i boosted this video a couple times already but want to stress that it's great! in a mere 20 minutes it:

- ELI5's the historical meaning and origins of capitalism, communism, and other jargon

- addresses the "but communist countries killed millions" argument

- uses this language to crystallize an argument about how the internet came about, turned shitty, and how to fix it

https://invidio.us/watch?v=L01iiJz8Thc

tyvm @strypey

@pho4cexa @strypey Interesting talk and worth watching. I'm sympathetic to many of his criticisms, but also critical of his framing.

He frames capitalism in the worst possible way, even though it's often used to refer to a market economy with private property and he frames communism in the most favorable way.

A free market economy does not require a star topology and the price mechanism doesn't require it either.

@pho4cexa @strypey

Also, ~40 million died in China, ~7 million in Ukrane and ~2 million (25%) in Cambodia. All states that had Communism as their stated end-goal.

Those deaths were avoidable, were all in the name of Communism and he doesn't address them at all.

@pho4cexa @strypey In those countries, because they were against "free enterprise", and for collectivization, you weren't allowed as farmer to harvest any of your crops to feed your family. The state had to confiscate ALL of your produce and redistribute it (often selling it to capitalist countries to generate foreign currency) thereby causing famine.

Podcast on Mao's great famine: http://www.econtalk.org/frank-dikotter-on-maos-great-famine/

Again, all in the name of a classless communist anti-imperialist society.