fun of economists who sometimes push damaging and anti social theories based on sketchy market-based logic)
That used to be a thing, lmao.
glaziers fallacy
TIL a new fallacy. I was joking just for the record, I called it “capitalist realist” specifically to try and indicate that it’s the kind of thing you might believe only if you were extremely economics brained.
Ooh I wanna try this. I used to eat a lot of spam, but then I moved and it wasn’t available anymore.
hunter1
But there’s only a certain amount of labor a fixed number of employees can absorb. Imagine a scenario where everyone everywhere agrees to stop returning shopping carts - grocery store employees would be forced to spend their entire shift just corralling them, and then they wouldn’t be able to man the cash registers or stock the shelves or whatever else, thus forcing the store to hire another employee on each shift to be the dedicated shopping cart return person.
Logically, every store everywhere tries to run with the minimum number of people possible to keep costs down. The idea is to create a situation where that minimum number of people is increased.
I’m a fan of the Capitalist Realist Shopping Cart Theory, myself.
Putting shopping carts away is bad for society and you should stop doing it.
The reason is that putting a shopping cart away requires labor, labor requires a person to do it, and the person who has to do it is employed by the grocery store.
Thus, if enough people refuse to put their shopping carts back, enough excess labor will be generated at grocery stores around the country that they will be forced to hire more people to do it, creating jobs.
QED
When I was a kid they taught penmanship too. I was awful at it but then when I was an adult I had a job where I actually had to use those skills and I was glad to have them - same with everything I learned in Home Ec, most the stuff I learned in wood/metal/auto shop, etc. I think all of those classes are extinct now, based on how people talk about school never teaching them anything useful.
I haven’t had to do a captcha myself for like a month. It’s great.
Because the kind of person who sides with Israel heavily overlaps with the kind of person who assumes that everyone in the Middle East is the same and that they’re all terrorists.