Submitted 2 weeks ago by Luisp@lemmy.dbzer0.com to videos@lemmy.world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8Z3MfNpJpE
No, capitalism is destroying the world. Capitalism promotes greed, but the base issue is the system that favors and rewards these behaviors.
Look at it this way- you may be the most equitable and charitable motherfucker in the real world, but if you sit down to play Monopoly with your family, you will become a vile corporate money hoarder and at some point someone will get so furious you’ll be finding those little red house pieces in odd corners of your home for years.
Eh, remember humans invented capitalism.
The problem is that our brains were designed for eating berries in a cave, not driving industrialized processes at global scale.
Our range of empathy extends roughly to our line of sight. When people in our social circle are suffering in front of us, most of us will try to do something for them. But people that are far away that get affected by our actions exist only in the logical part of our brains and don’t evoke an emotional response.
Living under capitalism forces you to adapt or perish. I hate money. I hate having to spend time thinking about investments and retirement and savings and down payments and credit scores. Cost of living in my city is insane and I’m terrified that if my income doesn’t increase every year, I won’t be able to keep up with escalating rent and bills. In order to keep my life as it is, I am forced to think like a capitalist.
When everything around me is becoming more expensive, I must also increase my personal profits.
Bingo.
This is what ideologues get wrong. Greed is rooted in our biology.
Idk traveling around the world made me more empathetic and understanding of people. Some people travel the world and decide to conquer it… ya know? It’s just people.
I think I understand this position, such that you don’t want people focusing on removing the oligarchs without also dismantling the machine that makes them.
But the machine doesn’t have to crush orphans. It gives you a pat on the head and hands you a cookie each time you do crush an orphan but it has other settings. They aren’t getting punished for not exploiting the system, they just don’t get as much of a reward as they could. No one gets to say “I had no choice but to crush that 99th orphan, so I could get that 99th cookie.” You could’ve stopped at 90, or 50, or 1.
They are exploiting a broken machine for their own benefit, which is nothing but greed.
As a planet, we have to address this issue of Sociopathic Oligarchs. It used to be that people would get rich enough to affect their own nation, but now we have people like Elon Musk, who are acting like their own personal country, and cutting personal deals with other nations, for his own benefit, with no regard for the nations themselves.
Now the billionaires all have a new objective - to become trillionaires. That will allow them to literally enslave entire nations.
After that, it is only a matter of time before multiple trillionaires form an alliance, and literally take over the world, with a world “government” that will simply be their own personal demands. We will ALL be slaves.
We can’t just do it in our country, or they will set up shop somewhere else, and abuse us from a distance. This will take the entire planet agreeing that we have to reign in the power of trillionaires, and I don’t see how that happens, when nearly anyone can be turned by a billion dollar bribe.
As a planet, we have to address this issue of Sociopathic Oligarchs.
Address the corrosive effects of concentrated wealth by organizing labor into an equitable society ready to defend itself against imperial aggression
Don’t get called a Tankie on the internet
You gotta pick one.
Valid
“It used to be that people would get rich enough to affect their own nation… .” When? Where? There has never been a world where borders are a real thing that insulates one state from another (I assume you mean state, “nation” as the imaginary common identity makes even less sense). This is not a matter of a few individuals making this system function poorly, the purpose of this system is to generate wealth for a privileged few.
European imperialism/settler-colonialism and the capitalism that emerged through it has always functioned this way. It was funded by individuals with systemic privilege that afforded exceptional wealth and was realized through the exploitation of poor Europeans disadvantaged in those societies and the genocide of indigenous peoples all over the world.Thousands and thousands of nations were targeted for genocide by people who would never even step foot on the same continent as them. Wealth concentration may have improved the conditions for settlers in some places, but that wasn’t for the betterment of the state or nation or whatever you have imagined here. Workers and farmers with relatively high material security and wealth were allowed that level of power because it maintained a racialized and gendered hierarchy that was necessary to effectively carry out the violent extraction of wealth for the most privileged in society. That was in no way universal; there hasn’t been centuries of civil recognition and labour rights movements because most people flourished under this system.
There was no break in how this society was organised that allowed these exceptionally naughty billionaires to exist, that amount of wealth concentration is not new and is only possible through a system that devalues life.
I wonder if anyone else has made the observation that a global revolution is necessary to prevent capitalism from killing as much as it desires… 🤔
Such a good video. You can and should share it with your family. This is easily the most digestible video for anyone who’s not educated on the workings of late stage capitalism.
I’m always on the fenc with Drew Gooden, but this is a good one
I’m curious which of their stuff you don’t like; Drew is one of the few people I subscribe to on youtube. They’re fairly funny, they don’t upload that often, and they seem to be genuine in terms of only making content when they think they’ve got something entertaining, interesting, or important. Even in the sillier videos, the deeper messaging is usually something related to exposing dark patterns.
I think it’s more just how I discovered him, the YT algo pushed him to me for quite a while which made me really skeptical of him. His content is decent like you said, but I’m always wary of people the algo pushes.
TIL coyotes are monogamous. Also, I agree with you about Drew Gooden, though I’m curious about your choice of pronouns.
I very much enjoyed this video, but I wish it was 15 minutes shorter. He spends too time giving an emotional argument and by the time he starts giving facts and statistics, most people that need to hear this have probably left.
With that said, he summarizes my feelings on the topic perfectly, but with some added historical context.
Emotionally is the only way some people will respond. If they relied on rational they would need convincing as much.
I cannot upvote, like, and share this hard enough. This one video sums up all the frustrations I’ve had for the last two decades!
All these so called conservatives want to go back to the fifties socially but none of them want it financially.
Great review with a good basis in history, logic, and facts.
iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Same as it ever was.
Ch3rry314@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Except now the level of wealth, influence, and power of a few has reached new levels accelerating the erosion of our planet in a fraction of the time.
deranger@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Same as it ever was. Today’s incomprehensible horrors will seem quaint and simple 100 years in the future.
tomiant@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
Not the same as it ever was by a longshot. It is very much worse than it ever was, because the engagement to profit has been weaponized and dictates how the entirety of our global civilization fundamentally works.
It is most certainly not the same as it has historically been.
jimmy90@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
the world will be fine but we may not
live and let live
if we play our cards right we’ll be fine