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Points Made During the Fed talk: (1) 2 board members voted for a 0.25% reduction in the over night rate. (b) they acknowledged the labour market is stabilizing (iii) board members are hawkish on the economy in 2026 (4) inflation is decelerating (V) the economy is on a solid footing (6) the giant tax refund should boost consumer spending
As far as the often trotted out "50% of all consumer spending is done by the top 10% of households making $250K+ year" yap. Upper middle class people make up dumb reasons to spend money on bullshit. It is hilarious that the yuppies in my neighbourhood make fun of my Toyota Corolla while they spend $10K a year on insurance on their hobby sports car.
I prefer to watch the Intercounty Baseball League and spend $0 lounging in the grass for an afternoon. The PMCs who don't know how to grip a fastball watch a parade of 6'7" guys pitch 1 inning and throw 99 MPH inside a concrete shoebox for $500 while wearing $500 worth of officially licensed MLB merchandise. Its dumb. I used to go to Blue Jay games and spend $5 total. MLB used to be a poor man's sport. Fortunately, there are lots of ways to have fun for under $10. Video games are a great super cheap hobby.
Also, you can have way more interesting conversations at Intercounty League baseball games because everyone is far more relaxed and friendly. At an MLB game you are shoehorned into your seat.
Anyhow,. Super-Cheap hobbies are more fun than hobbies involving $1000s or sometimes even $10,000s of spending every year.
Looks like the St. Paul police want to help ICE with crowd control aspects and honour ICE detainers. Looks like they wanted to all along. This is the St. Paul Police Federation President echoing this.. translated: he is the police union boss. He crushes Tim Walz pretty hard.
I find it funny how all of us are "white moderates" despite, I'm sure, not all of us being white, just because we don't think that communism (you can't really call it socialism if you are going to be calling people comrade I'd say) is a viable thing.
Again, GH, we live in a world, in this world, Communism never succeeded and failed in way so spectacular that these systems killed more people then Hitler did.
Stalinism, Maoism, all very, very deadly, and also, coincidentally based in the ideology you espouse.
Ironically, one of the places where communism, or as we called it "Socialist self-management" kind of worked for a while was ex-Yugoslavia.
However, even this system, which was mostly beloved by most of it's citizens for more then 30 years had a very cruel secret police and it crushed dissidents, as en example, my grand-grand father who I was named after was killed by Tito's regime because he, when leaving the midnight mass on Christmas eve mentioned to a neighbor that he wasn't so sure that Tito did the right move when he broke with Stalin in 1948, another neighbor overheard the conversation and on Christmas morning my grand-grandfather was taken to a prison colony for 3 years, he died 3 weeks after he was released.
We Slavs also attained our "white" status relatively late, so, GH, I will kindly ask you to fuck off with your "you are all white moderates MLK was talking about".
GH going around quoting MLK Jr. is an embarrassing farce when you realize the latter's life mission was fighting voter suppression so black people could fairly participate in the electoral system, and GH is utterly condemning electoralism and saying voting is futile in most cases.
The reasoning being that voting doesn't matter because Democrats are so right-wing that bOtH sIdEs are the same, but if you think either Democrats or Republicans were less conservative in MLK Jr.'s time than even moderate Democrats are now, you should try reading a history book. Both parties in the 1960s straight up assassinated people like Mamdani; look up what happened to Fred Hampton.
Communism has one irreconcilable component: people in its population will be born on the antisocial personality spectrum (or, more bluntly - psychopaths). These people covet places of power. They will make sure the system serves them. Communism is far too naive an ideology for psychopaths to be its jurors.
In essence, the thesis of the socialist purist is another genocide - of those who can't play nice with everyone.
On January 31 2026 00:31 Uldridge wrote: Communism has one irreconcilable component: people in its population will be born on the antisocial personality spectrum (or, more bluntly - psychopaths). These people covet places of power. They will make sure the system serves them. Communism is far too naive an ideology for psychopaths to be its jurors.
In essence, the thesis of the socialist purist is another genocide - of those who can't play nice with everyone.
There are plenty of psychopaths in power and genocide under capitalism. What you're against is authoritarianism, not a particular economic mode of production.
I don't know if anyone caught it but the 5 year old that was kidnapped to texas is reportedly in bad shape acording to the congress rep that managed to get inside. Hes scared and wants to go back to school with his friends, his hat and backpack were taken from him and hes sick from eating bad food. The facility where they're housing all the children they trafficed over state lines are also not doing well and are reportedly locked in their cells.
His mother, who is here legally and should be with her child, has been trying to get him back to no success. The invasion of minnesota continues and I am tired, but I'm still going out for my community.
I don't see how psychopaths are not just a problem in every system, especially in capitalism.
To me, individualism easily makes greed and selfishness virtues, because being the best in any form of competition is an easy way to claim uniqueness. For example, being a billionaire clearly distinguishes you from others. A culture that focuses on those aspects becomes easily destructive, as it rewards disregarding other members of society. For psychopaths, this is great as they already have problems with associating with others.
So far the administration’s retreat on ICE isn’t much of a retreat – they’re still beating up random civilians in MN, Noem and Miller still have jobs – but it is notable in that their whole theory of power and PR has been “never back down, never apologize.” They’ve arguably backed down before – bringing back Kilmar Abrego Garcia when SCOTUS told them to, for example, or promising not to take Greenland by military force – but this is a pretty public “oo, we touched the hot stove, we regret that” which they are normally insistent they never do.
Now part of why they normally refuse is because they think it just shows weakness and forces you to keep giving more and more ground. We’ll see, I hope so! But a big component here is that it happened to time out exactly with Senate Democrats deciding whether to block more ICE funding. If it were just public outcry over the killing, they might have held to their line; if it were just Democrats shutting down the government over ICE, they might have relished the fight; but the combination has them suing for peace.
In the broader picture, I regret to conclude that elected Democrats, those limp-dick septuagenarians, are still a pretty important piece in stopping the fascists. How best to use them, I’m not sure, but impressive as the street-level organizing in MN has been, I don’t think we can take our eyes off the traditional mechanisms of power, however badly they’ve failed us up to this point.
There isn't much of anything to use them for. At their best, they "do" (much less than the minimum they reluctantly promise in response to) what an overwhelming number of people demand happens, once those demands have made the status quo unsustainable. At the end of the day, that's what people expect of any political class, even dictators.
The example that comes to mind is refusing to fund ICE unless they have accountability measures like (somewhat ironically) visible identification of some kind (as opposed to masked goons). The only way that happens is if there isn't a functional choice for Democrats not to. But elected Democrats know they can disregard their supporters needs/demands and those supporters will even rationalize Democrats continuing funding the US Gestapo themselves.
Democrats are a right-wing conservative party full of enablers, Republicans are fascists they're enabling until/unless they are both stopped afaict.
Are you disagreeing with me on any particular point? I think you and I probably have someone different understandings of what their internal motivations look like, but functionally it’s the same – elected Democrats have to be dragged into doing what they should be doing, but getting them to do that is still pretty important in achieving better political outcomes.
I’m not happy to report this – I hate spending my time thinking about what Chuck Schumer will or won’t be willing to do – but, like, my sister lives in Minneapolis. Short-term political outcomes matter a lot here, and unfortunately, elected Democrats matter quite a bit in changing them.
If you don't think we're disagreeing about the functionality of Democrats, I have to wonder if you're disagreeing with anything I said there?
Also keep in mind that we're 155 days from the 250th birthday. We're certinly doing well building up the image of the republic and the patriotism of the people before that.
On January 31 2026 00:19 LightSpectra wrote: GH going around quoting MLK Jr. is an embarrassing farce when you realize the latter's life mission was fighting voter suppression so black people could fairly participate in the electoral system, and GH is utterly condemning electoralism and saying voting is futile in most cases.
The reasoning being that voting doesn't matter because Democrats are so right-wing that bOtH sIdEs are the same, but if you think either Democrats or Republicans were less conservative in MLK Jr.'s time than even moderate Democrats are now, you should try reading a history book. Both parties in the 1960s straight up assassinated people like Mamdani; look up what happened to Fred Hampton.
Now I know you haven't read my posting from before you started posting around here lol. We've talked about Fred Hampton. Mamdani is amazing compared to most Democrats, but definitely no Fred Hampton.
Without education, people will accept anything. Without education, what you’ll have is neo-colonialism instead of colonialism like you have now. Without education, people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing, you know what I mean? You might get people caught up in an emotionalist movement, might get them because they’re poor and they want something and then if they’re not educated, they’ll want more and before you know it, we’ll have Obama Negro imperialism.
Luckily we've pretty well covered that you're describing the whitewashed version of MLK Jr. The US government conspired to assassinate MLK Jr. when he came out as strongly against the war in Vietnam and shifted towards a "Poor People's Campaign" for developing class consciousness in the US.
Do you think MLK Jr., if he found out about the FBI surveillance on him, would've immediately renounced his life's work against voter suppression and become an anti-electoralist?
On January 31 2026 00:19 LightSpectra wrote: GH going around quoting MLK Jr. is an embarrassing farce when you realize the latter's life mission was fighting voter suppression so black people could fairly participate in the electoral system, and GH is utterly condemning electoralism and saying voting is futile in most cases.
The reasoning being that voting doesn't matter because Democrats are so right-wing that bOtH sIdEs are the same, but if you think either Democrats or Republicans were less conservative in MLK Jr.'s time than even moderate Democrats are now, you should try reading a history book. Both parties in the 1960s straight up assassinated people like Mamdani; look up what happened to Fred Hampton.
Now I know you haven't read my posting from before you started posting around here lol. We've talked about Fred Hampton. Mamdani is amazing compared to most Democrats, but definitely no Fred Hampton.
Without education, people will accept anything. Without education, what you’ll have is neo-colonialism instead of colonialism like you have now. Without education, people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing, you know what I mean? You might get people caught up in an emotionalist movement, might get them because they’re poor and they want something and then if they’re not educated, they’ll want more and before you know it, we’ll have Obama Negro imperialism.
Luckily we've pretty well covered that you're describing the whitewashed version of MLK Jr. The US government conspired to assassinate MLK Jr. when he came out as strongly against the war in Vietnam and shifted towards a "Poor People's Campaign" for developing class consciousness in the US.
Do you think MLK Jr., if he found out about the FBI surveillance on him, would've immediately renounced his life's work against voter suppression and become an anti-electoralist?
MLK Jr. already knew they were surveilling him when they conspired to assassinate him for shifting towards being anti-Vietnam war and raising class consciousness?
I recognize that the proposition of finally (after fighting in several wars and raising generations of white kids) being integrated into the electoral system was a (arguably plausible but) different proposition than remaining blindly loyal to Democrats despite their complete and utter failure over the years since.
The US government conspired to assassinate MLK Jr. for fighting to raise class consciousness. No one is renouncing his work against voter suppression (cool strawman though <3).
I can't say what MLK Jr. might do, but I am extremely confident libs/Dems/ilk would fuckin hate him like they did when he was alive.
On January 31 2026 01:51 GreenHorizons wrote: No one is renouncing his work against voter suppression (cool strawman though <3).
That is literally exactly what you're doing when you tell people that voting for Democrats is futile or wrong because they're too right-wing. Voter suppression doesn't matter if voting doesn't change anything. Unless you have a realistic plan for a third party to displace Democrats and still win elections, which you don't and have never had.
I can't say what MLK Jr. might do, but I am extremely confident libs/Dems/ilk would fuckin hate him like they did when he was alive.
Maybe, but that's not much different from how you flipped against Mamdani because he wouldn't validate your terrible takes.
Or maybe not. Raphael Warnock is in some ways the official torchbearer of MLK Jr.'s ideology and literally the pastor of the same church, and he's a Democratic Senator that, from what I've seen, is very popular among other Democrats. Presumably you have nothing nicer to say about him other than being "ilk", which is probably what you'd be saying about MLK Jr. if he were alive and telling people to vote for Kamala Harris.
On January 31 2026 00:31 Uldridge wrote: Communism has one irreconcilable component: people in its population will be born on the antisocial personality spectrum (or, more bluntly - psychopaths). These people covet places of power. They will make sure the system serves them. Communism is far too naive an ideology for psychopaths to be its jurors.
In essence, the thesis of the socialist purist is another genocide - of those who can't play nice with everyone.
There are plenty of psychopaths in power and genocide under capitalism. What you're against is authoritarianism, not a particular economic mode of production.
That's not refuting my point whatsoever. I didn't proclaim psychopaths didn't exist in capitalism or that that they weren't able to get to power. If anything, the competitive nature of capitalism enables entire layers of society to become exploited and being slowly squeezed ad perpetuum by a select few. You see this olicharchical structure come back again and again. Look at how managers have slowly distanced themselves from actual operational work by introducing middle managers. This economic model rewards predatory - antisocial - behavior. The naivité of communism might be that they didn't assume this would happen. Alas, APD will find its way to ruin your large consortium of people wanting to work together one way or another.
On January 31 2026 00:57 Legan wrote: I don't see how psychopaths are not just a problem in every system, especially in capitalism.
To me, individualism easily makes greed and selfishness virtues, because being the best in any form of competition is an easy way to claim uniqueness. For example, being a billionaire clearly distinguishes you from others. A culture that focuses on those aspects becomes easily destructive, as it rewards disregarding other members of society. For psychopaths, this is great as they already have problems with associating with others.
What else is individualism other than being anti-social? If you want to live alone that's fine, if you find out you can exploit the goodwill of other people for personal gain, that's no bueno. But this fundamentally undermines the entire premise of socialism. You don't go flat when certain people refuse from going flat.
On January 31 2026 00:19 LightSpectra wrote: GH going around quoting MLK Jr. is an embarrassing farce when you realize the latter's life mission was fighting voter suppression so black people could fairly participate in the electoral system, and GH is utterly condemning electoralism and saying voting is futile in most cases.
The reasoning being that voting doesn't matter because Democrats are so right-wing that bOtH sIdEs are the same, but if you think either Democrats or Republicans were less conservative in MLK Jr.'s time than even moderate Democrats are now, you should try reading a history book. Both parties in the 1960s straight up assassinated people like Mamdani; look up what happened to Fred Hampton.
Now I know you haven't read my posting from before you started posting around here lol. We've talked about Fred Hampton. Mamdani is amazing compared to most Democrats, but definitely no Fred Hampton.
Without education, people will accept anything. Without education, what you’ll have is neo-colonialism instead of colonialism like you have now. Without education, people don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing, you know what I mean? You might get people caught up in an emotionalist movement, might get them because they’re poor and they want something and then if they’re not educated, they’ll want more and before you know it, we’ll have Obama Negro imperialism.
Luckily we've pretty well covered that you're describing the whitewashed version of MLK Jr. The US government conspired to assassinate MLK Jr. when he came out as strongly against the war in Vietnam and shifted towards a "Poor People's Campaign" for developing class consciousness in the US.
Do you think MLK Jr., if he found out about the FBI surveillance on him, would've immediately renounced his life's work against voter suppression and become an anti-electoralist?
MLK Jr. already knew they were surveilling him when they conspired to assassinate him for shifting towards being anti-Vietnam war and raising class consciousness?
I recognize that the proposition of finally (after fighting in several wars and raising generations of white kids) being integrated into the electoral system was a (arguably plausible but) different proposition than remaining blindly loyal to Democrats despite their complete and utter failure over the years since.
The US government conspired to assassinate MLK Jr. for fighting to raise class consciousness. No one is renouncing his work against voter suppression (cool strawman though <3).
I can't say what MLK Jr. might do, but I am extremely confident libs/Dems/ilk would fuckin hate him like they did when he was alive.
On January 31 2026 01:51 GreenHorizons wrote: No one is renouncing his work against voter suppression (cool strawman though <3).
That is literally exactly what you're doing when you tell people that voting for Democrats is futile or wrong because they're too right-wing. Voter suppression doesn't matter if voting doesn't change anything. Unless you have a realistic plan for a third party to displace Democrats and still win elections, which you don't and have never had.
I can't say what MLK Jr. might do, but I am extremely confident libs/Dems/ilk would fuckin hate him like they did when he was alive.
Maybe, but that's not much different from how you flipped against Mamdani because he wouldn't validate your terrible takes.
That's not renouncing his work, it's recognizing it has fulfilled its purpose. In part, to demonstrate that integrating Black people into the US electoral system had basically 0 impact on things like shrinking the wealth gap between Black and white people.
Because he recognized then, like I recognize now, that people like you would insist that the reason why things like the wealth gap haven't closed since radical direct actions stopped being a primary political tool for change, is because Black people don't vote hard enough for Democrats.
Instead, Black people relentlessly voted for Democrats. Their support unmatched by any other demographic. The results? The wealth gap has gotten worse/stayed the same.
I didn't "flip against Mamdani". Please do try to stop inventing strawmen to argue about.
On January 31 2026 02:08 Uldridge wrote: What else is individualism other than being anti-social?
i guess you don't understand the basics so i'll lay them out here.
Individualism is... The moral primacy of the individual — the idea that each person exists for their own sake, not as a means to the ends of others or of the collective. Key points baked into that: Each person is an end in themselves Each person owns their own life, mind, and labour Moral action is chosen by reason, not obedience or sacrifice Individualism does not mean isolation. Humans benefit enormously from society Cooperation, trade, friendship, and culture are natural and good Society is a voluntary association of individuals, not a super-organism
ideal social relationship is trade, broadly defined trade of goods trade of ideas trade of value for value mutual benefit by consent
No one is morally required to live for others — but people can choose to live with others.
That's individualism according to the American deep thinkers. Henry Hazlitt , Allen Greenspan, Thomas Sowell etc etc.
Out all the various American deep thinkers I'm prolly most closely aligned to Greenspan and Sowell. I am 95%+ aligned to David Kelly.. .but no one knows who the hell he is.
On January 31 2026 00:31 Uldridge wrote: Communism has one irreconcilable component: people in its population will be born on the antisocial personality spectrum (or, more bluntly - psychopaths). These people covet places of power. They will make sure the system serves them. Communism is far too naive an ideology for psychopaths to be its jurors.
In essence, the thesis of the socialist purist is another genocide - of those who can't play nice with everyone.
There are plenty of psychopaths in power and genocide under capitalism. What you're against is authoritarianism, not a particular economic mode of production.
That's not refuting my point whatsoever. I didn't proclaim psychopaths didn't exist in capitalism or that that they weren't able to get to power. If anything, the competitive nature of capitalism enables entire layers of society to become exploited and being slowly squeezed ad perpetuum by a select few. You see this olicharchical structure come back again and again. Look at how managers have slowly distanced themselves from actual operational work by introducing middle managers. This economic model rewards predatory - antisocial - behavior. The naivité of communism might be that they didn't assume this would happen. Alas, APD will find its way to ruin your large consortium of people wanting to work together one way or another.
Can you please explain more about "The naivité of communism might be that they didn't assume this would happen"? I've not read every jot and tittle that Marx, Engels, and other theorists wrote, but they certainly didn't have a utopian view of human nature, or that sadistic people would magically vanish in a post-capitalist world.
Your criticism makes more sense if you're specifically talking about corruption of the revolutionary vanguard in Leninist theory, not all communists. Anarcho-communists, for instance, would tell you that the ability for psychopaths to sabotage the rest of society is the most limited in a world where hierarchy doesn't exist.
I don't care about theorists. They tried to adopt an economic model. They swiftly fell to authoritarians. If you want everyone to be equal, you squash anyone who makes a hierarchy. It's going to be a genocidal event, because your system can not allow this to happen. Their naivité was that they did not do so. Thus they failed.
The anarchists in the Paris Commune or Catalonia or Rojava didn't have to resort to genocide. When you say "they swiftly fell to authoritarians" you're only talking about Leninist movements.
On January 30 2026 23:49 Jankisa wrote: I find it funny how all of us are "white moderates" despite, I'm sure, not all of us being white, just because we don't think that communism (you can't really call it socialism if you are going to be calling people comrade I'd say) is a viable thing.
Again, GH, we live in a world, in this world, Communism never succeeded and failed in way so spectacular that these systems killed more people then Hitler did.
Stalinism, Maoism, all very, very deadly, and also, coincidentally based in the ideology you espouse.
Ironically, one of the places where communism, or as we called it "Socialist self-management" kind of worked for a while was ex-Yugoslavia.
However, even this system, which was mostly beloved by most of it's citizens for more then 30 years had a very cruel secret police and it crushed dissidents, as en example, my grand-grand father who I was named after was killed by Tito's regime because he, when leaving the midnight mass on Christmas eve mentioned to a neighbor that he wasn't so sure that Tito did the right move when he broke with Stalin in 1948, another neighbor overheard the conversation and on Christmas morning my grand-grandfather was taken to a prison colony for 3 years, he died 3 weeks after he was released.
We Slavs also attained our "white" status relatively late, so, GH, I will kindly ask you to fuck off with your "you are all white moderates MLK was talking about".
In Eastern Europe people use "communism" and "authoritarianism" as synonymous because that's the only form they've known, but it's an interesting subject whether that has to be the case or not.
I'm definitely in the "not" camp but it comes with some important caveats.
Whether we like it or not, 'getting ahead' is a fantastic motivator. Under capitalism, some of that initiative is spent on grifting, corruption and exploitation, but a lot of it is spent on the market itself, on finding useful niches, even the illusion of meritocracy is a good outlet for this. Under the current and historical forms of communism the latter option doesn't quite exist, so almost all of the 'getting ahead' force was spent on aquiring state positions of privilege, on corruption and on straight up stealing goods from the workplace to trade for different goods stolen by other people from their workplaces. Communist economic theory needs some major updates that provide both outlets and checks for all common types of people, it can't just declare that everyone's an empath starting tomorrow and be surprised that the only way to keep things from collapsing is through force again.
I lean a lot more on nurture in the nature vs nurture question, but it's obviously not 100%, we are a genetically diverse bunch with some conflicting traits that wouldn't still be around if they hadn't provided evolutionary advantages in different scenarios.
I don't think greed or human nature prevent communism from being able to work, but they do need to be accounted for and designed around rather than just swept under the rug.
The bigger problem for communism is culture, the collectivist societies with high trust in institutions and eachother are the ones that need it the least, because they have the least destructive form of capitalism and the lowest amount of despair. Whereas in the most unequal societies with the lowest trust, changing culture after the -ism takes decades of work, decades in which they'd have to keep the faith of the population in the long-term project, despite the conflict between the initial individualist low-trust culture and the goals of the project, and without resorting to repressive force/authoritarianism to keep the system from toppling.
Imagine we get to design the traits and culture of countries with sliders and drop-downs in a realistic simulation. Well, if I intentionally wanted to design a place where communism would most likely result in abject failure, copying those from Tsarist Russia or MAGA United States would be my best bet.
EPT
