After almost a year, I finally got my physical driving license card....and I am able to release a big blog post about it! tiotrom.com/2024/10/spanish-dr…
The absorbingly cinematic Ascension explores the pursuit of the “Chinese Dream.” This observational documentary presents a contemporary vision of China that prioritizes productivity and innovation above all.
The absorbingly cinematic Ascension explores the pursuit of the "Chinese Dream." This observational documentary presents a contemporary vision of China that prioritizes productivity and innovation above all.
"They are as "capitalistic" as USA. Or, in other words, they have a trade-based society. As simple as that. Produce, trade, consume."
That is not what capitalism is. China is functionally capitalist to a degree, yes, but not because they have production and trade and consumption. It's because many of the means of production are held privately, and to a degree they have the capacity to buy and sell as they wish.
Well the truth is that capitalism, socialism, or other isms are vague ideals.
The means of production being privately owned means near to nothing since they are always under the weight of a gov. USA or China. You can't just own a business, meaning be able to trade as an individual under your own rules. You are always restrained and directed by gov, laws, rules, regions.
In essence what we have globally is a society of trade, where trade is the main activity and drive. China, USA, Europe, whatever hey call themselves as communist, free markets, socialist, capitalist, in the end is all about a trade-based society.
It makes a great deal of difference whether the means of production are privately owned or not. For one thing, private companies can and do fail; the government would hardly ever allow one of its departments to shutter based on bad performance in the market. For another, if the government owns the means of production, you have a monopoly; such a thing is barely possible under free market capitalism.
Private companies, if big enough, will be bailed out by the gov. See SpaceX, Tesla, and more. The gov will also intervene to stop monopolies from creating, at least in theory. They split apart the largest telecommunication company in the USA not long ago. So gov is intervening, from capping the prices of drugs, providing subsidies, tweaking taxes, etc..
China, USA, Europe or the rest. The gov is always intervening.
For another, if the government owns the means of production, you have a monopoly; such a thing is barely possible under free market capitalism.
A...sorry what? Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google ?? We live in a world of monopolies. In another book I wrote I showcase that in detail tromsite.com/books/#flipbook-t…
Private companies, if big enough, are sometimes bailed out; I agree. They should not be. That is cronyism, not capitalism. They should be allowed to fail, and indeed sometimes are.
As to monopolies, nearly all of them are enabled by government action, not stopped by it.
Tell me; what does google have a monopoly in? Putting aside, of course, that we absolutely don't live under free market capitalism.
But they are....I am talking about the real world we live in not idealistic concepts. I compare USA with China and their self imposed labels, not the official and mushy definitions of capitalism vs communism since these do not exist.
As to monopolies, nearly all of them are enabled by government action, not stopped by it.
They are enabled by a system of trade that incentivizes companies to grow and individuals to seek profit.
Tell me; what does google have a monopoly in?
Too many things. Mobile operating systems, search engine, browser, online videos, online advertising, etc.. Again see here tromsite.com/books/#flipbook-t… - I spent a year on this book.
Yes, they are..sometimes. Which still leaves plenty of small companies and some large ones that are allowed to fail; that is a good thing.
LIFE incentivizes individuals to profit from their action. That's true under all economic systems.
Nope; there's iOs/sailfish/Ubuntu touch, duckduckgo/yahoo/ask/dogpile/plenty more, firefox/opera/safari/chrome, peertube and odyssey, plenty of other ad companies.
Those you mention are barely "competitors". Google owns the market of mobile operating systems (over 70%), search prob over 90%, video platform, browser, etc.. They even give Firefox a ton of money to keep google as the default search engine. Basically google has no competition in many areas.
LIFE incentivizes individuals to profit from their action.
The environment pushes people to become one way or another. Currently we live in a trade-based society that incentivizes people to profit, compete, be selfish. etc..
Those I mention are competitors. They exist, plenty of people can and do use them, and therefore google does not have a monopoly.
Yes, environments shape people. Please, provide literally any example of an environment where an individual is not incentivized to profit from their action.
Yah those are as much competitors as I am for Usain Bolt. I mean I can run...but have no chance to ever win a race with Usain. Same for Firefox and the like.
Please, provide literally any example of an environment where an individual is not incentivized to profit from their action.
Sure. We have a directory of such organizations where people volunteer without making any profits directory.trade-free.org/
Poor comparison. No one imagines you can run anywhere near as fast as him,. PLENTY of people use the products and services of other companies, me included.
If no one can compete with google in some domains, then google is a monopoly. And that is the case. Read the NPR article don't waste my time here please. npr.org/2024/05/02/1248152695/…
By the way "free market capitalism" sounds like a horror show. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_mar… And partially it is present since big companies control governments in many cases giving them a "free" hand at doing business.
To the contrary. If police is enforcing the law, but some people with power can buy the police officers, their guardian status is dissolved. Same with the gov. Big companies can buy off the gov rendering its guardian status as null. Thus creating a sort of free market for them. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government ;).
You claim that people pay the government to operate in their favor, thereby creating a free market, as define by...the government not intervening. Pure contradiction.
Please, drop me a line when you can reconcile the government getting involved and the government not getting involved. Until then...well, I can see why no one would pay for your "books". Have a nice day,
By the way "free market capitalism" sounds like a horror show. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_mar… And partially it is present since big companies control governments in many cases giving them a "free" hand at doing business.
There is no such thing as "free market". And it does not even matter it is still a system of trade that suffers from the same symptoms: greed, consumption, profit, corruption, etc..
No one "markets" "freely". There are regulations in place. Even for backpacks.
And mostly no I am not greedy but it depends on what situations I face. Look at what I've been doing for the past 15 years tiotrom.com/projects/ - all free. Never made a profit. So likely I am not greedy most of the time.
Of course you need to have a license for producing such a thing, patents, pay taxes, and a license to sell and where to. If you start to make backpacks now and sell them on the street you may be fined. You are also forced to pay taxes for your business and more.
Really? You're not greedy? It's rare to meet someone willing to make such a claim. What a saint you must be.
I said probably most of the time I am not. I released 2 huge documentaries, published over 30 books, made videos, articles, run trom.tf (free services for everyone), tromjaro.com linux distro, and more. All trade-free. Not a saint, but prob not greedy either.
Ok let's move on since you are slipping into nonsense. Please move on. You are starting to troll a little bit and I have a broken finger I barely can type.
Only accusing the "big companies" for doing all sort of "unethical" things, is like only accusing mass murderers for the killings that they do. Every crime is a crime. Big or small. Small companies do similar shady practices and abuse people or destroy the environment.
But best is to look at the system that creates these entities instead of accusing companies or people.
As long as the underlying practice on this planet is to TRADE or else you are fucked, then this is what we are going to do and prioritize. Thus the evolution of companies and billionaires, waste, pollution, you name it.
You want to see how kids entertainment looks like in a trade-based society? Here: Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV videoneat.com/documentaries/26…
Kids being abused in many ways in order to make money - for themselves, for others (mostly), for advertisers, etc..
Part 5 will be released in a few days time and it will be available on VIdeoNeat.
Also, how hilarious is the notion "war crimes". As if war was not a crime in the first place. Israel killed so many innocent people... to still "wonder" if what they are doing is wrong, is wrong!
Also this:
Our place in the universe, galaxies and galaxies that we can see from our little rock. How shameful to create a society where humans are divided into little groups: nationalities, beliefs, patches of land, etc.. And to kill each other and destroy this planet....
But if we are to get ourselves out of this shit, we have to first understand why this situation was created in the first place. What forces pushed humans to end up in this disastrous situation.
Oh look if you buy a "modern" car that has a "cool-screen" and useless features, it costs you money to update that shit.
How cool. New business opportunities for the traders. Since you can't really make these boxes on wheels more useful than they already are, now they are adding more and more useless "Features". That's the incentive in a trade-based society.
those look like basemaps for the navi, which are outsourced to TomTom (who at the same time have managed to enshittify the otherwise reasonable standalone satnavs by using poor quality batteries in later models)
to be entirely fair, satnav companies have been doing this since the early 2000s at least, it's just that with modern cars the manufacturers can cut out the middle man there and just run the annual update racket themselves instead.
The far more dodgy aspect is that eg. BMW lock features like remote heating (so you can turn the heating in your car on in winter from your house so the car's warm by the time you get in) behind a literal monthly subscription
like with maps they'll be licensing the map data from someone else and passing the cost on (and of course that in itself is a Capitalism Problem), but for things like letting you turn on the heating via an app it's just pure greed
Yes indeed. This is just an example, but since the navigation is perhaps the central point of such a screen, and can be useful, it is ridiculous that you have to pay to update it. Because if you do not update, then it becomes entirely useless. All of those GPS modules, the hardware, and everything else. Pointless.
I suspect that's "for now".... but I had no clue about these. This is a car my parents bought and honestly didn't consider the GPS to be that important since you can use the phone for nav anyway. But thanks for the headsup I had no clue.
@mark I would quite like to swap out my current dinosaur burner for an FEV at some point but also even this car which is almost a decade old now has an infuriating amount of extremely locked-in technology about it and
like what are the chances that EVs don't even have DIN form factor dashboard computers anymore so you just straight up *can't* switch the manufacturer's audio/satnav system with one that isn't, as they say, a physical instantiation of a business model
@mark like on this car I could buy an aftermarket fascia and just stick a 2-DIN Android radio thing in there to have OpenStreetMap and a Subsonic client to use with my home server and connect a reversing camera that doesn't cost hundreds because the manufacturer radio will only work with the manufacturer's cameras
and somehow I highly doubt any of that is possible on a modern FEV
Welcome to Earth, where trade is the main practice that everyone is a follower of, willingly or not. Where humans care mostly, if not entirely, about trade and how to maximize their advantage.
How can we get ourselves out of this shit, unless we start by understanding what the shit is made of!?
First: understand the problem. TRADE. The fact that we've built a society where you cannot survive unless you trade this for that. Once we understand this, hopefully we can tackle it. Give people a way to have a decent life, access to at least their basic needs as trade-free, and then try to replace more and more trade-based services (like say transportation) with trade-free alternatives.
Volunteers plus trade-free goods/services can create more of them, replicating over time and replacing the cancerous trade-based practices.
Thank God that companies are now starting to become more environmentally conscious!
100% recycled paper. Tell me that does not give you more confidence that we are going to, finally, make this world a better place.
So what that inside of it are 2 plastic bags full of chips!? I mean, they are at least trying!
I find it so hard to take this idiocracy of a society seriously. I think it is me who is in the wrong here, trying to think that this society can become sane. But perhaps I should take it for what it is: a total joke.
yes ofc....I was sarcastic. that's a lot more waste. they already put the chips in a plastic bag so there is no need to add yet another layer of paper on top of that just so that they can pretend to be "green"
haha, i thought the same when I have bought this chips in Spain :) I was actually angry at them, it feels like they tricked me, and not even 1 plastic bag, 2 of them :)
TFed 🚀🌍:blobcatpat:
in reply to Tio • • •some sentences in the tests: commas? Never heard about them…
In addition, a copypasta was found
"the ctrl-c ctrl-v masters"