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James
 Rep: 664 

Re: Current Events Thread

James wrote:

Begging Syrian and African troops to join the conflict

Asking China for weapons

It's going this bad already and the world is only two weeks into the conflict.

What's next?

polluxlm
 Rep: 221 

Re: Current Events Thread

polluxlm wrote:

A nice long distraction until they're ready to jump on the pandemic train again. With some climate change hysteria to spice things up. Economy's going to tank at some point. It's going to be fun ride towards 2030 and the globalist agenda.

"You will own nothing and be happy".

monkeychow
 Rep: 661 

Re: Current Events Thread

monkeychow wrote:

To me "You will Own Nothing" is an obvious trend that already existed....I don't need to buy every CD that comes out cos I have spotify...I don't need to get every new BD/DVD cos I have all the streaming services...I don't need to buy a holiday house....I can air B+B a great place for the 2 weeks of a decade I wanna be there....maybe eventually I don't need to own my car...I can make do with the transport and ubers....

People keep using it as some proof of some global agenda but to me it's just more common sense evolution of the gig economy and using the internet and smart devices to deliver services to people.

In 1997 I could have told you that one day I would be able to watch new movies as they come out on the internet, but that's just an extrapolation from the state of affairs of what the future is likely to be. It's not proof that anyone intends to unravel democracy or anything similar.

James
 Rep: 664 

Re: Current Events Thread

James wrote:

To me "You will Own Nothing" is an obvious trend that already existed

Absolutely. It's been going on for many years (Rent to Own) but obviously has sped up with the tech boom.

The (near) future is subscription services...for nearly everything.

Go to an amusement park? No more just buying a ticket, buying a meal/snack, and standing in mile long lines. There's now season passes/memberships where you pay a monthly fee for not only unlimited visits and skipping the lines, but also a subscription for food and drinks!

Everyone eats fast food. Some of these companies are now offering subscription services...a weekly/monthly fee for so many hamburgers a month.

Of course the movies and music you brought up.


This was inevitable with the direction our culture was going. Just the fact cash is rarely used and most people use debit/credit for everything makes it so much easier for this to take shape.

Polluxlm is right that they really are pushing this concept hard. On the other hand, I think it's just gonna blend in with everything else going on and not be some huge change detected by the masses. It's been creeping up on us for decades.


A nice long distraction until they're ready to jump on the pandemic train again

They're going to need a brand new pandemic if they want that train back on the tracks. The masses are done with Covid. Yes people are still dying from it but we're not going back to 24/7 Covid world ever again.

James
 Rep: 664 

Re: Current Events Thread

James wrote:

This is awful...but I'm sick of how everything has to be labeled as Fascist, communism, or that old chestnut Nazi.



polluxlm
 Rep: 221 

Re: Current Events Thread

polluxlm wrote:
monkeychow wrote:

To me "You will Own Nothing" is an obvious trend that already existed....I don't need to buy every CD that comes out cos I have spotify...I don't need to get every new BD/DVD cos I have all the streaming services...I don't need to buy a holiday house....I can air B+B a great place for the 2 weeks of a decade I wanna be there....maybe eventually I don't need to own my car...I can make do with the transport and ubers....

People keep using it as some proof of some global agenda but to me it's just more common sense evolution of the gig economy and using the internet and smart devices to deliver services to people.

In 1997 I could have told you that one day I would be able to watch new movies as they come out on the internet, but that's just an extrapolation from the state of affairs of what the future is likely to be. It's not proof that anyone intends to unravel democracy or anything similar.

If we just pretend to forget for the moment that this is blatant communism, why is this a good thing? The thing about owning something is the fact you have the freedom to do what you want with it. I still have my copy of "Lies". And I plan to spin it until I expire. Including the very best song on that EP, which you already can't listen to on the reissue and definitely won't hear on Spotify or anywhere else online in the future. Neil Young and Joe Rogan should be a reminder where this is heading. 

I also own my home. The government can't just throw me out because I disagree with the TV. They can't force me to live in a slum or a crammed high rise because we need to free up room for some new social programs. You remember bussing? That's going to take on an expanded meaning if this happens. But currently it's not so easy to do that. In some places now they are denying health care to RUSSIANS. Merely because your ass was born in a certain geography and they're villain of the week. Hospital in Munich just announced this. Governments in Europe are forfeiting Russian assets, including regular people, as we speak. You think this train is heading somewhere nice? Your own Prime Minister called you all sheep just a few months ago. How much more obvious does it need to get?

monkeychow
 Rep: 661 

Re: Current Events Thread

monkeychow wrote:
polluxlm wrote:

If we just pretend to forget for the moment that this is blatant communism,

How is it blatant communism?

Bands are private businesses that create music (eg Aerosmith) , they sell/lease it to giant public/private companies who make them famous (eg Sony Music), those businesses then make the content available to consumers for profit via publicly listed corporations that run that service platforms (eg Spotify).

Every stage of it involves non-governmental public/private ownership of assets and every stage of it is produced for profit - mostly going to giant capitalist corporations....it may be late stage capitalism even...but i can't see how it's even close to communism.


polluxlm wrote:

why is this a good thing? The thing about owning something is the fact you have the freedom to do what you want with it. I still have my copy of "Lies". And I plan to spin it until I expire. Including the very best song on that EP, which you already can't listen to on the reissue and definitely won't hear on Spotify

If you're referring to one in a million it's actually on spotify still at the moment, but I take your point that the problem with rental is that you don't enjoy all the privileges of ownership and are subject to the whims of the service provider.

But it's a trade off...I can also listen to the entire back catalogue of some random band a buddy suggests without going and risking $30 on each of those albums unheard....so there's pros and cons.

polluxlm wrote:

In some places now they are denying health care to RUSSIANS.

I wouldn't support that...on the other hand didn't the USA round up all Japanese citizens for a time during ww2 just incase? I don't see poor ideas and bad behaviours as evidence that there's some global plan for us.

monkeychow
 Rep: 661 

Re: Current Events Thread

monkeychow wrote:
polluxlm wrote:

Your own Prime Minister called you all sheep just a few months ago. How much more obvious does it need to get?

Actually, that comment is an attack on the premier (similar role to an American state governor) of a particular state which still implemented covid lockdowns and travel restrictions.

Basically the Prime Minister is from our Liberal party which despite the name is actually a conservative party - it's our mainstream republican style party. He does not like the premier of Western Australia because the premier comes from the Labour party (mainstream moderate left wing party - similar to Democratic party in USA). So they have to hate each other.

The premier's approach through covid was to lock down the whole state from travel within Australia - which gave them a period of relative normalcy while the rest of the states had uncontrolled outbreaks. The PM and his party in other states decided to pursue a policy of "open up and ride it out because the economy needs to" and the WA premier has been against it because of the health costs/deaths etc.

So his comments are designed to belittle the opposing side of politics basically. He probably also thinks using a sheep/farming analysis makes him seem more simple and relatable and down to earth - when really he is like most of our leaders a multi-millionare who owns 6 or 7 properties including some in places like NYC. However his party retains power via a coalition with the local farming party - the Nationals who are a conservative party but more focuses on no nonsense rural lifestyle and traditional values (think southern american kinda outlook). So basically evoking a metaphor of getting sheep through a gate simultaneously insults the other team and also makes it seem like he is a good old boy farmer...when in reality he's anything but. But that's politics.

Randall Flagg
 Rep: 139 

Re: Current Events Thread

monkeychow wrote:

How is it blatant communism?

Bands are private businesses that create music (eg Aerosmith) , they sell/lease it to giant public/private companies who make them famous (eg Sony Music), those businesses then make the content available to consumers for profit via publicly listed corporations that run that service platforms (eg Spotify).

Every stage of it involves non-governmental public/private ownership of assets and every stage of it is produced for profit - mostly going to giant capitalist corporations....it may be late stage capitalism even...but i can't see how it's even close to communism.

The idea of a streaming service where one pays a monthly fee to a company and receives access to a catalogue isn't communism.  But removing all physical media and supplanting it with digital media owned and controlled by a monopolistic conglomerate who decides when and if you can listen to music and reserves all rights and control of that property is communistic.  It's removed the private ownership of an item and replaced it with a communal oversight and control.  Whether the power center controlling that property/information is a corporation or oligarchy is largely irrelevant. 

This is the point Pollux later expanded on.  Sure, in a world where resources are infinite, communal access to transportation could be viewed as a good thing.  We're seeing that in most of the west with concepts like Z Trip (cars you can rent for a quick ride for you non-American folks) or more common gig economy examples like Uber.  So long as automobile companies can sell personally owned vehicles for a reasonable price, there is no concern.  But when Z Trip becomes the only option, and we acknowledge that resources aren't infinite, it starts to become a problem.

When Z Trip gets to decide if your errand/reason for renting their vehicle aligns with their stated moral beliefs, we run into serious issues.  And we see this happening at this moment with the dissemination of information.  I don't give two shits for twitter or facebook, but they along with google essentially have a monopoly on information in the English language.  Both social media companies have demonstrated their desire to control what information and narratives are allowed to exist.  Twitter didn't want the world to know that Hunter Biden was a junkie who had done horrendous things that would make Don Jr blush, and they wanted Biden to win the election, so they banned the article from being shared on their network.  Both Facebook and Twitter decided that the Democratic narrative on COVID were the only acceptable stories to be told, and would either ban or link their own inaccurate fact checkers to each article.  Although economic systems aren't inherently tied to intellectual narratives, they are greatly intertwined.  And communism and its stepping stone socialism (read your Marx) are largely based on the notion of the collective versus the individual that has dominated western philosophy the past 500 years.  Plato was arguably the first communist, but his philosophy was much different than the communism of Marx or the various real world examples. 

All of that is a long way of saying that entities who strive to have a monopoly on thought or property are dangerous and inline with the human rights abuses and disregard for individuality that the governments of the West claim to profess in their various national charters.  And elements within those nations are all too eager to allow this to happen so long as the monopolies lead to increase in their political power.  Berkley and San Francisco used to the bastions of intellectual individualism and free thought.  Now they threaten violence if your speech/thought goes against their political orthodoxy. 

So you shouldn't be surprised that when you advocate for a centralized control of resources and property, people associate that support for eagerness for communism as its defined in the philosophy books. 





monkeychow wrote:

didn't the USA round up all Japanese citizens for a time during ww2 just incase? I don't see poor ideas and bad behaviours as evidence that there's some global plan for us.

Yes, 80 years ago the US did this.  Our courts have since ruled it was unconstitutional and those harmed by them have been compensated as much as people can be compensated for a violation of personal autonomy.  But your nation didn't allow non-whites to immigrate until the late 1970s and is locking up its citizens in camps at this very moment.   Isn't there an island your nation maintains where it keeps all would-be economic migrants from entering the mainland?  Weird that an act from nearly a century ago is your go to example rather than the current and much more recent actions of your own nation. 

But more than anything it shows how weak your population is if they allow government agents to force them into quarantine camps for having an illness that is no more dangerous than the common flu to 99.9% of people under the age of 65.  We can argue degrees of separation, but your government is much more closer to the "Communist" Chinese who also use quarantine camps than say the "Capitalistic" Americans who only require a vaccine if you wish to travel, shop or remain employed.  I'm alarmed at both, but one is clearly more of a violation of personal agency.

misterID
 Rep: 475 

Re: Current Events Thread

misterID wrote:

This is a great argument for why Google should be broken up, like Bell was.

You cannot allow corporations, whose business is literally giving people access to information and news, full authority to release it anyway they please. They've already shown they can't be trusted with that responsibility. There needs to be regulation. You cannot claim the rights of a personal business to do what they want while operating in the unlicensed space. You can't deny people service based on discrimination (supposedly, but that's a whole other discussion). There are rules private businesses must adhere to.

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