Twonks | Bluesky

Transcript

TW😶NKS

A comic in four panels:

Panel 1. White text on black

AI Design Logic

Panel 2. A guy sits in a restaurant at a table with a checkered table cloth. A waiter stands near, hands behind back waiting attentively.

Guy: Get me a cheese pizza

Panel 3. The waiter returns with a pizza in hand.

Panel 4. The guy gestures proudly at the pizza. The waiter looks less than amused.

Guy: Wow, look what I made!

    • BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world
      1·
      21 hours ago

      VC funding

      VC funding isn’t free money. Usually you have to have alredy prospering business for anyone to even talk with you. Companies like WeWork or more recently AI companies are extremely rare exception.

      Also why are you so invested in defending capitalists?

      Why not?

      • jtrek@startrek.website
        1·
        21 hours ago

        VC funding isn’t free money. Usually you have to have alredy prospering business for anyone to even talk with you. Companies like WeWork or more recently AI companies are extremely rare exception.

        lol. Many people get funding for their companies because of their connections. Zoom famously got funding even though the investors thought it was stupid to try to address what they saw as a solved problem, but he was their friend so they gave him a few million dollars.

        The last business I worked for started with his daddy’s money, which (surprise) came from previous capitalist exploits. The first one was similar.

        Why not?

        Capitalists have done incalculable harm to our environment, society, and individuals. They don’t need your defense. They have almost all the money and power.

        • BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world
          11·
          21 hours ago

          What you don’t see are all the cases of business failing resulting in total loss of capital. What you see, you see because it worked out. But for every single startup that survived are 5-10 that don’t.

          Capitalists have done incalculable harm to our environment, society, and individuals

          First, generalization like that caused incomprehensible harm to many societies. This sort of generalization was foundation of Fascism, then Nazism, and then Holocaust.

          Second, while imperfect, that capitalist system works. I’ve seen no other system that would reconcile the incentives of multiple egoistic parties. None. Every utopian design fails miserably when inevitably some people turn to be assholes.

          • jtrek@startrek.website
            1·
            20 hours ago

            Failing businesses is irrelevant to the argument that labor is entitled to a fair share of what it creates.

            Your analogy to generalizations and an old timey Godwin’s law is laughable.

            The capitalist system “works” at tremendous cost to many people. Many such systems work. Chattel slavery would “work”.

            And you haven’t clarified why you’re so eager to defend this system. Are you a capitalist? Do you employ people while keeping the bulk of the profits?

            I don’t think I can take you seriously

            • BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world
              1·
              18 hours ago

              Failing businesses is irrelevant to the argument that labor is entitled to a fair share

              How about labor getting their fair share of loss if business they work in fails. No? Why not?

              And you haven’t clarified why you’re so eager to defend this system.

              And you haven’t proposed any better system. It’s always the same when I ask that question.

              But I’ll satisfy your curiosity. I am a capitalist. I run super small business. If you think it’s sunshine and rainbow, you’re sorely mistaken. It’s more work, there’s no pay guarantee, competition is ALWAYS ahead of you, in capital, scale and know-how, you’re sweating shitless on any change in costs, because raising prices always comes at the risk of losing customers, meanwhile you’re required to do shit ton of government mandated paperwork.

              But I’m still in favor of capitalism. Because my parents and grandparents lived in socialism and told me how their life looked like. Long story short: It was an inescapable poverty and no free speech. That’s how alternatives really look like.

              • jtrek@startrek.website
                1·
                17 hours ago

                How about labor getting their fair share of loss if business they work in fails. No? Why not?

                If the business fails, the workers lose their income and their shares are just as worthless as anyone else. The workers should have shares. (Or some other mechanism so there’s not a handful of fat cats living a life of luxury due to the labor of many others)

                The person who started the business can always go work somewhere else. It’s not like he’s put to death. And if the concern is that “someone who loses their money might suffer and die” then we should fix that problem more generally, because there are many other ways to end up there.

                And you haven’t proposed any better system. It’s always the same when I ask that question.

                That wasn’t the question or the point. A fairer system off the top of my head is profit sharing with a union. But that wasn’t the point.

                If someone says “X is bad for A, B, C” saying that Z isn’t better is not a rebuttal. We haven’t gotten that far. We’re trying to reach agreement that X is bad. Then we can talk about replacing or fixing it. Maybe Z does suck.

                It’s a common mistake. Someone will be like “windows sucks” and someone will be like “well apple is expensive”, just blazing by on that express train of thought. Take the local train.

                But I’m still in favor of capitalism. Because my parents and grandparents lived in socialism and told me how their life looked like.

                So you have generational trauma skewing your views.

                Long story short: It was an inescapable poverty and no free speech.

                Free speech has absolutely nothing to do with this economic system. And let me remind you of all the people fired because their employer didn’t like what they said, where they risk falling into poverty and worse.

                The way capitalism manifests in the US is a set of tiny tyrannies. Your boss tells you when you can piss, what you can wear, what you can say in public. Maybe you don’t care because you are the boss. You give your people time off?

                I am a capitalist. I run super small business. If you think it’s sunshine and rainbow, you’re sorely mistaken. It’s more work, there’s no pay guarantee, competition is ALWAYS ahead of you, in capital, scale and know-how, you’re sweating shitless on any change in costs, because raising prices always comes at the risk of losing customers, meanwhile you’re required to do shit ton of government mandated paperwork.

                And the dream is for you to make it so big that you don’t have to work anymore. Your business expands. You buy out or out compete everyone else. You sit back and let other people work. Then you raise prices, lower wages, and buy a private jet.

                The end state of capitalism is a rich asshole who doesn’t work, and a shitty world for everyone else. Maybe it takes years. But enshittification is pretty widely understood.

                Maybe a worker owned collective would enshittify, too. But as a small consolation, you’d at least have thousands of rich people instead of a billionaire.

                Now, I wrote this on the toilet so it’s not the most coherent or polished. I appreciate you taking the time to go back and forth even though we disagree.