Botond173
37m ago
We work remotely
Not new hires in their first corporate job ever though. Also, kids still attend public schools and college, don't they? That hasn't changed. I imagine economic stagnation may have reached such levels that only few college students can afford to go on summer vacations.
Botond173
39m ago
Indeed. Society only functions properly if people form meaningful friendships.
Botond173
1hr ago
like a small unit in a bloated imperial military that tries to reduce collateral damage by fucking checking whether a building marked 10 years ago as barracks is clearly something else now".
This seems to be a standard job for military recon units, doesn't it? Before you fire on a target, confirm where it is and what it is. Shouldn't that be evident? What's the point in creating a separate unit responsible for reducing collateral damage? And then naming it 'Civilian Protection Center of Excellence' to boot?
Botond173
1hr ago
The Pentagon chief last year slashed offices that didn’t contribute to his goal of “lethality,” including the group that assists in limiting risk to civilians, known as the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence.
Seriously??
Botond173
1hr ago
This is the consequence of the Great Awokening. Welcome to the current year.
Botond173
17hr ago
Fair enough. My point is that the "neo-" part has a more concrete and agreed-upon definition than the "late-" part.
Botond173
19hr ago
Adding this for further context:
The development of capitalism is divided into three stages.[6] The first volume of Der moderne Kapitalismus published in 1902, deals with proto-capitalism, the origins and transition to capitalism from feudalism,[7] and the period he called early capitalism – Frühkapitalismus – which ended before the Industrial Revolution.[8] In his second volume, which he published in 1916, he described the period that began c. 1760, as high capitalism – Hochkapitalismus.[9] The last book, published in 1927, treats conditions in the 20th century. He called this stage late capitalism – Spätkapitalismus, which began with World War I.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Sombart#Middle_career_and_sociology
In somewhat comical fashion, Wikipedia authors examined Sombart himself and drew similar biographical conclusions:
As a young man, Sombart was a socialist who associated with Marxist intellectuals and the German Social Democratic Party. Friedrich Engels praised Sombart's review of the first edition of Marx's Das Kapital Vol. 3 in 1894, and sent him a letter.[9] As a mature academic who became well known for his own sociological writings, Sombart had a sympathetically critical attitude to the ideas of Karl Marx — seeking to criticize, modify and elaborate Marx's insights, while disavowing Marxist doctrinairism and dogmatism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_capitalism#Initial_use_of_the_term
Botond173
20hr ago
True. Historians also differentiate Early and Late Antiquity or Early and Late Feudalism. I guess one can also speak of Mature/Peak Antiquity/Feudalism if we want to divide eras even further. The existence of any economic system is conditional and conditions are necessarily subject to change, which means no system can continue indefinitely, and nor can cancer.
Botond173
20hr ago
According to Wikiquote this seems to be the quote you are looking for:
The day has passed for patching up the capitalist system; it must go. And in the work of abolishing it the Catholic and the Protestant, the Catholic and the Jew, the Catholic and the Freethinker, the Catholic and the Buddhist, the Catholic and the Mahometan will co-operate together, knowing no rivalry but the rivalry of endeavour toward an end beneficial to all. For, as we have said elsewhere, socialism is neither Protestant nor Catholic, Christian nor Freethinker, Buddhist, Mahometan, nor Jew; it is only Human. We of the socialist working class realise that as we suffer together we must work together that we may enjoy together. We reject the firebrand of capitalist warfare and offer you the olive leaf of brotherhood and justice to and for all.
These are actually the closing words of a pamphlet he wrote in 1910 as a response to the anti-socialist lectures of some Priest. Well...technically speaking we cannot say if he was correct or incorrect. Four years later the entire world had an opportunity to learn what the firebrand of capitalist warfare is in its true form, and he argued that only a globally united working class can possibly prevent that disaster. I guess that may be true in retrospect.
Botond173
20hr ago
I think it's obvious that the phrase "neoliberalism" was invented in order to differentiate the liberal economic policies as they existed before and after the emergence and implementation of Keynesianism.
Botond173
1d ago
I'll not ask you to doxx yourself but I just wonder where all your friends live then. Is it some suburb in the Rust Belt? Some stagnant town in Central Valley, CA? What is going on here?
Botond173
1d ago
That means it's likely a 30+ minute car ride to meet with a friend. 60 minutes all in just for commute to meet with someone.
This implies that you don't have any friends in the suburb you're living in. Is that considered usual in the US?
Botond173
1d ago
I’d prefer not to start discussing something here that is only tangentially related to this miniseries, nor am I an economist or a redditor for that matter, but if you wish to discuss late-stage capitalism in general on this site, I’ll be happy to take part. To keep this comment concise I’d make the following argument.
In early-stage capitalism: the concentration of capital is yet of a low level, some natural resources are still untapped and not depleted, some markets are still unclaimed and unexplored, the low-hanging fruit is generally yet not picked, market forces did not yet eat away at social norms and cultural traditions (fertility rates and family formation rates are still high, and labor is plentiful), the environment is not yet poisoned and contaminated all over. In late-stage capitalism, none of that is true anymore.
I think it’s obvious. Of the three recorded deaths at Woodstock, one was a simple accident (you shouldn’t fall asleep on a hayfield where tractors move around) and two were drug overdoses. Compared to this, there were 742 recorded nonlethal overdoses according to Wikipedia. I imagine any jurisdiction in the US affected by the opioid epidemic (more or less all of them?) would be rather happy to produce such a ratio in their police reports. There was not one recorded murder or rape. Compared to this, hired security stabbed a man to death in Altamont, which is a significant difference. (The other three recorded cases of death were due to mundane accidents.)
Botond173
1d ago
I remember hearing in another documentary that later about 20 million Americans claimed to have been there...LOL. There was also a running joke among hippies: if you say you remember being there, you're lying.
Botond173
1d ago
I see that others already gave detailed answers. I’d add a couple of things. Michael Lang, the organizer of the original festival was also an organizer of Woodstock ’99, and probably (the documentary doesn’t go into detail about this particular aspect) had a big role in promoting the event as them paying homage to the original after 30 years, resurrecting the old spirit of peace and harmony, bringing people together and basically providing the same great experience. It was the BS they kept repeating even as the disaster unfolded, in order to conceal what a naked money grab it was actually supposed to be.
You and I will probably never understand Woodstock because neither of us are liberal US Boomers (I presume) nor were we there. With regards to its cultural legacy, the deaths and miscarriages don’t matter one bit. It was surely the one defining, uniting life experience for hundreds of thousands, taking place before their illusions and ideals were forever shattered.
Botond173
1d ago
This reminds me of something I forgot to mention: one attendee did die during Woodstock '99. Interestingly this is not even mentioned once throughout the 3-part series.
Botond173
1d ago
I ask you to consider that the Overton window has shifted significantly with regard to judging female sexual choice and single motherhood since Sk8er Boi was released. On the other hand I won't disagree that society does indeed give female speakers limited license to mock other women and their life choices in certain contexts.
Botond173
1d ago
Roughly one and a half years after first reading about it here and elsewhere I decided to finally binge-watch the 3-part Netflix miniseries about the infamous Woodstock ‘99 festival, released as episodes of the Trainwreck documentary series. I guess I’m lazy like that, or there are hard limits to my curiosity. Anyway, as I’ve commented on it here before, I did read and hear commentaries about this documentary and the one released earlier by HBO on the same subject, and based on these I assumed that I’ll be seeing some another tiresome woke Netflix slop about toxic masculinity and nu-metal being horrible and cringe. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised but also found that the rather little amount of woke commentary in the series seemed to be included in a rather ham-fisted and clumsy way.
To first address what was probably driving the dismissals/accusations about the series being woke propaganda slop: the topics of sexual harassment and assault are regularly brought up in it, which is understandable as this was eliciting much of the negative media focus on the festival. Based on the series there were three interconnected phenomena that were routinely taking place. One: women in the crowd flashing their tits, usually while being drunk or drugged, and prompting guys standing nearby to grab and grope them. Also, women who stage-dived were often groped all over. Three: as nudity was completely normalized from the beginning, which I imagine had much to do with the extreme heat, there were many cases of naked or semi-naked, similarly drunk or drugged women stumbling around and then getting surrounded by sleazy guys, usually also drunk or drugged, who also went on to grope them.
Plus there were rapes taking place, usually in tents and vehicles as mentioned by two interviewees, with a featured news segment mentioning 4 such cases being reported to the police. All this is mentioned in passing, except for one probable case of statutory rape which happened in a commandeered vehicle inside the rave hangar. I say 'probable' because the witness who described it said the otherwise blacked-out girl looked underage and it seemed like some guy just finished boning her, but he wasn’t sure. It also bears mentioning the context, namely that naked chicks were getting boned left and right in the dark next to the walls inside the hangar.
To finally move on to the culture war angle: there are two female interviewees relatively extensively commenting on the subject; one is a black former MTV reporter who curiously claims that the MeToo phenomenon was sparked by incidents and sexist behaviors such as these and a former attendee who was 14 at the time of the festival who said she’s just thankful that these behaviors are no longer considered acceptable.
I watched this and thought MeToo was obviously driven by multiple things, but I’m sure average drunk dudes groping drunk naked girls on festivals is definitely not one of them. Also, how do you then explain the 18-year time gap between the two? As someone of some experience at rock and metal festivals I also wondered: surely these behaviors cannot be said to be normal and acceptable during music festivals. What I think is fair to say is that they were routinely occurring on these particular festival, and that social and cultural factors that are peculiar to the late ‘90s were at play.
For example, widespread nudity was not the norm at the original festival, at least nowhere near to that extent, as far as I know, as evidenced by the many pieces of archive footage also included in this miniseries. Only by the late ‘90s did social licentiousness reach such an average level that such behaviors were normalized. Girls flashing their tits during music shows (and/or getting drugged on Ecstasy) is another expression of this, and I don’t think this was considered normal until the ascendance of nu-metal and rave, with both genres dominating Woodstock ’99. But still, it’s not like groping and touching was seen as a routine pastime during every similar festival in those times, I guess.
To mention some other things:
Curiously no member of Limp Bizkit was interviewed even though many Millennials apparently scapegoated them for the entire, well, trainwreck. Their former manager, on the other hand, was featured and he predictably denied any allegations, and it didn’t appear to me that the show’s narrative was trying to contradict him. However, it appears to be clear that him and the RHCP are responsible for cluelessly inflaming an already agitated and destructive crowd even further when an orgy of vandalism was already poised to break out, their only excuse being the organizers clearly not communicating effectively their request to help tame things down. On that note, no member of RHCP was interviewed either.
The incompetence on display on the part of the organizers is just hilarious, especially in included news segments of the bosses giving press conferences. A complete and delusional denial of the reality on the ground, one rosy and baseless statement after the other, refusing to take responsibility and shifting blame to a small number of evildoer attendees even on the morning after the disaster already happened. The mayor of the host town also came across as a complete dunce during those events, putting on an optimistic façade and actually having the temerity to even openly invite the organizers to return and put on another festival sometime later, doing all this at a point where everything already went to literally shit and things were to fall apart completely in a few hours.
While not openly naming late-stage capitalism as a culprit, the documentary creator clearly consider it to be the main culprit, and for a good reason, I think. Despite all the bullshit and pretense of doing everything to honor the great legacy of the original Woodstock, the overriding objective was to make maximum profit, driven by the bad example of Woodstock ’94 not turning any profit at all, and this went hand in hand with cutting to the bare minimum the budget for any services, facilities, staff and security, while at the same time banning the attendees from even bringing their own drinking water on site.
Do you specifically mean alcohol sales at bars and clubs? I'd also like to know what exactly 'a few years ago' means here.
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