It’s not that the entire mainstream media is in on it, only the billionaires that own it. The editors and journalists go against their best interests because they have no one else who will pay them. The liberal press isn’t profitable, so the billionaires are trying to make them accomplices in their own destruction.

Rotate the compass 45° clockwise, name the new vertical axis to state economy vs private economy, and name the new horizontal axis to left and right. At the far left(green) you have total destruction of hierarchy and flattening of power inequality, while at the far right(blue) you have absolute hierarchy and centralized power.

State centralized economies(red) lead to increased hierarchy by empowering government officials to become powerful lords. Privatized economies(purple/yellow) lead to increased hierarchy by empowering capitalists to become powerful lords. Trying to reach either the top or bottom tip of the diamond leads you the right tip.

Horseshoe theory kind of applies to Marxist-Leninists like its pro-capitalists creators imagined, but they didn’t realize that they were the other end of the horseshoe. This is because both capitalism and the state are the dangers. The problem with both stems from allowing the unrestricted accumulation of power.

Government officials use political capital, while capitalists use economic capital. They can feed off of each other, with the rich helping politicians and the politicians helping the rich. My preferred solution to both is to redistribute capital from the rich directly to the poor, growing the middle class by putting a ceiling and floor on the rich and the poor.

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The most foundational concept to America is economic exploitation and cut throat entrepreneurship. Selfishness is more foundational to American conservatives than the church or the state. Trump was openly a selfish asshole. One would think that open disregard for others would disqualify someone from the highest elected office, but the right thought otherwise. Being a bully meant that Trump was strong. A lack of empathy isn’t a vice, but a virtue.

Appreciate how good you have it. In America, child sex abuse material is only illegal when children were abused in making it, or if it’s considered obscene by a community. If someone edits adult actors to look like children as they perform sex acts, it’s not illegal under federal law. If someone generates child nudity using ai models trained on nude adults and only clothed kids, it’s not illegal at the national level.

Fake porn of real people could be banned for being obscene, usually at a local level, but almost any porn could be banned by lawmakers this way. Harmless stuff like gay or trans porn could be banned by bigoted lawmakers, because obscenity is a fairly subjective mechanism. However, because of our near absolute freedom of speech, obscenity is basically all we have to regulate malicious porn.

It’s the subjective experience of not seeing the wage growth themselves, combined with things not being acceptable for a longer time than Biden or Trump’s presidency. Things are improving right now, but haven’t caught up to people having economic security. When you’ve sunk deep enough, it takes a longer period of rising to finally catch a breath. Basically, the current growth must sustain for longer to get more people into a good position. If things continue on their current path, people will calm down.

It’s also true that necessities like housing have inflated in price far faster than other goods, again, for longer than a decade. Unnecessary goods might be cheaper than ever, but you NEED things like shelter and there are NO alternatives. Despite good competition, the demand is inelastic, so limited excess supply translates to soaring prices, plus, other factors are at play.

It also isn’t a good idea ignore subjective experiences in general. Not only are people almost always right to be unhappy on some level, invalidating their lived experiences isn’t a good idea. Democrats will not be successful if they don’t listen to people’s displeasure. Basic economic measures are essential, but not sufficient to make voters happier.

Both those jobs require PHDs, something only 2% of Americans ever get. It would be inaccurate to claim that there’s only a 1% chance of both your parents being doctors, but it is more exclusive than 1 doctor. They were definitely millionaires by the time he was an adult, and could probably afford excellent education for him since birth. The key thing is that closer you start to the bottom, the harder it is to become ultra wealthy.

Nah fam. Miss me with that nonsense. Why would a tiny nation control the US? They have influence with American interests in many ways, but control it? It makes no sense. The only position that this would make sense from is the same antisemetic cabal bullshit. A small group controls the world alright. The wealthy, most of whom are white Christians. They control things, not Jews.

Unfortunately, normalcy is incoherent screaming from countries when supporting terrible actions for selfish reasons.

It’s honestly amusing to see what batshit strategy Musk will use next to fuck up Twitter. It’s like he’s trying to force every smart employee to leave, drive away every advertiser possible, and get users to find other homes.

All elections, or just elections in liberal democracies? I can’t think of any major Marxist country that didn’t do some form of representational democracy, even if the elections are just a formality. China does it. The Soviet Union did it. They didn’t make elections dissappear, they just kept politicians that disagreed with the party line from running.

In large societies, not every decision can be made through direct democracy, so we need someone to make those decisions. Why not have a legislature? Is a group of unelected decision makers better?

I didn’t blame Israel for Hamas killing civilians, I blamed them for letting hamas get so powerful that they could execute such a devastating attack.

Israel does not care about pushing civilians towards Hamas, as they have mostly done just that for the last few decades. They refused to support more moderate Palestinians forces, instead causing economic hardship for all Palestinians, while stealing territory from the West Bank where Hamas has less power. If they didn’t want a humanitarian crisis, they wouldn’t have blockaded essential resources. They demanded over a million people evacuate from half of Gaza in 24 hours, something that would be nearly impossible in even wealthy countries with functioning governments. Even if Gaza had a government willing to move those people, the request would still be impossible.

When the government originally said they were “fighting animals,” they did not specify Hamas. In fact, they were telling all Palestinians that they would be cut off from essentials. Bibi and his allies have been trying their hardest to make Israel a less free country, an explicit Jewish theocracy. The idea that the “free world,” would speak up is laughable when fascist parties are serious threats in every liberal democracy. The Republicans in the US have been even more explicitly genocidal against Palestinians than Israel’s government, dehumanizing all Muslims and inspiring hate crimes. It’s nothing new as they have been demanding trans people be banned from public life for the last few years. Most Democrats refuse to speak up enough, as they value their middle eastern ally way too much. The right wing in Israel want to steal Palestinian land and force the people into exile, as they have no sense of irony.

Hamas would do it too if in the IDF’s position, but that’s even more of a reason for us to support Israelis that want lasting peace. Part of sustainable peace would be Israelis supporting anti-Hamas Palestinians. Attacking Gaza doesn’t really threaten Hamas’ power, but IDF reserves protesting Netanyahu did. If Israelis stop harassing Palestinians, Hamas risks getting replaced by a less fascist government. The goal of Hamas isn’t bettering Palestine, but ruling Palestine. Parts of your country being destroyed is preferable to getting overthrown for political entities like Hamas.

That’s just how the internet do. Not unique to lemmy.

I don’t think he’s calling the last two decades genocide, but he is calling the last two weeks genocide. The language is genocidal, refusing to allow Palestinians a way to escape is murderous, and the limited aid coming from Egypt won’t be enough to keep Palestinians afloat. If kept up, the blockade of necessary resources will kill more people in the coming months than the air strikes ever could.

LGBTQ rights activists were complaining about this already, and people didn’t listen. Using a more highly motivating issue like abortion is sadly necessary to get people to care. It could censor so many important issues, it’s a travesty it’s gotten this far.

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To be fair, they aren’t exactly profiting from the current strategy.

Video editing and compositing are the main things. These don’t seem to specialize in those tasks, while Adobe offers too many features and has too many quality 3rd party plugins to really be replaced. Even if there were programs that could compete, learning how to do things you know how to do in another program is a pain in the ass. The way programs work together is also a key thing Adobe can offer because they own multiple programs. Ideally there would be common standards to allow programs from different teams to work together just as well, but I’ve yet to see it.

Bigger thing for me is the Adobe shit. Those fuckers have monopolized creativity tools, and I haven’t heard of good alternatives for Linux.