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Comment by stuu99 | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately there is no freedom under capitalism mon capitan, it's part and part of private ownership. American copyright law grants companies state like powers to remove your rights and freedoms.

The only way would be to either 1) revolt against capitalism or 2) try to reform copyright law.

But as we all know the US is the most worshipful of capitalist ideology.

Software coming under copyright allows companies to remove out rights because we never got any property rights for software and games. That allows them to encrypt binaries and make computers that obey them and not us.

So you could call the FTC and launch an anti-trust complaint. https://www.ftc.gov/

Because DRM is vendor lockin when you get down to it.

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Anti-capitalism isn’t enough for you to sell as an alternative. We really don’t have a serviceable alternative ideology given the tendency for communism to fall under control of a few men same as capitalism. The Reddit subs can point out some of the problems with Capitalism but not alternatives.

At some point the only option will be to use something like an rPi with a Linux and only interact with the culture made from the next punk movement. Or, targeted violence somewhere. But where.

I think both 1 and 2 are ripe for action. The right person can explain that the assumptions we’ve been sold about capitalism no longer resemble truth and we need to change the rules so they do.

The real issue is company ownership is anti-democratic so we can't stop EA or activision from making games in fraudulent ways, so we'd need to have some ownership share over the company because it effects us politically.

There's no other way then private power being co-owned with the rest of society, aka there are certain things private individuals and companies can't engage in. That is the only explanation because corporations have state like powers at scale which all effect us. So capitalist ideology is still the root cause, there is no other alternative. AKA bobby kotick can say to his employee's "make games with drm" and the employee's must obey or be fired, that is the fundamnetal problem with capitalism in a nutshell. If someone who owns a powerful business is a giant dick there's no way to push back unless you give up the idea of owernship being in the hands of one or a small group of owners that can simply compel our obedience to their rules.

> The real issue is company ownership is anti-democratic

Wrong. Company ownership is perfectly democratic.

> need to have some ownership share over the company because it effects us politically

This happens now with share ownership.

> AKA bobby kotick can say to his employee's "make games with drm" and the employee's must obey or be fired, that is the fundamnetal problem with capitalism in a nutshell.

Every single time communism has been tried, it inevitably ends up that ultimate power rests in the hands of a few. It turns out way, way worse than capitalism, and belief that scrapping capitalism in favour of socialism (which Lenin stated is the path to communism) or jumping straight to communism, is always - always! - from either young idealistic but naive people, or believed by older people who never grew out of their earlier naive disgruntlement.

Besides which, I still believe now in my early 50's that what we have now isn't capitalism at all; it's more akin to corporatism. It's certainly not lassez-faire capitalism.

> This happens now with share ownership.

No it doesn't, you can not own shares in a company and still have it affect you. You can also own shares and have no voting rights, either.

Share ownership is, as it stands, undemocratic in the sense that there is no democratic decision making by all of those who are affected by a company. And a model where wealth decides how many votes you get isn't very democratic, either.

Interestingly, this belief is never shared by people from Europe who've actually experienced communism.

The issue in many cases is _corruption_ which will exist whatever you do (there's always a snake in the garden) so the trick is to implement the right legislation to control it and ensure freedom...

...which admittedly is easier said than done!

> Wrong. Company ownership is perfectly democratic.

It's not because a lot of shares end up owned by one of the few large ETF/pension plan administrators: in 88% of the S&P 500 companies [1], Vanguard/BlackRock/State Street together own the majority of the shares, and at least the passive ETF-held parts usually do not participate in voting which means that tiny "activist" investors now have a lot more vote percentage than they should.

Not to mention corporates with different share classes where the ones with voting rights are to a large degree privately held and the ones traded publicly do not have vote rights, such as Tesla [2].

> Every single time communism has been tried, it inevitably ends up that ultimate power rests in the hands of a few.

So where's the difference to the current situation, where those with the "ultimate powers" in society are effectively under control of their party donors? At least in communism, everyone had a right to a home to live in and to a decent employment matching his skill (see e.g. Art 24 sec. 1 of the Constitution of the former GDR [3]).

[1]: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/business-and-politic...

[2]: https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/how-elon-musk-con...

[3]: https://www.kas.de/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=9c5c691c...

Plus, I ask when did democracy get defined as “those who can pay get a say”?

Also, non-public companies exist.

This is written from a position of ignorance on European companies. There are successful midpoints between US style capitalism and communism. In Germany, for example, company boards (for large firms) have worker representation: https://www.worker-participation.eu/National-Industrial-Rela...

Heck - even functioning trade unions (not crippled as they are in the UK and US) provide a form of democratic check on individual companies.

The mistake is to paint this as a black or white choice, which tendency in the US is driven by hysteria media reporting of any policy which doesn't suit the needs of big business and rich elites.

What Marx calls socialism and what Western Europeans style as socialism aren't the same thing. Western European nations practice social democracy which developed before and independently of Marx.

When discussed without stupid names and branding, most people are open to discussing some of the ideas you are presenting. But the moment you call it socialism you are going to lose people, especially Americans. Because a lot of people have been murdered in the name of socialism.

> Western European nations practice social democracy which developed before and independently of Marx.

When we look at Germany and their universal healthcare system, it was developed in the 1880's under Otto von Bismarck and their monarchy in a direct response to the fears of a Marx-inspired socialist uprising.

A lot of what developed in Europe was inspired by Marx and socialist organizing and developments on the continent.

Maybe part of the problem is that the limited liability companies enjoy is no longer descendant on them performing a public good [1].

I'd add that we also enshrined money as equivalent to speech, effectively allowing corporations and the rich to run much of our politics [2].

[1] https://ptolemy3.medium.com/but-corporations-are-private-com...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_united

> The only way would be to either 1) revolt against capitalism or 2) try to reform copyright law.

Since (2) precludes the need for (1) and, hence, shows (1) is irrelevant to the discussion, and to do (1) would be an immense act of self harm akin to sticking one's fingers in one's eyes, repeatedly, for all time, I'll take (2), thanks.

You can go ahead but the history of the last 200 years suggest reformism doesn't work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/...

Corporations got their way every time over the last 200 years. There has never been a time where copyright was pared back in the public interest.

In the UK we got format shifting rights for a year or so, that was a minor, temporary paring back!

Until the alternative given is not dump capitalism then reformism is the only option I'll be backing, as the least worst of a sorry bunch.

> Unfortunately there is no freedom under capitalism mon capitan

If only the government prevented you and I from exchanging goods and services, all our problems would be solved, says the Communist.

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