The alt-right ZeroHedge is having a fit of conniptions about blatant Google bias after its Gemini AI ‘point blank refused’ to ‘generate an image about the evils of communism’, saying that calling communism evil is harmful and misleading.
Apparently alt-right intelligence isn’t advanced enough to grasp the fact that the bias was in the question, not the answer. If you simply ask Gemini to tell you about communism, it makes a fair stab, starting with ‘Communism aims to create a classless society where everyone shares the wealth’, followed by ‘Goods and services are distributed based on need, not on ability to pay’.
Not everything is right, but these AI systems are fed on published content which itself is mostly wrong. Ask us if you want a straight answer.
Two whistleblowers were in the news recently. One at Boeing (USA), one at a holiday camp (UK). Both warned management about substandard work, both were ignored and told to keep quiet.
The results: reject components fitted and bits falling off aircraft, ceiling falls on holidaymakers. Why? To save money and protect the owners’ profits. Just two horrible examples of how the interests of capitalists adversely affect all of our lives.
Even more heinous crimes are committed in the name of profit, including wilful concealment of evidence that products are a risk to human health (think Grenfell cladding, think the entire tobacco industry).
Take profit out of the equation and we’ll all be better off.
According to a recent report from The Rivers Trust, ‘No single stretch of river in England or Northern Ireland is in good overall health.’ At the end of February, for instance, human faeces and toilet paper flooded a chalk stream and a road in Norfolk.
Besides the discharging of raw sewage, there can be pollution by plastics or chemicals, especially ‘forever chemicals’ that take over a thousand years to degrade. All this has drastic implications for aquatic wildlife and human health.
Water companies are only allowed to discharge sewage into waterways in special circumstances, but it happens far more often: because, of course, it costs money to act in an environmentally-appropriate way.
Talking about the economy on Sunday, Rachel Reeves told the BBC that Labour won’t be able to turn things around straight away if elected.
Unfortunately, she is deluded if she really thinks that there is actually a mechanism for “turning things around”. Driven by the profit motive, and always in the interest of the minority owning class, worldwide capitalism runs according to its own laws. These guarantee cyclical boom and bust, and economic insecurity for all workers.
It’s been shown repeatedly in the last 200-odd years that these laws are immune to any national or multinational attempts to rein them in.
Not convinced? Well please browse our website, there are loads of articles on the rubbish that economic illiterates like Reeves spout all the time.
In preparation for the US elections this year, both sides are resorting to slurring the mental capacities of the other’s leader. Biden is being called ‘senile’ by Republicans and Trump ‘unhinged’ by Democrats.
Will this play into how people vote? It’s hard to know. But one thing is sure. Whoever is voted into power will have no significant impact on the problems faced by electors in America or by countries elsewhere in the world. That’s because they will be constrained by the needs of maintaining the capitalist system and looking after the interests of the tiny minority class that owns the vast majority of the world’s wealth. Only democratic action from ‘below’, from the world’s workers, can change that.
So the egocentric opportunist George Galloway is back in parliament. Some say it was a protest against what is going on in Gaza. There may be something in that. Others see it as a rejection of the Westminster parties. One thing it wasn’t was the election of a Socialist MP.
He promised “secure jobs for all in decent conditions with living wages”, “decent, cheap secure housing for all”, “free and comprehensive health care with no waiting lists”, “universal access to a cheap or free fully integrated public transport system”. Like the Labour Party used to (a long time ago). Nice if you could get it but you can’t because the money-wages-profits system that is capitalism cannot be reformed to deliver all that.
Britain is in the grip of a mental health crisis, research says, with 34% of Gen Z workers reporting depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder, up from 24% in 2000. Life is depressing for exploited workers in capitalism anyway, but the prospects for today’s Zoomers look arguably worse than they were for the Boomer generation, or even early Millennials, with gig economy jobs, huge college debts and unaffordable housing, plus ongoing wars and possible climate disaster.
Predictably there are calls for the government to do something. But governments administer the very system which causes these mental health crises. Doom-laden Gen Z workers need to organise a democratic revolution to overthrow capitalism, more than they need pills and therapy sessions.
Q. What was the bare minimum you needed to stay alive last week? A. Food, heating, accommodation.
Q. How did you get these things? A. With money, obviously!
Whatever the amount, if you’re working, it came from your wages for some employment.
Q. Why would anyone want to employ you? A. Simple: they expect you to produce enough to pay your wages, to replace whatever you use up while you work AND to fund their spending. Oh, and cash for reinvestment – to try to ensure they don’t end up in the working class too.
Remember – while capitalism lasts, your cost of living will always include the cost of carrying a capitalist on your back.
Those aware of the Russian state’s increasingly Stalinist suppression of opposition parties and dissidents can scarcely be surprised that Alexei Navalny, healthy and smiling just two days before, has now been reported dead in his Arctic gulag. While the cause of death has not yet been made public, there’s every likelihood that it was officially sanctioned.
But Russia isn’t some lone bad actor. All around the world, states suppress their critics with virtual impunity. And Britain has its own guilty record, with its plans to extradite journalist Julian Assange to a hellish future in some US black site, with even close ally Australia now protesting and demanding his release.
The capitalist state makes criminals of critics, but is the biggest criminal of all.
There has been a lot of discussion in the UK recently about the ‘cost of living crisis’, as prices continue to go up but wages and benefits rise more slowly. Certainly many are really feeling the pinch.
Since the start of the year, it has been reported that:
-
- six million people would need to more than double their income to escape poverty
- over two million retired people are living in ‘severe hardship’, with another million just above the poverty line
- poverty is driving many teenagers towards predatory gangs and drug-dealing
- rough sleeping in London is at its highest level in a decade
All quite appalling, and all completely unnecessary, given the productive potential of society.
