★ Amy Star ★capitalists: "without a profit motive, nobody would do anything. society would collapse."
my friends & acquaintances: "I implemented a SPARC emulator in pure CSS"
BeldarakIt's really crazy (and infuriating) when they say this.
Capitalism is not that old. How do they think villages and communities were built and managed before capitalism?
Also, they will often default to the "who will clean the sewers in a socialist world?".
Man, I'd be happy to clean the sewers, on my own terms and schedule if it could prevent me from waking up every single day at dawn to do fuck all in front of a computer for 8 hours :|
Also, huh... Who's deciding that cleaning sewers or healing people should be such low pay jobs? Oh right, it's capitalists.
yunchtimewhile inventing hedge fund derivative calculations must obviously pay the most! they are parasites.
K~@Beldarak @AmyZenunim Yeah. It's pretty messed up that in a capitalist system, the people who physically do the work tend to get the lowest pay while the people who own stuff (i.e. have 'capital') get the highest pay - often without actually doing anything at all.
Bob Thomson@Beldarak @AmyZenunim I often think this too, capitalism in the current form is only 2-3 generations old, yet collectively we act as if it's this built-in thing that we can never replace with any other way. It's gas lighting on a grand scale from those doing just fine on the status quo.
@bobthomson70 @Beldarak i've read their theories and it basically boils down to "capitalism is a primordial truth of biology, even lobsters in the permian era practiced their own forms of capitalism". completely unhinged revisionism that flies in the face of how we know preindustrial societies functioned based on pure historical accounts.
potentially hazardous object@AmyZenunim @bobthomson70 @Beldarak wasn't the lobsters thing from, like, them putting a bunch of lobters in a tank that's more crowded than their natural habitat and letting them sort themselves out?
Carson Hill@AmyZenunim @bobthomson70 @Beldarak
Another Crabs Treasure comes to mind... 🦀
ratfactorTotally. If you put somebody like me in charge of cleaning a sewer and gave me free reign and autonomy, I'm pretty sure I'd be reading books about sewers and the history of sewers and would make changes until it did NOT suck to clean anymore...for myself and whoever came after. Anything can be an interesting problem if you're enabled to solve it.
Yeah, it's easier to improve society when you don't have someone at the top syphoning all ressources
Octorine@Beldarak @AmyZenunim Before capitalism, we had serfs. Are you actually saying everyone should just go back to being serfs?
Ofc not, I clearly stated I was in favour of socialism.
Feodalism wasn't the only system before capitalism. You took the worst exemple, why?
But anyway, I'm not saying we should go BACK, just that other systems are possible and that we should move FORWARD, away from capitalism.
To be fair, I also read about better capitalist systems, so those are options too, but capitalists will just close their ears any time someone says we should improve society somehow.
@Beldarak @AmyZenunim I picked feudalism because that's where capitalism came from, so if you want to talk about life before capitalism, it seems like the natural place to start.
That's one of the issue capitalism has I think. It comes from an exploitative system and evolved through crisisn revolutions and industrial changes to become another exploitative system.
But like I said, my point was just to say capitalism wasn't always there and can be replaced. I don't think it should be replaced with older systems though but rather a new one.
That new system would put the people and the planet at the center.
Using the technological progress we made and put it at work towards those goals.
But for that we need to get rid of the sociapathic oligarchs that are currently running the show.
Progress and production should serve humanity, not a few child rapists at the top.
Lea@Beldarak @octorine @AmyZenunim
>"We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable - but then, so did the divine right of kings." ~ Ursula K. Le Guin in “Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books"
>"A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skilful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, - this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole." ~ Ursula K. Le Guin in "The Dispossessed"
Woozle Hypertwin@octorine @Beldarak @AmyZenunim
Feudalsm was a system that existed before capitalism; it was hardly the only one.
I think your observation of the connection kinda underscores the OP's point: capitalism was invented as a way of doing feudalism while making it seem more palatable.
Maybe we should try adopting a system that emerged from something better than that, hey.
knowuhCapitalism is just the latest form of feudalism, something with a long European history.
Danielle@AmyZenunim the sheer amount of various things people did and created and shared with other people at the beginning of the covid lockdowns blew that notion out of the water forever
GhostOnTheHalfShellFunny, they never think of all the people that come out to protest their totalitarian rule.
Oh right, Mr. Soros is paying all of us
Soozcat@GhostOnTheHalfShell @exelia_antonov @AmyZenunim Still looking for that sweet, sweet agitator check from Mr Soros... Maybe I'll just send him my Venmo account info, I'm sure that'll do it.
It is yet another example of the idea "we don't do anything without getting paid, so clearly nobody else operates without pure profit motive." You're telling on yourself, guys.
luna 🖤💛@AmyZenunim literally any ngo (non-profit):
Angela Miller@AmyZenunim
Capitalists:
What they don't even realise that they are actually saying:
Without a profit motive *we* would do nothing.
Capitalists:
What they don't even realise that they are actually saying:
Without a profit motive *we* would do nothing.
DarkDust@AmyZenunim @Migueldeicaza There is a profit motive here: the joy and satisfaction of achieving this goal and the things you learn along the way. Capitalist don’t understand that profit isn‘t always money.
Very Human Robot@AmyZenunim
It's not that "nobody would do anything," it's that a bunch of hard, uninspiring, but necessary work needs to be done.
Not all work is intrinsically rewarding.
It's not that "nobody would do anything," it's that a bunch of hard, uninspiring, but necessary work needs to be done.
Not all work is intrinsically rewarding.
@StompyRobot going to be honest, I know people whose special interest is sanitation and recycling systems, but they're not allowed to work in those fields because they're too poor to afford the credentials
our society does not reward interest or excellence, it rewards power and authority
@AmyZenunim
If necessary credentials are captured by rent seeking monopolists rather than being in public schooling, that's bad for the economy, no argument there!
If necessary credentials are captured by rent seeking monopolists rather than being in public schooling, that's bad for the economy, no argument there!
Chuck@AmyZenunim Yeah, but it isn't "capitalists" per se, it is anyone who has been cultured that their 'worth' or their 'score' is how much money they have. Parents do that to their kids, and people do that to their peers, they judge based on 'worth' not 'effort.' It is sad and it is destructive.
🇺🇦 haxadecimal 🚫👑@ChuckMcManis @AmyZenunim
🎶 Money, get back
I'm alright, Jack, keep your hands off of my stack
Money, it's a hit
Ah, don't give me that do-goody-good bullshit
🎶 Money, get back
I'm alright, Jack, keep your hands off of my stack
Money, it's a hit
Ah, don't give me that do-goody-good bullshit
leastaction@AmyZenunim But that would hardly be a contribution to society. That's like saying I can play all of Chopin's works on the ukelele.
@treyboudreau I love those guys, but we do need to build serious alternatives to capitalism.
@leastaction so far as I know, we don’t have a practical mathematical framework for planned economies. Capitalism does a better job at resource allocation than anything else we know, but unrestrained it becomes a “paper clip maximizer”. We need guardrails, but we clearly don’t know how to implement them effectively for economics, democracies , or machine learning.
@treyboudreau There isn't just a binary choice between laissez faire capitalism, which is what we have now, and a planned economy. "Capitalism does a better job at resource allocation than anything else" is, respectfully, rubbish. Capitalism maximizes returns to shareholders. Full stop. Ask Milton Friedman.
diana 🏳️⚧️🦋🌱Finally, a good use for CSS
John-Mark Gurney@brouhaha
What, we have both an x86 AND a sparc emulator in css? Or is someone just getting my hopes up.
@dianea @AmyZenunim
What, we have both an x86 AND a sparc emulator in css? Or is someone just getting my hopes up.
@dianea @AmyZenunim
Steve Foerster 🌐@AmyZenunim I don't think I've ever run into anyone who believed the profit motive was the only motive, and I've traveled in some awfully market-oriented circles.
🌸 Vårgubben”””
I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things).
”””
— Some random dude on the Minix Newsgroup, August 1991
Bitslingers-R-Us@AmyZenunim This is what I’ve been trying to explain to the frogs in the pot on the stove when they believe Debian developers who claim that writing portable code that doesn’t break on 32 bit processors or on big endian systems causes them extra work and extra time, and that they really, really need that extra time for More Important Things™.
You’re telling on yourself, Debian developers who claim such things, that you’re only concerned with businesses’ motivations (that is, profit).
Elosha@AmyZenunim But why does no-one fix SPARC emulation in Qemu then 😭
Ludovic :Firefox: :FreeBSD:@AmyZenunim where is the sparc emulateur ?
U.Lancier@AmyZenunim … nobody would do anything that capitalists could exploit. Everybody would solve problems just for themselves or fellow people.
Where's the profit in that ?!?
Capitalism would starve!
Every day: “I wish I didn’t have to go to work today, I need more time in the studio to finish the awesome thing I work on instead of sleeping”
a0405uYes but will your friend do the real work? We have fun doing these things, but when it comes to necessary things, we have to make an effort, we have to suffer. It would be possible to hope that society would not collapse if it consisted of people of good and strong will, which is not the case, because man is weak by its nature. The only hope is in Christ that could give the people such power, but for that we should love Him, which is not the case also. The perfect society exists only in God's kingdom, and God's kingdom is within you.
jan Ki | 奇 
@AmyZenunim
Capitalists also say "price = demand/availability" and then they limit access to essential goods. Their religion is one of
strife and hatred.
Capitalists also say "price = demand/availability" and then they limit access to essential goods. Their religion is one of
strife and hatred.
Oliver Schönrock@AmyZenunim TBF
A SPARC emu in CSS probably will make the world collapse
Tanguy ⧓ Herrmann@AmyZenunim meanwhile, @ Anthropic 🤣
Jari Komppa 🇫🇮@AmyZenunim I'm pretty sure I've generated over a million dollars of shareholder value to multiple companies that have used my open source uncredited.
Josh "cortex" Millard@AmyZenunim @pronoiac without a profit motive, the shittiest dudes you ever met wouldn’t do anything. Shitty dude culture would collapse.