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> and given the track record of those solutions, I feel justified in not listening. But that's one of the biggest problems with the ideology you're critiquing!

> and given the track record of those solutions, I feel justified in not listening. But that's one of the biggest problems with the ideology you're critiquing! I mean, what are the odds that a Frankfurt School-educated critical theorist in the 70s would be confronted with a product of capitalism that undermines one of the fundamental assumptions of both capitalism and classical Marxism? The likelihood is so low I'm sure they believed they could call it 0% and get on with their work. And in nearly all cases they probably could. Then the personal computer revolution brought the idea of zero marginal cost into the realm of practicality for most of the Western world. And the one field which claims to study hidden corner cases of the struggle for freedom and self-determination is stuck writing about the impact of zero marginal cost data only in retrospect. It's an embarrassing oversight, especially for a field that seems like it was designed specifically to illuminate (and predict!) esoteric social and technological developments that other fields would miss. E.g., the cheap, ubiquitous zero-marginal-cost factories that are our smartphones and laptops. Anyway, if your aim is to become the kind of ideologue you're attempting to avoid, by all means use your proposed filter to interpret the few interesting writings you come across as noise.

SuoDuanDao 5y ago
Not sure which ideology you say I'm critiquing in this context. Frankfurt school of economics? I confess I don't know much about it beyond that the Q set thinks it's the new Illuminati. In any case I think it's a pretty good filter - 'capitalism' is used as a deliberately vague title that lets the reader fill in their own meaning. If there were genuinely interesting writings based on hostility towards a deliberately vaguely-defined concept I'd be interested to see them, but I know enough about the concept of a Volksfeind to feel justified in my skepticism. Vitalik Buterin can talk about public goods without ever mentioning capitalism because he's got actual solutions in mind. He doesn't need a malleable boogeyman to lend them gravitas. I'm sure anyone else with genuinely interesting insights would have precise enough solutions that they need more precise problem statements than 'capitalism'.
- jancsika 5y ago
  I don't understand your position. Are you filtering on reading/hearing the stem of the word "capitalism" as written/uttered in an explanation of the problem? Or are you filtering critiques that simply begin and end with the stem of "capitalism?" If it's the former then your filter is way too broad. There are plenty of non-Marxists who by sheer coincidence probably mention capitalism in the midst of explaining quite specific policy positions. (Matt Stoller comes to mind.) For those commentators you are turning off your brain for what sounds to me like the equivalent of an intellectual drinking game. If it's the latter then the filter is useless. You'd be better off filtering on any single constant string as almost all are going to fall short of being a serious problem statement for any domain.
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    All right, this is interesting. How does this Matt Stoller fellow define the capitalism he speaks of?
imtringued 5y ago
>I mean, what are the odds that a Frankfurt School-educated critical theorist in the 70s would be confronted with a product of capitalism that undermines one of the fundamental assumptions of both capitalism and classical Marxism? The likelihood is so low I'm sure they believed they could call it 0% and get on with their work. Well, negative yields and interest rates are a pretty good candidate. Marxism has no reason to exist because Marx assumed that communism is an utopia that follows capitalism where negative yields mark the end of capitalism. If you simply allow negative yields then reaching the abundance utopia doesn't need capitalism to end. However, the capitalists pride themselves in the opposite, that there will never be abundance nor utopia and that they will always be needed and that they must keep working forever. All of this is based on the assumption that yields cannot be negative. We are about to find out whether that is true.

SuoDuanDao 5y ago

Not sure which ideology you say I'm critiquing in this context. Frankfurt school of economics? I confess I don't know much about it beyond that the Q set thinks it's the new Illuminati. In any case I think it's a pretty good filter - 'capitalism' is used as a deliberately vague title that lets the reader fill in their own meaning. If there were genuinely interesting writings based on hostility towards a deliberately vaguely-defined concept I'd be interested to see them, but I know enough about the concept of a Volksfeind to feel justified in my skepticism. Vitalik Buterin can talk about public goods without ever mentioning capitalism because he's got actual solutions in mind. He doesn't need a malleable boogeyman to lend them gravitas. I'm sure anyone else with genuinely interesting insights would have precise enough solutions that they need more precise problem statements than 'capitalism'.

jancsika 5y ago
I don't understand your position. Are you filtering on reading/hearing the stem of the word "capitalism" as written/uttered in an explanation of the problem? Or are you filtering critiques that simply begin and end with the stem of "capitalism?" If it's the former then your filter is way too broad. There are plenty of non-Marxists who by sheer coincidence probably mention capitalism in the midst of explaining quite specific policy positions. (Matt Stoller comes to mind.) For those commentators you are turning off your brain for what sounds to me like the equivalent of an intellectual drinking game. If it's the latter then the filter is useless. You'd be better off filtering on any single constant string as almost all are going to fall short of being a serious problem statement for any domain.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  All right, this is interesting. How does this Matt Stoller fellow define the capitalism he speaks of?

imtringued 5y ago

>I mean, what are the odds that a Frankfurt School-educated critical theorist in the 70s would be confronted with a product of capitalism that undermines one of the fundamental assumptions of both capitalism and classical Marxism? The likelihood is so low I'm sure they believed they could call it 0% and get on with their work. Well, negative yields and interest rates are a pretty good candidate. Marxism has no reason to exist because Marx assumed that communism is an utopia that follows capitalism where negative yields mark the end of capitalism. If you simply allow negative yields then reaching the abundance utopia doesn't need capitalism to end. However, the capitalists pride themselves in the opposite, that there will never be abundance nor utopia and that they will always be needed and that they must keep working forever. All of this is based on the assumption that yields cannot be negative. We are about to find out whether that is true.