• 2 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • Put those monkeys underwater and you might conclude that drowning is in their nature. I know of the studies you’re referencing regarding monkeys being taught to use money and I’m aware that they were done with monkeys in captivity. In the same vein, the debunked study about “alpha” wolves was done on wolves in captivity and observations of wolves in their natural environment countered the study’s findings. Our actions are a result of the context and material conditions that we are in.

    People dominate others for personal gain because they live in a system that rewards them for doing so. Place those people in a system that rewards them for helping others and the very same selfish impulse will make them saints. The “tragedy of the commons” is enlightenment era defeatist bullshit. The commons existed and were managed by people for thousands of years before capitalists enclosed them and dared to claim that it was the inevitable result of human nature.



  • These kinds of movements are a consequence of over-exploitation. The “lie down” movement - also “let it rot” - is similar to the “quiet quitting” movement in the US. People will not be motivated to contribute when they are struggling and do not see any benefit to trying harder. If these people were fairly compensated for their labor and had greater autonomy over how to contribute they would not lose motivation. Alienation from the result of their labor is also a huge contributor; feeling rewarded for your work can be as simple as seeing the result (a teacher seeing their students find their passions, for example).


  • Communism envisions a society where there are no haves and have nots (classless) and socialism is put forward as the economic system that will get us there eventually. There are criticisms to be made about the method but the vision is good.

    Capitalism does what you’re doing here, snarkily talk down to anyone who dares suggest such a society might be possible and is worth working towards, and puts forward instead that there must be haves taking advantage of have nots for society to function and that no other way is possible.





  • Yes, we’re both making claims and using anecdotes to support them and it seems neither of us will move from our positions without stronger evidence. Your claim that most sovcits are either wealthy or educated seems absurd to me, so in a data-poor environment I’m sticking with the simpler of the two options. I’m open to changing my mind, but not with only anecdotes. If you could make a logical case for why sovcits would be mostly educated or wealthy then that could be enough, given neither of us have hard data to give.










  • It’s because this isn’t about privacy at all, it’s about a popular social media platform being outside the control of domestic intelligence agencies. The US is unable to control the narrative on TikTok the way they do on American social media, which allowed pro-palestinian sentiment to spread there unhindered. It had a huge effect on the politics of the younger generation (IMO a positive one) by showing them news and first hand accounts they wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

    Edit: And yes, China is able to control the narrative on TikTok and that is a potential problem, but so far they’ve had a fairly hands-off approach to US TikTok aside from basic language censorship. I figure the way China sees it is that an unmoderated free-for-all will do more to sow divisions in the US than a carefully controlled (and therefore obvious) pro-China narrative ever could.