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Cake day: December 25th, 2023

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  • I don’t think it’s the source. I think it’s a tool of social control that enables the powerful to create a bare minimum willingness to be ruled. For a long time the doctrine of Christianity was the Divine Right of Kings. Now it’s the Prosperity Gospel. The books did not change but the people with all the money and power ensured the church leaders who served their interest had most of the money and thus followers.

    If we didn’t have religion, some other social construct would arise, and I’d argue, has arisen to fulfill it’s role. Modern economic theory justifies the current power order in an unfalsifiable way that reminds me of religion.

    Religion could be a liberatory force in society. In fact it has been. The liberation theology movement in South America and numerous heretical movements in the late medieval period are both examples of progressive Christian social movements.


  • pearable@lemmy.mltoMemes@lemmy.mlthe debt
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    22 days ago

    That sort of thing can happen in extreme situations. Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany are the most prominent examples. Both examples involved not having enough stuff. When there aren’t enough necessary goods to buy and people have plenty of money you’re going to get inflation. Using the right combo of subsidies, government run production, purchase quantity limits, reserves, vouchers, and price fixing you can ensure the supply is stable and eliminate inflation even if there’s lots of money.

    That’s true. That happens because people are stuck in the narrative of the government needing a balanced budget, just like a household. It also happens because the owners and the corpos use all their money and power to ensure workers pay taxes and thus decrease worker money and power.

    Yeah, if the population was educated on MMT the ability to bring corpos to heel would be significantly increased. People arguing for it are fundamentally arguing for a change in how we think about money.








  • The original definition is a community where private property is not a thing. Private property is when an individual can control the land, tools, and knowledge people need to survive. Private property is factories, not your toothbrush.

    Most pro USSR, PRC, or Cuba leftists believe those countries governments controlling all or the vast majority of private property constitutes communism. Some think these countries are socialist and working their way to communism.

    Many anti-communist people don’t really understand how these countries work specifically. All their ideas of what communism is are based on how they view the above communist countries.

    Finally right wingers will describe California as communist because they have social programs and higher taxes than some states. Basically if the government is intervening in the market by supplying a service or good directly to a citizen that’s communism.

    From what I’ve observed most people lie somewhere on this spectrum of definition.




  • I don’t think that’s how people work. An individual can decide to think critically, act selflessly, but when you’re talking about millions of people environment means so much more. A mass of people don’t just do anything. They are the result of their education, media, and religion. When all these things are shaped by people with all the money it’s no wonder that people are bigoted, short sighted, and disillusioned with politics. We live in an extremely sophisticated propaganda machine.

    As long as people are sufficiently comfortable, things will continue as they are. Enough people need to find their material reality shitty enough that they’re no longer willing to eat the shit we’ve been fed all this time. Things haven’t been this concentrated since before the great depression. If we see a similar economic collapse. This time a collapse in the ad/tech market or obscene capital financialization, and we’ll finally see a similar backlash against capital. We just need to make sure we finish the job and the owners can’t slowly claw back political power again.