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It used to be that Gangsta Rap and Drill music was the worst influence on black kids. Then came Instagram with its influence on young girls. And now this. Incr

by EGreg 4y ago

It used to be that Gangsta Rap and Drill music was the worst influence on black kids. Then came Instagram with its influence on young girls. And now this. Incredible how the capitalist industries really don't care about externalities, and will do anything to make a buck. And government works hand in hand with them, whether it's the US government or the Chinese government. In this case given the disparity of what is shown on TikTok in China and here, I think it's on purpose to weaken the West. Whether it's factory farms leading to superbugs, high fructose corn syrup causing diabetes, overfishing, insects dying, fossil fuels, water waste, plastic pollution everywhere, the corporations get away with putting metric tons of this out ...but they will keep the individuals distracted and fighting each other... they'll tell you that you can't use a straw or bag, you should recycle the plastic (a scam), diet and exercise, and go vegan, to save the planet ... meanwhile no one seriously can rein in the corporations, instead they work with them. Both Greta Thurnberg and George Carlin were right: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362 https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362

kerpotgh 4y ago
[dead]
robertlagrant 4y ago
> In this case given the disparity of what is shown on TikTok in China and here, I think it's on purpose to weaken the West. This undermines your theory that it's all capitalism.
- EGreg 4y ago
  It's capitalism + government working together. The assumption of many anarcho-capitalists is that government is the antithesis of capitalism, that it's somehow encroaching on a pure version of it ('laissez-faire capitalism'). But I'm saying the opposite, if you click the link. Government ENABLES capitalism. Government protects property rights, and passes laws, and enforces them with force. It is the one that enforces victimless intellectual property violations with force. It is the one that chooses to evict a tenant, or have an eviction moratorium. It is the one who chooses to bail out the markets and the big corporations. It's the one who prevents regular people from filming the horrors on factory farms. It is the one which gives Big Ag or farmers water, but regular people have very little. It is the one which lets corporations put high fructose corn syrup into everything. And it is the one which does nothing while Coca Cola and Snapple switch to putting out metric tons of non-bioldegradeable plastic. But the individuals are told they can somehow recycle and vegan their way out of it. It's all a scam, they shipped it to China. They don't want you to wake up and hold the corporations to account, so they'll tell you that the real problem is plastic straws and bags. For every socialist government failure (like Holodomor or Great Chinese Famine) there is a capitalist government failure (Irish Potato Famine or Bengal Famines).
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    I think most people would agree that government can enable, and can definitely disable, capitalism. Presumably by definition anarcho-capitalists don't (and to some extent they might be right, but not in many cases), but I don't understand why you're saying that here. > For every socialist government failure (like Holodomor or Great Chinese Famine) there is a capitalist government failure (Irish Potato Famine or Bengal Famines). The main cause of the potato famine was biological. The contributing factor I think you're referring to was liberty: farmers could sell potatoes overseas instead of to their starving kin. The British government could've removed liberty, and seized the potatoes and ordered them to remain in Ireland, or, I would say, the British government could've worked within the liberty/capitalist system and have simply bought the potatoes at market rate and kept them in Ireland. They did neither. The difference with the Great Chinese Famine was that - of course - the central bureaurocracy was actively involved in making farming terrible. It wasn't a failure to do something to help; it was a failure of doing the wrong thing. The blight wasn't biological; it was ideological.
    - EGreg 4y ago
      I’m saying that because government uses violence to enforce propertly rights and picks winners and losers, props up large corporations and instead its job should be to consistently impose costs on them for negative externalities. Which it does to some extent, but not nearly enough. As far as the potato famine, and bengal famines, they were exacerbated exactly by state policies favoring corporations and landlords. People have handled natural blights before, without such disastrous results as 15% of the country dying. Practically everything in this wikipedia article discusses it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Landlords_and_tenants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Landlor... The ability of middlemen was measured by the rent income they could contrive to extract from tenants.[34] They were described in evidence before the commission as "land sharks", "bloodsuckers", and "the most oppressive species of tyrant that ever lent assistance to the destruction of a country".[34] The middlemen leased large tracts of land from the landlords on long leases with fixed rents, which they sublet as they saw fit. They would split a holding into smaller and smaller parcels so as to increase the amount of rent they could obtain. Tenants could be evicted for reasons such as non-payment of rents (which were high), or a landlord's decision to raise sheep instead of grain crops. A cottier paid his rent by working for the landlord while the spalpeen, an itinerant labourer, paid his short-term lease through temporary day work.[39][40] As any improvement made on a holding by a tenant became the property of the landlord when the lease expired or was terminated, the incentive to make improvements was limited. Most tenants had no security of tenure on the land; as tenants "at will", they could be turned out whenever the landlord chose. The only exception to this arrangement was in Ulster where, under a practice known as "tenant right", a tenant was compensated for any improvement they made to their holding. According to Woodham-Smith, the commission stated that "the superior prosperity and tranquillity of Ulster, compared with the rest of Ireland, were due to tenant right".[34] Landlords in Ireland often used their powers without compunction, and tenants lived in dread of them. Woodham-Smith writes that, in these circumstances, "industry and enterprise were extinguished and a peasantry created which was one of the most destitute in Europe".[36] When the famine happened, the Irish government and the British crown chose to enforce and double down on protections for this class of landowner. And there is more too, in other sections. All the actions of the government that exacerbated this famine were as explicitly in favor of landlords and corporations and private property, as to be as much Capitalist as holodomor’s collectivization actions were Socialist. Each government reacted in a tone deaf way to the plight of the actual peasants and farmers, one with doubling down on capitalism, the other on collectivism. Also see the role of the British in protecting their East India company in 1700s, and in requisitioning grain for England amid a famine in 1990s… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 * The Company provided little meaningful mitigation — there was no reduction in taxation or any significant relief effort.[33][38] In October 1769, the Company requested that storehouses be constructed in Patna and Murshidabad; city officials were instructed to prevent monopoly of trade and have farmers raise "every sort" of dry grain, that was possible. The orders were largely unsuccessful; many Company officials along with their Indian assistants (Gomasthas) would exploit the famine to create grain-monopolies.[33]* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 Once again, you can see the elements here (people selling off their lands to survive, enforcing the private property system) to have exacerbated the crisis by a lot. Many people consider it a man-made famine but certainly NOTHING about the way it happened was due to collectivism. Quite the opposite, in fact, it was every man for himself, and the British also taking their food in the meantime. Churchill’s role: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-churchill-policies-contributed-to-1943-bengal-famine-study https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-church...
moate 4y ago
Point of order: >>high fructose corn syrup causing diabetes It's just too much sugar. Could be cane sugar, high fructose corn syrup, pure glucose, it doesn't matter. There's just too much added sugar in things, we can all stop pretending HFCS is anything other than the cheapest (and therefor most common) type of sugar. If you got "the corporations" to stop using it tomorrow, we'd just have Coke made with cane sugar, and you'd still have the related health issues. /rant
- EGreg 4y ago
  You buy into this idea that the individual can somehow escape and opt out, like Ted Kazynski opting out of technology and society… Most people can’t, because even the fruits are engineered to have tons of sugar now: https://qz.com/1408469/humans-have-bred-fruits-to-be-so-high-in-sugar-a-zoo-had-to-stop-feeding-them-to-some-animals https://qz.com/1408469/humans-have-bred-fruits-to-be-so-high... You think the uptick of people experiencing obesity and diabetes is because they just got lazy and gluttonous? Also this recently was found https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2021/fructose-promotes-obesity-colorectal-cancer https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2021...
  - moate 4y ago
    You're rambling and moving the goalposts. Let's go back to where we started: >>high fructose corn syrup causing diabetes Nothing you just posted refuted anything I said, which was that it's the sugar generally and not HFC specifically and that attempting to blame this specifically on HFC is missing the forest for the trees, so I'm not going to address any new points you made here because they have fuckall to do with what I said. Also, it's a terrible rhetorical technique to tell people what they think in the manner you did but that's neither here nor there.
    - EGreg 4y ago
      I said A causes diabetes You said A is only ONE OF MANY THINGS OF THE SAME TYPE that does And I responded that corporations and governments have put those other things into your food too, genetically modified, and you can’t opt out very easily. Also said that diabetes isn’t the only consequence of too much fructose.

by EGreg 4y ago

kerpotgh 4y ago

[dead]

robertlagrant 4y ago

> In this case given the disparity of what is shown on TikTok in China and here, I think it's on purpose to weaken the West. This undermines your theory that it's all capitalism.

EGreg 4y ago
It's capitalism + government working together. The assumption of many anarcho-capitalists is that government is the antithesis of capitalism, that it's somehow encroaching on a pure version of it ('laissez-faire capitalism'). But I'm saying the opposite, if you click the link. Government ENABLES capitalism. Government protects property rights, and passes laws, and enforces them with force. It is the one that enforces victimless intellectual property violations with force. It is the one that chooses to evict a tenant, or have an eviction moratorium. It is the one who chooses to bail out the markets and the big corporations. It's the one who prevents regular people from filming the horrors on factory farms. It is the one which gives Big Ag or farmers water, but regular people have very little. It is the one which lets corporations put high fructose corn syrup into everything. And it is the one which does nothing while Coca Cola and Snapple switch to putting out metric tons of non-bioldegradeable plastic. But the individuals are told they can somehow recycle and vegan their way out of it. It's all a scam, they shipped it to China. They don't want you to wake up and hold the corporations to account, so they'll tell you that the real problem is plastic straws and bags. For every socialist government failure (like Holodomor or Great Chinese Famine) there is a capitalist government failure (Irish Potato Famine or Bengal Famines).
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  I think most people would agree that government can enable, and can definitely disable, capitalism. Presumably by definition anarcho-capitalists don't (and to some extent they might be right, but not in many cases), but I don't understand why you're saying that here. > For every socialist government failure (like Holodomor or Great Chinese Famine) there is a capitalist government failure (Irish Potato Famine or Bengal Famines). The main cause of the potato famine was biological. The contributing factor I think you're referring to was liberty: farmers could sell potatoes overseas instead of to their starving kin. The British government could've removed liberty, and seized the potatoes and ordered them to remain in Ireland, or, I would say, the British government could've worked within the liberty/capitalist system and have simply bought the potatoes at market rate and kept them in Ireland. They did neither. The difference with the Great Chinese Famine was that - of course - the central bureaurocracy was actively involved in making farming terrible. It wasn't a failure to do something to help; it was a failure of doing the wrong thing. The blight wasn't biological; it was ideological.
  - EGreg 4y ago
    I’m saying that because government uses violence to enforce propertly rights and picks winners and losers, props up large corporations and instead its job should be to consistently impose costs on them for negative externalities. Which it does to some extent, but not nearly enough. As far as the potato famine, and bengal famines, they were exacerbated exactly by state policies favoring corporations and landlords. People have handled natural blights before, without such disastrous results as 15% of the country dying. Practically everything in this wikipedia article discusses it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Landlords_and_tenants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Landlor... The ability of middlemen was measured by the rent income they could contrive to extract from tenants.[34] They were described in evidence before the commission as "land sharks", "bloodsuckers", and "the most oppressive species of tyrant that ever lent assistance to the destruction of a country".[34] The middlemen leased large tracts of land from the landlords on long leases with fixed rents, which they sublet as they saw fit. They would split a holding into smaller and smaller parcels so as to increase the amount of rent they could obtain. Tenants could be evicted for reasons such as non-payment of rents (which were high), or a landlord's decision to raise sheep instead of grain crops. A cottier paid his rent by working for the landlord while the spalpeen, an itinerant labourer, paid his short-term lease through temporary day work.[39][40] As any improvement made on a holding by a tenant became the property of the landlord when the lease expired or was terminated, the incentive to make improvements was limited. Most tenants had no security of tenure on the land; as tenants "at will", they could be turned out whenever the landlord chose. The only exception to this arrangement was in Ulster where, under a practice known as "tenant right", a tenant was compensated for any improvement they made to their holding. According to Woodham-Smith, the commission stated that "the superior prosperity and tranquillity of Ulster, compared with the rest of Ireland, were due to tenant right".[34] Landlords in Ireland often used their powers without compunction, and tenants lived in dread of them. Woodham-Smith writes that, in these circumstances, "industry and enterprise were extinguished and a peasantry created which was one of the most destitute in Europe".[36] When the famine happened, the Irish government and the British crown chose to enforce and double down on protections for this class of landowner. And there is more too, in other sections. All the actions of the government that exacerbated this famine were as explicitly in favor of landlords and corporations and private property, as to be as much Capitalist as holodomor’s collectivization actions were Socialist. Each government reacted in a tone deaf way to the plight of the actual peasants and farmers, one with doubling down on capitalism, the other on collectivism. Also see the role of the British in protecting their East India company in 1700s, and in requisitioning grain for England amid a famine in 1990s… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 * The Company provided little meaningful mitigation — there was no reduction in taxation or any significant relief effort.[33][38] In October 1769, the Company requested that storehouses be constructed in Patna and Murshidabad; city officials were instructed to prevent monopoly of trade and have farmers raise "every sort" of dry grain, that was possible. The orders were largely unsuccessful; many Company officials along with their Indian assistants (Gomasthas) would exploit the famine to create grain-monopolies.[33]* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 Once again, you can see the elements here (people selling off their lands to survive, enforcing the private property system) to have exacerbated the crisis by a lot. Many people consider it a man-made famine but certainly NOTHING about the way it happened was due to collectivism. Quite the opposite, in fact, it was every man for himself, and the British also taking their food in the meantime. Churchill’s role: https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-churchill-policies-contributed-to-1943-bengal-famine-study https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-church...

moate 4y ago

Point of order: >>high fructose corn syrup causing diabetes It's just too much sugar. Could be cane sugar, high fructose corn syrup, pure glucose, it doesn't matter. There's just too much added sugar in things, we can all stop pretending HFCS is anything other than the cheapest (and therefor most common) type of sugar. If you got "the corporations" to stop using it tomorrow, we'd just have Coke made with cane sugar, and you'd still have the related health issues. /rant

EGreg 4y ago
You buy into this idea that the individual can somehow escape and opt out, like Ted Kazynski opting out of technology and society… Most people can’t, because even the fruits are engineered to have tons of sugar now: https://qz.com/1408469/humans-have-bred-fruits-to-be-so-high-in-sugar-a-zoo-had-to-stop-feeding-them-to-some-animals https://qz.com/1408469/humans-have-bred-fruits-to-be-so-high... You think the uptick of people experiencing obesity and diabetes is because they just got lazy and gluttonous? Also this recently was found https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2021/fructose-promotes-obesity-colorectal-cancer https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2021...
- moate 4y ago
  You're rambling and moving the goalposts. Let's go back to where we started: >>high fructose corn syrup causing diabetes Nothing you just posted refuted anything I said, which was that it's the sugar generally and not HFC specifically and that attempting to blame this specifically on HFC is missing the forest for the trees, so I'm not going to address any new points you made here because they have fuckall to do with what I said. Also, it's a terrible rhetorical technique to tell people what they think in the manner you did but that's neither here nor there.
  - EGreg 4y ago
    I said A causes diabetes You said A is only ONE OF MANY THINGS OF THE SAME TYPE that does And I responded that corporations and governments have put those other things into your food too, genetically modified, and you can’t opt out very easily. Also said that diabetes isn’t the only consequence of too much fructose.