The nature of capitalism is that it requires consumers to function. Traditionally the way the system works is that business owners employ people who get wages for their work, and then spend their wages purchasing goods and services. However, if a job can be automated then a business doesn’t need to hire people to do work. This leads to unemployment and lack of people with disposable income to consumer the goods and services that companies produce.

Here are a couple of recent examples of this already happening. Buzzfeed replaced some of their staff with chatgpt, and Netflix replaced artists with a stable diffusion style AI to draw backgrounds in their anime show

https://www.wsj.com/articles/buzzfeed-to-use-chatgpt-creator-openai-to-help-create-some-of-its-content-11674752660

https://boingboing.net/2023/02/03/netflix-used-ai-to-replace-workers-announces-new-anti-password-sharing-plan.html

if you say so

I’m pretty sure this particular story is just cover for why Blinken can’t go to China. He invited himself and Chinese never confirmed, so this is a perfect way to safe face for him.

https://www.usip.org/publications/2018/03/leveraging-us-china-cooperation-build-regional-consensus-afghanistan

Sure, but people in US are kicking and screaming for lots of things already. Healthcare, livable wage, and police violence are just a few examples. The regime clearly doesn’t care what the people want though.

the mighty US air force defeated by a single weather balloon 🤣

Of course, I’m strictly referring to the ruling class and their propaganda machine here.

I’m defending an institution that has improved the lives of more people than any other system ever tried. Only an utter ignoramus such as yourself could argue otherwise while defending one of the most heinous systems known to man. You’re like a poster child for the American stereotype.

It’s absolutely hilarious that you hold strong opinions on the topic regarding which you continue to demonstrate such stunning ignorance. You keep on wallowing in your dogma kiddo.

Life in US is getting worse and worse for vast majority of people. A staggering 63% of people in US today have no saving and live paycheck to paycheck. Around 30 million people are food insecure. There are literal tent cities all over the country. Poverty keeps rising while the wealth continues to be concentrated with a handful of oligarchs. That’s the reality of capitalism everywhere.

Meanwhile, quality of life in China continues to steadily improve and the government is actively working on doing things like eliminating poverty, creating public infrastructure, providing healthcare, housing, food, and education for all citizens. Chinese government practically eliminated poverty, and in fact China is the only place in a world where any meaningful poverty reduction is happening. If we take China out of the equation poverty actually increased in real terms:

If we take just one country, China, out of the global poverty equation, then even under the $1.90 poverty standard we find that the extreme poverty headcount is the exact same as it was in 1981.

The $1.90/day (2011 PPP) line is not an adequate or in any way satisfactory level of consumption; it is explicitly an extreme measure. Some analysts suggest that around $7.40/day is the minimum necessary to achieve good nutrition and normal life expectancy, while others propose we use the US poverty line, which is $15.

90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it’s the most populous country on the planet. Social mobility in China is far higher than in US.

Finally, capitalist policies kill millions of people each an every year

• http://guerrillaontologies.com/2014/05/attempting-the-impossible-calculating-capitalisms-death-toll/
• https://www.rawstory.com/2012/05/nearly-5-million-children-died-of-preventable-diseases-worldwide-in-2010/
• http://poverty.com/

You continue to expose yourself here as a profoundly ignorant individual. I can’t wait to see what inanity you come up with next here.

No, I’m telling you that my lived experience clearly shows which system actually works better. The fact that you think you know better what life was like in SU than somebody who actually lived there really says everything I need to know about you. On top of that, I’ve linked numerous scientific studies for you showing that it’s not just my anecdotal experience.

What do you mean I’m too thick?

Exactly what I said, maybe work on your English comprehension?

I can’t really see any path towards fundamental changes in society either unfortunately. The most likely scenario is that we’re soon going to start seeing climate disasters that kill and displace millions of people. That will likely result in countries trying to do geoengineering, like seeding reflective particles in the upper atmosphere, in a panic.

I highly recommend reading The Ministry for the Future from KSR. He paints a very realistic future, and shows a plausible way we can restructure society to deal with the crisis. It’s simultaneously one of the most depressing and optimistic books I’ve read in a while.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ministry_for_the_Future

capitalism 101 here

The whole US infrastructure is designed around car use. Many places in US don’t even have functioning public transit, and certainly not at scale that could support mass use. Meanwhile, due to lack of any sane city planning, all the necessities are scattered so that they’re not in a walking distance. People have to drive to get to work, they have to drive to get to stores, and to do pretty much anything.

Higher gasoline prices aren’t going to change the amount of driving people do in a significant way because driving in US is a necessity. The way you reduce pollution and fuel burn is by building public transit infrastructure and doing city planning. US has shown itself to be utterly incapable of doing either.

You are a poster child for the power of brainwashing of western propaganda. Go back up in the thread an READ what opinion polls from people who lived in former Soviet countries say. Majority of them preferred communism. Your regime lies to you, and you’re too thick to even consider the possibility evidently.

I grew up in USSR, but do tell me more about what life under communism is actually like.

The point here is that the west has no place vilifying Russia. People in the west would do far better holding their own regimes to account rather than spending their time pointing fingers.

I would like to know why you think the U.S is a hostile Empire.

Because of the long and well documented history of atrocities that US has been committing against communist and socialist countries for around a century now. Here are a couple of books you should read if you want to understand the nature of the empire

• https://ia800309.us.archive.org/26/items/fp_Killing_Hope-US_Military_and_CIA_Interventions_Since_WWII-William_Blum/Killing_Hope-US_Military_and_CIA_Interventions_Since_WWII-William_Blum.pdf
• http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=9A5EF5FCA74315C6FCDC1A545E8E3C4B

But in the modern day, many of these communist nations inflict wounds on themselves via oppressing their own peoples, causing the UN to take action.

In the modern day US is blockading Cuba, Venezuela, and DPRK. In fact, US has just recently tried to run a coup in Venezuela. US has also just recently done a coup in Peru against a mildly leftist government. The regime US is backing there is currently murdering people protesting against it.

The U.S would love to work and better relations with the 5 Communist countries of today, however it is them that are the problem, not us.

This statement is not based in reality.

Juche and Stalinism are proven to be perverted from their missions of Communistic ideals and were made by corrupt people who had zero care for their own population.

You have no clue regarding the subject you’re attempting to debate. Here are some facts you might want to consider before you regurgitate more nonsense. First, let’s take a look at a few studies that clearly show how nonsensical your claims are:

Professor of Economic History, Robert C. Allen, concludes in his study without the 1917 revolution is directly responsible for rapid growth that made the achievements listed above possilbe: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.507.8966&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Study demonstrating the steady increase in quality of life during the Soviet period (including under Stalin). Includes the fact that Soviet life expectancy grew faster than any other nation recorded at the time: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2672986?seq=1

A large study using world bank data analyzing the quality of life in Capitalist vs Socialist countries and finds overwhelmingly at similar levels of development with socialism bringing better quality of life: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1646771/pdf/amjph00269-0055.pdf

This study compared capitalist and socialist countries in measures of the physical quality of life (PQL), taking into account the level of economic development https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2430906/

Next, let’s just look at how do people who lived under communism feel now that they got a taste of capitalism

• A remarkable 72% of Hungarians say that most people in their country are actually worse off today economically than they were under communism. Only 8% say most people in Hungary are better off, and 16% say things are about the same. In no other Central or Eastern European country surveyed did so many believe that economic life is worse now than during the communist era. This is the result of almost universal displeasure with the economy. Fully 94% describe the country’s economy as bad, the highest level of economic discontent in the hard hit region of Central and Eastern Europe. Just 46% of Hungarians approve of their country’s switch from a state-controlled economy to a market economy; 42% disapprove of the move away from communism. The public is even more negative toward Hungary’s integration into Europe; 71% say their country has been weakened by the process.

• The most incredible result was registered in a July 2010 IRES (Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategy) poll, according to which 41% of the respondents would have voted for Ceausescu, had he run for the position of president. And 63% of the survey participants said their life was better during communism, while only 23% attested that their life was worse then. Some 68% declared that communism was a good idea, just one that had been poorly applied.

• Glorification of the German Democratic Republic is on the rise two decades after the Berlin Wall fell. Young people and the better off are among those rebuffing criticism of East Germany as an “illegitimate state.” In a new poll, more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR.

• A poll shows that as many as 81 per cent of Serbians believe they lived best in the former Yugoslavia -“during the time of socialism”. The survey focused on the respondents’ views on the transition “from socialism to capitalism”, and a clear majority said they trusted social institutions the most during the rule of Yugoslav communist president Josip Broz Tito. The standard of living during Tito’s rule from the Second World War to the 1980s was also assessed as best, whereas the Milosevic decade of the 1990s, and the subsequent decade since the fall of his regime are seen as “more or less the same”. 45 percent said they trusted social institutions most under communism with 23 percent choosing the 2001-2003 period when Zoran Djinđic was prime minister. Only 19 per cent selected present-day institutions.

• 75% of Russians have expressed increasingly positive opinions about the Soviet Union over the years. Only a small portion of those surveyed said they had negative associations with the Soviet Union. The economic deficit, long lines and coupons were named by 4% of respondents each, while the Iron Curtain, economic stagnation and political repressions were named by 1% each, the Levada Center said.

Cuba, China, and Vietnam are all great examples to study. DPRK is doing well given that it’s completely blockaded by the global empire. Meanwhile, US has poured untold billions into propping SK up. Your argument completely ignores the fact that every communist country has to content with the aggression from the most powerful global empire to ever exist. It’s not like these countries are allowed to develop peacefully. Soviet Union provided a counterbalance and protected these countries from aggression by the US. Once it dissolved US redoubled its efforts to destroy these countries. If anything, the very fact that they are still around and thriving shows how resilient communism.

Meanwhile, adopting capitalist policies doesn’t make a country capitalist any more than adopting some social services makes a country communist. What makes a country communist or capitalist is determined by which class holds power.

You’ve got this completely backwards I’m afraid. If humans are indeed selfish, narcissistic, and greedy by nature then it’s capitalism and not socialism that’s incompatible with humans. We need systems that inhibit negative tendencies and encourage positive ones instead of the opposite. Capitalism is like inviting an alcoholic to a happy hour. We also have plenty of evidence that communism does in fact work, and consistently produces superior results to capitalism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM

LOL

He’s been consistently excellent I find.

This is not entirely true, practical knowledge could be just shown, for example tool making etc. Also earliest known burials might predate the language, which shows some basic ideas can be maintained without language.

That’s true, but the set of behaviors that can be passed from one generation to another through imitation is inherently limited. The key thing that language allows is rapid accumulation of knowledge. That said, imitation of behavior is likely a precursor to language, so an important link in the chain. :)

And I really think that sort of singularity scenario might be the most plausible explanation. Maybe all the dark matter we observe is just civilizations that use their energy really efficiently across the spectrum and all they leak is their gravitational footprint. :P

Now they get to experience what living under an actual oppressive regime is like.

You do realize that capitalism has only existed for a tiny fraction of human existence. The utter lack of critical thinking required to believe that it’s human nature is simply astonishing.

fair :)

Apparently Bolsonaro made a deal with the US to make the process of expelling brazilians with expired visas - like himself right now - a very fast and non-chalant ordeal. It would be poetic justice if he gets extradited under this law.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-brazil-exclusive-idUSKCN1VG1PL

I didn’t say they wouldn’t be able to understand our society, but rather that lifestyle today would be unrecognizable. Modern lifestyle bears little resemblance to that of a 100 years ago.

Computing and networking in particular completely changed many aspects of our lives. This technology, that we take for granted today, simply didn’t exist a century ago. Many older people who grew up before computers became ubiquitous struggle with this technology today, and somebody from a century ago would have hard time understanding these things as well.

And of course, if we go a few centuries back then our technology might as well be magic to those people. They simply wouldn’t have the foundations to understand the principles behind it.

The overall point I’m making is that these advancements are happening at an incredible pace in cosmic terms. And the pace of change is constantly accelerating because technology is a self reinforcing phenomenon.

I think a lot of the discussions around aliens fail to take into account the sheer vastness of the Universe.

• Universe has been around for close to 14 billion years
• Milky Way in its current form has been around for about 8~9 billion years
• Life on Earth appears around 4280 million years ago
• Humans start evolving around 2.8 million years ago.
• Use of language appears around 100,000 years ago
• Writing is invented around 5500 years ago

Inventions of language and writing are the landmark moment here. Before language was invented the only way information could be passed down from ancestors to offspring was via mutations in our DNA. If an individual learned some new idea it would be lost with them when they died. Language allowed humans to communicate ideas to future generations and start accumulating knowledge beyond what a single individual could hold in their head. Writing made this process even more efficient.

So, after millions of years of life on Earth nothing interesting happened. Then when language was invented humans started creating technology, and in a blink of an eye on cosmological scale we went from living in caves to visiting space in our rocket ships. It’s worth taking a moment to really appreciate just how fast our technology evolved once we were able to start accumulating knowledge using language and writing.

Now let’s take a look at how technology itself has been evolving. Once we discovered radio communication we went through a noisy period where we were leaking a lot of our broadcasts into space, and within a span of a 100 years we started using more efficient communication, and encryption. If somebody intercepted our broadcasts today they would look like noise because they’re designed to look like noise.

Our society today is utterly and completely unrecognizable to somebody from even a 100 years ago. If we don’t go extinct, I imagine that in another thousand years future humans will be completely alien to us as well.

So the period during which intelligent life would be recognizable to us during its course of evolution is infinitesimally small! The time between creating language and becoming an advanced technological society is measured in thousands of years, while evolution of life is measured in millions of years. The chance of two different intelligences finding each other at exact same stage of development where they might be able to communicate is incredibly unlikely.

I would also imagine that the biological phase for intelligent life is rather short. We’re likely to develop human style AIs within a century, and they will be the ones to go out and explore the universe. Meat did not evolve to live in space because we’re adapted to gravity wells. An artificial life form could be engineered to thrive in space without ever needing to visit planets. This is the kind of life that’s most likely to be prolific in space.

Furthermore, post biological intelligences would likely be running at much faster speeds than our mental processes operate on. What we consider real-time would be what we consider to be geological scales.

For all we know the Universe may be teeming with intelligent life and we just don’t recognize it as such. We might be like an ant hill next to a highway looking to see if there are other ant hills around.

I really can’t imagine that advanced civilizations would have much they could learn from us. We might be a curiosity at best to them, but it’s more likely that they would give as much consideration to us as we do to an ant when we pass it by.

aliens are too advanced