wampus

I'm ok with women expressing this sort of sentiment, so long as they're also ok with guys making generalisations about women in the same vein -- ie "There are enough of 'this type' of character out there, that you gotta be defensive and assume any could be". Saying all men are dangerous is fair, it's also fair to say all women exploit men for financial gain. I don't know many men who've dated for a while, who haven't come across women clearly just seeking free meals, gifts etc; ones who'll judge you based solely on income. That said, it's prejudice in either case to assume that an individual of either gender is either of those things just because you've acknowledged the risk is there. Like if your store is constantly robbed by one specific ethnic demographic, it's human nature to be suspicious of any member of that demographic when they come in -- but you'd cross into racism if you explicitly treated them like thieves prior to them being shown as a thief at an individual level.

Yeah, this isn't so much about men/women, as it is about money. Like there was a story on here recently about the connection to Ariane Rothschild, and how she basically introduced him to all the power people / helped establish his honey trap -- story claimed her name showed up like 12k times in the files, but little/nothing's happened. Her name is basically verboten in all media.... because she's stupid rich. And Ghislaine is currently alive in a min security prison, with a dog -- while Epstein was killed. So, like in terms of the 'main people' perpetrating the crime, the guy in the couple got killed, the woman got a dog. At least the rich men are getting named and semi shamed, like Gates needing to eat crow for fuckin on the island and passing an STD to his then wife.

The image that was posted is literally arguing that "Women who have their photos leaked lose careers", but "Powerful men who can be linked to epstein get to stay in power", as the grounds for declaring "inequality! sexism!". I pointed out that in the Epstein case, looking at people who are named in the files (so same general control group), there are women like the Rothschild chick, who are getting off scott-free. I also pointed out that looking at two people who committed the same crimes (Ghislaine and Epstein were partners in all this afterall), the guy got killed, the woman got a dog, to highlight that the 'inequality' often favours women -- particularly when they, too, have money. Really, Ariane Rothschild getting off scott free, just like every other Epstein named collaborator, is enough of a counter to the 'attempted' point from the image -- as it shows that the getting off scott free isn't necessarily happening because they are 'men', since 'women' too are without accountability. I agree that inequalities exist, but I don't agree that it's as rampant as the left seems to think, nor do I think "ALL" inequalities boil down to gender shit. And I don't agree that looking at the accountability for those named in the epstein files is a good place to try and highlight gender inequalities (the actual crimes committed were generally against women, but that's not what the image is highlighting -- and if we want to look at that sort of thing, through a gender lens, then it'd be fair to bring up the lopsided casualties in things like war and drafts, where men's deaths far outnumber women, and basically no one in the epstein class/rich gives a shit. It's sorta like politicians arguing "Those who suffer most are the wives and children left behind" when a guy gets killed in a war - as though the guy dying isn't sorta a bad result from the POV of the individual, one that's a bit worse than not having a husband/dad around. Besides, if you want to talk about careers ruined by phone leaks/images on devices -- there are plenty of men who've had careers ruined by a dick pick, or even just an accusation of sexually inappropriate behaviours - though these consequences generally fall on the poors/commoners. So even the "Women who have their photos leaked lose careers!" is sorta bullshit. Hell, Kim Kardashian is practically famous because her private shit got "leaked". Name a dude who's made a billion off of a leaked dick pick. Heck, even that Coldplay cheating scandal -- the guy lost his job, the HR lady he was cheating with kept hers.

My take on it is that socialism is still fundamentally a capitalist approach to resource distribution, while Communism does away with most private property. Some people like to try and dress it up more with ideals, but that's the basic difference in practice -- it doesn't make sense in this context, from my pov, to talk about the imaginary "ideal" of communism, rather than the realistic implementations of it that have occurred. So, like under communism everything is basically state owned. People who've lived under communism will hear things like "state owned grocery stores" and think "Oh shit, I've lived this -- you get food stamps/allocations of food assigned by the govt, and that's what you're allowed to 'buy'/'eat'. And the govt workers will get better stamps/allocations, cause it'll be inevitably corrupt. This is bad!". (I've heard this very sentiment from people who fled communist states, when topics like Mamdani's govt run stores comes up). Applied communism isn't some idyllic fairytale, it's more "The state has declared the university system too elitist, so we're forcing you all to do back breaking labour in the fields. Refusal means firing squad". Under a socialist approach, you get things like private stores, honoring things like food stamps that are provided to people in need, but most of the transactions are done without government involvement. The talk of setting up government run grocery stores, is viewed more as "We want to provide a baseline that can sell food at cost, but we still want private stores too, especially for more luxury/foreign goods and other options/competition in the market. Having a market option that is providing cheap generic products should have a stabilizing effect on food prices, and downward pressure on cost of living in general for folks". To provide these services, socialist regimes typically have higher tax rates on private citizens -- but those taxes are still fundamentally driven by a capitalist system of private property and individual choice/freedom.

A potentially odd thought, but the power and reach of US tech oligarchs is based on US softpower -- the same stuff this guy is basically saying is useless. One reason US stocks/companies get lots of investment/support is the belief that US companies have more default in-roads to all western nations -- invest in a US tech co, you get access to all western markets. It's one reason they have the market power they flex. Even Iran had reports of their cisco devices failing during recent US aggression -- so even the USA's enemies had figured US tech was 'country neutral', stupidly, and their obvious mistake cost them dearly. Other nation's will see that as a learning moment. Western nations have started pulling away from US tech / hegemony. Places like France are eye'ing Linux, the Netherlands central bank declared it reasonable to expect US tech excised from their banking ecosystem in 4 years or so, Canada's openly declaring US ties a weakness. So investing in a company like Microsoft, may no longer translate into investing in a company with a global reach within the western world -- their stock 'should' eventually price this in. It's one reason the tech overlords have directed the US government to challenge any/all pushes for data sovereignty. And as for the end of nuke dominance and rise of AI drone warfare and all that.... he's an AI hammer salesman, declaring all problems are AI nails... hes clearly biased. We're seeing drones as a viable option currently, because people are so scared shitless of nuclear conflicts. Just because people are too scared to use the massively destructive weapons, doesn't mean that the deterrent factor of those weapons is meaningless. It's why few countries have directly helped ukraine in their conflict with Russia. Hell, the states and Israel are busy justifying a war to try and prevent a country from getting nukes -- and they're beating up a country that only had drone power. While their campaign isn't going as well as they may claim publicly, I know Iranians who've confirmed things like "All the airports are destroyed, and most of our projects/work is closed, so we're just sitting at home kind of waiting at this point". Those drones didn't really help deter anything / protect the people all that much -- having nukes likely would've, as we see in cases like North Korea and Russia. Even in cases like the USA, where their veering into a fascist dictatorship garnered little comment from western nations, who were afraid of upsetting their nuclear-umbrella.

Scoping and context matter -- I'm not saying sexism doesn't exist, nor am I saying that the crimes committed weren't based on sexually predatory men exploiting vulnerable women. But the argument the image is making is just shit, and conflating different topics, botching the framing and diminishing the statements ability to persuade me as a reader/consumer. Using your own response to highlight it: "slavery wasn't about race but economics because you had black slave owners". You didn't properly frame that as *American slavery*, you're presuming the context is just known to your reader, and that they'll inherently agree with your point as you view it as politically correct -- you're being intentionally lazy with your word choice, but that makes the statement easily challenged/ignored. It's sorta like virtue signalling -- you don't need to "prove" something will benefit an individual, if you can convince them its for some nebulous greater good. To your lazily framed statement, one could ask: What about Rome? What about Korea, one of the areas with the longest history of slavery? How about the First Nation groups in the PNW, who prior to "colonization" ruining their culture, were known as prolific slave traders with about 25% of their band being slaves from other FN bands? "Slavery" itself isn't about black and white, nor is it specifically about race. America's racism, is America's racism -- slavery or no, as many non-whites have found out in the years since slavery was "abolished" in that country. The image is leaning on virtue signalling, saying "sexism is bad"/"women are disadvantaged" to present a disjointed argument about gender inequality. The examples they provide are shit: in the two 'things' they put forward, having photos leaked online and being named in the Epstein files, if you look for cases with the two genders, there are differences but it's not a solid ground to stake a position. There are both men and women in the Epstein files, as conspirators/contributors/victimizers, who are all getting off nearly scott free (gotta quantify that a bit, as it's mostly US people getting off totally scott free, the US people in power specifically). And if you look at photo leaks/mis-sent photos, there's lots of examples of men getting shafted, and there are examples of women turning huge profits off it/gaining careers from it. Like if the base argument is "men got off scott free in epstein, women lose careers in photo leaks". Then pointing out women got off scott free in the epstein files, and that men lose careers over photo leaks, you could accurately rebut that argument simply by saying "women got off scott free in epstein, men lose careers in photo leaks -- they are equally avoiding accountability in the files, and both losing careers to photo leaks, so where's the inequality?". The image isn't arguing that "the epstein files was a giant multi-nation syndicate setup to exploit vulnerable women for the benefit of sexually predatory rich men, while also gaining blackmail material on those men". It's arguing "Men have no accountability from Epstein stuff, while women lose careers for a photo leak, therefore sexual inequality!". It's a shitty argument, even if you agree that sexual inequality exists.

Nah, the computers are evolving to become more resistant to meat sack interference.