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Comment by laughfactory | Hacker News Reader

It's not just video games either. Add Netflix and social media, and soon, VR, to the equation, and it's pretty clear that the game of life offers insufficient rewards relative to one's efforts. I don't believe we ended up here due to some grand conspiracy, but I do think that the top 1% have gotten so skilled at trapping wealth and therefore opportunity that it's really screwing over everyone else. Even as a relatively successful adult who doesn't game (no time for it, and I avoid things I know are addictive) I felt the game is rigged. Most of us have gotten to the point that we literally never expect to retire (though we will literally run into some physical constraints at some point when our bodies and minds begin to fail us). So we grind through work, pay our bills, and hope to God we don't get cancer or Alzheimer's. When life seems so unrewarding, it's unsurprising that many seek refuge in games and other entertainment (Netflix, social media, news feeds, etc)...

Any way you slice it this is not going to end well. Essentially we're in a Great Depression of an entirely new sort.

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One thing that's great about gaming as an addiction: it's very inexpensive. This has been changing for the worse with all the pay to win stuff, but there's still a fair amount of cheap gaming out there. With a gaming addiction, never leaving the house and a minimal food budget I wonder how much the average gamer subsists on each month.

I had a friend whose brother would go to work and come home and play video games every day. That was literally it. Work, pay rent, game, eat sleep. I watched him repeat this cycle when we were hanging out. He didn't even have much to say most days.

The hikomori in Japan are already adopting this terminal frugality en masse.

*hikikomori

> One thing that's great about gaming as an addiction: it's very inexpensive.

It can be extremely expensive in opportunity costs, unfortunately.

As with all addictions.

Well, it depends. Some other addictions, while they may consume parts of you, can on balance be more contained (if they don't kill you first). Video games, on the other hand, are sure to eat away inordinate amounts of that which you can never get back: time.

I would propose two counter conjectures: 1. There is no you. 2. There is no time.

Is a addict really that much worser off? At the end, all that remains of life, is sugar encoded eletricity in a jelly-fish on a walking sausage. They dont make copies of themselves though.

My grandfather had a collague, who build a fast-breeder reactor in germany. Then the political climate changed and the reactor- brand new was deconstructed, and the whole thing reverted to a grass-farmland.

Noting but memorys to show for it.

all these moments will be lost in time.

Like tears In the rain

The reason it's seen as depressing is that game addicts are usually celibate

Sorry. But that is precisely the point of opportunity costs.

Building that reactor isn't just a job. That kind of a job generally has a future/career. You would learn so many things on the way you will likely land a better job sooner or later.

One of things that I keep saying to my younger cousins that pretty much everything I built at the start of my career in programming doesn't exist now.

All that remains is me, and along the way I've gathered skills.

Video games don't give you this.

That assumes that the person has opportunities they're giving up. If they don't have them, or can't see that they have them, it's not nearly so expensive to them.

(Belief that you have opportunities, and motivation to take them, is very valuable. You can't just tell people this though, humans don't work like that)

This is one of the reasons I believe basic income won't result in masses of people 'dropping out' of society. People will seek real fulfillment given the resources.

I'm afraid people will just drop out and get high. That's what people on disability or social security are doing now.

It can actually be extremely expensive if you are addicted to free to play games. There is literally no upper limit on how much you can spend in those games.

It's like the world is catching up to Japan and its problems: slow growth, deep government debt, ballooning social entitlement spending, and un/under-employed youth.

This is just like the Japanese Neets.

I've been predicting "planet Japan" for years due to slowing population growth, resource constraints, and market saturation.

Well at least I can look forward to better customer service and lower crime rates.

You need to have the cultural homogeneity for that.

I have to disagree. Apart from maybe post WW2 in America, the average person has always had to work much harder than the elite. There were sweatshops, Kings, slavery, and colonialism. If we look at American now, even with all of its issues, it is much better for the middle and lower class than it was 100 years ago.

Not sure how you come to that conclusion when the middle class is almost gone in this country.

Not quite: https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2930990/D...

Compared to 1917? The middle class was in its infancy at that point. Workers were still fighting for basic safety protections and one day off per week.

"I felt the game is rigged", you nailed it in this simple phrase.

In fact http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-16/new-york-assemblyma...

They ( the oligarchs through their politicians ) change the rules every day, but they say to us that the system is fair. Obviously it is lapalissian that the system isn't fair at all but it is massively rigged.

In the past centuries people would have revolted, now they imprison themselves in the virtual world.

Yeah, you don't see them in the streets, they're "out of sight, out of mind". Even if they understood what happened to them, they wouldn't have the confidence to do anything about it. The brilliance of this terrible system is that it makes the victims accept the full the responsibility of their failed lives upon themselves.

It's natural selection. People who need to feel short term rewards in their lives will be wiped out from the gene pool. People who can operate without any rewards (contentment/happiness) in their lives; basically, people who seek status over happiness will strive.

The Occupy protests around the world? Arab spring? 2011 UK riots? Black lives matter?

There's a definite undercurrent that politicians are barely keeping a lid on, the latest manifestations being Brexit and Trump.

the only way they keep the ongoing strife from really effecting the political system is by keeping the left and right wings fighting each other over often minor disagreements.

And a new iPhone every year

consumerism is just giving the people what they want. It might be distracting, but just because that's what people want to do - chat to friends, play games, buy fashionable clothes etc. Politics is where the manipulation happens.

Unfortunately, the disagreements are not minor anymore, as you can see on the social networks and in the streets of the USA.

many of the disagreements are being given hyperbolic treatment to the point where all Trump supporters are Nazis and liberals are all SJWs. That's not an environment that's conducive to talking about why e.g. the immigration ban is too far in defense of national security. It just becomes another "us vs them" black-and-white situation that can drive nothing but division.

It's the greater problem of the anti-science sentiment of the general public.

Even some of my brighter & more successful friends lack the self-awareness to have a constructive dialogue with the other side without "feelz" getting in the way of "realz". It doesn't help that none of them are policy experts or economists, but there it is.

I fully agree that facts must supersede feelings, but that doesn't mean that one has to be a policy expert or economist -- that's yet another rigging of the system.

You don't have to have studied very specific disciplines to be suspicous about the fact that your parents went casually to work at offices without ever "disrupting markets" or "moving forward and breaking things" and yet they had 2 cars, villa at the sea, and 2 apartments. How? By showing up at work and working times less than you or me.

While you're right in those being reactions to a (correctly) perceived helplessness, have those things actually changed anything? I personally subscribe to Adam Curtis' argument [0] - from his works like Hypernormalisation and Oh Dearism - that they haven't changed anything fundamentally.

Sure, Brexit and Trump have had an effect, but are people truly better off? For all Trump's talk (whether you see that as positive or negative), I think we're seeing that even he's struggling against the whole system. And Brexit isn't really doing what anybody wants at the moment.

[0] Adam Curtis seems to come up regularly here on HN, for good reason. I can't believe it hasn't yet in this thread, but I'm happy to be the first. I strongly recommend all of Adam Curtis' work: https://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/

Large societal changes are fairly rare events. Personally I think the next stage is a new form of worker revolt, some new spin on Unions or Communism, the next Marx has yet to write his magnum opus yet though. Those words are still viewed as bad in the West, so it will need new terminology too.

And to be clear, I don't ascribe to communism or anything, I'm simply speculating that some sort of new ideology, with a focus on the common person, will arise in the next 50 years to direct and fuel the next revolt. You'll know it when you see it.

Occupy and Black Lives Matter[1] have deep ideological differences to Tea Party[2] and Donald Trump. Do not trust those who classify all of those as the same kind of civil uprising.

[1] https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/08/02/black-lives-matter-p...

[2] https://www.teaparty.org/about-us/

Yes they are different. But in the ways they are similar is that they are expressing a frustration at the current status quo.

Isn't every protest about doing exactly that?

Well the clue is in the name, protest. It's not a gathering, or a congregation.

Apples, oranges, and grapes have deep biological differences. Do not trust those who classify all of those as the same kind of fruit.

Pushed enough they will crack, but our new masters know this, so they keep us as teetering on the edge as possible. I like Mark Blyths comment on the matter... The Hamptons, Long Islands is low lying and provides very little defence when the angry masses come for your blood.

as a native of the area, i had to chuckle a bit when i read your comment!

just don't invade the hamptons by car. there's only one real road in, and it is only one lane each way. traffic routinely piles up on it ^.^

and unless you are invading on memorial day, july 4th, a saturday in july/august, or labor day, the richest of the rich probably will be in NYC instead!!

Hmm. Labor Day would be rather symbolic…

This is sounding eerily similar to Fahrenheit 451.

Uh? Can't find the similarities.

It's already not ending well. A seemingly sizable and growing fraction of these disaffected largely male unemployed or under-employed people are embracing full-blown fascism and other equally unhinged ideologies. Look into the intersection between online alt-right / neo-Nazi trolldom and the gamer/4chan/etc. orbit.

Humans don't like to live in zoos and alternate realities are ultimately unfulfilling.

I agree about your causal analysis too: the top of the pyramid have become so good at locking down wealth and power that they're closing the world down for everyone else. If this continues it will end very badly. We have nuclear weapons, drones, AI, and total surveillance, all of which are waiting for a truly unhinged demagogue to come to power.

World War III. Now there's a way to get out from under your student loans.

World war 3 is the dream for the disenfranchised.

The reality is more like dystopia and control/distraction of the average user, packaged as good deals/market solutions to help you get ahead.

>The reality is more like dystopia and control/distraction of the average user, packaged as good deals/market solutions to help you get ahead.

That's the status quo, sure. But nothing says that will remain stable.

The trick is to stop caring about the 1%. There isn't limited wealth or happiness. I promise if you plan it out it's completely possible to retire with dignity and people are doing it all the time.

I promise if you plan it out it's completely possible to retire with dignity and people are doing it all the time

Unless, of course your planning counts on government sponsored health insurance or even Social Security since in today's political climate, there's no guarantee that either will be around for your retirement.

Pensions are the first to go. They already are in many places. Taxpayers will be unable to bail them out. If you think being 20 with a shitty job is bad then consider being 65 with no savings or income whatsoever.

If you're 65 and have no savings or income you really lived your life wrong.

I mean, even if you bought a house at 35 and just made minimum payments, at least that would be paid off. And I'm sure taxes could be paid by renting out one room..

This thread is in the context of a major economic downturn. Many @ 65 are not set up as defensively to survive one.

Counters to your example would be modern day Detroit, modern day Greece, and the Weimar Republic.

> being 65 with no savings or income whatsoever.

I'm watching this happen to my own and friends' parents. Pensions gutted in industries / jobs that are dying or dead and nest eggs drying up very quickly to pay for health insurance and living costs. Most of these people did everything "right" that was within their means when it came to planning ahead and they are fucked.

If they were in an even lower economic rung of society, I would imagine what they are experiencing would be much worse. As in homelessness, malnutrition and death from easily treatable illnesses.

This is not something anyone wants for their future.

Agreed. Don't count on government sponsored health insurance or Social Security.

Since we're talking about it in gamer terms, the 1% are the hardcore raiders. They have all the best gear you'll never have, they have heaps of gold from selling exclusive raid drops, they're untouchable unless you're lucky, well connected, AND dedicate your life to the game.

Don't let the mere fact of their existence stop you from enjoying yourself.

Right, if only they'd stop ganking us when we just try to mine for ore...

They outlawed that after the middle ages. Now they're the ones buying ore off the auction house!

Too bad it isn't like eve.

Definitely - people are doing it all the time: based on investments and savings made before the current market regime and rules.

Its not going to be the same for you and most people on HN today.

> I do think that the top 1% have gotten so skilled at trapping wealth and therefore opportunity that it's really screwing over everyone else.

This is well put and I would only add that the wealth trapping is occurring in a viral way, which means there should be some type of inoculation for the more harmful effects of it.

This is a particularly ironic comment on HackerNews. While there indeed is a depression underway (as has been the case every 50-80 years in recorded history), opportunities have accrued to tech in an unprecedented fashion. Anybody can learn to code in their bedroom and open up options that require no connections or wealth (e.g. freelancing online). Combine that with unprecedented global mobility, and all of a sudden being an American programmer living and working in South America, Eastern Europe, SouthEast Asia etc means life is better than its ever been in history. Sorry man - I'm an immigrant to the US, and this strikes me as a very classic first-world-problems type sentiment.

I think this is the most cogent synthesis of these issues that I've read.

https://newleftreview.org/II/87/wolfgang-streeck-how-will-ca...

I've been thinking about gradients in evolution, what directions are fruitful for an organism to evolve in. The acceleration in intelligence in our line would seem to require an ongoing survival-advantage gradient for intelligence (that somehow, wasn't available to other apes...).

It also relates to the brain-body ratio for species, because investing in intelligence works for them - it says something about that species' environment/niche, and not just the species itself.

If games now provide the best gradient of reward for effort...

Another solution is to change the problem: what if games did provide a survival or reproductive advantage? Quite possibly, social media already is, being better connected has long been an advantage ("it's who you know, not what you know").

I doubt we're more intelligent than apes. We just have some specialized language machinery that allowed a new parasitic species (memes) to evolve on top of us. We're just apes with a "copy" button in our brains. We look intelligent, but that's just because we're being farmed by memes.

The memes aren't smart either, but the 2-layer system is smarter than any 1-layer system.

Our brains are much larger than apes' (IIRC about 4x), but survival advantage based on memes could well have provided the gradient. BTW yes, I have read The Selfish Gene, where Dawkins coined the term and concept.

But you and Dawkins.. oh yes, you're much more intelligent than apes..

> I don't believe we ended up here due to some grand conspiracy,

> but I do think that the top 1% have gotten so skilled at trapping wealth and therefore opportunity that it's really screwing over everyone else.

I've got news people: the top 1% is not forcing you to watch Netflix, consume social media, or strap a VR headset on.

We live in a generation absolutely devoid of personal responsibility. And it's why ideas that would easily be dismissed as Marxist (which masquerade as "post-modern") 30+ years ago are on the rise today.

Oh, you're just oppressed.

Economic growth is over, we have to redistribute things now.

It's not you're fault that you're addicted. Here, take this medication every day.

Where's the hard work in today's generation? Where's the personal responsibility? Where's the discipline? Where's the can-do attitude?

And let's get straight-to-the-point on the article in question. Nobody cares about men whining. It's just reality. Call it politically incorrect, whatever. If you're a man and don't work to get what you think you deserve, you won't get it. Instead, there's just gonna be more single women and more jobs available for those that do choose to compete.

I completely agree with this.

My immediate family and I came from having next to nothing. We busted ass and have money now. We aren't rich, but we're enjoying life in ways we couldn't growing up.

If we, instead, believed the rhetoric that life is screwed unless you came out of a "lucky vagina," we would still be broke, in Brooklyn, trying to make ends meet, and I would be another socially-inept dude that spends way too much time on games and "computers."

It's not just us either. I graduated with a bunch of people who came from similar situations and are now doing great.

Life is what you make of it.

It is too easy for people who have "made it" to say this. I have kind of made it too, so I could have the same attitude. The problem however is that anecdotes don't proof a point. You have to look at numbers. Numbers say that the majority of Americans are losing purchasing power year after year, and there are fewer middle class jobs. Somehow, the 1% have more privileges each passing day, they pay close to nothing in taxes and corporations can dodge taxes any way they want. As a result, there is less money to invest in people, and the same pattern is repeating itself in most countries around the world (globalization, remember).

Where do you think rich people put their wealth? A savings account?

Caymans and investments. Most of those geared for quick and high returns, not sustainability, improving society or long term job creation.

I would argue that public securities and the stock market is exactly what provides sustainability and long term job creation.

Wrong. The stock market doesn't care about job creation. They care about wealth creation, which is mostly concentrated in the hands of a few. In fact, wall street loves when firms lay off workers. If every firm out there laid off 50% or their workers the price of stocks would greatly increase, because then more money would go directly to the hands of shareholders.

Some do

Who are they going to invest the money they have in though? People who play computer games and watch Netflix all day? Probably not hey. If you want any chance you're going to have to do something. At least try something.

Enough with this. People who have money are not investing in productive things. They are mostly investing in hedge funds to play the market for the short term as a lottery, or in merger/acquisitions, which kills more jobs than creates. They also put money in assets like real estate that have their prices inflated because of the big rise in money looking for safe investments. When investors do something productive, it is just high technology that kills more jobs than it creates. In other words, the idea that wealthy people create jobs is a myth that is patently wrong in our times.

alternate theory. people who have money are desperately looking for things with potential for big returns. if you are one of those things or create one of those things there is more money looking for you than has ever looked for anyone in the history of the world.

i.e., they're looking for something that will concentrate wealth in their hands even more. This just exemplifies my point.

even if they were investing specifically for job creation, it would be less efficient than just redistributing the wealth and increasing the demand for products which would directly lead to job growth.

in other words, a restaurant owner isnt going to hire new employees unless hes got more customers, it doesnt matter how much 'investment' you give them, what creates job is demand.

Confirmation bias?

Just because it worked for you, doesn't mean there aren't a thousand people who tried and failed at exactly the same thing.

Your chances are definitely higher than zero if you try, but unfortunately it's no guarantee that you'll succeed.

There is no guarantee for anything. That is not a reason not to try.

There is literally nothing better to do with your life than try. So just try.

this comment is what a lifetime of philosophical thought, traveling, psychedelics, meditation, and experimentation has led me to as well.

"there is literally nothing better to do with your life than try. so just try."

The issue though is that a lot of the people mentioned in the original article don't think trying is worthwhile. So advice to "just try" is always going to fall short.

As advice it also ignores the structural issues that make trying easier and harder for various people. One way of encouraging people to try is to break down the real barriers that exists and make it harder for them than others.

This is the same kind of "advice" depressed people get. "Have you tried getting better"? "You just need to be happy". "Try my coping mechanism". "See a standup comedian". "Just try".

I hope I don't have to go through all the reasons this is fundamentally disconnected from the problem described in the article now.

What's your alternative?

Professional therapy.

what if that doesn't work?

I'm not prepared for this hypothetical, who knows what I would do, I guess I might even launch a startup.

Thanks, but this gives me nothing actionable. What am I supposed to do with this? Just be depressed?

Your advice is for a problem which is different from that in the article and the larger Macro scenario.

People ARE trying. Its not really a good strategy as it gets no where. Its only a better strategy than not trying, as not trying gets you to being a depressing statistic, like joblessness in erstwhile manufacturing hubs.

So what's the alternative? Give up and cry before even trying?

Knowing that you might fail and flame out is the definiton of risk; you do it because the upside is worth it

Obviously the people who drop out of the labor force don't think the upside is worth it.

Otherwise they'd be out there, looking for work. Instead of dismissing the possibility that they act in their rational self interest, perhaps you can study how the actual risk/reward ratio evolved for these people over the course of the last few decades.

But that would be quite a bit harder than giving self-help advice on the internets.

Okay, but you still haven't presented me with an alternative.

The point is you need to qualify by trying first.

"There is no point in trying, because you will fail" kind of attitude prevents you from trying at the first place.

There is one reason to be assured of failure, which is by doing nothing at all.

Same. Neither parents went to college. I went to college completely on the government's dime because my EFC was $0.

The only thing I had to do to get free grants was to show my parents didn't have money.

Their poverty became an enormous benefit for me when applying to college and receiving financial aid. It's an incredible and amazing country we live in.

You are mostly correct. But IMO you miss something very important -- "busting ass" has zero correlation to "we have money now".

I busted my ass as a obedient worker bee for 15 years and now (at 37 years old) all I have are 4 debts and a bit of tech. No own apartment/house, no savings, no security of any kind. If I lose my job tomorrow, I am as good as homeless. Oh, and I have health problems for which I can't pay (having teeth with holes in them isn't fixed by home remedies, before you try that).

I am glad it worked for you. You have to understand what you say is a confirmation bias however.

Will I ever stop trying? No. I am changing approach drastically as I am typing this, changing the way I work and communicate with people, focusing more on what the business needs are instead of negotiating for meager salaries that barely cover my huge monthly expenses and food. I'll succeed eventually, simply because people who don't give up + change their way of doing things are inevitably bound to succeed. But again, don't try to push the message of "work hard and it will work out". No it won't, otherwise now my mother would have had respectable pension and wouldn't rely on me for shelter and food.

Marxism should never be "easily dismissed". It should be respected and fought for. The problem is that we're afraid to go out and actually fight the Permanent Revolution; because we've been cowed by those who currently hold the power.

You're right, we've never had Real Marxism (TM), we just have to try a little harder next time.

> Capitalism (according to Marxist theory) can no longer sustain the living standards of the population due to its need to compensate for falling rates of profit by driving down wages, cutting social benefits and pursuing military aggression. The socialist system would succeed capitalism as humanity's mode of production through workers' revolution.

Do they mean that same capitalism that brings >1,000,000 Chinese people out poverty every month? Did Mao not try hard enough?

Newsflash, folks: we've had a few workers' revolutions. They're not all they're cracked up to be. Try talking to someone who lived through one of them.

Revolutions have failed in many ways, but they have an upside: putting pressure on the elite to do something in order to maintain what they have (and to keep their heads glued to the body). Why do you think we have working rights around the world nowadays? Because a bunch of crazy people decided to fight against the prevailing status in the beginning of XX century, and even run a revolution if necessary. Nowadays people are too afraid of doing anything, this is the perfect scenario for the downward social spiral that we're seeing in the XXI century.

> Do they mean that same capitalism that brings >1,000,000 Chinese people out poverty every month?

No, they mean the dominant economic system of the developed West in the mid-19th through early-20th century (since replaced in the developed west by the modern mixed economy which is an unstable form with a danger of reverting back to capitalism because it retains central features of capitalism.)

What China has is a transitional form that is somewhere on the map between totalitarian centralization through a kind of neofeudalism (that relates to classical feudalism in the same what that Leninist/Stalinist/Maoist totalitarianism relates to monarchic absolutism) to something like capitalism. Which is certainly progress, just as Marx recognized that the transition from.feudalism to the kind of capitalism he and other contemporary socialist critiqued was progress.

But that it is progress from something worse earlier doesn't make it the ideal end state.

> Did Mao not try hard enough?

Mao tried quite hard at completely the wrong thing. Leninism and it's descendants abandoned key tenants of Marxism to create something that either (in the overly generous view) they thought could work in very different conditions than Marx addressed or (in the more cynical view) as served as convenient propaganda for authoritarian populism in the societies in which they operated.

A word of advice: avoid the word "Marxism" like a plague. If you believe there are some good ideas hidden in it, present those ideas directly, without assigning historical credit to anyone.

I'm not making the case that Marxism had good ideas here, I'm making the case that Marxism had ideas that led to change in the direction it seems, without collapse, in the places where actual Marxism is a thing, and that the collapsed systems that called themselves Marxist shared a common deviation from Marxism on fundamental points stemming from their shared point of departure, Leninism.

Also, treating Marxism the way you suggest empowers the people who will use association with Marxism (which whether or not people who think Marxism had good ideas avoid the name, people who don't can still draw the connections) as an attack against an idea, leveraging the failure of Leninist societies to suggest that anything associated with Marxism is bad. So, no, I'll continue to point out that that involves not only the ad hominem fallacy, but also the fallacy of equivocation.

Why? Marxism refers to the work of Marx and Engels, who are forefathers of the criticism of capitalism (along with other 18th century anarchists and socialists). I see no reason to get rid of the term or use other terms; I base my reasoning of Marx's work and Engels's formulations and I'll be sure to give the great men their credit.

That kind of language policing is ridiculous. The words mean what they mean. If there is some taboo around a word like Marxism or feminism or islamism, that doesn't mean we need new words, it means there is resistance to the ideas. Over time the words depoliticize slightly and can be used freely again.

Giving in to people who are trying to cloud the meaning of words is the linguistic equivalent to negotiating with highjackers. You can do it, but you just make the job easier for the next highjacker.

I know it's a scary moment, where it feels like words have lost their meaning and insanity reigns, but that's just the zeitgeist. Words still mean things and that still had power.

>Do they mean that same capitalism that brings >1,000,000 Chinese people out poverty every month?

The idea that by pointing to some successes, it justifies the whole system of appropriating labour for profit is utterly falacious and false. I hope you can see that it's not sound reasoning.

A system can have merits; Marx was very clear that Capitalism has various merits, especially over its predecessors. His idea was that there is a further reachable goal. You have made no effort to dismiss this other than by saying "what we have now is pretty ok".

>Try talking to someone who lived through one of them.

Why would their experience be relevant to reformulations in theory? To be clear, I'm not advocating for Soviet-style Communism.

"It should be respected and fought for. "

Sorry, 100 million dead bodies is more than enough to convince me that Marxism doesn't work.

If you think Leninism is Marxism, you are a dupe of Leninist propaganda.

Ah, yes. "No true Scotsman".

Nope, not going to play that.

Edit:

At this stage, enough so-called "Marxist" governments have descended into slavery, starvation, and mass murder that the burden of proof should lie on those who advocate such governments, and that burden should be heavy indeed.

But nope, it's always "but that wasn't REAL Marxism".

After a century of trying, with dozens of attempts, it is quite clear that either those hellhole governments are "real Marxism" or, conversely, that "real Marxism" does not and cannot exist.

Otherwise someone would've gotten it right by now.

Leninism directly reverses fundamental premises of Marxism, including the required initial conditions and path. It's not Marxism.

There has been real Marxism, though it's never been absolutely dominant in any society. Particularly, it has been a key driving force in replacing the system of Capitalism that 19th Century socialists identified and critiqued with the substantially different modern mixed economy as the dominant economic form of advanced societies, even though Marxists would claim that as far from a complete success, as the modern mixed economy is far from their desired end state.

> Ah, yes. "No true Scotsman".

Refusing to back up certain or all interpretations of an idea by no means amounts to NTS.

You're making a fallacy by saying that these problems you mention are core to Marxist thought. Modern Marxist philosophers are almost dedicated to finding flaws in 20th century Marxist implementations, and doing research on other models such as anarchism, post-left anarchism and technocracy.

Dismissing this research as "lol no true scotsman, not playing that" is incredibly ignorant and facile.

"You're making a fallacy by saying that these problems you mention are core to Marxist thought."

Nope. I recognize that "Marxist thought" doesn't specifically advocate such things.

Nonetheless, those things always happen.

So far the scorecard is about Murderous Hellhole: 100, Utopia:0.

Usually one only needs to be burned once or twice before deciding that touching a hot stove is a bad idea, even if that glowing burner does look really pretty.

I don't think they must necessarily "always happen"; capitalism is much more developed now, much more advanced, and the conditions for revolution are more pertinent. I think you should move out of thinking of the way hitherto "Communist" states have been thought of. If you think that the kind of society Communism wants to acheive is desirable, I would also suggest that you help research and develop ideas for how to reach it.

You may be interested in anarchist writers, or Murray Bookchin.

I sometimes wonder if there are Neo-Nazis out there who argue that Hitlers regime was not real National Socialism.

The "interesting" thing about capitalism is that it kills millions of people every year and people defending it don't need to say that this isn't real capitalism. It is. And it made it common to die, kill and fight wars for money and resources.

> The "interesting" thing about capitalism is that it kills millions of people every year and people defending it don't need to say that this isn't real capitalism.

Actually, defenders of capitalism, when confronted with problems attributed to it, frequently argue that the problems are "the State" or "crony capitalism", and that the problems would not exist with "real capitalism".

Of course, both the State and cronyism are features of the system for which the name "capitalism" was coined by its critics, but that doesn't stop the defenders of capitalism for saying that those are separate and opposed things to "real capitalism".

> And it made it common to die, kill and fight wars for money and resources.

That was common long before capitalism.

The two most murderous regimes in history have both been socialist ones. Capitalism has proven itself to be less deadly and more prosperous than both socialism and feudalism (which I assume you must be referring to with your "it made it common...", as if there was some idealistic pre-capitalist society to emulate).

>Sorry, 100 million dead bodies is more than enough to convince me that Marxism doesn't work.

Where did Marx and Engels write about 100M dead bodies?

Where did the people who invented thalidomide write about deformed babies?

Sorry, not seeing your point here.

If Very Bad Things happen every time a particular idea is put into practice, it's a bad idea, regardless of whether the Very Bad Things were explicitly mentioned when the idea was put forth.

> Where did Marx and Engels write about 100M dead bodies?

More to the point, where did Marx and Engels write about narrow vanguardism instead of broad class consciousness, bypassing capitalism rather than moving forward from it, or any of the other central points of Leninism, which (and not Marxism) is the common ideology shared by the people responsible for those 100 million dead bodies?

The only people trying to put Marxism, rather than Leninism, into effect have been in developed capitalist (and now, in part due to their efforts, post-capitalist mixed) economies.

This may be new to your information bubble but have you ever read about working poor phenomenon?

Your comment is perfect example of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error

fundamental attribution error is a fancy way to tell someone they are self projecting, so why didn't you just say that? also you might have had disadvantages in life so you may be seeing as everyone else being disadvantaged to, the very thing you identified hes thinking with.

The reality is people are taking advantage of the generosity we have in our society and people who grow up comfortably will never know how to see someone below their standard of living as a leech but instead as oppressed. Redistributing wealth more and more creates less opportunity for the free market to lift people out of poverty.

>Redistributing wealth more and more creates less opportunity for the free market to lift people out of poverty.

What? No it doesnt? How do you even

Is this satire?

I should have used the word socialism instead of redistribution to make it more clear on my stance, but I didn't want to get political.

You are right though, butchering the middle and upper class with taxes then passing it around does help people out of poverty -- At the cost of making our future generations poorer, happens every time through out history. I am heavily against government welfare. For markets to survive it need competition, not cooperation through government bureaucracy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e50fQLyebI

> Where's the hard work in today's generation? Where's the personal responsibility? Where's the discipline? Where's the can-do attitude?

Look out your window it's everywhere.

> and soon, VR, to the equation,

I can guarantee you that VR will never be part of the equation.

There are far too many safety-related user-experience problems with it.

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