door5's comments

Piracy is good but fascism is bad. What's the problem here?

Capitalism has certain systemic features, one of them is concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a small few. Look at how wealth is concentrated in the U.S., especially over the last 40 years. Unions have eroded, markets have been deregulated, our social safety net has been dismantled, etc. and as a result, the power of capitalists has expanded. Capitalism is by its nature struggle between workers and capital. Capital is winning.

Capitalism.

That investment shouldn't be made by individuals, it should be made by society as a whole, ie by increasing taxes so tuition is free. The burden of student debt is not shared equally or fairly.

They would be say that an inheritance tax hurts "family farms" and "family businesses", because they are dishonest about the fact that their policies benefit the power and privilege of a only a tiny minority of the population

There is not one single way to publicly fund media. Hell you could just leave the whole system as is as provide no strings attached grants or tax credits to all publishers. The point is, there is no technical solution to this, we need policy change.

> The only way to have free content is if the user is the product being sold.

Or we could provide robust public funding, like the BBC

> It's what we must accept if we don't want the government to provide the news.

Public funding of media does not make it "government news". In fact, it's subject to far more scrutiny than private media. You would rather Jeff Bezos and friends control the news rather than a transparent & highly regulated independent publicly funded organization?

The U.S. president has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault. He has called women bitches, whores, fat pigs, ugly, etc. Multiple states in the south passed legislation effectively banning abortion, stripping women of their sexual and bodily autonomy. Where is there open, institutional misandry of this level?

Critiquing male power and men's sexist behavior towards women is not "misandry"

I didn't frame it as men vs. women. I framed it as challenging patriarchy, which is a system and ideology of male dominance and control.

No, I'm saying the economy rewards the choices men make. Women get paid less because employers pay less in female-dominated fields.

Even if you assume all this research is correct, why are people with certain characteristics or interests that are disproportionately associated with women get rewarded less economically? Also sexism.

It's not sexist to point out that men historically have held disproportionate cultural, social, economic, and political power and continue to do so to this day.

I agree, however I think it's important that we do not use "implicit bias" as a cover. Implicit bias seems very vague and allows people to evade responsibility. I think there's a lot of very explicit bias (in the form of sexist attitudes, discrimination, biased hiring practices, etc) that need to be tackled. The "implicit bias" narrative (that a lot of tech CEOs are a fan of) makes me uncomfortable because it depoliticizes the issue, chalking it up so something more innately human (our biases and mistakes) rather than sexist attitudes and policies.

It isn't, there is an enormous body of evidence demonstrating that the gender pay gap is driven by overt sexism and institutional barriers. This evidence is far more compelling than speculation about height.

Another way in which rigid, patriarchal gender roles hurt men as well as women. Straight men should be far more critical of sexism and misogyny than they are. This attitude is directly tied to oppression against women in the workforce.

There's a ton of overt misogyny and sexism in the U.S., nothing "subconscious" about it.

Socialism is a material struggle, it isn't an idealist Utopia where everything is perfect. It's a process. And most socialist regimes have been in the developing world, which had much less to work with and much weaker infrastructure. Regardless, China has lifted nearly a billion people out of extreme poverty over the last 40 years. I also think that Cuba's accomplishments have been admirable, despite decades of aggression and embargo from the United States. You may compare these regimes unfavourably to a developed country, but that's an unfair comparison, because they weren't developed countries before socialists took over. Compare them to other, capitalist countries in the global south and I think there is no question what model works better

This is ahistorical nonsense. The west industrialized hundreds of years ahead of the rest of the world and spent a century and a half plundering the global south. Regardless, China has managed to almost eliminate extreme poverty and hunger despite following a model very different than neoliberial Capitalism. As was the Soviet Union. Not defending these regimes, just stating a fact.

The majority of the world does follow neoliberial Capitalism and has for decades. And it has totally failed to reduce poverty. Almost all global poverty reduction since the 70s has taken place in China.

You also neglect the role of imperialism. The west has acquired much of its wealth through exploitation of the global south. So of course they are wealthier, because they have stolen wealth from everyone else, trapping countries in debt or dependence and overthrowing any regime that challenges neoliberial rule. Leftist regimes have done phenomenally well given the global economic context they live within -- Cuba has a similar life expectancy rate to the United States and phenomenally low malnutrition among developing Nations. China and Vietnam have experienced staggering economic growth for decades. Just compare India and China in this regard -- a country totally dominated by Western imperialism vs a left wing government that managed to forge its own development path

>they are not the reason why there is still actual poverty and malnutrition in the western world.

Why is there poverty and malnutrition in the western world if not because of capitalism? Neoliberal capitalism has been the dominant economic system in the west since the 80s.

>Then why not focus on the anti-competitive behavior, instead of trying to remake the entire society in your leftist image?

because my leftist image is good