gayhitler420

surely you take the accusation of nazism seriously enough to go to a website you don't like to show proof!

do you expect me to take you at your word that the people who explicitly forbid nazis and a bunch of other right wing kooks and have a modlog filled with bans and post and comment removals for violating those rules are nazis?

yall must have strong defederation if you can't even go to the grad website and see their posts.

I’ve never seen a grad say they support the tenets of national socialism or that they hate the working class. Can you show me?

I can still see the ml one but if it’s here…

I don’t understand, is this supposed to say that grad is nazis? They’re very explicit about not allowing nazis and adjacent stuff.

I don’t understand, is this supposed to say that grad is nazis? They’re very explicit about not allowing nazis and adjacent stuff.

According to the goofy dictionary definition were working with, wealth is a requirement.

That definition doesn’t talk about the relationship between wealth and extracted profits because getting to the bottom of that relationship ultimately ties the two together. There’s no space to explain that if you own productive capital, you’re by definition wealthy.

If we wanted to examine your retail investment portfolio under a broader definition, you could possibly be considered the most petit-ist of bourgeoise under some circumstances, but generally if you have to work for a wage or are expecting to have to work for a wage once your education is over then you’re not a capitalist. Participating in the securities market doesn’t change your relationship to the means of production.

If you made your living as a securities trader, that might be a different story.

I’m not sure what you’re saying about the labor and selling it themselves, but the organization, strategy and marketing are all labor that went into the production of the goods. The capital in the form of facilities and equipment are fixed costs like the raw materials used in production, so any profit from the sale is necessarily coming out of the value of the labor.

Good to know that market manipulation is illegal, surely there’s no examples of markets being manipulated in our recent memory!

I think if we just go by that dictionary definition, you being a wealthy person who invests in trade and industry to make a profit in accordance with the principles of capitalism would by definition make you “rich af” and would align your interests against those of the people whose labor allows trade and industrial production.

The people whose labor allows trade and industrial production want to get the highest pay and best living conditions possible, you, as a wealthy investor in the concerns that employ and pay them want the most profit possible. The raw materials of trade and production are fixed quantities so any profit must come from paying the worker less than their labor produces.

Does that make you evil? I don’t know.

You used the example of an etf and I wanna talk about stock and securities trading briefly. A person with enough money can invest it in the market in such a way that it causes huge changes and can basically write their own ticket. Small time (retail, if you’re familiar with the lingo) investors take on quite a bit more risk and while they might hope their bag goes up or down they don’t generally have any control or say over what happens to laborers or industries and certainly not any power to control markets.

There’s an argument to be made that the move to replace pensions with invested retirement funds was explicitly intended to align retail investors and working people with the interests of the very capitalists who needed them to accept lower wages and reduced benefits, but this tea…

I do take issue with using dictionary definitions though, because they tend to be truncated and devoid of the background and context that allow for understanding and use of words in conversation or correspondence. This one, for example doesn’t explain what the principles of capitalism are, only that they must exist because capitalists are people who invest according to them. This definition doesn’t even describe capitalists as a class, which is fundamental to understanding the overwhelming majority of ink spilled in the last few centuries about them and the system they are in control of!

I did not forget, I purposefully excluded it because were talking about the definition of the word capitalist in the sentence:

I’m a capitalist who doesn’t defend billionaires and also doesn’t feel left out

In that sentence the word capitalist is used as a noun, not an adjective.

I don’t think you’re being disingenuous here and English is a crazy language, so here’s the definition google came up with:

noun: capitalist; plural noun: capitalists a wealthy person who uses money to invest in trade and industry for profit in accordance with the principles of capitalism.

In the sentence

I’m a capitalist who doesn’t defend billionaires and also doesn’t feel left out…

The word capitalist is a noun.

But even if you were to pull up a dictionary definition of the word that says otherwise, in the context of the economic and political system of capitalism there’s three hundred years of writing that define capitalists under capitalism as various groups of bourgeoisie.

I think we can dispense with petty arguments over the dictionary definitions of words given what we’re discussing. If it will make you feel better I can refer to capitalists as flying purple people eaters.

may i see them?

i don't know how it is in most cities on the planet because i don't live in them and haven't looked into their public transit.

part of having a common good is defending and upholding it. usually when there's a problem with the routes people show up and yell loud enough that something gets done. I don't think they've cut a route and not replaced it with one that has more stops or split it into two that provide more coverage in like 20 years.

during covid here there were fewer busses running, but it was because of reduced ridership and they ran more on demand shuttles to make up the difference. they started installing big crazy air filters on the top of the busses too, so now you can't even smell a fart on one.

when there's more people than the route can handle you gotta wait, same as when there's more traffic than the road can handle. here when that unexpectedly happens they redirect people to other routes when possible.

a lot of what youre talking about is disabled people getting equal access to what car drivers have, which is good when the disabled person lives in a place that expects everyone to have a car. if a place were to ban cars, expect people to use public transport and operate public transport with enough volume and coverage to replace them, it would be better for the disabled than expecting each individual disabled person to own a car with expensive modifications to accommodate them and become licensed to operate it or hire a driver or service in the case they cannot become licensed.

serving the disabled and elderly is what's driven the expansion of bus routes and accessibility here. we don't even have car bans and it's a benefit for so many people!

Busses here have better accessibility than cars.

There are people who need more aid than the busses are equipped for and the bus line runs specially equipped shuttles out to them on request at no cost (back when the busses had fares it cost the same as a bus ride).