DreamlandLividity
@DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
- Comment on 👴☝️I did that 18 hours ago:
Both are true. Manufacturing costs went down significantly, but non-smart TVs are bow more expensive than smart TVs bu over $100.
- Comment on Gold 1 week ago:
Imagine how much more productive we’d be if everyone actually had any reason to give a shit about their company.
First of all, this is very questionable, since data from companies that overpaid/indulged their employees like Google and other tech companies in the past did not really see much increase in productivity as far as I can tell.
Second of all, pressure on wages is different. Hence my referral to minimal wages etc. In a sense, a boss is indeed not incentivised to increase productivity if all the gains go to employees anyway, but this is one special edge case. As you say, a majority of productivity gains come from automation improvements and other kinds of innovation, where the incentives do apply.
- Comment on Gold 1 week ago:
You are mixing cause and effect. Productivity is rarely affected by bottom level employees to a significant extent these days. That is why there is no pressure for wages to keep up.
- Comment on Gold 1 week ago:
Depends of your definition of solve. There is no mechanism directly within capitalism to solve negative externalities that appear in capitalism once they appear. You need government regulations via democracy to step in and resolve them. That is why the increasing influence of corporations on politics is so harmful.
But capitalism allows fewer negative externalities to appear. Let me give you an example for the worker owned factory. The elected leaders incentive is not to lead a productive factory. It is to be popular and win elections. So what happens when a role becomes obsolete. Perhaps you no longer need a person to stand in an elevator and operate it for people, since it can be automated. But firing people is unpopular, so the boss is incentivised to keep the person. This means these people are not allowed to find jobs that are actually productive in improving the standards of living for everyone. People don’t like being fired when their position obsolete but it is necessary to advance civilization.
Another example is investment. When the factory has surplus profit, should he increase the wages of the employees immediately or invest the money into improving the productivity by buying better equipment or building another factory site. What about maintenance? Should he increase wages and delay the maintenance until it is someone else’s problem? By the way, this delayed maintenance issue is why public infrastructure is crumbling everywhere, since that is overseen by democratically elected leaders.
- Comment on Gold 1 week ago:
How do externalities turn communist revolutions into authoritarian regimes?
This is an incredibly complex topic and depends somewhat on your exact setup of revolution and regime.
Let me give another example of negative externalities: corruption. It’s the exact same mechanism. The person receiving a bribe benefits from the bribe, but the cost (harm) is usually paid by their employer or society.
For a news agency, a negative externality may be to intentionally spread incorrect information and propaganda. So as an exercise, try to think of the incentives of a news organization in capitalism when it is privately owned and anyone with money can start a competing news agency and in communism, where some kind of political organ (elected or named by elected officials) decides the news agencies funding and if resources are allocated to create a competitor.
Economic and political systems are about incentives. The more the incentives of individual people are aligned with the incentives of society as a whole, the better the system.
- Comment on Gold 1 week ago:
You are talking mostly nonsense. I am pretty sure what you are trying to talk about is called negative externalities. A negative externality is simply put harm that a company does to others and does not have to “pay for” itself. E.g. destroying the environment. The issue is that negative externalities don’t just apply to companies and capitalism. They are also what turns communist revolutions into authoritarian regimes. Dealing with them (or realistically minimizing their impact) is an incredibly complex subject. Trying to say we should solve it by getting rid of billionaires is like saying we should solve global worming by dropping ice cubes into the ocean.
- Comment on Gold 1 week ago:
You know, there is nothing wrong with not knowing how investments and markets (stock, commodity, …) help direct the economy. It’s a complex topic that most people really don’t need to understand for their lives. But confidently claiming they do nothing just because you don’t know is ridiculous…
- Comment on Gold 2 weeks ago:
We need solutions to issues like capital allocation, keeping money circulation speed relatively constant and many many more. Capitalism is one solution to these problems. Perhaps not the best one, but the only one we know can work.
- Comment on Gold 2 weeks ago:
It would. Eliminating the HR would reduce the overhead from HR to zero. Eliminating the tax office would reduce money spent on that to zero. But these things fulfill a function. Could it be done better? Maybe, but why risk on maybes when that’s not the biggest problem we have with society at all. Probably not even be top 10.
- Comment on Gold 2 weeks ago:
It’s funny that people can understand every person having a lump of gold won’t improve their standard of living, but at the same time refuse to understand that owning a piece of a factory or a company they work at also does not change the standard of living. Reducing the fraction of the factory output that goes to the owners instead of the workers could. This can be done directly with raising the minimum wage or indirectly via taxes. But in the end, even the most pessimistic calculation I was able to make on how much the owners take was only about 50% of the output. Probably more like 30%.
So the billionaires owning too much is IMO a distraction. Pushing politicians to implement policies that would improve quality of life would have much bigger impact. Consumer protections, walkable cities, good public healthcare, … And it does not involve the massive risks of trying to switch to a differwnt economic model that always collapsed before.
- Comment on YouTube now 2 weeks ago:
Well, I wouldn’t say unreliable. It does not match the real dislike count, because it only knows about the people using the extension. It’s like the difference between the official rating of an app on the google play store and some third party user review site. It’s not that one is more reliable than other, just different people contribute.
- Comment on Test ride 5 weeks ago:
Taking your own stuff back without giving the bloodsuckers (lawyers) their tribute.
It definitely happens all the time with houses and apartments (kicking out squatters/trespassers), but I think I also read it in regards to taking back your own car or something like that. It was a long time ago so I don’t remember the details.
- Comment on Test ride 5 weeks ago:
You say /s but I vaguely remember someone being arrested for something similar in the US. Because I guess justice without the approval of a judge is illegal over there.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
It does not change anything about the fact your definition is so broad it can fit almost anything. So yes, it is nitpicking.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
Yes, nitpick on the exaggeration of all things. Extremely good faith argumentation.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
What do you mean you defined it?! Stateless? What does that mean? How is anything decided? How are people motivated to do shit without money?
- Comment on 1 month ago:
What is? The fact that not one person advocating communism actually dares define what they mean by communism? So they just jump from definition to definition to salvage losing arguments? Sure, extremely bad faith but what you gonna do?
- Comment on 1 month ago:
If you consider firefighters communist, you have extremely weird definution of communism.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
communism is a stateless classless moneyless society
So it’s a fantasy where everyone magically knows what to do, how and when. Then does it with no incentive or punishment. No coordinators, police, or anything else required. Ok, clear.
Because if there is anyone who has the ability to order people to do something, either via punishments, that is called a government.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
human nature is not an explanation
Yes, it is handwaving, because I ain’t spending time writing paragraphs of shit anyone with two brain cells to rub together can easily figure out on their own.
communism is a stateless society
Just because you string words together does not mean they mean something. If people don’t own/control the means of production, someone else does. Either you have private capital or a governing body. Calling it “stateless society” means nothing.
- Comment on 1 month ago:
We never had communism in the same way we never had a person fly by flapping their arms after jumping of a roof. It’s not that we did not try, it just does not end with a flying person.
To have communism, you have to concentrate all the wealth and power in some sort of government so that people don’t own anything. And when you concentrate all power in the government, human nature produces a dictatorship.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
Honestly, I don’t think the vetoes are the main issue. In international diplomacy/law, enforceability rules discussions. If all the small countries vote to prevent the US-Iran war and intervene against the US, good luck enforcing it. The vetoes just reflect this reality.
The UN helps coordinate where there is a will to cooperate, but it can’t govern the world, whether veto power exists or not. What could be done to improve this I am not sure, but it is not as simple as removing the veto.
- Comment on A modest proposal 2 months ago:
The Old Bastard have proven the “need” did not exist during World War II. Doubt it existed at any point after that.
- Comment on Apparently, all YouTube Rewinds have been unlisted as of today. 5 months ago:
They are just unlisted. They are preserved.
- Comment on Capitalism isn't the problem, THIS is the problem, and I've watched it roll over us for 40 years. [3 min. video] 5 months ago:
As a friend often says, “democracy isn’t perfect, but it’s the best thing we’ve got so far”, and I think the same goes for regulated capitalism, with working anti-trust and taxation.
Exactly. I agree. The most important thing is public participation, putting pressure on their leaders to keep the corruption low and well hidden. There are ways for people to hold their leaders accountable. The tragedy is when people are apathetic and don’t do so. When bribes can be received in the open and people just tolerate them calling them lobbying, then there is no hope keeping the system working for the people. The leaders will not stop from the goodness of their hearts.
- Comment on Capitalism isn't the problem, THIS is the problem, and I've watched it roll over us for 40 years. [3 min. video] 5 months ago:
Except that is true with any social or economic system. You unregulate your president, good luck getting that back under control. You unregulate your communist party/planning committee, hello Stallin my old friend.
Humans who accumulate power in any system can corrupt said system. And every system has opportunities to accumulate power.
At least in capitalism it’s slower, giving people more time to react. Even now, the state of US capitalism seems easier to reverse than e.g. the dictatorship of Chinese communist party.
- Comment on Hrmmmmm 6 months ago:
What coup attempts are you talking about? Let’s try to focus on coups that were at least attempted or has any substantial evidence of being in the works.
I am not talking about coup attempts. I am exactly talking about lack of coup attempts in countries, where you would expect superpowers to start one if they could. But they can’t.
- Comment on Hrmmmmm 6 months ago:
There is no logic in their claim. It’s an absurd what if. Monarchies were unable to suppress democracies. It’s like saying “what if communism causes the sun to exploded”. That would be bad, but it’s not reality.
- Comment on Hrmmmmm 6 months ago:
Maybe you should work on your reading comprehension skills. I never wrote anything like that.
- Comment on Hrmmmmm 6 months ago:
The problem isn’t political systems, it’s superpowers intervening
There can be more than one problem.
Please prove me wrong and tell me how e.g. the coup in Chile 1973 could have been prevented by decentralizing power.
A coup still inherently relies on there being internal forces willing to execute said coup. I don’t dare say being capitalist could have stopped this particular one, perhaps it couldn’t. It it is at least more resilient in general.