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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 18th, 2023

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  • Ironically by not advocating for IP you are depriving people from earning from their valuable mental labour.

    If I invent something and spend time, effort and money into developing it, I should be allowed to be rewarded for that effort. If a competitor comes along and steals my idea without putting the wok in, I am absolutely being deprived of all the value of my hard work. That’s how someone can steal your intellectual property.





  • Ideas certainly will become scarce products if people aren’t protected for having them.

    Of course you can steal someone’s intellectual property. If you copy someone’s idea you are depriving that person from profiting from said idea and depriving them of income. There is a limit on how many people can profit from a given idea.

    Intellectual property protects those who innovate against predatory practices. You are displaying naivety for who intellectual property is seeking to protect. By not enshrining IP in law you are literally stopping people from earning money from their mental labour.

    If IP law didn’t exist why would anybody spend their time and money researching and creating new inventions if someone can come along and steal their idea?





  • You know exactly what I mean. Rich people have always lorded it over the peasants we’ve just invented different terms for basically the same concept. There will always be people who figure out a way to have more than their neighbours. You can see it even in video games like world of Warcraft. It’s easier to get more if you have more and always will be.

    As for your other comments I’d rather deal with he present circumstances of the world rather than science fiction scenarios.




  • AI really isn’t as good as you imagine it is, especially when it comes to high level esoteric academic fields. An AI couldn’t produce original research or come up with creativity. It regurgitates what it’s been fed.

    Saying the bourgeoisie is a modern construct is basically wrong. Before they were called that they were called nobles or lords.

    I’d rather deal with what we are facing than some hypothetical luddite doomer scenario.


  • It’s a big leap from “is this the best we can achieve?” to “let’s abandon all societal structure and law”.

    You think you can get rid of power structures. I’m telling you that it’s a pipe dream. We are fundamentally constrained. That’s not the same as saying society as it is is the best we can ever do.


  • You couldn’t get rid of the bourgeoisie even if you tried. They tried it in a Russia by force and a different group of fat cats became in charge.

    Revolutions just get people killed and create power vacuums that are also filled with unscrupulous characters. It’s childish politics. It’s extreme.

    We don’t live in capitalism. It’s never existed in much the same way communism never has.

    Automation can and will help society. But there is still work that needs doing, we don’t live in a post scarcity society, we need people to work to keep everything going.

    I don’t know why you think there’s suddenly going to be no jobs. Have you seen trends for employment per capita? It’s the opposite.


  • If you think the Western world as is is fundamentally authoritarian then I honestly don’t know what to say to you. I feel like you are using the term so loosely that it becomes meaningless.

    All I’m saying is that capitalism and communism are just theories and in reality the job of a government with regards to the economy is to balance tax policy and spending.

    I’m saying there is no silver bullet or magical cure to the world’s ills. The world will always be fucked as long as humans are in it so the best the government can do is try to minimise suffering without completely shitting the bed and crashing the economy/society with idealism, left or right.

    Anybody who tries to change the world too radically too quickly inevitably fucks it up and makes things worse, time and time again.

    We don’t live in unfettered capitalism in the West. That’s as much a theoretical construct as communism.


  • It’s not a guarantee but that’s a failure on lots of levels, but not an unfixable one. We need more social housing, we need to manage immigration policy better (that doesn’t necessarily mean restrictions just more in terms of planning) and we need more wealth redistribution and methods to tax excessive wealth of conglomerates and individuals including their property portfolios. Then we need to legislate for more rights for tenants and less rights for landlords including more taxation to free up homes and make people view them less as an asset and more an actual home. This isn’t impossible and can be done through the power of the vote if the left at large isn’t fighting itself in a battle of idealism versus pragmatism.

    People who fail to adapt to the changing of the times always get left behind throughout history in large. Processes get automated and people bemoaned Henry Ford at the time for finding a more efficient way to build cars that required less man hours.

    To be successful in this world you have to provide something that other people can’t. It’s fucking difficult but it’s the truth and would be true in any society. That includes being aware of how the wind may change and improving yourself and planning for contingencies.

    There will always be bastards at the top trying to make things difficult in any organisation at any level of anything right down to the level of friendship groups and families. It’s shit, but it’s in our DNA. We are neither truly individualistic nor collective animals but a superposition of both. That’s the framework we are working in. That constrains the theory.


  • Happiness of the people, rights for minorities, salaries, education.i could go on and on how countries that have democratised have made lives better for the people who live there.

    Also I’ve never compared to fascism so I don’t know why you brought that up.

    If you think I’m holding society to a low bar, then perhaps you’re holding society to an unrealistic and theoretical high bar? You have to work within the geopolitical constraints that you’re presented with. Please posit an alternative country that is an example of a well run and equitable society that doesn’t have democracy or liberalism?