Because capitalism is not able to regulate itself, no matter how much people say it can.
And this has been known for 150+ years and it has been written about extensively, its just not considered acceptable/appropriate knowledge. Marxists study this.
97 karma · joined September 4, 2021
And this has been known for 150+ years and it has been written about extensively, its just not considered acceptable/appropriate knowledge. Marxists study this.
What else?
Rationalism isn't any more "correct" and "proper" thinking than Christianity and Buddhism claim to espouse.
- Split a paper into three
- Waste efforts by running the same research with a slight change
- Plagiarism
- Inter-peer favors (corruption, dishonesty)
Funding/grants, journals, publishers, paper count requirements, are the true source of these behaviors.
This is what markets are when left to develop. Academia made itself game-able. You can't have truth and profits sit in the same room.
Capitalism has made a very nice chair for careerism to sit in.
It's about volume(loudness), access(to data) and exposure(visibility).
All imitations require analogous mechanisms, but that is the extent of their similarities, in syntax. Thinking requires networks of billions of neurons, and then, not only that, but words can never exist on a plane because they do not belong to a plane. Words can only be stored on a plane, they are not useful on a plane.
Because of this LLMs have the potential to discover new aspects and implications of language that will be rarely useful to us because language is not useful within a computer, it is useful in the world.
Its like seeing loosely related patterns in a picture and keep derivating on those patterns that are real, but loosely related.
LLMs are not intelligence but its fine that we use that word to describe them.
The problem is capital. Of course many people are allergic to Marx, but the dude hit the nail on the head with his critique.
The problem is not individuals, it's a system of ownership over assets. And 99% of people will use their ownership to generate profits through hiring labor. Why? Because it's easier to have other people work for you, instead of you doing the work.
This becomes extended in the digital age beyond the original form of employees generating profit from the difference between their pay and the monetary value of their work (the original Marxist definition of profit), but also to end-users generating raw material as information for the further generation of profits through the selling of information services or plain data.
Tech has workers AND users in the formula for the generation of capital.
And if we, plebs, know this, you know the industry has already crafted their bourgeois science of this info extraction mechanism.
This monetary influence has already spread over the creation of hardware as well as software. This will follow in all of the tech-realms. They will influence the organizations that create the hardware and software specs. They will influence the law to ignore these ills. They are the creators of mass-use hardware and software.
The average end-user will live in a tech prison and the state is gonna become way more invasive. Democracy is on the line like it never has been before. They WILL use your instincts against you and they will use your data against you.
Just like capitalization has taken over every aspect of modern commodity/service production, and therefore modern life, so will data-capitalization.
There was never enshittification, it was just capital.
A new world is struggling to be born; this is the time of monsters.
Capital WILL neuter all software and hardware to make their reality happen. Capital WILL make more and more invasive systems if it means a whole industry can stay alive. They can lobby, we cant. They have the money to influence, we dont. We have voices, but why would they listen to voices when they have profits?
Voting with your dollar is the biggest lie out there if you live in a monopoly system where you only get a few options or if you can't afford anything else. They are literally building digital prisons but people say its fine because we can choose the size of the cell and the color of the walls.
And people dont fight wars without weapons and rationales.
I am specifically saying that a lot of the chaos in the third world is the result of opposing global-capitalists interests in order to sustain poverty and exploitation for the sake of the first worlds' economies.
> Look at taiwan, japan, ukraine, even isreal. These little nations can leverage greater nations to fight on their behalf by using their industrial capability, even when they are surrounded by enemies.
Those are all nations developed during or after the cold war in regions of conflict. They are not independent nations that developed due to "natural" regional history. They are neocolonial experiments.
They are neo-colonies of a global capitalist hegemony centered in the "west". Taiwan developed from Formosa from the aid of western capitalist nations as a base for defense from China. Israel is the same idea in the middle east. Japan essentially the same thing. Ukraine is currently in their neocolonial war for deciding which capitalist block to align with. These are not true independent nations, they are neocolonial experiments of essentially captive economies.
All this to say: Development is not down to a type of industry alone, it is also due to an economic context. Mali does not develop because it is not allowed to develop. This is what colonialism has done in the global south, this is how they prop up western nations. With slavery, misery and exploitation.
Your analysis of the global south is also what racists use to defend racial capacity while completely ignoring history and current economic contexts.
> You are conflating voluntarism and democracy. Capitalism is voluntaristic, but democratic insofar as wealth is well-distributed.
Ok, so competition and corruption in capitalism always makes capitalism undemocratic and exploitative. This is what we see in the leading nations of the world. Working classes who get the illusion of choice in their democratic institutions.
> You vote with your dollar.
This is one of the oldest lies in the book. It's circular reasoning. If someone else's dollar defines the choices; I'm not voting with my dollar. I'm just buying what I can afford.
> I would make this tradeoff, but I wouldn't be so sure others would, in the large. There are some things that only plastics can do[...]
Nobody wants plastic in their nuts. Plastic cannot be eliminated world wide, but maybe we could stop letting producers get away with not dealing with the trash they produce.
Imagine living in a system where you're allowed to innovate and create products and not deal with the consequences. It's almost as if the system is designed by those producers. Should they be allowed to create trash and not deal with it?
Sure, that's more like bourgeois logic, the voluntarist cop-out that is capitalism.
Remember: I buy what I can afford, they make what they can profit off of.
> The economies of scale and capital costs are not a result of any specific economic system, they are often the result of the realities of production and logistics. These tradeoffs exist even within communist command economies.
You are describing why capitalism is inherently flawed and leads to more and more and more exploitation.
And just to add, command economies is the same as a planned economy. Which we have the tech to build right now. No exploitation needed, because no private profits are allowed. We literally have the tech to create an unexploitable system of production right now.
> The only difference is that in capitalism, it is voluntaristic enough that you have the ability to choose what you do with your own wealth and time. You can affect change gradually, on a small scale.
You literally dont. I literally have to create wealth for someone else in order to eat. That is the opposite of "choose what you do with your own wealth and time". And sure I could find another job, or another. But there are hard limits to choosing a job, as well as hard limits to being your own boss. We can't all be capitalists or indefinitely choose jobs. The billions of us can't be capitalists and we'd all die before we find a job with the perfect trade-offs.
The only way to reconcile this contradiction is to be a classist who truly believes that some people are just doomed to be exploited because of their inherent qualities or lack.
Voluntarism is a cop out from inherent capitalist exploitation.
> Then buy a fairphone or something. You have some options.
A person who believes that wanting a good, cheap phone requires child soldiers, child labor and abject poverty should really re-think what they are doing and promoting in the world. Just because it's far away and detached doesn't mean it isn't real. And remember, we're truly all connected.
I don't judge you for thinking this way tho. This is what the capitalists promote. They literally control the airwaves, and while there is no "soviet" style censorship there is still the actual censorship of monopoly platforms deciding what gets amplified and what doesn't.
The point of the genocide in Gaza is to erase internal resistance. To erase internal cultural, ethnic and religious ties to their enemies. Eliminate "the enemy within". This is why they are ending a peoples. Straight colonial-racist-genocide of the retro variety.
And also, I do believe it is the whole key to the middle east:
It is a colonial war "playground".
Western Capitalist Block VS Eastern Capitalist Block fight using the people middle east. It is the current global center for proxy wars. Maybe its been working as a sort of vent preventing an all-out WW3.
These world leaders just use us poor people for the profits of their capitalist class.
They are enabled into fighting by big, huge interests. They ship them weapons and rationales.
Who are the customers in the end? Western nations. They create the abject poverty, they use poor governments to exploit and enslave their own people. There is no "poverty" in the world only exploitation. All poverty is fabricated and sustained.
Why is it that Mali is one of the poorest nations on earth but is also one of the top 10 exporters of gold? How does that work?
Capitalism is not voluntarism. That is the myth of philosophical liberalism.
To say that someone who owns as much wealth as a few million people is equal to those same millions of persons who directly own nothing except credit(debt)? It's a myth.
Voluntarism would only be true if we were on equal economic standing. Therefore voluntarism implies that no one can be coerced or leveraged, its a moot and infantile viewpoint of social dynamics.
The "silent majority" has no real way to speak. You choose candidates based on talking points who can then REALLY do anything they please. That is called "trusting campaigns", not democracy.
In reality what happens in elections is that we are choosing a group of people to enact policies based on the market-demands of a society that cannot control its market/production. There is a huge disconnect. It's not a real influence WE have. It's an influence that is given.
IE. The majority of people dont want to use plastic materials for anything related to their consumption. But plastic is cheap and easy to produce. I'm sure that if given a choice people would rather their society work a bit more, spend a bit more of human-energy if it means we dont have nuts full of microplastics.
It is how we produce that determines what choices we have, and how we produce is determined by market dynamics which are reduced to sustainability of production and profits. It is profits that determines production, not consumers' will.
So tell me: if we dont directly control the options we have, but you say we are making a choice, what is that?
There is another word for that. Coercion, manipulation.
I dont want child soldiers killing for control over resources or kids mining for 12 hours a day, I want a good, cheap phone. It is not the same.
Is there really no other way? I would sure as hell try to have it any other way.
Whoever conflates these is doing so because they profit off of it, not because its the only way.
In capitalism the heads of production and their profits determine the directions of our societies.
Oh you like phones? Well our phone companies require us to directly or indirectly create proxy wars in this region in order to acquire the raw materials necessary.
This is the democracy of western nations: policy hidden behind capitalist interests that the people engage with through consumption.
Its democracy for the rich not for the millions of us.
That's why they NEED to manufacture consent, in order to get you on board with murder and fabricated poverty in order to have goods and services.
Capitalist technologies are the surveillance state incarnate. They must study people in order to manufacture consent.
Remember democracy is majority rule, when have you ever had true control over your political destiny? You KNOW the answer is never.
Democracy =/= trust.
Democracy = control.
Even air can be monetized if you have the right legal team and tech. And we're all random working class people who can't afford a good lawyer even when we need it so... go figure.
Copying is built into all of our hardware/software. To keep extending copyright you have to either end privacy or neuter hardware/software.
The US' software domination has really spooked a lot of people and nation states. No one really trusts US tech companies.
And sure, "everybody spies", but that in and of itself will bring a lot more competition and privacy focus, hopefully.
China will take advantage of that sentiment. They don't have to win the war personally, just the US has to lose it. India is already trying to develop its own phones, China will only keep going.
No one really trusts US tech on a global scale.
Social mass-media is doomed to fail in its current form. These platforms are already manipulated by capital through advertising, nation states, data-brokers and platform self interest.
People need more federated networks where agents can be verified, at least locally and "feeds" cannot be manipulated.
The powers that be do not believe in democracy how you and I believe in it, they believe in manufactured consent.
Mass media in its current form is just a way to create consent within the masses, not the other way around, the masses don't make the decisions.
The future is open, they're just buying time. Piracy can never end because copyright is fictitious.
See, I could set up a system where I charge you for air by tracking your every breath, but that would be stupid since air is just available. There is a way tho.
Rather, capitalism will most likely look towards changing technology standards and softwares environments to serve their purpose.
Forget about downloading applications and looking at source code, the only way to use mass production computers will be through their neutered means: - Only approved softwares from approved "markets"/"app stores" - Settings? "Nah that's for experts" - Ad blocking? "That's a serious crime" - Different operating system? "You can't change that"
It's not enshittification its capitalism.
Most likely through their phones. They can just track you if they wanted to. Everybody knows it. This sentiment is part of why the USA will lose the propaganda war.
There is no amount of propaganda the USA can make to remedy this reality.
You can't say this isnt the top-level reality because of your belief of escape.
Only if you can confirm this is a simulation then the chances of getting to top-level reality do become higher the more you escape.
But then you'd also have to know if you're moving outward or inward in order to verifiably raise the chances of getting to top-level reality.
I don't think it should have been an issue and PSF should have been clear about the reason behind their delay.
Nobody intimately studies a countries law when sponsoring events in said country, they judge based on general knowledge and vibes, which is what makes this iffy and biased.
Else most countries would be in the spotlight as nation states don't generally do whats good for their population, they instead obey "national interests" which in capitalist societies is the capitalist class' private profit enterprise.
Just like the development of any other industry their purpose gently transforms into maximizing shareholder value and not to provide equal value to the consumer, this, contrary to a superficial analysis, does not contradict the existence of the industry itself.
Because in order to contradict the industry there must be an equal amount of power on both sides (of consumer and supplier) which we would use to prevent the use value drop to us. But that's the thing with capitalism: they own the far reaching platforms themselves, the live at the forefront of capabilities. So where is power left?
Any resistance must occur "underground" where there is usually very little exposition.
This is akin to wanting powertool manufacturers to standardize some battery interfaces. While it may be convenient to us, they have no incentive to do that and we have no power to force them besides boycott, which in a world with millions of people with millions of needs, is impractical unless you have mass media support, which is in itself almost an impossibility.
This will happen to any popular platform that maximizes profits; this happens to every popular platform with private ownership where private owners are (legally/existentially) incentivized to maximize profits.
This cannot happen in popular platforms whose aims are not maximizing profits; this cannot happen in popular platforms that have no individual owner. But a time where this is feasible has not arrived yet. I think a good example of this is standards, which can allow individuals to get rich, but not an individual. This can be leveraged even more to prevent mass users to suffer from capitalizing of the ones with capital.
Everything turns to crap when developed for profits. This happens all the time but no one realizes it because we're accustomed to think about the symptoms and not the sickness. "Micro-transactions this", "ads that", "censorship this", "privacy that", when in reality its just the natural development of platforms under capitalism.
The inherent problem is that these are marketing gimmicks permitted by our current technological development, but it doesn't mean they are useful. All the questions this technology poses are solved in one sweep with effective and comfortable public transportation.
To map out these supply chains is to map the material and social relationships of whole economies.
And what this article is talking about is war. The edge between standard financial coercion and kinetic war is getting more blurred.
Capitalism undergoing more tension
I say this about the universe not because i made it up, but because i see the pattern and i recognize a material cause for it.
Tree branches and arteries try to complete a similar function. They want to cover an area or volume as much as possible.
Circuit boards and cities look alike because they also complete similar functions. Roads/traces serve as a means of transport and buildings/components are places where the transported object undergoes a process, be them electrons or people.
Routers and networks also have a topology similar to information propagation in people or societies too because they serve the same function. People/routers are nodes and the info connection is an edge.
I'm not saying all of human society can be reduced to a CISCO manual, I'm saying they share similar structures.
Offspring lineages and lightning patterns are also similar because of the similarities between evolution and reproduction and finding the path of least resistance.
Not all of these structures have to be branching. There are many other kinds. Like how water forms a vortex and galaxies spiral.
Maybe the fractal nature of computing is not in the "are we living in a simulation?" Kind, but is in the "we can imitate what we see at a different scale with fundamental units, logic/math, and visual field". In a sense it is a universe within a universe, but that doesn't imply everything is everything. It implies there are many things at different scales that are self similar. Scale still exists and is relevant.
Money is both a means of transfer and a store of value. The reason for those conditional properties in crypto (secure and efficient but not valuable) is because currencies have value embedded in them, it is an abstract presentation of value, it abstracts work. In this case, hash power.
Real paper money and its digital representation, like the USD, is also proof of work currency, in this casw, human power. And it's distribution evidences exploitation, not effort.