Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Worrying about being "caught up in capitalism" on the one hand, and then later in the same sentence wanting to be paid for idle conversation with your fellow man?
I'm really starting to get a bit worried about this seemingly increasing assumption that every single little particle of our lives needs to be monetized. People fret about how a few words the write on some random social media site might end up being used to train an AI, that might end up being used to do some little task, that ends up being worth a pittance to someone. "Where's the fraction of a pittance that I am entitled to?" People demand. "I'm going to use scripts to delete all my old comments, I'm going to switch to different social media platforms, I'll quit posting on the Internet entirely if I can't get my fraction of a pittance!"
Whatever happened to just doing stuff because it was fun, or because being helpful was the right thing to do, and not worrying about how to prevent other people from somehow making a sliver of a penny off of it without recompense? Why care that someone might be able to find some way to make a tiny little bit of money off of it?
For what it's worth I generally agree with you, the proposition is to prod at where one might go if one were to take the capitalist mindset to a logical extreme. It's not so much that someone might, as it is that an already profitable big business might. Nevertheless, the exasperation you're expressing here, I share, and I've sort of inverted what you ask here out of dismay at how one's supposed to go about things without serving to further help some big business' profits.
Obviously the better and more practical solution is to leverage governments to break up pseudo-monopolies, regulate and tax businesses, and support unionization in every industry. However, this sort of twisted scenario I'm asking about here? That, to me, seems like the bizarre sort of logic that a staunch, honest capitalist would prefer instead despite it being to the detriment of society.
Just caught this in your other reply and decided to address this here. While this is possible, it also isn't how the world actually works that this is consistently the case, and it is in those inconsistencies of value production that influence the mindset of others, don't you think? Supposing that it is strictly a zero sum game is wrong, but supposing that wealth accrual isn't sometimes at the cost of others is also wrong, I think it may be reasonable to say.
Wealth accrual often creates economic inequality, and in turn while the original action may not directly make people poorer, it can cost them in other ways of which I imagine we may all be too familiar.