• space_comrade [he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Yes because people never communicated over the Internet before Glorious Visionary Entrepreneurs from the Great Private Sector took hold of it and gave us all these Valuable Products, they just sat on their ass wondering what to do with such technology like complete idiots.

        I swear free market ideology is the dumbest shit you can possibly believe in, I’d sooner become a fucking Mormon.

        • Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          How would you have communicated without someone owning a server and paying for it? Reddit and other centralized platforms emerged for some reason… You would have to literally make that illegal, i.e. make it illegal to host your own server and let users use it.

          You can’t just imagine some fantasy utopia, and compare that to the current system.

          • space_comrade [he/him]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            How would you have communicated without someone owning a server and paying for it?

            You do realize the Internet first started being used by universities and the military, not the private sector, right? I see literally no reason why Internet infrastructure couldn’t be publicly owned. It could function pretty much like any other public utility.

            • Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              1 year ago

              And would it have grown into more than that? Into something that everyone, and not just military and scientists can use?

              • space_comrade [he/him]@hexbear.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                Why not?

                Sorry I just don’t buy into the ideology that the free market has this kind of “magic sauce” that makes everything innovative and better.

                The early Internet was filled of people doing all kinds of cool things for free just because it was interesting to do, the only thing the private sector did is provide the base infrastructure, this is something the state can easily do too. All kinds of communities, FOSS software and media popped up and none of them had VC funding or expected any money out of it.

                It was only in mid-late 2000 that capital really sank its teeth into the Internet properly.

    • dartos@reddthat.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah but capitalism also made reddit great, before making it terrible.

      There’s a balance in there somewhere. What we got ain’t it tho.

      • Bobby_DROP_TABLES [he/him]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        There is no balance though, the shit-ification that happened to Reddit is a necessary function of capitalism. What we saw as Reddit at its best was, from a capitalist’s perspective, Reddit at its worst. I’m sure you’ve noticed a similar process taking place in lots of other areas as well.

      • ProxyTheAwesome [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Reddit was never great lmaoo

        It was a pedo networking tool reknowned worldwide for it’s jailbate and non-consensual creepshots. These moderators received awards from admins. Then it got too much attention and got a PR workover, burning a woman CEO at the stake to satiate the gamer-fascists before becoming a bland Atlanticist CIA sockpuppet front of bland corporate posts.

        At no point during this entire thing did it ever approach anything comparable to greatness

        • dartos@reddthat.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          I may be wrong, but I don’t see socialism and capitalism as hard opposites.

          I see capitalism and communism are like hard opposites with socialism somewhere in between.

          • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Capitalism is the state controlled by the capital owners with the workers repressed.

            Socialism is the state controlled by the workers with the capital owners repressed.

            They are literally hard opposites. One is a bourgeoise-state and the other is a proletarian-state.

            • dartos@reddthat.com
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              1 year ago

              I learned that “capitalism” is an economic system, not a system of government.

              So you could have a socialist state that funds essentials like healthcare and transportation through taxes with a market (capitalist) economy.

              • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                That’s not a socialist state. It’s a capitalist state with welfare. If the political structure of the state itself has not been reworked to put the workers in power what you’re describing is just a state where the bourgeoisie (who control power) have decided to do welfare, usually for their own benefit such as reducing revolutionary energy by providing the workers with concessions (the welfare state). That is social democracy.

                You do not have socialism without overthrowing the hierarchy that places the bourgeoisie as the ruling class:

                Capitalism = Capitalists in power. Proles repressed.

                Socialism = Proletariat in power. Capitalists repressed.

                Communism = No more classes, only 1 class because the bourgeoisie have been completely phased out.

                • wewbull@feddit.uk
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  All of this sounds at odds with representative democracy. What political system would you see working with socialism as you describe it?

                  • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.net
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    1 year ago

                    Representative “democracy” alienates the common man from the political process while maintaining a semblance of democracy. For this reason it is the ideal political form for capitalism, an economic system which alienates power from the masses and concentrates it in the hands of a few.

                    Class interests are the primary axis on which all political activity turns. Getting the working class to vote does not help them, it helps those in power.

                  • very_poggers_gay [they/them]@hexbear.net
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    0
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    What about the absolute lack of “representative democracy” we experience under capitalism?

                    I’d argue that the capitalist system is more at odds with representative democracy than other systems mentioned. Most workers have no say in what is produced, who produces it, how they are paid, how much products are sold for, etc. Instead, we end up with figurehead CEO’s and nameless investors making all of those decisions, and of course they do everything to minimize costs, maximize profits, and disempower workers so that they can collect billions of dollars at the expense of the workers who actually make their companies run. If we had representative democracy do you think we’d have billionaires?

    • Kidplayer_666@lemm.eeOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      I left Reddit because of short term decisions to squeeze money out of consumers to look good in an IPO, instead of having an actual long term thought.

      • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        You left reddit because of capitalism. What is an IPO? It is the launch of a business onto the public capital markets to release equity and to enrich its existing owners. What do all businesses on the markets operate on? Short term growth for the next financial quarter optimised to enrich their investors (shareholders) in the shortest amount of time possible.

        Capitalism consistently destroys everything you enjoy and yet you defend it relentlessly while asking for long term thinking, which is not a feature of capitalism. When you wake up to this reality you might actually start to question “maybe the socialists are right about a few things” and spend some time with us learning what we actually believe.

        • Kidplayer_666@lemm.eeOP
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 year ago

          But you know what happened after Reddit turned to crap? Because no one actually has to use Reddit, because Reddit is just a bunch of bored nerds and Reddit is just a bunch of forums, eventually someone realised: “wait a minute, I can code this in a few weeks and make it way less crappy than most social media. And maybe if I make it all open, a whole ecosystem of social networks can grow together”. And when Reddit turned to crap, “the invisible hand” acted and people slowly started to migrate over to lemmy and other social media and now reddit is just a bunch of bots

          • Awoo [she/her]@hexbear.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            A few weeks?

            Mate please check my profile. I have been here for 3 fucking years. Lemmy did not magically appear in a few weeks that is incredibly offensive to the sheer amount of work my comrades have put in to make it.

            And calling their work “the invisible hand of the market” is also nonsensical. Because the forces driving its creation, and the rest of us communists that support it, are the destruction of the markets. There is not one single jot of profit motive involved in Lemmy. You seem to recognise some of the problems of capitalism but consistently come to incorrect conclusions about everything because you have spent no time whatsoever getting a real political education and understanding the forces at work.

            And you fail to ask yourself what happens to your “market forces” alternative to reddit. In any scenario where the market is responsible for replacing reddit the market will also bring it back to exactly the same point of self-destruction through pursuit of capital. You will hurt yourself all over again.