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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • Sure there’s been a wave of imperialist wars, but it would have to cascade out of control and legitimately threaten world superpowers directly for a world war to break out. All this adventurism taking place is unfortunately just par for the course. IMO something truly unprecedented like the US launching a ground invasion against Mexico would have to happen to set off a cascade. I don’t think even airstrikes on Mexico would do it, only a ground invasion.


  • You should give it another viewing. There’s violence, but it’s not just random murder for its own sake like in The Purge. The protagonist carries out a series of targeted assassinations against people who were involved in detaining and experimenting on him in a concentration camp, and blows up a couple of empty buildings at the beginning and end of the movie in a symbolic act of defiance against a fascist regime. There’s a bit towards the end where he ships a bunch of guy fawkes masks to everyone and there’s some robbing and looting, but no killing until a secret police guy shoots an unarmed child in the street and some people jump him. The plot overall is about people rising up against and toppling a fascist regime, which is pretty relevant to current events.






  • Schmoo@slrpnk.nettoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldShocking
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    10 days ago

    I don’t know about “Capatalism” but “Capitalism” doesn’t require stealing value. All capitalism requires is private ownership of the means of production and using it to generate profit. If you’re a painter and buy paint, an easel and some canvas, and use that to sell portraits, you’re doing capitalism.

    Private ownership of the means of production is theft. What you described with the painter is personal - not private - ownership of the means of production. Personal ownership is when someone owns something and uses it for their own benefit. Private ownership is when someone owns something that they do not use themselves, instead hiring others to use it for them to generate a profit. The painter isn’t doing capitalism when they paint and sell portraits, they’re doing productive labor and participating in a market economy, which is not exclusive to capitalism. If the painter hired other painters to paint portraits using equipment and a studio that belongs to the original painter and kept the profits for themselves, that’s capitalism.

    Now, if the hired painters decided they didn’t like this arrangement and claimed the equipment and studio for themselves collectively (seizing the means of production), that would be socialism. The original painter - the capitalist - would consider this theft, as those things were their private property. The hired painters - the socialists - would consider what the capitalist was doing theft and they are taking what is rightfully their collective personal property because they are the ones using it to produce value. To the capitalist, the value is produced by their capital (the means of production) and the labor is just another kind of capital which they have already paid for with wages. To the socialist, the value is produced by their labor and the means of production is being rented to them by the capitalist for their excess labor value, whose only claim to it is that they paid the upfront cost.

    The owner of a company is like a landlord except instead of gatekeeping land/housing they are gatekeeping the means of production. Instead of paying rent, those who want access to the means of production sign away their excess labor value by agreeing to a set wage.