StrypeySep 18, 2018

#DymitriKleiner pitching his #VentureCommunism concept at #SigInt 2010:
https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=L01iiJz8Thc

This is worth a watch even if you consider yourself pro-capitalist and anti-communist, because as he explains at the start, the way he uses these terms is *totally* different from the way you do. #DougRushkoff presents pretty much the same criticisms of the effects of #VentureCapitalism on digital tech in his 'Throwing Rocks ...' book, but with a pro-business, anti-corporate framing.

peer to peer communism vs the client-server state [SIGINT10]

Show threada very weeny construct đź’€Sep 20, 2018

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

peer to peer communism vs the client-server state [SIGINT10]

Show threadJC BrandSep 20, 2018

@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.

Show threadJC BrandSep 20, 2018

@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.

Show threadStrypeySep 21, 2018

@jcbrand @pho4cexa
> Those deaths were avoidable, were all in the name of Communism and he doesn't address them at all.

Because they're irrelevant to the way he uses the term, as he explains when he gives his definitions. As #DavidGraeber shows in his book 'The Democracy Project', political terms can have (at least) two totally different meanings, one based on a founding ideal, one based on notable historical failures to fulfill that ideal. So it is with the term "communism".

Show threadStrypeySep 21, 2018

@jcbrand @pho4cexa Many equally terrible things have been done in the name of building and defending capitalism from communism (eg the Vietnam War):
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/26/communists-capitalism-stalinism-economic-model

Does that mean anyone who makes a pro-capitalist argument has to share responsibility for all that? I would say no, because like Dymitri, those people are using the term in a totally different way from its critics.

Condemn communists’ cruelties, but capitalism has its own terrible record | Owen Jones

Rightwingers point out the horrors of Stalinism, yet forget the human misery their favoured economic model was built on, says Guardian columnist Owen Jones

Show threadStrypeySep 21, 2018
@jcbrand @pho4cexa . As Graeber also points out, if you actually read Adam Smith, the system of free enterprise he proposes in 'The Wealth of Nations' is more like a kind of minarchist communism than most things called "capitalism" today. He would be turning in his grave at the way his ideas are abused by many today to defend corporate feudalism as "capitalism".
Show threadJC BrandSep 21, 2018

@strypey @pho4cexa

I'm definitely not for crony-capitalism or corporate feudalism and am actively looking for alternatives and better solutions.

However, just as Soviet Communism isn't "real" communism, crony-capitalism isn't a real free-market economy.

(Appropriately regulated) free markets (with a solvent welfare state or perhaps UBI) is still the best way I can see to allow people to have free association, free speech and free enterprise and to avoid tyranny.

Show threadStrypey

@jcbrand @pho4cexa
> However, just as Soviet Communism isn't "real" communism, crony-capitalism isn't a real free-market economy.

We are totally in agreement. Dymitri just uses "capitalism" to mean exactly the same thing you mean by "crony-capitalism". To be fair, that is it's original definition, as it was used by the people who coined the term.
1/2

Sep 21, 2018 at 2:24pmWeb
Show threadStrypeySep 21, 2018

@jcbrand @pho4cexa
That said, I have no interest in getting snotty at people who use it to mean

> (Appropriately regulated) free markets

As long as we're clear on which definition of "capitalism" we're using in any given discussion, there's no problem (unless people insist on being language police ...)