No he is wrong and he is just mouthing the ipcc party line talking points. They’ve been doing this bs for a long time, demanding that climate scientists tone it down. And the reasoning is appallingly manipulative: if people understand how fucking bad it is going to get they will be paralyzed and ‘people’ won’t act. Meanwhile ‘people’ not acting is pretty much irrelevant when the global economic system itself is the direct cause of the problem, ‘people’ are just consuming commodities with abandon, as they have been trained, and as they must to keep the global economic system functioning.
Information about economic activity and external events are routinely input into sophisticated economic modeling systems and analyzed accurately for their effects within seconds. To a certain extent, more and more so as this monopolistic era unfolds, we have top down central planning, just the kind neoliberals like.
most socialist systems participated in the capitalist economic system. The USSR, for example, attempted to create the capitalist mode of production that was almost entirely lacking when the revolution overthrew the czarist regime. They had to, according to their marxist theories, in order to develop a proletariat with a revolutionary consciousness. Similarly China was faced with an economic system that was the shambles left over from the long degeneration and colonial exploitation of the ancient regime, and proceeded to attempt to build a modern capitalist economy under the control of the party, as the USSR was doing. In both the USSR (except for the brief period of the NEP) and the initial attempt during Mao's lifetime, the market exchange was not used to set prices or drive production and planning, but instead top down '5 year plans' were used. They didn't work well, why is a complicated discussion, they actually might work a lot better now using the vast compute, information and communication tech available. The USSR under Gorbachev attempted to reform both their political and economic systems and collapsed. China looked at that and reformed their economic system, allowing much of the economy to be market based rather than planned, while keeping political control under the party. Their reform has been spectacularly successful in modernizing their economy, so successful that the USA at this point is determined to sabotage their system and, if necessary, destroy them militarily rather than allow them to dominate the global system.
that is the ideology of classic liberal and neoliberal governments in the history of capitalism, capitalism itself is simply investing 'money' (aka capital) to produce commodities that are then exchanged for more money that is then fed right back into the loop to produce even more commodities to make even more money. The term commodity can refer to things that are intangible, like financial instruments - stocks, bonds, derivatives of stocks and bonds, derivatives of derivatives of stocks and bonds etc. Capitalism is the core of the global economic system. It is not an ideology. There are many countries (but fewer than there used to be) that are either socialist or social democracies where capitalism is highly regulated.
That's a good question. Amway is perhaps the architype pyramid scheme. They actually do sell products, but primarily to the marks they con into being 'amway agents' or whatever they call them. The marks, in addition to buying the shit, also kick back part of the proceeds from any sales up the ladder. A ponzi scheme doesn't actually do anything with the marks investment money other than use it to pay off the people in on the con.
Yes that is true, and you can view wealth distribution as pyramid shaped, but that is not what a pyramid scheme means. As noted the system is very good at producing massive amounts of commodities, distributing them all over the planet, and exchanging them for your labor. If capitalism did nothing useful it would have disappeared long ago.
Oh sure yeah lol none of this is realistic as our election system, and our representation system are massively defective, and of course a lot of people have lost their fucking minds.
I’ll try this slowly: it would be idiotic to have multiple rail systems providing the same routes.
Please research ‘natural monopolies’ because that is the history of the unregulated development of the rail industry. If you are going to spout right-libertarian ideology, at least have some understanding of the history of capitalism.
The ancient for the most part rich white slave owners who wrote the constitution just didn’t think of the scenario where a corrupt imprisoned felon could be a candidate for president. They were all 18th century enlightened gentlemen and that was outside their reality. They were however very concerned that some Europe-born demagogue might gain power.
There is no competition for train lines. That is just stupid. Also multiple competing local bus services is equally stupid. Some services just don’t fit in the neoliberal model.
Oh I agree. Use cost is one major problem, quality and non-existence is the other. However privatization is neoliberal bullshit. It doesn’t guarantee quality. It guarantees that profits will be extracted and therefore use cost will increase and/or quality will decrease.
Yes bad actors are always a problem. So I guess we should never do anything substantial to reform the system because rightwing shitheads will try to sabotage it.
Yes it is. Luckily we have a system of taxation. By ‘free’ I mean of course ‘at the point of use’.
We could provide 100% subsidies for mass transportation for probably around 100 years before we would approach equity with the subsidies we have given to fossil fuels and private transportation.
Too bad this Lemmy.world gets spammed by rightwing propaganda.