Zero Punctuation: An Analysis of Corporate Failure
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- Опубліковано 29 сер 2024
- #zeropunctuation #yahtzee #secondwind
Extremally popular and long running series "Zero Punctuation" has come to an end, after sixteen years with online Magazine and site "The Escapist" - but not necessarily by the will of it's creator Yahtzee. Why is that? What happened, what can we learn, and why does Yahtzee keep making videos in this style after 16 years I AM IN PAIN -
Check out Second Wind - www.youtube.co...
I want to make a note here in case it wasn't clear in the video itself : *I do not condone any harassment of any of the current workers at the Escapist, or even Gamur's group.* Be as mean as you like about the executives and shareholders, but not the social media managers, article writers, or anyone else. At best it's harassing people who had nothing to do with this, at worst, it's deflecting blame away from the executives, which is exactly what they want. I cannot stress this enough - *Do not harass any of the workers* .
I have tons of stories of friends and family work for a company and the overhead broke down the entire company. I have a few stories where my friend saved the company and then the CEO bankrupted the company and sued my friend.
Riiiiiiiight, I get ya 😉😉
I just emailed an escapist employee saying this, "Hey, hang in there. It's rough when your boss is a bunch of twats. Believe me, I know. And if you could, pass this message to your bosses: 'you're all a bunch of twats.' Thanks, love!"
I disagree on the money part, i love money but hate the assholess that abuse the game mechanics to screw up others. I wont destroy a game i love because of power gamer...but I will gladly help you burn theit shit down tho because they are asking for a beat down for raping capitalism.
Cool video also
Hey there.
Been tinkering with some effects that i personally think makes ZP (and thus ramblomatic) funnier; Though contacting Yahtzee may or may not have an effect (and may or may not be wanted). Figure if you're interested i got a 10minute 2015 sample that encapsulates it.
Mad props for recreating Yahtzee's entire show format for the purpose of honoring his legacy. Hopefully he and the blokes at Second Wind give you a shoutout for this video.
I'm laughing at the realization that "Fully Ramblomatic" even has the same sylable count as "Zero Punctuation."
WAIT YOU'RE RIGHT THATS HYSTERICAL
I do miss the lighter yellow colour
@@wobblysauce it's just a matter of getting used to the new design.
That was true since before we even HAD ZP and it was just the first 2 FR episodes
It’s also the name of his old website from back when he started ZP
To correct you slightly, the recent firing of Nick and others and the subsequent mass resignation was not done by The Escapist. Nick was top dog at The Escapist, as well as a head figure for multiple other groups under Gamurs, the parent company. Gamurs executives were the one who fired Nick, for even more reasons than you know. The Escapist now consists only of a few article writers who post on the website, and they are entirely innocent in any of shenanigans here.
And Gamurs just recently acquire The Escapist (about a year). This is basically corporate takeover. Those who resign probably realize they also still in the layoff list
They fired Nick because growth was going up, just not up enough.
Yeah, I kinda feel like painting the storied history of the Escapist as a pattern of abuse ignores that the magazine had a number of corporate overlords in its time, which tended to be bad in their own special and unique ways. The people who were shitty to Extra Credits were not the same people who were shitty to Nick Calandra.
@@kiruppert Shitty people tend to all be the same type, though. They can't take no for an answer and if you dare say no to them, they'll take it personally. Beyond that, nothing else matters.
Are they gonna shut it down. Also why did gamers fire him
to add it's not even an overstatement that Zero Punctuation was the only thing that kept Escapist alive for as long as it has been, starting in 2015 Defy media started cutting staff, and by 2017 all that was left of the site was basically Yahtzee and 1-2 people to make sure it stayed online and that the weekly ZP went up on time
And Yahtzee has said in interviews afterward that one of the reasons he *did* pull the plug this time was because he didnt want to be in that same "lone survivor" position again. He really liked what Nick had done, and the team he now worked with, and he "couldn't see himself continuing without them" or something along those lines
I reminds me of a local TV station (as in this distopian story doesn't take place in the US) who's owners fired their last production crew of their only remaining original program not because of a lack of success, but because they didn't even want to pay for one team and the studio it required anymore. Now there's 2 workers handling multiple TV stations of the same mother company running almost fully automatic only playing adds and old content.
edit:
To be fair they didn't fire their last crew they just didn't renew their contracts for next year, while being completely transparent with their stingy, stingy reasoning I think.
@@Kaefer1973 Mind me asking which market this company was in?
That sounds to me like New York's "Regional News Network". That network's now nothing more than a paid ShopHQ relay broken up in the mornings with episodes of Richard French's news show, minus French since he retired back in May of 2021.
@@Code7Unltd The station in question was is a German national TV station. But the new parent company bought and automated stations in other european countries as well.
@@Kaefer1973 "they didn't fire their last crew they just didn't renew their contracts for next year"
...So they fired them.
gotta be honest with you, I have seen many people trying to imitate or copy how yatzhee does his shows, but you clearly became the closest to not only do it respectfully, but also almost perfectly.
I saw your previous 2 videos about Bullfrog and Big-D and this last one made me fully wants to follow your grow and your opinions in whatever you do in the future. Hope to see you in the 100K+ subscriber list sooner rather than later.
I guess all those hours of watching ZP while editing have finally paid off. Thank ye kindly - I've been having a lot of fun with these last three videos and the response has been encouraging. Thank you again!
Yep, the art style with the quips... Nailed it
he did a vid on bullfrog? know what Im watching next thx for tellin me.
Needs slightly more dick jokes. But it is a better attempt then almost any of the others.
I reckon the British accent helps too lol
This is an AMAZING tribute to Zero Punctuation and Yahtzee's entire body of work. Incredible video.
What pisses me off about most of this issue is the complete lack of acknowledgment of the good things Nick did for the escapist during 2019-2023.
I mean thanks to him Yahtzee was finally able to go to E3 in person giving one of his best videos, he managed to not only keep the Escapist afloat during the pandemic but also increase it's popularity, the amazing indie game documentaries, the GDC trip and Adventure is nigh.
But just because a fuckface saw a 0.1 drop from last quarter, he decides to just can him and think another one could do better.
Thank god people are realizing about the things you just said and as of now the Escapist have lost over 300k subscribers over 3 weeks.
From what I have heard, it was actually worse than all that. Numbers didn't go down, they just didn't go up as fast as they'd like.
@@GuybrushTThreepwood yep that's worse
Fuck Gamurs
Capitalism ho!
Yahtzee may well have single-handedly kept the Escapist afloat, but Calandra isn’t given enough credit for bringing it back from the brink.
@@nickjcal242 you deserved better. Hope Second Wind goes amazing for you all.
*"Your father ruled this land for 70 years, and you've ground it to dust in a matter of days."*
It’s crazy to think without warning zero punctuation is just no more.
Executive meddling is heavy-handed and never expected.
Semantics.
The copyrighted title "zero punctuation" is no more, the concept of it and the original creator are literally still going on, with a legally distinct name.
They're playing by the rules and sticking it to the conglomerate which is better than attaching to a legal name and working for a big ass.
In some sense, zero punctuation ending with zero warning is probably how it was supposed to go down eventually.
Who cares
@@jakespacepiratee3740 clearly not you
came for a comment on yahtzee's situation, got a thinly veiled manifesto.
im not mad or dissapointed i just dont know what i was expecting
Technically you got both
Thinly is generous. This was about as thin as Marx's beard.
@@nananamamana3591 you mean it was inbcredibly dense and non-transparent?
@@nananamamana3591 The effects of disco elysium, some ideas are so absurd only an "intellectual" could believe them.
I give benefit of doubt and assume he meant that you should look for better jobs, corpo bootlicking gets you nowhere and you should know your own value, which would be a revelation ...for a 13y/o.
Doesn't mean you should go red, unless you want to find yourself on the dumb side of your comrade's gun bc you ate the last potato skin.
@@alchemispark7751 brother the veil wasnt even installed on the stage lmao
Your script at the start of the episode was really very authentic to Yahtzee's style, even the part where Yahtzee comes in. This was entertaining to watch.
I work in a very curious space where I get to hear a lot of 'ground opinions' from production level employees regarding their supervisors, managers, all the way up to the CEOs and owners.
One recurring theme I hear is how many people, in isolation, fantasize of stopping for a day just to affect the corporate types and punish them for misdeeds. More than once (more than several times in fact) I had to remind these employees that this action was known as 'striking' and had previously been a common union tactic. However, as modern American business culture has demonized unionization, I actually got pushback from these same employees for mentioning the very thing they wanted to do!
To my perception that’s because it’s a tossup (in the USA) whether any given union will do anything for an individual other than take their money and schedule a rep meeting which goes nowhere.
Hilarious.
@@electricfishfan7159huh, it's almost like the unions were infiltrated and taken over by the same sorts of people who run corporations.
I think the solution to that problem is called "form new unions" and "only allow workers to join/lead the union"
@@ShuRugalThat would eventually fall back into Oligarchy which is the primary issue of these sorts of "come together" groups, eventually someone becomes leadership and yes running a union like a corporation while simultaneously encouraging workers to use violence and property damage to get what they want is rich and deeply ironic
@@dougneon9550 the oligarchy have a long and proud history of using violence to get where they are. There's nothing ironic about pointing out the fact that that game can be played both ways.
The "first" episode of Fully Ramblomatic got twice the views of the latest Zero Punctuation.
SecondWind got over 300K subscribers during it's first week, performing a record setting channel transition on UA-cam by only losing 2/3rds of the subscriber count from the original channel.
Design Delve and Cold take got more views than ever before, I should know, I had never watched Design Delve until now.
And they are already getting sponsors.
The future as always remains uncertain... but it's safe to say, for now they are winning.
And I'm so fucking happy they are. Great video, plus you know Bruva and are a hardcore anti-capitalist? You've earned a new loyal subscriber.
for real, it feels like the escapist still rarely pushed much beyond ZP. Like I can't really even blame them that hard when ZP is practically the face of their company for over a decade, but even back when I used to go to their website it was always for ZP first and then maybe other stuff. And now with the rebrand and everything with a fresh start, I mean I'm not gonna lie I'm still gonna probably focus on FR, but at least now all these other creators are getting a lot more exposure and a lot more noticed
You really don't understand capitalism.
The reason why capitalism works is because capital goods are expensive and the people who build and facilitate the production of capital goods play a greatly outsized role in the economy because the main factor that determines productivity is how efficient capital goods are at multiplying the productivity of workers. The reason why economy of scale *exists* is because factories are millions if not billions of dollars and require vast amounts of personnel to construct and man them in an organized fashion, while having a sales and delivery stream to sell and deliver these products to consumers (or to middlemen who then sell them to consumers because setting up your own retail network is horribly expensive and inefficient in many cases).
The problem is, there isn't really any economy of scale here. Yahtzee only needs a very small team of people to make these videos and manage their community and deal with the "business end of things" - he's just not a big-scale operation. As such, unlike a normal corporation, where the employees are basically small cogs inside a much larger machine, and the individual cogs are mostly highly replaceable and interchangable, Yahtzee WAS the means of production. As such, purchasing the company that Yahtzee worked for just wasn't that valuable, because almost all the value was in Yahtzee himself, as a person, and Yahtzee, as an employee and not a factory, was free to leave at any time.
The failure had nothing to do with capitalism or corporate autocracy or anything else. It was really just the fact that the people who owned the escapist had the fundamental problem that they were providing only a fairly minimal amount of value to their more valuable creators, so it was entirely possible for them to go their own way if they chose to do so.
In other words, The Escapist had a similar problem to the music industry today, where you can just go sell your music direct to consumers. This was always a problem for them with their more successful artists, because once you became successful enough that you were able to hire your own people to do your thing, you didn't actually NEED the music industry anymore, as the barrier to entry to mass media has fallen, the power of these groups has waned. The main reason why the music industry still exists today, in a greatly reduced form, is a lot of people have little understanding of business and when you are just starting out you both lack the expertise and the money to hire the people to manage the business side of things while you make the potentially valuable product (the music).
---
Incidentally, you also don't understand what happened with Extra Credits, either.
The Escapist was going bankrupt. A bunch of their shows were cancelled because they couldn't afford to pay the creators. James Portnoy offered to let them not pay Extra Credits for a while (with The Escapist going into debt to Extra Credits, in effect, by owing them that money in the future) so they could pay at least some of the other content creators and avoid completely going under. The reason why all this happened was, fundamentally, because most of the shows on The Escapist weren't actually profitable, and in essence, the more successful content creators were bankrolling the less successful ones.
When the donation drive happened, The Escapist participated as part of it - they offered t-shirts and publisher's club memberships as incentives for donations to the donation drive, with the understanding that if any money was left over at the end of the donation drive, they would be reimbursed for the wholesale costs of their donations, and anything else that was left would go towards saving Extra Credits - i.e. paying off the debt that The Escapist owed to Extra Credits.
When James decided to walk off with the money and create a publishing label instead, there was a conflict between them over this for pretty obvious reasons.
In the end, all of this again has to do with the fundamental problem with running a company like The Escapist - they are, fundamentally, a way of pooling money between a bunch of content creators and paying for the business end of things, which means that any significant disruption to their revenue streams are likely to result in severe problems where they can't pay for their people, their hosting, and their talent, which is exactly what has happened over and over again. Meanwhile, any of their more successful content creators can just go off on their own and do their own thing.
All of this has less to do with anything nefarious and more to do with the reality that The Escapist was fundamentally never really financially stable. It was a terrible company to work for because it was a company whose financial situation never made any sense.
And indeed, Extra Credits itself broke apart after it came out that James Portnow was abusing one of his employees, with a bunch of its constituent parts breaking off and doing their own shows instead.
The Escapist served as a launching point for a number of successful internet personalities - but also a lot of failed shows. The successful shows were, in effect, bankrolling the failing ones, so if you were one of the shows that was successful thanks to The Escapist helping promote you at first, you really had no reason to stay there in the long term as you were in effect giving your money to worse content creators. This is why they kept losing their best talent over and over again - because the best talent didn't need the Escapist after they got their start thanks to the Escapist giving them an initial boost.
Let's all laugh at an economic system that never learns anything teeheehee
In all seriousness this was a really good breakdown of everything that happened.
Also I like the idea of an assassin reviewing other videogames. You did a little bit of it in this review and I thought it was fun.
That would have been wittier.
I just wanna ask: the economic system they are running under now is the same as before, the difference is only who has the last say on decisions. Unrelated executives or not, the system is still capitalistic. Can you present an alternative to that system where they could still operate as they do now?
No flame, no grit, no hate, just want to listen.
I would argue that the economic system is working just fine. Business makes bad decision and is punished by the market (consumers) is a key principle in capitalism.
@@Mzaleyao The main thing I'm concerned about more than anything else is freedom and a reduction of hierarchy. Since the employees in an Employee-owned workplace have shares in their own company, then they have more power and influence to exert. I don't necessarily have an issue with how it's structured now - Any reduction of hierarchy is good in my book. The crew at least get something of a say in things.
I'm not married to any one particular concept to be honest. Once you start to do that, it becomes gospel, and you end up blind to alternatives. My main concern is the reduction of hierarchy and Workers rights. Whatever form that takes, we'll have to see. History doesn't work by inserting one idea, seeing if it works, then deciding from that. It can take a while, adjustments, experimentation, advocacy, and political climate.
@@QosmicVoid I see what you're saying and mostly agree. I believe hierarchy is a requirement for a well functioning company organization. By definition, if everyone decides on everything you will amount to nothing. The amount of times you can make everyone happy or meet everyone half way is slim to none and as such nothing can be done without at least someone getting the short straw. A hierarchy have designated people to have the last say and if they act appropriately they will find the best ways for most and some will suffer, as is due in order to elevate/develop/terminate those that make out the weakest link.
Having been a CEO for years I am biased, of course. No workers mean no products, but no products also means no workers. One of these are easier to manage than the other, hence why I am a big fan of unions, although not American unions (look up "the Swedish model" and you'll see what I mean by that). Fair is not a one-way-street, it must go both ways or one is always doomed to lose.
EDIT: Forgot to mention that a good CEO makes sure to make those designated to make final decisions are also responsable for the outcome and will act as such. What is most often the issue in such situations is nepotism (or just raw distain to your fellow man) and those should not be in such positions, although they can be useful as well depending on what the company deals with. I'd rather have a psychopathic CEO running a nuclear plant and have nothing but law, order and perfection in mind, but maybe not in a coffee shop where an employee can do wrong and not risk catastrophy.
I really like how we're slowly seeing more and more independent creators making stuff without corporate overlords constantly breathing down their necks. As annoying as being on the Internet can be on occasion, it's the one thing that allows us to reach people interested in our work without having to rely on some comically evil middleman to pay for marketing or distribution.
...You don't think ISPs are comically evil middlemen? That's laughable.
In theory the suits and middlemen are supposed to help smoothe things and prevent the developpers from doing a star citizen/vaporware and never finishing their game due to feature creep. Hoever, the general decay of our system is obviously felt here, and instead of hiring people who are familiar with game development or making talent emerge, companies probably think it's easier to hire a manager from god knows where and assume he can run things perfectly.
This is such a faithful (and funny) replication of Yahtzee's style that I'm putting this in my ZP playlist. And subscribing. Doesn't matter if this style is just a one-off gag: it's the best parody I've seen since that "Rhino loose in the city" one from Only Fools and Horses.
I applaud you for replicating ZERO PUNCTUATION in tribute to this tragic end in internet culture. No matter what you have my respect king. F the escapist and GAMUR
Much of the problem with corporatism is that it fundamentally doesn't understand what consumer purchasing power is supposed to be. The idea is that a consumer will spend money to acquire personal property (material wealth) from a company. An industry, then, is supposed to make lots and lots of potential material wealth for the consumer in exchange for capital (currency). These corporations have fundamentally forgotten that they're supposed to be selling a product and are, in effect, renting out their material value while actively refusing to part with anything. I 100% believe that the endgame is a streaming-only game industry where you own absolutely nothing and merely subscribe to a probably ever-increasing price. Whether or not that endgame is possible largely depends if they can keep convincing the government to print more money (robbing the taxpayer in the process) for themselves.
This is very true, but applies to a whole lot more than just games. It's already happening across all entertainment media, and my bet would be that it is coming to cars next. It's a new form of debt slavery, and it will be applied to everything that it can be. Just wait until you have to rent time on your washing machine.
@@invalidusername9999 bro, it's called circuit laundry.
Democracy: the god that failed.
You voted for this and a thinly veiled oiligarchy, ever heard of lobbying?
It's not an issue with say capitalism but more a failure of the government to regulate entities in your interest, instead the government and conglomerates have slowly merged into an all-powerful syndicate.
The first world constantly decreases in it's free speech index,
the gap between the ultra-rich and everyone else is bigger than ever,
The cost of living and value of the dollar are greater & lesser than ever,
There are more regulations than ever and more new crimes as more things get outlawed, such as speech laws being passed.
They want to take your weapons away, what happened the last time this happened?
By being right or left you are a useful idiot for a false dicotomy, trying to vote for the lesser evil when you know damn well it's the same corpse puppet strung up by those actually in charge, a face to take the blame,
disconnect people from the real issues for made up ones.
I think this worked because you didn't just copy his style, you got the same kind of dry sarcasm that that always made Zero Punctuation unique. Well done, you got yourself a subscriber. This was fantastic
Absolutely loved this vid. Basing the aesthetics of it (and general style of speaking throughout) on Yahtze's made it feel a slight bit nostalgic. Grand work.
Good demonstration of how what Yahtzee does isn't easy to duplicate.
but also a good demonstration as to how to replicate the style of Yahtzee
How he's done this weekly for 16 years is a question that will haunt me to my deathbed
@@rory8182Imitate not replicate
Note: "Fully Ramblomatic" was aslo the name of Yahtzee's original website, where he hosted text articles.
Once again making the case for worker ownership and keeping bumbling CEOs out of work they have no understanding of, nor any entitlement to the work of the creators ❤
I like to call it the "Keep Todd Howard in the basement" approach to economics
@@QosmicVoid lol
@@QosmicVoidthe retarded thing is it doesn’t even make good sense business wise. All the escapist has done is generate bad PR for itself and piss everyone off.
"Ownership" is not the issue here. At Second Wind, Nick is effectively the CEO who is making the whole business tick, while everyone else is effectively the Board. Yes, they "own" the company and can hold Nick to account, but he is the guy making the day to day executive decisions, and is doing the same exact job that he previously did as EiC at the The Escapist. Worker ownership really doesn't come into it; good leaders don't need to be owners, they need to be good leaders.
@@QosmicVoid Bonus points for you, because it makes zero difference whether Todd Howard owns Bethesda or not. His creative leadership on Morrowind etc was great, and he didn't need to own Bethesda for that. His creative leadership over the past decade has been awful and it would be equally awful whether he was an owner, an employee or first citizen of the Bethesda commune. In fact it's a good thing that he doesn't own BSG, because they can fire him and give someone else a shot at making the next Scrolls or Fallout game.
Thank you so much. It feels so gratifying seeing more and more people waking up to the absolute corporate dystopia we all find ourselves in and speaking up about it. I felt like I was going crazy thinking I was the only one since nobody was talking about it at the time.
And like you said, this whole situation with the Escapist and Second Wind is indicative of auch bigger problem that currently has it's filthy grip on society as a whole. But thankfully more and more people are talking about it now, and hopefully soon we all collectively learn that the people who bust their asses making suits their money are worth so much more than what they're being paid.
You've done a very good job of recreating the style of zero punctuation. Love this video
Great Video! I didn't know any of this, found your video; while I was looking for new Zero Punctuation videos.
Damn, I have expected Yahtzee to show up on this bc it's such a well done homage to ZP. You got his style down pat
3:27 I... think he did?
Longtime ZP fans will notice many little references throughout the video. That was a nice touch.
I cannot put into words how much I adore this video and how the first three minutes alone make it one of my favorites on the internet. As someone who has also been watching Yahtz since 2011, has had a huge chunk of my interest in video game history, critical analysis, and creative writing turbocharged by his work, and has binge watched the series so much I could tell you at a glance which episode any given joke is from (that is all to say a megafan), there is _so_ much I appreciate here.
Obviously the artstyle/presentation and how faithful everything is, but also the the way the video is scripted, the way you even put blink-and-miss-it black text jokes, the references to INCREDIBLY specific lines and gags from the series ("Yahtzee Sebastian Godzilla Croshaw" is the four, btw), the appreciation for Nick's hand in the escpaist's survival (fun as the "ZP broken back from carrying things etc joke is, Nick's grassroots content creation really was the key factor and it's been incredible seeing the community he fostered in that time band together on both the audience and creator side of things), very crucially understanding how Yahtz is a wordsmith first a comedian second and a game critic third, rightly labeling the series as a potentially effective sleep aid, and like me having a clear adoration for his work and general taste in games despite also wanting to shove several specific reviews of his right back down his throat until he's retracted every spoken word be it because of inaccuracies or just being WRONG. -cough Bioshock 2 cough-
I could go on, but like I said, I really can't put into words how happy this video made me. Thankfully I don't need to mourn Yahtz's career just yet, but if that were the case this video would be the best comfort I could ask for.
Thank you, Qosmic. I hasn't known about Second Wind; I withdrew from the discussion about The Escapist and Zero Punctuation because my pessimism convinced me that it was all over - that there was no rewinding the clock.
Not only did you tickle my nostalgia button with the ZP art style and humor, but you showed me that it isn't over. Thank you so much.
*Hm, this guy seems to be doing a good analysis on what happened with the escapist.*
"Which if you recall my analysis of Big-D..."
*OH! It's this guy*
**Subscribed**
THIS IS SO EXCELLENT ITS ACTUALLY MIND BLOWING. Im sick and about to fall asleep so i cant be eloquent in my comment yet but i just need to say you NAIL HIS STYLE!!! what a wonderful love letter to many years of love for his work
Anything done with a human being passionately and with earnestly going for it makes people feel things, even if it’s someone trying to do something someone else has done, or in their style.
Kudos, well done. I got the feels.
17:11 "any attempt in this late-stage capitalist dystopia to break away from corporate structures-"
Corporations as they stand are far more closely related to socialist or feudalist structures. In fact, the free and open market that capitalism facilitates is what's allowing them to create their own company away from all the BS TheEscapist pinned on them. Not to say Patreon is free of this either - what with its relative control over production, means, and exchange living off arbitrary 'social goods' that let it strike down any causes it disagrees with while The State in turn scratches their back by striking down any competitors that try to do the same thing.
That's what bothers me so much about these commies, they associate anything having to do with corporate corruption with the entirety of the concept of the system that has provided for them in truly profound ways all their life. They'll stamp their feet and demand everything change, and then they'll throw an utter shitfit when their pumpkin spice latte disappears because they've done away with the entire economic model that facilities that kind of goods production and service. "CORPORATIONS BAD, POWER TO THE PEOPLE!" **economy collapses and there's no more electricity for them to play Smash Bros. on their now useless Switch** "NOOOO NOT LIKE THAT!!!"
I genuinely cannot remember watching a video game review by anyone except Yahtzee in at least the last 4 years
Many have tried and failed to replicate what made Zero Punctuation great.
You nailed it.
I subscribed to you after your Big D and Bullfrog analysis videos and I don't plan on unsubbing anytime soon.
Reminder that this all started with the US government telling Henry Ford that he could not reinvest profits to improve working conditions because his sole was obligation to his shareholders. Can't really blame corporations for acting in the manner legally required of them.
States and corportions are like some sort of weird symbiotic parasite. Corporations can't exist without them.
yeah this is the clincher. the system of capitalism traps everyone. Workers are controlled by middle managers, who are controlled by social pressure and upper management, upper management is controlled by executives, who cater to shareholders, who are obligated , socially and career-wise, to make the line go up at all costs. Everyone loses and no one is in control
>Communist
>Advocates for private ownership and the personal collection of capital.
I don't think that's how it works comrade.
The only take of his that made me a little angry was his opinion on the white phosphorus scene in Spec Ops: the Line. The essentials being that he didn’t see it as a condemnation of his actions because he only did what the game told him. And I wanted to reach through the screen to slap some sense and scream, “Yeah. You don’t feel bad because you were *just following orders* “
as much as I like Spec Ops the line as a critique of militaristic jingoism, the whole thing where it chastise you(the player) for following the railroaded plot line is still a negative for me.
@@crimsoncrusader4829 that kind of narrative fits for a military story though because people in the military frequently just do what they’re told, but their actions still have consequences, and it’s still can deeply affect them mentally, even if they were just following orders
Well, if game doesn't want me to play it I will not in this case.
The scene could have been set up better as it was kind of obvious and with no option around it, i know they had planned a harder fight originally but cut it.
As it stands none of them comment how its a very strange formation for 50 soldiers to be clumped up.
Also technically they made the choice, no one told them to use the weapon at that point, its more they were just so self assured they were the good guys but everything had told them this group was hostile
"Yeah, there was an option -- stop playing the game."
Oh sure, I'll toss out this *_sixty dollar investment that I made in order to relax and have some fun._* Honestly, once the game started preaching at me, I started going over the top on purpose to _spite_ it. Got the "massacre the rescue team" ending and felt fully satisfied.
...Though, I admit, I didn't exactly make that investment. Yar-Har Fiddle-Dee-Dee and all that -- just an extra middle finger to the pretentious cunts who made it.
Your imitation of his style in this videos was very accurate, got a good chuckle out of me.
Speaking as a ruthless bloody-minded capitalist pig, it warms my heart to know some purposeless seat-fillers in a bloated corporatist bureaucracy got undone by a bit of hard work and consumer goodwill. I wish them all the luck and every dollar they can grab. And you as well! You’ve earned a new subscriber!
That's going to be the antidote to the mess we're heading towards in the entertainment industry. Breakaway talent forming their own businesses, letting conglomerates take a bath in their worthless name purchases, and people getting used to the idea that no IP lasts forever. Art is alive and therefore must eventually die. The only thing I fear is government bailouts with the classic tagline "too big to fail".
@@RakaTwo13
Funnily a good chunk of these companies were once breakaways themselves like Activision.
I suspect the cycle will repeat with the breakaways becoming inflated messes that'll have breakaways
@@SudrianTales Yup. Nothing lasts forever, as it should be
First time seeing your videos. Really enjoyed it and can't wait to see where you go from here! Thank you for your work.
This was incredibly well made, and very authentic to Yahtzee's style. Very good job!!
I was what was then known as a Department of the {USA} Army Civilian for over 25 years. For a long time, we were paid every other Wednesday. One year the Federal Civil Service payday was changed to alternate Thursdays just before the fiscal year ended so that Congress could claim they'd saved a lot of money. We workers were not amused.
Spoiler alert: Second Wind did not, in fact, die within a month.
I don't exactly think this is a capitalist dystopia, because what those corporations do is not condoned by capitalism. This is a corporatist nightmare we live in actually.
oh this is dangerously based
The 3 in assassins creed 3 is referring to the number of hours the tutorial lasts
This was a really good video in the hole Gamurs debacle. I do have one nitpick: you should have mentioned Gamergate. That played a key role in the first implosion of The Escapist back in 2014. Nevertheless good video and you nailed Yahtzees style.
Well, specifically, it was Escapist hiring GG-aligned journalists that caused Sterling to leave in a huff and make a dishonest video criticizing the idea of ethical gaming journalism on his way out. And there were rampant and frothing calls from anti-GG advocates for Escapist to shutdown their forum discussions of the matter even though it had brought the site a lot of attention.
It is worth reflecting on the fact that this sort of worker revolt was only possible in this case due to the low capital costs involved with production and publication in the modern world. UA-cam (and similar services) in particular have removed the publication barrier that previously would have locked workers like this into working for one of a handful of oligarchs.
First time I see someone replicating Yahtzee's style (visuals, writing, delivery, etc) so faithfully, and in an overview of his work no less. It's also really nice how you smoothly transitioned away of the homage and into your own writing style and tempo in time with the shift in subject.
I remember seeing that comment where someone was asking Nick if they could use the music for a video, it's nice to now watch the video in question and find it to be significantly better than what I expected.
Hey! I was wondering why i wasn't seeing new Yahtzee videos for a while!
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!
P.S. down with capitalism!!!!
Thanks, I was wondering where yahtzee went. Also "the workers control the means of production" that kind of rings a bell....and one more thing, being a worker owned company can be difficult but it can and does work.
Fun fact: Extra credits has its origins in a pair of videos that the initial narrator, Daniel Floyd, made for his college classes. His main inspiration for the style of those videos was....Zero Punctuation.
I appreciate your works and efforts on the review of how a review channel blew itself up.
It's a two way street baby! Power and control has to be given. Has to be given. (Usually through threats and intimidation, but that detracts from the point)
Okay, i haven't finished, might edit more in as i go, but i had to stop because the use of the clip "what the fuck are you doing in my house viewer?" and responding to it fucking SENT me. It's fucking brilliant and it's honestly in line with Yatzee's style.
This whole video is pretty good, the use of yatzee's styles, clips and even jokes are so well done. The way you speak is as close to yatzee as you can manage without sounding awful.
You also are just, on the point. There's nothing i can find that is incorrect about the point.
I excpected some horror story of how yahtzee fucked up badly, was happily surprised by more advocation for worker owned companies. The best type of ownership is collective ownership.
No the best type of ownership is by people who understand what their workspace actually does and promotes by merit.
@gamingforever9121 To be fair, these are not mutually exclusive concepts
@@QosmicVoid true that great video btw
@@QosmicVoid but it is true that single owner businesses are the norm. Primarily because they’re the best mechanism for generating generational wealth.
"Ah, shit, here we go again"
While I heavily disagree with your borderline comical opinion of what money is and why it should be abolished (as in, you can be anti-megacorp without being anti-money, lol), the rest of the video is entertaining, makes good points and is well-executed. Strange bedfellows indeed.
That aside, I already had ZERO attachment to the Escapist and viewed it as little more than "the website what hosts ZP", so seeing it crumble to dust and Yahtzee moving to Second Wind with the better lads would've been cathartic had I cared at all. As it stands, it's more of a "what goes around comes around, I suppose" type of reaction. I am quite glad they're in a better place now though. (Might take a while to get used to the new artstyle [ *his eyes are so small now it's so unsettling* ] and red background, ZP was just that iconic.)
Put the playback speed on 1.25 and this becomes a Fully Ramblomatic-esque video.
I know that when these things happen, it comes down to greed and the lack of checks and balances to keep someone from riding a business rough shod just for the sake of money; it would be nice that some content creator or someone in general can do an analysis on what keeps giving some corporate heads the idea that they think this is okay; and I sense - keep thinking this is something they HAVE to strive for.
Like, what kind of mindset, or what's being taught in schools and colleges, or if this can come from some kind of corruption we 'might' not know about yet; is allowing this to be okay.
You were all put through their tomfoolery and I am glad you all struck out on your own and seem to be doing quite well on your own, it seems.
Many blessings and keep rambling, Ramblers!
Yatzees taste in games is an age thing. I am in my late 30 and feel similar to yatzee. I would play monkey Island, myst or super mario over assassins creed or watch dogs any day.
From a legal perspective the company owners have a fiscal responsibility to shareholders but you can make profit without sacrificing stakeholders. The courts/laws/congressional decisionmaking need to reflect this to fix the incentive systems reinforcing this. On average shareholders will always want to see their investments grow and grow quite quickly but instead of accepting the law of diminishing returns, our capitalist enterprises have turned to dissolving their diamond fields as you described them into bars to sell at cost of the very soul of the business they sought to grow. We need to resolve this broken incentive system so that executives do not feel encouraged to do this.
You did an incredible job of replicating ZP's art style and delivery, nice video
This was a beautiful tribute to something that was a regular part of a lot of our lives for a decade and a half.
Anyone else expect a "HA!" at the start?
Man you replicated his style perfectly
What companies and shareholders can't seem to comprehend is that infinite growth just isn't possible and no amount of fraud can make it possible. There will be spikes up and down and you can't blind yourself to those downs and only care about the ups.
Another difference to Yahtzee: he knows how to actually do a good joke allegory.
"Giant tower of gold overlooking a field of diamond, only to shoot themselves in the foot with a bazooka"?! Where is even in the throughline in that?
“Late-stage capitalist”
Oh, God…
So that ending felt very "seize the means of production" which I am here for
Screams communism to me 😂.
Based
@@gamingforever9121 Yes 🗿
thanks for dropping pretense at five half
Someone should send this video to the CGI artists and animators at Disney, I would so love to see what would happen.
Even if a worker co-op is more efficient than a current "traditional" corporation, they still need managers to direct the workers for a unified goal. Especially for a complicated project like video game, you cant just bloat the project to be a passion project of a dozen individuals, especially if their interests clash. There will always be a need for a manager that has a final say and power to enforce an ultimate goal, if not tasks in general. And if the co-op grows, that manager will need a manager to manage multiple groups. And if the co-op grows horizontally - a manager, for the manager, that manages managers.
Completely flat hierarchy sounds cool, until you realize that we are all individuals with our own ambitions and plans, and a directionless world is a dead world.
How about democratically voting for a manager?
@@QosmicVoid thats just a popularity contest, irrespective of experience. Its a race to mediocrity, where the least controversial and most appealing canditate wins, and then theres a question of "term limits". The simple conclusion is - a company of any sort isnt a state, and its sole purpose is creating a product that consumers will want. The duties of the state are already filled by... the state. So the manager has to simply be extremely good at managing the company to get the most out of limited resources. If a mediocre leader is elected who only cares about their own image, the company will not succeed. The only answer, thus, remains meritocratic promotions - most experienced, talented or acknowledged get to run the company, rather than who ever is most charismatic but least capable.
Problem - we have now created grounds for a technocratic system, which kick starts the same process which in the past created stuff like Military-Industrial complexes, patent abuses and central banking, as well as many other issues.
The best option is simply making an experiment, see what works best - create 3 practically similiar companies, but each of them have different managerial systems. One has popular election, other has meritocratic electorate and the latter has seniority assignment. See which has more success, and draw conclusions from that.
how about not starving?@@QosmicVoid
Yahtzee doesn’t hate anime, just majority of what’s out there. Best way to describe his taste is that he had said on X he likes Cowboy Bebop and The Saga of Tanya the Evil. He called fans of Demon Slayer F’s with permission from Jim at the time.
It's like emperor who constantly murdering the nobels who even slightly annoyed him. Then got confused when suddenly the economy crumble and the empire scattred
Thanks to this video for making me learn about Fully Ramblomatic. God bless Yahtz for keeping it real for 16 goddamn years and counting.
Personally I feel that the indie games scene rise is one of the factors that's been floating the games industry as it currently stands. At least that's my personal truth, they saved my joy in games.
As for "time savers" that's not necessarily a bad idea. The bad part of it was monetizing it, and making the game objectively worse in order to increase sales of it. The same reasons that works is also why pay to win mechanics in MMO's make so much money. Not all players have the time to grind it all out, but that doesn't mean they should give up gaming either. So really this kinda starts to edge into the complicated discussion of difficulty in games.
even Yahtzee knows when to get to the point.
And this why i want gaming to return to being a niche hobby. Bean counters should never be allowed in any creative work unless if they are also used to do the creative work.
Anyone finds it ironic that Yahtzee and the escapist team basically did what he criticized crowd funded Kickstarter games for doing? Just doing the same thing again under a new legally distinct name because the parent company are being idiots. I mean I don’t blame them in the slightest I just find it funny.
"i can't be Zero Punctuation, ZP doesn't have a moustache!"
@@demy4176it’s funnier than that - It's like if ZP grew a moustache, shaved it off, then bought a fake one and said "ZP doesn’t have a moustache."
A sensible breakdown of the situation all delivered in a faithful, funny rendition of Yahtzee's style.
It is worth mentioning that Second Wind's first week was probably the biggest red-letter on Patreon, they received almost 100 grand in donation/subscriptions inside of 7 days.
unionize.
What a lovely summary and speaking voice.
I would like to add a.... thematic disagreement by degree. One might argue that the house that Nick Calandra and crew established is a strong example of ethical, grassroots use of private capital. The core crew have foregone salaries until next year to cover their employees, and I would assume a strong ethic will govern the whole business in kind.
I make this statement in good faith, not as a 'fu commie' debate slam.
Great video, unfortunately, Sterling has always been a douche canoe, and Unity is peak Assassin’s Creed. True as hell on the rest, though. Gamur’s Group (owners of The Escapist and other gaming media brands), are scumbags and it’s hilarious watching their out of touch decision making catch up with them. So glad Yahtzee and the rest are seeing continued success over on Second Wind.
This was a very impressive job at emulating Yahtzee's style, well done.
I can't say ZP's critiques were that harsh. They never really stood out as unreasonable, he was just much more critical than like IGN or something.
Being critical at all in videogame journalism is already a big thing.
The only videogames magazine critics ever shit on is games everyone already has agreed suck, lest they stop getting privileges and receiving bribes.
And look at what happened to The Escapist with... Sony was it? Yatzhee was honest one too many times and they never sent them press review codes ever again, it became a running gag.
"It's both possible, and even necessary, to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects" as another video game critic once said.
Escapist: * fires Nick *
Everyone else inclusing Yahtzee Croshaw and Sebastian Ruiz: "Do you hear the people sing? -- singing the song of angery man! . . ."
"Abolish money as a concept" i.e. how to tell when someone has zero understanding of money
Thanks for the update!! I hadn’t heard from ZP in a couple months, and had expected UA-cam shenanigans affecting the algorithms of recommendations for me. I only watched The Escapist for Zero Punctuation and Escape To The Movies with MovieBob back then; I suppose I’ll have to move on as well
Yeah, if you think worker owned business can't make dumb decisions or that having smaller hierarchy would stop such decisions, then I have to ask if you would be interested in this bridge I'm selling.
Don't get me wrong, worker ownership can work really well in some cases.
I just don't think it can work in many cases and I find the framing of some of your arguments to be downright baffling.
Yes, if you work for a business, you are expected to make a profit for that business. Why else would you be hired?
At the same time you don't bear any of the risks associated with said business. If a game developer works on a game that bombs, the dev still got paid and those that funded the game/the shareholders eat the loss.
I will absolutely agree that hiring a bunch of people, essentially forcing them to do crunch and then firing them immediately afterwards is a terrible practice. The problem in my opinion with that practice is dishonesty, it is completely reasonable for many companies in many fields to hire on temporary workers. The issue I have is that when companies aren't honest about a contract being temporary when they know full well that they'll maybe keep 10% of the people hired on mass.
I don’t recall saying worker owned labels couldn't make bad decisions. Frankly speaking that’s irrelevant to me. I don't care if they make bad personal economic choices - At least if they make a bad choice, it’s by their own choice - Not because some executive decided to gamble their livelihood, while that executive is going to be a-okay.
I could - And did - write out a whole economic thesis statement, but I realised I simply don’t care. My goal is to see a world with as much reduced hierarchy as possible, and improved for the maximum number of people possible. That’s it. There are some instances where worker ownership probably wouldn't work out too great, like for example, a government job, but outside that my main concern is the reduction of hierarchy. I want a world with as little chance as possible for abuse. Would it be Perfect - No, but a damn sight better than what we've seen happening for the last decade now.
@@QosmicVoid If a worker owned business is not better at making economic choices than the current executives, how is that better for the workers?
I can definitely see where you're coming from. The way large corporations are structrures and the way high power executives are paid is simply unjust.
In large part, because when executives make catastrophic decisions they rarely, if ever, get the just deserts.
See the idea behind the high pay executives get is because of the responsibility they bear.
But when they make a bad decision that impacts the company, even if they get replaced they still often land high paying jobs at other companies.
It's frankly disgusting.
That said, I don't think that flattening heirarchies is the solution to the problem.
@@ZealotOfSteal it would be better in that the workers are not being screwed over by a CEO who will be fine no matter what, who then decided to gamble with their jobs because they felt like it to make red line go up.
Also if you can list all of those things, and think "no, hierarchy isn’t the problem here", I’m frankly not sure what would. That’s the equivalent of saying "well if you ignore the blood, the fire, and the people now in hospital, the car crash wasn’t that bad." I’m not entirely certain what to say to that.
My main point is that if it is near always the choices of CEO's and a small number of executives - We should probably make sure that they have to answer to their employers in the work of workplace democracy, wherein they will have to actually listen to the concerns of their workers if they want to keep all the nice perks they get. Otherwise, they get voted off the board, and have to rejoin the workforce surrounded by people who hate them.
@@QosmicVoid
So the difference is accountability of the CEO and executives.
I'm not convinced that heirarchy is the problem, because I think the problem is incentives CEOs, executives and shareholders have.
I can see how a business where the people working there have a majority stake could potentially solve this problem in some cases.
However, I don't see how you could reasonably make that work in most cases. Stock options, part of your pay being stocks in the company, is one idea that is available for this. Another would be the option to buy into the company once you've worked there for a period of time.
Also if you look at corporate blunders where executives got a 'golden parachute', most often they don't continue to work at the same company. They just go work for another business, almost always by having connections with other executives. So the last part of your idea simply wouldn't work, since as far as I can see nothing would change on that front.
I do want to thank you for taking the time to have a chat with me. Corporate governance is an interesting topic, though nowhere near my field of expertise so I hope this conversation is as interesting to you as it is to me.
@@ZealotOfSteal
Exactly.
If you're not just an employee but 'forced' to be a shareholder (ie: 'Here's your paycheck minus the maintenance and upkeep of the business) not many people want the hassle of 'that sorta crap'.
It's why not everyone goes through the rigmarole of becoming a Senior Partner, or into the ownership side of things.
Sure the pay's overall better, but you also bear some of the responsibility as you get higher, with "things-going-wrong" (heavy the head that wears the crown and all that).
As the toilet-paper-stacker-dude-person, your job is just to go in and stack the toiletpaper. Sure you might have to cajole and ensure you get the tools to do your job, but beyond that you do job get paid go home.
As you become Senior Company Toiletpaper and Cleaning Supplies Meister, suddenly you gotta worry about all the stuff for all the other floors, and you also have to sit in on partnership meetings and justify your budget and "Hey why should we get the expensive cleaning product intead of the cheap crap that doesn't really do anything because we gotta shave some money here, and we'd rather spend it on stuff *here* in the shiny happyfuntime cool stuff...." only to then be dragged over the coals because, "Hey the toilet seats are kinda funky and they're not as clean as they were last quarter, this must clearly be your fault for some reason, rather than giving you substandard cleaning products."
If you're just an employee, yes you're at the whims and fates of those above you, your focus is just on "doing your job then going home at the end of the day and not thinking about anything until the next work day".
Bosses gotta work the books, keep the business going and get that "MyPocket" vs "BusinessUpkeeep" balance going. And especially in start-up businesses, it can be a while before there's any significant money that's going back into your pocket and not gobbled up by the business.
And human nature being what it is, there's always gonna be some element; even with a "Co-share-cooperative" of "Well you're the effengee. Sure we're all paying the same share, but I've been paying share since 20xx, you've only been doing it 200xy, so I automatically have seniority over you."
Hell, it's why in the military, two people of the exact same Rank can get into a bitchfit over "Date of Commission" because the guy who was comissioned a day before the other guy, has seniority.
It's why twins can get into loggerheads because, "Well *I* was born a few minute earlier, so therefore I'm older even though we were both born on the same day." and feel entitlted to lord it over the "younger" sibling.
I'm definitely checking out this video essay series some more at a later time. An Assassin's Creed fan making a video essay on Fully Ramblomatic in the style of Zero Punctuation with the same well deserved contempt for Microtransactions as The Jimquisition? Yes please!
I find it sad that people keep blaming corporation/capitalism when the problem is often just one or two twat with too much power and not enough comon sense.
Also, trying to make a link with microtransaction is a bit weird.
How do you account for this happening in every industry, everywhere in the world, constantly happening if its just "a few twats".
Clearly somethings has gone wrong somewhere for this to keep happening for 200 years, and we just keep ignoring it - or it can't be fixed. It's one of the two.
@@QosmicVoid
Every ? Nope.
I think it's time for you to look inward and ask yourself some important questions. But, then again people like you would prefer dying than to look in the godamn mirror and see what's wrong. You are the same kind of people that you depict here. The difference... they have power and you don't and that makes you furious.
I sure am paid correctly. I sure got decent work insurrance. I sure got a decent pension. I sure know many people like me in other corporation. I sure had to get an education and prove myself. I had to become bilingual. I sure am proud of my boss and the the culture of my corporation. Did we have lay off ? Yes, but everytimes we had learn from our mistakes and we have called out our lay off employe once the dark moment was gone.
Is there some corporation who fuck up. Yes... but don't put that on the back of every corporation.
You are just angry. The weird loot box argument and your speedy reaction are the biggest evidence of it.
Go get help
@@QosmicVoid Blaming it on capitalism isn't fair to every single business because it's implying the issue isn't fundamental. There is no golden alternative to run to when revolving an economic model around humans because the problem is that humans are dickheads, and dickish people gain power in systems because they'll either break them or exploit them.
If you're in some kind of anarchist commune, what happens if just... I dunno, someone doesn't redistribute? This would be a lot of people mind you, because your money doesn't mean much if it'll go away anyways. Well, you'd have to install a regime to reinforce distribution and... ahh, yeah. This comes off as kind of harsh but I think these are just dangerously naive perceptions of the world; if alternative systems worked better, we would have adopted them much, much faster. As it stands, the road to the solution is blaming the man rather than the system, because were a long way from coming up with a better model (nor capitalist or communist) that solves the issue of "humans suck and don't play fair" and assholes deserve to have their reputation marked rather than have some system be blamed rather than themselves, as it's actually a bit of a scapegoat IMO and they don't deserve that.
@@phancoom1087 "Humans are bad" is self aggrandizement.
"Humans are bad - But not me. I know Humans are bad. Therefore I'm good."
This logic has been used to justify some of the worst atrocities imaginable, because when you believe everyone else is a scumbag, you justify acting like a scumbag yourself, because you think everyone else is doing it. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. And here's the honest truth - Humans like to think things are simple, and that one solution will fix everything. That's never the case.
I've never claimed to have the perfect solution, but I refuse to believe that things cannot improve. I refuse to accept the idea that we must live in systems we know encourage harmful behaviour because "Humans bad lmao". I'd rather be naïve and working towards something better than being a pessimist, seeing unfathomable amounts of suffering, shrugging, and then advocating we keep it because Humans suck. At least if we try, we might find something along the way. Conceding outright guarantees this mess continues.
@@QosmicVoid If you think that our argument is ''things cannot improve''. Then you are obviously lying to yourself.
We both never claim that.
Again... GET PSYCHOLOGICAL HELP ASAP
Good Job explaining what the real problem is, the system itself.
Look man I hate big corpos as much as the next guy but describing “power coupons” and complaining how you need money to buy food just screams naïvete to me, like no shit we need money to survive it’s not like farming or manufacturing is free, there’s costs that need to be paid in order to keep the train running, is the whole lobbying politicians thing good no but it’s just basic fact that life aint free, handouts don’t keep society running the free market does
This comment fascinates me in so many ways. You seem to think money is like gravity, in that it's a force of reality, rather than a construct we made up for our own convenience that we could do away with, or enhance it's role in society even further if we wanted to. I don't think you're even aware that you're doing it. It's fascinating.
@@QosmicVoid so what’s your proposed solution then? We go back to bartering, my chicken for your PS5? How do you propose society progress without the concept of currency
@@jenkinsuu My solution is "We already produce more than enough food to feed the world three times over each year - Let's make is so people don't starve to death, and figure it out from there."
I'm not arrogant enough to presume to have the solve-everything solution - If I did, I wouldn't be doing media analysis. Reality doesn't work that way. It's built upon literally thousands of people, experimentations, theories, implementations, and structures based on material conditions, public perception, and political will. I don't believe in "Great man Theory".
What I do know is that if you actually believed in what you're saying, you wouldn't be dismissing the very real, actually existential issues with your ideology, and saying "Well there's nothing we can do and wanting things to be better is naïve". Attitudes like that guarantee the destruction of Capitalism, because that is of no assurance or comfort to the people who struggle with it on the daily. And then, assuming you're right and society breaks down - Congratulations. You get to be the smuggest person in the Mad-Max dystopia.
@@QosmicVoid So how do you propose we feed the world then? Producing doesn’t equate distribution, and there are still a lot of costs involved with that level of philanthropy. If we’ve abolished the dollar as you want then how are we to go about paying people to transport all that food, figure out a system for distributing said food to the masses? Everybody struggles and yeah starving to death sucks but it’s simply not feasible to feed all 7 however many billion of people on a centrally controlled plan. How do we decide what to feed people, how much, what if they don’t want what we offer? We have to fend for ourselves to at least some degree. Having a safety net is good and well and all, and for those that need food there’s services such as soup kitchens, however because they’re operated off volunteer work and not paid labor nobody wants to volunteer. Until we somehow figure out the impossible task of erasing humanity’s defining trait of craving wealth then idealism is the same thing as naïvete
You could get a job as assistant animator on fully ramblomatic, you emulated the style almost perfectly.
While I'm no anarcho-communist I do lean left and have to agree the current economic model even allowing billionares to exist or possibly even trillionares if the Saudis ever let us check whats in their vaults seems like a pretty big problem when there are countires like Italy with populations so elderly and the 20-somethngs so unsure about their future that for 60 million people only 400k babies were born last year due to sheer financial constraints is at least a little horryfing. I'm better versed in geopolitics than demestic 1s but the system kinda fucks up on both of those fronts and short of WW3 I dont see how youd fix the demestic policy of the US, EU, UK and at least the rest of the west with anything short of that.
I just don’t believe in the reality that communism/socialism as people idealize can be realized in any meaningful way. Any time I hear it, it always seems to show a easy to exploit power vacuum that always gets filled by people the systems were supposed to get rid of. Communism in China is just a handful of dudes telling everyone what to do with threat of arrest or loss of basic freedoms. Total Socialism cannot work on a large scale due to lack of ability to adapt to quickly changing conditions.
Yes there are definite protections and socialist concepts that can help and can work, but those are not the entire idea of what communism and socialism is. Capitalism works because it is the basic premise of economics and it’s adaptable because who cares if a company fails, another will take its place.
know what you're worth. because every time you de-value and undersell yourself, you make everyone in a similar situation cheaper and easier to exploit, it's not just you that suffers. none of us live alone in a vacuum, we all live surrounded by the vacuum together.
This was a great video until it turned into the literal commie manifesto