this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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For the first 2 points: Don't use "Western democracies". This is a US problem. Canada has much stronger labour and home protections.
3rd point: Getting banned online is a "you" problem. Your government has nothing to do with why your shitty opinions get you banned or muted. The fact that you even have the ability to complain about your government online is a luxury many other governments don't afford to their people.
4th point: Whining about cereal variety makes the entire argument hold less water. Who the fuck cares about brands of cereal. Buy your cereal or don't, but shut the fuck up about it. This is an empty complaint about capitalism.
5th point: Fair enough.
I don't directly mean you, OP. Unless you made the meme... In which case I do mean directly you.
I think cereal is brought in to demonstrate the absurdity of the situation, where something so basic as worker's or renter's rights are non-existent but somehow energy already has went into something so stupid as cereal, which indeed nobody cares about.
It's more about how one of the big reasons America is supposed to be great is all the options you have. 40 brands of cereal is worth it all, is it not?
Not to mention the huge variety of great cheeses, wines, beers and deli meats you should be responsible and not waste your money on.
I'd have thought that the emphasis is on the 40 brands vs 3-4 companies. So the theme is partially the illusion of choice but mostly it underlines the inherent problems with current capitalism.
Increasingly your money is being funneled into fewer and fewer hands. While marketing/advertising maintain the illusion of diverse companies with individual character/ethos.
This combination is repeated in some form or other time and again.
The intention here is more variety is more good, but it's a hollow variety because all of the food is owned by like three corps.
You can't protest with your dollar if all of the available food will just end up sending your money to the yacht fund.
I think it’s more because in American anti communist propaganda the ability to choose between different brands and varieties of products was often highlighted as one of the great strengths of capitalism. It is certainly a benefit of markets over poorly run centralized economies, but there’s everything from market socialism to centralized economies that place more emphasis on ensuring consumer satisfaction.
But yeah it’s often a thing that new socialists in America mock
First point is definetly a problem in other western democracies. In Sweden there is the "loyalty obligation", which states that you have to -- according to one of the centrist unions here -- "put the interest of the company above your own". It is a strong intrusion in your freedom of speech.
Which of the unions is that? Just so I know which one to avoid.
"Unionen". I think they focus a lot on like engineers and bosses, and other upper middle class jobs.
I don't think the union is really to blame there, "loyalty obligation", lojalitetsplikt, is afaik a set of laws that really does what Unionen says about it. It's not the union implementing it.
To be frank, I think its quite a refreshingly honest phrasing they are using. A more company-friendly way would be like "we all like to be teamplayers, and that is what the loyalty obligation is all about", or something like that. Now it sounds like "you are the guy on the track in the trolly problem meme, get fucked", and to some degree, fair play to you.
From what I could read during my morning fugue state, it seems to me that they're warning you that the contract you signed when getting hired does not allow you to be disloyal to the company as long as you're working for it. I could not find anything about it being an actual law, though I've been wrong before so it wouldn't surprise me if I missed something.
So it is a colloquial term for those aspects of LAS and lagen om företagshemligheter. Those quotes from Unionen again. There seems to be aspects (the application of this after your employment ends) also regulated in the collective bargening agreements, and those are not laws, that is true.
Sweden is a western democracy?
Sounds like that Swedish centrist union should pound sand
That is absolutely not how the term Western works in a geopolitical context. Alaska almost borders Russia, so by your definition the US isn't a Western country.
I figured I was misunderstanding some context. Thanks for clarifying.
This still seems to me to be a US-centric post, not something involving all Western democracies.
Yes, I am aware. I was making a sarcastic joke that didn't land. Thanks though
Everything in Europe west of the old Iron Curtain has been considered "The West", the Nordic countries are absolutely among them. There have been close ties to the US and UK since WW2, Norway's old prime minister is currently the NATO general secretary.
Maybe an interesting cultural curiosity, maybe not, but Riot Games had the same misconception as you and made an "EU Nordic and East" server for Scandinavians and Russians to play League of Legends together. The game got huge here, but almost all Scandinavians rejected the EUNE server and chose the "EU West" server instead. Nobody wanted to play with the Russians, including me.
This attitude extends beyond just this one game, but it's a prime example. Western Europe is a largely English-speaking region, it's why and how we can relate. Russians usually don't, with some exceptions. Either you communicate in Russian or you don't really communicate at all. We generally don't talk with Russians and don't relate to them.
Politically, in simple terms, we Northern Europeans often tend to want to pull the rest of the west farther left, but the border to Russia is a hard barrier we don't want to cross, not for any period of their political history do we want to emulate them. They are bad. They've been bad for a very long time. I don't know what's wrong with them, but they've been thoroughly fucked up for way too long. Maybe the Ukrainians can give a better analysis of the Russian psyche and culture that causes all this shit, when they get done with the current torrent of it.
Sheesh! Talk about a joke that didn't land. I'm aware of all of this, thank you lmao.
I appreciate seeing your stance on Russia, it’s what I’ve felt for a long time. It was shit under the czars, it was shit as the ussr, it was shit under capitalism, and would you look at that it’s shit under fascism (idk if it actually counts as fascism but holy hell does it look that way from across the ocean). There’s something going on there that leads to bad people keep taking power and using it to hurt others and even when they’re revolting they take it from someone new.
They complain about cereals because they've been fed so much CCP and USSR Propoganda that they think food variety is a bad thing. They're not one of us.
The point is, all the different brands you see are owned by the same handful of megacorporations So you're not getting actual choice, just the illusion of choice. You're like a dog who gets excited when your owner feeds you dog food from his hand instead of the bowl, because you think it's a treat.
I thought the meme was clear about that, but the average American reads at a third grade level, so I understand reading comprehension can be difficult for you.
I only have an illusion of choice because I can pick between corn flakes and chocolate cereal instead of corn flakes from a mega corp or locally produced corn flakes?
I have been played for an absolute fool!
(also, this is an non-issue in Sweden, which apparently is not a western country)
Pretty shitty thing to say, but anyway...
Just because a few big corporations make cereal, doesn't mean you have an "illusion of choice". It's kind of how the system works. A company that makes 1 brand of cereal also makes dozens of hundreds more. They are using processes and equipment already in place to make a slight variation on existing products. It's kind of just how things work. Same with companies like Asus making dozens of hundreds of variations of monitors. I don't think that's illusion of choice. That's actual choices, with actual differences.
Anecdotally, where I live, large corporations stock the grocery shelves with all their cereals, but local companies do make it in as well. I think in my situation, I do have access to items produced locally.
If you want to make an argument that some dickhead company like Mondelez owns fucking everything, I'm right with you, but whining about cereal variety makes the argument really weak.
My point is that oppressed CCP advocates hyperfixate on the 74 different largescale cereal companies based in the USA (and also many international brands available) because it is wholly opposed to their own reality.
I agree with the fish that what you say is USA only isn't.
Basically where economy (power) is dominated by the few such problems exist.
But I would just like to add that I still cringed when you brought up Canada as the counterpoint to USA. Its not that I disagree with what you wanted to compare, its just that to me those two countries are such an extremely similar shade of late stage systems they seem the same unless in direct comparison.
Canada is very different from the US in many ways relevant to this post.
Canada doesn't have "at will" work. Medicine is purchased by the government with immense buying power. Canada has anti-hate laws that supercede free speech, and still have the right to protest and assemble (which has basically been removed in the US). Women's health is protected, and hopefully soon they will offer free hygiene products for women. Maternity/paternity leave is protected. No abortion bans here. Weed is legal, and harm reduction therapy is a common thing.
I could go on but i feel like you just wanted to cringe at people who don't think the US is a proper "developed" country.
You are also wrong about the economy being controlled by a few. When there is actually only a few, like dictators, they come and take your entire crops for almost nothing, which is an unthinkable tax rate for democracies. You don't get education, and you don't get highways or drinking water. These things are offered to you because the government needs productive citizens to make money. It's The rules for rulers. Democracies are complicated and full of corruption specifically because it takes many people to do anything, not a few.
Tl;dr It takes 2 seconds of research to see you are wrong on every point.
I think you have not understood me when I explicitly agreed with the point - twice in the same post.
What did you even "research" (and why/how was that new to you)?
Ok try not to trip over backpedaling there.
You said you cringed at comparing the US to Canada because it's the same shade of grey. It's not. That's what we're talking about, it doesn't matter that you agree with the post in general.
I didn't need to research, because I'm not an ignorant idiot who speaks about countries they know nothing about. You on the other hand, could have done some research before making shit up. There's literally a 20 minute educational video in my link, watch it, that's considered researching this information..
Even if not in direct comparison, they aren't the same shade of grey at all. Canada is comparable to Europe, not the US. And yes they are all late stage capitalistic nations, congrats on that astute observation. It doesn't mean you aren't wrong
Side topic: I find it very interesting that mods will not act against toxic comments like these that obviously use ad hominem but will remove a lot of comments that are critical of ideas that the mods support simply for existing. Go figure.
The rules are pretty clear. It's okay to say someone is acting like an idiot, and it's not ok to call someone an idiot.. i dont necessarily agree, but them are the rules
When they say they "cringe" at what the person said, it means they feel second hand embarrassment. It's saying theyre embarassing. Is that some toxic ad hominem that should get you banned?
No, no, the redditor has got a point, I am not disputing the fact that I'm an idiot at all.
(But yes about that you said. Then again I don't know much about mod tools, like if there is word flagging, or even how many mods there are.)
And you're using "the redditor" not as a toxic ad hominem right?
I'm not a redditor anymore, i left the very day RIF stopped working.
It was your (I guess by your judgement toxic) nickname here ... @[email protected] ... that I was referring to.
Which is totally not relevant to the conversation, which is what an ad hominem is, which is what the other person was saying. You only said "the redditor" as an insult.
Yes my name has reddit in it, but it also has wanderer lol, because i have been wandering since. I wouldn't expect you to get it though.
:)
Unless by "Europe" you mean UK, which Im again going to bunch in with Canada and USA.
So now youre going to dismiss everything you said, and make a new point.
Tell us, oh wise one, why what I just said doesn't compare to other European countries except the UK? Tell me why I don't understand these other countries I've lived? The other comparisons here were France. Tell.me the democratic differences between france and canada? Germany? Spain? Italy?
Or just ridicule yourself again and make a different point.
If youre thinking about sweden and finland, that's not "most european countries".
Oh noo, I ridiculed myself by, um, making a point about what you pointed out in such a civilised manner?
Also what new point?
I was reapplying to "the first two points" (labour laws and housing), this is what this whole thread is about.
Otherwise due to historical reasons one could bunch Europe countries in the previous centuries in roughly two groups, one that went way into what became capitalism (mostly fueled & sustained by colonialism) and the other bunch that invested into state socialism (what Bismarck did or his vision was & countries modeled their policies by). Ofc there were wars, rise & fall of dictatorships/one-party systems, and each country is a separate unique story with its own nuances, but the general division kinda stayed (it's hard to take away rights from people) and is still evident: wiki/List_of_countries_by_social_welfare_spending.
It makes all the difference how the policies are implemented and used. Like 'how much' social security covers, how much is done on housing policies/projects, etc. Or - eg payed maternity (or even sick) leave, sure you can group by 'can has' and 'can not has', but a difference between one week and year(s) is basically a different system and culture altogether. I mention this specifically as iirc Canada generally takes care of it's moms to come slightly closer to what your are saying in and effort to be good at communicating & not leaving (accidentally) negative feelings all around.
:)
Cmon buddy. You went from saying the US and Canada are the same shade of grey and not comparable to europe. Then you said "comparable to UK maybe". And now we're arguing what defines europe and what amount of weeks defines maternity leave.
This is called moving the goalpost, and youve done it enough lmao.
Go away now, you aren't making arguments in good faith
Lol, my bad, Canada is Europe and is of yellow shade, I apologise, your intellect is so too very superior to mine that I cannot even, please have all the points.
Also its called a soccer-post over here in Europe.
But over in England they call it grey-goal-post.
Okay fair enough. Then as a Canadian, what's your experience like?
It's a Capitalism problem, Canada suffers from much of the same issues. It isn't as bad, but it is bad.