If anyone wants to see the actual situation here's NASA's live map: https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/
and a guide on how to use it, what all the symbols mean etc: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=SSd7KnWN9CM
Ah the innovation argument, so original. "Capitalism creates innovation". Everyone says it all the time so it must be true right? Well it isn't. Data doesn't support this argument.
Pretty much every major innovation of the past century has come from publicly funded and/or not-for-profit research and development. Capitalists only step in once the difficult part is done and the 'innovation' can be repackaged into something profitable in the short term.
See the following: https://academic.oup.com/ser/article/7/3/459/1693191
https://demos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/files/Entrepreneurial_State_-_web.pdf
Capitalism definitely creates barriers to certain types of innovation. Mainly innovation that isn't profitable - see 'planned obsolesence'. It also creates barriers to profitable innovation sometimes; just look up 'patent trolls'.
But I was never even talking about innovation. You just jumped to it because that is the classic buzzword talking point that is constantly repeated everywhere. 'Develop better alternatives' doesn't have to be 'innovation'. We have the technology already, we've had it for decades. Trains and cycle lanes = better alternatives to cars. Nuclear energy = better alternative to fossil fuels.
Market capture exists everywhere, in every economic system.
Sure, this might be the case for every existing economic system. I believe we need to develop something new. Just like modern Capitalism was inconceivable to someone living in the Feudal era, a new system might be inconceivable for us right now. But it is imperative we try.
European style houses won't save anyone from extreme heat
Europe has had plenty of fatal heatwaves in the past.
Saudi Arabia has 'proven' whatever it has proven through insane levels of draconian state intervention in everything, a lot of oil rents, and using imported slave labour.
https://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/saudiarabia0708/5.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_workers_in_Saudi_Arabia?wprov=sfla1
Hardly a model for anyone to follow.
btw they do store a lot of their money in vaults where it doesnt benefit the economy at all.
This is in the form of expensive art that stays in containers in tax-free zones, and offshore accounts in tax havens.
Please educate yourself.
https://archive-yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/how-wealthy-sell-treasures-tax-free
https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2017/09/7-charts-show-how-rich-hide-their-cash
Have you considered that this too might be an 'experiment'?
Defenders of monarchy and the divine right of kings used to argue the exact same thing - that we tried democracy before and it failed in the Roman Republic and Ancient Greece - so clearly feudal monarchy is the best, right?
Yet here we are, experimenting again.
Why is this joke of a system the ideal? It doesn't produce innovation - most of the stuff that led to the internet and modern computing came out of DARPA and various govt funded universities. All of our space advancements were from state-run NASA and the Soviet space programme. The wealthy CEO types only start 'innovating' after taxpayers fund most of the R&D. Same with medical advancements, material science, physics - almost every single positive innovation has come from state-run, taxpayer-funded, or non-profit institutions.
Maybe try reading a little bit more about all this innovation you seem so fond of:
https://academic.oup.com/ser/article/7/3/459/1693191
https://demos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/files/Entrepreneurial_State_-_web.pdf
I appreciate you trying to answer a question in good faith, but you're conflating 'liberal' with 'vaguely left-leaning', and none of what you've said makes any sense outside of current US political 'discourse' where 'Liberal' means 'slightly left-wing'.
What you describe as liberal economics is closer to Keynsianism or Social Democracy.
In economics, the 'Liberal' school of thought is generally against regulation and interference in the market, seeing it as being 'self-regulating'. In economic terms, Reagan and Thatcher were Liberals - hence them being associated with 'Neoliberalism'.
The whole thing you said about Capitalism tending towards monopoly is actually a very Marxist/Socialist idea - Liberal economic theory tends to argue that monopolies form because of government and that they wouldn't occur in a truly free market (although its more nuanced than that, there's major disagreements over 'Natural Monopolies' etc. within the Liberal school). Source: look up any Liberal economist/thinker and their view on monopolies. E.g Friedman, J.S Mill.
Capitalism being an economic system doesn't make it apolitical. 'In theory' Liberalism and Capitalism are very very closely intertwined, it's not implicit, it's absolutely explicit if you read any Liberal political or economic theory.
Economics is inherently political.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neoliberalism/#Libe Sections 3 and 4 of this are a decent starting point.
Also the idea of slightly changing our voting systems as the way to drive change is quite hilarious. Sure, moving away from FPTP would probably help a bit, but it's not like countries with other systems are doing fine. These issues are more fundamental. And historically, fundamental change has never occured through small technical adjustments to political systems.
We should crowdfund some Lemmy ads
All the actual journalism getting paywalled probably isn't great for social/political discourse and our general grip on reality.
Like tears in rain
"Tell ~~Ea-nasir~~ spez: Nanni sends the following message: When you came, you said to me as follows : “I will give Gimil-Sin (when he comes) fine quality ~~copper ingots~~ shitposts.” You left then but you did not do what you promised me. You put ~~ingots~~ shitposts which were not good before my messenger (Sit-Sin) and said: “If you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away!” What do you take me for, that you treat somebody like me with such contempt? I have sent as messengers gentlemen like ourselves to collect the bag with my ~~money~~ memes (deposited with you) but you have treated me with contempt by sending them back to me empty-handed several times, and that through ~~enemy~~ advertiser territory. Is there anyone among the merchants who trade with Telmun who has treated me in this way? You alone treat my messenger with contempt! On account of that one mina of ~~silver~~ data which I owe(?) you, you feel free to speak in such a way, while I have given to the palace on your behalf 1,080 pounds of ~~copper~~ data, and umi-abum has likewise given 1,080 pounds of ~~copper~~ data, apart from what we both have had written on a sealed tablet to be kept in the temple of Samas. How have you treated me for that ~~copper~~ data? You have withheld my ~~money~~ meme bag from me in enemy territory; it is now up to you to restore it to me in full. Take cognizance that (from now on) I will not accept here any ~~copper~~ platform from you. I shall (from now on) select and take the ~~ingots~~ instances individually in my own yard, and I shall exercise against you my right of rejection because you have treated me with contempt.”
Same; I've been trying to disengage from anything big tech related recently, not just social media, even Amazon etc. Can't take it anymore. It's all so blatantly exploitative and fucked up. Cancelling subscriptions feels good; hope I stick to it. Can't shake YouTube yet though, need my Rossmann fix. Hopefully we can figure out a viable FOSS alternative; tried PeerTube but it doesn't quite do it just yet.
The Internet can still be a beautiful positive thing.
BezoSpez Zuck-Musk can fuck off.
Feel you with being unable to keep up. The thing is, most of the outrage is artificial; have to remember the incentive structures of media etc.
If its any consolation, I reckon the average person being unable to keep up with stuff during periods of rapid change has always been the case historically. Most conversations, discourse, etc that have shaped society have been either among small groups of powerful people motivated by various interests, or stuff like pamphlets, polemics nailed to church doors, talking points, buzz words. This riles people up and is effective at getting stuff done but not effective at all at having an actual conversation. So the average person just gets swept up in the tide.
I am not an expert in political history by any means but I can't think of a single example in which people just talked to eachother to decide the direction of society. Seems like it has always been 'waves' or 'trends' or 'forces' and then 'backlashes' driving things. Historical developments and transformative change seems to just 'happen' and suddenly you live in a fundamentally different world.
Like, did we ever have a conversation, as 'a society' (if it can even be considered a singular entity) which resulted in the decision to put big tech corps in charge of running the main platforms we use to communicate with eachother?
Of course not; it's like we woke up one day and suddenly heads of state are issuing diplomatic communications via goddamn Twitter so we all just use that now. Again, not a historian, but I think it was a similar thing with major historical shifts like industrialisation etc.
And then we get hit by the consequences, and are totally unprepared, as if they were unexpected. A small group of random people having a conversation over drinks could have anticipated pretty much every single issue we now have with big tech running our social platforms, and probably could have anticipated many of the pitfalls of industrialisation or globalisation (not saying these don't have positives; but we're dealing with the pitfalls now so it is what it is).
I think this kind of approach to discourse and societal decisionmaking is very vulnerable to being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information in the modern world.
I recently read 'The Word for World is Forest' by Ursula Le Guin, and am reminded of this part in the introduction: "They have built a system of inter-personal relations which, in the field of psychology, is perhaps on a level with our attainments in such areas as television and nuclear physics." (Context: the Senoi people of Malaysia).
We haven't developed our 'social technology'; we're operating on the same kinds of social tech in the past, which is simply not equipped to deal with a connected globalised world. I think this extends to stuff like academia and journalism. We desperately need an approach to making sense of the world in a calm and thoughtful manner; but since our social tech can't really facilitate that, we're doing... whatever it is we're doing rn.
And coming back to capitalist incentive structures: inflammatory stuff generates more engagement, ad revenue etc.
I am holding out hope that smaller, FOSS alternatives which do not have such incentives will lead to better conversations
This is entirely my observation but the conversations I've seen on this platform seem more like actual conversations vs the almost-artificial 'talking past eachother instead of talking to eachother' I used to see on Reddit and Twitter.
Sorry for the ramble. My first post on any public-facing online thing since I quit posting on random forums like 15 years ago. I always lurked on Twitter and Reddit but feared that actually posting and/or getting into arguments would drive me insane so avoided it. Hello everyone; let's be humane to eachother and enjoy eachother's company. There's enough alienation in the world as it is. Thanks for reading to whoever is still reading.
Consider this: modern capitalism was pretty much inconceivable to people living in the feudal era. In the same way, it is possible that the system we need is inconceivable to us at the moment. Critiquing capitalism and advocating for a move away from it is still useful.
There are plenty of things that haven't been tried aside from small-scale examples: