Superstition is the end of reason, and therefore the ally of violence. A less superstitious world is a less violent world.
Religion is all about controlling people through fear and shame. This naturally leads to a great deal of hatred, violence, and suffering.

The following is an excerpt from The Empathic Civilization - Becoming Human, pp 119 - 122 (TLDR at bottom)

"When we talk of guilt, we need to be clear not to confuse it with shame. Often the two terms are used interchangeably when, in fact, they are quite different. While guilt can trigger empathic distress and the desire to reach out and make amends to another whom one has harmed, shame denigrates a person’s being, making them feel worthless and inhuman. To be shamed is to be rejected. Shame is a way of isolating a person from the collective we. He or she becomes an outsider and a nonperson. Shame has the effect of turning off the innate empathic impulse. If one feels like a nonbeing, socially ostracized and without self-worth, he is unable to draw upon his empathic reserves to feel for another’s plight. Unable to emotionally connect with others, he either shrinks into withdrawal or acts out his sense of abandonment by exercising rage at others. Why rage? Because it is often the only way he has open to him to communicate and engage his fellow human beings. The idea of the “loner,” isolated from society and full of rage toward his fellows, is a phenomenon in every society.

When one is made to feel guilty, it is one’s humanity that is being called upon to do the right thing by another person. Unlike shaming someone, which isolates him from humanity, guilty is an internal mechanism that reminds one of his deep social connection to others and the need to repair the social bond. Guilt needs to be handled carefully. If a parent’s induction discipline creates too much of a sense of guilt in the child, he is likely to grow up feeling that nothing he can do will ever be adequate to amend a hurt or restore a social bond. If, on the other hand, a parent’s induction discipline doesn’t result in instilling at least a minimum of guilt in the child, he will grow up without being able to reflect on how his behavior affects others and unable to trigger sufficient empathic distress to re-heal the social bond. Just good enough parenting lets the child know that he did something wrong, but in a caring way that lets him know that he is still loved and regarded as a person. By explaining how the other person might feel and asking him how he would feel in the same situation, the parents are letting him know that they trust his innate goodness and desire to empathize with others and make amends. Equally important, the parents are teaching a cxhild that their love for him is no less because of his wrongful behavior. No one is perfect. The best we can expect of each other is to learn from our indiscretions and try to do better next time.
By shaming a child, however, the parents are letting him know that whe is not living up to their expectations and, therefore, not worthy of their consideration. Their expectations, rather than his humanity, become the focal point of the disciplinary exercise. The child is left with the impression that his very being is a disappointment and that he must conform to an “ideal image” of what his parents expects from him or suffer the consequence of rejection*.
Guilt cultures create a very different human being from shaming cultures. The American philosopher Martha Nussbaum puts it this way:

Ironically, while a shaming culture pretends to adhere to the highest standards of moral perfection, in reality it produces a culture of self-hate, envy, jealousy, and hatred toward others. Shaming cultures, throughout history, have been the most aggressive and violent because they lock up the empathic impulse, and with it the ability to experience another’s plight and respond with acts of compassion. When a child grows up in a shaming culture believing that he must conform to an ideal of perfection or purity or suffer the wrath of the community, he is likely to judge everyone else by the same rigid, uncompromising standards. Lacking empathy, he is unable to experience other people’s suffering as if it were his own and therefore is likely to judge their plight as their own fault because they failed to live up to the standards of perfection expected of them by society.
   Shaming cultures still exist in traditional societies. It is not uncommon to hear about a woman who has been gang-raped and who is then stoned to death by her own family and neighbors, because she has brought shame on herself and her family. Rather than empathize with her suffering, the community inflicts even greater punishment on her by taking her life. In the eyes of the community, she bears the shame of the rape, despite the fact that she was the innocent victim. As far as her family and neighbors are concerned, she is forever defiled and impure and therefore an object of disgust to be blotted out. The power of shaming cultures to squelch empathy and transform human beings into monsters is terrifying to behold."

TLDR
"While a shaming culture pretends to adhere to the highest standards of moral perfection, in reality it produces a culture of self-hate, envy, jealousy, and hatred toward others. Shaming cultures, throughout history, have been the most aggressive and violent because they lock up the empathic impulse, and with it the ability to experience another’s plight and respond with acts of compassion. When a child grows up in a shaming culture believing that he must conform to an ideal of perfection or purity or suffer the wrath of the community, he is likely to judge everyone else by the same rigid, uncompromising standards. Lacking empathy, he is unable to experience other people’s suffering as if it were his own and therefore is likely to judge their plight as their own fault because they failed to live up to the standards of perfection expected of them by society. (...) The power of shaming cultures to squelch empathy and transform human beings into monsters is terrifying to behold."
-Jeremy Rifkin

Reality is actually even more shocking than you think. If there was a "They" who were in on this big conspiracy, it would be a simple matter of finding out who these people are and what their agenda is. There is no they.

No one knows what to do. Your leaders are mostly making it up as they go along, and all of them are just as indoctrinated into their sick culture as you are in yours. Like you, the elite have been lied to since formative years by people who were also lied to since formative years.

Most of the most powerful people in the world are just as terrified - and probably twice as stressed - as you are.

Entertainers survived and thrived for thousands of years before the word "copyright" was ever uttered.

So you don't support capitalism, I take it? After all, it's a fact that the overwhelming majority of workers are not allowed to keep the fruits of their labor. They are expected to accept a tiny fraction of the profits generated by that labor, or fuck off and starve.

Reality check, it's up to whomever commands the monopoly on coercive force and violence. In this case, the nation state. You have no rights, you have privileges granted to you by your masters. These can be revoked at any time. If you don't believe me, google internment camps WW2.

Mark Cuban is wrong, the end.

A nation founded on immigrants, built by immigrants, now trying to close the borders on immigrants and keep it for themselves. Such utter hypocrisy the world has never known.

If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

This guy gets it.

I'd so go one step further, once you have the information they are trying to own, distribute it as freely and widely as you can. No mercy for any profit margins backed by (state or not) violence.

As far as I'm concerned every day the bitcoin network is online bitcoin has succeeded.

It's not "china" as in "China's government", it's "a bunch of random folks who happen to live in the nation where one third of all humans live". Nothing to be alarmed about.

This concern only really matters when you're not pals with the people printing the money (or for those borrowing millions interest-free). When you have that kind of game-rigging happening in the heart of your system, the rules no longer apply.

Besides, if your big company fails because some little guy copied you and undercut your prices, you'll just get bailed out anyway! Or even if you don't get bailed out, we all know the executives will have their golden parachutes ready.

Not just yet, at least. 2014-15 hasn't exactly been kind to them, though. I guess I wouldn't complain if my 103 year old company had a 150+ billion dollar marketcap, though.

This video (and every other one from that YTer) is excellent learning material.

A white westerner in China? Spoiler: you ARE the man.

Correct. This will happen.

Really? What a weak strawman. Looks like we're done here.

QFT, but it comes with the territory of money.

I claim only that any system from past civilization will almost certainly be inferior, and any system from future civilization will very likely be (ethically and otherwise) superior. I claim that just as capitalism was born, so too must it die. Capitalism is not immortal, no human system ever was.

I know this may come as a shock to you, but modern post/anti-capitalist thought extends quite a bit beyond Marx.

"Anticapitalist Bitcointalk forum posts made North Korea happen, guise!"  

I guess you'll be conveniently ignoring the fact that capitalist sex-slave trafficking is a 40 billion dollar per year global industry? Dat profit motive though.

Not more food, but less people (higher infant mortality), and less waste.

In the amazon basin, during food shortages elders were often known to "go for a walk in the forest", which is a euphemism for go out to die, so that the young may live.
This is in stark contrast to modern american life, where the old so often become the predators of the young. And if that isn't the definition of dystopia, I don't know what is.

You do realize that capitalism existed in the 18th century, correct? What, did you think piracy existed before capitalism? Good lord, you're beyond my help.

Ah, I see we've arrived at the part of the story where all capitalists are rewarded in exact proportion to how hard they work. The part where the wealthy elite all work 60+ hour work weeks just like the single mom with three kids.
The part where inheritance and spoiled rich kids don't exist. The part where you mentally sanitize capitalism of all its obvious fuedal roots. The part where the mythical "communism" still exists in 2015 in Russia and China, even though everyone knows those nations are hyper-capitalist in practice.

Just world fallacy is so absurd, it's amazing how it survives, even in the minds of people as socially-engineered as you.

Nothing, because as you yourself admitted, there's nothing that can be done. The clever reader may note that this is very much NOT THE CASE when it comes to the possibility of egalitarian distribution of resources.

You can do better than weak ad hominem attacks, no?

Capitalism wastes food on an industrial scale. Whatever comes after will by necessity be much more efficient at resource distribution.

The health-profit parasite industry we call "Health Insurance" in this country is widely regarded as toxic mimic of real health care. It's almost darkly comical how bad it is in the USA, and reveals well the dangers of mass indoctrination and mass obedience.

Health Insurance execs are laughing their way to the bank with bloodmoney earned from denying access to healthcare to millions of Americans, including countless dead children. That's the reality you're supposed to accept because "capitalism", dear reader.

I think in the 21st century, the exchange of money is going to become an irrelevant ritual from a bygone era, no more necessary for feeding the children of the world than it is for coercing primates to fuck.

You could say the same for slavery, torture, and rape. Still, I think you'll agree we should seek to distance civilization from these as much as possible given the technology at our disposal.

I don't see how superstition is going to be anything but a hindrance here.

All food on this planet is free until the violence-enforced profit motive builds a big ass barbed-wire fence around it. I have this theory that the more a person talks about human nature, the less they understand about it. Listening to a capitalist preach about human nature is about as useful as listening to a priest talk to you about science. As a civilized primate, the first thing you need to understand about your nature is that it is being held hostage by a lifetime of cultural indoctrination. That is step one on the road to recovery.

I expect everything to change when it comes to human existence. In fact I expect continuous change to be the only constant.

The Royal Navy probably said something similarly fascistic to the men they press-ganged into service aboard their ships. Nevertheless, the militant social movement called piracy blossomed in the face of these lies.

In other news, Foxconn constructed huge nets around their massive factory-dorms to prevent further worker suicides. When you say "that's just life", what you mean is "that's just life for the working poor of the world. The rich don't have to work."

“America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you’ve lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn’t belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don’t care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve.”
― Tom Morello

Not for long.

That's precisely why private property has been so difficult to shake. Modern capitalism predates the age of science itself, it's built into the very architecture of our language (e.g. "I don't buy that").

It's no wonder we're at such a loss as to where to go from here, as we stand by helplessly watching capitalism die, as the life support of neverending debt slowly fails.

A very old lie is easily mistaken for the truth. But how feeble does a ten thousand year old lie become the day it first meets the truth? Ask any scientist.
 

The idea that we should tolerate "ownership" of ideas in the information age shows just how insidious and malignant the profit motive has grown in our time. We shouldn't even tolerate ownership of bits of earth, let alone ideas.

Or we could provide decent baseline food, shelter, healthcare, and education to all human beings as a birthright. What would art look like in a world where potential artists aren't forced to work soul-crushing jobs just to survive, their suffering often robbing them of creativity and passion?

You're defending the same capitalism that has systematically defunded the arts over the course of the past three decades, the same system which has made common the use of the phrase "starving artist", the same culture which isn't disgusted by the ubiquity of that phrase.

Private property isn't a human right enjoyed by all, it is an often inherited privilege enjoyed by a fraction of the human population. If you trace back through time you'd find that damn near all property can be linked to past violence.
If we as a civilization are to ever reject violence as a legitimate tool, we must begin by rejecting the over-engineered resource allocation which was forged in the blood of our forebears.

How many songs go unsung, how many books go unwritten, how much genius is wasted because the would-be writers, artists, and authors are instead wasting their lives scrambling to make next month's rent? We'll never know what might have been.

Fortunately for the future denizens of Earth, civilization will continue to socially evolve whether you butthurt capitalists like it or not.

Couldn't agree more, patents and copyrights are completely out of place and counter-productive in the digital age. One of the challenges of our time will be destroying the stigma against culture sharing ("piracy").

The near-future is decentralized, open-source, and crowdfunded, that much is clear. Disobedience equals progress here, folks. Obedience means stagnancy.