Everyone thinks they know better and investor money has to go somewhere for taxation purposes.

As an aside, S&P500 index is the only investment worth making for USAmericans who aren’t in congress.

This is a LEGO advertisement, just so everyone is aware. I can’t find info on how the polling worked so it’s unclear how the job options were chosen. But, it doesn’t seem like the kids were allowed to input their own answers—rather there was a list of jobs and respondents were told to pick 3.

There are plenty of reasons to object to the US/UK education systems so we dont need to rely on something intended to sell LEGO model rockets. Not to mention, being pessimistic is a choice and begets inaction. We can’t fall victim to nihilism lest we become nothing but annoying gadfly social critics, talking about how obviously right we are as the world ends to climate change and open combat between multinational corporations.

Anyway, this advert is pretty clever. Creating a leading poll to convince parents they need to buy their kids legos to prevent the Chinese from taking over space managed to get them all sorts of free media coverage—not to mention random shares from people like us.

The imperialist (ie late colonialist) relationship at the very least substantially defines the current capitalist system. It doesn’t seem possible for the conditions that exist now to arise any other way.

As far as whether or not capitalism in any form would ever develop in a world without colonialism, it’s hard for me to say considering my limited knowledge. A couple things to consider though:

Profit for business, ie extraction of additional value over competing firms, is essentially only decided by labor cost—materials and technology end up costing everyone about the same at scale. Labor exploitation would be obvious in a society that cannot use imperialism to export economic burdens and obfuscate social relationships. This clear opposition between worker and capitalist could prevent capitalism from arising or maybe only lead to a capitalism similar to ours but with a significantly shorter lifespan.

I’m majorly spitballing and hopefully someone more knowledgeable about early capitalist history/development will share their perspective.

Maybe send an email then. Uploading any personal content to a public server has always been frowned upon at places I’ve worked so it’s not crazy to contact the guy—especially if your job is in anyway related to network security or other IT type work.

Consider if it’s worth having these conversations in the first place. Realize the best you can accomplish is to razz your conservative relatives a bit. If you think they can take it without it becoming a significant issue, the communist manifesto has brought more people around to socialism than anything else so start there. Don’t cite anything specific as that’ll just cause them to shutoff completely in most cases, play the rhetorical game foremost. If they act like they’re already super familiar with Marxism, ask them about their thoughts on historical materialism or maybe the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in capitalist economies—asking about specific core Marxist concepts is rhetorically useful since it’s impossible to learn about Marx and not have encountered these phrases, making it a good way to reveal their actual knowledge. Don’t take the debates too seriously and if people start to lose their cool consider just letting it go.

What’re you hoping to accomplish? I can’t imagine the guy reacting well to randomly being confronted by a stranger.

You’re definitely not wrong. Admittedly my days of owning boxes of miniatures is long over, so my battletech knowledge does not extend beyond the late 2000s. Maybe it’s even worse now. Not to mention any sort of narrative lore controlled by a big business that hires working writers to fill out plot points will inevitably end up falling back on tired sci-fi tropes—many of which were solidified during the Cold War era.

is it a problem that all the various organizations in battletech are near uniformly morally detestable? I don’t think anyone is positively depicted outside of stories told from the perspective of individuals in the organizations, who of course view themselves favorably.

When it comes to mindless mono-gendered pop ensembles, the DPRK continues to uphold Frankie Valli and the four seasons above all others.