FWIW, a significant part of the enjoyment in gaming for me is the community aspects of talking about the latest popular game. Unfortunately, that means that while games on the previous cycle's console are often still good, they innately lack one of the biggest parts of gaming as a hobby for me.
I grew up in a time when we got one or two games a year, if we wanted more games, piracy with double deck tapes, or programming our own games, were the only options available.
Thus it is hard to feel the need to be talking about the latest popular game.
Did you also walk fifteen miles up hill both ways to school? Times change, but even back in the Nintendo Power days people would definitely flock to the home of whoever got Super Mario World 2 or Super Smash Bros first because there was no way to play those online and everyone would then talk about the games.
Nintendo was never that big in most European countries, when we talked about games on the playground during primary school it was about Game & Watch devices.
During highschool we were trading Spectrum, C64, PC and Amiga stuff on the playground, no one cared about consoles.
I think it helps to draw some distinctions here. Nordic countries have strong social welfare systems, but private property and free enterprise are still a thing. This is not at all the same as communism where everything is ultimately state owned and operated.
China is an interesting example too because it's basically capitalist with strong government oversight. So you can go hog wild on exploiting labor and amassing wealth as long as you don't oppose the overall goals of the government. We'll see how long they can keep it running - the problem with most authoritarian systems is that they're only as good as their current leadership, and when that changes things tend to fall apart.
I think basically capitalist oversimplifies a bit, both because private business holds no monopoly on exploitation of labor in any society, and because many of their large businesses are wholly owned by the state with the CEO appointed by the party. Here is an interesting interview on the subject with a relevant timestamp. https://youtu.be/e297mEZ479E?si=ASV_u9ZoN36wI4M5
The nuance that capitalist businesses do not hold an exclusive interest now or historical pioneering of labor exploitation is valuable to keep in mind because no matter how far the project of labor power spreads, all we workers must keep in mind that we have a primary and vested in empowering the most diminished of our society.
But why is it successful? Where did their money come from? How sustainable is it? The core issues from capitalism still exist there, but they have more money with a smaller population.
Even if the government took the money and burnt it that would be a net good for society since it would lower inequality and thereby decrease power imbalances.
Burnt money isn't the same as burnt resources. It isn't the same as burning down a factory or a corn field. Since the value of money is relative to how much of it there is, burning one person's money makes everyone else richer.
The Government taking money and burning it is called "taxation". With fiat currency, the government makes the money, out of nothing, at its discretion. They then collect most of it back in the form of taxes. Keep in mind, the money they're collecting is going into the pile of infinite money, and Inf + 1 = Inf.
Fiscal policy all about adjusting those levers (how much, and where, the government injects money into the economy, and how much, and where, the government extracts it back out) in order to promote the society we want to have.
The value of currency like other things is governed by supply, so destroying some does not damage anything real in the world, just increase the purchasing power of the other dollars in circulation.
You're describing deflation which leads to job losses. If you do nothing else, the policy you're advocating for would lead to a recession, if not a depression.
I think that a lot of the issue might be that the "good" is often irrelevant to the user. E.g. Great news! Scientists discover new drug for treating cancer (in mice).
I think that the problem would be if the reputation washing prevents their victims from getting justice or if they leverage their reputation to victimize more people.
The profit from the employee reduction goes to the capitalists not to labor. So it is in the best interest of workers to resist reductions in the number of workers.
reply