Where I would love to see micro-transactions be a thing is news articles, videos, and other creative works. I’m happy to pay for someone’s work, especially if I’m not paying a bunch of overhead to some shitting credit card company. At the same time, I have no wish to pay for a $20 monthly subscription for the local newspaper in Middleofnowhere, Montana just so I can read one article.
Clearly this should go on some other community with no subscribers. That way your message is neatly filed away somewhere nobody else will see it, especially me. I’m just in favor of proper sorting, that’s all! /s
I think a lot of Eastern European socialist states had ton of bribes (or sometimes “gifts”) to get anything done, including in some places “gifts” to your doctor.
Unfortunately Marx didn’t eliminate all the micro transactions
They are famously embargoed by America, except for food and medicine. Which is a pretty big deal, considering how important the US market is for any state in the American continents.
Or you had a friend who worked at the store or the factory and could get you stuff because they liked you. A hundred friends could get you further than a hundred roubles.
Lootboxes are legalized gambling for minors. So yeah, no shit it works. Just because a thing is profitable doesn’t make it good. The opioid epidemic proved very profitable, but just like gambling for kids, doesn’t make it a thing we should accept or want for our society.
Well, theres “working” and theres “working well”. Capitalism is not working so well anymore and its likely going to work worse as time goes on. more things will become automated, wealth inequality (and therefore a gap in political power) will grow, and companies will keep expecting increased growth in a world of limited(and in some cases, decreasing) resources. Capitalism currently “works” in the sense that its making resources move around, but thats about all its doing for regular, non rich, non well off people(and often is not doing even that much for them). It’s simply not sustainable when unregulated, thats why we need a well regulated economy.
"No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24).
Politics is a branch of philosophy about how societies should be governed. If you want to make a social commentary that is non political, you would have to avoid mentioning how society is or should be run. Also, how people should organise together.
I really tried to like it for years. Bought it on suggestion from a friend. Couldn’t enjoy a game that has a timer constantly dictating what I do and how I do it, had the same problem with Bully. Great game, if I was given free reign of my own actions instead of a time-limited version.
Also, I’m getting a bit tired of pixel graphics, been looking at them for the better part of 30 years. Time to move on.
You know that copyright export was illegal under the Soviets though yeah? So it only got released because a UK software sales guy faxed them a contract and they didn’t realise it was binding
Robert Stein, an international software salesman for the London-based firm Andromeda Software, saw the game’s commercial potential during a visit to Hungary in June 1986.[18]: 302 [25]: 11 min After an indifferent response from the Academy,[25]: 12 min Stein contacted Pajitnov and Brjabrin by fax to obtain the license rights.[25]: 11 min The researchers expressed interest in forming an agreement with Stein via fax, but they were unaware that this fax communication could be considered a legal contract in the Western world;[26] Stein began to approach other companies to produce the game.[17]: 89–90
Stein approached publishers at the 1987 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Gary Carlston, co-founder of Broderbund, retrieved a copy and brought it to California. Despite enthusiasm amongst its employees, Broderbund remained skeptical because of the game’s Soviet origins. Likewise, Mastertronic co-founder Martin Alper declared that “no Soviet product will ever work in the Western world”.[17]: 90
Stein ultimately signed two agreements: he sold the European rights to the publisher Mirrorsoft,[17]: 90 [27] and the American rights to sister company Spectrum HoloByte.[28] The latter obtained the rights after a visit to Mirrorsoft by Spectrum HoloByte president Phil Adam in which he played Tetris for two hours.[17]: 90 [25]: 15 min At that time, Stein had not yet signed a contract with the Soviet Union.[27] Nevertheless, he sold the rights to the two companies for £3,000 and a royalty of 7.5 to 15% on sales
No it wouldn’t. Tetris was going to get played by millions whether someone licensed it or not. That’s why there was such a mad scramble to land a deal.
Would be kind of hard to play a game that didn’t get published by the evil capitalist lol
I've played about a dozen versions of Tetris over the last 30 years, a lot of which were written by just one dude and released to the world without the expectation of compensation. There are literally hundreds of ports/clones that run on everything from a Nokia phone to a Unix/Linux text mode interface.
Were it not for western publishers, I'm pretty sure it would have spread anyway just due to its addictive nature and it being an excellent time sink. Just like chess and checkers didn't need a capitalist to spread around the globe.
I'm literally using an entire operating system right now that not one capitalist controls. It runs most of the internet's infrastructure. Sure, the capitalists can use it and even contribute, but they don't get to dictate how you run your system.
Oh, funny you mention that, because in my country, my government paid to have fiber laid but the useless bloodsucking capitalist ISPs didn't do absolutely jack shit with the money and pocketed it. That's why were having to do stupid shit like Starlink now to connect the people out in the sticks.
That’s only because in the West there was no way for the game to reach customers at the time. The game was popular in the “Soviet Block” just fine, because distribution model was different.
Today, it would spread through internet like fire.
not rly, you don’t have studio level funding if you don’t optimize (the content) for revenue. same with large/aaa level games
edit: according to George Lucas, filmmakers in the USSR had more artistic freedom than he had when making Star Wars www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWqvaMEFIdI
Okay but the bottom 5 are all capitalist countries.
Even if that wasn’t the case, just linking a corruption index doesn’t prove your original statement:
corruption is more common where there’s no opportunity to make money
Edit: since you’ve edited and added words, let me add:
I would even go as far as to say that your evidence in fact suggests rather the opposite trend: countries where wealth is more equitably distributed have lower rates of corruption
Are you aware that this is an article about how the poorly managed transition to capitalism allowed highly concentrated wealth and power, and thus corruption?
postcommunist Europe’s economic transition and institutional vacuum provided ideal opportunities for state capture. The most attractive jobs sought by corrupt officials were associated with the privatization process, institutions that regulated business and the customs bureau
Yeah the “postcommunist” is a very difficult word and the guy couldn’t understand the meaning. He thought that it might have something to do with the post office
While certainly capitalist, Denmark and Sweden use the nordic model which tends to lean pretty social-democrat/welfare-state.
Not to mention, much of bribery under capitalist states is legalized and codified. For example, I’m guessing their study didn’t consider Super-PACs as a form of corruption or bribery. Even though that’s clearly what they are.
Lol, there’s plenty of opportunity to make money under socialism. You just have to do the labor. Under capitalism, however, there exists opportunity to derive money from other people’s surplus labor value, for example, I can pay a worker $4 to make a thing that requires $1 in supplies and sell that for $10. That difference of $5 is stolen surplus value from the laborer. Socialists seek to abolish this parasitic relationship.
Given the context of the meme being a picture of Karl Marx, I was using the Marxist definition of capital. Marxists.org provides a pretty digestible definition: www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/a.htm
Under socialism however, the state funds labor based on needs and/or desires for the output of that labor (the commodity). In this case, the money isn’t used for the goal of making more money, therefore, this isn’t capital at all. And yet, the labor happens and the commodity created. Therefore, the production is independent of the capital.
Using everything that happened in the 20th century as evidence, no mystery. There’s good governance and bad management. Just one is more effective overall.
Astrox Imperium (this is a single player version of EvE Online, so definitely not for everyone)
Dyson Sphere Program
Factorio
UFO:AI (admittedly this is a FOSS XCOM game that started as a clone of XCOM Apocalypse, and morphed into something bigger)
All developed by either a single person, or tiny teams with basically no start up capital. I’m sure I can find more, since the FOSS list of games is enormous.
Labor develops society. Capital enshittifies society.
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