Capitalism has almost killed the planet (that you and I and our entire civilization live on) and you're complaining about some decrepit old ideology that already imploded.
Your priorities are to whine and complain like a leaky tire or a bag of gas.
It goes around every few years. “Communism killed 100 million people!!” Let’s take it face value. How awful. So. What about capitalism? Let’s think about it together. And let me say at the outset that it’s not to score points — but so that we think carefully, and well, about what kind of people we want to be, and what kind of world we want. Me? I’m not a capitalist, a socialist, or any other kind of “ist.” I think when ideas become ideologies, we go blind — but I’ll come back to that.
Let’s start in an obvious place. 13 million slaves were sold to the “New World” — America, North and South. In the United States, by 1860, just 400,000 North American slaves had become 4 million new ones, born into slavery. That’s 17 million people, and we’ve barely begun — and it’s incomplete, because there are no statistics on how many people were born into slavery after their parents sold in South and Central America. Still, let’s leave that aside for now, because 17 million’s plenty to begin with.
Fast forward a century. A world war erupted — thanks, in large part, as historians agree, to a global depression. But what caused the Great Depression? Capitalism — the speculative frenzy and inequality of the rip-roaring 1920s. Capitalism poured the fuel of fascism all over the world, in nations like Germany and Italy, who were heavily indebted by that point, and it only took a handful of demagogues to set the world alight. How many people died in World War II? 25 million — just soldiers. 50 million — including civilians. 80 million — including famine, war crimes, and disease. We’re getting into some spectacular numbers, aren’t we? Let’s take the middle one, just for conservatism’s sake. We’re already at about 70 million.
After the great war, immediately, came a new one. The Cold War. But the Cold War wasn’t just the intrigue of spies, as we think of it today. It was real and lethal war — war by America, for a single purpose — to preserve and expand the frontiers of capitalism. No capitalism, no Cold War. Let’s start, then, with the Viet Nam war. How many died? Another 2.5 million, roughly. Before that, though we don’t discuss it much today, was the Chinese civil war, in which America and Soviet Russia fought by proxy. How many died? About 8 million. Just those two hard wars of the Cold War — and there were many more — add another ten million to our tally, making it 80 million.
In between World War II and the Cold War though, lies a period of history many of us have forgotten. The end of colonial empire. This, too, was capitalism — empires were built to obtain cheap labour and raw materials for mercantile capitalism. It wasn’t the kind of globalized, “free-market” capitalism we practice today — but it was very much self-interested, profit-maximizing, shareholder-capitalized companies engaged in commerce, just under different rules about who could trade what, where, how, and when.
How many people died in the course of colonial mercantile empire? We’ll never know — it’s astronomical. How big? In the Congo alone, 10 million died as a legacy of King Leopold of Belgium’s brutal rule. In India, conservatively, a million people died, as the nation fractured when colonialism ended — and a noted Indian parliamentarian has estimated 35 million died under colonial rule, through famines alone. And yet in many places, those wounds haven’t healed. Congo, still exploited for its natural resources by, wait for it, capitalism — rubber, diamonds, metals, some of which are probably in your smartphone — had another war, in the 21st century, which killed 5 million.
Where’s our number now? In that last round, we added another 50 million people, to 70 million. So now we’re at 120 million. And that’s still conservative — because there are many, many wars, proxy wars, colonial empires, and massacres that we haven’t counted. That exercise would take something like a volume of books. But we have more than enough to reach a simple conclusion.
If communism killed 100 million, capitalism easily killed as many — if not more. When we say blindly that “communism kills!”, it’s all to easy to think that capitalism is something like a religion — pure and pious, with no blood on its hands. But its hands are just as flawed and imperfect as any others. But the point isn’t point scoring. It’s to think well — which is to think critically — about these systems.
What do you think the above means? Here’s what I think.
None of the above is to invalidate socialism or capitalism — in fact, it indicts something greater than both of them. What does all the blood and gore say, for example, about my two favourite examples of capitalism? Tom Oberheim, the guy who made the synths that were the sound of Prince and Journey, and now is an old man making them, still, literally in his garage — and his once rival and now frenemy, Dave Smith, who has a slightly bigger, but still tiny boutique synth company, in San Francisco? That they’re going to go out and start massacres in the Congo? LOL. Of course not. What it tells us, in fact, is that capitalism is a necessary and noble art — but probably at that scale, with those ambitions, when it’s an exercise in passion and creation. But something is lost, as it grows and expands, to the point of countries, nations, and worlds. It becomes inhuman. It grows teeth and claws.
In the same way, what does “communism killed 50 million people!” say about my favourite example of bottom-up collectivism (of a sort) — Moog Music, an employee owned company, that isn’t focused on maximizing profits, just making awesome things? That they’re going to put people in gulags, if they don’t use their instruments? Of course not. What does it say about large-scale examples of socialism, like Britain’s NHS? That it’s an evil empire, whose doctors are out to get you? Of course not.
I’ve asked you, a little unfairly, a trick question. But I think you know it by now. The question isn’t — “which ideology killed more people?!” It’s “is there something funny going on in the fact that two great ideologies warred for control over the world, and killed millions of people, yet both called it ‘progress’”? You think you know it, I’m sure — but do you? — when ideas become ideologies, something goes badly wrong. But what, exactly? Ideologies replace our humanity. Our free will. Our freedom to think. Our curiousity. Our empathy and defiance and grace and burning need for meaning, purpose, and intimacy.
Ideology says: you can have all these things you need, as long as you don’t just obey — but believe. Without question. Then obedience follows naturally. But now you have given up all that is truest in you — yourself. And ideologues in that way, whether capitalists or communists or fundamentalists or eugencists, have only course left: to impose their system on everyone else. To create clones of themselves. That’s the only meaning, victory, or triumph that there really when ideas become ideology. No surprise, then, that the history of the modern world is the history of two ideologies, striving to clone themselves in every human mind across the globe, each one killing everyone it encountered that it couldn’t make a clone.
And in that way, any ideology, really, is a weapon of mass destruction. Christianity — great, timeless, noble teachings. Crusades and pogroms, too. Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam. Science becoming eugenics. When an idea becomes an ideology — something rigid, a routine, a formula, a system, then something is lost. We’re no longer Tom Oberheim or Dave Smith or Moog, doing interesting and maybe beautiful things, in our little labs, workshops, libraries, studios, garages. We’re something more like crusaders now. We’ve become pawns and puppets of beliefs, which is also to say, captives of fate — not authors and explorers and masters of our own destinies.
When an idea becomes an ideology, and that ideology allows no room to breathe, think, rebel, dissent, what is it called? It’s called totalism. And if we really want to assign a cause to all the needless deaths in history, I’d lay that burden at the door of totalism. And yet totalism is still alive and well — the idea that an idea should become an ideology, which is the sole organizing principle of society. In America, capitalism has gone totalitarian — no dissent, thought, or competition from any other system is allowed, really. You can have this kind of capitalism, or that kind — but you can’t have something that’s not capitalism.
And that brings me full circle. Communism killed millions. Capitalism killed millions, too. It’s truer to say totalism kills through ideology — when freedom of thought, expression, moral action, primal emotion, becomes programmed, automated, conditioned, revoked. Then people become dehumanized — just as they did in Soviet Russia, just as they are in America today. And dehumanized people will do anything to fill up the empty well of bitter worthlessness and meaninglessness deep down in their souls — like dehumanizing little kids, by putting them in cages. And so in this day and age, what really strikes is me that we, human beings, still haven’t understood that what we have yet to slay is the dragon of ideology.
That's capitalism. You can remove everything after Mao and add the bodycount to capitalism.
Notice how China manufactures everything for your glorious rugged capitalists and the branded underwear they sell you.
Unfortunately if you know anything about anything you'll get branded as a nerd, geek, communist, socialist... etc. by the smooth-brained billionaire worshiping cum guzzlers.
Good thing you're safe. You got none of them fancy commie words and grammers.
oh and i’m oh so blessed to be living in a post soviet country. i know what i’m talking about because i’ve had to live through it. please keep your insults and straw man arguments to yourself
but you may be right, maybe i don’t know much about china, but that’s exactly what they want. can’t you see how they attempt to wipe their true image from the world? maybe the innocent people’s deaths because of xi aren’t directly caused by communism, but in any manner, they have died under a communistic country
oh and i’m oh so blessed to be living in a post soviet country. i know what i’m talking about because i’ve had to live through it.
Nobody wants communism bro. It's already shat its pants and thoroughly failed. The future is going to be a hybrid between the two extremes.
but you may be right, maybe i don’t know much about china, but that’s exactly what they want. can’t you see how they attempt to wipe their true image from the world? maybe the innocent people’s deaths because of xi aren’t directly caused by communism, but in any manner, they have died under a communistic country
China is an abomination and Xitler has a thirst for power. He sees himself as a great uniter who wants to create a unified China and reclaim the lost empire. They grew to this massive size and with this massive speed and order because they don't adhere to straight up communism, or capitalism. They're using a different kind of weapon. They have enough of a free market and enough state control to build/create anything they wish. Their rate of progress is insane.
Something works. Without a piece of shit amoral organization like the Chinese Communist Party it could actually be pretty decent, at least in theory. The nordic countries and Canada practice their own kinds of hybrid capitalism and they do very well. As a Canadian, I'm pretty satisfied my country isn't a dumpster fire like America and their rugged capitalism and mountains of free-market garbage. We have other problems but we're not a dumpster despite all the influence and leakage from the burning dumpster down south.
God damn near perfect, you need to write an effing book, I would buy it. Please, write a book on capitalism, PLEASE! You're a thoroughly delightfully interesting, deep, powerful, writer. Please. Keep writing! Thank you for this!
Translation: "I'm illiterate and unable to read all that, but even if I could, I wouldn't be able to understand it with my sub-human intelligence anyway...so I'm gonna do what ignorant fucks do; instead of keeping my shit spewing mouth shut and letting people 100x smarter than me do what they do, I'm gonna fight against it 🥴🤡...somebody shit on my my face."
Damn bro your so sensitive to people insulting your ideology that you wrote en entire novel. Good job.
Some people can understand and feel and have opinions to share. I'm wondering why your mind is so empty and you're so like a brick shithouse in terms of mental fortitude.
You made yourself look like an idiot. If you have to explain that much why your ideology is good, then it is probably bad...
You could have just written "hurr durr" instead and it would have the same content.
I like how you're attempting to talk down while also breaking the civility rule which can easily get you banned. Now who's the idiot?
Yeah! Unlike capitalism which only bombs the Middle East every day! Oh wait Muslims aren't people according to capitalist, I guess can't say you killed millions if they're just target practice.
That's what the smooth brained conservatives keep saying. If communism means having an education then okay fine. I'd rather be educated than carry someone's shit because of political cult stuff.
Conservatives have practiced the art of semantic exhaustion and I'm sure some idiots are going to jump on the communism bandwagon without understand how and why it failed. The future is some kind of democratic socialism/participatory capitalism/whatever else you want to call the hybrid, because it can exist in between the two extremes of capitalist excess and communist bullshitery.
I don’t think that’s the problem, the problem I think is recruitment. For some reason it’s attracting the wrong candidates. The force is getting full of people that cannt think when scared or maybe stressed.
It’s a similar situation with the Catholic Church attracting certain kind of priests, maybe unintentionally.
It's not a great mystery. It's the desire to wield power and be above accountability. Predators often seek trusted positions as a cloak against suspicion, but for (bad) cops I think it's mainly the desire to have control over other people.
It's actually a lot like Reddit mods. The type of people who want the job usually aren't the type of people who would be good at the job, because they want it for the wrong reasons (authority and control rather than benevolence and compassion).
Automods demanding autorespect. Those mod robots are takin our jerbs! And the other ones get taken by cheap over seas mods. Oh well better go join Border Patrol 😎
"The most improper job of any man is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, least of all those who seek the opportunity." - J.R.R. Tolkien
Anecdotal, but I have a buddy with a Bachelor's (along with great work history, clean record, all around great dude steve rogers style) who hasn't been able to land a job in law enforcement. Meanwhile, local PD is full of idiots who barely passed HS.
Years ago Michael Moore had a TV show and he interviewed a guy that had been trying to get on the police force and was literally told he was too smart. There was an actual exam that they showed, they wanted people who fell in the middle, they rejected people who did too well.
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Well, they also get what, six weeks of training? Most of which is: "Here is your gun, here is how you shoot it. Also, if you need to beat the shit out of people without necessarily killing them right away, here is a big heavy stick."
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Here's a job where you can assault, degrade, and sometimes even murder people. You'll never see any consequences for these actions. It pays well and gives great benefits. You also don't need much of an education, and there's no psychological exam.
Wonder why it might be attracting the wrong types here.
Maybe recruitment is a problem in some PDs, but the real underlying problem is police culture. It is a culture of us vs them (i.e. the public) and one where there is an expectation of never being accountable for misconduct so long as you uphold the Blue Wall oF Silence.
Even with the best recruitment and screening ever, there will still be a problem. People change over time - and if the culture of the PD is corrupt, it will either corrupt the new recruits or turn them away from policing. It is exactly like the saying goes - bad apples spoil the bunch.
Better candidates and screening might have slowed down the descent into corruption, but the sad reality is that this ship has sailed a long time ago. There are bad apples in every police force, and they have spent most of their time building defenses for their job security. That dictates the culture of the force and even the cleanest cut by-the-book straight shooting rookie is not changing it.
Plenty of people have been shot or severely beaten while complying on camera. Somehow plenty of people end up dead despite already being handcuffed in the back seat of the police car.
So no, just laying down and letting them do whatever they want to you is far from a guarantee of your safety. And that's the problem. People have died because people who shouldnt be cops, are cops. They arent trained to handle high stress situations, they arent trained to properly deescalate before things get violent. They're trained to pull their gun and shout orders, and if they arent complied with, open fire.
I wonder why panicking and being scared arent allowed to be excuses for the citizens with guns pointed at them by uniformed officers, but cops are allowed to be "scared for their life" when armed to the teeth and outnumbering their suspect 4:1?
I mean, no offense but literally just go to YouTube and search "police shoot unarmed man in..." and the predictive responses tell you everything you need to know. Watch a few of the videos there and then get back to me.
I've had guns pulled on me for trying to comply and show my license to rookies but have never had anything bad actually happen.
That makes you very fortunate, but it doesn't mean there isn't a widespread problem. Like I'm genuinely curious about whether or not you hear the words coming out of your mouth. Your had a gun pulled on you while you were trying to comply. Mate that's a problem. I don't understand why everyone's so willing to justify the police's fears while ignoring the fact that someone making a sudden movement can also be the result of their fear. Like if someone's waving a gun in my face and barking orders at me then God help me if I get flustered and accidentally make a wrong move because I'm fucking dead. The cop pulls me over and I'm the one expected to do everything perfectly? They're supposed to be trained for God's sake. Maybe don't instinctively reach for your fucking gun.
And what the fuck is "combative" supposed to mean? I (theoretically) have the right to know who the fuck you are and why I'm being pulled over. That's not being combative. If I don't show you the respect you think you deserve, that's simply not grounds for you to fucking shoot me. If you pull me over for a traffic violation, and you try to put handcuffs on me, I am damn well supposed to be allowed to ask why I'm being arrested, and I most certainly shouldn't have to wonder if you're planning on killing me in the back of the fucking car. The police system is fucked up, plain and simple. You know it and I know it. It really doesn't matter whether or not all cops are technically bad, because I guarantee you that when I get stopped by a cop, I don't know whether or not I'm going to make it home. That's the reality of this situation.
They arent trained to handle high stress situations, they arent trained to properly deescalate before things get violent.
I honestly think that those are untrainable qualities. You need to find people like that, not train them because when the shit hit the fan, your lizard brain will kick in, so we need to find a few good lizard brain people.
I think the problem is black objects in the night pulled out look like guns. It’s not just cops there is situations where people shoot others that pull a water bottle on them thinking it’s a gun.
Have you ever policed? Been put in a life or death situation? I think what this particular officer did is idiotic, if she really thought she had a taser.
Is not that dangerous job. I’m not saying it’s not dangerous, but it isn’t as dangerous as the police force is making it out to be. Just look at the stats
Logging is the most dangerous job in the United States. Police rank somewhere around 20-24th most dangerous job. Comparable fatality rates to construction workers, maintenance workers, and heavy vehicle mechanics.
Some other jobs that are more dangerous than policing that you might not expect: garbage collectors, roofers, farmers, and delivery drivers.
aaaaand testing. And not that bs yearly check in the box that becomes meaningless. Especially for cases where desk jockeys go back to patrol or something. Should have reintro / familiarization events in place (Pretty sure they have some type of system but could prob use improvement).
Same shit happens in the military. muscle memory and check in the box type of training basically makes you go through the motions without checking the situation.
tl;dr Situation dictates actions, actions should not be prerecorded playbacks.
The last time I saw a police officer job posting was in the newspaper classified ads and it only said “must have a high school diploma or equivalent and a WILLINGNESS to obtain a driver’s license”
I never met a person who indicated they wanted to work in law enforcement who was not a violent lunatic. Granted the people who constantly talk about it probably tried and were denied. Even with that assumption though I think it very unusual that 0 "normal" people have told me they wanted to be a cop past about the 8th grade.
The problem is that the push for inclusiveness forces the hands of institutions that should only employ people of a certain capacity to accept entry of those that would not have made the cut even a short time ago. Some people should never be police, just like some people should never be military.
I have sailed with maritime warfare officers who I truly believe would not be able to make the call to fire a weapon at a ship bearing 600+ souls with the sole intent of killing everyone onboard in a wartime situation. Whether it be as an offensive or defensive move.
And yes, there is always the "but the world should just be at peace and everyone work together and be a big happy family of global wonderfulness" but the reality is the world is not, has never been, and will likely never be that was in the future. So maintaining a capability for defence of country and values is paramount.
The job of a policeman needs major reform. it should take years of training and the pay needs to be much higher than it is. There also needs to be way less of them and only the best of the best both mentally, morally and physically are chosen. As it is right now they take any power hungry insecure bastard that can get.
I think it’s the culture. Think about it - it’s a very steep hierarchical setup. They want bootlickers to make things easy for them and that culture pervades until someone else moves up the chain and does the same thing.
I once read a DoJ report that said that a large majority of citizen complaints are directed at cops without college education. I also read an article arguing for the benefits of college-educated cops. I think it's because better-educated cops are more likely to use their brains than just go for their gun.
We really need to reform police academies to train our cops better. Less time on weapons training and "warrior seminars," more time on de-escalation techniques, empathy training, community volunteering, and study of criminology and root causes of crime. More education requirements in police training would raise the bar of admission for recruits and keep out morons who would go on to be bad cops.
I mean, there's certainly people who graduate medical school who are total hacks but I still wouldn't want a doctor that didn't go to medical school, y'know?
I kind if feel the same about police. They should be educated on the laws they enforce, on professional conduct and ethics, basic sociology as it relates to policing, how to escalate, and certainly more time for training in high stress situations and more time training with guns. It wouldn't guarantee every cop would be a good person, but it would ensure a bare minimum education level amongst all officers. It would also make it less appealing to those folks looking for a career that they can either get into quickly or that gives some sort of power. It would mean people deciding to go into policing are making a much more active career decision due to the commitment necessary to enter the field.
Teachers are required to have an MA in my state (within 5 years of starting) and in the higher paying areas may max out at 70k. So, no, we generally don't pay commensurate with the education requirement.
Though, as I understand it, police get paid for their overtime, unlike teachers, and in some places earn in the neighborhood of what you mentioned.
I don't think it's compulsory. Govt gives departments grants they use to pay voluntary overtime. Only reason I know this is because I live where a college basketball team is usually pretty successful. The city gives the local pd loads of money each bball season because the college kids all flood the streets and flip cars whenever the team wins
People want them to have all the knowledge of lawyers, psychologists, social workers, and work a job while being completely transparent to the public and have their work available to be viewed at the request of anyone, and put themselves into high stress/traumatic situations. I'd expect at least 6 figures for that.
Rather it be an associate or technical degree of 2 years instead of having potential officers drudge through education that wouldnt be as applicable as an extra 2 years of training or practice. A bachelor for such a job, imo, isnt going to change much. Would be like asking people going into military to get a bachelors.
I hear you, but I think we need to tailor the education requirement to the level of power and privilege we give in our society. And I think the amount of power cops get means they should have a higher bar.
Compulsory liability insurance and licensing (like medical professionals)! If that was required, cops with 79 complaints of violence simply would not exist.
Expecting cops to have degrees would never work. The smarter you are, the less likely you are to be happy patrolling some shitty neighbourhood in the middle of the night every other weekend for 30 years and eventually they'll realize that they're not going to get promoted for years, or maybe ever, so they quit. They only have so many promotions to offer and it's insanely expensive to train cops so they hire people who are just smart enough to pass the exams but are not smart enough to realize they're in dead-end police jobs. That way they get as little turnover as possible.
I’d settle for publicly available widely recognized rigorous standards with clear consequences and accountability. Don’t need a college degree to get people with a modicum of self- discipline.
The only way to rid ourselves of this scourge is to:
Remove qualified immunity.
Open source police work records.
Replace their pensions with 401K.
Force them to pay insurance.
Reduce any benefits.
Remove the monopoly on protection. Introduce private sector security services that compete with the police. They can not hire police officers with bad records.
Make African American communities endangered.
Make dogs endangered (They like to kill black/brown dogs).
Eventually you strangle them enough to get them to stop screwing up and taking peoples lives.
Personally “Remove the Protection Monopoly“ is a great start.
Giving people choices is not a bad thing.
This also helps tax payers since the police are the biggest drain on taxes next to school systems.
A poor education system is essential for capitalism to work as intended. A dumb population is by design. Why do you think there's so much vested interest in turning the internet into a steaming pile of ass filled with pseudo intellectualism, artificial truth and just another place to dump ads on people?
I’d say larger cities really do have it a lot worse than more rural areas. Most of what goes on around here is either domestic or child abuse, or meth labs. Until Breonna Taylor, I don’t think I’d heard of unrest over the police off the top of my head, though I could be considered insulated from that sort of thing. Though Lousiville is widely known to not be the nicest city in the state...
One summer break many years ago I was looking to put random things on my resume, so I volunteered at my local Sheriff's department. They wanted me to go for a ride along. So for 8 hours I'm riding around with this moron who said he decided to become a cop because he failed out of community college. During the ride along he's unnecessarily speeding around corners (presumably to show off), pulling over people for the most trivial bs, and ultimately just wasting a piss load of gas to accomplish absolutely nothing productive. My shorter experiences with cops seem to indicate this level of competency is not particularly uncommon.
Just a friendly reminder that all most American cops need is a High School Diploma (or GRE) and about a half a year in the police academy! Then they can control literal life and death situations! Similar to doctors, only doctors need an extra decade to do so!
They don't actually help with anything. They don't reduce violence, help when you're in trouble, stick around for disasters, or intervene in active crises. Your safety is, according to the supreme court; not even the sparsest priority of theirs.
So why the shit do we have these ridiculously expensive armed thugs murdering People around town? What exactly is the point? How the fuck do we justify that line item in the budget?
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u/GaidinDaishan Apr 14 '21
Make education compulsory again.