I can’t really think of a reason for that as Reddit is hated somewhat equally by “both” sides of the spectrum. It’s just something I find interesting.
It’s not corporate based social with a mostly US based audience.
It was literally started because of political censorship of leftists on reddit.
Everyone gets censored on Reddit, literally everyone. There’s no ideology that stays intact apart from sucking spez’s balls
Reality has a well known left leaning bias.
Conservatives and their politics do not have equal status. In this climate, “both sides” is toxic and suggest each is equally supported and viable. They are not. The right is an incredibly hateful minority end should be treated as such.
I’d say it’s mainstream media-type liberal bias. Inclusive aesthetically, and occasionally sincerely too, but mostly shit.
“It’s not my fault if reality is Marxist” -Che Guevara
Wow. Way to paint everyone with a different thought process the same. Very human of you.
Now you’ve convinced me! I really ought to have been the bigger man when my mom called me in the middle of the night to tell me that Trump’s a martyr like Jesus and that the Democrats are performing demonic baby-eating rituals inside underground tunnels, and just let her keep screaming about me being a brainwashed woke communist because we just have little differences and we all need to get along.
Haha, nope. I want scorched earth on every one of those conspiracy nut fuckers holding right-wing parties around the balls, since they went after my family with their brainrot. I don’t give a shit that a handful of people exist who don’t explicitly support Jewish Space Laser Marge or Venmo Bribes Clarence, because y’all still vote lock step to keep these crazy loons around because Roe v. Wade is worth killing for $300 extra on next year’s tax return.
Is it miserable?
Having your entire identity based on a political team?
Constantly being angry and thinking the worst about your peers?
Because it SOUNDS miserable.
Probably not as miserable as it is to have to spend all your energy pretending to not see how your political ideas have fully doomed humanity to drive itself extinct
my mom called me in the middle of the night to tell me that Trump’s a martyr
Gonna have to take any political and moral position you have with a grain of salt, since crazy runs in the family
That doesn’t make sense and you know it. It’s stupid and vindictive.
When discussing the whole space of possible political views, there is no “both sides”. There are seven zillion different axes on seven zillion different issues, some of them concrete (“should we forbid chemical companies from manufacturing neonicotinoid pesticides?”) and some abstract (“what is the best relationship between individual creativity, the marketplace, and the state?”).
“Both sides” (polarized duality) is partly an artifact of specific electoral systems. It can lead to people shooting at each other over tiny differences in doctrine — or, even more often, over which leader to follow this year.
Also: for example both US parties would be considered as a (far) right party here in Germany
Nah, one center-right (formerly centrist) and one far-right (formerly center-right). See discussion here and here.
In gist:
The Democrats have become the party of international free-trade capitalism with appropriate regulation, and with international policies that represent loyalty to the nation’s traditional alliances.
The Republicans have become the local representative of the international far-right: the Putin-Trump-Erdogan-Orban-Netanyahu-etc. axis, focused on granting strongman leaders the ability to loot their states, purge opposition even among the elite (see DeSantis-Disney), betray the nation’s traditional alliances (e.g. NATO) in favor of the far-right axis itself, and excite their “base” through hate & oppression of various minorities (e.g. immigrants, LGBTQ+).
The Democrats are the party of “keep the system working, but when you get a chance, try to make it work better for everyone.”
The Republicans are the party of “tear the system down, and replace it with loyalty to our authority figures; keep the masses stupid and busy trampling on queers & foreigners.”
Okay but the leftist position isn’t
“keep the system running, it can be made okay”
I’m just seeing two right-wing parties.
I mean, we can agree that neoliberalism is right-wing, right?
Yeah, I literally just said today’s Democrats are a center-right party, and today’s Republicans a far-right party. Back when the Republicans were neoliberal, they were center-right. But they’re not anymore; they’re aligned with Putin and the international neofascist tendency.
Okay, I see what you’re saying. But can you tell me what makes anything about it ‘center?’ I disagree about that part - I think they are bog standard ‘right.’ I don’t understand what moderates this partisanship in your view.
Oh! I was using “center-X” vs “far-X” as a distinction. The same distinction could be expressed maybe as “X” vs “radical-X” — the Democrats are “rightist” and the Republicans are “radical rightist” — much in the same way that we might say that social-democrats are “leftist” and revolutionary communists are “radical leftist”.
A good non-radical leader can be one who is a good manager of the current system, who gently reforms it toward social goals. However, radicals would never accept such a milquetoast weakling; they want someone who will come in, smash everything, “drain the swamp”, and implement the dictatorship of … um … someone.
I was using “center-X” vs “far-X” as a distinction.
Okay but center is third to something relatively more left and something more relatively right. What is it center in relation to? If Republicans are right, then Democrats can be less-right but that doesn’t make them center. And it doesn’t make sense to call them center in relation to leftism, because they are neoliberals which isn’t in any way leftist.
radical-X
To me and the political theory that I am used to working with, radical means dedicated to the fundamental principles of something, so I’m going to substitute it with ‘extreme’ in my reading as this is a relative descriptor.
much in the same way that we might say that social-democrats are “leftist” and revolutionary communists are “radical leftist”.
I would never, haha. Communists are leftist, but SocDems run a range from liberal to neoliberal which are both right-wing. To make sure we’re on the same page, the definition of SocDem to me Social Democrat which is not socialist. It was started in the 19th century as a right-wing reform of capitalism so as to prevent rebellion and revolution among the poor. It advocates for (neo)liberal market economics with the implementation of a social safety net. They’re my favorite right-wingers but they still support oppressive and hierarchical economics.
A good non-radical [read: non-extremist] leader can be one who is a good manager of the current system, who gently reforms it toward social goals.
Some things can’t be reformed. Why try reforming the market out of the market?
Lemmy is much less US-centric than Reddit.
Thank fuck for that.
Nice!
Really? I’ve only seen US related stuff here
Is it? Just look at the comments here - the thought is about political left and right and yet almost everybody is talking about conservatives, that’s a sure sign of Americans.
Plus I bet a good portion of the extreme left here are Americans disillusioned with their government, swinging hard into the other extreme.
Lemmy was initially created by communists.
It’s still in the process of being created, and the communism is a bit less in your face now alongside there being other contributors to the code, but that’s how it started.
What made the communism ‘in your face’ except for the lack of others posting content?
And now that the founders pretty much don’t post anymore, how is it ‘a bit less’ but still ‘in your face?’
What does the code comment have to do with it? Do you think this was FB or Twitter, with the devs pushing their political ideology with secret algorithms?
You see, I really don’t understand your reply. You seem to be arguing against the statement ‘Lemmy is much less US-centric than Reddit’ - right?
But Lemmy being less US-centric is exactly why people like communists make up more of a percentage of Lemmy, which is what makes their voices more visible/accessible.
If Lemmy becomes US-centric, it will naturally also become predominately right-wing like all other social media platforms in the US.
Are you arguing that Twitter is right wing because it is US-centric, and not because of Musk’s leveraged buyout?
I would argue that US social media platforms are (now) right wing because of aggressive financial attacks meant to break up open social engagement, as this is bad for business and sociopaths looking to exploit people for profit. Reddit was left wing, until it was bought and sold. Same with Twitter.
However my comment was merely rejecting the idea that Lemmy is left wing because it is not US-centric. Lemmy was started by tankies, who say they’re left wing and have some left wing ideologies, but really they’re more authoritarian fascists, and fascism is in fact right wing. However as Lemmy grew it became apparent that this stance would impede its growth - particularly in western markets - so the main devs have tried to minimise their political views and keep the program neutral; now those views are primarily concentrated at lemmygrad.
Lemmy is not US-centric, but that’s not why it’s left wing. Lemmy is left wing because rational empathetic thought is naturally left wing. Lemmy is full of communism because it was started by communists/tankies.
If you think Marxist-leninists are fascists, or like fascists, then you don’t really understand what either of those words mean man.
Communists are anti-state, tankies are pro-state.
Lemmy is not US-centric, but that’s not why it’s left wing. Lemmy is left wing because rational empathetic thought is naturally left wing.
And yet if Lemmy were US-centric, it would lack rational and empathetic thought because it would lack left-wing representation.
Are you arguing that Twitter is right wing because it is US-centric
Yes, that’s correct.
Most of comments on popular communities boil down to “capitalism bad communism only solution”. Very in your face and everywhere
Yes, and I would say that’s because of lemmy’s communist/tankie roots. Which is a philosophy based in left wing ideology, however in practice it is more authoritarian fascism, which is right wing.
Which is presumably because it isn’t so US-centric, and doesn’t have to do with the founders/devs. That’s how it looks to me at least.
I wonder if there are demographics by IP already? TBH most of the threads I’ve been in have felt very US Centric. I also came with the great reddit migration too though.
On my feed, at least, I have my frontpage set to whatever the kbin equivalent to “all” is. I see lots of other languages beyond English populating - particularly German. The Lemmy instance I chose when I initially made my way to the fediverse operates out of China. They’re chill over there.
I dunno. I think if you’re only finding people discussing the US here, then you’ve probably accidentally pigeonholed yourself based on your own interests. The fediverse is diverse.
How do you get more languages?
I mean yeah. Being only English speaking with gringo Spanish doesn’t let me understand memes in German or any of the other various non-english speaking magazines lol.
English is the defacto lingua franca though. Particularly on the web. The diversity I’ve seen still heavily leans English, and western, which makes plenty of sense.
good
The few conservative communities are nearly empty. But I find Lemmy to be less political overall than Reddit.
The developers of Lemmy are the type who have jumped the shark when it comes to leftism.
https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/socialism_faq.md#whats-going-on-with-the-uyghurs
I spent 15 minutes looking at all the links and clicking on a few.
North Korea is apparently a functioning democracy that gives its civilians everything they need. They’re all extraordinary happy and love their fairly elected leader. The ones who defect only do it because they’re filthy, selfish capitalists.
Tiananmen Square was apparently not a massacre of thousands of unarmed civilian student protestors, but the site of a skirmish between capitalist pig armed provocateurs who assaulted and killed soldiers in cold blood and acted surprised when the soldiers (with extraordinary restraint) defended themselves against their attacks, leading to just 200 deaths (including those poor innocent soldiers).
The Uighurs are apparently all happy. The Chinese government forcibly took thousands, no, hundreds of thousands of people from their homes and placed them in camps, all out of a selfless desire to help those poor, misguided souls. There’s definitely no cultural oppression, no forced labor, and no human rights abuses. They’re just all-inclusive resorts with free “cultural lessons” to help them understand both Uighur and Chinese culture. The CCP loves their Muslim citizens and definitely doesn’t consider them terrorists in need of forced reeducation. All the horror stories we’ve heard from people whose family members were captured, or about forced organ harvesting, or rape and torture, they’re all just unproven lies. The Chinese government even offers tours of their Uighur “resorts” to prove to the world that it’s a diligent effort to support their Uighur brothers!
Tiananmen Square was apparently not a massacre of thousands of unarmed civilian student protestors,
Actually, that one is true, you can look it up on wikipedia (including plenty of reliable sources): The massacring was in side streets while the main protest on the square was dissolved “peacefully” by telling students “well, you can go, or we also have rifles here”.
The whole thing was flanked by a power struggle within the CCP between reformers wanting to work with the students and hardliners, who ultimately won out but didn’t go so far as massacring the students without giving them a chance to cave in and leave on their own. They wanted obedience, after all, not blood. And, culturally speaking, obedience is what they got out of it there has been no popular questioning of the overarching party line since then. Localised protests for or against local issues, sure, and even plenty of them and that’s tolerated but nothing that could shake the system, and most of all it’s not movements. The CCP is very keen on there being no movements but their own.
Every time I see something that looks like Chinese/Russian/anti-Western propaganda I check the profile and it’s usually a user that’s been here for years. I’m starting to think the Fediverse was born as a misinformation shithole, here’s hoping the new users can get that content to fuck off into it’s own little defederated corner of trolls, bots, and edgelords.
“the Fediverse was born as a misinformation shithole”
Ding! Ding! Ding!
We have a winner.
Theres no way the devs made this whole place with the intention of free speech, no, those kids most likely wanted their own echochamber to roleplay as soviet comrades cuz its deffinetly not a face mom!!
But thats watever since they can stay in their echomaber while we leech from their work right?.. right?..
I like having mass manufactured cars, even though Henry Ford hated the Jewish people. The tech is good, we can ignore the inventors and engineers.
Hot take: you shouldn’t subscribe to an ism.
You know what my political affiliation is? I’m an engineer. You want to solve a problem, you break it apart and fix the broken parts.
Abortion? Sure.
What’s the problem? Women are pregnant and they don’t wanna be.
Well how’d they get pregnant? They had unprotected sex, or they got raped(including all kinds here). Teach people how to use birth control and make it easy to get. Teach men about consent. Fund sex crime policing.
That takes care of the input side of the equation. What’s next? Oh yeah, they don’t wanna be pregnant. Why not? Because it could kill them, or wreck thier bodies. OK, well let’s fund research and support for maternal mortality issues (including post-partum). If a pregnancy is likely to kill a woman (like double the normal mortality rate) she should be allowed to abort, even if she’s not in immediate danger. You can’t force somebody to risk their life.
Any other reasons? Because the fetus is severely deformed and will die in pain if allowed to make it to full term? Abortion, no question. Honestly any other position on this one is fucked up. I’m sure of very little when it comes to God, but I’m sure it doesn’t want preventable suffering.
What else? Families can’t afford a kid? Free high quality childcare for everyone. Free healthcare for kids and post-partum mothers (probably for everyone but that’s a different topic).
What about adoption? Well, as they say, adoption is the answer to a different question. Just to cover all cases though, let’s fund high-quality adoption services, including counseling for the birth mother for as long as she needs.
How do we pay for it all? Taxes. Taxes are good for society. Shut the fuck up and pony up your fair share. If you use our stuff, eat our food, drink our clean water, taxes are what you owe.
These are just off the top of my head. The real answers are probably way more complicated, but it’s going to take work to figure it all out. This is how you fix a problem though. Lots of hard work to understand the whole thing, soup to nuts, and then you fix it all.
Does that make me a leftist?
You just described steps that would actually reduce abortion by quite a lot, without making it illegal at all. The sex ed and contraception stuff is basically exactly how it’s done in other western countries that don’t have nearly the issue with teen pregnancies we do. What you’re proposing is practical and effective.
And in the eyes of the MAGA crowd, you’re not just a leftist, you’re a baby-murdering, Satan-worshipping communist America-hater.
We shall call in Huckleberryism. Subscribed!
Does that make me a leftist?
Though I assume this is but one part of your political convictions, I would say yes. That being said I think your hot take is wrong and suggest thinking about it this way: Theory and applications are two incredibly important components of any discipline, ranging from mathematics to politics. In this case the theoretical part means more or less ideology (or the isms you refer to) while applications are the more pragmatic approach of thinking implementations and effects. Both are important to navigate and propose solutions to ever evolving problems in our societies.
Now, as to why this makes you more left is that the leftist parties are usually (but not always) more culturally progressive as opposed to being conservative/reactionary when faced with questions like gay marriage, abortion etc… I think the most coherent political view is that of being both culturally and economically leftist, though that is of course subject to debate. If you are both I think you should say you are leftist as well.
Culturally and economically leftist.
This is a big part of the problem tbh, left-right is the economic distinction, authoritarian or libertarian is the top to bottom axis which is more apt to apply to “culture.”
If you want to control people through force of government you’re on the authoritarian side, if you want people to be free to live their lives so long as they don’t actively harm others you’re on the libertarian side. If you prefer collectivist economics you’re on the left side, and if you prefer capitalism in some form you’re on the right side. Put those together to get a slightly more accurate picture of a person you’re interacting with.
So a guy who prefers individualist free market economy and is socially apathetic or progressive would be bottom right, a guy who prefers more market control but still capitalism and is socially conservative would be center right, a guy who prefers monarchy with much market control and very conservative socially is top right, stalinists would be top left as they’re authoritarian and not necessarily progressive and collectivist as all hell, liberals would be center left more progressive but still authoritarian and still collectivists, and left libertarians would be bottom left, collectivist and progressive but as long as you aren’t hurting people live and let live, like bottom right. Of course most people fall somewhere on the middle of the graph or their quadrant rather than in a corner of it, but it is still more helpful than only having one axis to base things on.
Well, this “political compass” you are referring to does have some merits, but any effort to reduce political stances into scales is of course a simplification. For that sake one could argue that adding arbitrary more dimensions to the representation makes it more accurate, but I think that ultimately defeats the purpose of the simplification. There is no canonical way to express these concepts, hence it depends on context which simplification (if any) is useful.
One particular issue I see with auth-lib is that it IMO has a bias in that most only consider the government as an authority in this setting. However if one say defines autority as
power to influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior (from Merriam-Webster)
it should be clear that under some economical systems there are definitely authorities besides the state. Personally I would argue that money translates to power and hence authority. If this power is unchecked and of great importance, which I think it largely is, I would also argue that it forms a basis of authoritarian rule.
I see money as more a necessary thing, as it is much easier to operate a society that way over no money. You could replace money with barter but that does complicate things.
I think you might have misunderstood the point I was making. What I implied was that for a society to be free from authoritarianism and under democratic control, there also has to be some limits to the power wielded by the rich. Of course one could try to limit the power of money, but I think the most important thing one should do is limit the mechanics of the economy that allow for unlimited accumulation of wealth (i.e. read taxes and worker collectives).
Well good luck with that. Anyone been convicted in connection with that whole Epstein Fiasco? Hell at least sometimes rich guys do get fucked like Madoff but not one government employee has had to answer for their involvement with Epstein, they won’t even release the log.
The wealth in essence isn’t the issue, one can be wealthy and a good person, it is theoretically possible, I’d be hard pressed to think of an example while I’m shitting rn but nonetheless it is something that can happen. The issue comes in with letting those people get away with crimes because of their wealth, if we just stopped doing that your issue would be solved.
Problem is, both of these things are equally likely to occur, which is to say not very. The ruling elite consists of both the government and the corporations propped up by them, but even the most ardent revolutionaries on both sides of the economic spectrum only hate 1/2 of this ruling elite, nothing will ever be solved because neither side can see this. You’re more likely to come back to this with “yeah it’s both but it is really the corpos” than you are to actually see the issue is both.
Just to be on the same page I am not from the US. Also, I think the US government is essentially composed of and works for the bourgeoisie class, hence there is no distinction of my critique of the capitalists and the people in government due to them being the same groups.
Furthermore, this makes the Epstein case a further demonstration of the corrupting effects of money. I am really sorry for the state of the US democracy and where I am from we use it as a staple of what we don’t want our society to look like.
Lastly, there is an issue with hoarding wealth and being a good person. This is twofold: First there is the issue of where the money is taken from and second there is the issue of how it could be better spent. I think a good person would not overcharge for their products nor underpay their workers. However that is essentially how you get rich, along with other scummy actions. Lastly, after hoarding exorbitant amounts of wealth, I think a good person would also use this for something good rather than themselves.
Even Donald Duck doesnt subscribe to the abortion ban
Reforms are great, but ultimately a doomed bandaid over real problems. Quoth Lenin:
"Reformism is bourgeois deception of the workers, who, despite individual improvements, will always remain wage-slaves, as long as there is the domination of capital.
The liberal bourgeoisie grant reforms with one hand, and with the other always take them back, reduce them to nought, use them to enslave the workers, to divide them into separate groups and perpetuate wage-slavery. For that reason reformism, even when quite sincere, in practice becomes a weapon by means of which the bourgeoisie corrupt and weaken the workers. The experience of all countries shows that the workers who put their trust in the reformists are always fooled.
And conversely, workers who have assimilated Marx’s theory, i.e., realised the inevitability of wage-slavery so long as capitalist rule remains, will not be fooled by any bourgeois reforms. Understanding that where capitalism continued to exist reforms cannot be either enduring or far-reaching, the workers fight for better conditions and use them to intensify the fight against wage-slavery. The reformists try to divide and deceive the workers, to divert them from the class struggle by petty concessions. But the workers, having seen through the falsity of reformism, utilise reforms to develop and broaden their class struggle."
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/sep/12b.htm
Nobody cares what Lenin had to say. You’re not just talking to the lemmygrad lot.
Karl Marx was an idiot. Let me explain…no there’s too much. Let me sum up. Replacing a whole system just because some parts of it don’t work is stupid. How do you know the system you put in as a replacement won’t also be broken.
Some people tried to replace capitalism with a totally different system and it went real bad real fast. This wasn’t an isolated incident. They tried it in a bunch of places and in none of them did it work. Marxism has been debunked in the field.
Marxism is the idea that you can fix problems with an ism. Got poor people? Try communism or socialism or half-cocked-ism. If your solution to a problem can fit on a bumper sticker it’s wrong.
Some people tried to replace capitalism with a totally different system and it went real bad real fast. This wasn’t an isolated incident. They tried it in a bunch of places and in none of them did it work.
What examples are you thinking of?
China, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam, Cuba. Every single time, the state becomes authoritarian and repressive, ignoring human rights, starving and imprisoning huge populations. Eventually it either fails, or the state keeps the authoritarianism, but gets rid of the communism. Look at China and Vietnam. They’ve transitioned to a mostly market based economy, but kept the authoritarianism.
These are examples of everyone starving because centrally planned economies are a bad idea.
You’re being downvoted because you straw manned, not sure if intentionally or not.
If your solution to a problem can fit on a bumper sticker it’s wrong.
Like…really? Do you think that this community, or anyone worth talking to, thinks that it’s that easy?
Was it straw man, or ad hominem? Are you thinking that I shouldn’t have called Marx stupid, or that I misrepresented his concept?
If you think Karl Marx was an idiot (not just wrong, but an idiot), you don’t understand the conversation well enough to participate.
Why do Marxists always assume people who disagree just aren’t smart enough to understand Marxism? It’s not difficult to understand the concept, it’s just dumb. Marx was old school I-am-very-smart.
You’re an engineer. There are absolutely scenarios where so much of a system is broken that you have to redesign the whole system. You can’t turn a steam engine into an electric motor piece by piece.
40% of the population is one missed paycheck away from poverty while a handful of people have rocket ships and megayachts and buy-a-few-politicians money. That is not a bug, that is the central operating principle, the Carnot cycle of capitalism. If you’re one of the millions who are in the “wage labor” part of the cycle instead of the “extract profit” part of the cycle, capitalism has already gotten real bad.
You’re an engineer. Don’t be so reductionist. You sound like a kid who invented a perpetual motion machine with an overbalanced wheel and magnets. You should know better.
I can absolutely draw you a line from the development of the steam engine to the electric motor to NASA. Every little thing that was wrong with steam engines led to better and better technology. Marxism is like saying, “the steam engine has problems, obviously mechanical engineering is doomed, lets breed better horses.”
Really? Please, what linear, incremental changes can you make to a pressurized piston driven engine that will turn it gradually into an induction motor? Certainly, they both turn a wheel eventually, but the fundamental principle of operation is totally different. The things that were wrong with stream engines led to incremental improvements up until a point, when a total redesign was necessary.
Your approval thinking needs improvement. Capitalism isn’t like mechanical engineering, it’s like external combustion. Socialism is like replacing it with internal combustion, communism is like replacing that with electric induction.
Steam engines literally led to the development of electric motors. Steam engines led to steam turbines which led to dynamos which led to electric motors, each invention building off the knowledge gained at the previous step.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_turbine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Algernon_Parsons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamo
Your analogy is doubly flawed. Each type of engine you mention has strengths and weaknesses that depend on external variables. Internal combustion isn’t better at producing electricity for instance, which is why we mostly use external combustion to do that. Electric motors aren’t better than internal combustion, except that internal combustion is causing climate change. It’s also flawed because history has shown that Socialism doesn’t work better than Capitalism. I could see, if this were purely theoretical, someone arguing the benefits of Marxist ideas, but it’s been tried. In several places around the world, people tried to put in place the kind of changes you’re advocating. In every case it led to authoritarianism, brutal repression, and starvation. Does it suck that poor kids don’t have enough to eat, while Bezos builds space yachts? Yeah it sucks, but it’s not millions-starving-to-death levels of suck like we actually, not theoretically, got every time we tried Communism or Socialism or any kind of take-their-stuff-and-give-it-to-me-ism.
Right, but you wanna keep using steam engines to power cars.
History shows that capitalism has one exemplary use case: siphoning value from workers to capitalists. Full stop. It’s an outright failure at other things, or at least worse than most alternatives.
There are, in fact, millions starving to death under capitalism, and have been every time it’s been tried. Sure, they’re brown people in countries capitalists call “shit holes” so you personally can’t see them, but they’re there. Lots of them are working in dangerous conditions for negligible wages in order to prop up capitalism, because capitalism boils down to one equation:
(Revenue) - (Expenses) = Profit
Guess where wages fall in that equation?
Poverty and exploitation aren’t coincidental, occasional consequences of capitalism. They are the mathematically inevitable conclusion every single time. It’s almost impossible to find a mass-market product that didn’t involve child or slave (or child slave) labor somewhere in the supply chain. After all, the fewer pennies you pay for labor, the more space yachts you can buy.
The only times capitalist economies do anything other than exploit and cause poverty are when armed revolt is imminent and the government steps in to take-the-capitalists’-stuff-and-give-it-to-everyone.
Social democratic economies are thriving around the world. Every unregulated capitalist economy has devolved into space yachts and starving millions almost immediately.
Sure, there have been authoritarian governments that said they were socialist for PR. You can call a hammer a socket wrench. The failure of the hammer to turn a nut doesn’t mean socket wrenches don’t work, it means you’re pretending a hammer is something it isn’t. No one has tried communism, or large scale socialism. They’ve tried authorization centrally planned economies, which isn’t what either of those things are. Hammers marketed as wrenches. No one you’re taking about has ever tried the wrench.
Except worker co-ops.
progression tends not to be conservative
The progressive/conservative axis has nothing to do with the economical left/right, it was only forcefully merged in the USA because they have only two parties.
I’m afraid future will be conservative nevertheless due to the simple fact that they’re the only ones making kids. I’m liberal myself but I don’t have kids and will never have so my traits don’t pass to the next generations. The conservative neighbours with 7 kids on the other hand…
The thing about that is, if they’re ignorant, their kids will be ignorant too. And what that adds up to is just the same thing we’ve got: a large group of people who are subject to whatever momentary persuasion happens to reach them on any given day, and a political/ruling class that can work with that just fine, so they are taking steps to hamper education sufficiently that this can endure for an indeterminate amount of time before we all burn.
What those large populations do react to, is missing a meal or three. And so far, these aristocrats seem to understand that whatever else they try to pull, they must always service the fundamentals: bread and circuses.
See you at the coliseum.
But if that logic held wouldn’t religion tend to increase instead of decrease?
Politics being genetic, of course.
What?
Politics aren’t genetic.
But they ARE communal. Where you grow decides 90% of what you believe in.
It’s actually why I disagree with the top comment chain that smarter means more left leaning. I think it’s more that left leaning communities have better education standards and lead to smarter generations. Cause and effect reversed.
The ability to propagate the politics depends mightily on the success of the community though. It’s sort of the other side of the ‘brain drain’ principle-- if people have to leave the community for educational or economic opportunity, they’re probably not going to be able to reconstruct the same echo chambers.
Even when you see a preserved group within a larger population (think of Chinatowns and Little Italies), they’re inherently getting a lot more cultural exchange than back in the home country.
A lot of the most self-destructive policies (neglecting education, running the environment into the ground, skate-where-the-puck-was-in-1972 economic policy) are just begging for decades of brain drain. The kids are going to leave because there’s simply nothing there but the Gizzard Extraction Plant, and that got automated in 2032.
What top comment chain? They’re all talking about Reddit censoring leftists, not talking about the intelligence of any faction. The most I’ve seen are people making fun of the right, but that’s to be expected.
In some ways yes but it can have the opposite effect too. I know lots of left leaning people who grew up in super religious/conservative families and hate everything about their beliefs.
politics aren’t genetic, but they are obviously still inheritable
Is that controversial? Look around…
If you take in account that they’re raised in their parents’ household it’s not ridiculous
I don’t know. I think it depends more on where they grow up and who/what they’re exposed to (in person and online). At the high school I work at, we have a bunch of lgbtq+ teens whose conservative parents have no idea they’re queer or go by a different name. But I also don’t live somewhere like Wyoming with a much higher conservative population. I live in a college town in a (barely) blue county surrounded by red counties in an ultimately very blue state.
I hope we find a way to kill the online radical right pipeline and continue to expose more teens to other ideas, other cultures, and other ways of life, and maybe it won’t matter so much who their parents are.
A blue county surrounded by red counties in an ultimately very blue state
Tell me you live in California without telling me you live in California
;)
Only if we can kill the online radical left pipeline too. Too many tankies
Well by definition right?
Progressive outlook means your open to new ideas, exploring new territory, open to concept that challenge what you think and know, and gives you the ability to push boundaries, make new discoveries and try new things.Conservative outlook on the other hand means you are content and safe with the familiar, doing things the way they have always been done because its tried and true, however this means if they feel unconfortable or threatened by ideas which are going to change the way the live and how things work which makes them dig their heels in and get defensive.
I don’t mind. Fewer conservatives means higher quality and higher general IQ.
Maybe because on reddit you have an absolute fuck ton of right wing propaganda bots.
That is quite true as well. Lemmy gets Russian shills on Ukraine coverage worse than Reddit though. I don’t know if that would be tankies or Russian trolls.
I’ve noticed several pro-china shill accounts as well. Fortunately their attempts at astroturfing are made in China, very obvious and poorly done.
You have to appreciate their stupid confidence though. It’s entertaining.
I didn’t see any specific “propaganda bots”, just bots regurgitating anything that was posted
Thankk you. The Overton window has been forcibly molded to what would’ve been the mid- Right when I was a kid growing up (90s-00s). This is because of Fox News. And then social media propagandists have tried ripping it to the extreme right, aka alt-right.
I imagine a lot of what younger people think of as left/liberal was very much a moderate view point just a generation ago.
So when you move to a new medium not propagandized yet (or at least a new venue like Lemmy) you might find that organic discourse is a lot more sane, tempered, and moderate.
Remember during COVID, some people thought washing your hands is being left.
I feel like there’s a lot more queer focused instances available. Tbh that would most likely make it easier for queer people, and those more accepting of them, to easily and comfortably move to an instance.
ALSO, makes it that much easier to get banned if you’re even slightly conservative imo. Imo we won’t see many conservatives until we get a Steven Crowder or Daily Wire Instance.
I’m not queer personally but I find I have a lot more in common with people who are aside from those preferences as time goes on. By the time conservatives start using the platform you’re on in numbers it’s usually time to move on because the joint has become mainstream and is rapidly going to shit.
reddit had given into the “work the refs” strategy of the American right wing. That artificially elevated the voices of the right and suppressed the voices of the left. It’s actually the case when you look at surveys and voting behaviors that right wing ideas are abysmally unpopular.
So when we’re on an actually free platform that doesn’t have an “engagement” based algorithm driving anger and division, with no one putting their thumb on the scale (or people who try getting defederated), “leftist” ideas come up.
The confusion reflected in the OP is the obvious outcome of the post Fairness Doctrine “both sides” media landscape. There really aren’t as many right wing people as left wing. We are legion.
what lol
Reading comprehension mother fucker, do you speak it?
With America’s public school system? (sabotaged by the right, of course) Not a chance.
Conservatives also adopt new technology less willingly and more slowly. Which is to their credit, I think. I like having people who move slower and less willingly.
Nevertheless, political alignment and technological adoption are generally correlated. And it is a new platform. It’s not like taking up smart phones, but it’s a change, and those that are reticent to change do it more slowly.
That’s just not true in the slightest, reddit mod and admin actions clearly support a left-wing slant and ban accordingly. Most subs removed over the past few years have overwhelmingly been on the far right side of things. Admins regularly ban people for transphobia. How are you seeing otherwise?
Reddit has banned most right wing subs and clearly has a pro left bias from the top. The userbase was more right wing before most right wing users were pushed off the platform.
Cite your sources.
They didn’t exist before the 2016 election. They were mostly astroturf. The original Donald sub was entirely bashing him and intentionally killed off.
Probably because this migration may be related to the anti-corpo sentiment, which is more common in leftist circles
Mastodon managed to fight off bigots and nazis very successfully, maybe they do have enough brain cells to remember something I guess.
