I don't personally know Tatsuya Ishida, but I have a feeling he is;
1. Younger than me.
2. Not as informed as I am about economics.
And the reason I say this (and I mean this in a non-derogatory manner) is he is suffering from what I deem a lot of youth are suffering from and that is ignorance when it comes to basic economics. He has an identity complex.
First off, let me state that I am a HUGE EFFING FAN of Sinfest.
And "HUGE EFFING FAN" is the highest rating one can achieve in the Captain Capitalism hierarchy of rankhood.
Tatsuya is smart, he is brilliant, and if one were to test his IQ, there is no doubt in my mind it would exceed 130 points.
The problem is he is misinformed, and like most other youth, have no idea what they're talking about when they discuss the difference between capitalism and communism.
To those of us intricately trained in the differences between the two ideologies, his two latest comics;
This one
and
This one
show, quite clearly, that he has his heart in the right place, but plainly lacks the basic understanding of the basic tenets and principles/differences between capitalism and communism.
I mean this not in a jest or ha ha way, but a serious way. How many younger folk out there are unable to make that vitally important discernation between capitalism and communism, and (scarier still) vote on these misinformed, faulty premises?
It's almost as if their natural survivalist/darwinian instincts know what is "bad" and can easily identify it, but they're so easily taken in by the (nothing short of) B freaking S that is known as the false promises of socialism, that they propagate it.
Regardless, Tatsuya has provided me some much needed humor and mirth in a life that would otherwise be quite depressing, but I wonder that if Ishida had any formal training in the basics of economics...could he not be the one...the one that would bring balance to the force???
Ah! Who am I kidding? I'm the one. I'm the one that will bring balance to the force. That or the realities of economics, which *by definition* REALITIES of economics, more or less "forces" us all to adhere to, no matter how much we disagree with "realities."
Damn realities....You mean Obama won't guarantee I get a pony?
22 comments:
You seem to be misinformed. Corporations are the new communist state.
I think he's confused about the difference between corporatism and capitalism.
Just because the tools of production are nominally in the hands of, say, the industrialists doesn't mean interventionsim/Statism isn't in play.
I wanna know how come MacDonald's and Starbucks get all the headlines. That's not fair. There are so many other big evil international corporations. Why just those two?
In my experience, you can fit what most artists know about economics - and politics, really - in the ink cartridge of their pens.
Ron, clearly you cannot see that government has more power and control over your life than any corporation.
Government can pass a law declaring anything you do as an illegal act.
Corporations do not even have the power to prevent you from shopping elsewhere. Or from producing things for yourself.
Comuunists kill people. Directly. Many of them. There's another difference.
Anymore it's getting hard to tell the difference. One calls you comrade and the other calls you consumer.
The big difference used to be that in a democracy you had a hell of lot of personal freedom to do what you want and say what you want ... that is not so anymore.
If I want to smoke a cigar I have to find a place where there are no easily offended humans withing a mile.
In either system, you need to be a criminal to be financially successful. That's not how it used to be.
His Cyrillic alphabet needs work too.
In the last frame of the second cartoon, they should have asked each other, "Ok, now where do we eat dinner?"
I don't often eat fast food because it basically sucks. Occasionally I get a Big Mac attack. But big business is big business because lots of people enjoy going there.
I wrote a blog entry about shopping in the bankrupt city of Vallejo, where the Walmart was packed. If it weren't for Walmart and similar stores, the unemployment rate would've been much higher and prices more expensive.
I agree with Ron. It isn't necessary for government to own the means of production to be socialism. It's only necessary for them to control the means of production. That is where we need to be most concerned.
At a conference, a woman showed a list of the top 20 companies in the US in 1980 and how the list changed every five years thereafter. In 1980, General Motors was the largest corporation in the world with revenues right behind the United States and the Soviet Union. Now their stock is worth less than the price of a Happy Meal at McDonalds.
Corporations which fail to adapt to changing market conditions die a horrible, screaming death. Workers who fail to build human capital desired by employers and stay flexible to changes, suffer a similar fate.
You know, he's a young guy. God knows I had some seriously deranged ideas when I was young. But I have to admit that his take from two weeks earlier http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=2952
tickled me even though I knew the root cause came from Congress.
It isn't necessary for government to own the means of production to be socialism. It's only necessary for them to control the means of production. That is where we need to be most concerned.
So - how does the government buying stocks in major banks to bail them out play into that?
Ron, clearly you cannot see that government has more power and control over your life than any corporation.
I'm a hard-core free market capitalist. The corporations I speak of are the ones that maintain their power *primarily* through the use of the very tool you mention (government) to protect them from competition (think tariffs, licencing restrictions and so on), instead of through customer service and providing products customers want.
So, yeah, I'm aware.
I'm so old. I didn't get either cartoon. Both were non sequiturs to me. But then I live in a world where Citcorp helped leverage the buyout of my employer by an Indian company.
Louise said
"I wanna know how come MacDonald's and Starbucks get all the headlines. That's not fair. There are so many other big evil international corporations. Why just those two?"
You forgot about walmart and microsoft. The poor coffee snobs (who are poor because they are philosophy students who's goal in life is to be a philosophy professor) are just mad that the Starbucks attracted all the rich faux coffee snobs so their hole in the wall coffee shops went out of business since there isn't enough money in serving poor coffee snobs. It's not the evil corporations (even the genuinely evil ones like Sony) that bother me since I don't have an interest in their products, its the cancerous corporations like Electronic Arts that piss me off. They buy out a good gaming company, milking the newly acquired company's latest game for money to buy out the next company while destroying the acquired companies that they already own. Look at what they did to Westwood studios. They got to milk C+C Generals and then destroyed Westwood so that now we get C+C 3 which is crap. EA doesn't produce GDP, instead they buyout and destroy companies that do. But in all seriousness I'm thankful that I'm bitching about video games instead of thanking the great leader that I am able to stand in line for 6 hours to receive my bread ration.
AeroGuy, EA makes a lot of their money selling the same football/baseball/whatever game every year with updated jerseys, and I guess by their sales that someplace there are people who like that. I figure they're probably brain damaged.
But think of it this way for a minute; when EA buys out a company and replaces the staff and makes a crappy knockoff, it's not like the people behind the company who originally made the game is disintegrated by the process. They get a bunch of money from EA which they can use for their next project, whatever it may be. EA's willingness to fork out money for a successful game franchise provides an incentive above and beyond what already exists since they have to pay better than the company expects to earn on their own in order to make a deal.
But anyway, it's a good point that we're in a position to complain about video games, which is really a pretty good situation.
I doubt that Tatsuya Ishida was really saying communism and capitalism are equivalents. I think that his comics are meant more to be felt on a personal level, that the bombardment that big time corporations deliver feels similar to those that one would feel if bombarded with propaganda of any type. Both are obviously stretches as well and are fanciful and funny, I mean, the second comic especially, basing it off of the old Apple commercial. I don't think that a gag=Tatsuya Ishida is ignorant.
I, too, am a big fan of Sinfest, and I agree with Anonymous from 10:50 pm. I don't think Ishida is equating communism and capitalism at all. I think he's pointing out the inconsistencies between capitalism in theory and capitalism in practice, just like there's are inconsistencies between communism in theory and communism in practice.
I thought he was drawing huge comparisons between the two.
I thought he was drawing huge comparisons between the two.
You guys do realize that Tatsuya Ishida was born in 1978 right? I wouldn't call that exactly young with crazy youthful ideals, I'd call that being 32.
Middle aged is the new young? And young is the new fetus?
i didnt read all the comments,
i'm not that bored.
you clearly have a lot of passion in the righteousness of your argument.
i'm not saying you're wrong about capitalism / communism.
i'm hoping someone already said it, otherwise i guess it's down to me.
it's a comic, not an essay, definitely not a political campaign.
whimsy and free license.
Cap Cap,
I've noticed a trend in Sinfest of supporting Ron Paul, starting in 2008, some strips very critical of Obama and the Republicans, and a far more nuanced look at capitalism (vs the corporatocracy we live in today) than you give him credit for. I think an updated post on this might be in order.
"Actually the three philosophies are barely distinguishable, and the social systems which they support are not distinguishable at all. Everywhere there is the same pyramidal structure, the same worship of semi-divine leader, the same economy existing by and for continuous warfare. It follows that the three super-states not only cannot conquer one another, but would gain no advantage by doing so. "
George Orwell, 1984
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