The thing with products like games, textbooks, movies etc is that a large part of the cost is the design. This means that while you can make the products cheap and still cover the cost of manufacturing, you won’t make back the money from the design if your margin is very low. This gives manufacturers the ability to sell the same product in differently wealthy markets while still making a profit.

If you now take the product from a cheaper market and sell it to more wealthy consumers at lower price than they usually pay, you aren’t actually selling at a better price because you are providing a better service. You are selling at a better price because you’re breaking the manufacturer’s business model.

This isn’t something that can permanently work because either A: the manufacturer doesn’t get enough money to cover the design, can lead to bankruptcy or change of business model (C), B: through regulations this is prohibited or C: The manufacturer raises the price in the regions your buying from, breaking your business model and screwing over the people who can no longer afford it there.

Of course this depends on the scale you’re acting in, but in theory preventing you from doing so would bring more equality between richer and poorer nations

Nintendo is selling them for cheaper in Southeast Asia because people there have less money. They could sell them for less in the US as well, but people are able to afford the prices there so capitalism dictates that the price is higher. What Amazon and the retailers are doing undercuts this strategy, which in theory means that Nintendo should raise their prices in Southeast Asia to make their business model work, making the games inaccessible to consumers living there. In classic liberalism this is the logical way things should be, in neoliberalism the state should intervene.

The problem with capitalism in a representative democracy is that is almost impossible to maintain a perfectly sized government. If the government asks for too many taxes (on an extreme level) etc the market doesn’t function anymore. The “free market” needs some level of class difference to make profit attractive and keep people committed to their jobs. Because of these differences class conflict is created and through privately owned newspapers, corruption and short term economic gains regulation’s get liberalized. This results in wealth accumulation, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This then leads to the social and economic conditions that allow for the rise of the populist right.

As a European I can currently see this happening in all countries to which I pay attention (namely Germany, Netherlands and Britain).

Can someone share some insight with us non Americans, how close are you to a civil war? Between the LA protests and this it seems very imminent

o7

I have made good experiences with GPT4ALL

AFAIK per EU law the collected data has to stay in data centers in the EU, ChatGPT and Gemini at least pretend to conform while Deepseek explicitly states that the data is stored in Chinese data centers.

According to Meta it runs on their private servers

Regarding the edit: you should probably add that to your first comment as you probably meant the starter of this thread and not me

Using the political compass wasn’t ideal to get my point across (I know it’s flawed, just didn’t know how to say it better). Basically what I meant is that on a scale from social democracy to anarcho-communism socialism+democracy would be something of a middle ground if that makes sense.

Regarding state socialism/capitalism: I know there is a distinction and my insertion wasn’t very nuanced, that’s why I formulated it as possibility.

Anyway thanks for the nice discussion, it’s always to have a discussion that is based on arguments and not insults

The way you describe it makes sense to me. The main problem in Germany was probably not directly going to socialism after WW1, especially since Germany somewhat was expected to directly go there from monarchy (I believe this prediction was made in the communist manifesto? Not sure). Even though it doesn’t fit my ideals, Weimar may have been more stable if an authoritarian socialist government was installed, as a lot of people were anti democratic.

Sorry if my statements seemed in bad faith, but I find it hard discussing Marxist-Leninist politics on Lemmy, as those defending those parties/states are a lot of times Lemmygrad style stalinists.

I asked about rule 3 as I and most people I personally know use the democratic socialism definition in that capitalism is inherently incompatible with democracy, and that one should thus strive for a socialist society using any means possible (including a revolution). This society would then be organized via a representative democracy.

What you described is what I would describe as social democracy and nothing else, however after looking it up a bit these terms are defined so broadly that there is significant overlap between definitions. I fear this is a major problem with these kind of terms as everyone has their own definitions of them/uses them differently creating confusion.

I think socialism is inherently a related idea to democracy (one could argue socialism without some form of democracy or decentralized government isn’t socialism but state capitalism) and together they are the “conservative” variant of anarcho communism.

I am not trying to say that the SPD wasn’t defending capitalism at the time, heck one could argue during World War One they were even defending the monarchy. What my point is, is that the KPD in fighting the SPD (who I’d argue was still the major party politically closest to the KPD, even if there were significant differences) as their main political enemy and not the openly fascist NSDAP or one of the party’s who openly called for a return to a monarchy they became more like the NSDAP (Führerkult, antisemitism, authoritarian etc) and thus I argue that neither of these were good options and one shouldn’t have have voted for neither of them. I’m not saying the saying the SPD isn’t problematic from a communist perspective, but that one shouldn’t just give the KPD a pass because they are communists. This coming from a anarcho communist standpoint, so I understand if you aren’t as uncomfortable with a authoritarian party, but that’s just my view on the matter.

Also, one question regarding rule 3, I get all of the listed things but could you specify what exactly you mean with Democratic Socialism. Is this about reformist socialist parties or about revolutionaries who want a democratically organized socialism?

Say about the SPD what you want, but the KPD also betrayed communism in a way.

• Firstly, like you mentioned, the fight against the SPD instead of NSDAP, the party which would have been the most realistic to establish socialism with
• The antisemitism and nazi rhetoric present in their campaigns, with slogans like “Nieder mit Judenrepublik“ - “ Down with the Jewish Republic” and calling for violence against Jews
• The forced unification of the party und the Führer like Figur of Ernst Thälmann

I am not going to discuss whether their idea of how a transitionary socialist society should look is “korrekt”, however the devotion to Stalins ideas and the exclusion of parts of the because they were to left should be looked at critically.

One thing in regard to the SPD: Originally it was called Socialist Workers Party of Germany, however it was banned for being socialist. After the law banning them went out of power, they “restarted” as SPD, likely because they wanted to avoid being banned again. In the beginning the SPD was quite Marxist and the social democrats in the party were more of a minority despite the name. There also had been significant efforts to deradicalise the SPD by conservatives, for example by giving SPD functionaries roles in government without them being able to make radical changes, slowly turning the party from Kommunist to Socialist to Social democracy to the conservative party it is today. I don’t know who, it may have been Trotsky, but a communist revolutionary has argued that parties trying to reform capitalism to socialism via a representative democracy will always fail due to always either being not radical enough or not mayor enough

Well, after having read the first 20 chapters or so I don't think it's really my taste. Don't get me wrong, I get the appeal and did find the chapters I read enjoyable, but it is "too much" if that makes since. It would make for a great short story imo, but I don't see it as something I'd want to read 5.000+ pages of. It's a refreshing snack, but no full meal.

I do think it's worth checking out, you can always stop if you don't want to read the whole thing

Is there any concern to be had with archive warrior regarding legality (like scraping piracy sites)?

Ich glaube das ist eher was dauerhaftes

Mit der SPD koaliert niemand, da sie ein rechtsextremer Verdachtsfall ist. Die MSP ist relativ nahe bei PKA/CSU, kann aber die Grünen nicht ausstehen

This may be a joke and I’m just to dense, but I’m pretty sure there is one

Muss man ja nicht wählen.

Ich traue es den Leuten zu, dass egal was man macht sich eine politische Mehrheit findet die scheiße ist