Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Gentlefish]

Human labor is a resource and thus exploited for capital. I did mispeak a little. But it's hardly a new model of economics. The labor put into producing a product is what give a product its worth. Graphite and wood are much cheaper than the pencil you can make them into because of the work put in to make it a pencil.

And besides, I can't say I really get the "everything is profit" mindset. But you can score profit in socialist settings. Co-ops are fantastically profitable when they're allowed to grow and aren't stepped on. And not only are they profitable, they treat their workers better because the workers are the collective owners of their means of production. Free Market Socialism is a very real and very attainable economic system.

And we totally don't need profits. The Zapatista movement in South Mexico has been sustaining itself in a defensive war since 1994. They're a mutualist-collectivist anarchist group and they're in charge of a fairly large portion of Mexico's southern state.

[Trekkin]

Meanwhile, the conservatives are apparently divided over how politely they should go about arguing with each other over how best to force the rest of us all into a theocracy as a reaction to their losses in the culture war.

But, you know, liberals are the dangerously extreme social engineers.

[McTraveller]

Meanwhile, the conservatives are apparently divided over how politely they should go about arguing with each other over how best to force the rest of us all into a theocracy as a reaction to their losses in the culture war.

But, you know, liberals are the dangerously extreme social engineers.

That article was... surprisingly unintelligible.   Am I having a stroke?

@Gentlefish - maybe I need to define 'profit' better.  Profit in its purest sense as I mean it is net gain for effort.  It doesn't have anything to do with money.  So when you spend spring tilling a field, plant seeds, then through spring and summer keep out the weeds and rodents and stuff, keep the field fertilized and watered, and in the fall you have a harvest where you now have more food than you consumed over the previous year - that's profit:  you were able to produce more than one year's worth of food in one year's effort.  So theoretically if you can store that food, you no longer need to work one year to eat for one year.

So it's very possible and reasonable for collectives or whatever to be "profitable" in this sense - they can internally keep improving their productivity and have a grand old time.  This works in the collective because everyone in the collective has agreed to maximize the overall productivity, and so raise each individual's "profit", where the US is far down the road of "everyone tries to maximize their own personal profit" which - for a while, works, because most people are on equal footing and can push and pull to prevent others from making profit at the expense of others.  But after a while, once enough ownership (or read, authority to decide what is done with resources) is concentrated, this push-and-pull breaks down and the powerful organizations can take profit at the expense of others.

So at the end of the day, we probably agree on the forest, but maybe not on the trees...

[PTTG??]

The Onion comments on the Democratic field.

[Gentlefish]

@Gentlefish - maybe I need to define 'profit' better.  Profit in its purest sense as I mean it is net gain for effort.  It doesn't have anything to do with money.  So when you spend spring tilling a field, plant seeds, then through spring and summer keep out the weeds and rodents and stuff, keep the field fertilized and watered, and in the fall you have a harvest where you now have more food than you consumed over the previous year - that's profit:  you were able to produce more than one year's worth of food in one year's effort.  So theoretically if you can store that food, you no longer need to work one year to eat for one year.

So it's very possible and reasonable for collectives or whatever to be "profitable" in this sense - they can internally keep improving their productivity and have a grand old time.  This works in the collective because everyone in the collective has agreed to maximize the overall productivity, and so raise each individual's "profit", where the US is far down the road of "everyone tries to maximize their own personal profit" which - for a while, works, because most people are on equal footing and can push and pull to prevent others from making profit at the expense of others.  But after a while, once enough ownership (or read, authority to decide what is done with resources) is concentrated, this push-and-pull breaks down and the powerful organizations can take profit at the expense of others.

So at the end of the day, we probably agree on the forest, but maybe not on the trees...

Haha yeah, at this point I feel like it'd be an argument on semantics - we've both made our points pretty clear otherwise and I understand what you mean now. I appreciate the clarification!

[smjjames]

Meanwhile, the conservatives are apparently divided over how politely they should go about arguing with each other over how best to force the rest of us all into a theocracy as a reaction to their losses in the culture war.

But, you know, liberals are the dangerously extreme social engineers.

That article was... surprisingly unintelligible.   Am I having a stroke?

Not that bad I don't think.

[SalmonGod]

It would be cool if we didn't need it - but I don't know of any other system that can so effectively manage deferred trades.  Put another way: barter-only really sucks, and there are many reasons we don't do that any more.

And yet forms of mini-barter economies are increasingly springing up, because it's the only thing that people left behind by the currency-based economy can do.

Meanwhile, the conservatives are apparently divided over how politely they should go about arguing with each other over how best to force the rest of us all into a theocracy as a reaction to their losses in the culture war.

But, you know, liberals are the dangerously extreme social engineers.

When called out on their bad behaviors, one of the most basic and common responses of an abusive person is to counter that their behavior isn't really bad, because it could be worse.

I firmly believe that when we're all dead because the environment has entirely collapsed, that it won't be because of Republicans.  It will be because opposition to Republicans was continually neutered through the process of capture by Democrats for transformation into strategic branding.  And we'll spend our final days all consoling each other about how action appropriate to the circumstances just wasn't ever realistic.

[Frumple]

I'll probably be spending at least a little time in hell shanking people who heap more blame on people opposing GOP efforts to fuck all of us for being less than perfectly effective than they do on the GOP, at this point.

But no, it will be because of republicans and their ilk if it happens. Maybe other shit will contribute but the fucking cause remains that lot, and we don't actually do goddamn any of us any favors by trying to absolve the bastards of guilt like that line of nonsense does.

[SalmonGod]

"Being less than perfectly effective" is far too generous a framing.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Imagine living in Rohan and the Fellowship never shows up to free Theoden.  You watch your country burned around you, while Theoden orders the cavalry to do nothing because the battle is hopeless.  I wouldn't blame Sauron.  I'd blame Wormtongue.

That's not absolving Sauron of guilt.  It's acknowledging that villains are a part of the world.  The darkness will always be there.  Choosing your response is a part of life.  Cursing the darkness while tolerating someone who constantly snuffs out your candles as a "less than perfectly effective" ally is a recipe for eternal night.  Whether that supposed ally is wholly responsible for the darkness being there in the first place is insubstantial.

[Zangi]

https://www.npr.org/2019/06/06/730260511/redistricting-gurus-hard-drives-could-mean-legal-political-woes-for-gop

Huh, is something actually going to be done about gerrymandering or is it going to come to nothing again?

[Frumple]

If the GOP gets shellacked, maybe. Electoral reform is something that actually has some degree of traction among political factions in this country that doesn't rely on voter suppression and gerrymandering and whatnot to maintain power, and general public opinion on the subject of gerrymandering specifically is pretty negative. If they don't you can expect the GOP to do whatever they can manage to prevent any reform on that front that makes it less crony and corrupt.

Mind, even if they do it's not entirely guaranteed something gets done unless the shellacking maintains itself for multiple election cycles. Work's very much needed on that front but there's relatively few people that have it as a top priority at the mo', and the actual top priorities are all likely to be slogs.

[Folly]

For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon - We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!

Another gem from the man who inherited from his uncle a gut instinct for science.

[Trekkin]

For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon - We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!

Another gem from the man who inherited from his uncle a gut instinct for science.

Obvious wrongness aside, I wonder what he means by "Defense." Is the Space Force going to go fight Martians?

And, you know, how do we go to Mars by way of the Moon without going to the Moon?

[smjjames]

For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon - We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars (of which the Moon is a part), Defense and Science!

Another gem from the man who inherited from his uncle a gut instinct for science.

Obvious wrongness aside, I wonder what he means by "Defense." Is the Space Force going to go fight Martians?

And, you know, how do we go to Mars by way of the Moon without going to the Moon?

Seems to be trying to say that NASA should aim it's sights higher than simply going back to the Moon and that the Moon could be a stepping stone in the path to Mars. Not the first time Trump came off as incoherent.

[Folly]

I wonder what he means by "Defense." Is the Space Force going to go fight Martians?

There has been some concern lately of foreign powers launching weaponized satellites, capable of shooting down other satellites. When thinking of how reliant our military and entire culture are upon satellites right now, it's kind of scary to think about how defenseless they are and what could happen if they were suddenly removed from the picture.