davel

davel, 6 months ago

A few capitalist tech companies started a brutal 996 system, which from what I’ve heard was illegal, and the state has since been cracking down on it. I agree that we shouldn’t assume what China has done to be the best possible path, nor should we directly imitate it, because our material conditions are very different from theirs.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

davel, 6 months ago (edited 25 days ago)

Actually Existing Socialisms (AES): The five predominantly recognized AES states are China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and, [North] Korea.

The Nordic model is a social democratic one, which is still fundamentally a capitalist one. This is what someone like Bernie Sanders claims to want.

Sanders gets away with calling himself a socialist because Americans have forgotten what https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism actually means: “social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership.” Americans have forgotten what socialism means because the American socialists were persecuted into obscurity in the 20th century. So now even the vocabulary for socialism is lost in Orwellian fashion.

davel, 6 months ago (edited 25 days ago)

I think these are very good questions. You can’t rely on Atlantacist government propaganda or corporate media to get good answers to them, unfortunately. The don’t like there to be any threats of a good example, which is why the CIA tried to assassinate Fidel Castro hundreds of times and why Cuba is still under a trade embargo. It’s one of the reasons they never stop attempting regime changes (the other reason being to steal countries’ natural and labor resources).

North Korea is especially difficult for a Burgerlander like me to get a clear picture of. I hope the Kim dynasty largely acts as a state figurehead, but I haven’t investigated and have no idea.

China does have a limited capitalism going on right now, which, if I understand correctly, is a part of the ongoing Reform and Opening Up project. From my (still fairly ignorant) P.O.V., I can’t help but imagine a risk to this strategy, where the capitalists become strong enough to wrest control. The project has brought hundreds of millions out of poverty, though. The government recently took the capitalist real estate speculators to heel (to the dismay of capitalists everywhere and the delight of people just wanting a place to live), so it seems they haven’t lost control. Their professed long-term plan is to phase out capitalism entirely.

It’s worth noting that no Marxist worth their salt will paint any of these socialist countries as utopias, especially given that Marxists reject utopian socialisms.

davel, 6 months ago

But they engage in massive censorship among other issues and I just can’t see how there can be a democracy (which I consider the most important component to make something socialist) with that degree of control

Maybe they do, maybe that’s mostly the propaganda we’re fed. I’m sure that at least some of the “censorship” is the Chinese State keeping foreign capitalist enterprises from dominating China’s indigenous internet.

The state has control over all the means of production in the country and I believe it uses it for its own benefit.

I do think that is predominant (though there are also worker co-ops & individual projects). If China is a democratic socialist state, then the “it” in “its own benefit” is largely the working class. This is in contrast with a bourgeois democracy like the US, where the “it” is largely the capitalist class. Our votes are somewhat effective when they don’t conflict with the capitalists, but otherwise not so much. We get fed a lot of propaganda about socialist states having an authoritarian “ruling class,” analogous to our capitalist class, living high on the hog at the expense of the people, but is that really so, or is it projection?

I guess I’m just an anti-authoritarian first […] I’ve always been more inspired by anarchist philosophy and go by Libertarian-socialist if forced to pick a name.

Quite understandable: I came from that place. It took a lot of convincing, because my heels were pretty dug in to a Noam Chomsky/Mark Fisher position. I think one of the quicker/easier ways to seeing arguments on why this position has never and can never succeed, and why the “authoritarianism” of communism has succeeded and is a necessary step on the path to socialism, is Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds. It’s a short book and as such doesn’t—on its own—provide a whole lot of backing evidence; it’s a jumping-off point for further inquiry.

davel, 6 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

The first user I blocked was the AutoTL;DR bot. GTFO with machine summaries.

How to Use ChatGPT to Summarize an Article: ChatGPT tends to oversimplify things or even hallucinate sometimes, so fact-checking is essential.

Which means I’m discussing articles with people who read dumbed-down hallucinations of articles.

davel, 6 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Those photos are so harrowing 🙄 Meanwhile, the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and other American black sites are still open, and an actual genocide is happening in Palestine with American material & political support.

The Uyghur genocide has already been debunked several times over, but go on Guardian.

• The Xinjiang Genocide Allegations Are Unjustified
• The Uyghur Human Rights Project is a product of the National Endowment for Democracy, which is the American government’s main regime change NGO.
• Uyghur genocide allegations

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/b3149875-7e13-4436-a4b1-c8dc4f82194a.jpeg

davel, 6 months ago

“regex” means “regular expression”, so “regex expression” means “regular expression expression”.

davel, 6 months ago

Do kbin.social users even notice the irony in their name?

davel, 6 months ago (edited 5 months ago)

Thanks! Fortunately I have a stuck name I can live with.

davel, 6 months ago

I might have. Unfortunately I don’t clearly recall :/

davel, 6 months ago

I just set my Display name to “Davel”. We’ll see if this propagates. Then I’ll delete my Display name, and see if “Dave” is retained by other instances. Then I’ll know that this is unrelated to the Markup table.

davel, 6 months ago

It seems to appear on sh.itjust.works as well, at least when accessed via a browser. Are you on a browser? If not, then this would suggest the functionality is in the lemmy-ui codebase.

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/05a4a4e0-4ab4-4b85-b0f1-037b0f237ce9.png

davel, 8 months ago

For the ableists in the room: to reduce mouse usage.

davel, 7 months ago

The fuck is wrong with you.

davel, 8 months ago

They’ll keep trying until they win. It will be relatively easy for them to win on corporate social media. They largely have already have won, if you’ve continued to follow Matt Taibbi’s Twitter Files.

The final frontier will be the non-corporate fediverse: Atlantic Council: Collective Security in a Federated World

davel, 8 months ago

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYTQ7__NNDI&t=9s

davel, 8 months ago

Funny thing about American southern accents is that “stock” and “stalk” sound the same.

I was in the south once and someone asked me to stalk the printer. It took me a second to realize she wanted me to PC LOAD LETTER.

davel, 8 months ago

That’s the joke

davel, 8 months ago

I wouldn’t say I’m forgetting to do them.

davel, 8 months ago

It’s funny how IMDB changed his name sometime between January 2022 and now: web.archive.org/web/20220129175259/…/nm3305952/

davel, 8 months ago

24 is the highest number, fuggedaboutit [1] [2] [3]

davel, 8 months ago

One’s interpretation of this relationship might make for a good liberal/socialist Voight-Kampff test.

davel, 8 months ago

socialists are fascists. war is peace. freedom is slavery. ignorance is strength.

davel, 9 months ago

Halloween PSA: Check your children’s candy for Russian propaganda.

davel, 9 months ago

If anyone’s hoping that this lemmy.ML community will defederate from lemmygrad.ML anytime soon, then you obviously don’t understand where the fuck you even are.