this shit happened all over the world, though


with varying levels of violence from either side


Brazil was a fun ride, apparently



hell, it even happened here, but there was no violence

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NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

and this weekend we have our election second round: banker Macron vs fascist Le Pen

fascist capitalism vs. er, capitalist capitalism


Macron is likely to win, which will mean fuck you if you're poor, and according to him, everyone should aim at becoming a millionaire. (like we care about being millionaires. maybe we just want to live in a livable world? eat food without wondering whether it has been polluted for the sake of productivity? and, you know, going back to normal climate)

the good old bullshit principle that the value of a human being is proportional to the amount of capital they produce

would you say Trump has any value as a human being?

and modern capitalism also means uberization, ie. working as an "auto-entrepreneur", which they sell you as "giving you freedom, work whenever you want, etc" except:

a) you need to work a fuckton to even survive (see b)
b) you're competing against the other workers for shifts, and you're paid per shift
c) the ones who get freedom are bosses, they do away with the restrictions that come with the regular employee status


ie. Macron is a capitalist shitbag and needs to fuck off


the thread should be renamed to "shit's going down in the whole world", it'd be more accurate

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NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

I refuse to vote for the 'least bad' though.


voting means you like and trust your candidate. no candidate is trustworthy or remotely likeable.

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NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

I'd actually be interested into knowing your positions. As long as you aren't ridiculously narrow-minded or outright fascist, there will be no problem.


Regardless, communism isn't supposed to be a totalitarian trainwreck like China or USSR are/were.

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NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

I don't share the position that "every rich man is corrupt/bad", just like "all cops are bastards". But nethertheless, the trend is strong. Tax avoidance is a lot of money that could benefit everybody, but instead stays in the megacorporations' pockets. Just like the 'bad' trend is strong among police -- about 50% of police in France are voting for Le Pen, to give you an idea.


"they immediately think 'fire more easily', while us liberals think 'hire more easily'"

Both are true though, one doesn't exclude the other. And that's why I think the system itself is flawed: it basically pits two parties against eachother (workers vs bosses). It is impossible to find a perfect compromise that will make everybody happy. Social protection is a double-edged sword for this reason: it may make it safer for existing employees, so they don't constantly fear losing their job, but bosses will be more reluctant to hire and will raise the entry barriers because they will have more trouble firing a bad employee.


There are also very real ecological issues to the current system. Many people think it is the only viable system, but actually, it isn't viable, and it's heading towards major ecological crisis. Global warming is a good example of it, and it's only the tip of the iceberg.

But the system only works by producing more, always more. So, for example, when everybody has bought their TV set, nobody is buying them anymore. How do you make them buy more TV sets?

For a while, technology progressed fast enough that it gave people an incentive to upgrade. It's less much the case now. This is where planned obsolescence enters: products are carefully planned to fail after a certain time (generally after the warranty expires), and there are all sorts of physical, technical and legal hindrances to repair attempts. Because they want you to buy a new one. Smart objects (IoT) are an upgrade to this, where you can remotely and effectively make a product obsolete ("new firmware version isn't compatible with this hardware") instead of hoping it will break.

Planned obsolescence goes completely against one of the bases of ecology: using resources wisely, reusing and recycling as much as possible. The resources aren't infinite, and it's been said that we took 8 months to consume the amount of resources the Earth can renew in one year, which I wouldn't call a good thing.

Oh, and speaking of global warming, no election candidate, no politician will ever make it end. Even if they wanted, they can't -- what power do they have against big oil? They want to keep selling oil, and they will.

Putting an end to global warming will require getting past politicians and their broken systems.


"Another key thing is social dialogue. By removing the forced equality which means construction workers obey the exact same rules as, say, game devs, Macron wants to allow negotiation between employees and bosses to decide of special rules within the company."

Yeah, we've seen a sample of their "social dialogue" during the "loi travail" protests. A dialogue essentially spoken by riot cops.


Which also brings me to another point, the whole part of jobs and money.

Why do we work? To produce what the society needs. So basically, people make money by producing what they later spend money on. It's a loop.

Why are we paid to work? An idea is to motivate people to work, which is legit. But, what if someone ends up with no money for whatever reason? They don't deserve to live decently any less than anyone else.

Money creates inequalities. The principle is that some forms of work are 'better' than others, and thus deserve more money in return. Which is, well, flawed. Would one say that the cashier, bus driver, or garbage collection employee are "not very useful" to the society? Meanwhile, professional soccer players are paid millions to basically provide entertainment.


Money is also the base of one form of dictatorship, if you will. Many people seek to buy the cheapest items possible, generally because they don't make a lot of money. Which can kill attempts at ethical/clean businesses. Let's say you seek to produce healthy, organic, local food. It's cool and all, but the disgusting industrial practices yield more production at a lesser cost. So in the end, your food is more expensive than your rival's. Many people will still buy your rival's food because it's cheaper, even if it's been polluted with chemicals for the sake of producing more, even if it's been grown under artificial light in artificial soil, even if the animals were bred in batteries where they can't even scratch their ass, even if the bosses employ children whom they pay squat and whom they rape every day.

This form of dictatorship encourages the least ethical production methods, because those are generally the cheapest ones.


I don't pretend to have the answers to everything, but the current system is clearly flawed and not very efficient at dealing with these flaws.


As for the "unemployment rate went down" bit, I would take it with a grain of salt. Especially as it occurs in the president's last months.

The unemployment rates only count the unemployed who are registered. Meanwhile, a common policy is to strike them from the lists if they fail to get a job quickly enough or if they refuse too many job offers. I don't have the exact rules in mind, but this can help artificially lower the numbers.

Who knows.

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NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

I see where you're going. Aiming at reforming the existing system is a legit idea. The main issue, though, is corruption. As long as we're represented and governed by small groups of individuals, they can easily be corrupted by third parties (corporations for example), and there's no miracle solution for avoiding that. A solution could be giving more immediate power to the people so they could take action against corrupted leaders, but... 'the people' isn't a united group either, various differences exist.


As for communism, the way it's been implemented in China and USSR was still pretty much capitalist in the sense that you still needed to make money to survive. The differences in practice were that everyone was paid the same (or almost, of course the State leaders got more), and everything belonged to the State.

In such a system, reality is warped in that working a job isn't something you to do serve the community/society, it's something you end up doing because you have to, for the sake of your own survival. If you like your job, all is good, but what if you have trouble getting a job? You have to pick the first one that you find. And in the case you land a job you don't like, you're pretty much there for the paycheck only. Of course, in a 'communist' system like those previously described, you would have basically zero incentive to work, you're getting paid either way.

I believe communism would work better in a world where work is what it should be: producing what the community needs. As a member of the community, you would be granted the right to live a decent life, and the "individual survival" aspect of work would be eliminated. I can figure it wouldn't be perfect, but I believe something like this is worth experimenting.


Not like all of this is easy. The current system has been normalized, and reinforced by failures like USSR, so much that most people believe that there is no alternative and that this is the best system we can come up with.


Oh by the way, the scandals revealed by the media are only further normalizing the idea of living under absolutely corrupted management. Phony technological progress ("omg smart spoon, so trendy") is normalizing constant surveillance.

(the part about technology and surveillance isn't some dystopian sci-fi novel, it's becoming reality. When I went to a Carrefour mall in the town, the ClearChannel ad screens there had builtin cameras.)


"And well, fun fact: the unemployment curve started to go down only after Hollande said he wouldn't run for President this time"

Oh, yeah. Gives more credit to Hollande, I guess.

I don't believe the president should be getting all the blame for the bad situation though. In the world we live in, governments are far from being the most powerful entities.

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NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

welcome back, sir

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NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

this board is still running, so I guess you don't have to worry too much

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NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

oh hey btw, if you didn't know, the DAPL is finished and it's already been leaking


s u r p r i s e


nonviolent protests were a legit idea but we see how well it has worked

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NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

I downloaded the security patch from the MS website and installed it alone.

Apparently Microsoft resisted the temptation to stick "get windows 10!!!!!!!" shit into it, haven't seen any so far.

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NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

Posted by Splitwirez

*ahem*

They patched XP again.

Anyone else here hoping this is a sign of things to come?

I'm sorry to disappoint you sir, but no, that doesn't mean they're going to revive Windows XP.

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NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

Oh, so that's good. I hope they didn't hide telemetry shit in there though.


But I should rather finalize that switch to Linux, I guess.

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NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

that post would have been a good opportunity to explain yourself tho.

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NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

oh btw we've got a new theme courtesy RanAS! check it out in editprofile

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NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

basically my entire life in the shithole, or almost


like, waking up on time in an attempt at getting to some stupid course on time, only to have that effort trashed by the bus that never arrives (except of course when I decide to leave, but at that point, fuck it)


I'm SO glad I left the shithole. in that place, everything is miles away, so you can't just bike or walk to it. fuck that place.




anyway, I feel that this thread belongs more in General chat. should we move it?

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NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

I just want it to be somewhat democratic

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NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

a) you already made another thread of this kind
b) this one is in the wrong forum (General Chat isn't a catch-all)

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NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd

Questions end with a question mark, though, not a period.

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NSMBHD - Kafuka - Jul
melonDS the most fruity DS emulator there is

zafkflzdasd