#capitalism

[probablyasocialecologist]

Lindt, Mondelēz, and Nestlé together raked in nearly $4 billion in profits from chocolate sales in 2023. Hershey’s confectionary profits totaled $2 billion last year. The four corporations paid out on average 97 percent of their total net profits to shareholders in 2023. The collective fortunes of the Ferrero and Mars families, who own the two biggest private chocolate corporations, surged to $160.9 billion during the same period. This is more than the combined GDPs of Ghana and Ivory Coast, which supply most cocoa beans. Decades of low prices have made farmers poorer and hampered their ability to hire workers or invest in their farms, limiting bean yield. Old cocoa trees are particularly vulnerable to disease and extreme weather. Many farmers are abandoning cocoa for other crops, or selling their land to illegal miners.

[prokopetz]

One of these days some enterprising con artist is going to make up a fake quirky little sci-fi movie, claim that it's been fully produced but Warner Bros. permanently shelved it for a tax writeoff, raise a couple million dollars in crowdfunding to "buy back the rights", then disappear off the face of the planet and take the money with them, and they'll 100% get away with it because really, who are we going to believe?

[politijohn]

Source

Huge win for workers

[dispatchesfromtheclasswar]

[mywitchcultblr]

If you are an American artist/fan, change your pixiv account region! Because there's new censorship

Number 5. If your drawing has no 'educational/scientific/artistic value' it won't be allowed to exist. These new censorship are absolute nonsense pushed by credit card company and conservative politicians. Fucking bonkers

It's the same thing when Tumblr banned NSFW and they promised that 'artistic nudity' will still be 'allowed'. I hope every purist on the internet realized that when they whine over anime fan art they are repeating what conservative billionaires and politician are pushing:

The death of art...

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The Canadian and Ecuadorian governments continue to forge ahead with free trade agreement (FTA) plans, despite opposition from social movements and Indigenous Peoples within Ecuador, along with rampant instability. In these negotiations, the spotlight is on the Canadian mining industry. Canadian mining investments in Ecuador are valued at $1.8 billion, with Canada’s trade commissioner noting that Canadian companies are “leading investors” in Ecuador’s mining sector. The trade commissioner also praises Ecuador’s “mining-friendly legal framework.” On March 5, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa met with Justin Trudeau in Ottawa. Both leaders welcomed “the imminent launch of negotiations toward a Canada-Ecuador free trade agreement.” The day before, Noboa spoke at the 2024 convention of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), an annual event that promotes Canadian mining interests globally. March 4 was “Ecuador Day” at PDAC, and Noboa used the opportunity to promote his country as a “mining destination” to Canadian investors. This is despite what MiningWatch Canada calls “serious human rights violations [that shed] light on the state of conflict over mining projects in peasant and Indigenous territories” in Ecuador.

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland @allthegeopolitics

[troythecatfish]

[theconcealedweapon]

"But socialism is worse."

I don't care. Not even a little.

Capitalism is happening now. Socialism is only happening in your dystopian nightmares.

If one person is actually suffering in real life and another had a bad dream, I'm obviously going to care more about the person who's suffering in real life.

[bravecrab]

Because it seems I can't stop looking into what's been happening with Watcher, I think something that hasn't been talked enough about the wider issue, is that trying to escape the system of ads and ad reads has been a factor in the attempt to move to this new platform, and not as some have put it, because they're just so greedy.

The proliferation of ad reads within YouTube content is an issue few talk about, and usually only in the context of problematic companies like Better Help. However the reliance on sponsorships, to subsidize from the lack of viable payment from the YouTube platform has been largely accepted without much criticism towards YouTube or the sponsoring advertisers. Combine that with a cultural attitude under capitalism that results in artists' work being thoroughly devalued, it puts creatives in a difficult place.

You have to build a following through a combination of putting your stuff out for free, often chasing trends to insure algorithm relevance, and take on sponsorship ads, and the time it takes to properly vet those companies and their potentially shady products/services is additional unseen labour.

As much as I think that Watcher fumbled this, I do not begrudge them from trying to escape the shitty system of YouTube algorithms and attempting to court sponsors, to try to make the content they want to create without having to dilute themselves to make themselves marketable. If they had expressed this sentiment more clearly instead of focusing on "TV quality shows" and bringing Worth It to Watcher, I do think the audience would have been more sympathetic, instead of seeing them as a company cutting them off and extorting them for cash.

If this whole thing has made you think that Watcher are villains, that's fine, but they're not the sole villains. The YouTube platform, and various parasitic companies have also got a hand in this, and it's important to keep that in mind, to see the bigger problems in our current media environment.

[thegoodmorningman]

"Okay, this is basically my dream job! How's the healthcare?" "Depends on how much of a capitalist hellscape your home country is."

[dispatchesfromtheclasswar]

[probablyasocialecologist]

Drawing on various theoretical perspectives such as treadmill of production, world systems theory, and ecological unequal exchange, green criminologists have posited that the adverse outcomes associated with ecological disorganization are tied to the expansionary tendencies of the capitalist world system. Here, ecological disorganization is the sum of the deleterious effects of two connected economic-ecological processes: ecological withdrawals that disrupt ecosystems by removing resources from the environment and ecological additions that disrupt ecosystems by adding pollution to environments. In an effort to promote growth and capital accumulation, in addition to exploiting labor, capitalist must expand the market, which means producing more goods and more demand for those goods. To increase production, capitalism must increase withdrawals of ecological resources, causing ecosystem damage or disorganization. Those raw materials are then fed into the manufacturing process where, applying fossil fuel and chemical energy, other forms of ecological disorganization are created: pollution or ecological additions. Drawing on these insights and from ecological Marxism, green criminologists suggested that the ordinary production of commodities via the capitalist process, creates ecological disorganization and can be conceptualized as a form of green crime from the perspective of nature and also as a form of green/ecological injustice.

Measuring the Ecological Impact of the Wealthy: Excessive Consumption, Ecological Disorganization, Green Crime, and Justice

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Toronto city council says it has strengthened its short-term rental bylaw to crack down on operators who exploit regulatory loopholes.

Council is raising registration fees, increasing vetting of hosts and allowing for snap inspections through changes to the city's short-term rental bylaw. The city will also hire nearly two dozen more inspectors.

Council passed changes to the bylaw at a meeting on Thursday night.

Mayor Olivia Chow said on Friday that the bylaw amendments will help to address the city's housing crisis. She said the changes will allow legitimate users to rent out their homes while giving the city increased powers to crack down on speculators.

"Yesterday's motion actually achieved a fine balance. We're going to have more inspectors and we're closing loopholes," Chow said. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[reasonandempathy]

Saw this and I actually wanted to add some actual details, in case people didn't know/weren't curious.

US Specific Recessions:

Recession of 1990 and 1991

2000 to 2001 Recession

The Great Recession, from 2007 to 2009 (this does not include the recovery, which took years and arguably never really happened)

The COVID Recession

Genocides:

Rohingya (2016 and ongoing)

Iraqi Turkmen (2014-2017)

Yazidis Genocide (2014-2019)

Darfur (2003 and ongoing)

Congolese (2002-2003)

Hutus (1996-1997)

Rwanda (1994)

Bosnia (1992-1995)

I'm presuming we can all agree he was also referring to Ghaza right now

So yeah. 9 Genocides and 4 major recessions since 1990. If he was born in 1985 there are 3 more genocides (Anfal, Gukurahundi, and Isaaq).

[catboy--slim]