When I first went to the US, the unrealistically low speed limits were one of the first things I noticed when driving.

I kinda assumed that this is by design so that police can pull over anyone they feel like since virtually everyone drives over the speed limit in some areas as it is so ridiculously low.

A lot of reasons. First of all, it’s not really their goal to make a good OS for users. They know that 95% will use windows no matter what, especially businesses, because they still more or less have a monopoly, especially in the desktop market.

In other words, any ressources spent on improving the desktop OS experience past the bare minimum is excess because they don’t really get anything concrete in return.

Yes, windows is less efficient than other os, but until recently, this wasn’t a problem for microsoft since you can just throw more/better hardware at the issue, which is a win win. They have to spend less ressources at optimizing code for better performance and, I imagine, they get a better cut since their hardware partners sell more devices because hardware gets obsoete every couple of years.

And in the server environment, they want it to be increasingly expensive because windows server is mostly used in cases where there is no alternative, and they want it all in their cloud.

Also, a lot of what is annoying about windows is per design. Ads, sponsorship ads, forced accounts, etc.

You are mixing social democrats with democratic socialists.

The origin and core of social democracy is clearly socialist and, in many cases, Marxist. Of course this was more and more deluted over time until today, were many social democratic parties have indeed completely abandoned their socialist roots even in theory.

However, historically, social democracy overall can (and imo should) still be seen as reformist socialism, at least partially. The way I see it, it’s that the parties have abandoned social democracy by embracing neo-liberalism. have abandened those goals completely (e.g. modern German SPD, British Labour)

One could also argue that social democratic parties pretty much always had a leftist wing and a liberal wing, this is true today as well for the most part.

Its niceties are financed by imperial rent.

Isn’t everything/anything existing under capitalism financed by imperial rent?

How is it different to China, for example, who also participates in the global capitalist economy and benefits from it?

When that flow contracts, the mask comes off.

When has this happened? Do you have a specific example of a social democratic party turning fascist (actually curious)? Turning neo-liberal, sure, but to me at least, equating neo-liberalism with fascism is an oversimplification. Or is the argument that socdem turns into neo-liberalism, neo-liberalism turns into fascism, ergo socdem=fascism?

>I explicitly said “helped,” not “solely responsible.” Multiple factors converged in 1933.

Fair enough.

they preserved the bourgeois state apparatus after 1918.

they kept the reactionary judiciary, the imperial officer corps, and the bureaucratic machinery intact. They unleashed the Freikorps on the KPD.

Whether or not you believe me, it does pain me to defend the SPD, but I guess I will still do it.

They didn’t just preserve it, they were essential in building it. And that shouldn’t be surprising since in their view, socialism has to be build through a liberal democratic system instead of going straight from imperialist/monarchist to socialist.

And yes, they did a lot of “ultra-pragmatic” and desperate moves to protect the liberal republic and what was in their view the way towards socialism in the future and avoid a civil war/reversal of their gains. This does include them using Freikorps, which is imo indefensible, but it is at least somewhat explainable given the uncertainity of the situation.

And it’s easy to judge in hindsight, but the German situation was quite different from Russia. There were uprisings all over the place, socialist republics were declared, but it was much more chaotic and the working class was much more divided. Chances of right wing and monarchists forces reversing power or even taking back more power seemed plausable.

>They refused every proposal for a united working class front against the Nazis.

This is very critical and one of the biggest issues. But again, this was a mutual thing. The KPD also refused to form any kind of front against the nazis until it was too late. Both factions failed to see nazism/fascism severely underestimated the threat of the fascists.

>Stalin characterized this relationship precisely when he stated that “Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism” and that these organizations “are not antipodes, they are twins.”

And this characterization is in part what made it virtually impossible to form any kind of pragmatic alliance/front against the fascists and I honestly don’t understand what the purpose of this characterization is… Why would they work with the SPD against the fascists when the SPD was, in practice, fascist itself?

social democracy functions as the left wing of counterrevolution.

Social democracy is against revolution and pro reform. If that makes it fascist, literally everything and everyone except for revolutionary socialists are/were fascists. This worldview, imo, is shooting yourself in the foot. And I don’t understand why this view still seems to be held. Many have no issue with critial support of regimes/groups/factions for specific and pragmatic goals. And then we don’t live in Weihmar Germany anymore, there is virtually 0 revolutionary potential in the west, so what good does essentially turning virtually everyone into the enemy do?

socialdemocrats entire ideology is built upon “reforming” capitalism by implementing a welfare state to more evenly spread the profits of the super exploitation of the periphery.

Technically, it’s built on the idea that a socialist society can be/should be reached gradually by participating in parliamentary liberal political system instead of overthrowing liberal society and implementing a “dictatorship of the proletariat”.

At least that was what the original debate was about (“reform vs revolution”) that split the left apart. Since then, most social democrats have completely moved away from the idea of reaching a socialist society anytime soon (for various reasons).

The meme is pointing out the unfortunate pattern of it almost always ending in a rightward shift

The meme is clearly pointing out that “social democracy enjoyers” turn into fascists/Nazis once the economy declines. Or, if we keep OP’s caption in mind, the idea that social democrats are actually fascists “wearing a mask”.

directly helped bring Hitler to power

What helped Hitler seize power was not just the actions/inactions of the socdems and the economic collapse, but the deep split of the left overall, the ineffective political system and the relentless infighting to the point were socdems and communists saw eachother as equivalent or even a bigger threat than the fascists.