What's your favorite hilariously dumb capitalist apologist deflection?
What's your favorite hilariously dumb capitalist apologist deflection?
27 comments
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South Korea has a 50% heritage tax - and it applies, as far as I'm aware, to everything. Causes and absolute havoc when billionaires die and the companies need to be broken up, but ultimately it seems to work
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Won't anyone think of the havoc people still inheriting millions of dollars have to go through? 🎻 More people might have an opportunity to buy in on the society's corporate institutions? 🎻
That sounds like the right thing to do for a society that values... Society.
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“Of course the CEO deserves 399 times your pay, they take 399 times the risk!”
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"and what is the penalty if they lose that risk?" "Why, they become a labourer like the rest of us!"
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But the UnReALiZEd Gains
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Honestly their Super Yachts, mansions, and luxury climate bunker compounds should be eligible for section 8 housing subsidy if you think about it.
They have so little liquidity, couldn't you just die?
In the Arms of the Angels plays to images of sad Warren Buffets, Elon Musks, etc...
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"Capitalism is just human nature."
If it's just human nature, then why do we need a militarized police force to enforce order? Having workers go to a workplace, do labor, and then send the profits to some far away entity that probably isn't even there is actually very far from human nature. It's something that necessarily requires the implied threat of violence to maintain. Same with tenants and landlords. No one would pay rent if it wasn't for the police, who will use violence to throw you out otherwise.
It also frustrates me how that argument just waves away the incredibly complex and actually extremely arbitrary legal structure of capitalism. What about human nature contains limited liability for artificial legal entities controlled by shareholders? "Ah yes, here's the part of the human genome that expresses preferred and common stock; here's the part that contains the innate human desire for quarterly earnings calls."
edit: typo
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Its so dumb. "Human nature" according to who? Ignoring that appeal to nature is a logical fallacy its also just...fake. humans are social obligate primates. We naturally form small communal groups. We've interacted cooperatively and altruistically since before we were anatomical humans. If capitalism is human nature why did it take 19,700 years for anatomically modern humans to invent it. Because for one thing, commerce is not the same as capitalism. And even commerce is somewhat recent. Most of human history we didnt barter, pre-money barter economies are a myth. We had "gift economies" where we simply helped and gave each other what we needed. Without explicitly demanding a return but understanding others will help you out the same when you need it.
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From what I've learned it feels like we're just not supposed to be critical of it. It reminds me of being a kid and adults being upset when I ask too many questions or questions they might not want to face. I know you didn't ask but Mark Fisher has a compelling way of describing it as capitalist realism and I wanted to leave this quote:
Capitalist realism as I understand it cannot be confined to art or to the quasi-propagandistic way in which advertising functions. It is more like a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action
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"They make everything: The wine, the glasses, the chairs, the buildings. Without their investment, none of that could be made."
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PU has already compiled the best ones.
The one mentioning the iPhone will long be a favorite.
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Wow. Almost every single thing he listed at the beginning (before I turned this off because I was getting the urge to punch his face so strongly my work computer's screen was at actual risk) has taken enormous amounts of "big government" subsidy. And well over half of them (possibly much higher!) are actively damaging society.
Woohoo! Capitalism!
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There's something disconcerting about the structure of that person's face and the ways it does and does not move how it should when the person it belongs to speaks.
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Not many would do well reading that script.
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do you use an iphone
you can make a similar argument for slavery
you dont want the government...
triangle shirtwaist fire ..
do the people who don't like government regulations know how working conditions were before government regulations
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It's a matter of perspective. It doesn't look so bad when you're not the one doing the working.
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Advances were made and sustained principally through labor organization, not government regulations.
Much of the manipulation in the presentation from PU is based on constructing a false dichotomy between social structure occurring through either private business versus central government.
A common tactic is to bait an antagonist into attacking private business, but then shifting from a defense of business to a criticism of government. It is often repeated by proponents of marketism, and often involves insertion into the discussion, often as a straw man, the Democratic Party or the Soviet Union.
Such proponents often respond poorly to suggestions about cooperative organization, or to reminders over the natural tendency of business to seek increasing protection from the state.
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Argh, I watched two seconds of it. Now YouTube will recommend that stuff to me forever.
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When I bring up that 80-90% of an average top billionaire's wealth is their share of their company, it's usually to counter the perception that those hundreds of billions of dollars are deadweight. I do still think the rich should be taxed, though I would lean towards taxing the personal assets more than business stock.
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Nope, all of it. Otherwise it's a loophole that they will abuse
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27 comments