There’s a reason I stopped using tumblr, and the staff are it.
There are no words to describe how hurt, disgusted and humiliated I feel after watching this video. Meant to highlight the issue of Female Genital Mutilation, the cake was designed to be cut starting from the clitoris.
I’ve tried to add my thoughts, but the sight of the laughing and cheering Swedes (including the Swedish Minister of ‘Culture’, as pictured below) is a lot more than I can handle.
These white feminists baked a cake based on genital mutilation. The cake was a black woman to be ‘cut’ from the clitoris. There is nothing more I can add. This is one of the most racist things I’ve ever seen. God.
this is so disgusting, it’s beyond words, really.
Horrifying.
What the fuck, that’s a MAN who’s black-faced as a black woman.
I can’t fucking deal with this.This is fucking terrible on so many fucking levels I just…
I almost threw up watching this.
Disgusting? Yes. Racist? Probably. But the fact that this cake has got people talking about vaginal mutilation means it accomplished the goal it set out to achieve.
What is a “fair share” of taxes?
Can you please give me an exact percentage or an exact amount?
Thank you.
100% of profits, 0% of wages.
Can someone please explain to me how Objectivists can subscribe to the largely subjective notions of neo-liberal value theories?
We got trouble.
The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces. Here’s a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army.
A group of people who are for the use of military intervention to deal with a militaristic faction of murderers and rapists? Shock fucking horror. What the fuck do you advocate then, giving the LRA fucking daisies and asking them nicely to stop raping and killing people? Send the rebels on a liberal arts course? I’m sick of pansy-ass liberals like you. It’s people like you who forced the tragic war in Sierra Leone to go on as long as it did by condemning the use of successful military tactics to deal with the murderous, hand-chopping diamond cartels.
~ Your Freedom To Use Your Browser Is Under Attack ~
Tumblr’s Terms of Service hasn’t changed yet. So please read and help out!
The Tumblr staff recently requested feedback on updates they will be making to their policies. They specifically mention one of their goals is to prevent the promotion of self-harm. However, their updated Terms of Service includes something a lot less laudable.
Unable to find the required avenues to stop developers from creating and distributing browser extensions that enhance the way you use Tumblr and not getting enough of a response to their scary warning campaign, they now seem to be preparing the groundwork for coming after users of these extensions.
~ Who, you? Yes, apparently. ~
Tumblr had been previously unable to prevent all development of these extensions, scripts and add-ons because they function within your web browser, allowing you to direct these extensions to use your browser to automatically perform tasks for you on Tumblr (like quickly reblogging from the dashboard, uploading images to posts, adding control buttons to your sidebar or hiding content you don’t want to see). The extensions, themselves, do not interact directly with Tumblr, only help your web browser to do it for you!
With the upcoming changes to the Terms of Service, Tumblr will soon be able to punish someone: you.
~ How is it wrong to use something to help me enjoy Tumblr more? ~
The important part of the new Terms of Service is under the section titled Limitations on Automated Use:
You may not do any of the following while accessing or using the Services: … (c) access or search or attempt to access or search the Services by any means (automated or otherwise) other than through our currently available, published interfaces that are provided by Tumblr… (d) scrape the Services, and particularly scape (sic) Content (as defined below) from the Services, without Tumblr’s express prior written consent
These limitations will make using almost any browser extension, add-on or script for Tumblr (and even some not specifically intended for Tumblr) against the rules!
Do you use Missing e, XKit, Tumblr Savior or any Greasemonkey script for Tumblr? Well, pretty soon, that will mean you will be in violation of Tumblr’s Terms of Service. That would be grounds for terminating your account!
~ What’s the Big Deal? ~
Extensions, add-ons and scripts like Missing e, XKit and Tumblr Savior help you get better use of Tumblr. They might mean that you decide against leaving Tumblr, or that you come back to it. They make it easier to spend more time on Tumblr than you might have normally and become a more involved member of this community. These are the kind of things a company like Tumblr should want, but is instead fighting against.
This most recent step effectively means that Tumblr apparently wants to reach into your web browser and tell you exactly how you are to use it to interact with their website. Their way, and NO OTHER WAY.
~ So, What Can We Do? ~
Tumblr’s new Terms of Service policy has not yet been put into effect. They are still looking for feedback. My suggestions is that we give them feedback.
Contact Tumblr (policy@tumblr.com) and let them know that this decision will alienate the userbase they work so hard to grow. Let them know that a browser extension (be it any of them) brought you back to Tumblr, or convinced you to stay, or kept you on this site longer. Tell them that your Tumblr is better off with a Savior, a Kit of the ‘X’ variety or that Missing e!
ABOVE ALL, BE POLITE. The best way to present your case is with clearheaded statements that show Tumblr that these tools make you want to use their product more!
Reblogging to read in the morning. Night, tumblr.
Why socialism will never work
Labor will never be pleasurable. That is just human nature. If people have to pick between working or leisure they will always pick the leisure with all things being equal.
Labour is pleasurable when it is fulfilling. In order for it to be fulfilling, it must both serve a useful purpose and be properly rewarded. Labour is only unpleasurable under capitalism because workers are forced to perform tasks that they see no utility in, and are then not rewarded with the full value of their labour. When workers see their managers and owners performing less work than them while earning considerably more, this results in one two things: it either makes workers less productive by demotivating them, or it encourages them to seek a job that requires the least amount of work for the highest reward; to becomes the oppressor instead of the oppressed. Capitalism by its very nature produces a society in which it is undesirable to be productive because the careers that bring the biggest rewards are those that produce the least, instead forcing other to produce on your behalf. It is this very attitude — the desire to force others to do your work for you — that poisons our society and makes labour unfulfulling. This is not a healthy relationship.
It is human nature to work the least amount for the most amount.
Precisely! Is this not a good thing? If pay is tied to how much a worker produces, rather than to how much they are able to force others to produce, then greater efficiency will be achieved. No one will work harder than they need to because they will want efficiency: to produce the most amount of product for the least amount of effort with an equal reward. This will also reduce the waste associated with capitalism, because nothing that is not needed will be produced.
I’d much rather work 4 hours a day and golf 6 hours a day if that was feasible. Or work 2 hours and golf for 8 hours. Unfortunately that isn’t possible because I need to work, to make as much money as possible, so I can golf as much as possible when I’m not working.
Everyone would. The reason you can’t is because two thirds of society is not producing; you have to work to make up for the work that someone richer than you isn’t doing. If the means of production were brought into the public sphere, then every human being would have to produce in order to fulfil their needs and their own needs only, which would reduce the workload of individuals and create more free time for everyone, rather than for the elite few — the politicians and the super-rich. If people want the latest electronic device or arguably any product, they can either learn to build it themselves or, more efficiently, work twice as hard and pay someone else better at making it to make it for them, but if people don’t want so many things as other people, then they don’t have to put in the same amount of work, and consequently will earn less. In such a society, people will have as much free time as they choose to have, it just means going without something that other people might choose to work for. You can’t have your cake and eat it unless you use capitalism to force other people to bring you more cake.
If there is no incentive to work harder people won’t.
Precisely! Capitalism provides no incentive to work harder because we live in a demand-based society. Workers are forced to work not to satisfy their own needs, but to satisfy the wants of others. Under capitalism, people seek to minimise the amount of work they do because the capitalist system allows them to force others to do that work for them; this is how the middle class came to be, a class of non-producers emulating the capitalist class by using capital to force the working class to fulfil their needs and wants for them.
They will do the least amount of work to get the most out of it.
Again, this is correct, and will increase efficiency. As you’ve already said this and I’ve already explained how damn right you are, I’ll go off on a tangent; a cautionary note. Under socialism, people fulfil their own needs; they produce only as much as they want to produce, and are rewarded — here’s the part you don’t seem to understand — in accordance with the amount that they produce. So, those who work harder are paid more, and those who do not want to work harder will not be.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. If someone is materialistic under socialism, then they will have to work harder to fulfil their material needs. But someone who is not materialistic cannot be forced to help the materialist fulfil their desires. Capitalism, on the other hard, allows materialists to force non-materialists to fulfil their needs for them. If the non-materialist wishes an easy life under capitalism, they are not free to have it because they lack capital, and they are forced to work on behalf of the capitalist simply to fulfil their bare minimum essential needs such as food and shelter.
The only way to experience any kind of freedom under capitalism is — as Libertarians boast — to achieve economic freedom, which is to say, to amass enough capital to force others to do work on your behalf, and workers are forced to work longer hours and produce more and more if they wish to earn a higher wage. But this results in a society that is obsessed with exponential growth to continue to match the needs of the materialist, by creating new businesses, increasing production and amassing capital.
Put simply, this emphasis on growth is killing the Earth, because every human being is forced to become a materialist. Even those who wish to live an easy and austere life without the luxuries that the materialists crave are forced to work on because of materialists, resulting in overproduction, overconsumption and overpopulation. Growth — the Jesus Fucking Christ of the capitalist system — will cause the apocalypse unless we fundamentally reorganise society to allow materialism to take a back seat. We do not need to keep producing and consuming in order to attain utility — all we that need, put simply, is to allow workers to fulfil their own needs to as great or as little an extent as they choose, to whatever level gives them satisfaction. Otherwise we are all on the path to extinction.
Or, more succinctly, to quote lmtd-edtn:
actually his argument is a perfect example of why capitalism doesnt work, and why socialism is perfect. in capitalism unemployment is a tool of the rich to keep wages low and profits high. when there is no leech sucking all the profit there is more money for everyone else. basically you would work less hours, make more money than you do now, and everyone would have a job.
The Failure of Libertarian Ethics
Let us take three examples of situations that might occur in a Libertopian society and demonstrate how, despite each example perfectly obeying libertarian axioms, they fail ethically. The first example is standalone, while the second and third are designed as a contrast to each other.
In our first example, we have Mary, a single mother struggling with childcare costs, under the employ of Smith Associates. We shall ignore, for the sake of brevity, the lack of support for single mothers in Libertopia.
Mary is on a rolling one month temporary contract with Smith Associates, meaning that at the end of each month her contract is renewed at the discretion of Mr Smith, for as long as he wills it to be renewed. In short, she has no job security. Fortunately for her, for the past nine months, he has continually renewed her contract.
On this particular month, he brings Mary into his office. He tells her that he would like to take her out to dinner, and maybe more. When she declines his offer, Mr Smith turns to the matter of her contract, and says that if she does not humour his wishes, he will not renew her contract and she will be without a job; her children will starve and she will lose her home.
According to Libertarian ethics, nothing immoral has been done here. In fact, Libertarianism would claim that such abuse of power does not in fact constitute coercion, because no force or fraud occurred. No property rights have been violated and no contracts have been broken; everything Mr Smith has done is fully within the terms of his contract with her. Nowhere in her contract does it state that she is exempt from being asked to suck cock, and nor does it state that Mr Smith is in any way obliged to renew her contract. No threat of force is being used, and yet clearly he is able to coerce her using his power over her job prospects. Under libertarian ethics, this is legitimate. But clearly any right mind can understand that this relationship is not ethically sounds, that it is coercive, and that if it does not fall under the Libertarian definition of coercion, then clearly the Libertarian definition must fall short.
In our second and third example, we have two situations that are, by effect, the same, but fall under slightly different definitions with regard to Libertarian ethics.
Sally’s short-hold tenancy, which lasts for six months, is ready for renewal, and her letting agent has decided to write up a new tenancy which involves a £300 administration fee. In order for Sally to continue living in her home, she will have to pay an extra £300 out of pocket.
Alternatively, John’s short-hold tenancy is also up for renewal. His landlord is slightly more underhand than Sally’s letting agent, and he has told John he will only consider renewing his tenancy if John gives him £300 under the table. If John refuses, he says, he has other prospective tenants lines up. Such are the effects of a scarce resource; housing.
In both of these instances the effect on the tenant is absolutely the same, but according to libertarian ethics, the second is only slightly less justifiable than the first, because it is a transaction outside of contracted behaviour; John has not signed anything saying that he will pay the money. However, despite the fact that John’s landlord is able to extort £300 out of John, this kind of behaviour is perfectly acceptable according to Libertarian thinking. Again, no force or fraud has been used to coerce John into handing over £300, and so, apparently, this isn’t coercion at all. John’s landlord is perfectly within his property rights to not renew John’s tenancy. The fact that John’s landlord is using potential homelessness as a bargaining tool is irrelevant to Libertarians, because John always has the “choice” to give in to such extortion, and Sally always has the choice to not sign the contract and instead choose homelessness.
And Mary always has the choice of sucking her boss’s cock if she wants to keep feeding her children.
This is the Libertarian definition of freedom, and that’s all fine and dandy and completely free from coercion according to Libertarian logic. I think it’s safe to say that there’s something not right with that. Redefining coercion to justify coercion isn’t a sound basis for a code of inalienable rights.
