Yeah, responding to someone else! Fuck sake

Go bother someone else.

My description wasn’t “wealthy hoard money, empire make money.” And I didn’t say anything about anyone else’s work. Honestly, I don’t know what ax you have to grind here, but I really don’t care. I assume you think you’re arguing against someone who’s trying to say it’s the “natural and best way” and all that, but you’re not, I’m literally just saying that these kinds of structures have occurred for millennia and seem to recur alongside broader imperial structures.

Seems like your comment only seeks to discredit and not address the issue. Waste of time to go down this path. My claim’s simply “something like this did in fact exist a lot longer ago than only a few hundred years back”, which is just a fact.

Well, notice how you’re using the word “tend”. Religious ideas only come from attempts to derive explanations for what we experience. The latter is the basically intrinsic part of human nature, the former isn’t. I’m talking about what is an absolute, unchangeable part of human nature, versus what’s variable and just “something that humans do sometimes”.

Anyone ever commenting “human nature” should be forced to explain how: (a) some behavior is an inevitable result of brain physiology, and, (b) why examples of people who don’t exhibit that behavior exist. The absence of those explanations disprove like 95%+ of “human nature” arguments. Like, “oh, religion is human nature, we must believe in a higher power because we crave meaning” - which part of the brain mandates that thought, and why do atheists and agnostics exist then?

Greed isn’t inescapably “human nature”, but results from it under some basic conditions. The nature of enjoyment and suffering means the pursuit of enjoyment and avoidance of suffering as a biological imperative. Desperation, lack of cultural/learned empathy, cultural normalization of disparity, etc., can quickly allow unchecked greed. The same thing, with different conditions, can be said for… not sure there’s a single word for it, but behavior motivated by empathy promoting equality and sharing and so on. The conditions actually kind of close to being the inverse of those for greed - some combination of not having desperation, having cultural/learned empathy, cultural normalization of economic equality, etc. Both types of thinking are just basically pro-social or anti-social thought with regard to material/economic gain, depending on what influences individual thinking.

Definitions of “capitalism” are variable but I think it’s totally inaccurate to say that it’s only existed for a few hundred years. You look at ancient Roman/Greek society, they have privately owned businesses with shareholder type structures. One of the key influences on Western legal systems today (something hinted at by half our legal terms being in Latin). Something similar about the economic structure can be said about many historical empires, older than a few hundred years. Where does the line get drawn on what’s “capitalism” or “capitalism-like” vs. what’s not. The basic idea of monopolizing control over production etc. in order to privately benefit, is not particularly hard for people to arrive at. Heck, it goes hand in hand with “empire”, because when you have a structure based on elevating a huge number of people against a huge number of other people, it’s not a stretch to have the same structure occurring within the society, because you already have one type of inequality normalized.

The vibes are impeccable though.

Lost track of my reddit bans. Really lost track of my subreddit bans. I really stacked them up late 2023.

It’s the episode where it’s “Columbus Day,” and the mobsters are getting indignant about the suggestion Columbus was a mass murderer, while local indigenous people are protesting it. Tony says something like “in this house Christopher Columbus is a hero.”

The way this scene on the show is so much uglier.

There’s an absolutely ancient meme of someone selling a mirror or TV or something. Circa 2000 ish.

Brainwashers and brainwashees. Brainwashers are traitors.

Paul also pulled out of his ass all the insane bullshit that modern evangelical Christianity is based around. “Yeah, uh, God hates gays, and women, and also loves the Roman Empire that killed Jesus.”

Guy’s dead, no evidence either way, so asserting that’s wrong is about as baseless as asserting it’s right. Things like that are far from unheard of.

I would edit it to say:

The precise reason why the solution has always been total replacement of the system with direct democracy. From within or without.

I have some faith that we’d see the economic outcomes we want with direct votes for measures vs. votes for politicians, due to the amount of involvement required.

Congress has the power to impeach him and remove him from office. Of course, like the last 10 or so war criminal presidents of the U.S., they don’t. Likewise, the courts have the power to neuter his presidency - and had the power to put him in prison - but don’t, and didn’t.

The precise reason why the solution has always been total system replacement. From within or without.

They love their government contracts.

Not quite what I mean. The way that control is orchestrated between the whole apparatus for the moves of the machine to function synchronously (media support of wars, wars happening in a way that benefits the largest companies, etc.).

For example, the way that even CNN seems to just be reading from a script re: manufacturing consent for the Palestinian genocide. It’s beyond something like “they’ll lose their White House press credentials if they don’t play nice”.