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sj_zero | @sj_zero@social.fbxl.net

Author of The Graysonian Ethic (Available on Amazon, pick up a dead tree copy today)

Also Author of Future Sepsis (Also available on Amazon!)

Admin of the FBXL Network including FBXL Search, FBXL Video, FBXL Social, FBXL Lotide, FBXL Translate, and FBXL Maps.

Advocate for freedom and tolerance even if you say things I do not like

Adversary of Fediblock

Accept that I'll probably say something you don't like and I'll give you the same benefit, and maybe we can find some truth about the world.

Ah... Is the Alliteration clever or stupid? Don't answer that, I sort of know the answer already...

Actually, that's the opposite of reality. French legal systems are based on the civil law system, which is fundamentally different than the common law system. Quebec in Canada shares that, but english speaking canada is also based on common law like US law.

America's legal system is based on the common law legal system.

The difference between capitalism and wealth is that for most of the history of the world, protection of private ownership wasn't really a core concept of law. For most of human history, although an individual may accrue wealth, ultimately ownership and control fell to the tribe, or the community, or the king, or the gods (through the priest class).

It wasn't until very recently that private ownership was a concept, particularly in law, and that concept of private ownership ended up becoming a cornerstone of liberalism. Once the state protected your ownership stake in a thing, it opened the door for protecting other rights, which is why many human rights in common law are conceptualized as a property right.

So the real reason you've never seen a definition of capitalism is that your definition of definition is so damn narrow.

Private ownership and control of goods and labor. As I repeatedly, repeatedly said.

Now you can't say nobody gave you a definition of capitalism. Now you've got two from two different people.

Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.

It requires free markets, and generally provides workers the liberty to own their own labor, and allowing individuals to decide how they spend their time and how they spend their money. There are unfortunately examples where privately owning capital means abridging liberty of the workers. However, for a lot of people ideal capitalism means workers are more free than in other economic systems since they can sell their labor to whoever they please, or use it themselves without interference from external entities like the community or the government. For a lot of people, protecting people against these situations becomes a major role of government in a capitalist society.

Contrasting this liberty and individual choice, many other economic systems including socialism and communism have the community or the central government make these decisions for the individual.

Often, "Capitalism" becomes the catch-all phrase attacking all market failures exclusively. For example, some people talk about feudalism and complain about capitalism, but under feudalism everything belonged to the king, and the king would meter out control of his holdings to nobility, who in turn would meter out control to peasants. By definition the capital was not owned privately since it was owned by the king exclusively.

Capitalism often works very efficiently because individuals know what they want or need better than the state does. Free markets tend to be rooted in pragmatism: For one example, Meta has invested billions of dollars into the metaverse, but people don't want the metaverse so they've just lost that money. If this was a government program, customers would be forced to participate in the metaverse or they'd continue to get money forever, but eventually the private company will run out of money for the program and eventually the capital will be reallocated to something more beneficial.

It's this very pragmatism that can be dangerous at times: Jonathan Swift said markets need to be underpinned by a moral society for this reason. The pragmatic thing is often also horribly evil, such as spending as much as possible to monopolize surface water then raising the prices of water massively. This is another place where even proponents of capitalism often support government intervention, to ensure that market actors aren't taking actions that are profitable but grossly immoral.

In practice, there have been virtually no examples of pure capitalism, so there are many examples throughout history where merchants could trade and individuals could own things despite strong central planning in other ways, but although there are examples from the medieval era onwards, capitalism in the sense we think of it today really started with eras focusing more on liberalism, which started only a few hundred years ago. In addition, capitalism has never been the only economic system on earth at one time, with a number of different economic systems being in play at any one time and that's true today.

Newton life

Could someone explain this to me like they're trying to get published in a top academic journal and they're really leaning on the thesaurus to get it in there?

Growing up, we were told that we should not judge all black people for the crimes of a few. Now that we're old, we're told that we should judge all white people for the crimes of a few.

It's totally hypocritical and in the short term it's working, but in the long term it's going to end social justice in the west.

A lot of commentators have recognized that tick tock China is filled with stuff like science experiments, tick tock America is filled with stuff like animal pronouns.

Sorry, Isekai quartet, not konosuba

My least favorite one is still the konosuba translators translating desu as death. I mean, if you really wanted to use a word as verbalized period in the same way and keep the same lip flaps, you could just say "yes!"

Really could do either.

I've gathered these for the enrichment of my son, but maybe other people interested in some music history would be interested as well.

Eastern cultures:

"Duanwu Festival Music." from ancient China - around 475 to 221 BC - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_DLS7MCKMQ

"Rag Desh" from classical Indian music - around 300 BC to 1700 AD - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JVueGvWB-s

"Gagaku" from Japanese imperial court music - around 700 AD to present day - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OA8HFUNfIk&t=230s

African cultures:

"Yoruba chant" from West Africa - estimated to be several thousand years old - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O7_-_iA1cc

"Gahu" from the Ewe people of Ghana - estimated to be several hundred years old - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5SbyBAPlPk

"Xhosa song" from South Africa - estimated to be several hundred years old - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzIyEMzEhdA

Western cultures:

"Hymn to Apollo" from ancient Greece - around 7th century BC - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QfeG5KH1M

"Gregorian Chant" from the medieval Christian Church - around 5th to 15th century AD - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK5AohCMX0U

"Greensleeves" from 16th century England - around 1580 AD - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmOb5H8kL30

2000s me: "What's up with your monitor?"

I feel like the fact that the majority are married might not bother some of these women.

The real lives of Canadian tech CEOs

Went outside to touch grass.

Shovelled for 8 hours in -30C, finally reached grass.

WTF overrated.

The west was one of the highest trust societies in history until it started down the path of anxiety rather than fear.

Fear based societies can be incredibly cohesive because the consequence of lacking cohesion is death. You'll be overrun by barbarians or you'll die of starvation or the elements. Anxiety based societies don't fear anything concrete. They're just vaguely worried that something a little bad might happen.

By contrast, anxiety based societies are distrustful and ultimately suicidal. The Roman empire was highly anxiety based right before it fell, with the people in the capitol far more concerned about how to climb the social ladder with no regard for the fact that very real things could destroy the empire.

Witness today where people are anxious about climate change 150 years from now but have no concern for food and fuel shortages today that can, are, and will continue killing the world's poorest people.

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