To understand why millennials hate you, you must understand capitalism. To understand capitalism, imagine being forced to play a game of Monopoly where one person starts with nearly all the money in the bank and all the properties… and what about you? Fuck you, that’s what.
@JohanEmpa Everything is capitalism, unless it’s communism, so what’s better than capitalism isn’t the winning argument you might think it is. (Nor is it original. “There is no alternative” is Thatcher-speak.)
@aral so we agree that while regulated capitalism has some downsides, it is better than all existing alternatives?
Or which alternative do you prefer?
"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words."
Ursula K. LeGuin (obm)
@dgold @aral nice words. I definitely believe a new system can be invented. Going backwards to some kind of communism seems boring and wrong. But.
A hybrid of basic income and regulated capitalism would be interesting.
Naturally we should let robots do the work we don't want to do and they should get paid for their work. Then we tax them and that's how I would finance that basic income. Let's make it medium income so we have a good living standard and money left over
@JohanEmpa
If we were forced to choose only between political and economical systems in their current or past forms, then the besz choice is probably somewhere in Europe, at a time when "Capitalism" was still understood as a bad caricature of "market economy".
But fortunately we don't have to. Thanks to democracy, we can decide to change our economic system and how it's organized, taxed and regulated, in ways that haven't been done before, and probably couldn't have.
@aral I need to excuse my now following unpolitiness.
But what bullcrap is that? That's just ageism, hiding itself behind the veneer of social criticism. The capital distribution is not the fault of one generation (e.g the boomers).
But is the fault riding for now roughly 200 - 300 years a system called capitalism, which eats people, environments and produces capital and destroys the living conditions of what it needs to run.
A millenial speaking.
Well, it is true that there was a huge change in the 80's with the so called "neo-capitalism", with the power going from the entrepreneurs to the stockholders, from the companies to the stock markets. Culminating to what we have now: the most unequal capitalism system we've had since the creation of capitalism (I believe).
It did happen in a few generations in my opinion. But then the hate is up to you of course 😅
@fantazo Read up on Thatcher, Greenspan, and neoliberalism.
@aral It's still bullshit. Referencing Thatcher, Greenspan and Neoliberalism only to make your argument right is just name dropping.
Neoliberalism is bullshit, nothing new. That Thatcher destroyed the social state of Great Britain, nothing new. She even was proud that now the laborparty that she corrupted through her actions.
Ageism is still crap, need to be treated as fascism in itself, a way of trying to hinder solidarity and make each person fighting for herself.
@fantazo
I think you should not interpret the phrase "why millenials hat you" as "if you read this, every millenial hates you" (because that would be silly)
But many millenials have been given the very short end of the straw, and are justifiably unhappy about hearing from smug, well-off older people about how lazy they were.
I'm a bit too old to be a millenial, but comparing the stuff I dealt with to the lives of people 10, 15 years younger: I had no idea how easy I had it
@aral
@aral 1) you dont speak for a generation, and 2) this is senseless drivel.
@fm 3)🖕
@fm
And do you have the same stats for people below ... Say 35?
Also, you state that for wealthy people. Nice but it seems to me like the following:
Of all people who won the lottery, more than 70% paid 5[insert currency name here] for a ticket. To bee meaningful, you would need to add the percentage of the population sait wealthy people represent.
@aral
@fm
We seem to agree on facts then.
So if you are young now, you get worse education than the earlier generation. Since property is something you either acquire or inherit, you did not inherit and, because of education deficit have a lot less opportunity to acquire.
Seems a lot like @aral 's original message. Maybe with less monopoly imagery and profanity.
@aral
@ew Oh, the irony, it hurts! 🤣
@aral in addition to that, there is a huge and unfair factor of luck. The question is, if you ever found a huge source of gold, how much would you take and what would you do with it.
@aral Capitalism consists of a number of fundamentally false assumptions (infinite growth of the world economy, everyone can get rich, etc) and their PR tries to cover that up with lies.
No! Believe in yourself and give everything! You can do it!
@aral There was a conversation at a local board game group with plenty of them saying they don't want to play with someone who'll play Monopoly. And these are people desperate to play board games!
I have to concur...
@aral
I honestly don't understand the connection between the problem of uncontrolled capitalism and people born after the 1.1.2000 ! I doubt that there is one at all.
@ew
That is also not entirely true! The problem that having wealthy parents improves your chances to get wealthy on your own is a matter of fact, and the big problem especially in fully free market systems as that means a lot of possible potential gets wasted because people don't get their fair chances!
@aral
@aral at least the European regulated version of capitalism gave us free schools, university, health care, unemployment support and help paying the rent if you for some reason is unable to work. Oh, also freedom, democracy.
There's American, European and Chinese capitalism. The only known alternative is Soviet communism.
Well you have the medieval guilds where you're born into an occupation and is forced to obey the King and the lord.
What's better than capitalism?