Inventing Reality
Argues that the news media are subtly controlled by sponsors and the government, shows examples of press bias, and identifies the means by which the media misrepresent reality
Stats for nerds
6recommend
11mentions
9people
2020–2026years
64% recommend36% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- "Sure, powers like the US and others still exact colonial-like force over smaller and weaker countries, for economic gain,"
that's definitionally colonilism under imperialism.
"but if the US would retreat from that colonial position tomorrow, the workers in those countries would not suddenly get higher wages, they'd just get more oppression from their own local robber barons, as it happened in every colonized country after the colonizers left."
not true, when colonizers leave of their "own volition", it's usually with a puppet government left behind called "friendly" that's essentially a proxy for colonial extraction. Nations that kick out the foreign influence under libertaory action often are sanctioned or invaded to try and topple them and revert to depedance on western intervention, but, when they succeed, rights and success often are much increased for the people in them, see "Human Rights in the USSR" by albert syzmenski, who uses only western sources for the book to steelman his position.
The western dependence happens through layers of coordinated and planned proxy vasselization. See the books "Unequal exchange" by Arghiri Emmanuel and "superimperilaism" by michael hudson for more details and scientific treatments of the question. "Inventing Reality" by Micheal Parenti might be another good read for you!
"But if you wanna grow the scope, we can say that we're all serfs of usury by the international banking system which runs on getting us addicted to debt which we and future generations are forced to pay off without being asked if we agree with it,"
Glad that one of the other sibling comments looked this quote up so I didn't have to. Fully "growing the scope:"
> For capitalism to generate greater profits than the home market can yield, the merging of banks and industrial cartels produces finance capitalism, and the exportation and investment of capital to countries with undeveloped and underdeveloped economies. In turn, that financial behaviour divides the world among monopolist business companies. In colonizing undeveloped countries, business and government will engage in geopolitical conflict over the exploitation of labour of most of the population of the world.
> Therefore, imperialism is the highest (advanced) stage of capitalism, requiring monopolies to exploit labour and natural resources, and the exportation of finance capital, rather than manufactured goods, to sustain colonialism, which is an integral function of imperialism.
> Moreover, in the capitalist homeland, the super-profits yielded by the colonial exploitation of a people and their economy permit businessmen to bribe native politicians, labour leaders and the labour aristocracy (upper stratum of the working class) to politically thwart worker revolt (labour strike) and placate the working class.
-- "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism"
"Then that's not colonialism, it's just serfdom. Colonialism implies a foreign nation, but most countries workers are poor due to their own politicians and business leaders squeezing them for their own interest."
This distinction collapses under the scientific understandings of imperialism and colonialism, linked above in more detail.
- "I guarantee AI run by a totalitarian 'socialist' government would be far less humane than AI in a capitalist federalist republic."
very likely false: see the book by albert syzmanski I linked in my other comment. Also, China actually puts regulation on their ai to, among other things, minimize harm to the public, ecological harm, etc. Other, already existing, socialist states already have as well.
"All states have a monopoly on violence over their citizens."
Yes, true. The point of scientific socialism, by its own program, is to minimize the harm associated with that state of affairs (pun intended) as a transitionary period between the current capitalist system and a future, more egalitarian global stateless system of governance.
"Paying people for their labor at a negotiated price in a free market is the great humanitarian invention capitalism offered the world,"
That's true, and very much improved upon feudalist systems. Capitalism is a very large step forward from that. Socialist systems, however, account for the vast majority of the uplift out of poverty in the last century (worldbank, of all sources https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstrea... )
"where before the status quo was domination and slavery."
still is. Capitalism oversaw the greatest amounts of slavery in history via chattel slavery and the imperialist system that perpetuated it. America had its deadliest war over the question, well after capitalism was firmly established. We still see it via our carceral system of forced labor creating goods for our market. Also, domination still occurs, see the nations we routinely invade, as well as the other books I mentioned elsewhere in this thread for a more complete scientific view.
You would also probably like "Inventing Reality" by Micheal Parenti!
- "Inventing Reality" by Michael Parenti is another book on the subject.
- Try “Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media” by Michael Parenti (1986).
- Yes and also Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality.
https://archive.org/details/inventingrealit100pare
A quick video discussing both Chomsky and Parenti: https://youtu.be/unKNNiYQFp4
- This is, basically, naive and your view of the world would likely be greatly expanded by reading Manufacturing Consent or Inventing Reality.
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