Most of that makes sense to me, though I’d think the nature of a socialist government giving a subsidy is going to be pretty different than venture capitalists, since the socialist government will not be wanting to extract value for a minority ruling class. That’s where the mafia analogy more comes in for me, is the nature of it not having any kind of intrinsically supportive motive in the capitalist case; there’s a “catch” and someone is probably going to suffer at some point to fulfill that. Whereas with the socialist structure subsidy comparison, if there were any “catch”, it would be more like “this better bring value to society” or “this better not be trying to bring down our socialist government”. So while the impact in a competitive space might be similar, the outcome should be pretty different for the customer / end user / whatever you want to call them.

I’d also say the socialist case is more incidentally competitive, in that it bypasses the problems of capitalist funding precisely because it’s willing to do things for the sake of something other than profit (operating at a “loss” isn’t necessarily perceived as a “loss”). Versus the capitalist, such behavior can only ever be considered temporarily valuable for the longer term payout.

My mind is stuck on the mafia/mob metaphor for the US (well maybe more just literal than metaphor in some cases) and lately I’ve been thinking about it in relation to what people call “enshittification”. The dynamic where a startup gets some nice “friendly” capital injections to build, build, build and grow, grow, grow, and then eventually there comes a part where the investors want a return and the product gets made more predatory and user-unfriendly in a desperate bid to make it especially profitable.

So it’s sorta like “hey, we’re here to help” later “we’re gonna break your legs if you don’t have something to show for it”

But a lot of the leg-breaking gets offloaded to the customer, for whom this dynamic is mostly invisible as a process and they just see the bait of “cool product” without the strings attached; the “get their hooks in you and get you dependent on it before they start trying to extract as much profit from you as possible.” And once the customer actually sees it, it’s too late, they’re already personally attached and have to hurt themselves by leaving or hurt themselves by putting up with it.

And this is just like… most of the US tech world? Shit’s sickening.

I think we’re in agreement that he’s acting somewhat differently than before. I think my focus is more just on emphasizing that, not dissimilar to Hitler, he’s a sort of front man for an existing trajectory. And this is something where liberals (not saying you think this way) can get caught up on this idea of him being the source or Musk being the source and losing sight of how thoroughly enabled and encouraged on a system level this trajectory has been.

It’s probably more useful look at it like the two parties are two sides of the same entity whose rule mostly comes down to capitalist interests making lobbying decisions, rather than viewing it as two distinct parties whose rule mostly comes down to how people vote as individuals.

In other words, we could get hung up on arguing over whether and how much materially worse Trump is or isn’t, but if you look at it more like the two parties are the same sword and the republicans tend to be a more openly pointy end, that doesn’t mean the democrats are actually harm reduction; they’re still working on stabbing the world with the same sword (with the hilt being primarily controlled by the capitalist/imperialist power brokers, not the voters).

It can be observed time and again that the democrats are not a true opposition party and act as more of a buffer against / capture of reformist and revolutionary energy than anything actually oppositional to the more brazen republican agenda. The democrats help create the conditions that lead to someone like Trump by helping to block any kind of meaningful reform and quietly going along with practices that are similar if not identical to the worst republicans get called out for, so even from the standpoint of believing that the republicans are “significantly worse”, the democrats are still helping them be that, which cannot be called harm reduction in the long-term. And even in the short-term, is such a dynamic from the democrats really improving lives or is it just buying the system as a whole more time to adapt to worsening conditions, such as by building cop cities and the like? By slowing the transition to something more brazenly fascistic?

That’s clever. 😄

China is doing the long-con. They’re gonna help the whole world via global influence, only to turn around and help them transition from an exploitative system to a mutually beneficial, cooperative one. No wait, um. They’re going turn around and after helping over a billion people be more self-sustaining and collectively empowered, they’re gonna suddenly… start doing the opposite without changing anything about the existing power structure and the mechanisms in place that would make that next to impossible! turns out the lights Wooooo waves hands Chiiinaaa

I think you’re right on the first part. Reddit long had problems, but pretty sure they got worse since the whole fiasco with sub shutdowns from mods organizing to protest API changes that would wreck third party apps and some mods got booted off subs by admins as a result of keeping their subs shut down for prolonged periods. There are probably subs that are significantly worse in how they’re run since then, cause of different people doing it and them presumably being more bootlicker mindset to be someone who’d take over in that situation. I don’t know the details of the damage done after the controversy died down, but in broad strokes, it can’t have been good.

That’s an interesting thought. Could be. I haven’t looked into it enough to be confident that’s what people are doing, but I could believe it.

I don’t know if I can quite put my finger on it as a generalization, but there’s this way some people on the western internet talk about products, maybe more of a USian thing and extends to political thinking too, where it’s like they have no sense of bargaining or negotiating in them; they view it like you’re supposed to just take things as they are and deal with them without complaint. Maybe it’s a side effect of rugged individualism? And of having a business culture where prices are kind of just set by major corporations and you deal with it?

Like some of these people will go to great lengths to defend the corporate side of things and talk like you’re odd if you don’t immediately cave to the terms a corporation has set out for you. It’s so weird. I know there isn’t really a haggling culture in the US, like there is in some countries, but the degree some of these people go to in the opposite direction baffles me.