this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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Lefty Memes

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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.

Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.

If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.

Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low-quality!

Rules

Version without spoilers

0. Only post socialist memes


That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)


1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here


Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.


2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such


That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.


3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.


That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).


4. No Bigotry.


The only dangerous minority is the rich.


5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.


We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.

(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)


6. Don't idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.


Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.



  1. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Own something valuable and then borrow against that thing. Easiest example would be to own stock worth say a thousand dollars and borrow a hundred dollars from that stock value you get to keep the stock worth nine hundred dollars growing in value while you pay the one hundred dollar "debt" off. If you ever get to where you could not pay it for some reason, you could always take $100 and pay it off immediately. I've heard this referred to as the buy borrow strategy and some people to avoid taxes will use this perpetually and they call it the buy borrow die strategy. Selling an asset often involves extremely heavy extortion from gangs that we call governments, where borrowing from the value of that asset does not incur such an extortion penalty.

Edit: The most important part though is just to make more than you spend from whatever you do.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Tbf, most tax authorities haven't been completely captured by billionaires and they recognise what your just described as a disguised remuneration package.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 7 months ago (4 children)

It works even in the United States. If you sell a stock within a year of owning it, you get charged like 30% extortion. If you sell it after a year, you get charged your normal extortion rate. And if you borrow from it, you get charged zero extortion.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Other countries haven't had their tax authorities completely captured by billionaires.

Its funny, wage thieves are happy to charge a levy on other peoples labour, for using their things to make money, but as soon as a country comes along and says "yeah, so, about that whole charging people for using our things to making money thing...." they act like you just asked to fuck thier mum.

And they'll look you dead in eye and claim its a moral issue too, without a hint of shame.

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 7 months ago

Le Lemmy moment

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

...and sitting on their asses watching stock value climb.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Or Luck/right place right time.

Ground floor entry on Bitcoin, Tesla, Amazon, whatever gave mad returns

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I agree for the most part. I do know people who got rich by working hard, treating employees fairly and with empathy, and providing a useful service.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I can almost guarantee you do not know a "rich" person per db0's viewpoint

One does not reach the top by "treating employees fairly."

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

brownie points for people in the intersection

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago
[–] [email protected] -2 points 7 months ago (5 children)

I hate to be that guy, but not always exactly this. I have relatives that were born dirt poor but are now rich. You can definitely say they exploited people to get that way but the birth lottery gave them nothing financially

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I can almost guarantee you do not know a “rich” person per db0’s viewpoint

One does not reach the top by “treating employees fairly.”

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Not sure your point. Yes you can get rich ONLY exploiting the poor and don't need to be born rich.

I guess the op should have made it more of a venn diagram.

There are no innocent billionaires. They all trade human lives for profit every day.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It gave them birth in a advanced nation and no disabilities

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago

For every example like this there are a million examples of poor people staying poor.

Social mobility is much less than we like to pretend it is.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (4 children)

The chart says that 50% get rich by exploitation and the other 50% by inheritance.

Edit: NVM, Im dumb and misread the meme. Still I doubt they were litterally "dirt poor" so birth lottery still applies.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (8 children)

For sure, never ever trust a wealthy person's origin story. Even trump and Musk claim to be self made.

Much better to go with the evidence of our eyes and ears.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

How rich people get rich: Assets.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Slightly more accurate may be combining both birth lottery and merciless exploitation.

Since winning that lottery let's them be the people who can mercilessly exploit people, who then have children who won that lottery, etc.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Isn't that what it says already? 50/50 bit of both?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago

Oh, I read it as half the people won the birth lottery, the other half exploited people.

As a 50/50 split for the person yeah that's what it would be

Just how I read the images sorry :)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I would also suggest “Daddy’s credit card”.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago

So, birth lottery

[–] [email protected] 43 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I agree fully, but I do want to know what the original image said before "birth lottery" was edited in

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (6 children)

I'm not rich. But I was born poor and am no longer poor. The Birth Lottery blessed me with a brain, and with that as my only asset, I learned esoteric skills which I can parley into a niche career.

But more importantly, the social safety net in my country allowed me to get an education without becoming a wage slave for the rest of my life. Without that, I couldn't have pulled this escape from poverty off.

I now run my own business. We have no employees -- only owners who have self-invested. Our business is growing and I anticipate a comfortable retirement. Haven't got rich off the working class either.

So, thank you Canada for the opportunities. I've tried to make the most of them.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 7 months ago

r/thattotallyhappened

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So can you answer his question or did you just see an opportunity to brag about yourself.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

No. I was pumping socialism as an alternative to birth lottery. Enjoy your day :)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

What's that got to do with the question?

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Looks like inherited is the original, but I also seen another one with "Luck"

[–] [email protected] 30 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Luck is the most generically accurate, but ultimately it does come down to birth lottery, as someone can just be born poor and disabled and no amount of post-birth luck is going to fix that.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

I think luck implies random chance. Which is completely inaccurate.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago

I've seen this discrepancy explained by being or putting yourself in the right situations to get lucky in the first place. You can't get lucky in the way a lot of successful people do if you never put yourself out there. I guess the very first example of this is getting conceived lol. You could have gotten lucky and been conceived to wealthy parents, or unlucky and conceived to poor parents, or really unlucky and not conceived at all, but you would certainly have perished if you chose not to even participate in the race.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Post birth luck can fix it. Wouldn't call Eminem a winner of the birth lottery but he was definitely pretty lucky with dr dre

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago

Being lucky depends on being in the right situation and being able to grab the opportunity. Turns out that having rich connected parents means you get in more and better situations. Also, having money means a lot more chance to grab opportunities by easily moving for a job or go without income to take a chance without being evicted for not paying rent.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

Right nation and not disabled (or even just hideous looking). Sounds pretty lucky to me

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago
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