Hard disagree. Any system that allows private accumulation of capital will create a class of wealthy individuals who then use their wealth to dismantle checks and balances. It’s inevitable.
I think that if you make enough things democratically controlled, and have a proper secret ballot, that you can prevent wealth accumulation from being able to subvert democratic will.
I’ve been wondering how the media could be regulated to not become a populist hellhole.
If the government starts telling what the media can write and what it cannot, we are quickly in a very bad place.
But at the same time, yellow press is a cancer. It seems that people all around prefer interesting newspapers over factual ones. Newspapers that add a bit of extra flavour to their articles sell a lot better than purely factual ones, because they are “less boring”. And then that destroys democracy. I wonder how that should be avoided!
I agree regulating speech for this purpose is not a good fit, and more likely to be abused than useful.
I think society has to really double-down on critical thinking skills, particularly around verifying sources and identifying bias, including your own cognitive biases that are inescapable. Of course, authoritarians of all stripes, but particularly religious ones, don’t like this so frequently interfere with public education efforts along those lines. CFAR has problems, but their “core mission” of “explore and practice better ways of thinking” is a good one and some of their resources can be valuable.
But, we also have to figure out how to provide spaces where people can let down their guard and escape the hostile environment AND get people (like myself) to use them (instead of doomscrolling, e.g.).
Did you know that despite only having 4.5% of the world’s population, the USSR held 25% of the world’s prison population? Oh wait, no. Those statistics are for the USA right now.
The global capitalist system kills 9 million people every year from starvation alone. Millions more from preventable disease. Capitalism is responsible for orders of magnitude more deaths than every socialist country combined.
Hard disagree. Any system that allows private accumulation of capital will create a class of wealthy individuals who then use their wealth to dismantle checks and balances. It’s inevitable.
I think that if you make enough things democratically controlled, and have a proper secret ballot, that you can prevent wealth accumulation from being able to subvert democratic will.
It doesn’t solve “tyranny of the majority”, tho.
I’ve been wondering how the media could be regulated to not become a populist hellhole.
If the government starts telling what the media can write and what it cannot, we are quickly in a very bad place.
But at the same time, yellow press is a cancer. It seems that people all around prefer interesting newspapers over factual ones. Newspapers that add a bit of extra flavour to their articles sell a lot better than purely factual ones, because they are “less boring”. And then that destroys democracy. I wonder how that should be avoided!
I agree regulating speech for this purpose is not a good fit, and more likely to be abused than useful.
I think society has to really double-down on critical thinking skills, particularly around verifying sources and identifying bias, including your own cognitive biases that are inescapable. Of course, authoritarians of all stripes, but particularly religious ones, don’t like this so frequently interfere with public education efforts along those lines. CFAR has problems, but their “core mission” of “explore and practice better ways of thinking” is a good one and some of their resources can be valuable.
But, we also have to figure out how to provide spaces where people can let down their guard and escape the hostile environment AND get people (like myself) to use them (instead of doomscrolling, e.g.).
nah take your tankie nonsense back to your gulag
Look at this genius who thinks calling someone a “tankie” automatically wins the argument.
This guy is a notorious pro-capitalist hog BTW
it does tho because you don’t feed trolls. That’s like internet 101
Did you know that despite only having 4.5% of the world’s population, the USSR held 25% of the world’s prison population? Oh wait, no. Those statistics are for the USA right now.
Who needs prisons when you have gulags, murder rooms and force famines :)
As much as a I despise the penal system of USA, USA has not killed 60 million of its own inhabitants.
You are comparing grapes to grapefruits.
The global capitalist system kills 9 million people every year from starvation alone. Millions more from preventable disease. Capitalism is responsible for orders of magnitude more deaths than every socialist country combined.
Which is of course because there are so much fewer socialist countries than capitalist countries.