You nailed it here. It just annoys me that almost nobody gets what you’re saying.

I don't think there is a proper statistic on this yet. Just as there isn't a proper statistic on sex trafficking, though there are better statistics on that. This is kind of a new thing that we are discovering.

I really don't want to do research on a half-cocked point when it's not really a hill I'm willing to die on.

Capitalism created Epstien. I don't know if that's the conclusion you wanted me to come to but that's kind of been something on my mind lately. Espstien only thrived as a child sex trafficker because capitalism put him in that position and gave him that power.

Church

I could be wrong but I read it as him saying other forms of exploitation (such as of workers) are just as bad as explicitly sexual exploitation.

I'm still thoroughly willing to shoot the Pope in the head for doing nothing about this but the question is whether priests have a higher pedo percentage than the general populace and a good way to at least approach this would be to look at the rate of pedophilia in religious leaders in Protestantism, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and any other religion that doesn't have a centralized leadership to cover up pedophilia.

I imagine there are statistics out there that we're too lazy to look up, which is kind of the point. You need to at least try to look up the literature on the subject to make informed statements.

Epstein could have and I'm sure did exist in any form of government/economics throughout history. It wasn't capitalism that covered up his crimes, it was powerful people. Or to be more specific, capitalism covered up his crimes in the same way any other form of government/economics would have covered up his crimes.

I'm not gonna try to put words into OH's mouth but what I imagine he would try to say if he was as smart as I am is that exploitation of workers applies to exploitation of sex workers as well, and exploitation of workers can be both sexual and non-sexual and both are based on the power dynamics of capitalism and you can't solve either exploitation or sexual exploitation in capitalism without solving the inherent problems in the power dynamics of capitalism that will exist so long as capitalism exists.

I completely understood your point and I even think it had merit

I'm just saying that it's the sorta thing that if I said it, it would be misinterpreted as me defending the church due to my obvious Christian sensibilities...

Despite me not believing in Jesus and being more of a depraved hedonistic deviant than the lot of you, in terms of actual sexual behavior.



maybe. It seemed to me like he was somewhat irritated at society prioritizing sexual abuse above other forms of exploitation.

No, I looked up the statistics on women forced into porn and can't find ****. I found an article about how more and more women in Japan are coming forward about being tricked or forced into porn, but it just had the number attached to that case. We really lack a lot of stats that you'd think we'd have.

Sure, I think any power angle could be exploited in the same way. However, capitalism definitely makes it easier because it creates a clear hierarchy where those that have the capital have the power.

So your argument is that modern porn is kinda creepy? Absolutely who gives a ****? You waste your own time, dude.

Like I said I'm smarter than him but his basic point stands even if he ends up sounding like he's bitching about men's rights.

I definitely think there's a forced blindness about exploitation and bad stuff in porn since people just don't want to care. I mean there was that woman who was basically bullied into committing suicide because she agreed with someone who didn't want to perform with a man who'd done gay porn because there's a poorly kept secret that gay porn has an STD problem, but when you look into it gay porn does in fact have an STD problem.

It was treated as a problem with the people pointing it out as if they were homophobic, and regardless of whether or not they were there is an STD problem in gay porn that could be dealt with if there was actual responsible government oversight of porn in general.

Yeah but the Epstein problem isn't really about capitalism so much as it's about the problem of power dynamics in general. Someone who has money doesn't need capitalism to take a poor waif and use them for whatever purpose they want with the promise of food and status. It would exist under literally any form of government or economics that allows for power disparity. Feudal lords could do the exact same thing without having to account for any extra blocks to their influence.

How is that a response to what I just said? I swear you have the attention span of a ****ing hummingbird.

I told you what my point was from page 1

Incest porn is gross

Many forms of porn are gross

And I think they are normalizing ideas that don't deserve it and are better left at the fringes.

Yeah you just reiterated what Frown said but assumed that your distaste was vastly important while Frown didn't.

It's the same message I've been giving for pages now so if he just now got it then my point stands

You should reevaluate how well your argument is presented and how consistently your posts support it, because you've been all over the place.

Once that takes place it’s a capitalistic exchange.

It's easy to imagine the end of the world but so hard to imagine post-capitalism but if there’s to be any hope we need to become post-currency.

give an example

No.

Alright, then allow me to retortNo

Ignant out of spite, I like that.

You've wasted enough of my time with your weak reading comprehension.. **** if I'm gonna start re reading my own posts to prove something to you when you don't even properly read them in the first place

You're asking to be walked through every baby step of logic to any counterargument (criticisms of the justifications for your larger stance and correlations that you draw, just to refresh your memory) presented until the original subject at hand is no longer relevant. You waste your own time dude.

you're saying I haven't been consistent in what I said above as being my position and rather than provide an example you said for me to go back and re read the entire convo.

Basically my position is if you won't even offer up a single example to demonstrate your point then I'm calling bs rather than taking on the burden of re reading through the entire convo myself. You're the one making a claim. So back it up.

Case in point.

But I mean that could take place in a feudalistic or a Roman republican society. It's not specifically about capitalism, it's about power dynamics. Capitalism just turns those power dynamics into a game.

@the mod formerly known as Frownland

-_-

Pussy

I’m not sure if I have a useful definition of capitalism in my head anymore.

It's the 1%!!!!

And the Jews.

OH and elph and probably Batlord think working is exploitation and the government should just function and give you everything.. engaging with them when they bring it up is more of a waste of time than entertaining me at work.

Also, he's still known as Frownland.

pragmatically speaking most employers will **** you right in the ass

They'll hit you with that financial jew-dough

Money is power, capitalism is when hard social distinctions for who should hold money and power become nebulous and undefined but the people who previously held money and power made the rules and created the conditions for who now holds the money and power, and now simulcra confuses the **** out of you and makes reality something impossible to define.

There is no easy answer to any of this, but just know that any current definition of money and power exists to ease the confusion of people who will never understand the nature of the society they rule.

Technically, yes. Working for anybody will always be exploitation.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exploiting

How ever, working lower class or working class jobs where they expect more from you than they are willing to give back just because they know you rely on the income for survival is an inhumane and evil form of exploitation. I'm pretty sure they mostly hate that.

you guys realize capitalism isn't some subjective term but rather something you could Google to find out what it means?

I always thought capitalism was when the means of production is in the hands of private interest.

that is much closer but I think would include other systems besides capitalism

Would it?

Socialism is when the government ceases the means of production for redistribution and communism is when the people share the means of production.

Im pretty sure they just dont want to have to work at all even on their own terms.

Christmas is usually a slack time when it comes to news stories; so many things are closed down and God is too busy with his son's birthday party to organize any natural disasters. Even so...

...this debate has been more of a filler than this thread really needed. It started on p.2123, and works out to about 250 posts in two days. Figures like that would've made me a happy man when I was doing that FAIR album club in the World Music section. :(

^ I can sympathise with this comment, jwb. I had a sense of wasted time yesterday as I read through the bulk of this debate, but at least thanks to you I can now play the grammar nazi:-

pass time =/= pastime

Score! My time has been validated after all :tramp:

Meh. If youre a contractor and youre paid to install a new hot water heater what about it is not on your own terms? Youre agreeing to price and getting the job done however you see fit.

^ Yep, I think elphenor's first statement is a bit too sweeping to stand up to much scrutiny. In one sense, outside of literal slavery, any job is "on your own terms" because you walk in the door and agree to do it.

^ This statement holds up better, imo, though personally I'd take out the word "creatively" as that only applies to some hobbies. To me, the defining things about hobbies are:
i) you choose what you want to do
ii) don't get paid for them
iii) you can stop when you want.

I mean i understand what they are saying about jobs exploiting employees and threatening loss of pay or job if they don't comply to things they werent aware they were signing up for but their arguments go beyond that and consider being forced to work because of capitalism as a form of exploitation. They expect the government to just take care of everyone so people are free to pursue hobbies without communal/societal responsibility.