111–120 of 212 posts
Don't want to be political on HN but I see lot of parallels between now and then. A plague effected region, ruled by conservative parties, opposing science and logic in the name of religion or freedom. persecution of people who either look or do something different from their own. Printing press helped in spreading both lies and truth. Now a days, mainstream media and social media is being used to spread all kinds of…
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I'm using the standard definition of capitalism. E.g. Encyclopaedia Britannica dates "early capitalists" to 1500–1750. https://www.britannica.com/topic/capitalism
Agricultural Capitalism is listed as starting in 1350 by Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_capitalism But, it’s hard to pin down a date because individual ownership of the means of production is arguably the default state.
Could you flesh out that argument because I'd imagine that co-operative ownership was essential to the rise of civilisation.
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This kinda fits in quite nicely with Federici's theory, seeing as capitalism emerged in Protestant north-west Europe.
It’s seems a rather peculiar definition of capitalism, if it emerged so late.
It's really not; historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and philosophers generally point to a few key features of capitalism, and can date it quite well. Federici draws from that argument.
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This isn’t a refutation of Federici’s argument. Her’s is specifically that the conditions of European feudalism created an emergent communalism that was then subjugated through witch trials and their mythology in service to the new, Capitalist ordering. She doesn’t argue that gendered forms of subjugation have no prior context in history. And whether or not the changes in women’s social/economic conditions were “temp…
Witch trials were virtually non existent in post-reformation Catholic countries (e.h. Spain, Italy and France). I have never seen any source indicating that women were more free in these countries.
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You were going so well until the last two, where you've ignored the very real problems that gave rise to them. There are very few examples of overreach compared to "underreach" there?
If it seemed that I'm lumping the last two together with the complete negativity of the others, that's not my intent. These modern sudden positive moral shifts are new phenomena made possible by the internet (and so one would be hard pressed to come up with significant older examples besides the temperance movement), whereas the older (negative) shifts were all driven by fear. But it doesn't change the fact that oppo…
Anytime there's a moral shift (good or bad), there's an opportunity to co-opt it in order to remove rivals, and it works very nicely because all you need to do is sow seeds of doubt about someone if they happen to be in a vulnerable group, and then let the mob do the rest
That doesn't much address the dynamics of #metoo or Black Lives Matter.
Some time ago, I read an article that the inquisition only really stopped when the economic incentive structure for the ones driving it was dismantled (funerals and fees paid by relatives of the accused). Unfortunately, I can't find it now... p.s. if somebody is aware of the exact source, would appreciate it very much...
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A war on drugs is never noble. It wasn't the Opium war (England wanting to keep cheap Opium supply from China), and it wasn't Nixon. Criminalization of drugs and declaring war on the cartels, whilst secretly supporting the cartels for their help in their fascist putsches. Civilized countries can fight the drug problem fine without declaring war, even if state actors are involved. (Eg Kosovo, ...)
Eliminating the scourge of drugs in America was Nancy Reagan's brainchild, and it was a very laudable goal. The fact that it was so ham-fistedly and wrongly implemented, and co-opted for repressive purposes doesn't diminish the nobility of the original goal that gave birth to such a monster.
The first Nixon election was actually the birth of the monster which enabled such a multi-generation debacle.
Regardless of how toxic and harmful alcohol and drugs have been for millennia.
Turns out Nixon was not only misinformed, he also had a crooked streak.
History shows that the Reagan mishandling of a free country occurred afterward.
I not only witnessed all of this first hand, it has been a painful experience.
You should have seen what a free country was like beforehand.
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Those articles are more interesting than OP's article. When I research a lot of wealthy families I frequently find their level of comfort not possible to replicate because it is something considered impropriety today. Taking advantage of an imbalance in the socioeconomic order that was promptly fixed as soon as anybody noticed.
The rich are different: https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Are-Different-Priceless-Quotatio...
What I've learned is that money is a multiplier for personality and if you have a humble personality, then you'll stay humble while you're rich (with some caveats about people that are not truly humble).
There's a stereotype that witch hunts were “mass hysteria” (as Wikipedia calls them) affecting stupid backwards people (another common stereotype) or stupid believers (a stereotype with a militant atheism flavour). In these cases, we would see more witch hunts the earlier the age is or the stronger the church is. People weren't much more stupid than people today are. Moreover, it's a fairly recent era, I'd even say t…
The modern word is "moral panic", and it's used just as effectively to destroy rivals as it was in times of old. The only difference is that we don't kill the losers anymore, but rather imprison, harass, fire, and bankrupt them. Anytime there's a moral shift (good or bad), there's an opportunity to co-opt it in order to remove rivals, and it works very nicely because all you need to do is sow seeds of doubt about som…
Do you mean Dungeons & Dragons specifically or are you including the Satanic Panic in that phrasing?