201–210 of 248 posts
China seems to be a good test for our foundations and principles: democracy, freedom of speech and opinion on the one hand, and capitalism, profit of shareholders, fear of losing a job or losing a market or a supplier on the other hand.
Apple, Blizzard, NBA, South Park, ... There will be more, and, unfortunately, we prefer money over virtue.
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I'm not saying they don't have a political leaning, but they often focus their energy and 22 minutes on showing just how wildly absurd a situation is. For me, that's a big ingredient in why they've stayed so entertaining.
They're also a big proponent of bothsideism. For some topics that makes sense (because there are two legitimate or legitimately absurd sides). For other topics it just pollutes discourse by elevating an illegitimate side.
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USSR and its sphere of influence was communism in practice. You couldn't create a company, you weren't allowed to do anything for money without state permission (and mostly there was no permission). Prices and number of things produced were decided by the ruling party. It failed almost universally. China today is less "communist" economically than most of EU.
Capitalism, communism, fascism, they are all distractions from facts on the ground. Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia resembled nothing so much as one another.
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Its scary how much communism is affecting our daily lives, even if we live far away from it...
Is it really communism at this point? There definitely is a lot of capitalism and fascism happening there. It's really about the party and it's leaders and they'll adopt whatever economic or social policy to further the party and its leaders' power and riches.
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Isn't that what communism in practice is? Or are you on the "real communism has never been tried" side of things?
USSR and its sphere of influence was communism in practice. You couldn't create a company, you weren't allowed to do anything for money without state permission (and mostly there was no permission). Prices and number of things produced were decided by the ruling party. It failed almost universally. China today is less "communist" economically than most of EU.
Yes, China has less economic planning than the USSR did, that's true. But communism isn't defined by that, trying it out is just a natural consequence of Communist beliefs. Indeed Marx laid out almost nothing of how actual communist states were meant to operate. Communism is ultimately about building a totalitarian system in which the ruling classes must be loyal devotees of Marxist social theory. China certainly qualified.
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They were mocking Al Gore, who made some pretty wild doom predictions which didn’t come true. Even if you’re fully on board with climate change being a very serious issue, there’s plenty of space to mock people. For example, how about an episode which mocks Democrats for coming down hard against nuclear energy (except for Yang)? It’s incredibly disappointing to see the candidates cave to the anti-nuclear wing of thei…
Correction : Al Gore made doom predictions that haven't come true yet!
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Result is very similar, which is all that matters. In a way it's even worse, because they pretend to be a free country and shit (while doing repression even more violently than chinese or russian governements). China at least is not pretending that.
The result is absolutly not similar since there is no censorship at all. This is even the oposite since those epsiodes are available... If you're not happy with Netflix deciding to filter what's available, just stop using netflix.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park#Épisodes_censurés_e...
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Self-censorship is still censorship. If these companies crater to the least common denominator, then free speech in the West is also doomed. We can't allow that to happen. Putting profits ahead of everything else is a sure way to go broke because it sacrifices quality and every other good for the sake of short-term profit. We saw Disney do this with Star Wars, trying to pander to Asian audiences and failing miserably…
What did Disney do with star wars to pander to asian audiences?
Where are the usual users saying "it's a private company, they can do what they want. It's not censorship."? Are those usual users we hear on this platform when companies like Facebook or Google or Reddit or etc censor people and ideas silent in this case or are they being hypocrites?
What am I missing?
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USSR and its sphere of influence was communism in practice. You couldn't create a company, you weren't allowed to do anything for money without state permission (and mostly there was no permission). Prices and number of things produced were decided by the ruling party. It failed almost universally. China today is less "communist" economically than most of EU.
China is still kinda like that. To make an internet company you need a license (not allowed without state permission) and that company is still in reality owned by the state. It may do whatever it likes to it at any moment, like insisting party members sit in the officers and control decisions ... and does. It will often also be literally owned by a state bank too. Yes, China has less economic planning than the USSR…
> Communism is ultimately about building a totalitarian system
I really don't want to be advocate of communism, but it seems to me you're cherry-picking the defining characteristics of communism to suit you. After all:
> Indeed Marx laid out almost nothing of how actual communist states were meant to operate
So why demand it must be totalitarian? Also
> Communism is ultimately about building a totalitarian system in which the ruling classes must be loyal devotees of Marxist social theory
Communist party in Poland at least certainly wasn't that. They were the first to become devote capitalists in 1989.