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Looking forward to my purchase going towards R&D for new tech and not just some CEO’s coke/CSAM addiction.
Freedom dies when your tech purchase doesn’t fund trips to epstein Island
-pro capitalists completely unironically
Thanks I needed that one 😄
but China is capitalist???
Well I mean Germany did it too? Unless you’re asserting that Germany wasn’t a capitalist.
Nobody’s capitalist, or communist for that matter. Both of these are mythical ideals that nobody has ever managed to implement at any large scale.
Sure, if you base your politics in idealism instead of materialism, which isn’t a very useful lense for analyzing politics.
Exactly, though I would say there are some ideals that are more realistic than others. I think the whole debate between communism and capitalism is largely a distraction from actual tangible change that can be achieved and sustained.
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OK, what exception did I miss?
It’s still capitalism when the government does things. It’s not a mix of capitalism and socialism or whatever, it’s just capitalism because what matters is who is in control. Under capitalism there is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the owners of capital. Hence, capital-ism.
Under capitalism, corporations take over the government and use it to their own ends. Under communism, the government takes over the corporations and uses them to it’s own ends. Either outcome ends up looking pretty much the same.
What we have in the west, especially America, is far more than just “the government doing stuff”. Government power and corporate power have become nearly indistinguishable. Corporations don’t make long term investments of any kind without government grants to ensure consistent steady profits. We are constantly at war, and those wars consistently serve corporate interests.
On the other side, every large scale implementation of Communist ideals has resulted instead in state capitalism.
No, every implementation of a communist state (or even a vaguely leftish state) is ruthlessly hunted down and destroyed by capitalist powers - chiefly the United States.
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Under communism, the government takes over the corporations and uses them to it’s own ends.
No, that is Leninism. Not communism. Those groups called themselves communist, communist party, communist Republic etc. But we’re not communist in any significant sense beyond nominally.
Replace every time you mention communism with Leninism or ML and I largely agree however. Russia evolved into fascism. China is absolutely state capitalist. North Korea 100% a dictatorial nepo-state. But not because of communism.
Plenty are capitalist. True no one will ever achieve the capitalist ideal. Because capitalism amplifies and encourages the worst of human behavior. Without offering any controls for it. Capitalism is absurdist by it’s very nature.
While it’s true no nation has ever achieved ideological communism either. Thats because it requires post scarcity. Which strictly speaking we don’t have yet. And directly requires us to address the worst of human nature. It simply isn’t currently achievable. But there are plenty of things we could do to move towards it that we aren’t and should be doing. But can’t, in the United States for example. Because wealthy oligarchs and authoritarians have invested heavily in miseducation and propaganda.
I would argue that post scarcity is something that we could actually have today if it were a priority. Most of the work people do today is entirely unnecessary. What’s left could mostly be automated if that were a priority. Instead, what we see is consumer demand expanding to demand more and more stuff, and the majority of the workforce being employed in scams to help their employer collect power coupons.
I disagree. But you aren’t that wrong. We could claw back the theft of capitalism and absolutely provide a comfortable standard of living for almost everyone. But there are absolutely some big road blocks. Energy and food demand in particular. But we are rapidly approaching some significant milestones on those fronts. Cell cultures/lab grown meat, advancements in fusion. But again if we don’t address the problem that is capitalism. Those things will be hamstrung and used to fleece regular people all the more.
I didn’t say that we actually are post scarcity, only that we could be if that were society’s priority. Take away all the useless work, and that doesn’t leave a whole lot to require coercion. Most of our food production is already pretty much automated, and most of the rest would be if coercion was taken off the table.
I don’t share your optimism on fusion, but that’s not very relevant since there are other technologies that I see as long term solutions. We also waste tons of energy, for instance Bitcoin alone is estimated to account for 2% of US electricity use.
I don’t think it says much for communism as an economic system if all the economic problems have to be resolved before it becomes possible.
There is so much potential for efficiencies if the state can subsidize and guide software development. It should really be treated as public infrastructure to be efficiently managed for the public good rather than a means for private monopolies to siphon as much rent as possible.
I think we can expect to see a future where a lot of Chinese computing is done on RISC-V. They will not have any need for American technology companies, b/c we don’t do the manufacturing anyway. We just have the IP for entrenched technology. Americans were too short-sighted with all that trade war, Nvidia GPUs, and Huawei stuff. Why wouldn’t your biggest trading partner take that as a warning sign that they must foster their own tech sector?
Also, when you can truly plan for longer terms than fiscal quarters or, if you’re being really ambitious, fiscal years then I don’t see how you can’t just eventually dominate the sector.
Not that you could before, but I wouldn’t trust any chips, hardware, software, anything made from there from a security stand point anymore.
What alternative is there lol. The rest of high-tech are made in the US or its allies, which is far worse.
Why is that worse?
Because while there are only obtuse and vague accusations that China is backdooring technology, there’s no proof besides a Chinese law that says Chinese tech companies have to help authorities.
The US on the other hand was caught red handed doing what they accuse China of with the Prism system. It was caught spying on Angela Merkle. And just ask Snowdon how he feels about living in exile in Russia for exposing that.
How would you reconcile the great firewall with this view? They censor texts(on many platforms) with certain messages. To do this you obviously need access to the content.
It all has to do with transparency. China actively tells you what it’s doing and what it collects. Thus, the Chinese citizens can prepare for it and do by using VPNs.
The US is spying. Not just on it’s own citizens, but the entire world. Merkel for example couldn’t have known that US was spying on her and didn’t have the opportunity to protect herself by using a VPN. Mind you, this is on TOP of US companies openly and transparently collecting data as we discovered with Cambridge Analytica.
Again, remember, we’re not saying China is good. We’re saying USA is worse, since they do everything China does on data collection AND they have backdoors and spy.
*Edit: Interestingly this transparency in what they collect is a primary reason for why the west believes they’re oppressing Uyghurs. The problem is they’re conflating this transparent information with oppression. Things like do they go to prayer or shave their beards are things that are collected. The west has stated that this shows the Chinese are targeting Uyghurs, the problem with that analysis is that China does this to everyone.
Another example is a data point China collected was are you planning to have a child soon. The west took this as are you getting pregnant and stated that China is trying to force women to have children. The problem with a lot of western articles is they’re mistranslating and misunderstanding.
Say what you will about if you’re OK with this type of data collection, but at least China is honest about it, to the point we are misconstruing their collecting of data to place insidious ideas on them.
From my point of view, Western powers are more realistically gonna impinge on my human rights than Beijing is.
Your circumstances may be different.
Do you really need to ask why you shouldn’t trust the countries responsible for the vast majority of ongoing neocolonialism, and the ones currently supporting a genocide?
Just look up some of the numerous shit the CIA has done, or the fact that they collect information on every US citizen to use against them, etc. Or the 1965 Indonesian massacre of 700k to 1mil people where the CIA supplied the military dictatorship with information on them.
How many reeducation camps does China currently operate, again?
Probably the amount you’d need to tackle a security threat like the ETIM and its attacks that are right inside your country.
Could they have handled it better? Almost certainly; there’s always a better way to do something. But who am I to complain when the Organization of Islamic Cooperation approve of China’s treatment of its Muslim population?
- Welcomes the outcomes of the visit conducted by the General Secretariat’s delegation upon invitation from the People’s Republic of China; commends the efforts of the People’s Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens; and looks forward to further cooperation between the OIC and the People’s Republic of China.
Or how Global South, mostly Muslim, countries also approve, and the ones currently committing a genocide in Palestine are the only ones who accuse China of mishandling it?
…separatism and religious extremism has caused enormous damage to people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang, which has seriously infringed upon human rights, including right to life, health and development. Faced with the grave challenge of terrorism and extremism, China has undertaken a series of counter-terrorism and deradicalization measures in Xinjiang, including setting up vocational education and training centers. Now safety and security has returned to Xinjiang and the fundamental human rights of people of all ethnic groups there are safeguarded. The past three consecutive years has seen not a single terrorist attack in Xinjiang and people there enjoy a stronger sense of happiness, fulfillment and security. We note with appreciation that human rights are respected and protected in China in the process of counter-terrorism and deradicalization.
An iron fist is certainly one way to encourage creative thinking.
You gotta get a bit creative when fisting.
Which will further stifle innovation, just like every other time it’s been attempted.
Thanks China!
Which is why WW2 led to no innovation and why NASA did nothing new, right?
Give us examples
Any dictatorship in history?
That comes across as hiding in vagueness. If there are abundant examples like you claim, it should be very easy to cite a few.
Is China a dictatorship ?
You are currently living in a bourgeois dictatorship (no, getting to “choose” out of two capitalist imperialist parties is not “democracy”). Has your country not innovated on anything?
Have proletarian dictatorships like the USSR, which went from feudal backwaters to the first nation ever to explore space in just 30 years, and China, which has gone from one of the 10 poorest nations to now the second (soon to be first) richest, not innovated?
Name one major new innovation of the past 50 years that didn’t rely substantially on government funding? NASA alone is responsible for most of the technologies in your cell phone, except for the touch screen which was funded by the Smithsonian.
I’ll even tie one arm behind my back and we can ignore indirect things like public schooling or military conquest for resources like oil.
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Because it’s not right? The biggest competitor to the US technologically for decades was the USSR. They were the first into space, made the first computers etc. and they were much more centralised than China is.
US media says socialism bad tho :clueless:
This isn’t about socialism or “the US media”, it’s a fact that authoritarian regimes suppress science they don’t like which is bad for science.
I mean, Soviet policy led to fucking up agriculture in a number of other countries because they rejected genetics; they killed one of their top cosmonauts because nobody wanted to listen to the literal hundreds of safety and operational problems the Soyuz rocket had; and caused one of the worst nuclear disasters in modern history because “Soviet engineering does not fail”.
But yeah, I think all this just because of what I’ve been told, and not because I’ve seen with my own eyes scientific advancements stifled by authoritarian regimes 🙄
“Authoritarian regimes” 🙄 god shut up nerd
To be even handed you could point to science and industry doing exactly the same shit when given a freer hand. Whether it’s basically all industrial “accidents” in various and sundry capitalist economies (scare quotes because overriding safety protocols or not doing due dilligence in hiring because money isn’t an accident it’s social murder), stuff like that super secret American bomb sight being a scam, industrial agriculture everywhere fucking the soil for short term profits, oil spills, the whole climate crisis and burying of it for money etc.
It’s sort of difficult to get in the blame game because everything is multifaceted and regardless of whatever theoretical construct presides over everything humans have the same incentives for corruption at lots of levels.
you also need to keep in mind the USSR was huge, completely and utterly fucked up by ww2 after inheriting a Russia completely and utterly fucked by centuries of tyranny and ww1. In a huge empire, rapidly industrialising, that just had millions of people killed and tens of thousands of towns destroyed there are going to be problems. No system is perfect enough to just overrule the material and social damage done during that.
TBH my own take is they did pretty well but centralised management everywhere has a tendency to fuck everything up. Oh to be clear, anything with a single leader is highly centralised. Like tech startups are centralised, most research labs are under the iron grip of a PI and thus centralised (and talk to anyone below tenure on the academic track to learn of the problems there).
Most reasoned response by far. And, agreed: I’m not saying capitalism is perfect, or even that it’s better than socialism or communism. Capitalism encourages cutting corners which obviously isn’t good when it’s something like a space mission; capitalism also brought us PFAS chemicals and leaded gasoline and Hummers and Citizens United and on and on - no shortage of evils born of capitalism we can point to.
My only point was that concentrating all research and development under the government is a sure way to slow it down (see cybernetics from one of my other responses here), and history shows it plain as day.
Yes, and Chernobyl never exploded because Soviet engineers don’t make mistakes.
Komarov did not know he was going to die in Soyuz 1, he was excited and happy to be going up and didn’t want Gagarin to get all the glory: https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/02/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage
Science was so much better in the USSR there’s even a whole list of things about how much better it was: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repression_of_science_in_the_Soviet_Union
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Omg a Wikipedia article shit talking the USSR? Communism is over, pack it up boys.
You can spew anti-communist Cold War era propaganda all you want.
I know the USSR wasn’t perfect. But it really serves only the interests of the US empire to focus on that without ever mentioning all the bullshit anti-science shit the US and Western powers engaged in for centuries.
Acting like only communist nations had issues is propaganda, plain and simple. Ignoring all the similar issues western capitalist nations had is propaganda, plain and simple.
Michael Parenti - Blackshirts and Reds:
The pure socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.
I doubt the person you’re replying to is a socialist though ig. Prolly just a lib judging by them citing NATOpedia lol
got news for you, all innovation happens on the tax roll. and because it’s free and public to use, companies take it, stick licenses on it, and sell it back to you (gotta love paying twice).
I’ve got news for you: historically, “centralised” research has led to fewer innovations in consumer technology and bureaucrats unilaterally redirecting funds away from promising areas for political reasons. For just two examples: Cybernetics was the target of a political campaign in the USSR, and their biologists denied genetics of all things and tried to promote agricultural policy based on genetics being wrong.
Alternatively, we could just look at where the USSR is now to see how well their centralised research and development efforts are going 👀
your example is irrelevant and makes little sense as a counter when all research and innovation globally is still paid for by taxes. no business will spend billions on new ideas, they spend billions on commercial application of public (tax paid) ideas in order to profit.
You could even lump giant US corporations into that group too. Companies like IBM innovated less and less the larger they got. You can’t expect constant innovation from a singular machine that runs the same all the time.
There’s that classic homophobia, always juuuust below the surface, all it takes is a little scratch for it all to come flowing out 😌
I’m not downvoting you because your score being “7/11” is hilarious to me, and is only two upvotes off another very funny set of numbers.
EDIT: Nooooooo!
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their entire tech industry was built on by industrial espionage and corporate theft
We need more of that. Fuck megacorps and their IPs. Hell, even the US completely disregarded br*tish IP laws when it was industrializing, and African countries will do too when they industrialize.
Agree that IP laws are shit for developing a country & its people.
You’ve come to the right site; we’re all pro-piracy and anti walled gardens here.
Reasonable IP laws are conceptually a good thing. Unfortunately, America is incapable of implementing reasonable laws about anything. Between rampant authoritarianism and legalized bribery, American IP laws only favor large corporate interests.
their entire tech industry was built on by industrial espionage and corporate theft
basedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbasedbased
wrangle it in?
I gotta love that even US hegemony is challenged on Lemmy, here not even Western superiority is a given which is at least something the vast majority on Reddit can agree on.
That said nuanced discussions seem impossible still, it’s less a balanced mix where every spot on the scale is represented and more a fairly even balance of two extremes.
My current theory is that the majority of actual moderates (not US politics moderates) between two extremes just aren’t interested in the debate, whereas the extremes very much are. I do gotta say that I too generally want to weigh in on things I either agree on completely or things I vehemently oppose, so I guess that kinda helps me understand how and why this is… But it makes everything seem like the extremes are the only two choices, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
Lemmy is way better because unlike Reddit they don’t really censor stuff unless for a good reason, and because the modlog is public it becomes very easy to see when they are which makes it even more of a disincentive not to remove stuff just because it’s distasteful. And unlike other platforms which build themselves on being “free speech” are willing to have basic standards of quality like “lets not become a hub of CSAM, neo-nazism, and crypto scams” allowing that shit not only stifles actual free speech but also drives people away in droves.
what are you trying to say?
Not every observation has to result in a conclusion.
