• Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    I don’t mind having a lot of different hot sauces. What I mind is “financial innovation” like debt-backed securities, and “tech innovation” like tracking people as they browse the web.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      10 months ago

      The point is we’re getting “innovation” at the expense of people. That person says they have no teeth because they can’t afford dental care in America since for-profit healthcare is another feature of capitalism.

      • TurboDiesel@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        I find it beyond infuriating that dental isn’t even considered healthcare per se. It requires entirely separate “insurance,” all of which is hot garbage. I need my wisdom teeth out, because they never fully erupted and now they’re rotting in my gums. I shred my cheeks eating because I can’t afford the $5,000 they quoted me for an oral surgeon. My dental “coverage” only pays out a max of $2,000 annually so I just deal with it and pull out the chunks as they break off.

      • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        This is one of the forms of alienation Marx talked about. Products aren’t made because they’re good or needed, but because they’re profitable

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        10 months ago

        Well, the point is also that it’s not useful innovation. Profit is prioritized, not utility. Sometimes that results in useful innovation, but frequently it results in potentially useful innovation being avoided because it’d cost too much with a low chance of return on value.

        • 100_kg_90_de_belin @feddit.it
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          10 months ago

          Healthcare in Europe has been eroded for decades. In my country healthcare basically covers very bad conditions,.such as cancer, chronic conditions, such as diabetes, or degenerative conditions, such as MS.

          Often, medical intervention fails to take into account quality of life or the psychological consequences of illnesses.

          For instance, my late father was diagnosed with a lung cancer and he was sent home without a pain management protocol.

          So, long story short: capitalism bad in the long run.

      • Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        But there are plenty of other capitalistic societies where health care is covered for all like Canada. You can reign in capitalism and manage it and have socialism in the same system. The issue in the USA is not capitalism, it is out of control capitalism.

        • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          It’s cronie capitalism. We don’t actually have a free market and we don’t get actual competition.

            • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              I never understood why everyone blames capitalism, when almost all of the places they spout as being great…are built with capitalism money…

              • Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.works
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                10 months ago

                Right and further, when you look at the people complaining about capitalism and ask them if they shop ethically…you know making sure their coffee beans are fair trade, their clothes makers are paid a living wage, their veggies are picked by those fairly compensated etc etc let alone slave labour in the mix, they almost always look like a deer in the headlights. They say they hate capitalism but they seek the lowest price therefore they reinforce the behaviour they hate.

                • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  Nailed it. I don’t eat fast food anymore because of the cost. I’ll order out from a local restaurant because it’s a few bucks more than fast food at this point, and I usually get my meal quicker. Panda Express? Nope… I’m going to the local Chinese place and getting double the food for the same cost and the Chinese immigrants there are awesome people who make bangin’ food.

  • darth_tiktaalik@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    That’s assuming that those brands aren’t just one or two actually different sauces from the same couple of suppliers

    • HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      A lot of them used to be different businesses. But capitalism gotta capitalism and the largest companies bought out all the smaller ones like Agar.io for rich people.

      Same with media too. Remember when Marvel, Lucas Films, and 21st Century Fox all used to be their own things?

  • edgemaster72@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Innovating exciting new ways to replace ownership with rentals/subscriptions and giving you less while charging you more

  • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    Mhm. Ask all the scientists whose work has been suppressed by corporations claiming IP but not doing anything with it because it competes with their main product lines. Ask those whose work would be of wide public interest but is paywalled by the for-profit journals they’re required by their institutions to publish in.

    The ‘capatalism breeds innovation’ thing is a massive lie. In reality, brilliant people drive innovation, and capitalism beats them to death then scavenges their corpses.

    eta: This applies to the military version of this argument, too. No, the military doesn’t drive innovations and achievements; it hides them from the public so that society is constantly two or more decades behind what’s possible. Again, people are doing it, but we’re not allowed to benefit from many things until they have no real strategic value. It’s bonkers to think about. Even more bonkers to realise we’re paying them to do this to us.

    • mob@sopuli.xyz
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      10 months ago

      While you can debate if “the good ol days” were better…innovation has completely changed the would multiple times in the last 30-40 years. We are likely in the most innovative time in human history and not just for multiple hot sauce flavors.

        • mob@sopuli.xyz
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          10 months ago

          You are saying you have little access to these innovations, on the Fediverse, probably wirelessly on a touch screen? The world was extremely different 30 years ago, but the slow transition may have made it not so easy to notice.

          Cell phones, and not anything close to the modern type, are only 50 years old. Internets closer to 30… Social media/Fediverse is a little more than 20…

          Also, if you think people weren’t working to survive before modern day, I recommend you learning a little more about history. We are generally in some of the easiest living times, even if it feels the hardest. Everyone’s stories different though, so your time could be harder than thousands of years of people before you so I’m not trying to take away… but just speaking in generalities.

          But 100% agree we should be focusing on the planets health.

  • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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    10 months ago

    I think a lot about how venture capital spends billions on companies that send gifs over the Internet, and how that money could have been spent on, say, anything useful.

  • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    “Innovation” is not necessarilly improvement and “New” is not necessarilly better, and I say this as somebody who has spent most of his career at or near the bleeding edge of Tech.

    I even get the feeling (from myself and from comments I read sometimes) that techies who do or did bleeding edge stuff and with a few years behind their backs, like me (so, not the bright-eyeds naive young ones who haven’t seen much yet and which the industry uses as fuel), are less prone to be technology early adopters than the average person exactly because we’ve seen a lot of brand-new innovative glittered turds sold on hype, not on genuinelly being a good thing.

  • PixelProf@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    This isn’t a informed statement just a hot take, but maybe capitalism wouldn’t be so evil if everyone tipped into the growth end of Maslow’s before turning insulin into high-end consumer goods.

    • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      It’s pretty informed. Left to its own devices this is what unregulated capitalism has done. Increased profits for those who already had stolen capital. Leaving most everyone else behind. While simultaneously whittling away their effective access to things like housing, nutrition, and healthcare.

      It could be fixed by regulation and socialist policy. But that’s not capitalism.

      • PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        This is unregulated capitalism left to its own devices? Limited liability corps? Corporate personhood? FDA, USDA, the entire stock market being tilted toward entrenched interests and big business? Drug and software patents? That’s what you think unregulated means. Fuck me.

        This is the capitalism regulations have given us.

        • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          These are the regulations capitalists have bought. You got it completely backwards. Yes, the entrenched interests have rigged the system for themselves. If that’s what capitalism does.

          • PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works
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            10 months ago

            So it’s what violently backed, highly regulated capitalism does?

            If you think politicians and CEOs don’t think they’re in the same class you’re insane.