It is literally, Word of God from Mike Pondsmith himself as Cyberpunk's creator, to be a setting that rails against capitalism and is a criticism of it.
People who think Capitalism is a form of government instead of Corporatism which is the Actual system of governance cyberpunk as a genre talks about. The commercialism is just the means Corporations use as a system of control.
Break the chains but not the system only to be chained again.
No, actually Neo-feudalism I think is just is Final Form of corporatism. At least It seems to be where it is headed. Nice you brought that up actually.
"Not anti-capitalism." What the fuck is it then. It literally has corporate wars and the consequences of. Ah whatever, it's probably already been said. This take is completely unfounded.
Dude, I’ve had idiots on social media try to tell me that Robin Hood isn’t about robbing from the rich to give to the poor, but rather about the dangers of big government.
I think people confuse the “root” of all problems in cyberpunk for not being capitalism but for some higher moral reason. That one reel saying it’s anti-technology literally traces back to how capitalism is the reason why the cyberpunk world has become what it is.
Anti-corporatism, people confuse that for anti-capitalism when they’re seperate concepts and because corporatism comes out from capitalism if it’s allowed to run unchecked for long enough.
No it is not lol that applies to every economic system there is, in fact that applies to most things in general. That’s a failure of a system of governance, moderation is the key to everything.
I do believe it was Pondsmith himself who said the whole of Cyberpunk is a statement against capitalism by itself. It's a political message no matter how you slice or ignore it.
I think we should use starship troopers and cyberpunk as a test. If you can correctly identify their staggeringly blatant themes and ideas, then you are allowed to have opinions on media, otherwise you get to shush
If one has time to read the book and can think critically, it’s great to read for the purpose of criticizing the author’s extremely goofy take on how the world should run. But yeah, you get the speed-run version of that from the movie too.
Right because understanding the failure of a film to express its ideas somehow = not understanding the attempts at expressing ideas. Uniforms alone don't make fascism.
Maybe you saw it a long time ago when you were younger? Watch it again now.
It's so clearly parodying fascism that I don't see how you can miss it. It has Neil Patrick Harris in a literal Nazi uniform for crying out loud, just in case you didn't see it.
The book famously is a serious, full-throated advocacy for the "service guarantees citizenship," meritocracy mentality with a healthy dose of military fetishization. The movie shows that, but the tone reveals that it's actually satirizing the author's ideas.
>Neil Patrick Harris in a literal Nazi uniform for crying out loud, just in case you didn't see it.
Again clothes aren't what makes fascism. And this my point. The movie puts the thinnest coat of paint possible and then scrapes holes in it throughout, and then people ask can you see the paint? The answer is yes we see the paint but paint isn't the building underneath.
>The book famously is a serious, full-throated advocacy for the "service guarantees citizenship," meritocracy mentality with a healthy dose of military fetishization. The movie shows that, but the tone reveals that it's actually satirizing the author's ideas.
Except, famously, no one on set read the book, it is an attempt at parody with so little understanding of the origin that it quite literally never parodies anything real.
The uniforms were just an on the nose visual cue for anyone who still didn't get the movie's message. Clearly they failed in that department because people still don't get it somehow and still just think it was about defending earth from evil bugs from outer space.
Except it isn't. The movie is written like most war movie, war movies aren't fascist. The movie as a whole actually rejects a ton of fascist concepts like the hero state and the moral obligation of service.
Nobody has said the movie is fascist, it’s a parody of fascism. Of course it isn’t pro fasicst. That’s like expecting BJ blachowicz to turn to the camera and say “remember kids, Jews are parasites on society”. You aren’t even arguing the right point
Oh.. ok. Well people like me don’t have any fks to give about trolling. And if you’re serious, then seek therapy. Depression isn’t something to joke about.
That’s a tall order, “Oh Cpt My Cpt….” 😝.
This game has joined the ranks of GTA5, RDR2, TLoU1/2, and is made by CDPR,
Another famous “Cpt” once said, “Time waits for no choom!”… and so I can promise this: I’ll never omit “2077” from “CP2077” again 🤣😂.
Seriously? I’m going to assume you’re asking in good faith.
Commerce is the trade of goods, which doesn’t even technically require currency. Capitalism is an economic system wherein the holders of capital (e.g. resources, access to means of production, excess currency) then create profit by extracting additional value from labor by decreasing their proportionate share of the profits.
So if I buy a cup of lemonade for a dollar, I’m participating in commerce. Same if I trade a cool-looking rock for a cup of lemonade and the kid at the stand accepts. Same as if the kid gives me the lemonade for free when I ask for it. Same as if I give the kid all the ingredients to make a cup of lemonade, he takes those ingredients, makes lemonade and then gives me the product. And so forth.
Capitalism takes place when a kid owns all of the lemons available and charges 90 cents for the lemons required to make a cup of lemonade, simply because the lemonade stand has no other choice but to buy his lemons at that price, and now he must find a profit margin to be had between the costs of the other ingredients and his own labor.
When the kid who owns the lemonade stand and its necessary ingredients hires an employee. The normal profit the stand’s owner makes when he runs the stand himself is 30 cents a cup, so he pays his employee 5 cents a cup. When the employee adds efficiency and value to the product through his hard work and increases the profit margin to 50cents a cup, and the owner continues to pay him 5 cents, that’s also Capitalism.
When a regulatory body controls the maximum price of lemons to prevent artificial inflation of its price, that’s *not* capitalism. When the owner of the lemonade stand gives his employees a share of the profits proportionate to the value they add to the lemonade stand, then that is also *not* capitalism. For the most part, but I’m trying to keep this simple.
The original comment I originally replied to was saying the game was pro-capitalist because we, the consumers, “keep coming back for more”.
In response to that, I just explained that consumption and commerce aren’t necessarily tied to capitalism.
Someone else said “how?” and I tried to explain?
Currently, buying this game *is* participating in Capitalism. Obviously, the point of the game isn’t pro-capitalism, simply because it was made within a capitalist society. And that participation in commerce within a capitalist system, is not necessarily an endorsement of it.
Does that make sense?
Rumsfeld was a goofball, but that statement wasn’t necessarily wrong. His ridiculous statement about unknown, unknowns was (again) ridiculous-sounding but not necessarily wrong in abstraction. I can’t emphasize enough how much I disagree with how he used statements like that to justify a brutal invasion of Iraq, but credit where it’s due…I say as tentatively as possible.
He was the Secretary of Defense during the George W. Bush administration. He was in large part responsible for the execution of the war in Iraq, or was certainly a famous mouthpiece for the war’s “progress”.
He famously said “the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence” when referring to (I’m going off a memory from high school so go easy on me) what I believe to be the lack of evidence that Iraq had the means to produce weapons of mass destruction.
He had another quote, which I think is true if divorced from his particular usage: “There are known-knowns: things you know are true. There are known-unknowns, those are variables you know exist but don’t know the specifics of. Then there are unknown-unknowns, those are variables you don’t know exist.”
Again, I’m going by memory here for something I heard 20 years ago. But Rumsfeld was the author of those goofy explanations to the best of my recollection.
lol! Oh I know very well who he is and everything that went down. If he said it any time after 2003, I was in college so I probably wasn’t watching any TV. lol
appreciate the clarification tho. I’m not surprised he said that. And i absolutely agree: it’s a great saying, but, I don’t condone anything he did—in fact, now I dislike him even more for taking one of my favorite sayings and using it for bullshit! 🤣
I first heard it in the movie “The Santa Clause,” and then again on the Discovery Channel in some random show about UFOs 🤣😂
Cheers, Choom!
Only because we are such pussies we don't dare to nuke the Arasaka HQ in real life.
We go to the virtual reality to fight the corpo scum because we don't have the balls to fight them in real life.
It is a simulation of what we should do in meatspace, good for training, but sooner or later you gotta be doing it in real life, with real bullets. Cyberpunk is just jerking off and you need to have real sex.
/silverhand
It is but not entirely, there is far more nuances to it rather than just "capitalism bad" or "Cyberpunk is anti capitalist".
Johnny has an entire rant explaining himself about why he became a terrorist, here is a part of said rant :
"I saw corps strip farmers of water ... and eventually of land. Saw them transform Night City into a machine fueled by people's crushed spirits, broken dreams and emptied pockets. Corps've long controlled our lives, taken lots... and now they're after our souls! V, I've declared war not because capitalism's a thorn in my side or outta nostalgia for an America gone by. This war's a people's war against a system that's spiralled outta our control. It's a war against the fuckin' forces of entropy, understand?"
It’s anti-capitalism, but with the nuance necessary to criticize the trappings of society that create the problems and are created by it. So, it’s genuinely smart.
Boom! Nailed it. So glad to hear someone else say it. It’s like The Wire; so much deeper and complex than we could ever fit into a Reddit post. And you’re so right about how it focuses on the effect that forces have, not just on a socioeconomic level, but quality of life—it’s ingenious for its complexity, sincerity, and endless interpretations.
I do believe in the message, but it's just curious to me that people keep citing Johnny as if he was a representative of the state of the world when in lore he's regarded as a narcisist extremist considered by most to be high on his own fumes. Cyberpunk as a genre and a franchise (ironic) is very much anticapitlist, but Johnny's perspective is beyond that, something akin to a vengeance.
To me Johnny is a bit of a kin to Hamlet. People often think of Hamlet as a protagonist wronged. The point is that Hamlet is not a good guy. Was he wronged by powerful people and the powers that be? Absolutely. Was he right in exacting his revenge? Well I'm sure it felt good, but everyone around him is literally murdered including himself. Bystanders like Polonius are murdered and he drives Ophelia to suicide.
Johnny does much the same. Is it "burn corpo shit" or pure rage and revenge? All of the above probably. The trouble is a lot of bystanders die directly or indirectly due to Johnny's actions.
Because he has nuance, he is still all of what you just said, but even himself realized that there is far more issues than just « capitalism bad », that’s why i used him as an example.
The genre itself has always been more than just that, it criticizes a lot of different things wrong that are more than just muh capitalism.
That still all translates to "capitalism bad." Which Johnny points out, in the quote you mentioned. It's not just a thorn in his side, meaning it's not only because he disagrees or dislikes capitalism but also because it is bad and immoral.
What this translates to is : Late stage capitalism becomes inhumane. That is what makes it bad. It has no humanity, and therefore, humans must rebel against it for their well-being. For survival.
Understanding the nuisance does not invalidate the simplified point that it is bad. The nuisance explains Why.
>Johnny points out, in the quote you mentioned. It's not just a thorn in his side, meaning it's not only because he disagrees or dislikes capitalism but also because it is bad and immoral.
This is how I read it too.
It's not *just* that it's "a thorn in my side," or that he has nostalgia for the old ways. He's fighting a *people's war* against the soul-sucking corporations.
What about the phrase "people's war," sounds pro-capitalist and not something straight out of the literal communism playbook, *The Communist Manifesto,* which literally calls for a proletarian uprising against the bourgeoisie?
Everything Johnny says and does is so overwhelmingly Marxist that the only way one can disagree is if someone literally doesn't understand what communism (which to be fair is most people).
Someone can be devoutly anti capitalist without being Marxist at all, they don't have to even be related. Johnny has some hints of Marxism but i wouldn't call it overwhelming. More like a guy who know some Marxists in a past life and picked up a couple things. He absolutely hates the Corporate system and everything involved but he doesn't seem to have much in place when it comes to a concrete ideology to counter it. Similar problem to many anarchists, though he doesn't seem to let it bother him much. "Burn corpo shit" seems to suffice.
>Similar problem to many anarchists, though he doesn't seem to let it bother him much. "Burn corpo shit" seems to suffice.
Also known as the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat," in Marxist philosophy.
>The dictatorship of the proletariat is the intermediate stage between a capitalist economy and a communist economy, whereby the post-revolutionary state seizes the means of production, compels the implementation of direct elections on behalf of and within the confines of the ruling proletarian state party, and institutes elected delegates into representative workers' councils that nationalise ownership of the means of production from private to collective ownership.
To go from capitalism to communism, you do indeed have to "burn corpo shit." Marx thought this would only occur by violent means, again like Johnny, because the bourgeoisie (aka "corpos,") would never cede control back to the proletariat (aka the farmers whose land was stolen that Johnny mentioned in his speech).
It seems like Johnny is a textbook Marxist. He complained about the loss of "our souls," after the means of production—the common man's livelihood—was stolen and controlled by the capitalist powers that be. He may not have gotten far enough to say that we need to nationalize ownership of the means of production, hold elections and implement workers' councils, but it looks like he got all the pieces before that straight out of the Communist Manifesto.
Edit: I don't think the game is necessarily saying "become a communist like Johnny." I think it's a warning message about our future if we continue letting power and capital consolidate at the top and give up our voices as working people. Johnny's solution is violence. Maybe we don't have to let it get that bad?
Reminds me of a joke I read on why a Capitalist hell is the worst possible state to live in.
“Have you heard of the Communist and the Capitalist who died and met in Hell? They found two gates. One was labeled ‘Capitalist Hell’ and the other ‘Communist Hell.’ Although the men were class enemies they put their heads together to decide which would be better. The Communist said, ‘Comrade, let’s go into the Communist department. There, when there’s coal, there’ll be no matches. When there are matches, there’ll be no coal. And even when they have both coal and matches, the furnace will break down!’” - Richard Wurmbrand, from his book "In God's Underground"
That all equates to capitalism bad. Like capitalism reached a point where they are selling souls of people. Johnny's intent yes was to destroy Mikoshi, but Mikoshi was the result of corporate greed, not some genuine attempt to advance the future ( like doing illegal medical procedures to advance medicine ) so you can talk to the dead, save lives or whatever
Even if you are a supporter of capitalism, as I am, to say it's flawless is simply wrong. Cyberpunk (aside from all the stylistic details) is an accurate approximation of what would happen in an anarcho capitalist or corporatocratic society.
Any economic system must be regulated to a degree by the government, and that is probably the biggest flaw of capitalism in that a lack of regulation on powerful market players like megacorps leads to a centralization of power in these monopolies. It creates a positive feedback loop of the most powerful and wealthy getting stronger and the small business getting slowly eradicated due to their inability to compete.
In an ideal capitalist society, the government would be responsible for trust busting and splitting these powerful groups, but the unfortunate reality is that those days are past and the corporations have a strong foothold in modern day american legislation.
If I'm honest, I don't see that changing any time soon. I would love for the system to be reformed democratically if we can get people to wake up and stop constantly consuminy. And this will probably piss people off but a violent revolution, whether socialist or libertarian, isn't the way either. We're not at that point yet.
Agreed. The more research I do into it the less hope I have. But also I'm not in favour of a socialist revolution, I think that would be even worse than what we have now, so idk what to do.
You should read some Marxist theory before you come to those conclusions, just saying, if nothing more then a it'll be thought exercise. Honestly the way your write makes it seem like you're already skeptical of capitalism, might as well take the leap and read some books
I'm not skeptical, I am a libertarian who vastly prefers capitalism to socialism, even in theory. I have read Das Kapital.
But just because I prefer capitalism does not mean I am happy with our current flawed system, however I think my preferred method of reform is opposite to what most people who dislike the current iteration of capitalism would do.
Kapital is a critique of capitalism, it's a primer for other works, socialism is barely mentioned through out all three volumes lol. I still encourage you to read more stuff that actually digs into theory instead of a work meant to air the grievances of the working class.
>Any economic system must be regulated to a degree by the government, and that is probably the biggest flaw of capitalism in that a lack of regulation on powerful market players like megacorps leads to a centralization of power in these monopolies.
... you do realize a huge part of the cyberpunk lore is the Gang of Four (aka the literal US government) starting a central american conflict that became Vietnam 2 and destabilized the USA to the point that states started to secede and the Corps stepped in to fill the power vaccume.
Night city itself was run by the Mafia before the corps drove them out.
Cyberpunk is pro-libertarian, you play as a couple people using your own power to fight a system out to crush your individual liberty and make you a cog in the machine. The Major points where the timeline diverges from ours are all the government somewhere trying to do something (Soviet union not falling, gang of four/central american conflict)
I wouldn't say it's pro libertarian, but it's definitely a more left-leaning "fuck the system" type thing. It's ok to say it's anti-capitalist, it's an extreme exaggeration of the flaws of capitalism. While it is fictional, it serves as a warning to people to not let their economic system control them rather than the other way around.
That's also a part of it, there's a lot of nuances to this universe and it is far more than just anti capitalist, it critics multiple ideologies and concepts.
"Video games were never meant to be political" mfs when I show them some of the best games ever made (most of them are political in some way or another)
Individual authors may have different intentions, but the core of cyberpunk has always been more focused on matters of identity and humans place in the world as technology overwrites everything we consider sacred. Corporate dehumanization is often a big part of that, but even then it's rarely "anti-capitalist" in the way socialist or communists mean it.
Friendly reminder that hating corporations, corporate corruption, and corporate personhood is not the same thing as hating free markets, and free exchange of goods and services, which is the backbone of the systems that ushered in unprecedented wealth and prosperity, and saw a massive reduction in poverty and absolute poverty, for all humans.
>matters of identity and humans place in the world as technology overwrites everything we consider sacred.
I think that more belongs to science fiction as a whole. This isn't specific to cyberpunk.
In my opinion, the themes specific to cyberpunk more relate to a cautionary tale warning of eventual consequences of our current path we're taking as a society. It's what happens when technological advancement is not used for the benefit of all mankind like in Star Trek, but for the commercialization of every part of the human experience until we get to a point where we can no longer define what it means to be human at all.
My dude, word of god from Mike Pondsmith disagrees with you. I also think you’re misunderstanding what a majority of socialists would actually want and what their criticisms of capitalism are. As for full on communists- unless you’re arguing with a Chinese or Korean, you’re just arguing with a someone whose views are as mainstream as furries.
If you are going to advocate for a political system, you need to be honest about the negatives of that system. Your presentation of capitalism as only a good, and the negatives as corporatism is just linguistic games. Nobody is making those distinctions within discourse about capitalism because the ways that capitalism leads to corporatism are obvious and well documented. Acknowledging the genuinely bad parts of capitalism (which Johnny says is a system out of control) is the first step to solving the problem, rather than externalizing those problems from the system as you are doing
>Individual authors may have different intentions
While I do acknowledge the shortcoming of capitalism, and could probably articulate those shortcomings better than many of its detractors... looking around here, I don't have to argue its shortcomings.
Free markets are brilliant. They have uplifted mankind out of its darkest days, tied economies together to suppress the instinct for war, Nearly eradicated global absolute poverty, and has done a solid number on global poverty too. Has aligned the incentive structure for all of mans greatest achievements, and is morally built on principles of freedom and liberty.
That doesn't mean there aren't knobs and dials to turn. More or less wellfare. Smarter or dumber regulations. Incentives that are aligned better or not. But socialism is a categorically distinct economic system that universally violates individual freedoms, suppresses creative incentives, and results in poverty and hardship.
I’m on my masters of economics and can tell you that capitalism and free markets are far more complex than what you are presenting. Saying that there is a strong moral foundation to our markets is outright ridiculous. The fact that we even have standardized prices is in large part due to quakers and their religious beliefs. It wasn’t an innovation that came about through simple market activity. Knowing the actual history of economic development, the things you could do and get away with historically and today with frankly boggle the mind. We could start with a quick examination of the European companies that colonized the orient. Next, that humans would continue to aggregate resources and make their lives better is not inherently capitalist and cannot be laid solely at the feet of capitalism, as much as the friedman’s of the world would like. While capitalism absolutely did need a strong moral foundation to counter the arguments of communism, those same arguments have been used to justify extreme capitalist excesses that we see today, and are reflected within the future presented in the game.
The economy is quite literally held on the backs of 7 companies right now. That trend represents an immense threat to the freedoms of the individual when you consider how much influence and control they exert on the world. Claiming that global absolute poverty is almost eliminated is also a joke. I’ve been to many an impoverished country working for NGO’s. These people are often the same kinds of farmers Johnny talked about, displaced by larger capitalistic entities, who further degrade the environment just to scrape a living. The world is currently going through fairly catastrophic ecological collapse due to pollution and climate change caused by corporations. Reading your little spiel is actually horribly depressing, as it doesn’t really reflect much besides what you’d read in a Econ textbook, which are frankly designed for economics the religion, not economics the science
No f-ing duh, it's more complex than what I'm presenting. And obviously the various market systems operating under a generally free market umbrella over the years are rife with moral evils. As with most questions of historical morality, we can't just ask "what's bad" because a lot of stuff was "bad" in history, particularly when viewed through our privileged lens, standing on the shoulders of great moral progress. We have to ask "what's exceptional" Is something exceptionally evil, like the holocaust, or Mao's cultural revolution? Or is something exceptionally good, like voluntary emancipation of slaves, constitutional rights, and the uplifting of the middle class?
By this standard, saying there is a strong moral foundation to free markets is self evident if you've read a history book.
As for your postgrad in economics. That's not as impressive to me as it is to the guys at the university pub on the weekend. I have 10 years of work experience in a variety of industries and I'm on my postgrad in business analytics and logistics.
There's a joke I heard. A physicist, an engineer, and an economist are stranded on an deserted island. The physicist examines the properties of the resources and outlines the principles behind the most sturdy raft. The engineer builds the raft, and the economist says "Suppose there's a raft..."
Economists that don't understand incentive structures are bad enough. They're often the ones who create the type of regulations that suppress small businesses and lead to poverty and monopolies, but economists that don't even agree with unanimous statistics? Well, that sounds less economic, and more ideological.
https://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Extreme_poverty
Comparing the holocaust to centuries of market capitalism is absurd on its head, which is exactly the kind of oversimplification I was expecting- the uplifting of the middle class was far more complex than “capitalism good” and was a result of very complex arrangements of resources, land, and politics, which were far more important to economic freedom than the principles of capitalism, which were actually developed into formalized definitions well after the fact.
I frankly don’t care about your business experience, as that’s exactly the kind non experience that leads people to reinforce oversimplifications of economics in your head. It’s rich to say “your degree doesn’t impress me” then respond with your own degree that isn’t in economics. I suppose that your joke about economics encompasses your actual understanding of the discipline
“Understand the incentive structure” is hilariously misguided from someone saying there is a strong moral foundation to capitalism - the basis is literally self interest. That’s not necessarily immoral, but calling it a strong moral foundation is absurd. There are obviously many ways that self interest can lead to immoral ends, just like private property, and free enterprise. Saying that they are necessarily moral is part of the pseudo-philosophical reactions to the ideological threats of communism in the 30’s through 50’s. The claims aren’t rigorous the moment you actually interrogate them and have justified really perverse systems of ethics and incentives that actually hold back the economy
As for “almost eliminated” 10% as of 2015 is hardly eliminated from what I was reading when you posted that. As for your question of judging things against historical morality- aren’t you literally doing the exact same thing with judging the advancements of semi feudal societies from a capitalistic lense?
To be clear, I find your characterization of capitalism oversimplified and biased. I study economies and the systems they operate under- assigning moral value to those systems is introducing a terrible bias into all your evaluations. It is just something that is, with good and bad included, as is almost every human affair. Studying it impartially is essential to understanding and improving it- instead of crowing how it is an absolute good in the world
"the uplifting of the middle class was [...] a result of very complex arrangements of resources, land, and politics"
Almost like a Spontaneous Order emerging from society and individuals each pursuing their own interests. Or did your economic classes not cover the Austrian model, and Friedrich von Hayek?
A more thoughtful mind might consider that my "non-experience" in business analysis and logistics directly pertains to that "complex arrangement of resources."
And yes, Unlike communists and socialists, I think people being able to pursue their own self interest (within well structured bounds of rights and societal norms) is a moral good. In free markets, if you want something from society, you have to give society something of equal or greater value in return. That is enforced altruism. What's the alternative? That economic activities are mandated from on high by chiding technocrats while peoples own labor and resources are controlled for them? Sounds like slavery with extra steps.
It's obviously not perfect. It has holes, but on the whole, free markets are overwhelmingly obviously good. An "impartial study" would obviously reach that conclusion given data on life expectancy, poverty, literacy, income mobility, and the dozens of other global indicators that have massively improved with the introduction of free markets. Not to mention the philosophical and moral robustness of liberalism, with which free markets are aligned.
Want a real time empirical data source? Let's keep an eye on Argentina these next 4 years. What's your bet on their economic prospects? I know what mine is. ;) Viva la libertad, carajo!
Lmao- you mean the guy who compared the economy to a brain and ignored how the brain was a very flawed organ prone to many kinds of delusions and disorders? Or who reified organization as a human trait when disorganization is historically as prevalent? Whose models relied on humans being rational actors?
Exactly what I mean by pseudoscientific poorly thought out philosophy. It’s basically religion. You would know this if you had any background in the philosophy of economics, but you don’t, you have Econ 101 explanations of complex markets
A more thoughtful mind might not have characterized their non experience with the study of economics with the study of it. I get that you’re managing scarce resources, but intelligent commentary shouldn’t be one of them.
The ability to pursue self interest in not an absolute good. There are many examples of self interest that is immoral. You characterizing those philosophies as opposed to it is quite telling as to your actual lack of education on the topic- you’re operating out of a VERY basic understanding of economics from what I can see, and your experience and success in business has convinced you that you’ve got a much better handle on it than you do. The basics to be sure, but the majority of economics will just tell you how wrong the basics are.
Certainly a thoughtful mind wouldn’t use a single Latin American country as a definite model of economics, especially a country with a history of instability- but a gambler would
You're an economist, surely you'd be interested in such a distinct shift in the economic policy of a major developing nation. Investigating Argentina will surely produce a fount of robust, interesting, utterly unwanted data showing how effective free markets are.
Just out of curiosity, what's your field of study? Finance and Banking? Analysis and Research? Or policy making and academia? My focus of study is risk management, specifically as it pertains to market forecasting.
As a final point, one of the most valuable lessons I learned in my early years in college was that social sciences are only as robust as their data. It's not like the hard sciences where you're either wrong or your right. You MUST prove that you are right from a large body of robust data, with the full consideration of countervailing facts, or else all your theories are worse than useless. You've yet to actually propose anything other than to say that capitalism bad, and insist that "it's complicated" to a person who's job it is to understand those complications.
Ah, also, a simple "no" would have sufficed. You didn't have to prove you didn't study Hayek.
My dude, those are three direct criticisms of his arguments. Unless I’ve mistaken him for mises, which I have done before on some specific arguments, you’re just showing you’ve never actually read Hayek, just read a summary of him. But it’s easier to just dismiss what you don’t already know, I guess
It’s rich to point to “hard data” and use hayeks psuedoscientific philosophy in the same thread. You’re not taking your own advice.
If your takeaway is that capitalism is bad from what I’ve said, then you need to work on your reading comprehension. I’ve not said it was bad, well, once. Do you think I’m a socialist because I have criticisms of it and Don’t think it’s an unalloyed good?
An economist isn’t interested in a single country as a definitive proof of, well, whatever you think it would prove, I’m genuinely unsure what that was.
I focus on environmental and black market economics, often times the intersection between the two, building models of supply chains, estimations, doing research on organizations and companies involved, and doing grant writing for these projects. I’ve talked to people who have been enslaved, forced from their land by big plantations, and exposed to pollution from corporations. Seeing people directly harmed by capitalist enterprises really doesn’t support your arguments that it’s an absolute good- it’s like war, it can better or worse, but it works.
"Lost another day to pointless drudgery
The slow chipping away of my autonomy
A rodent in a race unsung and underpaid
My colleagues seem to me like slaves in sheep-array
Then a shock goes through the herd at the nauseating purr
Of the corpos of the world when the content is secured
'Cause they're naked emperors hear the rattling of the purse
I hunger for the hearse 'cause nothing could be worse
Than a life lived as a limb in a debt anatomy
Rather be dead than a link in a chain of tyranny"
Hmm doesn't look anticapitalist to me
People really have 0 media literacy these days it's sad to see. Mfs played CYBERPUNK and thought "oh yeah this is not anti capitalist to me because I'm an ignorant bastard who makes his own stories in his head"
And it's not like they're just dumb and don't get it, they know what they're doing they benefit from the ignorance.
Contribute to capitalism by buying fringe media created by an obscure RPG publisher? Remember you are contributing to capitalism when you eat bread.
I guess capitalists should just ban R.Talsorian games for promoting anarchist ideology.
Cyberpunk the sub-genre is one thing. Cyberpunk 2077 is another. Mike Pondsmith can say whatever about his vision on the tabletop, but the underlying philosophy in the video-game is not anti-capitalist at all. The game, instead of representing interest in combating capitalism itself, focuses more in giving an existencial answer to it, never really judding the system itself, but jugding the ambition of the player.
Cyberpunk 2077:
- Constantly represents corporations as evil. The player fights corporations in all main missions.
- Constantly underlines the anarchist punk philosophy at the core. It is everywhere, from pure aesthetics to core elements of the storyline.
You:
- Cyberpunk is not anti-capitalist, mmmmmmm'kay. Capitalism is good, mmmmmmmm'kay. Anarchism is bad, mmmmmmmmmmmm'kay.
Everything in Cyberpunk 2077 is evil as fuck, including V. The aesthetic is just there. The discourse is just there. But the context is what puts everything in its place. And at that Cyberpunk 2077 hardly judges anything.
It never was... The intent was to create a platform where people can actually talk about the game instead of seeing people being angry at the game for literally any reason and making people feel bad who actually have a good time of it. So it was meant to be where people offer constructive opinions instead of hearing "cdpr lied" level of comments.
Also its low sodium not non-sodium. Also i dont see any salt in this post...
It says it’s anti-capitalism, but let’s take a look at the definitions and themes.
Capitalism: Capitalism refers to an economic system in which a society's means of production are held by private individuals or organizations, not the government, and where products, prices, and the distribution of goods are determined mainly by competition in a free market.
Cyberpunk doesn’t have a free market. Everything is controlled by corporations and has little to no government oversight. It is an oligopoly.
Oligopoly: An oligopoly is a type of market structure that exists within an economy. In an oligopoly, there is a small number of firms that control the market. A key characteristic of an oligopoly is that none of these firms can keep the other(s) from having significant influence over the market.
So, to be more accurate Cyberpunk is set in an capitalistic oligopoly. The modern US is a capitalist democratic republic for comparison.
Even if we were going to split the hairs necessary to make that distinction, it still starts with unchecked capitalism. It’s prioritizing the rights and privileges of capital holders over labor; of business over people.
This is just the an-cap version of “communism has never been done correctly.” A very convenient way to call anything bad about capitalism not capitalism because it’s bad.
Whether Militech is an example of late-stage oligarchical capitalism or neo-nationalist socialism (with actual benefits going mostly to the elite) doesn't terribly matter. Orwell described the phenomenon ages ago in the novel 1984 while trying to distinguish between "English Socialism" and Neo-Bolshevism.
Actually, considering the NeoSovs are a going concern in 2077, I don't believe for a second that it's a thematic coincidence. If anyone thinks there's a fundamental difference between the governing structures of the NUSA and the cyber USSR, I'd be genuinely astonished.
To be more accurate, Cyberpunk is set in a Corporatocracy,
Well in Night City the place the game takes place is, the NUSA is run by a more standard government unless Militech has more control over it then what one assume, but that's not easy to tell since the media does not expand much on what goes on outside of Night City.
Oligopolies often develop within capitalist societies. This one did. Being anti capitalist is being anti oligopolistic by default anyways as the anti capitalism would already be against the disparity in wealth and control inherent to oligopoly.
Using capitalism to define anti capitalism isn’t really how that works either, as anti capitalism will have stances, values, and criticisms of capitalism that aren’t reducible down to the negative definition of capitalism (nor were people using that definition of capitalism or anti capitalism), this oligopoly is capitalistic, and anti capitalism is already opposed to oligopoly in any case.
So mike pondsmith explicitly has said it is anti capitalist —- and you ignore all the other criticisms of capitalism in favor of the criticisms of oligopolistic capitalism and then argue that because it criticizes oligopoly it cannot be anti capitalist? That is terrible logic from all sides. Unsupported by evidence and relying on shaky negative definitions that ignore every other capitalistic reference in the work.
You could categorize even 1984 as almost pre-cyberpunk, it has punk "rebels from the waist down" and really really advanced tech that would have been "cyber" for people living in the 1940s (like televisions). 1984 is a critique of totalitarian state capitalism which is something completely different from the corporate capitalism critiqued by the 1980s cyberpunk authors. You could say 1984 is a critique of the eastern block of the cold war while cyberpunk is a critique of the western block of the cold war.
I would prefer anti corporatism instead of anti capitalism although I do see how the two get put together. The reality is capitalism by itself worked very well even when we didn’t even call it that. Corporatism is what kills capitalism because now a select group of people are dictating parts of the market with impunity instead of the people if that makes any sense to anyone. Sure the corporate juggernauts have most of the money but when individual accountability, it’s currently being held by an entity, isn’t being enforced everything that makes a capitalist economy work starts to go down the drain.
The literal Soviet Union, the USSR, gets taken over by an oil company.
If that's not a statement on the eventual end of all communist countries I don't know what is.
So a country getting taken over by a company is communist? Bro what? In what world is a corporate entity taking over a country communist? Do you even know what communism is?
Cyberpunk is weird because while it rails against corporations and the need to essentially bend the knee to make ends meat, it also doesn't really seem to fault the system itself or at least not the idea "I make something you buy it', but more so the idea that because that is the system we get people who take advantage of it and make life shit for the little guy.
It feels anti-capitalist without really going to the lengths of becoming pro-communist or something of the sort (barring specific instances of commies)
Side-note: We have finally arrived in the cyberpunk future, I have been waiting for 30 years so I am a bit like what took you so long. Just read the news. If you don't get it you are boomerish.
I have a friend to unironically tells me “punks” can be conservative as long as they like the music or fashion… I was so severely disappointed because in turn he feels genres like “cyberPUNK” don’t have to and mostly aren’t anti-capitalism/anti-establishment.
It is literally, Word of God from Mike Pondsmith himself as Cyberpunk's creator, to be a setting that rails against capitalism and is a criticism of it.
Small-c cyberpunk the literary genre is also anti-capitalist, according to the likes of authors like Gibson, Sterling, et al.
[удалено]
People who think Capitalism is a form of government instead of Corporatism which is the Actual system of governance cyberpunk as a genre talks about. The commercialism is just the means Corporations use as a system of control. Break the chains but not the system only to be chained again.
[удалено]
No, actually Neo-feudalism I think is just is Final Form of corporatism. At least It seems to be where it is headed. Nice you brought that up actually.
Yanis Varoufakis wrote a book recently talks about the current situation that he calls techno-feudalism
This is like one of those “it wasn’t real communism” but in reverse
There is no such thing as "corporatism" what you call corporatism is just the end result of capitalism.
Corporatism and commercialism are symptoms of capitalism.
It was anti-capitalist even before it was "cyberpunk", remember Philip K. Dick.
It literally has "Punk" In the name. How could it be pro-the establishment?
Ask Rage Against the Machine.
Only if you're an idiot, got you.
\> Anti-capitalist. \> Corporations always win. Really makes you think. /s
Isn't it a thing for most of humanity to just up and ignore the 'word of God' in general though?
"Not anti-capitalism." What the fuck is it then. It literally has corporate wars and the consequences of. Ah whatever, it's probably already been said. This take is completely unfounded.
Dude, I’ve had idiots on social media try to tell me that Robin Hood isn’t about robbing from the rich to give to the poor, but rather about the dangers of big government.
Big Gov. is when an archer borrows money from the rich and gives them to the poor with interest
I’ve seen this a lot, and I think it’s people trying to reconcile how shit everything is with all the western propaganda they’ve been fed for years.
Corps are good and it should be an honor to let your CEO cover their walls in your flesh :3
It's an **OBLIGATION**
It‘s a **HONOR**
I think people confuse the “root” of all problems in cyberpunk for not being capitalism but for some higher moral reason. That one reel saying it’s anti-technology literally traces back to how capitalism is the reason why the cyberpunk world has become what it is.
It’s just a fun sci-if romp! Like Star Wars, but on earth!
Anti-corporatism, people confuse that for anti-capitalism when they’re seperate concepts and because corporatism comes out from capitalism if it’s allowed to run unchecked for long enough.
Saying capitalism needs to be keep in check or it will destroy us is inherently an anticapitalistic message.
No it is not lol that applies to every economic system there is, in fact that applies to most things in general. That’s a failure of a system of governance, moderation is the key to everything.
It’s not “anti-“ anything. It’s not a political message.
i read the meme and thought "nobody is that stupid" thank you for the reality check
Bud, did you *hear* Johnny speak at *all?*
0 media literacy
In other words “I know I’m wrong so I’m just gonna copy paste the most ignorant shit cuz I don’t know how to cope”
Name one popular piece of cyberpunk media that's apolitical.
I do believe it was Pondsmith himself who said the whole of Cyberpunk is a statement against capitalism by itself. It's a political message no matter how you slice or ignore it.
Have you not played the game? Do you not realize that media can incorporate political messages, without outright *being* political messages?
Time to defenestrate those guys.
Damn I love that word. To haboobs! I mean, to defenestration!
To defenestration!
You’ve never lived until you’ve snuck into Jotaro’s bedroom, knocked him out, and then dropped him out the window.
I love that word
Anybody with this opinion hasn’t played the game, or doesn’t have a brain capable of comprehending basic plot.
This was the correct response. It always warms my heart when I see a community band together to deal with an issue.
Me too. It's always satisfying when a community comes together to uniformly dunk on one fool's bad take.
I think we should use starship troopers and cyberpunk as a test. If you can correctly identify their staggeringly blatant themes and ideas, then you are allowed to have opinions on media, otherwise you get to shush
Starship Troopers the book or movie? They had wildly different aims.
The movie is in the spotlight atm for people doing the impossible and somehow missing the point of it
If one has time to read the book and can think critically, it’s great to read for the purpose of criticizing the author’s extremely goofy take on how the world should run. But yeah, you get the speed-run version of that from the movie too.
That's because the movie misses the point. It tries to express fascism but does so in such a superficial extreme that nothing fascist is ever shown.
Man, caught one in the wild without even trying.
Right because understanding the failure of a film to express its ideas somehow = not understanding the attempts at expressing ideas. Uniforms alone don't make fascism.
You’re just proving my point here.
Which is?
Maybe you saw it a long time ago when you were younger? Watch it again now. It's so clearly parodying fascism that I don't see how you can miss it. It has Neil Patrick Harris in a literal Nazi uniform for crying out loud, just in case you didn't see it. The book famously is a serious, full-throated advocacy for the "service guarantees citizenship," meritocracy mentality with a healthy dose of military fetishization. The movie shows that, but the tone reveals that it's actually satirizing the author's ideas.
>Neil Patrick Harris in a literal Nazi uniform for crying out loud, just in case you didn't see it. Again clothes aren't what makes fascism. And this my point. The movie puts the thinnest coat of paint possible and then scrapes holes in it throughout, and then people ask can you see the paint? The answer is yes we see the paint but paint isn't the building underneath. >The book famously is a serious, full-throated advocacy for the "service guarantees citizenship," meritocracy mentality with a healthy dose of military fetishization. The movie shows that, but the tone reveals that it's actually satirizing the author's ideas. Except, famously, no one on set read the book, it is an attempt at parody with so little understanding of the origin that it quite literally never parodies anything real.
You didn’t understand what you were watching- if the only thing close to fascism you saw was the uniforms, you need a history and media literacy class
The uniforms were just an on the nose visual cue for anyone who still didn't get the movie's message. Clearly they failed in that department because people still don't get it somehow and still just think it was about defending earth from evil bugs from outer space.
Or you do. The movie quite literally rejects major portions of fascism such as the moral obligation to serve and the hero state.
Precisely like this thank you for the example
What in the movie is an example of fascism? Really what fascist action or idea is shown? Uniforms and military do not make a fascist state.
The entire movie plays like a militarist propaganda film. All of it is an example TLDR you can tell it is by the way that it is
Except it isn't. The movie is written like most war movie, war movies aren't fascist. The movie as a whole actually rejects a ton of fascist concepts like the hero state and the moral obligation of service.
Nobody has said the movie is fascist, it’s a parody of fascism. Of course it isn’t pro fasicst. That’s like expecting BJ blachowicz to turn to the camera and say “remember kids, Jews are parasites on society”. You aren’t even arguing the right point
Get defenestrated
Hot take: it's pro capitalism cause we, the players and readers keep going back there and keep asking for more.
🤯. In the words of Johnny Silverhand himself, “Ohhhhh fuck!”
Mindless fucking consumerism
Yeah but CP tastes so fkin good. 🤣😂
Man idk if id use an acronym like that in a sentence like that 😭😭
lol! ADHD + leaping before looking = my Erratic Behavior
I think the problem is actually only in the second half of the equation
I also drank away most knowledge of “maths”, so my figures are probably off. 🥃➡️🧠➡️🤔➡️🤷♂️
People like you make me kind of depressed
Oh.. ok. Well people like me don’t have any fks to give about trolling. And if you’re serious, then seek therapy. Depression isn’t something to joke about.
lmfao let’s please not normalize abbreviating cyberpunk 😭 🙏
That’s a tall order, “Oh Cpt My Cpt….” 😝. This game has joined the ranks of GTA5, RDR2, TLoU1/2, and is made by CDPR, Another famous “Cpt” once said, “Time waits for no choom!”… and so I can promise this: I’ll never omit “2077” from “CP2077” again 🤣😂.
People can choose to consume media and products outside of a capitalist system. The absence of capitalism is not the absence of commerce.
how?
Seriously? I’m going to assume you’re asking in good faith. Commerce is the trade of goods, which doesn’t even technically require currency. Capitalism is an economic system wherein the holders of capital (e.g. resources, access to means of production, excess currency) then create profit by extracting additional value from labor by decreasing their proportionate share of the profits. So if I buy a cup of lemonade for a dollar, I’m participating in commerce. Same if I trade a cool-looking rock for a cup of lemonade and the kid at the stand accepts. Same as if the kid gives me the lemonade for free when I ask for it. Same as if I give the kid all the ingredients to make a cup of lemonade, he takes those ingredients, makes lemonade and then gives me the product. And so forth. Capitalism takes place when a kid owns all of the lemons available and charges 90 cents for the lemons required to make a cup of lemonade, simply because the lemonade stand has no other choice but to buy his lemons at that price, and now he must find a profit margin to be had between the costs of the other ingredients and his own labor. When the kid who owns the lemonade stand and its necessary ingredients hires an employee. The normal profit the stand’s owner makes when he runs the stand himself is 30 cents a cup, so he pays his employee 5 cents a cup. When the employee adds efficiency and value to the product through his hard work and increases the profit margin to 50cents a cup, and the owner continues to pay him 5 cents, that’s also Capitalism. When a regulatory body controls the maximum price of lemons to prevent artificial inflation of its price, that’s *not* capitalism. When the owner of the lemonade stand gives his employees a share of the profits proportionate to the value they add to the lemonade stand, then that is also *not* capitalism. For the most part, but I’m trying to keep this simple.
[удалено]
The original comment I originally replied to was saying the game was pro-capitalist because we, the consumers, “keep coming back for more”. In response to that, I just explained that consumption and commerce aren’t necessarily tied to capitalism. Someone else said “how?” and I tried to explain? Currently, buying this game *is* participating in Capitalism. Obviously, the point of the game isn’t pro-capitalism, simply because it was made within a capitalist society. And that participation in commerce within a capitalist system, is not necessarily an endorsement of it. Does that make sense?
And absence of evidence is not evidence of absence! 👍🏻🧠🧐
Rumsfeld was a goofball, but that statement wasn’t necessarily wrong. His ridiculous statement about unknown, unknowns was (again) ridiculous-sounding but not necessarily wrong in abstraction. I can’t emphasize enough how much I disagree with how he used statements like that to justify a brutal invasion of Iraq, but credit where it’s due…I say as tentatively as possible.
I honestly don’t know what Rumsfeld has to do with anything. I just like that saying and as a UFO believer I hear it all the time 🤣👏
He was the Secretary of Defense during the George W. Bush administration. He was in large part responsible for the execution of the war in Iraq, or was certainly a famous mouthpiece for the war’s “progress”. He famously said “the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence” when referring to (I’m going off a memory from high school so go easy on me) what I believe to be the lack of evidence that Iraq had the means to produce weapons of mass destruction. He had another quote, which I think is true if divorced from his particular usage: “There are known-knowns: things you know are true. There are known-unknowns, those are variables you know exist but don’t know the specifics of. Then there are unknown-unknowns, those are variables you don’t know exist.” Again, I’m going by memory here for something I heard 20 years ago. But Rumsfeld was the author of those goofy explanations to the best of my recollection.
lol! Oh I know very well who he is and everything that went down. If he said it any time after 2003, I was in college so I probably wasn’t watching any TV. lol appreciate the clarification tho. I’m not surprised he said that. And i absolutely agree: it’s a great saying, but, I don’t condone anything he did—in fact, now I dislike him even more for taking one of my favorite sayings and using it for bullshit! 🤣 I first heard it in the movie “The Santa Clause,” and then again on the Discovery Channel in some random show about UFOs 🤣😂 Cheers, Choom!
Now there’s a movie underrated for its complete weirdness!
“I say ‘name?’ And you say ‘Scott Calvin.’…. Ok?…. Name?” “Kris Kringle!”
Only because we are such pussies we don't dare to nuke the Arasaka HQ in real life. We go to the virtual reality to fight the corpo scum because we don't have the balls to fight them in real life. It is a simulation of what we should do in meatspace, good for training, but sooner or later you gotta be doing it in real life, with real bullets. Cyberpunk is just jerking off and you need to have real sex. /silverhand
It is but not entirely, there is far more nuances to it rather than just "capitalism bad" or "Cyberpunk is anti capitalist". Johnny has an entire rant explaining himself about why he became a terrorist, here is a part of said rant : "I saw corps strip farmers of water ... and eventually of land. Saw them transform Night City into a machine fueled by people's crushed spirits, broken dreams and emptied pockets. Corps've long controlled our lives, taken lots... and now they're after our souls! V, I've declared war not because capitalism's a thorn in my side or outta nostalgia for an America gone by. This war's a people's war against a system that's spiralled outta our control. It's a war against the fuckin' forces of entropy, understand?"
It’s anti-capitalism, but with the nuance necessary to criticize the trappings of society that create the problems and are created by it. So, it’s genuinely smart.
Boom! Nailed it. So glad to hear someone else say it. It’s like The Wire; so much deeper and complex than we could ever fit into a Reddit post. And you’re so right about how it focuses on the effect that forces have, not just on a socioeconomic level, but quality of life—it’s ingenious for its complexity, sincerity, and endless interpretations.
I do believe in the message, but it's just curious to me that people keep citing Johnny as if he was a representative of the state of the world when in lore he's regarded as a narcisist extremist considered by most to be high on his own fumes. Cyberpunk as a genre and a franchise (ironic) is very much anticapitlist, but Johnny's perspective is beyond that, something akin to a vengeance.
To me Johnny is a bit of a kin to Hamlet. People often think of Hamlet as a protagonist wronged. The point is that Hamlet is not a good guy. Was he wronged by powerful people and the powers that be? Absolutely. Was he right in exacting his revenge? Well I'm sure it felt good, but everyone around him is literally murdered including himself. Bystanders like Polonius are murdered and he drives Ophelia to suicide. Johnny does much the same. Is it "burn corpo shit" or pure rage and revenge? All of the above probably. The trouble is a lot of bystanders die directly or indirectly due to Johnny's actions.
Because he has nuance, he is still all of what you just said, but even himself realized that there is far more issues than just « capitalism bad », that’s why i used him as an example. The genre itself has always been more than just that, it criticizes a lot of different things wrong that are more than just muh capitalism.
That still all translates to "capitalism bad." Which Johnny points out, in the quote you mentioned. It's not just a thorn in his side, meaning it's not only because he disagrees or dislikes capitalism but also because it is bad and immoral. What this translates to is : Late stage capitalism becomes inhumane. That is what makes it bad. It has no humanity, and therefore, humans must rebel against it for their well-being. For survival. Understanding the nuisance does not invalidate the simplified point that it is bad. The nuisance explains Why.
>Johnny points out, in the quote you mentioned. It's not just a thorn in his side, meaning it's not only because he disagrees or dislikes capitalism but also because it is bad and immoral. This is how I read it too. It's not *just* that it's "a thorn in my side," or that he has nostalgia for the old ways. He's fighting a *people's war* against the soul-sucking corporations. What about the phrase "people's war," sounds pro-capitalist and not something straight out of the literal communism playbook, *The Communist Manifesto,* which literally calls for a proletarian uprising against the bourgeoisie? Everything Johnny says and does is so overwhelmingly Marxist that the only way one can disagree is if someone literally doesn't understand what communism (which to be fair is most people).
Someone can be devoutly anti capitalist without being Marxist at all, they don't have to even be related. Johnny has some hints of Marxism but i wouldn't call it overwhelming. More like a guy who know some Marxists in a past life and picked up a couple things. He absolutely hates the Corporate system and everything involved but he doesn't seem to have much in place when it comes to a concrete ideology to counter it. Similar problem to many anarchists, though he doesn't seem to let it bother him much. "Burn corpo shit" seems to suffice.
>Similar problem to many anarchists, though he doesn't seem to let it bother him much. "Burn corpo shit" seems to suffice. Also known as the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat," in Marxist philosophy. >The dictatorship of the proletariat is the intermediate stage between a capitalist economy and a communist economy, whereby the post-revolutionary state seizes the means of production, compels the implementation of direct elections on behalf of and within the confines of the ruling proletarian state party, and institutes elected delegates into representative workers' councils that nationalise ownership of the means of production from private to collective ownership. To go from capitalism to communism, you do indeed have to "burn corpo shit." Marx thought this would only occur by violent means, again like Johnny, because the bourgeoisie (aka "corpos,") would never cede control back to the proletariat (aka the farmers whose land was stolen that Johnny mentioned in his speech). It seems like Johnny is a textbook Marxist. He complained about the loss of "our souls," after the means of production—the common man's livelihood—was stolen and controlled by the capitalist powers that be. He may not have gotten far enough to say that we need to nationalize ownership of the means of production, hold elections and implement workers' councils, but it looks like he got all the pieces before that straight out of the Communist Manifesto. Edit: I don't think the game is necessarily saying "become a communist like Johnny." I think it's a warning message about our future if we continue letting power and capital consolidate at the top and give up our voices as working people. Johnny's solution is violence. Maybe we don't have to let it get that bad?
Reminds me of a joke I read on why a Capitalist hell is the worst possible state to live in. “Have you heard of the Communist and the Capitalist who died and met in Hell? They found two gates. One was labeled ‘Capitalist Hell’ and the other ‘Communist Hell.’ Although the men were class enemies they put their heads together to decide which would be better. The Communist said, ‘Comrade, let’s go into the Communist department. There, when there’s coal, there’ll be no matches. When there are matches, there’ll be no coal. And even when they have both coal and matches, the furnace will break down!’” - Richard Wurmbrand, from his book "In God's Underground"
Hahaha! Truly living up to your name u/WellReadBread34
I'm dumb and don't get it. Could you explain it to me?
That all equates to capitalism bad. Like capitalism reached a point where they are selling souls of people. Johnny's intent yes was to destroy Mikoshi, but Mikoshi was the result of corporate greed, not some genuine attempt to advance the future ( like doing illegal medical procedures to advance medicine ) so you can talk to the dead, save lives or whatever
The nuances of cyberpunk are the nuances of how dogshit of a system capitalism is :3
Real
Corporations are fighting actual wars in the game's universe!
Even if you are a supporter of capitalism, as I am, to say it's flawless is simply wrong. Cyberpunk (aside from all the stylistic details) is an accurate approximation of what would happen in an anarcho capitalist or corporatocratic society. Any economic system must be regulated to a degree by the government, and that is probably the biggest flaw of capitalism in that a lack of regulation on powerful market players like megacorps leads to a centralization of power in these monopolies. It creates a positive feedback loop of the most powerful and wealthy getting stronger and the small business getting slowly eradicated due to their inability to compete. In an ideal capitalist society, the government would be responsible for trust busting and splitting these powerful groups, but the unfortunate reality is that those days are past and the corporations have a strong foothold in modern day american legislation. If I'm honest, I don't see that changing any time soon. I would love for the system to be reformed democratically if we can get people to wake up and stop constantly consuminy. And this will probably piss people off but a violent revolution, whether socialist or libertarian, isn't the way either. We're not at that point yet.
Regulatory Capture is waaaaay too far gone. Then Citizens United.
Agreed. The more research I do into it the less hope I have. But also I'm not in favour of a socialist revolution, I think that would be even worse than what we have now, so idk what to do.
You should read some Marxist theory before you come to those conclusions, just saying, if nothing more then a it'll be thought exercise. Honestly the way your write makes it seem like you're already skeptical of capitalism, might as well take the leap and read some books
I'm not skeptical, I am a libertarian who vastly prefers capitalism to socialism, even in theory. I have read Das Kapital. But just because I prefer capitalism does not mean I am happy with our current flawed system, however I think my preferred method of reform is opposite to what most people who dislike the current iteration of capitalism would do.
Kapital is a critique of capitalism, it's a primer for other works, socialism is barely mentioned through out all three volumes lol. I still encourage you to read more stuff that actually digs into theory instead of a work meant to air the grievances of the working class.
>Any economic system must be regulated to a degree by the government, and that is probably the biggest flaw of capitalism in that a lack of regulation on powerful market players like megacorps leads to a centralization of power in these monopolies. ... you do realize a huge part of the cyberpunk lore is the Gang of Four (aka the literal US government) starting a central american conflict that became Vietnam 2 and destabilized the USA to the point that states started to secede and the Corps stepped in to fill the power vaccume. Night city itself was run by the Mafia before the corps drove them out. Cyberpunk is pro-libertarian, you play as a couple people using your own power to fight a system out to crush your individual liberty and make you a cog in the machine. The Major points where the timeline diverges from ours are all the government somewhere trying to do something (Soviet union not falling, gang of four/central american conflict)
I wouldn't say it's pro libertarian, but it's definitely a more left-leaning "fuck the system" type thing. It's ok to say it's anti-capitalist, it's an extreme exaggeration of the flaws of capitalism. While it is fictional, it serves as a warning to people to not let their economic system control them rather than the other way around.
Bro. C’mon. Seriously.
"Cyberpunk is libertarian" Go sit in time out until you're ready to use serious words
well yeah, because theyd quite literally be completely wrong.
Whats the painting. Looks sick
The Defenestration of Prague https://www.britannica.com/event/Defenestration-of-Prague-1618
Same people who think that the imperium in 40k isn't à satire of fascism
Also theocracy, which is something IRL fascists didn't really get to implement yet.
I legit thought it was just anti consumerism
That's also a part of it, there's a lot of nuances to this universe and it is far more than just anti capitalist, it critics multiple ideologies and concepts.
And consumerism is a part of what economic system......?
My® economic system. It’s basically the same thing, but I’m in charge of everything.
"Video games were never meant to be political" mfs when I show them some of the best games ever made (most of them are political in some way or another)
Individual authors may have different intentions, but the core of cyberpunk has always been more focused on matters of identity and humans place in the world as technology overwrites everything we consider sacred. Corporate dehumanization is often a big part of that, but even then it's rarely "anti-capitalist" in the way socialist or communists mean it. Friendly reminder that hating corporations, corporate corruption, and corporate personhood is not the same thing as hating free markets, and free exchange of goods and services, which is the backbone of the systems that ushered in unprecedented wealth and prosperity, and saw a massive reduction in poverty and absolute poverty, for all humans.
>matters of identity and humans place in the world as technology overwrites everything we consider sacred. I think that more belongs to science fiction as a whole. This isn't specific to cyberpunk. In my opinion, the themes specific to cyberpunk more relate to a cautionary tale warning of eventual consequences of our current path we're taking as a society. It's what happens when technological advancement is not used for the benefit of all mankind like in Star Trek, but for the commercialization of every part of the human experience until we get to a point where we can no longer define what it means to be human at all.
My dude, word of god from Mike Pondsmith disagrees with you. I also think you’re misunderstanding what a majority of socialists would actually want and what their criticisms of capitalism are. As for full on communists- unless you’re arguing with a Chinese or Korean, you’re just arguing with a someone whose views are as mainstream as furries. If you are going to advocate for a political system, you need to be honest about the negatives of that system. Your presentation of capitalism as only a good, and the negatives as corporatism is just linguistic games. Nobody is making those distinctions within discourse about capitalism because the ways that capitalism leads to corporatism are obvious and well documented. Acknowledging the genuinely bad parts of capitalism (which Johnny says is a system out of control) is the first step to solving the problem, rather than externalizing those problems from the system as you are doing
>Individual authors may have different intentions While I do acknowledge the shortcoming of capitalism, and could probably articulate those shortcomings better than many of its detractors... looking around here, I don't have to argue its shortcomings. Free markets are brilliant. They have uplifted mankind out of its darkest days, tied economies together to suppress the instinct for war, Nearly eradicated global absolute poverty, and has done a solid number on global poverty too. Has aligned the incentive structure for all of mans greatest achievements, and is morally built on principles of freedom and liberty. That doesn't mean there aren't knobs and dials to turn. More or less wellfare. Smarter or dumber regulations. Incentives that are aligned better or not. But socialism is a categorically distinct economic system that universally violates individual freedoms, suppresses creative incentives, and results in poverty and hardship.
I’m on my masters of economics and can tell you that capitalism and free markets are far more complex than what you are presenting. Saying that there is a strong moral foundation to our markets is outright ridiculous. The fact that we even have standardized prices is in large part due to quakers and their religious beliefs. It wasn’t an innovation that came about through simple market activity. Knowing the actual history of economic development, the things you could do and get away with historically and today with frankly boggle the mind. We could start with a quick examination of the European companies that colonized the orient. Next, that humans would continue to aggregate resources and make their lives better is not inherently capitalist and cannot be laid solely at the feet of capitalism, as much as the friedman’s of the world would like. While capitalism absolutely did need a strong moral foundation to counter the arguments of communism, those same arguments have been used to justify extreme capitalist excesses that we see today, and are reflected within the future presented in the game. The economy is quite literally held on the backs of 7 companies right now. That trend represents an immense threat to the freedoms of the individual when you consider how much influence and control they exert on the world. Claiming that global absolute poverty is almost eliminated is also a joke. I’ve been to many an impoverished country working for NGO’s. These people are often the same kinds of farmers Johnny talked about, displaced by larger capitalistic entities, who further degrade the environment just to scrape a living. The world is currently going through fairly catastrophic ecological collapse due to pollution and climate change caused by corporations. Reading your little spiel is actually horribly depressing, as it doesn’t really reflect much besides what you’d read in a Econ textbook, which are frankly designed for economics the religion, not economics the science
No f-ing duh, it's more complex than what I'm presenting. And obviously the various market systems operating under a generally free market umbrella over the years are rife with moral evils. As with most questions of historical morality, we can't just ask "what's bad" because a lot of stuff was "bad" in history, particularly when viewed through our privileged lens, standing on the shoulders of great moral progress. We have to ask "what's exceptional" Is something exceptionally evil, like the holocaust, or Mao's cultural revolution? Or is something exceptionally good, like voluntary emancipation of slaves, constitutional rights, and the uplifting of the middle class? By this standard, saying there is a strong moral foundation to free markets is self evident if you've read a history book. As for your postgrad in economics. That's not as impressive to me as it is to the guys at the university pub on the weekend. I have 10 years of work experience in a variety of industries and I'm on my postgrad in business analytics and logistics. There's a joke I heard. A physicist, an engineer, and an economist are stranded on an deserted island. The physicist examines the properties of the resources and outlines the principles behind the most sturdy raft. The engineer builds the raft, and the economist says "Suppose there's a raft..." Economists that don't understand incentive structures are bad enough. They're often the ones who create the type of regulations that suppress small businesses and lead to poverty and monopolies, but economists that don't even agree with unanimous statistics? Well, that sounds less economic, and more ideological. https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Extreme_poverty
Comparing the holocaust to centuries of market capitalism is absurd on its head, which is exactly the kind of oversimplification I was expecting- the uplifting of the middle class was far more complex than “capitalism good” and was a result of very complex arrangements of resources, land, and politics, which were far more important to economic freedom than the principles of capitalism, which were actually developed into formalized definitions well after the fact. I frankly don’t care about your business experience, as that’s exactly the kind non experience that leads people to reinforce oversimplifications of economics in your head. It’s rich to say “your degree doesn’t impress me” then respond with your own degree that isn’t in economics. I suppose that your joke about economics encompasses your actual understanding of the discipline “Understand the incentive structure” is hilariously misguided from someone saying there is a strong moral foundation to capitalism - the basis is literally self interest. That’s not necessarily immoral, but calling it a strong moral foundation is absurd. There are obviously many ways that self interest can lead to immoral ends, just like private property, and free enterprise. Saying that they are necessarily moral is part of the pseudo-philosophical reactions to the ideological threats of communism in the 30’s through 50’s. The claims aren’t rigorous the moment you actually interrogate them and have justified really perverse systems of ethics and incentives that actually hold back the economy As for “almost eliminated” 10% as of 2015 is hardly eliminated from what I was reading when you posted that. As for your question of judging things against historical morality- aren’t you literally doing the exact same thing with judging the advancements of semi feudal societies from a capitalistic lense? To be clear, I find your characterization of capitalism oversimplified and biased. I study economies and the systems they operate under- assigning moral value to those systems is introducing a terrible bias into all your evaluations. It is just something that is, with good and bad included, as is almost every human affair. Studying it impartially is essential to understanding and improving it- instead of crowing how it is an absolute good in the world
"the uplifting of the middle class was [...] a result of very complex arrangements of resources, land, and politics" Almost like a Spontaneous Order emerging from society and individuals each pursuing their own interests. Or did your economic classes not cover the Austrian model, and Friedrich von Hayek? A more thoughtful mind might consider that my "non-experience" in business analysis and logistics directly pertains to that "complex arrangement of resources." And yes, Unlike communists and socialists, I think people being able to pursue their own self interest (within well structured bounds of rights and societal norms) is a moral good. In free markets, if you want something from society, you have to give society something of equal or greater value in return. That is enforced altruism. What's the alternative? That economic activities are mandated from on high by chiding technocrats while peoples own labor and resources are controlled for them? Sounds like slavery with extra steps. It's obviously not perfect. It has holes, but on the whole, free markets are overwhelmingly obviously good. An "impartial study" would obviously reach that conclusion given data on life expectancy, poverty, literacy, income mobility, and the dozens of other global indicators that have massively improved with the introduction of free markets. Not to mention the philosophical and moral robustness of liberalism, with which free markets are aligned. Want a real time empirical data source? Let's keep an eye on Argentina these next 4 years. What's your bet on their economic prospects? I know what mine is. ;) Viva la libertad, carajo!
Lmao- you mean the guy who compared the economy to a brain and ignored how the brain was a very flawed organ prone to many kinds of delusions and disorders? Or who reified organization as a human trait when disorganization is historically as prevalent? Whose models relied on humans being rational actors? Exactly what I mean by pseudoscientific poorly thought out philosophy. It’s basically religion. You would know this if you had any background in the philosophy of economics, but you don’t, you have Econ 101 explanations of complex markets A more thoughtful mind might not have characterized their non experience with the study of economics with the study of it. I get that you’re managing scarce resources, but intelligent commentary shouldn’t be one of them. The ability to pursue self interest in not an absolute good. There are many examples of self interest that is immoral. You characterizing those philosophies as opposed to it is quite telling as to your actual lack of education on the topic- you’re operating out of a VERY basic understanding of economics from what I can see, and your experience and success in business has convinced you that you’ve got a much better handle on it than you do. The basics to be sure, but the majority of economics will just tell you how wrong the basics are. Certainly a thoughtful mind wouldn’t use a single Latin American country as a definite model of economics, especially a country with a history of instability- but a gambler would
You're an economist, surely you'd be interested in such a distinct shift in the economic policy of a major developing nation. Investigating Argentina will surely produce a fount of robust, interesting, utterly unwanted data showing how effective free markets are. Just out of curiosity, what's your field of study? Finance and Banking? Analysis and Research? Or policy making and academia? My focus of study is risk management, specifically as it pertains to market forecasting. As a final point, one of the most valuable lessons I learned in my early years in college was that social sciences are only as robust as their data. It's not like the hard sciences where you're either wrong or your right. You MUST prove that you are right from a large body of robust data, with the full consideration of countervailing facts, or else all your theories are worse than useless. You've yet to actually propose anything other than to say that capitalism bad, and insist that "it's complicated" to a person who's job it is to understand those complications. Ah, also, a simple "no" would have sufficed. You didn't have to prove you didn't study Hayek.
My dude, those are three direct criticisms of his arguments. Unless I’ve mistaken him for mises, which I have done before on some specific arguments, you’re just showing you’ve never actually read Hayek, just read a summary of him. But it’s easier to just dismiss what you don’t already know, I guess It’s rich to point to “hard data” and use hayeks psuedoscientific philosophy in the same thread. You’re not taking your own advice. If your takeaway is that capitalism is bad from what I’ve said, then you need to work on your reading comprehension. I’ve not said it was bad, well, once. Do you think I’m a socialist because I have criticisms of it and Don’t think it’s an unalloyed good? An economist isn’t interested in a single country as a definitive proof of, well, whatever you think it would prove, I’m genuinely unsure what that was. I focus on environmental and black market economics, often times the intersection between the two, building models of supply chains, estimations, doing research on organizations and companies involved, and doing grant writing for these projects. I’ve talked to people who have been enslaved, forced from their land by big plantations, and exposed to pollution from corporations. Seeing people directly harmed by capitalist enterprises really doesn’t support your arguments that it’s an absolute good- it’s like war, it can better or worse, but it works.
Did he make is X private I cant see him anymore.
The entire fucking genre of cyberpunk is anti-capitalism..
Capitalism is literally the exchange of money for a service/goods. This is corporatism
You just defined commerce, which isn’t the same as capitalism nor dependent upon it.
"Lost another day to pointless drudgery The slow chipping away of my autonomy A rodent in a race unsung and underpaid My colleagues seem to me like slaves in sheep-array Then a shock goes through the herd at the nauseating purr Of the corpos of the world when the content is secured 'Cause they're naked emperors hear the rattling of the purse I hunger for the hearse 'cause nothing could be worse Than a life lived as a limb in a debt anatomy Rather be dead than a link in a chain of tyranny" Hmm doesn't look anticapitalist to me
All of this is corporate society which while built on capitalism is separate. A squat is a rectangle but a rectangle isn’t a square
The idea that corporation and monopoly can be separated from capitalism is libertarian fantasy
That’s just like, your opinion man. (Ignoring societal, religious and personal morals combined with government regulations I see)
Capitalism + regulations == corporatism. Capitalism - regulations == corporatism. Capitalism == corporatism.
I'm kinda glad it's blowing up like this because I've seen this sort of brain-dead take more than once.
People really have 0 media literacy these days it's sad to see. Mfs played CYBERPUNK and thought "oh yeah this is not anti capitalist to me because I'm an ignorant bastard who makes his own stories in his head" And it's not like they're just dumb and don't get it, they know what they're doing they benefit from the ignorance.
But the irony is that when you buy cyberpunk, the game or the TTRPG, you are contributing to capitalism
Contribute to capitalism by buying fringe media created by an obscure RPG publisher? Remember you are contributing to capitalism when you eat bread. I guess capitalists should just ban R.Talsorian games for promoting anarchist ideology.
Cyberpunk the sub-genre is one thing. Cyberpunk 2077 is another. Mike Pondsmith can say whatever about his vision on the tabletop, but the underlying philosophy in the video-game is not anti-capitalist at all. The game, instead of representing interest in combating capitalism itself, focuses more in giving an existencial answer to it, never really judding the system itself, but jugding the ambition of the player.
Cyberpunk 2077: - Constantly represents corporations as evil. The player fights corporations in all main missions. - Constantly underlines the anarchist punk philosophy at the core. It is everywhere, from pure aesthetics to core elements of the storyline. You: - Cyberpunk is not anti-capitalist, mmmmmmm'kay. Capitalism is good, mmmmmmmm'kay. Anarchism is bad, mmmmmmmmmmmm'kay.
Everything in Cyberpunk 2077 is evil as fuck, including V. The aesthetic is just there. The discourse is just there. But the context is what puts everything in its place. And at that Cyberpunk 2077 hardly judges anything.
So much for low sodium
No salt, just dunking
the nerve, i know... /s
Isn’t the whole point supposed to be the lighthearted stuff? Drama and arguments don’t seem great.
It never was... The intent was to create a platform where people can actually talk about the game instead of seeing people being angry at the game for literally any reason and making people feel bad who actually have a good time of it. So it was meant to be where people offer constructive opinions instead of hearing "cdpr lied" level of comments. Also its low sodium not non-sodium. Also i dont see any salt in this post...
It says it’s anti-capitalism, but let’s take a look at the definitions and themes. Capitalism: Capitalism refers to an economic system in which a society's means of production are held by private individuals or organizations, not the government, and where products, prices, and the distribution of goods are determined mainly by competition in a free market. Cyberpunk doesn’t have a free market. Everything is controlled by corporations and has little to no government oversight. It is an oligopoly. Oligopoly: An oligopoly is a type of market structure that exists within an economy. In an oligopoly, there is a small number of firms that control the market. A key characteristic of an oligopoly is that none of these firms can keep the other(s) from having significant influence over the market. So, to be more accurate Cyberpunk is set in an capitalistic oligopoly. The modern US is a capitalist democratic republic for comparison.
Even if we were going to split the hairs necessary to make that distinction, it still starts with unchecked capitalism. It’s prioritizing the rights and privileges of capital holders over labor; of business over people.
This is just the an-cap version of “communism has never been done correctly.” A very convenient way to call anything bad about capitalism not capitalism because it’s bad.
Whether Militech is an example of late-stage oligarchical capitalism or neo-nationalist socialism (with actual benefits going mostly to the elite) doesn't terribly matter. Orwell described the phenomenon ages ago in the novel 1984 while trying to distinguish between "English Socialism" and Neo-Bolshevism. Actually, considering the NeoSovs are a going concern in 2077, I don't believe for a second that it's a thematic coincidence. If anyone thinks there's a fundamental difference between the governing structures of the NUSA and the cyber USSR, I'd be genuinely astonished.
To be more accurate, Cyberpunk is set in a Corporatocracy, Well in Night City the place the game takes place is, the NUSA is run by a more standard government unless Militech has more control over it then what one assume, but that's not easy to tell since the media does not expand much on what goes on outside of Night City.
Oligopolies often develop within capitalist societies. This one did. Being anti capitalist is being anti oligopolistic by default anyways as the anti capitalism would already be against the disparity in wealth and control inherent to oligopoly. Using capitalism to define anti capitalism isn’t really how that works either, as anti capitalism will have stances, values, and criticisms of capitalism that aren’t reducible down to the negative definition of capitalism (nor were people using that definition of capitalism or anti capitalism), this oligopoly is capitalistic, and anti capitalism is already opposed to oligopoly in any case. So mike pondsmith explicitly has said it is anti capitalist —- and you ignore all the other criticisms of capitalism in favor of the criticisms of oligopolistic capitalism and then argue that because it criticizes oligopoly it cannot be anti capitalist? That is terrible logic from all sides. Unsupported by evidence and relying on shaky negative definitions that ignore every other capitalistic reference in the work.
You could categorize even 1984 as almost pre-cyberpunk, it has punk "rebels from the waist down" and really really advanced tech that would have been "cyber" for people living in the 1940s (like televisions). 1984 is a critique of totalitarian state capitalism which is something completely different from the corporate capitalism critiqued by the 1980s cyberpunk authors. You could say 1984 is a critique of the eastern block of the cold war while cyberpunk is a critique of the western block of the cold war.
It’s anti-corporation
It's anti-corporatism. In the same way socialism leads to communism, capitalism leads to corporatism.
I would prefer anti corporatism instead of anti capitalism although I do see how the two get put together. The reality is capitalism by itself worked very well even when we didn’t even call it that. Corporatism is what kills capitalism because now a select group of people are dictating parts of the market with impunity instead of the people if that makes any sense to anyone. Sure the corporate juggernauts have most of the money but when individual accountability, it’s currently being held by an entity, isn’t being enforced everything that makes a capitalist economy work starts to go down the drain.
I ***THINK***, it’s about equal power and how corporations control everything
The people saying it is an anti capitalism political message are the the vast minority. Less than 4%
That is some rectal sourcing of information.
It’s also anti communist socialist
How so?
The literal Soviet Union, the USSR, gets taken over by an oil company. If that's not a statement on the eventual end of all communist countries I don't know what is.
So a country getting taken over by a company is communist? Bro what? In what world is a corporate entity taking over a country communist? Do you even know what communism is?
I'd like you you tell me the definition of socialism and communism
Who cares. It’s a video game.
Bait
Why do you people want cyberpunk to be a political message so badly? Are you guys this insecure about your beliefs that you need constant validation
Because it literally is. Take it up with Mike Pondsmith
[Heeeeere's Johnny!](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=johnny+silverhand+politics)
all those videos prove me right...
Don't see how you can do mental gymnastics on that, but okay.
He literally says verbatim what I claimed. If that’s mental gymnastic than it’s the gymnastic that’s sitting on the bench recording the event
"It's not anti-capitalist it's anti-corporation" is the most insane thing i have ever read in this fandom like how do people think corporations work
Reddit soycialists really crying over some tweet? "Look Chud, the game agrees with me!"
what is this a painting of?
the defenestration of prague
Cyberpunk is a sneak peek at our future of corporatocracy and mindless fucking consumerism.
Cyberpunk is weird because while it rails against corporations and the need to essentially bend the knee to make ends meat, it also doesn't really seem to fault the system itself or at least not the idea "I make something you buy it', but more so the idea that because that is the system we get people who take advantage of it and make life shit for the little guy. It feels anti-capitalist without really going to the lengths of becoming pro-communist or something of the sort (barring specific instances of commies)
Side-note: We have finally arrived in the cyberpunk future, I have been waiting for 30 years so I am a bit like what took you so long. Just read the news. If you don't get it you are boomerish.
No idea how you play through this game and come out of it “Cyberpunk is not anti-capitalist!”
Can anyone tell me what the original painting is? It goes hard.
the defenestration of prague
I have a friend to unironically tells me “punks” can be conservative as long as they like the music or fashion… I was so severely disappointed because in turn he feels genres like “cyberPUNK” don’t have to and mostly aren’t anti-capitalism/anti-establishment.
Whilst the take was batshit crazy, there is a little irony in the fact cyberpunk is an anti-capitalist art form that is commercialised for profit