this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2024
826 points (100.0% liked)

World News

45757 readers
3387 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19046336

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 66 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Well of course it has, fascism is the end result of capitalism. Some would say it's natural conclusion.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago (3 children)

fascism is the end result of capitalism

I wonder what sort of echo chamber you must live in, in order to believe this

[–] [email protected] 38 points 8 months ago

Late stage capitalism?

[–] [email protected] 35 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Fascist regimes generally came into existence in times of crisis

Too bad that modern capitalism produces wealth like no other system - the supposed resurgence of fascism never happened despite EU running capitalism for 79 years since the World War 2.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago (2 children)

the supposed resurgence of fascism never happened

hahhahahahhahahahahhahahahhahahahahahhahaha

hahahahah ' hahahahaha

hahaahahahahahahahahahaha

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

What a lemmy moment.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (3 children)

hahhahahahhahahahahhahahahhahahahahahhahaha

hahahahah ' hahahahaha

hahaahahahahahahahahahaha

10/10 argument. You lost

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago (1 children)

No, you just made a likely bad faith argument he couldn't be bothered to engage with.

There has been a rise in far-right parties in many countries, many of which don't officially label themselves as fascist for plausible deniability, while spouting clearly fascist rhetoric. Their current scapegoats of choice include (but are not limited to) immigrants and lgbtq people.

But if you're not being disingenuous, what do you think fascism is?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

There has been a rise in far-right parties

Extremist organizations exist always and everywhere - what both of you fail to understand is that they're very small (although sometimes loud) minorities.

what do you think fascism is?

A totalitarian movement in pre ww2 Italy, that killed a lot of people.

What do you think it is?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Just to be clear, your argument was Checks notes "Too bad that modern capitalism produces wealth like no other system" had the proof "the supposed resurgence of fascism never happened despite EU running capitalism for 79 years since the World War 2." was truly a masterclass.

It's like you had this well thought out idea, and really just made sure everyone understood that yo-

sorry, hahahahhahaha i just cant, every time I read it I laugh again, hahahahah thank you so much this made my day.

Enjoy being ratio'd though, the view is incredible from up here.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

You live in your own little world, aren't you?

being ratio'd

By people as misguided as you.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (1 children)

the supposed resurgence of fascism never happened despite EU running capitalism for 79 years since the World War 2.

If you took 5 minutes to look into elections in Europe and in US, you'd see that far-right are becoming more dominant in elections, white nationalists and neo-nazis are openly having marches on streets and attacking the "enemy" (like immigrants or muslims), Russia is pretty much an unofficial fascist state right now and so on.

You're right, resurgence of fascism never happened, but it is happening right now.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

happening right now

No, you're just one of radicals on the opposite side of political spectrum. Everyone with the wrong opinion is called fascist these days.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This isn't a bait. I tried once explaining the differences between fascism and nazism and guess what? Got acussed of being fascist. The only reason was because others didn't like my argument.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Nazism is a flavour of fascism. They're not "differences", they're technicalities

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

What, you think Stiglitz is some kind of dangerous tankie now? Jfc, talk about muddying the waters. The forces that motivated the germans to "seek shelter" from markets with the nazis are the same pushing people to vote for Le Pen, AfD today.

Even Orban's little dictatorship is a product of the sovereign debt crisis of the EU in 2014. If neoliberals are so blind that they lose touch with their people, voters will seek shelter from market forces either to the left or to the far-right, depending on how they understand what is happening.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (4 children)

extracts wealth

Produces. Wealth comes from efficient allocation of resources - capitalist free markets are really good at it.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (9 children)

Efficiency under capitalism?

We waste tremendous amounts of food but people go hungry.

We produce absurd levels of clothing, much of which is destroyed and sent to landfills without being worn, but there are people who need it.

We have more houses than unhoused by a huge factor.

Capitalism optimizes for profit and profit only. Sometimes that leads to good outcomes, sometimes it leads to bad outcomes.

It's not "efficient" in terms of taking care of people's needs. It's only efficient in terms of producing profits for the owner and investor classes.

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Exactly, capitalist markets are really good at extracting resources from the land and labour from the people to make a profit, they just don't know where to stop until it's too late, unless they are regulated.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

They're also getting increasingly more efficient at funneling profits to the top, rather to the greatest value producers: labourers. This is wage theft. Get it all the way to 100% and you have slavery.

Though important to note that slavery does not just meant you don't get paid. Though I don't think anyone needs a splainer on that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (4 children)

extracting resources from the land and labour

You're trying to paint production in a negative way, while in reality competitive markets converge to most fair prices

Law of supply and demand dictates that too low wage will fail to attract workers, while too high wage will result in product that is too expensive and won't attract customers willing to buy.

It's a beautiful, self regulating communication network that pays well for stuff that is in demand and pays little for things nobody wants

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

No, it is you who are seeing the world as just markets, as if markets is what produces wealth, as if labour were just a pesky cost that you can't get rid of.

As the pandemic showed, it is workers that produce wealth and are essential. Markets have their place, but need to be controlled so they don't kill the people who power them.

Also: markets fail very often when the incentives and structure are not aligned with the socially desired outcomes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

workers that produce wealth and are essential

You got it wrong - workers alone won't produce anything. You need everything: Workers, managers, accountants, capital, financial system, machines, supply chains, logistics, customer acquisition and so on. Each one of these parts is crucial - wealth is only produced if all those elements are correctly allocated.

Half of these things are provided by separate companies, which have their own complex structures, that together create wealth producing market environment.

"I'm a worker so I produce wealth!" Is a harmful simplification. Skilled worker without all that backend isn't worth a jack shit. This is why there're so huge wage disparities between poor and rich countries - workers may be equally skilled, but the backend that supports the work in the poor country simply doesn't exist.

markets fail very often when the incentives and structure are not aligned with the socially desired outcomes.

There're corner cases that cause issues - but this is why we have legal framework to fix them - antitrust laws, regulation of relations between employee-emplyer, consumer protection, green energy incentives and so on

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I agree all of that is needed to produce products in a modern economy, but I disagree with the share of profit allocated to managers. The only reason the allocation of profit is so skewed is because the manageriat abuses their power. They are supposed to be enablers of productivity, not little tyrants.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You're missing the part of the picture: There are also workers with specific skill sets who are paid extremely well. You don't hear about them, because they don't complain.

But the question is why? Why workers with certain skills really well paid, while others aren't?

The answer is misalignment between availability of types of work, and availability of workers with appropriate skills.

There's no magic solution that would fix this - core issue is education system that produces surplus of one type of skilled workers and not enough of other types. The end result are huge wages for rare skills, and very low wages for common ones

Fixing that problem requires radical reform of how people pick their career patch and it would take many years for benefits to have impact.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

No, I'm saying people need to be paid a living wage to keep the social peace. You may externalize that responsibility from your enterprise, but someone is going to have to address the mismatch between wages and cost of living.

You want an economy that rewards the 10% best, that is good I guess...but the inevitable 90% of "losers" that are still essential for production will get out of your control if you keep punishing them and forcing them into a race they never win (particularly when the social elevator breaks and poverty becomes transgenerational)

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Law of supply and demand dictates

This is the economic version of "assume a spherical cow in a vacuum." An economic "law" is an idealized description of how things work when there are no confounding factors, not a rule the real world is compelled to obey. It turns out the real world is full of confounding factors that make the law too unreliable to predict—or even admit—things the rise of fascism.

It's a beautiful, self regulating communication network

On paper yes, but Jesus Christ, look around you. It's only beautiful if you overlook its fatal flaws.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Too low wage and the government will top up those being underpaid by their employer, effectively passing on part of the burden of pay to the tax payer.

If wages rise too high, the government will always step in to make sure it doesn't continue.

Its highly externally regulated and ultra manipulated by the people who buy labour and own for their money. Sadly, some people still beleive in the "invisible hand" blessed be its name story.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

If wages rise too high, the government will always step in to make sure it doesn't continue

What do you mean by that? If you mean progressive taxation then I agree - IMO this is an inevitable result of democracy - in particular one citizen one vote rule.

Progressive taxation of middle class and spending that money on benefits for poor is a way of buying votes. If you can buy multiple votes of poor people at expense of one middle class vote, it's a winning strategy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Progressive taxation is fair: someone who makes 0 from the way society is structured pays 0, because the system is clearly not working for them. Someone who makes the average wage contributes accordingly, but they are not a winner. People who are doing very well are paying a premium to society for creating the conditions for them to be doing so well.

Too bad that when you go even higher the effective tax goes down again due to all sorts of accounting tricks and outright evasion.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Pesky voting rights! For too long have the ultra wealthy had to suffer under the dictatorship of the majority. Votes should cost money and there should be no limit to how many you can buy.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

Oh my sweet summer child.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yep, nothing inefficient about an intern commuting via plane from South Carolina to New York everyday because it's much cheaper than living in New York. /s 🙄

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

I would argue that it was not capitalist benevolence that kept social peace for 80 years, it was partly the existence of the USSR that forced capitalist governments to make concessions to the social state to prevent communist influence from expanding westwards, flawed as it was.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

capitalist benevolence

Capitalism is neither benevolent nor malevolent - it just happens it has most aligned incentives between egoistic actors

forced capitalist governments to make concessions

Really, really not. People were escaping from socialist USSR republics to western countries. This is why USSR decided to build a wall - their disfunctional system couldn't compete

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

The New Deal is an example of capitalists understanding that you need to make some concessions to keep the peace, I'd call that sorta benevolent.

About the USSR: yes, people escaped it, but there was a chance that democracies would flip communist if you squeezed the population too much, so there was a political incentive to creating social policies to control capitalist forces. Without fear of the USSR agitators and backing, they had less incentive to compromise a.k.a. TINA.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Fascism was maintained in several European countries way beyond 1940s, such as my homeland Spain. There were also fascist regimes after WW2 outside Europe, such as in Chile or arguably in South Korea and Taiwan.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

lemmy.ml isn't the real world

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago

You dont have to be a tankie to understand that the neverending capitalist search for growth leads to exploitation and eventually backlash.