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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • We dont know how much power they have, it’s illegal to know:

    | Due to secrecy laws, it is extremely hard to find documentary evidence of the queen’s exercise of influence. In the United Kingdom, government documents that “relate to” communications with the sovereign or the next two persons in line to the throne, as well as palace officials acting on their behalf, are subject to an absolute exemption from release under freedom of information or by government archives.

    • “relate to” is so broad and it means we have no idea what is going on.

    | But The Guardian has managed to expose a chink in this armour of secrecy. In the UK’s National Archives, it discovered documents from 1973 showing the queen’s personal solicitor lobbied public servants to change a proposed law so that it would not allow companies, or the public, to learn of the queen’s shareholdings in Britain. The gambit succeeded, and the draft bill was changed to suit the queen’s wishes. Perhaps these documents escaped the secrecy embargo because they involved communications with a private solicitor, rather than palace officials

    https://theconversation.com/the-queens-gambit-new-evidence-shows-how-her-majesty-wields-influence-on-legislation-154818


  • Australia already spends time and money maintaining the English monarch as the head of state. And it’s not a ceremonial position; the governor-general has reserve powers, such as the ability to remove office holders, like in 1975. It is only convention, not law that appoints and makes the GG act on the PMs ‘recommendations’ rather than the Monarch; the description of the office has not been rewritten. We can’t rely on convention to govern a country and need to have explicit laws that match our ideals of how a democracy should behave. It’s unexploded ordinance that should be cleaned up… let’s do that rather than spending our time and money changing all the pictures on the money, and the pronouns on all the legal documents each time a monarch croaks.



  • her status and authority, unfortunately, make her an acceptable target

    Agreed, but It’s really more that she’s a complete arsehole. As a nimby mining magnate, she is a sponsor of organised climate denialism and vocal about it herself, a race she clearly has a horse in. She’s also an active libertarian who wants to further dismantle the welfare system, and reduce taxation, and wants Australian workers to be cool like Africans and work for $2 a day. And a vocal Trump supporter.

    It’s not the painting that makes her ugly, it’s her behaviour and ideology.









  • I know a lot of young people these days that have to live in crowded share houses because there’s nothing else they can afford in the area where they work, and still 70%+ of their income goes towards rent and board.

    Where I’m from, the cost of living has skyrocketed compared to when I was starting out, but the wages haven’t changed. I’ve benefited greatly from that due to capital gains, but it makes it a lot harder for Gen Z to achieve the same thing, even if they do scrimp and save. I can understand people being demoralised and living for today instead, as it seems impossible to improve your position by much.


  • SuperApples@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlWhy are folks so anti-capitalist?
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    1 year ago

    Some great answers here so I’ll do something different and I’ll give myself as a real-world example.

    As a young adult, through a twist of luck, I found a cheap place to rent, so was able save a good amount of my income. I used that saving to get a loan, buy property, and used that property to get a loan and buy a property, and then do it once again. A short while later I now have no debt, can sit on my arse browsing lemmy in Bali (exploiting geo-arbitrage), and live off the market-rate rents my tenants pay back home.

    If my tenants didn’t have to pay market-rate rents, they too might be able save some cash and become capitalists themselves. I could lower the rent, but then I would have to get a job and actually earn my living again. People born into wealth can even skip that step of having to earn their initial capital.

    But whats the point of owning income producing assets (like property, or business) if you’re not improving your situation with it? The ONLY benefit of the capitalist system is that it allows the capitalist to reap the benefits of other’s work, thus reducing the burden of the capitalist to work themself.

    It’s a ridiculous situation, I should not be able to live as I do, simply because I got a lucky break at the start of my working life, an opportunity that is given to the very few. The system should change.


  • This is my thinking, let me know if you see any issues with my interpretation:

    First line of Wikipedia Left-wing politics: Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy as a whole.

    First list of Wikiepdia Authoritarianism: Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting.

    By these definitions, Left-wing politics should want to evenly distribute power democratically, whereas authoritarianism wants to centralise power in a single entity such as a the military or a dictator.

    The perpetual dictatorship of the proletariat in Marxist-Leninism is functionally indifferent from the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The authoritarian leadership just becomes the new bourgeoisie.




  • Motoo Fujiwara, lead singer/composer of Bump of Chicken.

    He was good friends with a friend of mine so we went out to dinner and hung out in his apartment. He’d just turned down the offer to write an opening song for One Piece, because he’d never heard of it, and was regretting it immensely (as a consolation they did the ending of the 2003 movie).

    Working in games I’ve worked with more famous people, like Tim Curry and Billy West, but never met any of them. Still cool to see your name in the same credits roll :D.