• alekwithak@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I don’t mind being governed. I mind being governed by shareholders. Regulation isn’t oppression. Exploitation is.

    • cobalt32@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 days ago

      I agree that things would be better without shareholders, but wouldn’t government corruption still be a problem? For example, shareholders aren’t profiting from mass deportation or tariffs. These sort of abuses would still happen without shareholders because they aren’t motivated by profit, they’re motivated by racism and nationalism. The way I see it, we need to get rid of all coercive hierarchies, government included.

      • lefaucet@slrpnk.net
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        2 days ago

        Good news! You’re about to learn about for-profit prisons and how racism is very profitable for shareholders, especially in how it suppresses wages and keeps poor people fighting other poor people instead of forming unions…

        Maybe not right now tho. I’m done poo… Uhm I’m about to do something other than googling “prison industrial complex” and “how racism effects unionizing”

      • alekwithak@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Government doesn’t have to be a hierarchy. Direct democracy would have been impossible in the past, but is very much doable in this day and age.

        • cobalt32@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          15 hours ago

          Direct democracy would be less hierarchical than what we have currently, but it’s still a hierarchy of the majority over the minority. So long as government exists, the decisions of the majority will be violently enforced upon the minority.

          Unless of course you’re referring to direct democracy without law enforcement, but I wouldn’t exactly call that a government.

          • alekwithak@lemmy.world
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            14 hours ago

            Weighted voting based on how much said proposition affects you personally? Idk man why does perfect always have to be the enemy of a hell of a lot better than we have now?

        • sorghum@sh.itjust.works
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          1 day ago

          You don’t think that regulation won’t be exploited? It’s how the safety and environmental regulations drove all car manufacturing into 3 companies here in the USA. Bigger companies pushed for the regulations because they could withstand the change to force their competition out of the market.

          One OS monopoly in my lifetime was already bad enough, I’ll pass on having another.

          • alekwithak@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            That again sounds like exploitation rather than regulation. That is exactly what I’m referring to when I say governed by shareholders.

                • sorghum@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 day ago

                  And I’m telling you that this is done via regulation and not just naturally and isolated by corporations alone. Regulation is exploitation in practice.

                  • alekwithak@lemmy.world
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                    23 hours ago

                    The examples you’ve given are of a regulatory system that has been captured by private interests. These are the interests that need regulation, they have turned on its face a system that is meant to protect the people from them and are using it to protect themselves from consequences of their own exploitation. Regulation isn’t exploitation by default. Exploitation happens when regulation is written in ways that entrench incumbents or erode civil liberties. The solution is not to get rid of all regulation, it’s regulation that constrains power rather than concentrating it. Your examples are a symptom of what is wrong with the current system, not a demonstration of its function.