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On February 01 2025 07:21 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2025 07:14 maybenexttime wrote:On February 01 2025 06:49 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 05:44 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 05:20 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 04:43 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 04:28 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 02:07 Sermokala wrote:On February 01 2025 01:52 Zambrah wrote:
My dude, everyone here has a long history with each other, theres no way you're gonna get any progress with your ideals around here in any super meaningful way, I've shifted more towards your viewpoints over the years as it seems like all of the electoral types here have as much of a plan as they accuse you of not having for dealing with basic shit like political corruption and all of the absurd issues we've had in this country for years.
Petulant, cynical back and forthing is all we have here, that and posting the news, usually cynically. Its extra funny considering he doesn't follow any of his advice. If anyone is petulantly shitposting its GH. Dude offers no solutions, no open hands to convince anyone of anything. He's never tried to convince anyone of anything other than cynically trying to opine why everyone else doesn't abandon their positions and admit he was right all along. On February 01 2025 02:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 01:52 Zambrah wrote:
My dude, everyone here has a long history with each other, theres no way you're gonna get any progress with your ideals around here in any super meaningful way, I've shifted more towards your viewpoints over the years as it seems like all of the electoral types here have as much of a plan as they accuse you of not having for dealing with basic shit like political corruption and all of the absurd issues we've had in this country for years.
Petulant, cynical back and forthing is all we have here, that and posting the news, usually cynically. Alternatively, we could be adults capable of participating in a democracy? I'd really like us to be that *eyes glisten dramatically with optimism* On February 01 2025 01:55 Sadist wrote:
[quote]
Can you clarify what you mean by becoming socialists? In the temporary sense and to be probably dangerously reductive, I basically mean approaching everything here with a sort of "how would a socialist I can relate to engage with this" and going from there. I mean look at this shit. He can't even answer what a socialist is without trying to put himself as the example people should be following. He doesn't understand that he lives in a democracy and that people can seriously engage with the one form of government that we have. I know communists and they're at least unafraid to tell people they don't belive in democracy and want authoritarianism. This guy is just scared to tell people how he thinks we should be doleing out power in this country. I agree with Zam on this. The question wasn't, as I understood it, "what is a socialist?" Though if Sadist or anyone else wants a hand finding a socialist they can relate to I'd be happy to assist their efforts. The US has something it calls "democracy", but there's more to democracy in any meaningful sense than ~30-70% of the country voting every couple years (if Trump/the fascists/Putin let you anymore). I'm advocating socialism. Socialism is democratic. I'm not "scared" to tell people we should live in a socialist, democratic country. It's easy to see the difference between how you describe my posts and what is actually in them for anyone reading both in good faith. To that point... I welcome anyone that wants to explore being a socialist while Democrats are busy appeasing Trump/fascists and bickering over ATC dwarfs and such, at least until it's time for them to tell you voting for evil (of the lesser kind) is your only hope (should Trump/the fascists allow it), to my Blog: Socialism Anyone?. The US has democracy. The problem with the US isn't Trump, the problem with the US is Americans. I don't think you have a plan to overcome that. Let's say that 20 years ago a democratic socialist America was the status quo. It would have been dismantled just as easily by conservative media and the breakdown of political norms. Your Americans would love Trump just as much as real Americans do. You spend so much time bashing America's choices and yet the best plan you can come up with is predicated on Americans somehow making better ones. The moment in time to go back to would be post WWII and the ~60's. One problem then as it was in 2016, 2020, and is now, are the "white moderates" that ostensibly aren't fascist Trump supporters, but effectively end up being fascist enablers to protect their personal comforts (usually in vain). I don't need everyone in the US to "make better choices", just a handful of posters here that already know they should be to relax a little bit and just try it for funsies. Worry about us doing just a little better here and now, we don't have to worry about if what we're doing is changing the world or not. On February 01 2025 04:56 Sadist wrote:
My question was more along the lines of what he meant "be socialist". Join a political party? Like I dont understand what it means in practical terms. If it means look at the world through X lens I dont understand how that helps anything.
Like im looking for a tangible action on what being a socialist is and how its any different from where we are now.
Joining a socialist org is a great thing to do. I recommend the video in my blog as something relatively easily accessible starting point to those here. Zam's suggestions on forming unions, local organizing, food bank stuff, and other mutual aid efforts are also aspects of socialism. Can you truly not imagine how looking at an issue through a socialist perspective, absent the profit motive, could lead to tangibly different approaches/action we would take to address a variety of problems? For instance, how what we do about healthcare has a lot to do with whether someone believes they need to profit off your sickness or not? + Show Spoiler +This doesn’t address my point. Agreeing with me about the trashness of the American voter and saying it’s been unfixable for even longer than I said doesn’t answer the question. My point was that your democratic socialist vision is still made up of these same shitty Americans that vote today. You can have a federation of allied trade unions that elect their own leadership directly on the factory floor. Nothing will change. They’re still going to vote to expel all immigrants from the union on day 1, require all workers have union membership on day 2, and require the deportation of “scabs”, by which they’ll mean non union workers illegally working, on day 3. Trump does very well with the poorly educated working class. They love his shit. Worshiping a billionaire New York luxury real estate developer is the closest the US has come to working class class consciousness in a century. So how exactly does your new democratic socialistic system address that? How can you reconcile the awfulness of your American voters and your plan to hand power directly to them? You need to either come up with an excuse for why they’re not really as terrible as they very obviously are or drop the democracy part. The simple answer is basically the same way the US system is supposed to (as it is with most systems). Use an imperfect framework to build upon itself toward "a more perfect union" of sorts. Socialism is a noticeably better framework, still gotta do the grueling work of engaging people to collaboratively alleviate our suffering while finding joy and fulfillment though. Turns out having a democracy and preventing fascism through socialism is hard work and we're either going to do that hard work or fall into fascism. I'd much rather do the hard work, as frustrating and unrewarding as it may be/feel sometimes. I'd like to think I'd still be here saying all this if I was an affluent white cis man in a blue state (generically speaking). I know being higher up on the list of the targets of fascism than a centrist lib in a blue state certainly makes it feel more pressing for me though. If/when the kind of people that constituted the majority of Democrats that didn't want Biden to run before the primary even started commit toward socialism, we'll be running circles around any far right-wing opposition. You still haven't shown how it's better. You've just stated it a bunch of times. I'm not really appealing to the people that reject socialism as preferable to capitalism (not even sure who among 'the left' here would do this), I'm more talking to the people that would prefer socialism but find implementing it impractical for one reason or another (which is effectively everyone on 'the left' here).
It’s practical as long as you‘re willing to accept that a lot of the time you put into working is taxed away to make sure everyone who does less profits more than you.
But you can keep disabled people and generally less functional ones at an acceptable living standard, unless that premise gets exploited, which can happen.
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United States44046 Posts
On February 01 2025 07:59 Vivax wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2025 07:21 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 07:14 maybenexttime wrote:On February 01 2025 06:49 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 05:44 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 05:20 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 04:43 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 04:28 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 02:07 Sermokala wrote:On February 01 2025 01:52 Zambrah wrote:
My dude, everyone here has a long history with each other, theres no way you're gonna get any progress with your ideals around here in any super meaningful way, I've shifted more towards your viewpoints over the years as it seems like all of the electoral types here have as much of a plan as they accuse you of not having for dealing with basic shit like political corruption and all of the absurd issues we've had in this country for years.
Petulant, cynical back and forthing is all we have here, that and posting the news, usually cynically. Its extra funny considering he doesn't follow any of his advice. If anyone is petulantly shitposting its GH. Dude offers no solutions, no open hands to convince anyone of anything. He's never tried to convince anyone of anything other than cynically trying to opine why everyone else doesn't abandon their positions and admit he was right all along. On February 01 2025 02:02 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
Alternatively, we could be adults capable of participating in a democracy? I'd really like us to be that *eyes glisten dramatically with optimism*
[quote]
In the temporary sense and to be probably dangerously reductive, I basically mean approaching everything here with a sort of "how would a socialist I can relate to engage with this" and going from there.
I mean look at this shit. He can't even answer what a socialist is without trying to put himself as the example people should be following. He doesn't understand that he lives in a democracy and that people can seriously engage with the one form of government that we have. I know communists and they're at least unafraid to tell people they don't belive in democracy and want authoritarianism. This guy is just scared to tell people how he thinks we should be doleing out power in this country. I agree with Zam on this. The question wasn't, as I understood it, "what is a socialist?" Though if Sadist or anyone else wants a hand finding a socialist they can relate to I'd be happy to assist their efforts. The US has something it calls "democracy", but there's more to democracy in any meaningful sense than ~30-70% of the country voting every couple years (if Trump/the fascists/Putin let you anymore). I'm advocating socialism. Socialism is democratic. I'm not "scared" to tell people we should live in a socialist, democratic country. It's easy to see the difference between how you describe my posts and what is actually in them for anyone reading both in good faith. To that point... I welcome anyone that wants to explore being a socialist while Democrats are busy appeasing Trump/fascists and bickering over ATC dwarfs and such, at least until it's time for them to tell you voting for evil (of the lesser kind) is your only hope (should Trump/the fascists allow it), to my Blog: Socialism Anyone?. The US has democracy. The problem with the US isn't Trump, the problem with the US is Americans. I don't think you have a plan to overcome that. Let's say that 20 years ago a democratic socialist America was the status quo. It would have been dismantled just as easily by conservative media and the breakdown of political norms. Your Americans would love Trump just as much as real Americans do. You spend so much time bashing America's choices and yet the best plan you can come up with is predicated on Americans somehow making better ones. The moment in time to go back to would be post WWII and the ~60's. One problem then as it was in 2016, 2020, and is now, are the "white moderates" that ostensibly aren't fascist Trump supporters, but effectively end up being fascist enablers to protect their personal comforts (usually in vain). I don't need everyone in the US to "make better choices", just a handful of posters here that already know they should be to relax a little bit and just try it for funsies. Worry about us doing just a little better here and now, we don't have to worry about if what we're doing is changing the world or not. On February 01 2025 04:56 Sadist wrote:
My question was more along the lines of what he meant "be socialist". Join a political party? Like I dont understand what it means in practical terms. If it means look at the world through X lens I dont understand how that helps anything.
Like im looking for a tangible action on what being a socialist is and how its any different from where we are now.
Joining a socialist org is a great thing to do. I recommend the video in my blog as something relatively easily accessible starting point to those here. Zam's suggestions on forming unions, local organizing, food bank stuff, and other mutual aid efforts are also aspects of socialism. Can you truly not imagine how looking at an issue through a socialist perspective, absent the profit motive, could lead to tangibly different approaches/action we would take to address a variety of problems? For instance, how what we do about healthcare has a lot to do with whether someone believes they need to profit off your sickness or not? + Show Spoiler +This doesn’t address my point. Agreeing with me about the trashness of the American voter and saying it’s been unfixable for even longer than I said doesn’t answer the question. My point was that your democratic socialist vision is still made up of these same shitty Americans that vote today. You can have a federation of allied trade unions that elect their own leadership directly on the factory floor. Nothing will change. They’re still going to vote to expel all immigrants from the union on day 1, require all workers have union membership on day 2, and require the deportation of “scabs”, by which they’ll mean non union workers illegally working, on day 3. Trump does very well with the poorly educated working class. They love his shit. Worshiping a billionaire New York luxury real estate developer is the closest the US has come to working class class consciousness in a century. So how exactly does your new democratic socialistic system address that? How can you reconcile the awfulness of your American voters and your plan to hand power directly to them? You need to either come up with an excuse for why they’re not really as terrible as they very obviously are or drop the democracy part. The simple answer is basically the same way the US system is supposed to (as it is with most systems). Use an imperfect framework to build upon itself toward "a more perfect union" of sorts. Socialism is a noticeably better framework, still gotta do the grueling work of engaging people to collaboratively alleviate our suffering while finding joy and fulfillment though. Turns out having a democracy and preventing fascism through socialism is hard work and we're either going to do that hard work or fall into fascism. I'd much rather do the hard work, as frustrating and unrewarding as it may be/feel sometimes. I'd like to think I'd still be here saying all this if I was an affluent white cis man in a blue state (generically speaking). I know being higher up on the list of the targets of fascism than a centrist lib in a blue state certainly makes it feel more pressing for me though. If/when the kind of people that constituted the majority of Democrats that didn't want Biden to run before the primary even started commit toward socialism, we'll be running circles around any far right-wing opposition. You still haven't shown how it's better. You've just stated it a bunch of times. I'm not really appealing to the people that reject socialism as preferable to capitalism (not even sure who among 'the left' here would do this), I'm more talking to the people that would prefer socialism but find implementing it impractical for one reason or another (which is effectively everyone on 'the left' here). It’s practical as long as you‘re willing to accept that a lot of the time you put into working is taxed away to make sure everyone who does less profits more than you. But you can keep disabled people and generally less functional ones at an acceptable living standard, unless that premise gets exploited, which can happen.
This assumes that there is no connection between the society you live in and how your labour within that society is valued. That your paycheck is an objective truth and that any deviation from it by taxes is necessarily depriving you of something that is intrinsically yours. A paycheck doesn't work that way.
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On February 01 2025 08:15 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2025 07:59 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 07:21 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 07:14 maybenexttime wrote:On February 01 2025 06:49 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 05:44 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 05:20 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 04:43 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 04:28 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 02:07 Sermokala wrote:
[quote]
Its extra funny considering he doesn't follow any of his advice. If anyone is petulantly shitposting its GH. Dude offers no solutions, no open hands to convince anyone of anything. He's never tried to convince anyone of anything other than cynically trying to opine why everyone else doesn't abandon their positions and admit he was right all along.
[quote]
I mean look at this shit. He can't even answer what a socialist is without trying to put himself as the example people should be following. He doesn't understand that he lives in a democracy and that people can seriously engage with the one form of government that we have. I know communists and they're at least unafraid to tell people they don't belive in democracy and want authoritarianism. This guy is just scared to tell people how he thinks we should be doleing out power in this country. I agree with Zam on this. The question wasn't, as I understood it, "what is a socialist?" Though if Sadist or anyone else wants a hand finding a socialist they can relate to I'd be happy to assist their efforts. The US has something it calls "democracy", but there's more to democracy in any meaningful sense than ~30-70% of the country voting every couple years (if Trump/the fascists/Putin let you anymore). I'm advocating socialism. Socialism is democratic. I'm not "scared" to tell people we should live in a socialist, democratic country. It's easy to see the difference between how you describe my posts and what is actually in them for anyone reading both in good faith. To that point... I welcome anyone that wants to explore being a socialist while Democrats are busy appeasing Trump/fascists and bickering over ATC dwarfs and such, at least until it's time for them to tell you voting for evil (of the lesser kind) is your only hope (should Trump/the fascists allow it), to my Blog: Socialism Anyone?. The US has democracy. The problem with the US isn't Trump, the problem with the US is Americans. I don't think you have a plan to overcome that. Let's say that 20 years ago a democratic socialist America was the status quo. It would have been dismantled just as easily by conservative media and the breakdown of political norms. Your Americans would love Trump just as much as real Americans do. You spend so much time bashing America's choices and yet the best plan you can come up with is predicated on Americans somehow making better ones. The moment in time to go back to would be post WWII and the ~60's. One problem then as it was in 2016, 2020, and is now, are the "white moderates" that ostensibly aren't fascist Trump supporters, but effectively end up being fascist enablers to protect their personal comforts (usually in vain). I don't need everyone in the US to "make better choices", just a handful of posters here that already know they should be to relax a little bit and just try it for funsies. Worry about us doing just a little better here and now, we don't have to worry about if what we're doing is changing the world or not. On February 01 2025 04:56 Sadist wrote:
My question was more along the lines of what he meant "be socialist". Join a political party? Like I dont understand what it means in practical terms. If it means look at the world through X lens I dont understand how that helps anything.
Like im looking for a tangible action on what being a socialist is and how its any different from where we are now.
Joining a socialist org is a great thing to do. I recommend the video in my blog as something relatively easily accessible starting point to those here. Zam's suggestions on forming unions, local organizing, food bank stuff, and other mutual aid efforts are also aspects of socialism. Can you truly not imagine how looking at an issue through a socialist perspective, absent the profit motive, could lead to tangibly different approaches/action we would take to address a variety of problems? For instance, how what we do about healthcare has a lot to do with whether someone believes they need to profit off your sickness or not? + Show Spoiler +This doesn’t address my point. Agreeing with me about the trashness of the American voter and saying it’s been unfixable for even longer than I said doesn’t answer the question. My point was that your democratic socialist vision is still made up of these same shitty Americans that vote today. You can have a federation of allied trade unions that elect their own leadership directly on the factory floor. Nothing will change. They’re still going to vote to expel all immigrants from the union on day 1, require all workers have union membership on day 2, and require the deportation of “scabs”, by which they’ll mean non union workers illegally working, on day 3. Trump does very well with the poorly educated working class. They love his shit. Worshiping a billionaire New York luxury real estate developer is the closest the US has come to working class class consciousness in a century. So how exactly does your new democratic socialistic system address that? How can you reconcile the awfulness of your American voters and your plan to hand power directly to them? You need to either come up with an excuse for why they’re not really as terrible as they very obviously are or drop the democracy part. The simple answer is basically the same way the US system is supposed to (as it is with most systems). Use an imperfect framework to build upon itself toward "a more perfect union" of sorts. Socialism is a noticeably better framework, still gotta do the grueling work of engaging people to collaboratively alleviate our suffering while finding joy and fulfillment though. Turns out having a democracy and preventing fascism through socialism is hard work and we're either going to do that hard work or fall into fascism. I'd much rather do the hard work, as frustrating and unrewarding as it may be/feel sometimes. I'd like to think I'd still be here saying all this if I was an affluent white cis man in a blue state (generically speaking). I know being higher up on the list of the targets of fascism than a centrist lib in a blue state certainly makes it feel more pressing for me though. If/when the kind of people that constituted the majority of Democrats that didn't want Biden to run before the primary even started commit toward socialism, we'll be running circles around any far right-wing opposition. You still haven't shown how it's better. You've just stated it a bunch of times. I'm not really appealing to the people that reject socialism as preferable to capitalism (not even sure who among 'the left' here would do this), I'm more talking to the people that would prefer socialism but find implementing it impractical for one reason or another (which is effectively everyone on 'the left' here). It’s practical as long as you‘re willing to accept that a lot of the time you put into working is taxed away to make sure everyone who does less profits more than you. But you can keep disabled people and generally less functional ones at an acceptable living standard, unless that premise gets exploited, which can happen. This assumes that there is no connection between the society you live in and how your labour within that society is valued. That your paycheck is an objective truth and that any deviation from it by taxes is necessarily depriving you of something that is intrinsically yours. A paycheck doesn't work that way.
What your paycheck says in Europe in gross value doesn‘t mean much. What is deducted on the way to the net and what that is used for does.
What the society looks like isn‘t necessarily a function of the deductible and its use.
Then it‘s the cultural component defining how it reacts.
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On February 01 2025 07:43 Turbovolver wrote:
I still don't really understand how recognising that capitalism is flawed and applying this worldview to see for example that healthcare sucks and CEOs are over-valued, or even joining an organisation with a bunch of people with a like-minded view on fiscal policy, helps me when the fascists come.
You can ask 1930s German socialists all about that: it obvious doesn't help at all when the fascists come. But ideally there'd be enough of you to stop the fascists from actually coming at all. Whether that is a realistic goal for the current US situation? I'm mostly in agreement with Kwark: the US is too far gone. Europe is going to get dragged down into the muck, but with a bit of luck we manage to avoid truly becoming a neofascist corpocracy. That'll be just in time for China to dictate the new world order to us.
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United States44046 Posts
On February 01 2025 08:22 Vivax wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2025 08:15 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 07:59 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 07:21 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 07:14 maybenexttime wrote:On February 01 2025 06:49 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 05:44 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 05:20 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 04:43 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 04:28 GreenHorizons wrote:[quote] I agree with Zam on this. The question wasn't, as I understood it, "what is a socialist?" Though if Sadist or anyone else wants a hand finding a socialist they can relate to I'd be happy to assist their efforts. The US has something it calls "democracy", but there's more to democracy in any meaningful sense than ~30-70% of the country voting every couple years (if Trump/the fascists/Putin let you anymore). I'm advocating socialism. Socialism is democratic. I'm not "scared" to tell people we should live in a socialist, democratic country. It's easy to see the difference between how you describe my posts and what is actually in them for anyone reading both in good faith. To that point... I welcome anyone that wants to explore being a socialist while Democrats are busy appeasing Trump/fascists and bickering over ATC dwarfs and such, at least until it's time for them to tell you voting for evil (of the lesser kind) is your only hope (should Trump/the fascists allow it), to my Blog: Socialism Anyone?. The US has democracy. The problem with the US isn't Trump, the problem with the US is Americans. I don't think you have a plan to overcome that. Let's say that 20 years ago a democratic socialist America was the status quo. It would have been dismantled just as easily by conservative media and the breakdown of political norms. Your Americans would love Trump just as much as real Americans do. You spend so much time bashing America's choices and yet the best plan you can come up with is predicated on Americans somehow making better ones. The moment in time to go back to would be post WWII and the ~60's. One problem then as it was in 2016, 2020, and is now, are the "white moderates" that ostensibly aren't fascist Trump supporters, but effectively end up being fascist enablers to protect their personal comforts (usually in vain). I don't need everyone in the US to "make better choices", just a handful of posters here that already know they should be to relax a little bit and just try it for funsies. Worry about us doing just a little better here and now, we don't have to worry about if what we're doing is changing the world or not. On February 01 2025 04:56 Sadist wrote:
My question was more along the lines of what he meant "be socialist". Join a political party? Like I dont understand what it means in practical terms. If it means look at the world through X lens I dont understand how that helps anything.
Like im looking for a tangible action on what being a socialist is and how its any different from where we are now.
Joining a socialist org is a great thing to do. I recommend the video in my blog as something relatively easily accessible starting point to those here. Zam's suggestions on forming unions, local organizing, food bank stuff, and other mutual aid efforts are also aspects of socialism. Can you truly not imagine how looking at an issue through a socialist perspective, absent the profit motive, could lead to tangibly different approaches/action we would take to address a variety of problems? For instance, how what we do about healthcare has a lot to do with whether someone believes they need to profit off your sickness or not? + Show Spoiler +This doesn’t address my point. Agreeing with me about the trashness of the American voter and saying it’s been unfixable for even longer than I said doesn’t answer the question. My point was that your democratic socialist vision is still made up of these same shitty Americans that vote today. You can have a federation of allied trade unions that elect their own leadership directly on the factory floor. Nothing will change. They’re still going to vote to expel all immigrants from the union on day 1, require all workers have union membership on day 2, and require the deportation of “scabs”, by which they’ll mean non union workers illegally working, on day 3. Trump does very well with the poorly educated working class. They love his shit. Worshiping a billionaire New York luxury real estate developer is the closest the US has come to working class class consciousness in a century. So how exactly does your new democratic socialistic system address that? How can you reconcile the awfulness of your American voters and your plan to hand power directly to them? You need to either come up with an excuse for why they’re not really as terrible as they very obviously are or drop the democracy part. The simple answer is basically the same way the US system is supposed to (as it is with most systems). Use an imperfect framework to build upon itself toward "a more perfect union" of sorts. Socialism is a noticeably better framework, still gotta do the grueling work of engaging people to collaboratively alleviate our suffering while finding joy and fulfillment though. Turns out having a democracy and preventing fascism through socialism is hard work and we're either going to do that hard work or fall into fascism. I'd much rather do the hard work, as frustrating and unrewarding as it may be/feel sometimes. I'd like to think I'd still be here saying all this if I was an affluent white cis man in a blue state (generically speaking). I know being higher up on the list of the targets of fascism than a centrist lib in a blue state certainly makes it feel more pressing for me though. If/when the kind of people that constituted the majority of Democrats that didn't want Biden to run before the primary even started commit toward socialism, we'll be running circles around any far right-wing opposition. You still haven't shown how it's better. You've just stated it a bunch of times. I'm not really appealing to the people that reject socialism as preferable to capitalism (not even sure who among 'the left' here would do this), I'm more talking to the people that would prefer socialism but find implementing it impractical for one reason or another (which is effectively everyone on 'the left' here). It’s practical as long as you‘re willing to accept that a lot of the time you put into working is taxed away to make sure everyone who does less profits more than you. But you can keep disabled people and generally less functional ones at an acceptable living standard, unless that premise gets exploited, which can happen. This assumes that there is no connection between the society you live in and how your labour within that society is valued. That your paycheck is an objective truth and that any deviation from it by taxes is necessarily depriving you of something that is intrinsically yours. A paycheck doesn't work that way. What your paycheck says in Europe in gross value doesn‘t mean much. What is deducted on the way to the net and what that is used for does.
The idea that me sitting on my butt looking at spreadsheets is worth $100/hr only works in a society in which there is a strong government that meets the needs of people, has rule of law, has a monopoly on force, issues and guarantees a currency etc. If the price of that is that I only get $50/hr net then that doesn't mean that half of the value of my labour has been stolen, the initial $100 gross only exists in the context of those taxes.
People think of it akin to spending 8 hours gathering 100 mushrooms and then someone who didn't gather any mushrooms showing up and forcing you to hand over 50. In the foraging example then sure, they took the product of 4 hours of your labour. But looking at spreadsheets doesn't create value in the same way as foraging for mushrooms does. They're not taking half my labour, they're taking half of the digital record of some paper that they dreamed up in the first place. Money isn't like mushrooms, society is substantially more complicated than foraging.
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On February 01 2025 08:27 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2025 08:22 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:15 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 07:59 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 07:21 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 07:14 maybenexttime wrote:On February 01 2025 06:49 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 05:44 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 05:20 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 04:43 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
The US has democracy. The problem with the US isn't Trump, the problem with the US is Americans. I don't think you have a plan to overcome that. Let's say that 20 years ago a democratic socialist America was the status quo. It would have been dismantled just as easily by conservative media and the breakdown of political norms. Your Americans would love Trump just as much as real Americans do.
You spend so much time bashing America's choices and yet the best plan you can come up with is predicated on Americans somehow making better ones. The moment in time to go back to would be post WWII and the ~60's. One problem then as it was in 2016, 2020, and is now, are the "white moderates" that ostensibly aren't fascist Trump supporters, but effectively end up being fascist enablers to protect their personal comforts (usually in vain). I don't need everyone in the US to "make better choices", just a handful of posters here that already know they should be to relax a little bit and just try it for funsies. Worry about us doing just a little better here and now, we don't have to worry about if what we're doing is changing the world or not. On February 01 2025 04:56 Sadist wrote:
My question was more along the lines of what he meant "be socialist". Join a political party? Like I dont understand what it means in practical terms. If it means look at the world through X lens I dont understand how that helps anything.
Like im looking for a tangible action on what being a socialist is and how its any different from where we are now.
Joining a socialist org is a great thing to do. I recommend the video in my blog as something relatively easily accessible starting point to those here. Zam's suggestions on forming unions, local organizing, food bank stuff, and other mutual aid efforts are also aspects of socialism. Can you truly not imagine how looking at an issue through a socialist perspective, absent the profit motive, could lead to tangibly different approaches/action we would take to address a variety of problems? For instance, how what we do about healthcare has a lot to do with whether someone believes they need to profit off your sickness or not? + Show Spoiler +This doesn’t address my point. Agreeing with me about the trashness of the American voter and saying it’s been unfixable for even longer than I said doesn’t answer the question. My point was that your democratic socialist vision is still made up of these same shitty Americans that vote today. You can have a federation of allied trade unions that elect their own leadership directly on the factory floor. Nothing will change. They’re still going to vote to expel all immigrants from the union on day 1, require all workers have union membership on day 2, and require the deportation of “scabs”, by which they’ll mean non union workers illegally working, on day 3. Trump does very well with the poorly educated working class. They love his shit. Worshiping a billionaire New York luxury real estate developer is the closest the US has come to working class class consciousness in a century. So how exactly does your new democratic socialistic system address that? How can you reconcile the awfulness of your American voters and your plan to hand power directly to them? You need to either come up with an excuse for why they’re not really as terrible as they very obviously are or drop the democracy part. The simple answer is basically the same way the US system is supposed to (as it is with most systems). Use an imperfect framework to build upon itself toward "a more perfect union" of sorts. Socialism is a noticeably better framework, still gotta do the grueling work of engaging people to collaboratively alleviate our suffering while finding joy and fulfillment though. Turns out having a democracy and preventing fascism through socialism is hard work and we're either going to do that hard work or fall into fascism. I'd much rather do the hard work, as frustrating and unrewarding as it may be/feel sometimes. I'd like to think I'd still be here saying all this if I was an affluent white cis man in a blue state (generically speaking). I know being higher up on the list of the targets of fascism than a centrist lib in a blue state certainly makes it feel more pressing for me though. If/when the kind of people that constituted the majority of Democrats that didn't want Biden to run before the primary even started commit toward socialism, we'll be running circles around any far right-wing opposition. You still haven't shown how it's better. You've just stated it a bunch of times. I'm not really appealing to the people that reject socialism as preferable to capitalism (not even sure who among 'the left' here would do this), I'm more talking to the people that would prefer socialism but find implementing it impractical for one reason or another (which is effectively everyone on 'the left' here). It’s practical as long as you‘re willing to accept that a lot of the time you put into working is taxed away to make sure everyone who does less profits more than you. But you can keep disabled people and generally less functional ones at an acceptable living standard, unless that premise gets exploited, which can happen. This assumes that there is no connection between the society you live in and how your labour within that society is valued. That your paycheck is an objective truth and that any deviation from it by taxes is necessarily depriving you of something that is intrinsically yours. A paycheck doesn't work that way. What your paycheck says in Europe in gross value doesn‘t mean much. What is deducted on the way to the net and what that is used for does. The idea that me sitting on my butt looking at spreadsheets is worth $100/hr only works in a society in which there is a strong government that meets the needs of people, has rule of law, has a monopoly on force, issues and guarantees a currency etc. If the price of that is that I only get $50/hr net then that doesn't mean that half of the value of my labour has been stolen, the initial $100 gross only exists in the context of those taxes. People think of it akin to spending 8 hours gathering 100 mushrooms and then someone who didn't gather any mushrooms showing up and forcing you to hand over 50. In the foraging example then sure, they took the product of 4 hours of your labour. But looking at spreadsheets doesn't create value in the same way as foraging for mushrooms does. They're not taking half my labour, they're taking half of the digital record of some paper that they dreamed up in the first place. Money isn't like mushrooms, society is substantially more complicated than foraging.
In your example the money is complicated, society isn‘t. Money‘s just the function of the time you put into a specific task at a set qualification or skillset where the qualification is optional.
Then it‘s just about the time each individual puts in.
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United States44046 Posts
On February 01 2025 08:33 Vivax wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2025 08:27 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:22 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:15 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 07:59 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 07:21 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 07:14 maybenexttime wrote:On February 01 2025 06:49 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 05:44 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 05:20 GreenHorizons wrote:[quote] The moment in time to go back to would be post WWII and the ~60's. One problem then as it was in 2016, 2020, and is now, are the "white moderates" that ostensibly aren't fascist Trump supporters, but effectively end up being fascist enablers to protect their personal comforts (usually in vain). I don't need everyone in the US to "make better choices", just a handful of posters here that already know they should be to relax a little bit and just try it for funsies. Worry about us doing just a little better here and now, we don't have to worry about if what we're doing is changing the world or not. [quote] Joining a socialist org is a great thing to do. I recommend the video in my blog as something relatively easily accessible starting point to those here. Zam's suggestions on forming unions, local organizing, food bank stuff, and other mutual aid efforts are also aspects of socialism. Can you truly not imagine how looking at an issue through a socialist perspective, absent the profit motive, could lead to tangibly different approaches/action we would take to address a variety of problems? For instance, how what we do about healthcare has a lot to do with whether someone believes they need to profit off your sickness or not? + Show Spoiler +This doesn’t address my point. Agreeing with me about the trashness of the American voter and saying it’s been unfixable for even longer than I said doesn’t answer the question. My point was that your democratic socialist vision is still made up of these same shitty Americans that vote today. You can have a federation of allied trade unions that elect their own leadership directly on the factory floor. Nothing will change. They’re still going to vote to expel all immigrants from the union on day 1, require all workers have union membership on day 2, and require the deportation of “scabs”, by which they’ll mean non union workers illegally working, on day 3. Trump does very well with the poorly educated working class. They love his shit. Worshiping a billionaire New York luxury real estate developer is the closest the US has come to working class class consciousness in a century. So how exactly does your new democratic socialistic system address that? How can you reconcile the awfulness of your American voters and your plan to hand power directly to them? You need to either come up with an excuse for why they’re not really as terrible as they very obviously are or drop the democracy part. The simple answer is basically the same way the US system is supposed to (as it is with most systems). Use an imperfect framework to build upon itself toward "a more perfect union" of sorts. Socialism is a noticeably better framework, still gotta do the grueling work of engaging people to collaboratively alleviate our suffering while finding joy and fulfillment though. Turns out having a democracy and preventing fascism through socialism is hard work and we're either going to do that hard work or fall into fascism. I'd much rather do the hard work, as frustrating and unrewarding as it may be/feel sometimes. I'd like to think I'd still be here saying all this if I was an affluent white cis man in a blue state (generically speaking). I know being higher up on the list of the targets of fascism than a centrist lib in a blue state certainly makes it feel more pressing for me though. If/when the kind of people that constituted the majority of Democrats that didn't want Biden to run before the primary even started commit toward socialism, we'll be running circles around any far right-wing opposition. You still haven't shown how it's better. You've just stated it a bunch of times. I'm not really appealing to the people that reject socialism as preferable to capitalism (not even sure who among 'the left' here would do this), I'm more talking to the people that would prefer socialism but find implementing it impractical for one reason or another (which is effectively everyone on 'the left' here). It’s practical as long as you‘re willing to accept that a lot of the time you put into working is taxed away to make sure everyone who does less profits more than you. But you can keep disabled people and generally less functional ones at an acceptable living standard, unless that premise gets exploited, which can happen. This assumes that there is no connection between the society you live in and how your labour within that society is valued. That your paycheck is an objective truth and that any deviation from it by taxes is necessarily depriving you of something that is intrinsically yours. A paycheck doesn't work that way. What your paycheck says in Europe in gross value doesn‘t mean much. What is deducted on the way to the net and what that is used for does. The idea that me sitting on my butt looking at spreadsheets is worth $100/hr only works in a society in which there is a strong government that meets the needs of people, has rule of law, has a monopoly on force, issues and guarantees a currency etc. If the price of that is that I only get $50/hr net then that doesn't mean that half of the value of my labour has been stolen, the initial $100 gross only exists in the context of those taxes. People think of it akin to spending 8 hours gathering 100 mushrooms and then someone who didn't gather any mushrooms showing up and forcing you to hand over 50. In the foraging example then sure, they took the product of 4 hours of your labour. But looking at spreadsheets doesn't create value in the same way as foraging for mushrooms does. They're not taking half my labour, they're taking half of the digital record of some paper that they dreamed up in the first place. Money isn't like mushrooms, society is substantially more complicated than foraging. In your example the money is complicated, society isn‘t. Money‘s just the function of the time you put into a specific task at a set qualification or skillset where the qualification is optional. Then it‘s just about the time each individual puts in.
Why is 100/hr the objectively right number and why does only getting 50 mean half of my labour has been stolen? What if the guy next to me only gets 20 net, has 80% of his labour been stolen? What if his job title is more junior than mine?
If you gather 100 mushrooms then 100 mushrooms is the fair thing for you to have. If you look at spreadsheets then the fair number of moneys to reward you for doing that is a lot harder to explain. There’s no direct link between the labour and the changing record of how many moneys I have in my online banking app. There’s no intrinsic rightness to 100 moneys over 50 moneys. It’s all made up. If I decide I no longer believe in taxes then I have to stop believing in money generally. I can’t declare that I accept the objective truth that I deserve 100 moneys while rejecting the framework that gives the money meaning.
If I walk around declaring I don’t believe in the framework that gives me 2x what the next guy does because really I feel like 4x is fair then I’m sawing away at the branch I’m sitting on. I pay my taxes gladly because the system that gives me 2x only works if I do. I like it that other people seem to believe in the idea that I have property which is sacrosanct and that if I own fractional shares of the means of production then I deserve to have dividends from the proceeds of their labour. It only works if we believe in it.
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Northern Ireland26967 Posts
On February 01 2025 08:23 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2025 07:43 Turbovolver wrote:
I still don't really understand how recognising that capitalism is flawed and applying this worldview to see for example that healthcare sucks and CEOs are over-valued, or even joining an organisation with a bunch of people with a like-minded view on fiscal policy, helps me when the fascists come. You can ask 1930s German socialists all about that: it obvious doesn't help at all when the fascists come. But ideally there'd be enough of you to stop the fascists from actually coming at all. Whether that is a realistic goal for the current US situation? I'm mostly in agreement with Kwark: the US is too far gone. Europe is going to get dragged down into the muck, but with a bit of luck we manage to avoid truly becoming a neofascist corpocracy. That'll be just in time for China to dictate the new world order to us.
The German leftists got fucked by the centrists thinking the Nazis were preferable, and controllable. I mean we know how that went.
It’s a pretty consistent historic theme. When push comes to shove, even when leftist politics have a pretty strong presence the status quo does its best to marginalise them whenever possible.
When leftist politics does prosper it tends to have a ton of groundwork and structures that augment it, beyond the ballot box. Hey they might lose an election, but they’ve a shit ton of strong unions and participation there, that kind of thing. You can’t just squash the left if you have those kind of structures and grass root engagement, even if you would rather like to.
I don’t agree personally that the US is too far gone as a populace. I think the various structures, some good ideas in a different context have created a scenario of just extreme dysfunction in terms of the pipeline of what people want, versus what they get.
There’s an extreme disconnect, indeed a democratic deficit in the place. There’s bipartisan support, at times huge majorities for policies us Euro take for granted, but are never enacted because of the dysfunction of the systems themselves.
They just don’t work, and to overhaul them is basically impossible so here we are.
I think many a European country would look very like the US if they were similarly structured. You can’t get much of anything done in the legislature and you bounce between Presidential terms and a bunch of EOs that are antithetical to what the last guy or gal did.
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On February 01 2025 08:33 Vivax wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2025 08:27 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:22 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:15 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 07:59 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 07:21 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 07:14 maybenexttime wrote:On February 01 2025 06:49 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 05:44 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 05:20 GreenHorizons wrote:[quote] The moment in time to go back to would be post WWII and the ~60's. One problem then as it was in 2016, 2020, and is now, are the "white moderates" that ostensibly aren't fascist Trump supporters, but effectively end up being fascist enablers to protect their personal comforts (usually in vain). I don't need everyone in the US to "make better choices", just a handful of posters here that already know they should be to relax a little bit and just try it for funsies. Worry about us doing just a little better here and now, we don't have to worry about if what we're doing is changing the world or not. [quote] Joining a socialist org is a great thing to do. I recommend the video in my blog as something relatively easily accessible starting point to those here. Zam's suggestions on forming unions, local organizing, food bank stuff, and other mutual aid efforts are also aspects of socialism. Can you truly not imagine how looking at an issue through a socialist perspective, absent the profit motive, could lead to tangibly different approaches/action we would take to address a variety of problems? For instance, how what we do about healthcare has a lot to do with whether someone believes they need to profit off your sickness or not? + Show Spoiler +This doesn’t address my point. Agreeing with me about the trashness of the American voter and saying it’s been unfixable for even longer than I said doesn’t answer the question. My point was that your democratic socialist vision is still made up of these same shitty Americans that vote today. You can have a federation of allied trade unions that elect their own leadership directly on the factory floor. Nothing will change. They’re still going to vote to expel all immigrants from the union on day 1, require all workers have union membership on day 2, and require the deportation of “scabs”, by which they’ll mean non union workers illegally working, on day 3. Trump does very well with the poorly educated working class. They love his shit. Worshiping a billionaire New York luxury real estate developer is the closest the US has come to working class class consciousness in a century. So how exactly does your new democratic socialistic system address that? How can you reconcile the awfulness of your American voters and your plan to hand power directly to them? You need to either come up with an excuse for why they’re not really as terrible as they very obviously are or drop the democracy part. The simple answer is basically the same way the US system is supposed to (as it is with most systems). Use an imperfect framework to build upon itself toward "a more perfect union" of sorts. Socialism is a noticeably better framework, still gotta do the grueling work of engaging people to collaboratively alleviate our suffering while finding joy and fulfillment though. Turns out having a democracy and preventing fascism through socialism is hard work and we're either going to do that hard work or fall into fascism. I'd much rather do the hard work, as frustrating and unrewarding as it may be/feel sometimes. I'd like to think I'd still be here saying all this if I was an affluent white cis man in a blue state (generically speaking). I know being higher up on the list of the targets of fascism than a centrist lib in a blue state certainly makes it feel more pressing for me though. If/when the kind of people that constituted the majority of Democrats that didn't want Biden to run before the primary even started commit toward socialism, we'll be running circles around any far right-wing opposition. You still haven't shown how it's better. You've just stated it a bunch of times. I'm not really appealing to the people that reject socialism as preferable to capitalism (not even sure who among 'the left' here would do this), I'm more talking to the people that would prefer socialism but find implementing it impractical for one reason or another (which is effectively everyone on 'the left' here). It’s practical as long as you‘re willing to accept that a lot of the time you put into working is taxed away to make sure everyone who does less profits more than you. But you can keep disabled people and generally less functional ones at an acceptable living standard, unless that premise gets exploited, which can happen. This assumes that there is no connection between the society you live in and how your labour within that society is valued. That your paycheck is an objective truth and that any deviation from it by taxes is necessarily depriving you of something that is intrinsically yours. A paycheck doesn't work that way. What your paycheck says in Europe in gross value doesn‘t mean much. What is deducted on the way to the net and what that is used for does. The idea that me sitting on my butt looking at spreadsheets is worth $100/hr only works in a society in which there is a strong government that meets the needs of people, has rule of law, has a monopoly on force, issues and guarantees a currency etc. If the price of that is that I only get $50/hr net then that doesn't mean that half of the value of my labour has been stolen, the initial $100 gross only exists in the context of those taxes. People think of it akin to spending 8 hours gathering 100 mushrooms and then someone who didn't gather any mushrooms showing up and forcing you to hand over 50. In the foraging example then sure, they took the product of 4 hours of your labour. But looking at spreadsheets doesn't create value in the same way as foraging for mushrooms does. They're not taking half my labour, they're taking half of the digital record of some paper that they dreamed up in the first place. Money isn't like mushrooms, society is substantially more complicated than foraging. In your example the money is complicated, society isn‘t. Money‘s just the function of the time you put into a specific task at a set qualification or skillset where the qualification is optional. Then it‘s just about the time each individual puts in.
Yeah, but you're mistaking money for value. Money isn't a function of time. That's just what capitalists want you to think. But we've had far too many clever economists show that the invisible hand of the market doesn't actually exist. Humans are far too easily fooled to be "rational".
And that means that just because someone is willing to pay Kwark $100/hr for looking at spreadsheets doesn't mean his value to society is $100/hr. He can't eat spreadsheets and he can't use money to plug a hole in his leaking roof. When shit hits the fan, and society collapses, nobody will care about spreadsheets. Yet I'd much rather live in the society where we can pay Kwark $100/hr to make spreadsheets than the society where everyone is forced to do things with real substantial value, like farming potatoes, building houses or gathering mushrooms. Not only because i myself an als a lot better at spreadsheets than at potato farming, but also because that society is also much much more efficient overall at farming potatoes. But I also believe that that society can only be funded by having Kwark pay about $50 of his $100 hourly allotments into a mutual cookie jar, with which we fund health care, unemployment benefits, education, etc. for the less fortunate. And that is so that the poor shmuck who has to scrabble in the dirt to collect potatoes for $10/hr also benefits from this efficiency.
And yes, there are excesses. If Kwark got $1000/hr instead of $50 I'd probably say that he should pay more than 50% (probably more like 80%) into the cookie jar. And even that is but a tiny fraction of what the Musks and Bezosses of the world get every hour. And Musk spends every waking hour "gaming"!
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On February 01 2025 08:42 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2025 08:33 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:27 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:22 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:15 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 07:59 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 07:21 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 07:14 maybenexttime wrote:On February 01 2025 06:49 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 05:44 KwarK wrote:[quote] + Show Spoiler +This doesn’t address my point. Agreeing with me about the trashness of the American voter and saying it’s been unfixable for even longer than I said doesn’t answer the question. My point was that your democratic socialist vision is still made up of these same shitty Americans that vote today. You can have a federation of allied trade unions that elect their own leadership directly on the factory floor. Nothing will change. They’re still going to vote to expel all immigrants from the union on day 1, require all workers have union membership on day 2, and require the deportation of “scabs”, by which they’ll mean non union workers illegally working, on day 3. Trump does very well with the poorly educated working class. They love his shit. Worshiping a billionaire New York luxury real estate developer is the closest the US has come to working class class consciousness in a century. So how exactly does your new democratic socialistic system address that? How can you reconcile the awfulness of your American voters and your plan to hand power directly to them? You need to either come up with an excuse for why they’re not really as terrible as they very obviously are or drop the democracy part. The simple answer is basically the same way the US system is supposed to (as it is with most systems). Use an imperfect framework to build upon itself toward "a more perfect union" of sorts. Socialism is a noticeably better framework, still gotta do the grueling work of engaging people to collaboratively alleviate our suffering while finding joy and fulfillment though. Turns out having a democracy and preventing fascism through socialism is hard work and we're either going to do that hard work or fall into fascism. I'd much rather do the hard work, as frustrating and unrewarding as it may be/feel sometimes. I'd like to think I'd still be here saying all this if I was an affluent white cis man in a blue state (generically speaking). I know being higher up on the list of the targets of fascism than a centrist lib in a blue state certainly makes it feel more pressing for me though. If/when the kind of people that constituted the majority of Democrats that didn't want Biden to run before the primary even started commit toward socialism, we'll be running circles around any far right-wing opposition. You still haven't shown how it's better. You've just stated it a bunch of times. I'm not really appealing to the people that reject socialism as preferable to capitalism (not even sure who among 'the left' here would do this), I'm more talking to the people that would prefer socialism but find implementing it impractical for one reason or another (which is effectively everyone on 'the left' here). It’s practical as long as you‘re willing to accept that a lot of the time you put into working is taxed away to make sure everyone who does less profits more than you. But you can keep disabled people and generally less functional ones at an acceptable living standard, unless that premise gets exploited, which can happen. This assumes that there is no connection between the society you live in and how your labour within that society is valued. That your paycheck is an objective truth and that any deviation from it by taxes is necessarily depriving you of something that is intrinsically yours. A paycheck doesn't work that way. What your paycheck says in Europe in gross value doesn‘t mean much. What is deducted on the way to the net and what that is used for does. The idea that me sitting on my butt looking at spreadsheets is worth $100/hr only works in a society in which there is a strong government that meets the needs of people, has rule of law, has a monopoly on force, issues and guarantees a currency etc. If the price of that is that I only get $50/hr net then that doesn't mean that half of the value of my labour has been stolen, the initial $100 gross only exists in the context of those taxes. People think of it akin to spending 8 hours gathering 100 mushrooms and then someone who didn't gather any mushrooms showing up and forcing you to hand over 50. In the foraging example then sure, they took the product of 4 hours of your labour. But looking at spreadsheets doesn't create value in the same way as foraging for mushrooms does. They're not taking half my labour, they're taking half of the digital record of some paper that they dreamed up in the first place. Money isn't like mushrooms, society is substantially more complicated than foraging. In your example the money is complicated, society isn‘t. Money‘s just the function of the time you put into a specific task at a set qualification or skillset where the qualification is optional. Then it‘s just about the time each individual puts in. Why is 100/hr the objectively right number and why does only getting 50 mean half of my labour has been stolen? What if the guy next to me only gets 20 net, has 80% of his labour been stolen? What if his job title is more junior than mine? If you gather 100 mushrooms then 100 mushrooms is the fair thing for you to have. If you look at spreadsheets then the fair number of moneys to reward you for doing that is a lot harder to explain. There’s no direct link between the labour and the changing record of how many moneys I have in my online banking app. There’s no intrinsic rightness to 100 moneys over 50 moneys. It’s all made up. If I decide I no longer believe in taxes then I have to stop believing in money generally. I can’t declare that I accept the objective truth that I deserve 100 moneys while rejecting the framework that gives the money meaning.
Your goods have to be transported so any money you think you earned needs to be first earned by delivery which brings you to the energy cost.
Because in practice the production amount isn‘t the problem but the delivery is. Since we still have to rely on oil for that most of the time.
But I guess the point you want to get across is that anyone‘s labour is defined by units of worth per time depending on their function.
And socialism is about mitigating the consequences of that approach by acknowledging that in many cases, one isn‘t permitted to deliver the units of relevant and productive labour one could bring because there are legal requirements to do so.
If you managed to foot the bills in an extrajudiciary manner you may be able to circumvent certain restrictions that would prevent you from doing business successfully.
But that‘s tax advisor territory.
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United States44046 Posts
On February 01 2025 08:52 Vivax wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2025 08:42 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:33 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:27 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:22 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:15 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 07:59 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 07:21 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 07:14 maybenexttime wrote:On February 01 2025 06:49 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote] The simple answer is basically the same way the US system is supposed to (as it is with most systems). Use an imperfect framework to build upon itself toward "a more perfect union" of sorts. Socialism is a noticeably better framework, still gotta do the grueling work of engaging people to collaboratively alleviate our suffering while finding joy and fulfillment though.
Turns out having a democracy and preventing fascism through socialism is hard work and we're either going to do that hard work or fall into fascism. I'd much rather do the hard work, as frustrating and unrewarding as it may be/feel sometimes.
I'd like to think I'd still be here saying all this if I was an affluent white cis man in a blue state (generically speaking). I know being higher up on the list of the targets of fascism than a centrist lib in a blue state certainly makes it feel more pressing for me though.
If/when the kind of people that constituted the majority of Democrats that didn't want Biden to run before the primary even started commit toward socialism, we'll be running circles around any far right-wing opposition. You still haven't shown how it's better. You've just stated it a bunch of times. I'm not really appealing to the people that reject socialism as preferable to capitalism (not even sure who among 'the left' here would do this), I'm more talking to the people that would prefer socialism but find implementing it impractical for one reason or another (which is effectively everyone on 'the left' here). It’s practical as long as you‘re willing to accept that a lot of the time you put into working is taxed away to make sure everyone who does less profits more than you. But you can keep disabled people and generally less functional ones at an acceptable living standard, unless that premise gets exploited, which can happen. This assumes that there is no connection between the society you live in and how your labour within that society is valued. That your paycheck is an objective truth and that any deviation from it by taxes is necessarily depriving you of something that is intrinsically yours. A paycheck doesn't work that way. What your paycheck says in Europe in gross value doesn‘t mean much. What is deducted on the way to the net and what that is used for does. The idea that me sitting on my butt looking at spreadsheets is worth $100/hr only works in a society in which there is a strong government that meets the needs of people, has rule of law, has a monopoly on force, issues and guarantees a currency etc. If the price of that is that I only get $50/hr net then that doesn't mean that half of the value of my labour has been stolen, the initial $100 gross only exists in the context of those taxes. People think of it akin to spending 8 hours gathering 100 mushrooms and then someone who didn't gather any mushrooms showing up and forcing you to hand over 50. In the foraging example then sure, they took the product of 4 hours of your labour. But looking at spreadsheets doesn't create value in the same way as foraging for mushrooms does. They're not taking half my labour, they're taking half of the digital record of some paper that they dreamed up in the first place. Money isn't like mushrooms, society is substantially more complicated than foraging. In your example the money is complicated, society isn‘t. Money‘s just the function of the time you put into a specific task at a set qualification or skillset where the qualification is optional. Then it‘s just about the time each individual puts in. Why is 100/hr the objectively right number and why does only getting 50 mean half of my labour has been stolen? What if the guy next to me only gets 20 net, has 80% of his labour been stolen? What if his job title is more junior than mine? If you gather 100 mushrooms then 100 mushrooms is the fair thing for you to have. If you look at spreadsheets then the fair number of moneys to reward you for doing that is a lot harder to explain. There’s no direct link between the labour and the changing record of how many moneys I have in my online banking app. There’s no intrinsic rightness to 100 moneys over 50 moneys. It’s all made up. If I decide I no longer believe in taxes then I have to stop believing in money generally. I can’t declare that I accept the objective truth that I deserve 100 moneys while rejecting the framework that gives the money meaning. Your good have to be transported so any money you think you earned needs to be first earned by delivery which brings you to the energy cost. Because in practice the production amount isn‘t the problem but the delivery is. Since we still have to rely on oil for that most of the time. But I guess the point you want to get across is that anyone‘s labour is defined by units of worth per time depending on their function. And socialism is about mitigating the consequences of that approach by acknowledging that in many cases, one isn‘t permitted to deliver the units of relevant and productive labour one could bring because there are legal requirements to do so.
My point is that your gross pay is an absurd dream built on a scaffold of lies and that the assumption that something is being taken from you mistakes it for an objective truth about value created. Dollars are made up and digital records of dollars held by a third party are more so. None of it is real, we just find things work better if we all pretend.
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On February 01 2025 09:01 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2025 08:52 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:42 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:33 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:27 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:22 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:15 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 07:59 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 07:21 GreenHorizons wrote:On February 01 2025 07:14 maybenexttime wrote:
[quote]
You still haven't shown how it's better. You've just stated it a bunch of times. I'm not really appealing to the people that reject socialism as preferable to capitalism (not even sure who among 'the left' here would do this), I'm more talking to the people that would prefer socialism but find implementing it impractical for one reason or another (which is effectively everyone on 'the left' here). It’s practical as long as you‘re willing to accept that a lot of the time you put into working is taxed away to make sure everyone who does less profits more than you. But you can keep disabled people and generally less functional ones at an acceptable living standard, unless that premise gets exploited, which can happen. This assumes that there is no connection between the society you live in and how your labour within that society is valued. That your paycheck is an objective truth and that any deviation from it by taxes is necessarily depriving you of something that is intrinsically yours. A paycheck doesn't work that way. What your paycheck says in Europe in gross value doesn‘t mean much. What is deducted on the way to the net and what that is used for does. The idea that me sitting on my butt looking at spreadsheets is worth $100/hr only works in a society in which there is a strong government that meets the needs of people, has rule of law, has a monopoly on force, issues and guarantees a currency etc. If the price of that is that I only get $50/hr net then that doesn't mean that half of the value of my labour has been stolen, the initial $100 gross only exists in the context of those taxes. People think of it akin to spending 8 hours gathering 100 mushrooms and then someone who didn't gather any mushrooms showing up and forcing you to hand over 50. In the foraging example then sure, they took the product of 4 hours of your labour. But looking at spreadsheets doesn't create value in the same way as foraging for mushrooms does. They're not taking half my labour, they're taking half of the digital record of some paper that they dreamed up in the first place. Money isn't like mushrooms, society is substantially more complicated than foraging. In your example the money is complicated, society isn‘t. Money‘s just the function of the time you put into a specific task at a set qualification or skillset where the qualification is optional. Then it‘s just about the time each individual puts in. Why is 100/hr the objectively right number and why does only getting 50 mean half of my labour has been stolen? What if the guy next to me only gets 20 net, has 80% of his labour been stolen? What if his job title is more junior than mine? If you gather 100 mushrooms then 100 mushrooms is the fair thing for you to have. If you look at spreadsheets then the fair number of moneys to reward you for doing that is a lot harder to explain. There’s no direct link between the labour and the changing record of how many moneys I have in my online banking app. There’s no intrinsic rightness to 100 moneys over 50 moneys. It’s all made up. If I decide I no longer believe in taxes then I have to stop believing in money generally. I can’t declare that I accept the objective truth that I deserve 100 moneys while rejecting the framework that gives the money meaning. Your good have to be transported so any money you think you earned needs to be first earned by delivery which brings you to the energy cost. Because in practice the production amount isn‘t the problem but the delivery is. Since we still have to rely on oil for that most of the time. But I guess the point you want to get across is that anyone‘s labour is defined by units of worth per time depending on their function. And socialism is about mitigating the consequences of that approach by acknowledging that in many cases, one isn‘t permitted to deliver the units of relevant and productive labour one could bring because there are legal requirements to do so. My point is that your gross pay is an absurd dream built on a scaffold of lies and that the assumption that something is being taken from you mistakes it for an objective truth about value created. Dollars are made up and digital records of dollars held by a third party are more so. None of it is real, we just find things work better if we all pretend.
Even the jobs we work are mostly meant to keep us busy and restrained. The dollar is just the origin of that ideology. As the amount of people increases elsewhere and gets its resources independently, the value of the dollar decreases. That‘s why the US needs to flaunt its military power to ensure the validity of its currency, with Russia being a convenient boogeyman (maybe, or maybe not).
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United States44046 Posts
On February 01 2025 09:05 Vivax wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2025 09:01 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:52 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:42 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:33 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:27 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:22 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:15 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 07:59 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 07:21 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
I'm not really appealing to the people that reject socialism as preferable to capitalism (not even sure who among 'the left' here would do this), I'm more talking to the people that would prefer socialism but find implementing it impractical for one reason or another (which is effectively everyone on 'the left' here). It’s practical as long as you‘re willing to accept that a lot of the time you put into working is taxed away to make sure everyone who does less profits more than you. But you can keep disabled people and generally less functional ones at an acceptable living standard, unless that premise gets exploited, which can happen. This assumes that there is no connection between the society you live in and how your labour within that society is valued. That your paycheck is an objective truth and that any deviation from it by taxes is necessarily depriving you of something that is intrinsically yours. A paycheck doesn't work that way. What your paycheck says in Europe in gross value doesn‘t mean much. What is deducted on the way to the net and what that is used for does. The idea that me sitting on my butt looking at spreadsheets is worth $100/hr only works in a society in which there is a strong government that meets the needs of people, has rule of law, has a monopoly on force, issues and guarantees a currency etc. If the price of that is that I only get $50/hr net then that doesn't mean that half of the value of my labour has been stolen, the initial $100 gross only exists in the context of those taxes. People think of it akin to spending 8 hours gathering 100 mushrooms and then someone who didn't gather any mushrooms showing up and forcing you to hand over 50. In the foraging example then sure, they took the product of 4 hours of your labour. But looking at spreadsheets doesn't create value in the same way as foraging for mushrooms does. They're not taking half my labour, they're taking half of the digital record of some paper that they dreamed up in the first place. Money isn't like mushrooms, society is substantially more complicated than foraging. In your example the money is complicated, society isn‘t. Money‘s just the function of the time you put into a specific task at a set qualification or skillset where the qualification is optional. Then it‘s just about the time each individual puts in. Why is 100/hr the objectively right number and why does only getting 50 mean half of my labour has been stolen? What if the guy next to me only gets 20 net, has 80% of his labour been stolen? What if his job title is more junior than mine? If you gather 100 mushrooms then 100 mushrooms is the fair thing for you to have. If you look at spreadsheets then the fair number of moneys to reward you for doing that is a lot harder to explain. There’s no direct link between the labour and the changing record of how many moneys I have in my online banking app. There’s no intrinsic rightness to 100 moneys over 50 moneys. It’s all made up. If I decide I no longer believe in taxes then I have to stop believing in money generally. I can’t declare that I accept the objective truth that I deserve 100 moneys while rejecting the framework that gives the money meaning. Your good have to be transported so any money you think you earned needs to be first earned by delivery which brings you to the energy cost. Because in practice the production amount isn‘t the problem but the delivery is. Since we still have to rely on oil for that most of the time. But I guess the point you want to get across is that anyone‘s labour is defined by units of worth per time depending on their function. And socialism is about mitigating the consequences of that approach by acknowledging that in many cases, one isn‘t permitted to deliver the units of relevant and productive labour one could bring because there are legal requirements to do so. My point is that your gross pay is an absurd dream built on a scaffold of lies and that the assumption that something is being taken from you mistakes it for an objective truth about value created. Dollars are made up and digital records of dollars held by a third party are more so. None of it is real, we just find things work better if we all pretend. Even the jobs we work are mostly meant to keep us busy and restrained. The dollar is just the origin of that ideology. As the amount of people increases elsewhere and gets its resources independently, the value of the dollar decreases. That‘s why the US needs to flaunt its military power to ensure the validity of its currency, with Russia being a convenient boogeyman (maybe, or maybe not).
No
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On February 01 2025 09:06 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2025 09:05 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 09:01 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:52 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:42 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:33 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:27 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:22 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:15 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 07:59 Vivax wrote:
[quote]
It’s practical as long as you‘re willing to accept that a lot of the time you put into working is taxed away to make sure everyone who does less profits more than you.
But you can keep disabled people and generally less functional ones at an acceptable living standard, unless that premise gets exploited, which can happen. This assumes that there is no connection between the society you live in and how your labour within that society is valued. That your paycheck is an objective truth and that any deviation from it by taxes is necessarily depriving you of something that is intrinsically yours. A paycheck doesn't work that way. What your paycheck says in Europe in gross value doesn‘t mean much. What is deducted on the way to the net and what that is used for does. The idea that me sitting on my butt looking at spreadsheets is worth $100/hr only works in a society in which there is a strong government that meets the needs of people, has rule of law, has a monopoly on force, issues and guarantees a currency etc. If the price of that is that I only get $50/hr net then that doesn't mean that half of the value of my labour has been stolen, the initial $100 gross only exists in the context of those taxes. People think of it akin to spending 8 hours gathering 100 mushrooms and then someone who didn't gather any mushrooms showing up and forcing you to hand over 50. In the foraging example then sure, they took the product of 4 hours of your labour. But looking at spreadsheets doesn't create value in the same way as foraging for mushrooms does. They're not taking half my labour, they're taking half of the digital record of some paper that they dreamed up in the first place. Money isn't like mushrooms, society is substantially more complicated than foraging. In your example the money is complicated, society isn‘t. Money‘s just the function of the time you put into a specific task at a set qualification or skillset where the qualification is optional. Then it‘s just about the time each individual puts in. Why is 100/hr the objectively right number and why does only getting 50 mean half of my labour has been stolen? What if the guy next to me only gets 20 net, has 80% of his labour been stolen? What if his job title is more junior than mine? If you gather 100 mushrooms then 100 mushrooms is the fair thing for you to have. If you look at spreadsheets then the fair number of moneys to reward you for doing that is a lot harder to explain. There’s no direct link between the labour and the changing record of how many moneys I have in my online banking app. There’s no intrinsic rightness to 100 moneys over 50 moneys. It’s all made up. If I decide I no longer believe in taxes then I have to stop believing in money generally. I can’t declare that I accept the objective truth that I deserve 100 moneys while rejecting the framework that gives the money meaning. Your good have to be transported so any money you think you earned needs to be first earned by delivery which brings you to the energy cost. Because in practice the production amount isn‘t the problem but the delivery is. Since we still have to rely on oil for that most of the time. But I guess the point you want to get across is that anyone‘s labour is defined by units of worth per time depending on their function. And socialism is about mitigating the consequences of that approach by acknowledging that in many cases, one isn‘t permitted to deliver the units of relevant and productive labour one could bring because there are legal requirements to do so. My point is that your gross pay is an absurd dream built on a scaffold of lies and that the assumption that something is being taken from you mistakes it for an objective truth about value created. Dollars are made up and digital records of dollars held by a third party are more so. None of it is real, we just find things work better if we all pretend. Even the jobs we work are mostly meant to keep us busy and restrained. The dollar is just the origin of that ideology. As the amount of people increases elsewhere and gets its resources independently, the value of the dollar decreases. That‘s why the US needs to flaunt its military power to ensure the validity of its currency, with Russia being a convenient boogeyman (maybe, or maybe not). No
I don‘t know enough.
But if you do. Why.
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Well, that went off the rails quickly.
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On February 01 2025 09:09 Acrofales wrote:
Well, that went off the rails quickly.
I‘m writing from a pub, ready to regret it later.
Don‘t know about Kwark.
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another plane crash in philly. i can’t see how this could be ATCs fault, hopefully, but we’ll have to see what happened here. maybe people are crashing planes after trump downsized the department in protest.
oh it looks like the passengers died so that’s pretty bad.
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United States44046 Posts
On February 01 2025 09:08 Vivax wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2025 09:06 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 09:05 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 09:01 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:52 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:42 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:33 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:27 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:22 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:15 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
This assumes that there is no connection between the society you live in and how your labour within that society is valued. That your paycheck is an objective truth and that any deviation from it by taxes is necessarily depriving you of something that is intrinsically yours. A paycheck doesn't work that way. What your paycheck says in Europe in gross value doesn‘t mean much. What is deducted on the way to the net and what that is used for does. The idea that me sitting on my butt looking at spreadsheets is worth $100/hr only works in a society in which there is a strong government that meets the needs of people, has rule of law, has a monopoly on force, issues and guarantees a currency etc. If the price of that is that I only get $50/hr net then that doesn't mean that half of the value of my labour has been stolen, the initial $100 gross only exists in the context of those taxes. People think of it akin to spending 8 hours gathering 100 mushrooms and then someone who didn't gather any mushrooms showing up and forcing you to hand over 50. In the foraging example then sure, they took the product of 4 hours of your labour. But looking at spreadsheets doesn't create value in the same way as foraging for mushrooms does. They're not taking half my labour, they're taking half of the digital record of some paper that they dreamed up in the first place. Money isn't like mushrooms, society is substantially more complicated than foraging. In your example the money is complicated, society isn‘t. Money‘s just the function of the time you put into a specific task at a set qualification or skillset where the qualification is optional. Then it‘s just about the time each individual puts in. Why is 100/hr the objectively right number and why does only getting 50 mean half of my labour has been stolen? What if the guy next to me only gets 20 net, has 80% of his labour been stolen? What if his job title is more junior than mine? If you gather 100 mushrooms then 100 mushrooms is the fair thing for you to have. If you look at spreadsheets then the fair number of moneys to reward you for doing that is a lot harder to explain. There’s no direct link between the labour and the changing record of how many moneys I have in my online banking app. There’s no intrinsic rightness to 100 moneys over 50 moneys. It’s all made up. If I decide I no longer believe in taxes then I have to stop believing in money generally. I can’t declare that I accept the objective truth that I deserve 100 moneys while rejecting the framework that gives the money meaning. Your good have to be transported so any money you think you earned needs to be first earned by delivery which brings you to the energy cost. Because in practice the production amount isn‘t the problem but the delivery is. Since we still have to rely on oil for that most of the time. But I guess the point you want to get across is that anyone‘s labour is defined by units of worth per time depending on their function. And socialism is about mitigating the consequences of that approach by acknowledging that in many cases, one isn‘t permitted to deliver the units of relevant and productive labour one could bring because there are legal requirements to do so. My point is that your gross pay is an absurd dream built on a scaffold of lies and that the assumption that something is being taken from you mistakes it for an objective truth about value created. Dollars are made up and digital records of dollars held by a third party are more so. None of it is real, we just find things work better if we all pretend. Even the jobs we work are mostly meant to keep us busy and restrained. The dollar is just the origin of that ideology. As the amount of people increases elsewhere and gets its resources independently, the value of the dollar decreases. That‘s why the US needs to flaunt its military power to ensure the validity of its currency, with Russia being a convenient boogeyman (maybe, or maybe not). No I don‘t know enough. But if you do. Why.
Because nothing you said in that last post made sense. The thoughts expressed were incomplete and nonsensical. What ideology? You didn’t name one. What jobs are a conspiracy to keep us restrained? Restrained how? As the amount of people grows the dollar devalues? Is that using some metric other than the value of the dollar because it seems to be increasing in value. The US is flaunting its military power in Russia? What?
Your post is just a 0/10 failing grade. Next time use chatGPT, it’s more likely to be mistaken for intelligent than you.
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On February 01 2025 09:14 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2025 09:08 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 09:06 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 09:05 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 09:01 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:52 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:42 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:33 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:27 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:22 Vivax wrote:
[quote]
What your paycheck says in Europe in gross value doesn‘t mean much. What is deducted on the way to the net and what that is used for does. The idea that me sitting on my butt looking at spreadsheets is worth $100/hr only works in a society in which there is a strong government that meets the needs of people, has rule of law, has a monopoly on force, issues and guarantees a currency etc. If the price of that is that I only get $50/hr net then that doesn't mean that half of the value of my labour has been stolen, the initial $100 gross only exists in the context of those taxes. People think of it akin to spending 8 hours gathering 100 mushrooms and then someone who didn't gather any mushrooms showing up and forcing you to hand over 50. In the foraging example then sure, they took the product of 4 hours of your labour. But looking at spreadsheets doesn't create value in the same way as foraging for mushrooms does. They're not taking half my labour, they're taking half of the digital record of some paper that they dreamed up in the first place. Money isn't like mushrooms, society is substantially more complicated than foraging. In your example the money is complicated, society isn‘t. Money‘s just the function of the time you put into a specific task at a set qualification or skillset where the qualification is optional. Then it‘s just about the time each individual puts in. Why is 100/hr the objectively right number and why does only getting 50 mean half of my labour has been stolen? What if the guy next to me only gets 20 net, has 80% of his labour been stolen? What if his job title is more junior than mine? If you gather 100 mushrooms then 100 mushrooms is the fair thing for you to have. If you look at spreadsheets then the fair number of moneys to reward you for doing that is a lot harder to explain. There’s no direct link between the labour and the changing record of how many moneys I have in my online banking app. There’s no intrinsic rightness to 100 moneys over 50 moneys. It’s all made up. If I decide I no longer believe in taxes then I have to stop believing in money generally. I can’t declare that I accept the objective truth that I deserve 100 moneys while rejecting the framework that gives the money meaning. Your good have to be transported so any money you think you earned needs to be first earned by delivery which brings you to the energy cost. Because in practice the production amount isn‘t the problem but the delivery is. Since we still have to rely on oil for that most of the time. But I guess the point you want to get across is that anyone‘s labour is defined by units of worth per time depending on their function. And socialism is about mitigating the consequences of that approach by acknowledging that in many cases, one isn‘t permitted to deliver the units of relevant and productive labour one could bring because there are legal requirements to do so. My point is that your gross pay is an absurd dream built on a scaffold of lies and that the assumption that something is being taken from you mistakes it for an objective truth about value created. Dollars are made up and digital records of dollars held by a third party are more so. None of it is real, we just find things work better if we all pretend. Even the jobs we work are mostly meant to keep us busy and restrained. The dollar is just the origin of that ideology. As the amount of people increases elsewhere and gets its resources independently, the value of the dollar decreases. That‘s why the US needs to flaunt its military power to ensure the validity of its currency, with Russia being a convenient boogeyman (maybe, or maybe not). No I don‘t know enough. But if you do. Why. Because nothing you said in that last post made sense. The thoughts expressed were incomplete and nonsensical. What ideology? You didn’t name one. What jobs are a conspiracy to keep us restrained? Restrained how? As the amount of people grows the dollar devalues? Is that using some metric other than the value of the dollar because it seems to be increasing in value. The US is flaunting its military power in Russia? What? Your post is just a 0/10 failing grade. Next time use chatGPT, it’s more likely to be mistaken for intelligent than you.
That‘s just like, your opinion man.
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United States44046 Posts
On February 01 2025 09:21 Vivax wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2025 09:14 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 09:08 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 09:06 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 09:05 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 09:01 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:52 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:42 KwarK wrote:On February 01 2025 08:33 Vivax wrote:On February 01 2025 08:27 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
The idea that me sitting on my butt looking at spreadsheets is worth $100/hr only works in a society in which there is a strong government that meets the needs of people, has rule of law, has a monopoly on force, issues and guarantees a currency etc. If the price of that is that I only get $50/hr net then that doesn't mean that half of the value of my labour has been stolen, the initial $100 gross only exists in the context of those taxes.
People think of it akin to spending 8 hours gathering 100 mushrooms and then someone who didn't gather any mushrooms showing up and forcing you to hand over 50. In the foraging example then sure, they took the product of 4 hours of your labour. But looking at spreadsheets doesn't create value in the same way as foraging for mushrooms does. They're not taking half my labour, they're taking half of the digital record of some paper that they dreamed up in the first place. Money isn't like mushrooms, society is substantially more complicated than foraging. In your example the money is complicated, society isn‘t. Money‘s just the function of the time you put into a specific task at a set qualification or skillset where the qualification is optional. Then it‘s just about the time each individual puts in. Why is 100/hr the objectively right number and why does only getting 50 mean half of my labour has been stolen? What if the guy next to me only gets 20 net, has 80% of his labour been stolen? What if his job title is more junior than mine? If you gather 100 mushrooms then 100 mushrooms is the fair thing for you to have. If you look at spreadsheets then the fair number of moneys to reward you for doing that is a lot harder to explain. There’s no direct link between the labour and the changing record of how many moneys I have in my online banking app. There’s no intrinsic rightness to 100 moneys over 50 moneys. It’s all made up. If I decide I no longer believe in taxes then I have to stop believing in money generally. I can’t declare that I accept the objective truth that I deserve 100 moneys while rejecting the framework that gives the money meaning. Your good have to be transported so any money you think you earned needs to be first earned by delivery which brings you to the energy cost. Because in practice the production amount isn‘t the problem but the delivery is. Since we still have to rely on oil for that most of the time. But I guess the point you want to get across is that anyone‘s labour is defined by units of worth per time depending on their function. And socialism is about mitigating the consequences of that approach by acknowledging that in many cases, one isn‘t permitted to deliver the units of relevant and productive labour one could bring because there are legal requirements to do so. My point is that your gross pay is an absurd dream built on a scaffold of lies and that the assumption that something is being taken from you mistakes it for an objective truth about value created. Dollars are made up and digital records of dollars held by a third party are more so. None of it is real, we just find things work better if we all pretend. Even the jobs we work are mostly meant to keep us busy and restrained. The dollar is just the origin of that ideology. As the amount of people increases elsewhere and gets its resources independently, the value of the dollar decreases. That‘s why the US needs to flaunt its military power to ensure the validity of its currency, with Russia being a convenient boogeyman (maybe, or maybe not). No I don‘t know enough. But if you do. Why. Because nothing you said in that last post made sense. The thoughts expressed were incomplete and nonsensical. What ideology? You didn’t name one. What jobs are a conspiracy to keep us restrained? Restrained how? As the amount of people grows the dollar devalues? Is that using some metric other than the value of the dollar because it seems to be increasing in value. The US is flaunting its military power in Russia? What? Your post is just a 0/10 failing grade. Next time use chatGPT, it’s more likely to be mistaken for intelligent than you. That‘s just like, your opinion man.
Ok well I’m going to assume the ideology that the dollar created was Juche.
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EPT
