A handful of technocrats, convinced of their intellectual superiority, occupy key positions of power. They champion a supposed critical thinking — ‘think for yourself’ or ‘find your own truth’ — which they want us to pursue by surfing their social media platforms, where propaganda and disinformation thrive
I see nothing individualist with building centralized monopolies.
I’m pretty sure they meant ultra-privileged.
The centralized monopolies are built to serve the interests of, and to consolidate the powers and control of, a relatively small number of individuals. There’s nothing more freeing for an individual than total power and control over others.
No, possessing power doesn’t mean knowledge, understanding or ability to use it to destroy one’s own chains.
No, all kinds of control add to one’s own chains, through the need to maintain them.
These are not freeing at all for an individual. These are “freeing” in a perverted sense for the kind of collectivist that wants to be at the top of the collective.
I don’t agree. I think these people are acting out of what they believe to be self interest, even if it is an unenlightened self interest. Why else would they desire to be at the “top of the collective?” What do they hope to gain if not special, INDIVIDUAL, privileges, opportunities, liberties, etc?
I see plenty. Individualism is the basis of „free” market economy. Free market economy tends to produce monopolies and fascism ;)
Umberto Eco considers Stalin’s USSR as one of the main examples of fascism.
Fascist “market” economies have anti-individualist propaganda similar to Soviet one, - about everyone selflessly working for the common goal, accepting hierarchies, normalcy.
Fascism itself is anti-individualist, it’s one of the main traits of it, that an individual is a building block for it and nothing more. Except for the will of the people\nation.… expressed in the personalities of the leaders.
Free market economies eventually produce monopolies, because the rest start as monopolies. USSR, again, was basically one humongous corporation, even its planning mechanisms were similar to those that exist inside big corporations. And like many a humongous corporation, it broke up into a few pieces because of C-suite politics.
I encourage you to stop idolising individualism because it’s not a virtue by itself. There is a significant difference between state and private monopoly that liberals tend to conveniently ignore. I’m a citizen, not a shareholder.
This conversation is fruitless because you have neither lived in USSR nor studied it.
But in general for a person living in USSR “citizen” was their sorry reality and “shareholder” (in different words, but that’s how “common ownership of means of production” was applied - we have a hierarchical structure, a state, commonly owned by all the citizens and in turn administering the public property, which would be everything in economy) was something they were being told from TV they are, but in fact weren’t. One was better than the other.
Things structurally same are same in operation. Names and ideologies matter zero. State monopoly is worse than private monopoly, because it’s absolute monopoly.
It is a virtue by association with truth, because choices you make are individual and responsibility for them is individual. No matter what you imagine, agree with, sign to, support etc.
Computer games with easy satisfaction and easy construction of unnatural mechanisms have hurt humanity, I think. The virtue of something being just true eludes many people.
I live in a post-soviet republic, please rethink what you’ve just said XD
If you haven’t been at least 16 in 1991, and if you haven’t studied the USSR well enough, then my assessment shouldn’t change.
I’m not that old but not that far off either. I live in ruins of that civilisation. I walk the remains of a 15 minute city and I know first hand accounts of people who lived it. I can see that my country somehow solved gender wage gap. Was it perfect? It was awful and authoritarian but that’s what you get when being Russian colony. Doesn’t have to be that way.
Except the 99% of times it hasnt
What’s the 1% that did? I want to see where the bar is.
Italy, Germany, Chile
Why use examples of ones that are no longer fascist. I mean, in Italy we have a post-fascist government after all. There are also some fascist states that have endured quite long like Russia or United States. And that’s for plain fascism. Monopolies and the rich extracting money from societies are as big of an issue because unaddressed they lead to fascism pretty much always.
Lmao, let me know how freshman year poli sci turns out for you
Why keep pretending that’s not the case, especially now? What else is required? For Kanye to run death camps?
Yes