You think when these journalists keep expressing “confusion” about why the public loves Luigi, are they just pretending to not understand? Or perhaps they’re so fucking cooked that they can’t see things from the perspective of the class that they’re in?
They also have to keep their editors happy. One of an editor’s jobs is to push back on the folks who write articles, and occasionally rewrite parts of them. And the editors have folks above them in the food chain pulling the strings.
News companies aren’t monoliths, they’re spiderwebs of people pushing and pulling on other people because there are obligations all over the place.
To put it another way, “You can’t say that or you’re fired. You’ll never work in this city again.” And, because there aren’t many celebrity journalists, it’s a very real risk.
Sadly, “you’ll never work in this city again” has been true for my entire career. What are you going to do? Walk across Main Street to the other paper?
But it has never been an editor’s job to “push back on the folks who write articles,” which I thought would be the worst part of that sentence; literally, rewriting is what editors do. We don’t push back on staff, we push back on copy. A minor omission here, a glaring hole there, and – as a last resort – spiking a story until questions are answered.
No one has felt any job security in this industry for at least 15 years. “You can’t say that” probably cuts both ways at this point.
Thats something i wonder too.
My answer is that many of the unwilling participants within capitalism are delusional and believe that they are capitalists when being a capitalist means you would have capital so that means these people are nothing more than exploited workers with severe Stockholm syndrome. People like this writer believe they are just temporarily embarrassed billionaires
Hardly unique to people living under capitalism though. Most people tend to identify with the system they are living under, including systems that are much worse than ours.
Capitalism is the only system that promises people the ultra slim a d unlikely chance to become as wealthy as those who exploit the poor. what systems, besides capitalism in third world countries are worse than capitalism at its core? Where greed and ruthlessness are praised above virtuous ethical pursuits
The obvious answer is that every single attempt at communism has produced far worse economic, environmental, developmental and ethical results than capitalism - while at the same time loudly promising to make everyone equal and happy. Isn’t it worse to promise freedom and decent life to everyone - instead of just the chance of “making it big” - and then completely failing at everything while limiting every kind of personal freedom and right, including the one of being the architect of your own happiness? It’s not even a competition.
I also highly doubt you would argue that the other side of the autocratic coin - Fascist systems with human rights abuses and poor ethics that are comparable to the worst communist systems on one hand, with usually completely incoherent economic policies on the other hand - are any better. Neither are absolutist monarchies.
Capitalism is highly flawed, no doubt, but if we look at the countries on this planet that are the most successful in terms of economics, equality, personal freedom, human rights, etc. then we find countries that made it work through regulation and strong government institutions. We should try and learn from those and use the slow nature of democratic change to tweak and improve our societies and economics based on what they have shown to work in the real world.
but if we look at the countries on this planet that are the most successful in terms of economics, equality, personal freedom, human rights, etc. then we find countries that made it work through regulation and strong government institutions
Yeah that’s socialism. The best societies were all degrees of socialist, this includes western Europe and the USA at its mid-century peak. These societies all had aggressive, borderline confiscatory progressive taxation, large scale government intervention in the economy (in the US especially aggressive anti-trust), a generous social welfare state, and a large and professionalized civil service.
They also had large and well-organized labor unions capable of wielding power on behalf of their members and disrupting plans of the elites.
Remove those things and you quickly slide into a dystopian fascist nightmare state as the US and parts of Europe like the UK are discovering.
You’re forgetting that these countries also have among the highest economic freedom in the world, protect personal property and investments, provide a stable and reliable environment to conduct very capitalist business. The economic system is capitalist, not socialist. There is no planned economy, most industries are in private hands. Strong regulation keeps capitalist excesses in check as you’ve correctly identified, while the high taxation levels the playing field by financing a robust safety net and other government services everyone benefits from.
In Germany, the term for this kind of system is social market economy, with social being a qualifier and market economy the system.
And the massive amounts of resources expended bu capitalist super powers to ensure those awful economic conditions isn’t the reason for them? 🤡
What about lybia, burkina faso and cuba before the ussr fell?
Youre seriously just parroting anti socialist propaganda. Capitalism came to be the domination economic model in the 1600’s took control of half the world and immediately began searching for new markets to exploit while perpetuating warfare for profit, slavery to maximize profits and genocides to stifle any resistance or perpetuate the values of eugenics and racism but yeah communism is bad because of famine and people aren’t allowed work really hard to become wealth hoarding billionaires while a large subset of the population live in squalor to support such opulent lifestyles of luxury
Break down the word capitalism and it tells you all you need to know. The intransitive verb at the root, to capitalize, is synonymous with “to exploit” and “to take advantage” the only time American capitalism ever allowed the working class to thrive was a brief moment of 4 decades after FDR legislated socialist policies to protect the working class from severe limitless exploitation and now legislation has been passed since that has rendered that progress irrelevant.
Also fascism is capitalism in decline and monarchy is irrelevant because we are talking economic models. And monarchies that were not capitalist were feudalist which is just a less refined version of capitalism.
Youre seriously just parroting anti socialist propaganda
How utterly predictable.
Capitalism came to be the domination economic model in the 1600
Mate, stop reading Marx like a history book. Seriously. Captitalism wasn’t a thing yet and has many differences from the mercantilism of that time period, including importantly that it existed within a completely different system instead of encompassing all or even most of the economies of the time - and the wars of conquest, subjugation and extermination of other people was not a new invention of the colonial era. How is that any different from what e.g. Roman or Arab conquerors did centuries earlier, just to name two?
perpetuating warfare for profit, slavery to maximize profits and genocides to stifle any resistance or perpetuate the values of eugenics and racism
Are you even remotely aware of the crimes of Mao and Stalin? Their body counts doing exactly that far exceeds everyone else’s - but they did it under that red star you like so much, so it’s all right.
but yeah communism is bad because of famine
You never had to worry about your next meal, correct? I’m getting the distinct impression that you can’t even comprehend the horrors of e.g. the Holodomor or the Great Leap Forward. Yes, man-made famines are actually bad and communism is responsible for a few of those (which are also among the worst famines in all of human history) - or is that “anti socialist propaganda” as well? Was it Capitalist saboteurs, national-republican agitators or kulaks who were actually responsible?
while a large subset of the population live in squalor to support such opulent lifestyles of luxury
Ever seen Stalin’s dacha compared to the communal block houses that the ordinary Soviet citizen had to live in at the time, poorly heated, cramped homes where many families lived in the same apartment, with not an ounce of privacy or dignity? The gap between those two was far greater than between the average e.g. French home and a French leader’s home under evil capitalism right now. Hell, someone living on welfare in any Western European country 50 years ago was already enjoying a higher standard of living than your average Socialist worker could even dream of at the time.
Break down the word capitalism
Now you’re getting ridiculous.
the only time American capitalism ever allowed the working class to thrive was a brief moment of 4 decades after FDR legislated socialist policies
You’re so close to getting it, it hurts. Remember that part about tweaking and improving our societies and economics to counter the weak aspects of capitalism? Roosevelt did precisely that to counter the fallout of the Great Depression, which was a direct result of unregulated market capitalism. He was not a Socialist, far from it, but he recognized what worked.
It is also incredibly important to mention that the benefits of his economic policy were highly segregated. Whites were first in line, every time. This was not an attempt at egalitarianism.
Also fascism is capitalism in decline and monarchy is irrelevant because we are talking economic models.
You can not be serious. Fascism is noteworthy for not having any clearly defined economic policies, but if there is one thing it definitely does is meddle with the economy to a far greater greater degree than what capitalists are comfortable with. At the same, time, Nazism in particular was aligned with some (but far from all) big business interests and implemented a significant number of privatization efforts. Also at the same time, the Nazis were deeply suspicious of, among other things, free international trade and the stock market, core pillars of capitalism. It’s complicated.
And monarchies that were not capitalist were feudalist which is just a less refined version of capitalism.
No, you can’t just attach the “capitalism” label to economic systems you don’t like and clearly don’t understand. Feudalism - from an economic perspective - is closer to the moneyless utopia of true socialism.
The only thing missing from your comment is that any kind of socialist country that has already existed wasn’t actually true Socialism and thus doesn’t count. If I hadn’t mentioned it, it would have likely come up eventually, because you’re seriously doing nothing but frantically churning out every clichéd talking point that you can remember about this topic (edit: the reply is even worse).
Also by this author
When your entire career is nothing more than licking boots i guess eating glue is an improvement 🤷♂️
You think when these journalists keep expressing “confusion” about why the public loves Luigi, are they just pretending to not understand? Or perhaps they’re so fucking cooked that they can’t see things from the perspective of the class that they’re in?
They also have to keep their editors happy. One of an editor’s jobs is to push back on the folks who write articles, and occasionally rewrite parts of them. And the editors have folks above them in the food chain pulling the strings. News companies aren’t monoliths, they’re spiderwebs of people pushing and pulling on other people because there are obligations all over the place.
To put it another way, “You can’t say that or you’re fired. You’ll never work in this city again.” And, because there aren’t many celebrity journalists, it’s a very real risk.
Sadly, “you’ll never work in this city again” has been true for my entire career. What are you going to do? Walk across Main Street to the other paper?
But it has never been an editor’s job to “push back on the folks who write articles,” which I thought would be the worst part of that sentence; literally, rewriting is what editors do. We don’t push back on staff, we push back on copy. A minor omission here, a glaring hole there, and – as a last resort – spiking a story until questions are answered.
No one has felt any job security in this industry for at least 15 years. “You can’t say that” probably cuts both ways at this point.
Thats something i wonder too. My answer is that many of the unwilling participants within capitalism are delusional and believe that they are capitalists when being a capitalist means you would have capital so that means these people are nothing more than exploited workers with severe Stockholm syndrome. People like this writer believe they are just temporarily embarrassed billionaires
Hardly unique to people living under capitalism though. Most people tend to identify with the system they are living under, including systems that are much worse than ours.
Capitalism is the only system that promises people the ultra slim a d unlikely chance to become as wealthy as those who exploit the poor. what systems, besides capitalism in third world countries are worse than capitalism at its core? Where greed and ruthlessness are praised above virtuous ethical pursuits
Explains why so many people don’t seem to have consciences anymore, doesn’t it?
The obvious answer is that every single attempt at communism has produced far worse economic, environmental, developmental and ethical results than capitalism - while at the same time loudly promising to make everyone equal and happy. Isn’t it worse to promise freedom and decent life to everyone - instead of just the chance of “making it big” - and then completely failing at everything while limiting every kind of personal freedom and right, including the one of being the architect of your own happiness? It’s not even a competition.
I also highly doubt you would argue that the other side of the autocratic coin - Fascist systems with human rights abuses and poor ethics that are comparable to the worst communist systems on one hand, with usually completely incoherent economic policies on the other hand - are any better. Neither are absolutist monarchies.
Capitalism is highly flawed, no doubt, but if we look at the countries on this planet that are the most successful in terms of economics, equality, personal freedom, human rights, etc. then we find countries that made it work through regulation and strong government institutions. We should try and learn from those and use the slow nature of democratic change to tweak and improve our societies and economics based on what they have shown to work in the real world.
Yeah that’s socialism. The best societies were all degrees of socialist, this includes western Europe and the USA at its mid-century peak. These societies all had aggressive, borderline confiscatory progressive taxation, large scale government intervention in the economy (in the US especially aggressive anti-trust), a generous social welfare state, and a large and professionalized civil service.
They also had large and well-organized labor unions capable of wielding power on behalf of their members and disrupting plans of the elites.
Remove those things and you quickly slide into a dystopian fascist nightmare state as the US and parts of Europe like the UK are discovering.
You’re forgetting that these countries also have among the highest economic freedom in the world, protect personal property and investments, provide a stable and reliable environment to conduct very capitalist business. The economic system is capitalist, not socialist. There is no planned economy, most industries are in private hands. Strong regulation keeps capitalist excesses in check as you’ve correctly identified, while the high taxation levels the playing field by financing a robust safety net and other government services everyone benefits from.
In Germany, the term for this kind of system is social market economy, with social being a qualifier and market economy the system.
And the massive amounts of resources expended bu capitalist super powers to ensure those awful economic conditions isn’t the reason for them? 🤡 What about lybia, burkina faso and cuba before the ussr fell? Youre seriously just parroting anti socialist propaganda. Capitalism came to be the domination economic model in the 1600’s took control of half the world and immediately began searching for new markets to exploit while perpetuating warfare for profit, slavery to maximize profits and genocides to stifle any resistance or perpetuate the values of eugenics and racism but yeah communism is bad because of famine and people aren’t allowed work really hard to become wealth hoarding billionaires while a large subset of the population live in squalor to support such opulent lifestyles of luxury
Break down the word capitalism and it tells you all you need to know. The intransitive verb at the root, to capitalize, is synonymous with “to exploit” and “to take advantage” the only time American capitalism ever allowed the working class to thrive was a brief moment of 4 decades after FDR legislated socialist policies to protect the working class from severe limitless exploitation and now legislation has been passed since that has rendered that progress irrelevant.
Also fascism is capitalism in decline and monarchy is irrelevant because we are talking economic models. And monarchies that were not capitalist were feudalist which is just a less refined version of capitalism.
How utterly predictable.
Mate, stop reading Marx like a history book. Seriously. Captitalism wasn’t a thing yet and has many differences from the mercantilism of that time period, including importantly that it existed within a completely different system instead of encompassing all or even most of the economies of the time - and the wars of conquest, subjugation and extermination of other people was not a new invention of the colonial era. How is that any different from what e.g. Roman or Arab conquerors did centuries earlier, just to name two?
Are you even remotely aware of the crimes of Mao and Stalin? Their body counts doing exactly that far exceeds everyone else’s - but they did it under that red star you like so much, so it’s all right.
You never had to worry about your next meal, correct? I’m getting the distinct impression that you can’t even comprehend the horrors of e.g. the Holodomor or the Great Leap Forward. Yes, man-made famines are actually bad and communism is responsible for a few of those (which are also among the worst famines in all of human history) - or is that “anti socialist propaganda” as well? Was it Capitalist saboteurs, national-republican agitators or kulaks who were actually responsible?
Ever seen Stalin’s dacha compared to the communal block houses that the ordinary Soviet citizen had to live in at the time, poorly heated, cramped homes where many families lived in the same apartment, with not an ounce of privacy or dignity? The gap between those two was far greater than between the average e.g. French home and a French leader’s home under evil capitalism right now. Hell, someone living on welfare in any Western European country 50 years ago was already enjoying a higher standard of living than your average Socialist worker could even dream of at the time.
Now you’re getting ridiculous.
You’re so close to getting it, it hurts. Remember that part about tweaking and improving our societies and economics to counter the weak aspects of capitalism? Roosevelt did precisely that to counter the fallout of the Great Depression, which was a direct result of unregulated market capitalism. He was not a Socialist, far from it, but he recognized what worked.
It is also incredibly important to mention that the benefits of his economic policy were highly segregated. Whites were first in line, every time. This was not an attempt at egalitarianism.
You can not be serious. Fascism is noteworthy for not having any clearly defined economic policies, but if there is one thing it definitely does is meddle with the economy to a far greater greater degree than what capitalists are comfortable with. At the same, time, Nazism in particular was aligned with some (but far from all) big business interests and implemented a significant number of privatization efforts. Also at the same time, the Nazis were deeply suspicious of, among other things, free international trade and the stock market, core pillars of capitalism. It’s complicated.
No, you can’t just attach the “capitalism” label to economic systems you don’t like and clearly don’t understand. Feudalism - from an economic perspective - is closer to the moneyless utopia of true socialism.
The only thing missing from your comment is that any kind of socialist country that has already existed wasn’t actually true Socialism and thus doesn’t count. If I hadn’t mentioned it, it would have likely come up eventually, because you’re seriously doing nothing but frantically churning out every clichéd talking point that you can remember about this topic (edit: the reply is even worse).