Explaining capitalism to aliens
Explaining capitalism to aliens
Why does Ross, who is the largest friend, simply not eat the other friends?
It was a good joke then, timeless joke now.
I am so happy this was the top comment, if it wasn’t, the disappointment would have been immense.
I love the reference to Futurama.
Why does Ross, the largest friend, not simply eat the other five?
However, yes. Capitalism is fucked up that rewards those with the most resources.
Nice of you to not include source.
Existential Comics, I believe.
Yes, it is. It’s fucking awesome
It's far worse than this:
See how these supply and demand lines intersect over here? Well we get to shift the supply a little lower, sell for higher price, and get to extort workers harder, so that they feel lucky to have a job at all.
The reason that the large class doesn't eat us, is that we have enough profits to control media and politicians to brainwash and force them not to eat us, and so when we say "free market", we're just lying to create a corrupt market and a corrupt society which we get to control absolutely.
--Ahhh says the alien.
Do you have any intrinsic concerns about being evil? Or does the only thing that matters is that the slaves accept your evil and their oppression?
I may be misremembering Posadas but he had a bit where he imagined that any alien society that managed to make it to space travel would have necessarily developed to Communism as they would have to go through the different Modes of Production on their own alongside the necessary development of tech. If Posadas' theory is correct, the Aliens would indeed be familiar with some form of Capitalism.
Not a Posadist nor a Trotskyist though.
when i'm angry and pessimistic, i'm posadist concerning the nukes' part. when i'm happy and optimistic, i'm posadist concerning the aliens' part.
Lmao 🤣
please put a link to the source in your post description!
(in this case, it's https://existentialcomics.com/comic/418 )
Anyone ever post funny non political or economy based comics, or are these the only kind getting made now
I hear Garfield is still being made
The I'm sorry Jon variant is a better read
I sure hope intergalactic-capable aliens would be smart enough to understand the concept of ownership, which seems to be the sticking point here.
Maybe they wouldn't if they evolved as a hive-mind, without predators, or without inter-group competition in some other way, but I doubt it.
If aliens hadn't abolished capitalism at some point they would destroy themselves before becoming capable of interstellar travel.
There's a difference between owning your own things and owning things that other people use and extracting value from their labor. I can tell you aren't capable of traveling the stars.
Barely related but you've spurred a thought into mind:
Would a hive mind or other gestalt consciousness even have the drive to reach the stars outside of circumstances involving potential extinction? I feel as though a GC who has reached the galactic stage would perhaps (almost necessarily) be a fanatic assimilator that had assimilated a race who has a drive to be spacefaring.
My theory, a Terran like imperialist force hailing from a dead world attempts to colonize a habitable planet, only for the colonial force to become assimilated into a fungoid hivemind who has never considered life on other worlds, nor that their world could potentially not be eternal. This spurs action in the hivemind, a drive to expand to other worlds to secure their eternium, and with this newfound difference in thought a drive to assimilate more and more species to see just how different thinking can be
that's why unregulated capitalism (like in amcapistan or a minarchy) would be better, unions would actually be as powerfull as corporations
No lol, the factory owner would just pay his private security a premium to kick your fucking teeth in if you don't work. You actually think unregulated capitalism is BETTER???
The whole point of a state is to mitigate the worst of class conflict, remove that and the class with greater resources (the one ruling before the removal of the state) wins the conflict.
The removal of a state doesn't make unions more powerful it makes the owning class more able to destroy them. An anarcho-capitalist experiment either ends in slavery or revolution.
No, no, the Prophetess Rand foretold what would happen! The rich would just lock themselves away in their golden city and the poor outside the gates would starve!
... As yet, though, no word one who's washing their dishes or making their clothes...
Capitalism can't function without a State, in a "minarchist" or "ancap" situation there would be some intermediary group with a monopoly on violence to suppress workers and hash out deals between business owners. Moreover, we exist in a world largely dominated by US Imperialism, we can't just swap to minarchism or ancapism by gathering the infinity stones.
Whatever system we transition to must come from where it once was, even revolutionary societies have to deal with the holdovers from the previous Mode of Production. That's why the Soviets had the NEP, in fact, they couldn't just snap their fingers and institute what they wanted. It was a big deal when they managed to collectivize.
How do you personally reckon we can make it to your prefered organization of society, from where we are now? Genuinely curious.
... Whatever system we transition to must come from where it once was, even revolutionary societies have to deal with the holdovers from the previous Mode of Production...
Which is why the funniest thing in this comic strip is a human trying to explain economics to clotheless aliens without appearing to know even an iota of their economics, or whatever system do they have / had in their society.
Not by a long shot. Remove the guardrails and the (theoretically) neutral party that enforces them, the state, and violence abounds. Whoever has more guns will call the shots. After enough time and consolidation, any big group will become its own state. If you don't think that'd happen, just take a look at EVE Online and how the biggest player run corps work.
What? The only thing stopping the oligarch from buying an army and enslaving everyone who can't fight back is the fact that the government has a bigger army to stop them before they have time to even think about it. Monopolies of violence. It's not that hard to figure this out.
The only reason why "ownership" even exists is because the government's army serves as a threat to anyone who even thinks about disrespecting it. Without is, nothing is stopping someone who can exert more violence than you from stealing everything you thought you owned.
Uh huh. And how would you guarantee it stays freely unregulated by any one party. With a regulator perhaps?
We already tried that. It wasn't great.