This is a great and inspirational read. It demonstrates the application of a diy hacker solution to issues like medical shortages caused by the Israeli blockade, but also to dialysis machine vendor lockin which is a global issue.
Check out the section on the difference between QA in the lab and field-testing!
It's also a heartbreaking read to be honest. Check out this quote on why they spread their 3d printers around multiple locations; "There are two reasons we do this. One is that we want to promote the culture. The other is that we’re going to get bombed at some point. When that happens, if we are the only place that has all the 3D-printing knowledge or equipment, then we’re going to set back the entire movement by two or three years. The more we hoard the knowledge or hoard the equipment, the worse it will be. As it is, when our offices eventually do get bombed, we’ll probably only be set back a year. If somebody dies, obviously it will be even worse. "
The level of pragmatism/resilience in statements like this is always baffling as an "outsider" who has never been in even a remotely comparable situation
René Laennec wrote the classic treatise De l'Auscultation Médiate, published in August 1819[5][6] The preface reads:
In 1816, He was consulted by a young woman laboring under general symptoms of diseased heart, and in whose case percussion and the application of the hand were of little avail on account of the great degree of fatness. The other method just mentioned [direct auscultation] being rendered inadmissible by the age and sex of the patient, I happened to recollect a simple and well-known fact in acoustics, ... the great distinctness with which we hear the scratch of a pin at one end of a piece of wood on applying our ear to the other. Immediately, on this suggestion, I rolled a quire of paper into a kind of cylinder and applied one end of it to the region of the heart and the other to my ear, and was not a little surprised and pleased to find that I could thereby perceive the action of the heart in a manner much more clear and distinct than I had ever been able to do by the immediate application of my ear.
He didn't convince me that the occupation of Gaza is almost over.
I may not be an expert on the current state of the near-east conflicts, but it seemed to me as if the state of Israel doesn't really want to acknowledge the Palestinians as either citizens of Israel or as entitled to their own state.
And the Palestinians are not going to cease existing just because they are inconvenient for the established states in the region. Nor do they seem to be able to reign in the radical elements in their midst.
"Apartheid state" is an incendiary and useless label, though the comparison is indeed useful.
Unfortunately, the continuing violence of Palestinians against Israelis and the rhetoric about the destruction of Israel are the main argument for maintaining that oppression. And a particularly good one, as far as reasons for oppressing people go.
"The continuing violence of Palestinians against Israelis" - This framing is just the manifestation of utter ignorance or of blatant bias. For those who are interested and want to construct their own opinion:
What framing? It's absolutely true that Palestinians are committing acts of terror/violence against Israeli citizens. I'm not saying that all of them do it. I'm not even saying most of them support violence against Israel/Israelis, though you could get that impression when listening to their leaders. Both small scale violence with knifes or guns, up to rockets, are an undeniable fact.
I am purposely depicting both sides. Just as I am not ignoring the suffering of Palestinians at the hand of Israeli forces, and that Israeli forces have at times gone far beyond what is morally or legally justifiable.
But it doesn't help to label this "Apartheid". It's a totally different conflict with different causes and entirely different solutions. If Israelis where to give citizenship to all Palestinians (and I would say the Palestinians have some claim to that), Israel would cease to exist and I highly doubt Palestinians would protect Jewish Israelis...
This is the most difficult and complicated conflict in the world in our time. There are no simple solutions, but the last thing that helps is to heap blame on one side.
Note that the palestinians themselves also don't really seem to acknowledge jews as citizen of Israel or as entitled to their own state (calling Israel "the zionist entity", and not even representing their neighbour on a map in schoolbooks). Also, note that this view is also shared by a lot of arab countries.
This indeed doesn't paint a very bright future for the region.
Why would they when Israel doesn't recognize Palestine as a state? Why should anybody maintain that double standard least of all the people who are at the raw end of it.
Do you think that if they did recognize Israel then Israel would automatically return the favor and recognize a Palestinian state? Of course not.
“Barak offered to form a Palestinian state initially on 73% of the West Bank (that is, 27% less than the Green Line borders) and 100% of the Gaza Strip.”[0]
This is exactly what Israel proposed at Camp David in 2000. Arafat rejected it without a counter-offer.
i think the original 1947 UN proposition of partition was accepted by the jews and not the arab population of the region (at the time we didn't use the term "palestinian" to speak of arabs living there). This was the best time because the situation was a bit more symetrical then. Just two people on one land who couldn't live next to each others and had to be split.
> Why would they when Israel doesn't recognize Palestine as a state?
In order to get Palestine recognized by Israel as a state.
> Do you think that if they did recognize Israel then Israel would automatically return the favor and recognize a Palestinian state?
Israel holds regular elections in which power is peacefully handed over. The Israeli public is a lot more likely to recognize a Palestinian state if that state's actions include something better than continual promises to restore Jews to a subjugated state.
But, Hamas's Gaza continues to hold rallies in which such lovely slogans as "Palestine is ours and the Jews are our dogs."
Both don't acknowledge each others right for existence, at least at the level of their political leadership.
Even though I believe Palestinians have committed lots of wrong against Israelis, and I acknowledge their right to defend or protect themselves, I can't blame Palestinians for feeling oppressed, hopeless and angry. It would be superhuman to expect them to not have these emotions.
Israel is clearly dominant, militarily and in every other way. That also means they have the bigger responsibility to go first in terms of peace.
I think what’s quite often forgotten in statements like this is that Israel voluntarily withdrew from Gaza 15 years ago, and Gazans then had an election in which they elected Hamas.
Since then, Hamas has launched thousands of rockets into Israel with the express purpose of targeting civilians, while Israel has lost a huge buffer zone (Hamas now reaches major cities like Beersheva with their rockets).
Worst part IMO is that there have not been any new elections and that Hamas has started enacting Sharia law in Gaza.
If there have not been any new elections how can you attribute the violence to the Palestinian people, many of whom would have been children 15 years ago.
And if the application of sharia law is cause for blockading a country and rendering its inhabitants stateless then we had better start blockading most of the Middle East.
...And what you're forgetting is that thanks to Iron Dome, those rockets kill fewer people than, say, electric scooters in Tel Aviv. And that Gaza is subject to an economic blockade making it basically impossible to do, well, anything but be poor and angry: No fishing, no trade, unreliable electricity, not enough fuel, slow internet, etc.
That's not even mentioning the slow annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israel is now officially rejecting a two-state solution, and they are obviously rejecting the idea of giving palestinians full citizenship (which would render jewish Israelis the minority). That implies, logically, that Israel is now denying Palestinians the perspective of any sort of democracy.
Violence against civilians is wrong. But it isn't unheard of in a struggle for self-determination. It's inexcusably wrong for (some) Palestinians to deny Israel's right to exist within the borders of '68. But the enormous power differential between the parties simply places the burden of taking the first step on Israel's shoulders.
> making it basically impossible to do, well, anything but be poor and angry: No fishing, no trade, unreliable electricity, not enough fuel, slow internet, etc.
The blockade certainly makes things difficult, but, like all things, the actual situation is much more complex than that. The people in power in Gaza seem to find it much more expedient for things to remain bad, and all the hate, negative energy, and blame to be directed at Israel, than to put real effort into making things better.
Regarding, for example, your mention of electricity, I've had conversations with people who tried to set up a working electric plant within Gaza, and were stymied by a baffling level of neglect, poor workmanship, and inattention to cleanliness or detail on the part of the Gazans. (I'm not making a general statement about Gazans here, just the ones involved with the project.)
It seems sometimes as though the people there feel that if they were to give up some of the hate, anger, and outrage towards Israel (justified or not), and actually devote their full energies to improving what they have, then they'd be selling out their cause. A prospering Gaza is a less effective critique of Israeli policy, and a less useful weapon on the public stage in the battle to reclaim ancestral lands.
Israel controls Gaza and the Westbank in pretty much any sense that matters, especially they limit or prohibit trade and they regularly conduct raids of all sorts.
That in turn means they are responsible for providing water and almost everything else, and the Palestinians have almost no agency over any of their affairs, which also makes it hard or impossible for them to reign in their militant fractions.
And it's hard to expect those in Gaza to not have a problem with what happens in Westbank and the other way around.
Does it? If US build that wall and stop trading with Mexico, it’ll suddenly become responsible to supply the needs of the Mexican people?
Israel supports Gaza because it’s an overwhelming consensus that leaving 1.8mm people, most of them innocent by any reasonable definition, to starve to death, is not a viable option. And no one thinks Egypt, a disfunctioning state by itself, will take any action.
Completely different situation. Mexico is undeniably a larger country and much more self-sufficient. Neither the Westbank nor Gaza are self-sufficient. Israel does not allow Egypt to help them either, even though Egypt is not dysfunctional at the moment.
So Israel is taking active measures to prevent Palestinians from getting help, trading, or even building their own economy (which is tough when you can't produce construction material and Israel doesn't let any in). Israel is also responsible for putting Palestinians into those zones, because that many people wouldn't move voluntarily into an area that can't sustain them.
Their situation has been likened to that of a prison, and the comparison is quite apt. In a prison, the wardens are almost completely responsible for anything that happens inside.
It's hard to choose language that doesn't carry an inciting valence for someone. I'm not trying to make a "which one's worse, or more at fault" argument; I'm saying that when you're in a bad situation, you can languish in your victimhood, let your hate fester, and do nothing productive to improve your situation, or you can direct some of that energy into positive pursuits. (I speak from personal experience of a culture that struggles with moving past its self-definition as a victim.)
The example I gave was of some people refusing to put in the work to generating their own power, thus perpetuating their dependence on Israel-provided power sources. The situation in Gaza is not a pure function of Israel's actions, but a very complex maelstrom of conflicting cultures, values, and priorities.
I would much rather see Israel and Palestine at peace, but what's also forgotten is that Israel created its own monster.[1] Israel's right wing government will do anything it can [2] to undermine Palestine's legitimacy so long as they don't have to confront difficult choices.
Capitalism describes a social organization where some people (the capitalists) own the means of production whereas most people are working for them. And nowadays, the «means of productions» are mostly in the form of patents and intellectual property (as most companies almost never build anything themselves[1], and pay contractors to build stuff for them).
[1] Apple don't build Mac, Mc Donald's don't operate most of its restaurants, car manufacturers merely attach together a bunch of spare pieces built by contractors, etc.
The point is that capital is not defined as the property of the capitalists. There are virtually no pure "capitalists" in the sense that they only own capital and do no work around that capital.
In developed countries there aren't even that many pure workers, because most workers own insurance policies, some "means of production" or even equity in a company or two.
The problems which are often called "capitalism" are in my opinion more about a power disequilibrium causing exploitation, especially using capital as power to take capital away from poorer people or distributing the value gain in a way that is perceived as inequitable.
Capitalism is indeed a form of oligarchy, I don't think this is a controversial view.
Oligarchies can be justified by different reasons: religion, lineage, etc. In the case of Capitalism, it's an oligarchy legitimated by the “merit” of the dominant, who were somehow chosen in the great market competition.
The point is that any form of oligarchy means redistribution of wealth from the powerless to the powerful.
And capitalism is not about "merit" but about possession. Lots of "Capitalists" (by which I mean people who derive most of their income from capital investments rather than labor) have inherited much or most of their wealth. Merit is not a requirement. Enough property to exert power and therefore redistribute wealth however is.
“Merit” isn't a real thing, but it's the mythical value that's used as a moral justification of the current state of societies. Like virtue, honor or faith in other kind of oligarchies.
> Capitalism describes a social organization where some people (the capitalists) own the means of production whereas most people are working for them.
This is not accurate. Capitalism describes a system where people are free to own means of production. A hypothetical system where everyone owns some means of production, would still be capitalism.
> A hypothetical system where everyone owns some means of production, would still be capitalism.
No, it wouldn't, because it is marketable ownership of the means of production that defines capitalism; that is, it is the buying and selling, not the ownership alone, that is key (particularly, historically, the marketability of the means of production is a key factor distinguishing capitalism from feudalism, in which much of the means of production was owned but attached to entailments which the current owners were not free to alienate.)
For a version of your example, if everyone owned a fixed, equal share of the means of production which was not marketable, that would be an implementation of socialism.
> No, it wouldn't, because it is marketable ownership
I have to be sincere, I never saw this definition involving marketability anywhere, this is new for me. Perhaps it's really like you say, but that's not the definition I had, nor the one I see as the generally accepted one when checking up the definition of capitalism.
> For a version of your example, if everyone owned a fixed
But that is the thing, it isn't fixed. You are free to manage it, sell it, buy it, as you wish. That's why it's an hypothetical situation, where everyone would end up with a part voluntarily and not forced by the state.
> I never saw this definition involving marketability anywhere, this is new for me. Perhaps it's really like you say, but that's not the definition I had
But then also this about your hypothetical about a “capitalist” system where “everyone owns capital” which makes it capitalist as opposed to socialist:
> You are free to manage it, sell it, buy it, as you wish.
You seem to explicitly recognize that marketability—the right to buy and sell—is an essential element of the kind of capital ownership that defines capitalism in the same post that you claim that it isn't.
My bad I misunderstood your answer to my first comment. I understood you were taking about the marketability of the produce, not of the means of production.
In any case, that is the reasoning of my second point when originally answering to you: A hypothetic situation where most people would own means of production, would still be capitalism when means of production are free to exchange hands.
That is too say: it's capitalism by definition as long as the means of production can exchange hands freely, it doesn't matter if they are all concentrated on the possession of a few or not.
> it's capitalism by definition as long as the means of production can exchange hands freely, it doesn't matter if they are all concentrated on the possession of a few or not.
If they can be freely exchanged, absent active as social management if distribution (which is not capitalism), they will become narrowly concentrated over time. Broad distribution is not a stable condition.
> Capitalism describes a system where people are free to own means of production.
That's a fairly broad definition, so broad you lose all the meaning. By this definition, half of socialism (all but Marxism-Leninism) counts as Capitalism. Same for many economic system around the world since the beginning of History, while historians unanimously describes Capitalism as born in the late Middle-age/Renaissance in Europe (they don't agree where though, some talk about the Protestant counties (Max Weber), others think it was born in northern Italy (Fernand Braudel), while some consider the Jewish community as being the cradle of Capitalism).
I think your definition is highly influenced by the US anticommunist propaganda of the world war, who tried to create a dichotomy between Capitalism and the totalitarian communism. The reality is way more complex than this black-and-white narrative.
If one wasn't attempting to make money from others, and expect the State's help in doing so, it would make no sense for IP to exist as a concept.
It's like when people say "competition is good for innovation". HN (the hobbiest stuff featured here, not the venture capitalist stuff) is proof that people will always do stuff for the fun of it. Hobbiests aren't competing - they're cooperating. Cooperation is far better for innovation than competition as you're helping each other and sharing resources, not making it harder for others to work in a similar area.
I don’t think I agree; hobbyists have rarely, if ever, made truly compelling end products. I don’t think hobbyists could have produced Uber in every city I visit, or the iPhone, or a usable desktop OS (not kernel - OS), or even the microprocessor.
To be fair, I think the interviewee is using the word “capitalism” to mean what some in the US today proclaim to be capitalism. I don’t have any citations for what I’m about to say, but I’ve heard of some US politicians describe the United States as a defender of both democracy and capitalism: compare this rhetoric with how similar US politicians describe “socialism” and “communism”. As a result, I interpret the interviewee simply continuing to make that association as incorrect as it is.
Using fucked up in the first sentence, not in quotes, gave me something like the feeling that reading Dante in Italian instead of Latin must have given his audience.
I know exactly what you mean. And yet after a page worth of text I felt like the editor made the right call: the text would have lost a bit of its soul if they had redacted it in a socially more accepted way.
This is a great and inspirational read. It demonstrates the application of a diy hacker solution to issues like medical shortages caused by the Israeli blockade, but also to dialysis machine vendor lockin which is a global issue.
Check out the section on the difference between QA in the lab and field-testing!
It's also a heartbreaking read to be honest. Check out this quote on why they spread their 3d printers around multiple locations; "There are two reasons we do this. One is that we want to promote the culture. The other is that we’re going to get bombed at some point. When that happens, if we are the only place that has all the 3D-printing knowledge or equipment, then we’re going to set back the entire movement by two or three years. The more we hoard the knowledge or hoard the equipment, the worse it will be. As it is, when our offices eventually do get bombed, we’ll probably only be set back a year. If somebody dies, obviously it will be even worse. "
The level of pragmatism/resilience in statements like this is always baffling as an "outsider" who has never been in even a remotely comparable situation
It comes with a high toll on the locals mental health.
This is a place that is home to 1.8 million people. The blockade has been on since 2007 (and in some other form before that).
Israeli-Egyptian blockade.
Israeli-Egyptian-Gazan blockade.
What material makes it past the first two is then held tightly by the Hamas militias as a means of exerting control over the Gazan population.
The stethoscope is one of those simple inventions that has had an outsize influence on the practice of medicine.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Laennec#Invention_of...
René Laennec wrote the classic treatise De l'Auscultation Médiate, published in August 1819[5][6] The preface reads:
In 1816, He was consulted by a young woman laboring under general symptoms of diseased heart, and in whose case percussion and the application of the hand were of little avail on account of the great degree of fatness. The other method just mentioned [direct auscultation] being rendered inadmissible by the age and sex of the patient, I happened to recollect a simple and well-known fact in acoustics, ... the great distinctness with which we hear the scratch of a pin at one end of a piece of wood on applying our ear to the other. Immediately, on this suggestion, I rolled a quire of paper into a kind of cylinder and applied one end of it to the region of the heart and the other to my ear, and was not a little surprised and pleased to find that I could thereby perceive the action of the heart in a manner much more clear and distinct than I had ever been able to do by the immediate application of my ear.
This is a fascinating read. Love his hacker mentality.
He didn't convince me that the occupation of Gaza is almost over.
I may not be an expert on the current state of the near-east conflicts, but it seemed to me as if the state of Israel doesn't really want to acknowledge the Palestinians as either citizens of Israel or as entitled to their own state.
And the Palestinians are not going to cease existing just because they are inconvenient for the established states in the region. Nor do they seem to be able to reign in the radical elements in their midst.
They have zero incentive to reign in their so called 'radical elements', they live in an apartheid state.
"Apartheid state" is an incendiary and useless label, though the comparison is indeed useful.
Unfortunately, the continuing violence of Palestinians against Israelis and the rhetoric about the destruction of Israel are the main argument for maintaining that oppression. And a particularly good one, as far as reasons for oppressing people go.
"The continuing violence of Palestinians against Israelis" - This framing is just the manifestation of utter ignorance or of blatant bias. For those who are interested and want to construct their own opinion:
[Genocidal Views: Israelis Speak Candidly About Palestinians](https://youtu.be/1e_dbsVQrk4)
[Israeli Army Vet’s Exposé - “I Was the Terrorist”](https://youtu.be/1Rk1dAIhiVc)
[Irish MP reads out quotes made by Israeli Ministers](https://youtu.be/5utTDGS3B_Q)
[If Americans Knew - What every American needs to know about Israel/Palestine](https://ifamericaknew.org/)
[Empire Files: How Palestine Became Colonized](https://youtu.be/BT5L4YU_Fl4)
What framing? It's absolutely true that Palestinians are committing acts of terror/violence against Israeli citizens. I'm not saying that all of them do it. I'm not even saying most of them support violence against Israel/Israelis, though you could get that impression when listening to their leaders. Both small scale violence with knifes or guns, up to rockets, are an undeniable fact.
I am purposely depicting both sides. Just as I am not ignoring the suffering of Palestinians at the hand of Israeli forces, and that Israeli forces have at times gone far beyond what is morally or legally justifiable.
But it doesn't help to label this "Apartheid". It's a totally different conflict with different causes and entirely different solutions. If Israelis where to give citizenship to all Palestinians (and I would say the Palestinians have some claim to that), Israel would cease to exist and I highly doubt Palestinians would protect Jewish Israelis...
This is the most difficult and complicated conflict in the world in our time. There are no simple solutions, but the last thing that helps is to heap blame on one side.
It's a colonial project that expands illegally at the expense of one side only, how's that not one-sided?
The label is intended to evoke an emotional response. The very presence of the state of israel is an act of violence.
I think you are confused. The “apartheid state” is in the West Bank. It’s “occupying terrorist state” in Gaza.
There’s no Israeli presence there other than Israeli water, electricity, petrol, money and occasional bombs.
Note that the palestinians themselves also don't really seem to acknowledge jews as citizen of Israel or as entitled to their own state (calling Israel "the zionist entity", and not even representing their neighbour on a map in schoolbooks). Also, note that this view is also shared by a lot of arab countries.
This indeed doesn't paint a very bright future for the region.
Why would they when Israel doesn't recognize Palestine as a state? Why should anybody maintain that double standard least of all the people who are at the raw end of it.
Do you think that if they did recognize Israel then Israel would automatically return the favor and recognize a Palestinian state? Of course not.
“Barak offered to form a Palestinian state initially on 73% of the West Bank (that is, 27% less than the Green Line borders) and 100% of the Gaza Strip.”[0]
This is exactly what Israel proposed at Camp David in 2000. Arafat rejected it without a counter-offer.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Camp_David_Summit
i think the original 1947 UN proposition of partition was accepted by the jews and not the arab population of the region (at the time we didn't use the term "palestinian" to speak of arabs living there). This was the best time because the situation was a bit more symetrical then. Just two people on one land who couldn't live next to each others and had to be split.
> Why would they when Israel doesn't recognize Palestine as a state?
In order to get Palestine recognized by Israel as a state.
> Do you think that if they did recognize Israel then Israel would automatically return the favor and recognize a Palestinian state?
Israel holds regular elections in which power is peacefully handed over. The Israeli public is a lot more likely to recognize a Palestinian state if that state's actions include something better than continual promises to restore Jews to a subjugated state.
But, Hamas's Gaza continues to hold rallies in which such lovely slogans as "Palestine is ours and the Jews are our dogs."
Seems a little counter productive.
Both don't acknowledge each others right for existence, at least at the level of their political leadership.
Even though I believe Palestinians have committed lots of wrong against Israelis, and I acknowledge their right to defend or protect themselves, I can't blame Palestinians for feeling oppressed, hopeless and angry. It would be superhuman to expect them to not have these emotions.
Israel is clearly dominant, militarily and in every other way. That also means they have the bigger responsibility to go first in terms of peace.
I think what’s quite often forgotten in statements like this is that Israel voluntarily withdrew from Gaza 15 years ago, and Gazans then had an election in which they elected Hamas.
Since then, Hamas has launched thousands of rockets into Israel with the express purpose of targeting civilians, while Israel has lost a huge buffer zone (Hamas now reaches major cities like Beersheva with their rockets).
Worst part IMO is that there have not been any new elections and that Hamas has started enacting Sharia law in Gaza.
If there have not been any new elections how can you attribute the violence to the Palestinian people, many of whom would have been children 15 years ago.
And if the application of sharia law is cause for blockading a country and rendering its inhabitants stateless then we had better start blockading most of the Middle East.
...And what you're forgetting is that thanks to Iron Dome, those rockets kill fewer people than, say, electric scooters in Tel Aviv. And that Gaza is subject to an economic blockade making it basically impossible to do, well, anything but be poor and angry: No fishing, no trade, unreliable electricity, not enough fuel, slow internet, etc.
That's not even mentioning the slow annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israel is now officially rejecting a two-state solution, and they are obviously rejecting the idea of giving palestinians full citizenship (which would render jewish Israelis the minority). That implies, logically, that Israel is now denying Palestinians the perspective of any sort of democracy.
Violence against civilians is wrong. But it isn't unheard of in a struggle for self-determination. It's inexcusably wrong for (some) Palestinians to deny Israel's right to exist within the borders of '68. But the enormous power differential between the parties simply places the burden of taking the first step on Israel's shoulders.
> making it basically impossible to do, well, anything but be poor and angry: No fishing, no trade, unreliable electricity, not enough fuel, slow internet, etc.
The blockade certainly makes things difficult, but, like all things, the actual situation is much more complex than that. The people in power in Gaza seem to find it much more expedient for things to remain bad, and all the hate, negative energy, and blame to be directed at Israel, than to put real effort into making things better.
Regarding, for example, your mention of electricity, I've had conversations with people who tried to set up a working electric plant within Gaza, and were stymied by a baffling level of neglect, poor workmanship, and inattention to cleanliness or detail on the part of the Gazans. (I'm not making a general statement about Gazans here, just the ones involved with the project.)
It seems sometimes as though the people there feel that if they were to give up some of the hate, anger, and outrage towards Israel (justified or not), and actually devote their full energies to improving what they have, then they'd be selling out their cause. A prospering Gaza is a less effective critique of Israeli policy, and a less useful weapon on the public stage in the battle to reclaim ancestral lands.
> negative energy
Israel burns down centuries -old olive trees, closes access to water, and promotes settlements in occupied territories
"Negative energy"
- Olives rarely make it to hundreds of years. Surely they don’t in Gaza which has crappy soil for olives. Are you confused with the West Bank?
- All water in Gaza are provided by Israel. Are you confused with Hebron or some other place?
- There are no settlements in Gaza since the unilateral withdrawal in 2005. Are you confused?
Israel controls Gaza and the Westbank in pretty much any sense that matters, especially they limit or prohibit trade and they regularly conduct raids of all sorts.
That in turn means they are responsible for providing water and almost everything else, and the Palestinians have almost no agency over any of their affairs, which also makes it hard or impossible for them to reign in their militant fractions.
And it's hard to expect those in Gaza to not have a problem with what happens in Westbank and the other way around.
Does it? If US build that wall and stop trading with Mexico, it’ll suddenly become responsible to supply the needs of the Mexican people?
Israel supports Gaza because it’s an overwhelming consensus that leaving 1.8mm people, most of them innocent by any reasonable definition, to starve to death, is not a viable option. And no one thinks Egypt, a disfunctioning state by itself, will take any action.
Completely different situation. Mexico is undeniably a larger country and much more self-sufficient. Neither the Westbank nor Gaza are self-sufficient. Israel does not allow Egypt to help them either, even though Egypt is not dysfunctional at the moment.
So Israel is taking active measures to prevent Palestinians from getting help, trading, or even building their own economy (which is tough when you can't produce construction material and Israel doesn't let any in). Israel is also responsible for putting Palestinians into those zones, because that many people wouldn't move voluntarily into an area that can't sustain them.
Their situation has been likened to that of a prison, and the comparison is quite apt. In a prison, the wardens are almost completely responsible for anything that happens inside.
It's hard to choose language that doesn't carry an inciting valence for someone. I'm not trying to make a "which one's worse, or more at fault" argument; I'm saying that when you're in a bad situation, you can languish in your victimhood, let your hate fester, and do nothing productive to improve your situation, or you can direct some of that energy into positive pursuits. (I speak from personal experience of a culture that struggles with moving past its self-definition as a victim.)
The example I gave was of some people refusing to put in the work to generating their own power, thus perpetuating their dependence on Israel-provided power sources. The situation in Gaza is not a pure function of Israel's actions, but a very complex maelstrom of conflicting cultures, values, and priorities.
- Gaza has a restricted fishing zone.
- There are to date 4 missiles casualties in 2019, maybe switch the TA scooters example to something else.
I would much rather see Israel and Palestine at peace, but what's also forgotten is that Israel created its own monster.[1] Israel's right wing government will do anything it can [2] to undermine Palestine's legitimacy so long as they don't have to confront difficult choices.
1. https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-c...
2. https://www.thenation.com/article/how-israel-spies-on-us-cit...
My statement explicitly didn't put the blame on either side, though both probably carry a lot.
And "Palestinians elected Hamas" is in my opinion a useless oversimplification.
It bothers me that the term “capitalism” is being overloaded to mean “patents and intellectual property”.
Other than that, this is a fantastic read, and it sounds like they are doing great work.
Capitalism describes a social organization where some people (the capitalists) own the means of production whereas most people are working for them. And nowadays, the «means of productions» are mostly in the form of patents and intellectual property (as most companies almost never build anything themselves[1], and pay contractors to build stuff for them).
[1] Apple don't build Mac, Mc Donald's don't operate most of its restaurants, car manufacturers merely attach together a bunch of spare pieces built by contractors, etc.
You describe a general oligarchy.
The point is that capital is not defined as the property of the capitalists. There are virtually no pure "capitalists" in the sense that they only own capital and do no work around that capital.
In developed countries there aren't even that many pure workers, because most workers own insurance policies, some "means of production" or even equity in a company or two.
The problems which are often called "capitalism" are in my opinion more about a power disequilibrium causing exploitation, especially using capital as power to take capital away from poorer people or distributing the value gain in a way that is perceived as inequitable.
Capitalism is indeed a form of oligarchy, I don't think this is a controversial view.
Oligarchies can be justified by different reasons: religion, lineage, etc. In the case of Capitalism, it's an oligarchy legitimated by the “merit” of the dominant, who were somehow chosen in the great market competition.
The point is that any form of oligarchy means redistribution of wealth from the powerless to the powerful.
And capitalism is not about "merit" but about possession. Lots of "Capitalists" (by which I mean people who derive most of their income from capital investments rather than labor) have inherited much or most of their wealth. Merit is not a requirement. Enough property to exert power and therefore redistribute wealth however is.
“Merit” isn't a real thing, but it's the mythical value that's used as a moral justification of the current state of societies. Like virtue, honor or faith in other kind of oligarchies.
> Capitalism describes a social organization where some people (the capitalists) own the means of production whereas most people are working for them.
This is not accurate. Capitalism describes a system where people are free to own means of production. A hypothetical system where everyone owns some means of production, would still be capitalism.
> A hypothetical system where everyone owns some means of production, would still be capitalism.
No, it wouldn't, because it is marketable ownership of the means of production that defines capitalism; that is, it is the buying and selling, not the ownership alone, that is key (particularly, historically, the marketability of the means of production is a key factor distinguishing capitalism from feudalism, in which much of the means of production was owned but attached to entailments which the current owners were not free to alienate.)
For a version of your example, if everyone owned a fixed, equal share of the means of production which was not marketable, that would be an implementation of socialism.
> No, it wouldn't, because it is marketable ownership
I have to be sincere, I never saw this definition involving marketability anywhere, this is new for me. Perhaps it's really like you say, but that's not the definition I had, nor the one I see as the generally accepted one when checking up the definition of capitalism.
> For a version of your example, if everyone owned a fixed
But that is the thing, it isn't fixed. You are free to manage it, sell it, buy it, as you wish. That's why it's an hypothetical situation, where everyone would end up with a part voluntarily and not forced by the state.
If people are free to buy and sell, "everyone owns some" is a description of some states of the system, not the system itself.
You say this:
> I never saw this definition involving marketability anywhere, this is new for me. Perhaps it's really like you say, but that's not the definition I had
But then also this about your hypothetical about a “capitalist” system where “everyone owns capital” which makes it capitalist as opposed to socialist:
> You are free to manage it, sell it, buy it, as you wish.
You seem to explicitly recognize that marketability—the right to buy and sell—is an essential element of the kind of capital ownership that defines capitalism in the same post that you claim that it isn't.
My bad I misunderstood your answer to my first comment. I understood you were taking about the marketability of the produce, not of the means of production.
In any case, that is the reasoning of my second point when originally answering to you: A hypothetic situation where most people would own means of production, would still be capitalism when means of production are free to exchange hands.
That is too say: it's capitalism by definition as long as the means of production can exchange hands freely, it doesn't matter if they are all concentrated on the possession of a few or not.
> it's capitalism by definition as long as the means of production can exchange hands freely, it doesn't matter if they are all concentrated on the possession of a few or not.
If they can be freely exchanged, absent active as social management if distribution (which is not capitalism), they will become narrowly concentrated over time. Broad distribution is not a stable condition.
> Capitalism describes a system where people are free to own means of production.
That's a fairly broad definition, so broad you lose all the meaning. By this definition, half of socialism (all but Marxism-Leninism) counts as Capitalism. Same for many economic system around the world since the beginning of History, while historians unanimously describes Capitalism as born in the late Middle-age/Renaissance in Europe (they don't agree where though, some talk about the Protestant counties (Max Weber), others think it was born in northern Italy (Fernand Braudel), while some consider the Jewish community as being the cradle of Capitalism).
I think your definition is highly influenced by the US anticommunist propaganda of the world war, who tried to create a dichotomy between Capitalism and the totalitarian communism. The reality is way more complex than this black-and-white narrative.
I agree, I prefer to use the term 'modern capitalism' to refer to the current implementation.
If one wasn't attempting to make money from others, and expect the State's help in doing so, it would make no sense for IP to exist as a concept.
It's like when people say "competition is good for innovation". HN (the hobbiest stuff featured here, not the venture capitalist stuff) is proof that people will always do stuff for the fun of it. Hobbiests aren't competing - they're cooperating. Cooperation is far better for innovation than competition as you're helping each other and sharing resources, not making it harder for others to work in a similar area.
I don’t think I agree; hobbyists have rarely, if ever, made truly compelling end products. I don’t think hobbyists could have produced Uber in every city I visit, or the iPhone, or a usable desktop OS (not kernel - OS), or even the microprocessor.
To be fair, I think the interviewee is using the word “capitalism” to mean what some in the US today proclaim to be capitalism. I don’t have any citations for what I’m about to say, but I’ve heard of some US politicians describe the United States as a defender of both democracy and capitalism: compare this rhetoric with how similar US politicians describe “socialism” and “communism”. As a result, I interpret the interviewee simply continuing to make that association as incorrect as it is.
Using fucked up in the first sentence, not in quotes, gave me something like the feeling that reading Dante in Italian instead of Latin must have given his audience.
I know exactly what you mean. And yet after a page worth of text I felt like the editor made the right call: the text would have lost a bit of its soul if they had redacted it in a socially more accepted way.
I don't think it was the wrong call, I was just surprised.