this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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"Small comic based on the amazing words of Ursula K. Le Guin".

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago

This comic would slap harder if not for the Supreme Court under christofascist influence from the belief in the divine right of kings having today ruled that Presidents are immune from prosecution for official acts.

That whole divine king thing isn't nearly as dead as the last panel would like to portray it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

I don't really fit in that well here at times because I don't consider Capitalism as having anything to do with governance. Capitalism is a market system that uses competition to drive efficiency of creation of satisfaction of needs and luxuries both. If your democratic system of laws is being leveraged by highly efficient non-state entities, then you should really fix that shit, but fixing it doesn't require abolishing private property nor would that end corruption.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Who wants to abolish private property? You don't need capitalism to have private property.

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

Some users on here use Capitalism as an opposite term to Communism.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago

Confused British noises

[–] [email protected] 47 points 4 months ago (6 children)

Kings never went away, they just changed to a different form and name to remain accepted in society, as the ones with the crowns ended up in the gallows.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

Already has more than a hundred people would ever need, yet takes every opportunity to oppress the have-nots in order to make their ego number go up?

I’d make a punch line about billionaires, but it’s way, way more than just them.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

The Supremos: on second thought, let's have a King after all.

[–] [email protected] 60 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Not to be downer, but there are people literally thinking Donald Trump is the second coming of Christ.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If anything, I'm more concerned with folks like Jamie Dimon and Satya Nadella and Andy Jassy. People who have trillions of dollars of capital at their command exert immense influence over my quality of life. Arguably much more so than any king or high priest or even any American president.

We talk about Divine Right of Kings like its a thing that came and went, but consider how a guy like Elon Musk has accrued phenomenal amounts of wealth and authority. Consider how people see him. And how he sees himself. Its chilling to consider how much power some of these people wield and how blind we all are to their intentions.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I think you can be concerned by both. All these examples are of people that can exert and incredible amount of power through their respective means.

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

I read intense concern about the results of the next election, without seeing anything approaching the comparative concern for a private monopoly of real estate, a mass privatization of our postal and shipping system, or the horrifying prospect of a computerized administrative state run out of Microsoft's digital basement.

If you want to talk about the Divine Right of Kings, it should be noted how much of that authority was accrued through mystifying the mechanisms of authority. The modern capitalist state reinvents mysticism through contracts, borders, and advanced technologies, while working towards the same fundamental ends.

Kings and Priests would have plotzed at the power afforded by a credit card company or mortgage lender or OS vendor over one of its clients. And yet these are powers we hand over to modern capitalist institutions without a second thought.

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

I appreciate the perspective but nothing here says we can't be coscerbed by both positions (or all sides) of power.

I don't want kings or monopolies, or either by any other name. No need to split hairs on it.

I would also argue that "we hand powers over to modern capitalist institutions without a second thought" is a pretty loaded sentence. Who's doing that? Me? You? It's not like someone asked us. Sounds pretty dismissive to assume people are acting outside of their better interest.

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

I don’t want kings or monopolies

Its not really a matter of what you want. These are systemic issues, not personal choices.

I would also argue that “we hand powers over to modern capitalist institutions without a second thought” is a pretty loaded sentence.

Its a consequence of growing up in a world that functions in a particular way. Adopting the tools of a society means putting out substantially less effort for survival than trying to cut across them. Ask any homeless vagrant how easy it is not to have a bank account or to get by without a job in a commercial business or state institution.

It’s not like someone asked us.

You work within the system because you fear the consequences of transgression. Nobody has to spell out why you can't squat in an empty apartment room or wander through a grocery store grazing out of the produce section. You pay your credit card balance and your car note because you know what happens if you miss too many payments, not because some repo man or loan shark has to spell it out for you.

Sounds pretty dismissive to assume people are acting outside of their better interest.

When you're under the gun, its in your best interest for the other guy not to pull the trigger.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago

And there are people who thought their kings were divine.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

There are still plenty of kings in the world.

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

If old man Charles starts talking shit about divine right they'll put him in a home and replace him with another inbred fuck in like a month

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

There are also kings in the Middle East, and all over Asia and Africa.

I'm sorry to be a wet rag but the comic is simply innacurate.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

And are their powers inescapable?

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

I saw panel 2 and only saw a sales funnel, am I broken? ;)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

At least you saw a funnel.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Divine right of kings lasted for a long long long time, and caused the deaths of untold millions

[–] [email protected] -3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Millions of deaths compared to what alternative? The difficulty with attributing causes in history is that we have no ability to conduct controlled experiments.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (3 children)

"Listen, the Crusades seemed bad, sure. And the Mongolian hordes did kill a lot of people. And maybe the globe spanning feudal industrialization of Victorian Era England leading headlong into a pair of World Wars decimated whole continents. But hear me out. Maybe coulda been worse?"

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

Unfortunately there is no double blind studied alternative to capitalism that demonstrates without a doubt that it's statistically significantly better than capitalism as a system so I'm sorry to tell you that your children deserve to die because you're too poor, hope that helps

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Unfortunately there is no double blind studied alternative to capitalism

I'll never understand why people believe clinical trials for pharmaceutical efficiency are the baseline for all forms of scientific inquiry and sociological research.

How on earth do we study astronomy, paleontology, or seismology without double-blind trials?

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

We just have to let the capitalist experiment play out. When this world is destroyed whatever humans remain if any will start the next trial. Trust me, capitalism still has a fighting chance.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

That is the question best asked I suppose.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 months ago (3 children)

What point are you trying to make? That it would have been better if the divine right of kings ended sooner? I'm sure Ursula K. Le Guin would agree.

Or are you trying to say we shouldn't be complacent in working to end capitalism? Because I'm sure Ursula K. Le Guin would agree as well.

The point of even saying this is to rally people who might feel there's no point in trying, because the current system seems unstoppable.

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

I'm sure one day we'll achieve some sort of utopia if we aren't killed off by climate change or some other catastrophe, but my bones will have eroded to dust by then.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (1 children)

to me it read like "that's a nice thought and I'm sure one day we'll move beyond it, but i doubt I'll live to see that"

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

Just pondering the difference between something that is practically inescapable in a finite human lifespan vs something that is surely escapable given a removal of that metric. Merely the first thought I had when enjoying the art, no point to be made of it... More mumblings of a idle fool/thinker?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The quote is correct, but as I recall the divine right didn't end because the people cried out for freedom. Royalty was replaced by governments of the nobility or military, neither of which are necessarily better for the people.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (2 children)

And how did such replacement happen? It wasn't out of nowhere but after a lot of turmoil, uprisings, and guillotines. The point being, there's people outcries, prostest, and so on. I'm not endorsing violence, but we can't just ignore that there was a process in-between. That's the whole point of the quote, is up to grassroots movement to try and find a way to open a crack and then make it grow...

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

I don't see how anyone can look at 99.9% of history and not endorse violence.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

I might be endorsing violence this time. You can't always make nice with a bully. We've given them plenty of chances to stop kicking over our sandcastles

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

My favourite author. LeGuin, that is.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I read the comic and was like "didn't Le Guin say something similar" than I read the subtitle and apparently, I was right

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago

The comic's author should have add the proper quote.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Her father was an Anthropologist, where as she seems to be more of a Sociologist.

[–] [email protected] 90 points 4 months ago (3 children)

SCOTUS just ruled that US presidents have the divine right of kings.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 4 months ago (2 children)

From this day forward, every day that Biden doesn't have the Republican judges killed is a betrayal of democracy.

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

He can't because it was tossed to the lower court to be put on ice until the election decides how they should rule.

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Hot take (not entirely serious):

Now that Presidents can't be prosecuted for official acts that are crimes, Biden should enact Project 2025 EARLY give himself unitary executive power, and refuse to leave office.

This would either destroy the country, save the country, or force SCOTUS to reconsider their ruling.

Of course he could just deem the imbalance on SCOTUS a threat to national security, and write an official law saying that all major parties must be equally repressented by the judges on there (a one out, one in law).

That would also work, and run less risk of tearing the country apart.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 months ago

socialize the costs, privatize the rewards

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