this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2023
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How did manipulation to make you buy specific shit become so accepted?
Because that's the goal of capitalism
That's deep.
Capitalism is driven by the idea of a free market, where competition and the law of supply and demand determine prices, production, and distribution. Manipulating you to buy stuff you don't need is the result of human greed, not capitalism. That's such a monothink way of seeing the world.
Imagine living in a small town in the middle ages. You're growing corn, your neighbour has a chicken farm, then there's also a bakery, blacksmith etc. Say you now need nails. Where do you go? To the blacksmith obviously. Does he just give them to you? No, he wants something in return. Well you offer corn because that's what you have plenty of but what if he doesn't want corn but wants eggs instead? Well you can go to your neighbour and ask if he would like to trade some eggs for corn which you could then further trade for nails. Maybe that works, maybe it doesn't, but that's still a bit of an hassle. That's why people came up with money. You can just sell your corn, get cash, buy those nails with said cash and the blacksmith can then go buy eggs with that. That's capitalism.
Medieval communities did not engage in capitalism or any sort of internal market economy. Your assumption is that history defaults to a modern western mindset where everyone is highly individualistic and only interested in themselves. Yes you would give your neighbor eggs because you know theyll give you nails. Its called a "gift economy" by historians. Anyone who didnt help the community would be ostracized
My comment is meant as a counter argument for the claim that capitalism is "manipulating you to buy specific shit"
Money was invented in 3000BC, with first coins being minted out of precious metals around 650 to 600BC
coins being around for a long time dosent mean that most trade relied on them though
Trade existed. Trade over privately owned goods. Also known as capitalism. Capitalism is a broad term and people in this thread are zoning in on modern day liberal interpretation of capitalism because they can't wait to get their late stage capitalism verbiage in. Please, everyone take a step back or open a history book.
Commerce is not the same thing as capitalism, those words are not synonyms. Take a step back and open a dictionary. Pedantic definitions aside. The idea that capitalism is human nature and that human society and more broadly humans as a species are inherently capitalist is completely made up and ancient couns existing doesnt prove it. Id recommend looking up articles regarding "gift culture'" and "barter culture"
As for opening a history book: i did my undergrad in European history, and have a masters in Archeology. So while im not the definitive expert on the history of commerce and capitalism by any means, I have definitely opened up a couple history books.
You're attributing a lot of things to my statement that I did NOT say and I don't know why you do this. Why do you do it?
It brings me hope when I see atleast one other person trying to make sense of things. Fun place for debate, isn't it?
Haha sort of. People have a very superficial understanding of topics but a lot of confidence and anger. I don't know why I even bother with these forums/communities. My hope is lurkers don't feel alienated here because they aren't left of Bernie enough. The older I get, the more I notice people talk with a lot of confidence about stuff they have no idea about.
What ever would we do without you? 🙄
That's commerce, not capitalism.
That's the foundation capitalism is built on.
Capitalism is the concentration of society around capital, hence the name capital-ism.
Here's a definition of capital:
: a stock (see STOCK entry 1 sense 1a) of accumulated goods especially at a specified time and in contrast to income received during a specified period also : the value of these accumulated goods (2) : accumulated goods devoted to the production of other goods (3) : accumulated possessions calculated to bring in income set capital and land and labor to work —G. B. Shaw see also VENTURE CAPITAL b (1) : net worth : excess of assets over liabilities (2) : STOCK sense 2a see also CAPITAL GAIN, CAPITAL STOCK, EQUITY CAPITAL c : persons holding capital : capitalists considered as a group d : ADVANTAGE, GAIN make capital of the situation e : a store or supply of useful assets or advantages
So Capitalism doesn't give a shit about free market, workers, ethics, consumers, nation, environment etc, only about capital. Which is why Capitalism is good for the stock holders, yet bad for everyone else. Because stock holders will do anything for their capital.
I'm not sure why you're defining "capital".
capitalism
/ˈkapɪtəlɪz(ə)m/
*noun
an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.
"an era of free-market capitalism"*
This includes your labor: you are the private owner of your labor. Capitalism is not possible without free markets.
Mostly for myself.
The pointing i'm failing to make is you speak of Capitalism the same way others speak of Communism, of an ideal stateof mind where everyone plays nice and does what they're supposed to. But few people do. Most play dirty and don't respect these definitions. Like you say, the imagination is nice, however it's reality that annoys and people come to hate and harm each other when profit is more important that coexistence.
I don't think there is an inherent ethical value ascribed to capitalism...it's just a description of an economic system. It can be good or bad. It's a broad description at that too.
It is apt to say capitalism inherently lacks ethics. And in a world where competition is the main attribute describing society, that lack is what breeds success. Which is why one could even exaggerate and say that capitalism fosters sociopathy. Individuals that grow to lose their sense of ethics are favoured and more likely to succeed in positions of power, while those restricted by their morals are quickly pushed aside. So while we say capitalism can be good or bad, it is more likely that it leans towards the bad.
I defend capitalism because I don't want to live under communism. That doesn't however mean that I'm a huge fan of the status quo either. Ofcourse I want more fair distribution of wealth, and that factories stop dumping waste into rivers etc. What I don't want, however, is that we throw out the baby with the bathwater. I don't advocate for that we just pull the plug on capitalism, whatever that even means. I'd much rather try and fix what's wrong with it with better rules and regulations. Even if you think that's impossible, it still sure is easier that rebuilding the whole thing from the ground up, and thinking you'll succeed on the first try.
Capitalism depends on the selfishness of the individual and their ability to extract the highest value with the lowest cost. Communism depends heavily if not fully on ethics. We are definitely not an ethical people. So you are correct the former is more preferable to the latter, because it's easier to implement. You cannot depend on ethics unless those ethics create the highest value at the lowest cost for the individual. So the key would be to make restrictions that inspire the ethical approach over cutting corners. If that is possible, then whichever system is used, they are more likely to be better than the alternative.
That's cool but, what does it have to do with the topic at hand?
Source
You just described the free market, not capitalism.
My definition is almost word to word the same that merriam webster gives. You can go have a look yourself.
What are you talking about? Capitalism is inherently reliant on free markets. Otherwise what you have is a planned economy. You know, the opposite of capitalism?
Capitalism is reliant on a free market. That does not make it the same nor does that mean that a free market is reliant on capitalism. The concept described above is a free market, not capitalism.
Dude, you're talking to 14 year olds that skimmed Das Kapital one time and binged second thought on yt for the sum of their economic education.
Edit: your downvotes can't hurt me. You know I'm right. Go back to watching Hasanabi or something.
This is not what is happening. Google offers you a tier with advertising for free. If you'd prefer to not have the ads, you can pay a small fee, get no ads and also steam every song ever. I truly don't see the controversy.
It's literally cheaper than a beer for a full month of this service, but people would rather spend hours of their time tinkering with settings instead. Personally, I don't have that kind of time.
Where do you live that a beer is $15?
If I'm not mistaken, the "tinkering" necessary in uBlock Origin would take much less than the time you took to type out your comment. And no, it doesn't cost less than a beer.
You have a point, but the problem goes far beyond ads vs. no ads. There is definitely a lot of controversy, and you simplify choose not to see it, but don't try to act like everyone else is just too dumb or too poor to see things your way when neither of those are true.
I did not say that applying today's partiucar fix would take hours. For however long this fix works works. I said "people would rather spend hours of their time tinkering with settings instead." Of course I use ublock myself, the web is appalling without it.
As to the price of beer, that may be an Australian thing. But if you manage to get a schooner (425ml/15 oz) at a public bar here for less than $10, you're probably drinking something crap.
I see what people are complaining about. They're acting like they are being forced to visit the website. A website that sits behind one of the largest and most responsive network/web clusters on the planet. A website that is somehow referencing over an Exabyte of storage, geographically redundant and presumabely being backed up. I work in this industry, on a network with over 1,000 servers and my mind boggles at how much infrastructure that takes. I couldn't begin to estimate what is behind that simple YouTube web front page.
Somehow, the controversy is that Google has the gall to want to recoup some of these costs. It costs a fortune for just the hardware. Then add the bandwidth. Then somehow they're paying content creators to put popular videos on the platform. And they offer it all to you for free in return for watching some ads. Or alternatively, you pay $10 to not watch ads.
I see what you mean on that last point, but I think their profits are just insanely above what the average company's looking at, which is probably why it seems like so much at face value.
Just the data alone that they're complaining on almost everyone out there would more than make up for what they spend. It's most likely why Facebook and others are also free.
As far as being forced to visit, there really aren't many alternatives on the same level to where you can really say someone can easily do without. It's what they wanted in the first place, so it's not like this wasn't something they weren't planning for ahead of time.
It's a tough situation, I don't know that I wouldn't do the same thing in youtube's place, but I don't think simply accept what the big Corp tells us is the best path either.
You are missing my point. Advertisment became an elaborate manipulation, targeted with questionably obtained personal information.
And for me personally the content YouTube is selling is not worth the money they are asking. I just do something else.