Some weird, German communist, hello. He/him pronouns and all that. Obsessed with philosophy and history, secondarily obsessed with video games as a cultural medium. Also somewhat able to program.

https://abnormalhumanbeing.itch.io/
https://peertube.wtf/a/wxnzxn/video-channels

  • 9 Posts
  • 102 Comments
Joined 5 years ago
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Cake day: November 24th, 2020

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  • It really isn’t, but as long as those resources are distributed through a market, there are problems even if you add money. Say the billionaires truly are incorruptible angels and put all their money to providing food and shelter, the not-yet-billionaires in the market suddenly have incentives to raise prices, withhold food to the market while prices are rising as a speculative gambit, stuff like that.

    That’s one of the mechanisms through which the system itself, that produces billionaires, makes it at least hard or - imo - even impossible to truly undo the damage it does to create such billionaires, even when you have those billions. Another example is corruption: As soon as you put a lot of money into an issue, it creates an incentive there to funnel money away in secret, to provide false solutions that don’t solve anything, to scam, etc. A friend of mine worked on projects providing water infrastructure in countries in Africa from philanthropic and international aid funds, and he did get often frustrated telling how some projects simply vanish halfway through, because someone down the line had basically run off with the money (not that the projects were wholly useless, either, but they failed to fundamentally solve things by just throwing money at them). Someone like Bill Gates, as another example, has been unironically doing a lot of good as a philanthropist, but all his money still wasn’t able to truly tackle the root causes of the problems in the countries where he supports healthcare and such things - and inevitably, some of the funds he provided were used on glamour projects or ineffectual, nice-sounding strategies, or ended up in outright corruption. And at the same time, the question remains, what the system that made him a billionaire caused in damages to begin with.

    That’s why I still think you can’t really tackle all these problems without doing away with a market structure, exchange value, capital accumulation, etc. - i.e., why I remain a dirty commie, instead of just arguing for redistribution (redistribution and more social-democratic, beneficial investment is still good, but you gotta always aim for the abolition of private property and capital accumulation as an end goal, imo).

    Oh, and I just realised my ramble kind of missed OP’s point, which is also important: All the money caught up in the three-digit multi-billionaires net worth? It’s not representative of true goods and labour, it is what Marx would have called “dead” capital. As soon as it is used for anything but as financial capital, it can drive inflation massively, which connects to part of my first point.

    EDIT: Another example that just came to my mind for how this can impact things - Mansa Musa and the stories surrounding his lavish spending during his Hajj, basically crashing the local economies. So, even pre-capitalist systems had to deal with these dynamics.


  • This is an interesting conundrum, actually. The big question at its core being:

    Can you ever do enough good through philanthropy, so that it offsets the damage you had to do, in order to become a billionaire? Can even all the billionaires in the world do enough good with their money, to offset the damage done by a system, that allowed for them to become billionaires?

    I, personally, don’t think it is possible.

    To give an actual answer: I think, the world would definitely be better, but unless those billionaires collectively used all the power their money provides, to do away with money and the possibility of billionaires altogether, I don’t think it would amount to all that much.










  • Was there a contradiction? Point is, there is no loyalty beyond that. If the favours for Russia were to no longer serve his own, personal interests (or at least, for as long as he believes them to do so, let’s not forget he is also very much fallible), he’d not support them. There is no ideological solidarity, or alliance or higher loyalty is what I was getting at. Just his belief that the world is fundamentally strong people preying on and using the weak, and that he thinks that he can cooperate with Putin on that - conditionally.




  • As far as I know, from when this was discussed after the first Reddit exodus, only commenting and posting makes you an active user. So the number is somewhat deceivingly small, as the vast majority on platforms like this are lurkers who maybe post/comment every once in a while at most.





  • Okay, that is fair enough - although one small thing I’d add is “psychological issues not greatly exacerbated by his former employer” - where I also don’t think intentionality is important, as long as they callously don’t consider the potential of that exacerbation.

    Thing is: psychological issues don’t exist in a vacuum. For example - let’s say he was robbed of all perspectives to ever work again in a field he was passionate about by his former employer de facto “blacklisting” him - they surely did not explicitly have this outcome in mind, but they accepted it as a possibility. Similar situation with the high suicide rates in countries like South Korea - they don’t exist the way they are because of independently existing, isolated mental illness, but because of a material system that interacts with, and sets the conditions of, psychological development.

    So, you are right, it’s true that it could be, that it ends up as the result of a completely unrelated mental illness. But I’d be wary to take reports like “he actually had a diagnosis of depressive disorder” as simply washing OpenAI clean of all responsibility.



  • So, it isn’t the exact same situation, but just as a reminder: von Papen, the conservative guy who ultimately put Hitler into power, initially thought he’d be savvy and cede only “not that important” posts to Hitler and the NSDAP. After all, a silly, comically insane upstart like Hitler would be easily outmanoeuvred by knowing the law and how statecraft works, right?

    Well, the Nazis just used those posts in illegal ways, overstepped their official authority and refused to report to von Papen at all (whom they should at that point have been subservient to) - knowing full well no one was going to stop them anyway. Shortly thereafter, von Papen was out and Hitler was chancellor.

    Von Papen managed to live until 1969, and wrote an autobiography that was derided by historians for having a terribly naive lack of understanding politics, lack of principles and being full of vanity.


  • OF killed good amateur porn

    As I have seen it pointed out, it’s not just that, although it is a huge part of it. Another, sadly, is that there was so much uncontrolled porn floating around the internet, much of it was pretty fucked up - involuntarily filmed and/or published without consent, not traceable, even with very unclear ages, etc., etc.

    So as a secondary effect, that I think is highly positive, most sites also just don’t allow for non-verified content, or at least are much better at removing anything remotely suspicious. That leaves the OF stuff as the main non-studio-produced source, as it allows for easy, professional verifications.


  • As a quick reminder: don’t expect them to handle your load (lol) for free. If you are a gooner/goonette with some income, leave a tip for the server costs and consider volunteering for mod duties if you have time and some internet social skills. If you value your nsfw communities, they don’t exist without work, like any other community.