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Turned from 0 to French real fucking quick
Taking advantage of an underclass then having that underclass threaten to guillotine you… Seems like it just went from French to French… Whole scenario is French.
Taking advantage of an underclass
Nah this is just normal
I don’t know the way things are going here in the United States I think it might be time to start rolling out the guillotines.
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It’s worth pointing out that the guillotine was primarily used to terrorize the poor commoners, not nobles (who had already fled the country by that point.)
Also many leaders of the revolution were capitalists bourgeois who found it unfair that nobles had more power than them by birth right. Analphabetic people with close to no news access didn’t care that much about politics. Some far left fantasy that French revolution was led by peasants against capitalist is really ironic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeois_revolution
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For example, https://theconversation.com/the-french-revolution-executed-royals-and-nobles-yes-but-most-people-killed-were-commoners-200455 which cites this book https://www.amazon.com/Incidence-Terror-During-French-Revolution/dp/0844612111 (unavailable online as far as I can tell.)
I’d also highly recommend Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast series on the French Revolution.
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It’s hardly a controversial position that the Reign of Terror had virtually nothing to do with the nobility or monarchy, both of which had been abolished by that point; and everything to do with the suppression of political dissent by means of state terror.
The lesson of the Reign of Terror is not “kill the rich”. It’s not even “kill your enemies”. It’s “normalizing political violence will inevitably, maybe literally, blow up in your face.” People who equate the guillotine and Reign of Terror with successful political violence, or even successful economic and political reform, are not just wrong but dangerously wrong, and need to corrected.
The funny part is how we rationalize exploiting thousands and often millions of people… Some of whom work to the point of death
But everyone goes nuts if we threaten violence against those who make our lives miserable.
The funny part is how you blame businesses, but every time a government or nonprofit tries the same, SALARIES ARE NOT PAID (on time or at all).
CENTRAL PLANNING IS WORSE AS B2B COMPETITION.
Fck off zurdos de m
Could you elaborate on exactly what it is you’re talking about?
There’s always some bootlicker just waiting to pop out of the bush.
Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
Exactly.
But in south America they have been robbed blind by communists getting 11.5% loans from China for failed projects. IN DOZENS OF LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES!
South America was robbed blind by Europe and North America.
Yeah, it’s all China’s fault and totally not the imperial power who exploited South America for decades, foisted murderous fascist regimes onto it and funded genocidal death squads over there who murdered millions.
I don’t understand why people in the US fall for that take. Socialism did take root in the US - that’s the whole reason they had to invent police and alphabet organisations to crush it.
My man, I’m Finnish.
I’m Finnish.
Sooo… you have less of an excuse.
And they ALWAYS have a self-important username. “JustMy2c” that nobody asked for.
My bet is that they’re an Argentinian who voted for Milei and is currently coping
That’s an extensive list of every 501©3 in the largest economy in the US. California has strong workers protections compared to the rest of the nation. If they don’t pay your salary, withhold your salary, or even fire you without your final pay in hand, they owe triple in damages. Nonprofit corporations, and Co-Ops, are the only corporations that should exist, as they are the only ones not legally beholden to shareholders profits first.
We will execute corporations in a heartbeat if they decide to FAFO out here.
Did you know there exists other options like co-ops?
Doesn’t work.
Doesn’t work.
[citation needed]
Sure… Name ONE (1) example, then?
that’s not how this works.
YOU made the claim, YOU back it up.
I’m not doing your homework for you.
Hahaha hahahha I can name top 500 businesses. You name just one functioning coop?
Boo. Fucking. Hoo.
One, non-profits are worse by design, being both a tax write-off and deliberately exploitative entities, and two, any government that goes it has to work against number of international interests, each of which probably gets more income than many country’s economy. Companies are centrally planned by their CEO and board of directors, your statement makes no sense. The only difference is in what they are willing to do and were they are willing to go, where the real difference is not having to give a shit about your workers or consumers.
I work in a non profit healthcare company and the first part of your statement is bullshit. No comment on the rest of it though but non profit can work just fine.
They work worse and act as an excuse not to offer universal care, so I disagree. Talk to these guys about just how good non-profit healthcare is … https://www.bbb.org/us/fl/orlando/profile/hospital/adventhealth-0733-160528155/customer-reviews
Basically, as bad as healthcare, but they can get tax-free incentives. Good luck for the diamond in the rough you claim to belong to, but it’s far, far, far from the norm and it comes with hidden costs.
Has anyone ever told you the world is bigger than the US? Because it is, and I’m from there. That’s why healthcare isn’t a problem no matter what type of company I work in (if I even work). So maybe working non-profit in the US is unfair, but it is just as working for a normal organisation here in Europe.
Sorry, bud, I have universal healthcare in Europe. Nice try. No need for “non-profit (tax-subsidized private) healthcare”, at least not at the citizen level of the country I’m at where we do get it. The only one who seems stuck in the US bubble is you & company. But if you want, there are plenty of sites for European non-profits too, feel free to provide an specific example as I am able to do instead of moving from vague to vague and I’ll take your claim more seriously than what a bunch of meaningless Internet points gives it.
I’m sorry but your comment confuses me a bit. You specifically link to a US based article, and mention how bad non-profit organisations are. One of the things you mention as being bad about it (and why it doesn’t work) is because you don’t get healthcare.
Then I mention that this is not true for at least some other regions of the world, and I know that from personal experience, but now your saying I’m wrong? Or do you want me to share where I work?
I must just be misunderstanding your comment for sure, so please elaborate what you mean.
Universal healthcare can’t be for-profit btw
Of course it isn’t, I’m not arguing for for-profit universal healthcare, where did you get that impression? I’m arguing against non-profits being used as tax-free launderers without any real benefits that also seem to want to get their low level workers to work for free while the CEOs cash in a nice salary.
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List of “non-working” non-profits: FSF, KDE e.v., Linux Foundation, Agora and Anti-Corruption Foundation.
Take your choice between mainstream non-relevance, free reusable software projects for large enterprises with small or next to nothing labor costs, political fronts, while also being far from the norm of how non-profits are used. You used the term “non-working”, not me, but it’s quite apt. If FSF and the Linux Foundation are worth anything, is because of the trust one can place in their central leadership, but their licenses get ignored all the time internationally and no amount of lawyers and money can overcome that. Even in regards to Ukranian and anti-Putin support, most of it is coming from the mainstream because that’s where the people are, crumbs don’t make an argument.
I understand why Ayn Rand is in this comic, but she never financed a damn thing. She was working class herself and on welfare at the end of her life.
So, on top of everything else, she was a hypocrite, but she was not a capitalist, despite her obvious longing to be one.
Usually the gist of existentialcomics (great comic btw if you haven’t read it) is taking well-known philosophers from humanity’s history and pitting them against each other to play with ideas and crack philosophical jokes. With that in mind Ayn Rand’s and her book “Atlas Shrugged” is presented as a philosophy, which may clear up why she is here.
Yeah, I’m familiar with them myself, I’m just saying in this case Ayn Rand is doubling as both the philosopher and the person with money, and in real life she was only a wannabe.
A fair point that more people should know
I think people do not understand where Ayn Rand was coming from. She came from the Soviet Union, a highly collectivist society. Everyone is expected to conform and be all the same economically. Then she got sick of it, emigrated and formed her own Iam14butthisisdeep philosophy. Unfortunately, some rich American asshats saw that her ideas have self-serving utility to justify their ultra-capitalist beliefs and privileges and continue exploitation, and then spread her nonsensical “objectivist” ideas around. Not many people actually believe the philosophy, although we unconsciously apply this especially with middle class NIMBYISM.
“Oh, poor homeless people. I hope they could be housed. But I will elect a politician who will not build social housing because it will bring down the value of my property.”
“I support mitigating climate change. But I do not want windfarms nearby. They are eye sores.”
I mean, lots of people with terrible and damaging ideas came from backgrounds that explain their terrible and damaging ideas. She doesn’t get a pass because the USSR was corrupt, nor does she get a pass because western capitalist society is also corrupt.
She came to the West and made it more corrupt with her half-baked ideas by amplifying the excessive use of individualist values.
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Where is your objection? She formed her philosophy after experiencing a collectivist dystopia. Her family’s business was nationalised. That is part and parcel of such extreme collectivist socio-economics and thus enamoured by hyperindividualist extreme counterpart.
Dystopia in her experience. The peasants going to uni would have had a different perspective.
Her family’s business was nationalised.
Lol! The US nationalizes stuff all the damn time - Obama essentially nationalized the auto industry after the 2008 crash (right before handing it back to the billionaire parasites after their debt had been shouldered by the US people).
Yet I don’t see anybody calling the US “collectivist.”
How much of US economy is nationalised compared to the Soviet Union?
That’s only relevant if you insist on calling the US military “collectivist” - will you be attempting to make such an argument or not?
If you don’t, your attempt to conflate nationalization with collectivization falls flat on it’s face - so get on with it.
The military can be argued “collectivist”. I’ve never been in the military but many vets say that in the bootcamp they pretty much remove the personality out of you so that you think with the team and follow chain of command. And often, teams are punished based on the mistakes of one person in the group.
And to you, define “collectivism”.
It’s because they handed it back, so everyone can see we are obviously an individualist kleptocracy. The US government should have imminent domained automakers instead of giving them billions of dollars in loans and then forgiving a good chunk of the loan.
Wealthy investors siphon as much money from the system as they can. Then, when there is the slightest economic turmoil, the government gives them billions or trillions in handouts. Why aren’t they required to reinvest the windfall from their previous years into their own companies when they fail? That math doesn’t add up.
That math doesn’t add up.
It sure as hell adds up for the billionaire parasites.
She came from the Soviet Union, a highly collectivist society.
The USSR wasn’t a collectivist society - it was a centalized one. There’s a vast difference. Nobody calls the US military “collectivist,” do they now?
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Centralised but everyone is expected to value the group over the individual. The property in the Soviet Union belongs to the people albeit managed by the state. Therefore, collectivist.
Centralisation does not mean either just means individualism or collectivism.
Centralised but
So you are now claiming that centralization isn’t inherently collectivist?
The property in the Soviet Union belongs to the people albeit managed by the state.
So you are now claiming nothing in the Soviet Union was nationalized?
You can be centralised but not collectivist. See the theory of anarcho-capitalism.
I’m guessing you’re operating from different sensibility of political philosophy. Define collectivism then we can talk.
See the theory of anarcho-capitalism.
I saw it… and just looking at it made it fall apart like an upside-down house of cards in a whirlwind. Strange… this seems to happen every time anyone looks at (so-called) “anarcho-capitalism” a bit too closely. Have you had better luck with it, perhaps?
Anarcho-capitalism doesn’t work, yes. What’s your point?
Have you any luck yet trying to answer me how would you define collectivism?
she was just mad that her privileges were distributed fairly for once
Also, in that reality, in panel 5 Rand’s private paramilitary security team would show up and start clubbing the workers.
In the real reality, Rand would borrow the state’s police and/or national guard, just as it has historically happened.
The state always has the final say. In a liberal democracy all we can do is vote, campaign & support the best (or least worst) people to make these decisions.
To be fair the owning class are even bigger welfare queens
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The are the only welfare queens.
That’s every working class capitalist behaviour I’ve ever met. The average family guy with 4 kids barely able to make ends meet but god forbid if you ever make a disparaging point against Elon musk as if he’s in the same category out there fighting the good fight for the average working joe.
Blind hypocrisy seems to be a necessity in capitalism ideals.
I don’t think Rand longed to be a capitalist… but it really does seem as if she longed to be owned by one.
and on welfare at the end of her life.
You are just repeating what others have stated online without looking into this claim yourself.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ayn-rand-social-security/
She took Social Security and Medicare benefits. She also paid into those. She also paid taxes.
It is morally defensible for those who decry publicly-funded scholarships, Social Security benefits,
and unemployment insurance to turn around and accept them, Rand argued, because the government
had taken money from them by force (via taxes). There’s only one catch: the recipient must regard the
receipt of said benefits as restitution, not a social entitlement.
If she paid into Social Security and Medicare and paid taxes then what is the issue? The paragraph above states
that she did not believe her actions to be hypocrisy because she had paid taxes.
I think everyone understands that people are dicked over and have to participate in the system as it is. However, if you’re going to be the poster child for why meat is murder or how god is fake or how public assistance is evil, it’s also not unfair for people to think you’re a hypocrite if they find you eating a turkey leg, preaching in church or taking public assistance.
She was hypocritical because she thought Medicare and Social Security shouldn’t exist. And was extremely vocal about it. Yet she took them anyhow.
Also, those programs aren’t some kind of retirement savings plan. The money you pay into Social Security today gets paid out to those who are receiving it today. The first people to ever receive Social Security and Medicare never paid a dime into it because it didn’t exist while they were in the workforce.
We need to stop thinking about how the taxes we pay in directly benefits us. Taxes pay to keep our government and society functioning on an even keel. It isn’t a pay in and get your kicks out system. And when people like Ayn Rand go about criticizing it as if it’s a travesty that they had to pay taxes so that other people can live comfortable lives they are showing what kind of self serving fanatics they are.
There’s only one catch: the recipient must regard the receipt of said benefits as restitution, not a social entitlement.
Oh, so magic thought games change the nature of reality. Got it!
My god so much of my young life was spent idolizing this hack.
It’s humiliating, and it damaged every relationship I had. I mean, naturally. Who the fuck am I that anyone who spends time with me would do so from their own rational self interest?
That’s not how love works and I wish I had seen that earlier in my life, because the only thing I’ve found that has any real value is the love of other people. Even if someone were to live by the “philosophy” of objectivism for self preservation, once everyone knows what a selfish twat you are, it’s a matter of time until you find that you NEED other people to survive.
Empathy has value. Altruism is a virtue. Those two sentences were all I needed. Not thousands of pages of nonsense that even the author couldn’t live by.
I mean… rational self interest to anyone with a modicum of foresight is to be kind and foster cooperation
Yes. Exactly. Being self absorbed is against rational self interest.
I have needed so many people in my life, and they’ve needed me. Even when I absolutely did not want to be there, I did it anyway because they’d do it for me.
It’s been a long time since I read those books, probably more than 20 years now. I probably can’t remember 99% of what I read. I remember the hero worship, I remember that town that fell apart after the factory closed, little things.
I was primed to fall right into that shit. Young, questioning my religion (Appalachian Pentecostal. Like, deeeeeply engrained in everything I was), and from the poorest part of the country and ashamed of it. I seen the hypocrisy of the people around me, the preachers living off of offerings while everyone around me starved, knowing very few people who weren’t dirt poor and living with chickens in their houses (like the town that lost the factory).
I thought that maybe the thing that was holding me back was my altruism, because I wanted to rise above that mess.
Altruism is the only way that people forgotten by the world survive. I wouldn’t have made it without food stamps. I wouldn’t have made it without the people who crawled under the house to fix the sewage and never charged my mother a dime. It didn’t matter how smart I was, I wasn’t on an even playing field. It didn’t matter how much I wanted better things. I wasn’t on an even playing field. So many people are worse off than me, and they come from harder backgrounds than me. Meeting the right people is what it takes to get out of it.
Sorry for the wall of text. I mean, maybe I needed to take that shit so seriously to become a better person by damaging myself trying to be selfish. I feel like I would have been better off without it though.
I think social needs like fulfillment and happiness, pride that comes with seeing others succeed, the contentment that comes with deep love for others and receiving that in kind are all things we have evolved to share and receive and can be the end goal just as much as a means to an end. Sure, the evolutionary pressure that created that kind of social dependency may have been more practical and survival oriented in nature, however we are long past that at this point and I think it’s fair to say humans need those things directly in order to be healthy now. Exactly the reason why NASA can’t just send people up together without considering the social dynamics of that unit; even the most intelligent and motivated people will be unable to act in their own self interest without those social needs met properly.
But, but, magic metal makes steadfast man special, which, in turn, causes female Jesus to lubricate in one of the worst love scenes in literature.
If only the moochers would stop getting in their way!
I lost a best friend to Objectivism , and I’m not sure if the dumb bastard has changed his ways. I haven’t the time.
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It’s always kind of weird to see people blame her fucky philosophy for them being cunts. You just found an excuse to be the dick you wanted to be.
You don’t know anything about me.
Only what you’ve said yourself.
It is very easy to get hooked on a toxic ideology when you are desperate. No need to judge so harshly.
We all develop ourselves as we age. I might be too harsh on myself, but my ethical errors are mine. Regardless of influences, only I have responsibility for my actions and failures.
They recognized they were being toxic and grew as a person. Pushing the blame off on some dead bitch seems unnecessary.
I could have used less harsh language, but meh.
In case anyone didn’t know, Ayn Rand idolized serial killer William Edward Hickman.
The best way to get to the bottom of Ayn Rand’s beliefs is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt. Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten with Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation – Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street – on him.
What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: “Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should,” she wrote, gushing that Hickman had “no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel ‘other people.’”
This echoes almost word for word Rand’s later description of her character Howard Roark, the hero of her novel The Fountainhead: “He was born without the ability to consider others.” (The Fountainhead is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ favorite book – he even requires his clerks to read it.)
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/ayn-rand-became-big-admirer-sadistic-serial-killer-william-hickman/
Well that makes a depressing amount of sense.
I’m glad other people are aware of this. I used to post about her infatuation with that butcher every time I saw her name come up on Reddit. It makes me happy to see other people doing the same.
Story 3/10, execution 10/10
France: *happy*
Oh, so the engineers who thought up and built the machine must own it, right? Right?
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One of the problems with economic theory in general is assuming rational actors.
I was told by my first economics professor that if I could solve that problem, and eliminate the assumption of rationality, I’d be the richest man on earth over night.
It’s a problem, they know it’s a problem, they just don’t have a better answer.
You can’t even assume everyone can agree on the same definition of rational. If a business owner is a sadist they might value treating their employees like dirt more than the money they’d make if the business ran more efficiently. For a dickhead, rational self interest could mean forgoing profit to cause misery.
…they might value treating their employees like dirt more than the money they’d make it the business ran more efficiently.
This sounds like the metric for hiring middle-management if anything.
It would certainly help explain middle management’s obsession with return-to-office policies in the face of all the evidence that WFH increases productivity.
Rational in the economics sense just means that people do things for a reason. We’re not acting randomly, we believe that when we put money towards a thing that we are receiving something of value for it.
Any more specific than that and we’re not talking about rationality in the economics sense any more. Rationality does not mean correct. Just with cause.
Add greed and self-interest to that list. Those leaders and owners like CEOs are beholden to investors and shareholders, and if they demand a return on their investment or the C-suite wants a raise, the workforce will be one of the places the value is extracted from.
I was expecting him to lay off half of them.
shrugs
Nooooo! The earth! What have you done?!
Ackshually, Atlas is carrying the sky, not the world
… I’m sorry, I was feeling like being an annoying pedant today.
Him?
The problem about guillotines is that they seldomly are applied where it matters, just were it sells.
One of my favorite songs from my favorite band. For those who haven’t heard them, Kiss Me, Son of God and One More Parade (which is a cover of an old song, like Istanbul (not Constantinople)) are both great as well
Too be fair though, Hugo Boss designed some very sharp uniforms.
No he didn’t. Hugo Boss only used death camp slave labor to sew it together in his factory.
Two SS officers (Walter something and someone) designed the uniforms.
screams “respect the NAP! you can’t break the NAP!” as she is carried to the guillotine
The sad thing is that not a single “proletariat revolution” produced better or even similar result that democratic capitalism produced in the West. Granted, Rand is to the far right economically of the modern Western society, but still…
And that’s why wages didn’t increase for workers as a result of industrialization. People are just as poor now as they were before! /s
I mean, that’s been an ongoing battle. It sure as hell wasn’t going well in the 1920s and 1930s, then a bunch of shit happened to claw back rights and value for workers.
Some of those battles continue to be fought.
Those battles have not been going well for the last 40+ years as worker share of profits, power, and wealth disparity has been eroded pretty much every year.
But we have lots of bread and circuses so it’s cool I guess.
They are kind of starting to forget about the bread part of Bread and Circus lately though
Many people commenting here more than likely didnt read atlas shrugged - my take away is that the politicians and do nothings at the top are the problem, making poor decisions and never being accountable to them.
Not everything is black and white if you think she was just some capitalist tool to push an agenda do yourself a favor and read the book, if you still have that opinion good on you but at least you did your homework.
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