[jubalfh]

you do realise that ussr does not exist anymore (it's been replaced with a hyper-capitalist structure that mutated into a fascist dictatorship); and that the existence of people being highly paid does not disprove the fact tha the us-style capitalism is a terrible system for anyone but the highest echelons?

[smsm42]

> you do realise that ussr does not exist anymore

O RLY?! That fact totally changes my whole argument... unless it was an example of a non-capitalist society and I never claimed it currently exists and the point was the comparison of living in capitalist and non-capitalist system.

> the existence of people being highly paid does not disprove the fact tha the us-style capitalism is a terrible system for anyone but the highest echelons

The guy complaining about it is the highest echelons. He was working for frickign Google, which pays tons of money. Not that this duckspeak isn't a complete lie for pretty much all people. As a person who, unlike you, actually lived in the USSR, I can tell you that it had humongous inequality and a myriad of daily degrading and humiliating problems for almost everybody "but the highest echelons", on the level that somebody living in a Western country can't even imagine. Capitalism may have its flaws, in the US and everywhere, but man you don't know how lucky you are, compared to the alternative. And I don't wish on anybody to ever learn it. Just stay ignorant and take your knowledge from your weed-smoking cool pol-sci prof who surely knows everything about the matter. Really, this way it's much, much better.

[jubalfh]

dude, i'm polish, and i know very well how dysfunctional ussr was. moreover, my father was from lviv; he repatriated to poland in 1956. members of my family enjoyed the hospitality of the siberian gulags for the reason of defending warsaw as a part of polish pre-war military, too.

however, i do not mistake capitalism with free markets; capitalism (in the stage where we are, ruled by rentiers and oligarchs that we call billionaires) needs to be reined in if we want to fucking survive.

[smsm42]

I think for somebody fresh out of Google and an RM for Python survival is not going to be a pressing concern. The streets aren't exactly filled with starving ex-Googlers. Again, getting fired sucks, but it's not exactly an atrocity which necessitates the overthrowing of the whole political system.

[jubalfh]

non sequitur.

[Vegenoid]

The point is that many would view Google SWEs as being in the highest echelons. Generally, people who get paid very large amounts of money under capitalism are seen as being hypocritical when they criticize capitalism, if they aren't using their wealth to make change.

It's not that their criticism isn't valid, it's the feeling that they are perpetuating and benefiting from capitalism more than 99% of people, so they are all talk and no walk.

[smsm42]

If there was some valid criticism, it'd warrant some engagement on merits. But it's not even that. It's just "I've got laid off from my extremely lucrative job, and probably will land a similarly lucrative job within a short time, therefore the whole societal system must be overthrown". It's not a criticism, it's just some kind of mental tick - any time anything bad happens, say some fashionable nonsense about capitalism being awful. As they saying goes, it's not even wrong! It's just lazy.