Lol at all of the wannabe thirteen year old edgleords on lemmy who are so confident that they understand this extremely complicated and protracted conflict such that they can reduce it to a single generic cause but can’t even be bothered to look up which of the two world wars is the correct one to reference for their edgy meme.
I just heard an NPR story about US Steel Corp using chattel slavery less than a hundred years ago. They worked people to death and buried them in unmarked graves.
I think one of the main problems with Smith’s conception of capitalism is that he didn’t account for how huge and pervasive and intrusive advertising would become. He naively assumed that the best product would dominate the market when actually people will buy whatever is thrust in front of the their eyes a thousand times a day.
And of course corporate lobbying wasn’t such an issue in his time.
The UN sponsored report uses a pretty liberal definition of slavery to include things like wage theft (which forces workers to stay at a job until they’re fully compensated), sex trafficking, and domestic servitude where the servant’s documents are confiscated so that they can’t flee.
However, there’s still a hell of a lot whips and chains slavery in Africa and South East Asia. Those slaves serve the excavation and manufacturing industries.
I appreciate your critique but I’ve got to be honest and say that I’m not going to spend any more time in my life trying to justify late stage capitalism. It will eventually be replaced and pass into history like every other economic system, if it doesn’t kill us first. 💣
History lives in the present (lemmy.zip)
Context (for those who don’t know): Israel and Palestine
Slavery: still a thing (lemmy.zip)
History memes. Fuck yeah. (startrek.website)