Indeed. Which standard do you, gentle Slashdot read, want: * Videos that people want to put up, and that people want to see; or * A curated selection of videos that are best for you, as judged by your betters
We know that oppressive governments the world round demand the second option. Which should you demand?
"To know who rules you, ask: who am I not allowed to criticize in public? Those are your rulers."
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Tuesday April 02, 2019 @12:18PM (#58372110)
It used to be the case that a higher education was good for exposing young minds to challenging ideas, and thereby teaching them to stare with resolve into the deep abyss that is existence, and to rebut bad arguments with good arguments.
However, collectivist authoritarians (namely Marxists) began their "long march" through the Institutions of the West; in the Universities, they started curbing speech by setting up "safe spaces", and then once the "safe" space spread across most of a campus, they started designating "free-speech zones" to mark those pockets of the university that are explicitly no longer "safe" from triggering ideas. Then, the started calling some speech "hate speech", so that they could regulated the "free speech" zones, and now students (read: children) at these institutions regularly prevent cordial lectures by any means necessary, including yelling, chanting, storming stages, and piling chairs up where an unwanted speaker might which to make his pulpit.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Tuesday April 02, 2019 @12:33PM (#58372224)
As an actual Marxist, I fucking wish Marxism was spreading throughout universities, but alas it isn't at all. What is spreading though universities is consumer ideology. People treating their degrees as commodities, demanding "consumer satisfaction" from their time at university. Institutes of learning have been invaded by the market, with everything valuable worthy and fun driven out.
All that shit you wrote has no basis in reality, and shows you've never been within 10km of a university ever, but as a Marxist I want everyone to have that opportunity. We should be spending the surplus of society on enabling everyone to reach their highest potential, regardless of economic background. Even you.
Indeed, all the "pure" ideologies are pretty much useless at any scale beyond the immediately local, including "pure capitalism".
That's why I laugh when people say "the USA will never be socialist" because the USA has been socialist for at least a hundred years and arguably since its founding. If you believe the government has any role whatsoever in regulating commerce, then you believe in socialism and we're just dickering over details (as an aside, the power that the constitution most explicitly grants c
Besides ideology, the fact is that something like 36% of US GDP is governmental. That means the vast majority of US society is still a matter of "private" interaction; indeed, most legal disputes are actually resolved out of court by private arbitration, and most security services are not the police but rather hired mercenaries.
Perhaps 64% "pure" capitalism might be realistically achievable. That's not really a "pure" position, and many social democrats might actually agree with it.
Capitalism doesn't care about borders or self-described "governing" bodies; capitalism is a philosophy that describes a fundamental aspect of anti-fragile interactions between individuals.
Put more concretely, even North Korea has capitalism, manifesting as the so-called "black markets"; in fact, it is this capitalism that keeps the North Koreans (or the former Soviets, or the Venezuelans, etc.) alive in spite of the massive parasite of authoritarianism that sits astride social interactions.
Those examples have nothing to do with the ownership and distribution of capital, and also nothing to do with philosophy. What you're describing is more accurately referred to as "social science" (because economics IS-A social science).
Marxism is a religion from a fantasy book which, when let out of the confines of the vacuum of the book much akin to some chemical elements being taken out of a vacuum, and introduced to reality and the atmosphere, inherently changes into a different element to suit the new environment and its laws and requirements. In other words Marxism is an armchair fantasy book only armchair idiots cling to. People who put it into practice however, who know better about the realities of it through their practice as Newto
Well, it's been such a smashing success in Venezuela...and Cuba....and let's not forget the USSR, although I guess they can claim that thug Putin is a success. N. Korea is just an economic powerhouse.
Right. The problem with Marxism is that it cannot exist in a practical way, because the system is inherently unstable.
You really need to understand that different words do have different meanings. Democracy == capitalism == fascism as much as socialism == communism == Marxism.
In Marxism, the labor theory of value rules. Don't put in effort don't get the results. As opposed to what we have where Beszos just made in the time it took me to write this more money than both of us will make in our entire lives while putting in zero effort.
The labor theory of value (the price of a good or service should be equal to the total amount of labor value required to produce it) doesn't reward increase in efficiency. Why should I invest in a method to produce the same goods twice as fast, if that requires halving the price ? Without any effort to maximize efficiency, you'll quickly lose against competing communitities, and that's one reason it's unstable. Also, without a free market with independent agents settling on a mutually agreed price, you'll need an authority to set prices for you, which introduces a target point for corruption, and power struggles.
"Price" isn't a thing in Marxism, you know that's a free market idea, right? Arguments based on price fail to even address Marxist issues. Price signalling, on the other hand, is an issue, but with telecommunication, there are other ways for independent agents to settle on a mutually agreed upon value. For example, you could go on a website and set your personal preferences for various consumer goods and services. Your share of the output from the means of production would then be used to satisfy those pre
More generally, the problem with the labor theory of value is that it ignores the value of knowledge. The theory was defined in the context of a stable agrarian society with minimal industry, where the knowledge of how to produce things was fairly uniformly distributed, and innovation was so rare as to be negligible. With no differentials in knowledge to speak of, the output levels were entirely determined by the materials available and the labor applied.
As soon as you recognize that knowledge has value, though, it's trivial to see why the labor theory falls on its face. Invent a way to make widgets with half the materials and half the labor and you're producing twice as much as your competitor for the same cost. More subtly, but perhaps more importantly, discover a situation where some unavailable (or nonexistent!) good or service is needed, and arrange to remedy that need, and you may have generated 10X or 100X value. Knowing where to apply resources to maximize their utility can generate incredible returns to multiple segments of society, often with no losers.
A less-obvious result of ignoring the value of knowledge is that the labor theory is inherently zero-sum. To produce more widgets you have to shift labor away from making whatsits, so you make less of them. But the reality is that you can often create a way to make whozits which can be used to dramatically increase the efficiency of producing both widgets and whatsits, so by taking labor away to produce an entirely new thing, you actually produce more of everything. Such positive-sum outcomes are actually more common than not.
As a philosopher, Marx had some moderately-interesting ideas. As an economist, his ideas were just plain wrong.
Ummm, you literally just made that up. Anyone who has even briefly studied any economics whatsoever knows that the LVT is meant to drive price down to 0 as efficiency increases. Without profit, that is actually a realistic goal. Open source software (the most socialistic experiment in human history, bar none) exemplifies this, although the cart is before the horse somewhat: the price starts at free to maximize efficiency, but it intrinsically proves that a price of 0 can and does improve efficiency nigh
Perhaps an unobtainable member of that particular part of the island. Because every example I have been given I have deemed to not truly be from there....
Gees, chill dude. The problem with Google employees is clear, it is a broken recommendation system. Look, sometimes I view those toxic videos, you know the stuff white supremacists, just to see what they say, how they express themselves, try to gauge their real thoughts, see what it is about, zero influence on me. Now the problem is Googe's recommendation system, watch one of those videos out of curiosity and trying to understand the people who create them and bloody Google will serve up nothing but that cr
This shit is pure evil, and I hope you get cancer. It is being spread by universities and its infecting the media and government. You are championing a ideology that has lead to millions of deaths and therefore you can totally get fucked.
But it is spreading. Its not "the market" that fires people for wrongthink. I know you like to blame the market for everything you dont like but it just aint so. The market doesnt care about your specific economic background, skincolor or sex. You take offense when they assign value in context, that perhaps a variant of those factors have an higher value than the others in some areas. Like how you'd rather bet on nigerians instead of germans in a marathon, or the norwegians over the jamacians in cross-count
Meh, conservatives and nationalists are just pissed off that the world is no longer their exclusive 'safe space' and that they are no longer free to indoctrinate however they see fit with no competition. Isn't it funny how they tend to accuse 'marxists' of doing exactly what they want to do and are upset at resistance?
I mean, the United States was explicitly founded on the idea that people should be allowed to hold and to express religious ideas (read: even the most bizarre ideas) without constraint by the government.
So, what are you talking about? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
The problem is that there is an asymmetry: Conservatives (in the U.S. at least) are trying to conserve the idea of a small, limited government that explicitly protects free speech; the conservatives (in the U.S. at least) have always invited into the
Most politicians who call themselves "conservative" in the United States are not, in reality, conservative.
Look for the ones who oppose medical abortion, legislate about where people can shit, put up religious monuments outside court houses, try to "protect" marriage from consenting adults who want to get married... these people exist. This is not a straw man. And they have the gall to call themselves "conservative".
* The taxpayer shouldn't be paying for your abortion; limiting abortion is the quickest way to free the taxpayer. Also, a healthy society would basically never need abortions; if you're promoting abortion, then there's something rotten at the core of your philosophy.
* The only problem with putting up religious monuments is that taxpayers must fund it; such an act is forced speech (well, all taxation is forced speech, because money is speech, but that's a wider discussion). Otherwise, erecting a religi
The world? Don't conflate the paltry 600 million people of the Western world and Anglosphere to the rest of the world's 7.1 billion people, when you yourselves are divided and you have your spoiled and infantile worldviews compared to both the rest of the world and your ancestors who are partly to blame for you becoming like this due to your vastly different histories and vastly different cultures from the rest of the world.
Dumbasses like yourself ask yourselves why Eastern Europe and half of Central Europ
And this has to do with YouTube how exactly? You saying "Marxists are marching through YouTube?" Or are you saying higher education makes people less tolerant of toxic spew? Or what?
And this "rebut bad arguments with good arguments" is quite laughable. Toxic morons don't argue; they don't reason with facts and logic; they just make stuff up and yell it as loud as they can. And in the process they manage to convince a few more weak-minded souls, who also don't listen to reason, and then things snowball to th
Ironically, "Nazi" is derived from "National Socialist", which is an ideology better known as "Fascism", which was derived from Marxism by recognizing that Nationalism seems to be a more cohesive collectivism than some kind of internationalist economic status.
The Koch Brothers [duckduckgo.com] are taking over the Universities. They've already bought out the economics departments and replaced a large chunk of the professors with the sort of Neo-Liberal MBA guys that are busy figuring out how to replace you with an offshore resource or better yet a computer.
Stop spending all your time and attention on social issues. I get it. SJWs are annoying as fuck. But they're a small minority with very, very little actual power. There are extraordinarily wealthy and powerful people who do
Nazi party (they are rightwingers, no more socialist than North Korea is democratic), white supremacists, religious and patriots all revere authority, the patriots BY DEFINITION do so. "My country". That is an authority state.
Felson's Law:
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from
many is research.
Good (Score:1, Insightful)
I see no problem here (except with some employees who are complaining, who should probably be fired).
Re: (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. Which standard do you, gentle Slashdot read, want:
* Videos that people want to put up, and that people want to see; or
* A curated selection of videos that are best for you, as judged by your betters
We know that oppressive governments the world round demand the second option. Which should you demand?
"To know who rules you, ask: who am I not allowed to criticize in public? Those are your rulers."
Collectivists took over Universities. (Score:2, Interesting)
It used to be the case that a higher education was good for exposing young minds to challenging ideas, and thereby teaching them to stare with resolve into the deep abyss that is existence, and to rebut bad arguments with good arguments.
However, collectivist authoritarians (namely Marxists) began their "long march" through the Institutions of the West; in the Universities, they started curbing speech by setting up "safe spaces", and then once the "safe" space spread across most of a campus, they started designating "free-speech zones" to mark those pockets of the university that are explicitly no longer "safe" from triggering ideas. Then, the started calling some speech "hate speech", so that they could regulated the "free speech" zones, and now students (read: children) at these institutions regularly prevent cordial lectures by any means necessary, including yelling, chanting, storming stages, and piling chairs up where an unwanted speaker might which to make his pulpit.
We're doomed.
Re:Collectivists took over Universities. (Score:5, Interesting)
As an actual Marxist, I fucking wish Marxism was spreading throughout universities, but alas it isn't at all.
What is spreading though universities is consumer ideology. People treating their degrees as commodities, demanding "consumer satisfaction" from their time at university.
Institutes of learning have been invaded by the market, with everything valuable worthy and fun driven out.
All that shit you wrote has no basis in reality, and shows you've never been within 10km of a university ever, but as a Marxist I want everyone to have that opportunity. We should be spending the surplus of society on enabling everyone to reach their highest potential, regardless of economic background. Even you.
Re: (Score:0, Flamebait)
Re: (Score:0)
wtf is an "actual marxist" ... is this like people who claim to be Libertarian?
Re: (Score:1)
It's a religion. Dumber than average.
Re: (Score:3)
wtf is an "actual marxist"
I assume it's someone who follows the writings of Marx.
Of course, those are just writings, ideas, not an actual stable functional system.
Re: (Score:0)
Indeed, all the "pure" ideologies are pretty much useless at any scale beyond the immediately local, including "pure capitalism".
That's why I laugh when people say "the USA will never be socialist" because the USA has been socialist for at least a hundred years and arguably since its founding. If you believe the government has any role whatsoever in regulating commerce, then you believe in socialism and we're just dickering over details (as an aside, the power that the constitution most explicitly grants c
Libertarian or pure capitalists answer: No. (Score:0)
Besides ideology, the fact is that something like 36% of US GDP is governmental. That means the vast majority of US society is still a matter of "private" interaction; indeed, most legal disputes are actually resolved out of court by private arbitration, and most security services are not the police but rather hired mercenaries.
Re: (Score:0)
Perhaps 64% "pure" capitalism might be realistically achievable. That's not really a "pure" position, and many social democrats might actually agree with it.
Your frame of reference is silly. (Score:0)
Capitalism doesn't care about borders or self-described "governing" bodies; capitalism is a philosophy that describes a fundamental aspect of anti-fragile interactions between individuals.
Put more concretely, even North Korea has capitalism, manifesting as the so-called "black markets"; in fact, it is this capitalism that keeps the North Koreans (or the former Soviets, or the Venezuelans, etc.) alive in spite of the massive parasite of authoritarianism that sits astride social interactions.
Where's an exampl
Re: (Score:0)
Those examples have nothing to do with the ownership and distribution of capital, and also nothing to do with philosophy. What you're describing is more accurately referred to as "social science" (because economics IS-A social science).
"Capitalist" is a job title, no more and no less.
Re: (Score:2)
So, what's the difference between libertarians, fascists and socialist?
Re: (Score:-1)
Not really, ever since Megan's Law passed you can actually see where all the Libertarians live now.
Re: (Score:0)
Marxism is a religion from a fantasy book which, when let out of the confines of the vacuum of the book much akin to some chemical elements being taken out of a vacuum, and introduced to reality and the atmosphere, inherently changes into a different element to suit the new environment and its laws and requirements.
In other words Marxism is an armchair fantasy book only armchair idiots cling to.
People who put it into practice however, who know better about the realities of it through their practice as Newto
Re: (Score:2)
wtf is an "actual marxist" ... is this like people who claim to be Libertarian?
.
No... an Actual Marxist, or rather, a True Marxist, apparently lives in Scotland.
.
*shrug*.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
Well, it's been such a smashing success in Venezuela...and Cuba....and let's not forget the USSR, although I guess they can claim that thug Putin is a success. N. Korea is just an economic powerhouse.
Re: (Score:2)
Except zero of those countries are marxist. Do you even know what the word means?
Re: (Score:2)
Except zero of those countries are marxist.
Right. The problem with Marxism is that it cannot exist in a practical way, because the system is inherently unstable.
Re: (Score:0)
So just like everything else, as the chaos butterfly theory proves.
Re: (Score:0)
Except zero of those countries are marxist.
Right. The problem with Marxism is that it cannot exist in a practical way, because the system is inherently unstable.
You really need to understand that different words do have different meanings. Democracy == capitalism == fascism as much as socialism == communism == Marxism.
In Marxism, the labor theory of value rules. Don't put in effort don't get the results. As opposed to what we have where Beszos just made in the time it took me to write this more money than both of us will make in our entire lives while putting in zero effort.
Re:Collectivists took over Universities. (Score:5, Informative)
In Marxism, the labor theory of value rules.
The labor theory of value (the price of a good or service should be equal to the total amount of labor value required to produce it) doesn't reward increase in efficiency. Why should I invest in a method to produce the same goods twice as fast, if that requires halving the price ? Without any effort to maximize efficiency, you'll quickly lose against competing communitities, and that's one reason it's unstable. Also, without a free market with independent agents settling on a mutually agreed price, you'll need an authority to set prices for you, which introduces a target point for corruption, and power struggles.
Re: (Score:-1)
"Price" isn't a thing in Marxism, you know that's a free market idea, right? Arguments based on price fail to even address Marxist issues. Price signalling, on the other hand, is an issue, but with telecommunication, there are other ways for independent agents to settle on a mutually agreed upon value. For example, you could go on a website and set your personal preferences for various consumer goods and services. Your share of the output from the means of production would then be used to satisfy those pre
Re:Collectivists took over Universities. (Score:4, Informative)
More generally, the problem with the labor theory of value is that it ignores the value of knowledge. The theory was defined in the context of a stable agrarian society with minimal industry, where the knowledge of how to produce things was fairly uniformly distributed, and innovation was so rare as to be negligible. With no differentials in knowledge to speak of, the output levels were entirely determined by the materials available and the labor applied.
As soon as you recognize that knowledge has value, though, it's trivial to see why the labor theory falls on its face. Invent a way to make widgets with half the materials and half the labor and you're producing twice as much as your competitor for the same cost. More subtly, but perhaps more importantly, discover a situation where some unavailable (or nonexistent!) good or service is needed, and arrange to remedy that need, and you may have generated 10X or 100X value. Knowing where to apply resources to maximize their utility can generate incredible returns to multiple segments of society, often with no losers.
A less-obvious result of ignoring the value of knowledge is that the labor theory is inherently zero-sum. To produce more widgets you have to shift labor away from making whatsits, so you make less of them. But the reality is that you can often create a way to make whozits which can be used to dramatically increase the efficiency of producing both widgets and whatsits, so by taking labor away to produce an entirely new thing, you actually produce more of everything. Such positive-sum outcomes are actually more common than not.
As a philosopher, Marx had some moderately-interesting ideas. As an economist, his ideas were just plain wrong.
Re: (Score:0)
Because otherwise you'll shortly go out of business, because you'll be competing against people offering the same thing as you at half the price.
Next question?
Re: (Score:0)
Ummm, you literally just made that up. Anyone who has even briefly studied any economics whatsoever knows that the LVT is meant to drive price down to 0 as efficiency increases. Without profit, that is actually a realistic goal. Open source software (the most socialistic experiment in human history, bar none) exemplifies this, although the cart is before the horse somewhat: the price starts at free to maximize efficiency, but it intrinsically proves that a price of 0 can and does improve efficiency nigh
FOSS is Capitalism (Score:0)
By contributing to a FOSS project, you are choosing to allocate your resources (e.g., your money, your time, your skills, your labor, etc.).
FOSS is Capitalism. You're a Capitalist.
FOSS is socialism (Score:0)
You cannot redefine socialist as "anything bad" and capitalism as "anything good".
Re: (Score:0)
Alright you just admitted there is no marxism so now forget the word and let poor people have healthcare dipshit.
I'm looking for a guy from the northern part of UK (Score:0)
Perhaps an unobtainable member of that particular part of the island. Because every example I have been given I have deemed to not truly be from there....
Re: (Score:0)
Re: (Score:1)
Marxist, communism, socialism. Same shit, different flavor
Re: (Score:0)
And you have never been more than 10km away from a university...
Re: (Score:0)
Even you.
I love the throwaway lines you Marxists use to show how intelligent you are. Please let me know when Real Communism is implemented.
Re: (Score:0)
"As an actual Marxist" said the anonymous coward. I'd put money down that you get paid for your job and wouldn't do it otherwise. Marxist my ass.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Gees, chill dude. The problem with Google employees is clear, it is a broken recommendation system. Look, sometimes I view those toxic videos, you know the stuff white supremacists, just to see what they say, how they express themselves, try to gauge their real thoughts, see what it is about, zero influence on me. Now the problem is Googe's recommendation system, watch one of those videos out of curiosity and trying to understand the people who create them and bloody Google will serve up nothing but that cr
Re: (Score:0)
"As an actual Marxist, I fucking wish Marxism was spreading throughout universities, but alas it isn't at all."
So edgy. Are you 12?
Communism is the ideology which caused the most human suffering and loss of human life in the previous century.
You're worse than the Nazis.
Re: (Score:0)
This shit is pure evil, and I hope you get cancer. It is being spread by universities and its infecting the media and government. You are championing a ideology that has lead to millions of deaths and therefore you can totally get fucked.
Re: (Score:0)
But it is spreading. Its not "the market" that fires people for wrongthink. I know you like to blame the market for everything you dont like but it just aint so. The market doesnt care about your specific economic background, skincolor or sex. You take offense when they assign value in context, that perhaps a variant of those factors have an higher value than the others in some areas. Like how you'd rather bet on nigerians instead of germans in a marathon, or the norwegians over the jamacians in cross-count
Re: (Score:-1, Troll)
False premise (Score:0)
I mean, the United States was explicitly founded on the idea that people should be allowed to hold and to express religious ideas (read: even the most bizarre ideas) without constraint by the government.
So, what are you talking about? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
The problem is that there is an asymmetry: Conservatives (in the U.S. at least) are trying to conserve the idea of a small, limited government that explicitly protects free speech; the conservatives (in the U.S. at least) have always invited into the
Re: (Score:0)
Most politicians who call themselves "conservative" in the United States are not, in reality, conservative.
Look for the ones who oppose medical abortion, legislate about where people can shit, put up religious monuments outside court houses, try to "protect" marriage from consenting adults who want to get married... these people exist. This is not a straw man. And they have the gall to call themselves "conservative".
Re: (Score:0)
Maybe.
* The taxpayer shouldn't be paying for your abortion; limiting abortion is the quickest way to free the taxpayer. Also, a healthy society would basically never need abortions; if you're promoting abortion, then there's something rotten at the core of your philosophy.
* The only problem with putting up religious monuments is that taxpayers must fund it; such an act is forced speech (well, all taxation is forced speech, because money is speech, but that's a wider discussion). Otherwise, erecting a religi
Re: False premise (Score:1)
Re: (Score:0)
The world? Don't conflate the paltry 600 million people of the Western world and Anglosphere to the rest of the world's 7.1 billion people, when you yourselves are divided and you have your spoiled and infantile worldviews compared to both the rest of the world and your ancestors who are partly to blame for you becoming like this due to your vastly different histories and vastly different cultures from the rest of the world.
Dumbasses like yourself ask yourselves why Eastern Europe and half of Central Europ
Re: (Score:0)
And this has to do with YouTube how exactly? You saying "Marxists are marching through YouTube?" Or are you saying higher education makes people less tolerant of toxic spew? Or what?
And this "rebut bad arguments with good arguments" is quite laughable. Toxic morons don't argue; they don't reason with facts and logic; they just make stuff up and yell it as loud as they can. And in the process they manage to convince a few more weak-minded souls, who also don't listen to reason, and then things snowball to th
You're saying Democracy is a bad idea. (Score:0)
Without curation, you don't trust the populace with the right to vote.
Well, I agreeâ"society's resources should be organized with Capitalism, not Democracy, but that's for another discussion.
To give you answer to your question: To me, the OP is saying 2 things:
* The collectivist authoritarians (namely Marxists) are making their long march through YouTube.
* University-educated people are the ones who fill the roles of large, influential organizations like a government or YouTube; generations of these pe
Re: (Score:2)
No-one cares what 'Marxist' actually means any more. It's just a convenient scary word which can be slapped upon anyone undesirable.
Nope. The scary word is "Nazi". (Score:0)
Ironically, "Nazi" is derived from "National Socialist", which is an ideology better known as "Fascism", which was derived from Marxism by recognizing that Nationalism seems to be a more cohesive collectivism than some kind of internationalist economic status.
Not exactly (Score:1)
Stop spending all your time and attention on social issues. I get it. SJWs are annoying as fuck. But they're a small minority with very, very little actual power. There are extraordinarily wealthy and powerful people who do
Re: (Score:0)
100% agreed. Youtube did the right thing here. Freedom of Speech mother fuckers! Fuck the cultural Marxists.
Authoritarians are rightwingers (Score:0)
Nazi party (they are rightwingers, no more socialist than North Korea is democratic), white supremacists, religious and patriots all revere authority, the patriots BY DEFINITION do so. "My country". That is an authority state.