• clarinet_estimator@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    The problem isn’t smartphones, it’s capitalism.

    All of those things would have happened anyway in a different form factor because capitalism is just a race to the bottom.

    Except maybe UI design. That has been special in its enshittification.

    • bountygiver [any]@lemmy.ml
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      23 hours ago

      bad UI design is also because of capitalism, because the software companies can’t stand just having a working software, they must make some changes in some way and UI is a low hanging fruit.

    • nexguy@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I don’t see how we would have smartphones without capitalism. We’d still all be farmers.

      • redwattlebird@lemmings.world
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        1 day ago

        Without capitalism, we’d all have the ability to swap out parts and create a phone for the purposes that we need. Some people want the best while others want the minimum, and most want something in between. Every part would be replaceable.

        With capitalism, we have planned obsolescence without the ability to repair or replace parts and every conceivable thing to reap more money off us and force us to continually consume.

        • nexguy@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          I’m saying without the greed of capitalism we wouldn’t have phones to swap out parts. We would have very limited technology because the incentive to innovate is much less when you do it because you want to rather than earning extra resources to raise standards of living(greed). Not as many people will volunteering their entire lives to come up with new technology while living the same standard of living as a farmer.

          • redwattlebird@lemmings.world
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            23 hours ago

            I get what you’re saying but, respectfully, I think you’re incorrect. The field of science is not about capitalism but the goal of understanding everything around you. Aqueducts were not the result of capitalism. Russia won the space race. Innovations happen regardless. Capitalism drives innovation in specific directions.

            • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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              18 hours ago

              Also id argue that the creation of the smartphone is the result of market forces, which arent unique to and predate Capitalism by millenia. The bronze age collapse happened largely due to the collapse of the grand trade networks and markets that birthed the bronze age, most bronze age societies predate currency as we understand it outright.

              • nexguy@lemmy.world
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                10 hours ago

                Everything that happened before capitalism happened at an extremely slow pace. We might have smart phones without capitalism and therefore the industrial revolution… but how long? Centuries? Another millenia?

                • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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                  10 hours ago

                  The reason things happened at a slow pace wasnt because capitalism sped it up by a particular amount, its because human knowledge builds on itself. Plus capitalism was borne from the enlightenment which was when a shit tonne of ideas that made the scientific revolution possible came to be.

                  Capitalism just happened to be the major economic ideology that was gaining favor, id actually argue that social liberalism and Republicanism was the major factor for innovation on a political level.

          • nomous@lemmy.world
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            24 hours ago

            I’m saying without the greed of capitalism we wouldn’t have phones to swap out parts.

            This might be a hot take but I’m not sure we all need a phone in our pocket or that it’s inherently a good thing.

      • uis@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        “When they say ‘there is no alternative to capitalism’, they do not make a observation. They make a demand. They demand to not think about alternatives.”

        You missed patch 1917 on eurasian servers.

      • clarinet_estimator@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        You know capitalism is really new in the scale of human history right? It wasn’t until the industrial revolution in the 18th century that the means of production could be privately owned which then allowed for further speculative capital (stocks, land value, etc) to be equated to power.

        The people of the past weren’t inherently stupid. Plenty of scientific and cultural progress was made prior to capitalism being our economic model.

          • piccolo@sh.itjust.works
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            1 day ago

            Most were farmers because humans needed food, and food productivity was low before the age of industrialization. Not really sure what you are trying to argue other than it took a long time for enough progress was made to free humans to presue other things other than farming their land.

            • nexguy@lemmy.world
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              20 hours ago

              Capitalism incentivises rapid progress in all fields.

              I’m not cheering for capitalism, just saying it takes advantage of the inherent greed of people to quickly speed innovation. There would be no industrial revolution without capitalism. At least not on the short scale of just a hundred years or two.

              • uis@lemm.ee
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                15 hours ago

                No, capitalism only incentivises profiting.

                I’m not cheering for capitalism, just saying it takes advantage of the inherent greed of people to quickly speed innovation.

                Except in the end you will get innovations of greed.

                There would be no industrial revolution without capitalism.

                Wrong! Sadly, article is only in Russian.

                • nexguy@lemmy.world
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                  13 hours ago

                  Russia’s industrial revolution did not happen in a bubble. They did not invent the technology that allowed the industrial revolution, they took advantage of others inventions to take a very inefficient rout to the revolution. They have enormous resources and a vast population… yet it was much smaller capitalist nations that advanced much faster.

                  • uis@lemm.ee
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                    13 hours ago

                    Capitalism’s industrial revolution did not happen in a bubble. It did not invent science that allowed the industrial revolution, it took advantage of existing discoveries to take a very dehumanizing route to wrong destination.

                    Also USSR was at least 15 nations.