This. Not to mention actual white supremecist groups that infiltrate law enforcement. Or just look at the uncharacteristically tame response of police to Cliven Bundy, et al, compared to the usually short shrift given to likewise armed "urban" suspects.

When I think of socialism, I don't tend to think of things in binary terms. I do define socialism by the classic phrase "worker control of the means of production". But working out exactly what this means requires some context.

I don't think you ever push past a point and bing! you're now in magic land where everything is great. I essentially view worker control of the means of production as a gradient. What I translate it to in my mind is: how democratic are the social institutions people face? Not just government, or church, but in all aspects of their lives. Do people have a reasonable say in how their workplace runs, how their government functions, etc., are the questions I ask to see whether I think a society is "good" or "bad". Typically people view democracy in terms of government function only. By calling myself a socialist I'm saying I think the force of liberal democracy should also extend through the workplace. In America specifically, I believe there's a pretty massive lack of proper democracy in the economy. Even though the government functions well (the inputs are bad, but the institutions so far still do their job).

I also think people focus way too much on the nominalization of these words. For me, I don't care whether Stalin called his country socialist, I care how effectively democratic Russian society was. Which is to say, not very. You can call the Soviets "socialist" because they called themselves that historically, but if I try to compare how they ran by how democratic I think the Russian economy was, I would say "not very". Lenin himself explicitly knew this. Lenin originally gave large control of factorys to workers. This was suspended pretty quickly. Lenin explicitly moved away from socialist goals for practical concerns. Of course, Lenin died, and Stalin basically ended any hope whatsoever that workers would have any substantial voice in the Soviet system.

Contrarily, America I think had a great surge of worker control in industry from the 1930's towards the 1950's. Union membership skyrocketed, strikers won ground and many workplaces had much more effective democracy. The 1950's red scare (yes there were more than one) was more targetted at shutting down union activity that got "too extreme" than it was about preventing Soviet spies or whatever.

So, when I ignore the nominal words and I think just about who had the most control over industry, I think America was more "socialist" than the Soviet system was. Even though nominally the Soviet workers owned the factories and in America they were owned by individuals. I think nominal property matters less than the social systems which decide how the property is used, essentially.

So, in America today, anything which tends toward restricting the amount of income a few people earn from capital, and democratizing them, I think is preferred step. IDK about Soviet larpers or whoever and don't really give a damn.

Well to be fair it didn't need to be, since in the pre-WWII days, in the eyes of many Americans, Hitler literally did nothing wrong, and was even named Person of the Year by Time Magazine. And after WWII, well, the Nazis were all but annihilated.

It would be like making it illegal to be Japanese or something... oh wait. Hmm, why didn't they ever put German Americans in concentration camps during WW2? I never thought about that one....

Edit: nm, I guess some of them were

And yes, democracy in your workplace would be awful. Because actually talking to people, voting, working things out is difficult. Democracy is not supposed to be fun, and it has drawbacks. But it's leagues better than having no say other than what you can get your idiot manager to hear from you.

I think that literally everything should be voted on by everybody! Even to decide whether or not I used the appropriate amount of TP to wipe my own ass.

Edit: Am I making a point here? No, absolutely not, as usual. :downs:

I care. I find it scary. Rich ****s have spent so much time brainwashing into believing that the only two options in the whole wide world are capitalism and Stalinism. Kids are sick of capitalism and for want of better options they are looking to ****ing Stalinism.

Just this morning I saw a holodomor+cultural revolution apologist in the wild. Apparently it was all western propaganda!!

My favorite parts of this thread are all of the times Obi-Kwiet stops by to remind us how his coworkers are all functionally retarded, and that society as a whole would collapse if they were allowed to make any sort of decision including a vote for representation.

Aaaaanyway, I believe we were talking about Stalinism?

It really hasn't. Democrats who object to single-payer generally object on the grounds that it's difficult to implement because there are so many stakeholders, not that they're opposed to single-payer on ideological grounds.

Honestly I suspect an important reason why single-payer has gained popularity is because Trump's 2016 campaign has made politicians believe that there's no reason not to promise the moon in order to win elections and rally the base.

Single-payer isn't going to be easier to implement just because Democrats want it more.

but think of all of the harm that will come if we make extortion illegal. All of the enforcers and bosses who won't have jobs anymore. And if local residents aren't being extorted, they'll be able to save money and move to a better neighborhood, which will have a devastating effect on local landlords and services. And don't forget about the baseball bat manufacturers! Without that extra demand, the baseball bat manufacturers will have to raise their prices, which means baseball ticket prices are gonna go up. This is way too complicated. We'll never get buy-in from all of these stakeholders.

We can't have single-payer healthcare because my employees might quit if they weren't scared of bankrupting their family after slipping on some ice.

(I'm not making fun of the political reality behind what you said, Eversor. I'm making fun of the idea that the irredeemable parasites opposed to single payer should be entitled to any say beyond their one vote.)

I don't know if I'd call them "parasites." Actually, I straight up wouldn't call them parasites.

I know people who work in the insurance industry pushing numbers in white collar jobs. They aren't evil people, but their livelihoods depend on the status quo. I'm not willing to say that their interests simply don't matter, and that they shouldn't want people to fight on their behalf to protect their jobs. Implementing a single-payer system could potentially be immensely disruptive.

won't someone think of the asbestos miners!!

What's the opportunity cost of employing these workers in that activity?

iirc conservatives literally argued that obamacare had cost soooo much to society because millions of workers weren't working now that they had healthcare. something like that.

So, after the buzz this year of record-smashing, all-time high stock buybacks due to the Trump infrastructure investment plan, Goldman Sachs is apparently worried that the stock market won't be able to keep itself afloat.

The thing I love is the business press doesn't even try to cover it up:



Where were you when the U.S. decided to finance and allow it's corporations to devour themselves in order to bump up stock prices a couple more percent?

I wish it were easy to get people to grasp the utter insanity that is the Republican tax bill.

I wasn't born yet

"but they're just returning profits to the shareholders" said an idiot who's never heard of a leveraged buyback

I'm an idiot, why is leveraging for your buyback any different?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/07/are-stock-buybacks-starving-the-economy/566387/

Some of the basic facts in here are just insane:

TL;DR: It's like buying a new TV off your HELOC.

What do you think?

Oh, I think I read your comment in a different way.

You are missing the point. People should be less involved in the details of political policy, and more in the general direction of the country. Why? Because the average person simply cannot properly educate themselves sufficiently to have a meaningful opinion about most policy issues. Instead of actually making decisions on the basis of knowledge, the only option is to make every aspect of policy ideological, which turns it into a ****show. My political opinions are a hell of a lot better informed than most of the people I see circle jerking on Reddit or Facebook, but that isn't saying much, and it's only because I have the self awareness to know that most of my opinions would probably look a lot different if I actually understood the issues well enough to have a meaningful position.

The biggest issue with this is that it reduces every issue to a binary between two options that are so unsophisticated that they are both unworkable, and leaves no room for compromise. Our whole approach here is wrong. The same blue collar guys who get but-hurt when management makes some out of touch policy in relationship to their specific job, also think that "DEY TOOK OUR JERBS" is a valid economic theory. Representation of the people should be sufficiently abstracted that people can talk about values and results, but leave the actual details to people who appreciate the complexity of policy.

Of course, nothing will work unless people recognize and share certain fundamental values and can work in that framework.




If it doesn't work that way in politics, why do you think it'll work that way in the workplace? Management is self-interested and myopic about everything, but they at least have some exposure to every point of view. Workers are myopic about everything they don't do and tend to have an exaggerated view of their own job's importance. Should engineering get to overrule marketing just because marketing is smaller? Or visa versa? Democracy doesn't force people to resolve their issues. It can also just let the biggest group impose their perspective on the smaller group, or cause a stale mate that prevents decisions until everything breaks.

Going back the Valve example, we do know what their management structure is like, because multiple people have described their experience there, and the employee handbook has leaked. Here's one example, https://www.google.com/search?q=vavlve+amangment+issues&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS796US796&oq=vavlve+amangment+issues&aqs=chrome..69i57.2745j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 If you look at employee reviews of the company, there's one trend that stands out. The company is de jure a flat structure, but in reality it isn't. Things are decided by collations and cliques that have accumulated social power, so there is still a pecking order, but it's less transparent and less accountable.

So I just watched about three minutes of some doctor claiming she didn't understand the question "During this time did you or anyone on your behalf talk to a member of congress." Then I closed the tab.

These are ancient questions about democracy and there’s already no shortage of texts that try to answer them. I won’t add to it. If the works of accomplished philosophers, mathematicians, historians, economists, and political scientists can’t convince you of democracy, I don’t expect to be more successful.

What I will say is that cooperatives (democratically run businesses) are a proven concept. They work. You probably interact with them every day and not even recognize them for what they are, even in the United States. Academic studies have shown that cooperatives are more stable and weather crises better. They are no less efficient than standard corporate structures. They maximize employment better. They distribute profits more efficiently.

My vision for socialism (workplace democratization) is just that: make the only legal form of corporation a worker cooperative. Everything else stays the same. You’d work, you’d get paid, you’d go shopping.



Multiple former employees have said the handbook is bull****, so you don’t get to have this both ways.

Tribalism isn’t the same thing as democracy. Democracy doesn’t preclude either formalized reporting structures or formalized priorities.

Democracy does work. Pretty damn well, actually. I don't know why you'd think otherwise. Unless you'd prefer living in any of the other states which have no democratic elements? Russia's probably open to granting asylum to Americans, especially if you're a Republican.

I think workers are not as self-centered as you're making it sound. As it stands worker co-ops do exist and they don't implode. They seem to do fairly well. At least, they don't seem to go directly against the best interests of the company and dump millions of dollars enriching shareholders. While people do have self interests, it's usually in the interest of everybody in the co-op to keep the business running. Profit sharing also encourages people to keep the company running well.

Democracy does force people to resolve their issues. It's called a vote. You can also vote for delegates.



I wouldn't take Valve to be a good representation of what I'm talking about.

Of course cliques naturally form. They do everywhere. It doesn't strike me as a particularly relevant dismissal of democracy.

My god, actually finding out if you're a team player instead of responded to coded language about "how much bull**** can you take?" would be nice.

So it's actually very possible that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Dr. Ford.

The best people!

Coincidentally it's also very possible that he's never seen or heard of her until this scandal erupted. Amazing. I thought his opening statement was remarkable. I didn't finish watching hers yet but the small bit of her testimony I referred to earlier had me wondering how she can legitimately be a doctor of anything.

I lean towards believing her. Her original claim was, that she encountered Kavanaugh together with Mark Judge and PJ Smyth during a specific episode during a couple of weeks in the Summer of 1982, and lo and behold, Kavanaugh himself now brings forth a calendar from July 1982 with both these names mentioned for a meeting at July 1st. He also lies about several things, such as remaining a virgin in college, and never having been drunk in college, which attests to the quality of his testimony. Then the sicko starts talking about how his daughter asked him to pray for dr. Ford.

And of course, he was nominated by a self-professed multiple sexual assailant.

Yup, and every single successful democratic form of government has made some attempt to answer them. Depending on how you count, the US has either the first or second oldest Constitution in the world, and it has numerous features designed to limit and abstract the will of the people. My whole point is that it's asinine to complain that something isn't as democratic as it could be. No government should be as democratic as it should be. The government should definitely be accountable to the people, but giving the people as much and as immediate control as possible isn't a good thing.

At the end of the day, no system can survive when it's run by people who are determined to consistently make self-destructive choices. However, we can take steps to limit the impact of some self-destructiveness.

Yeah the Nazis wondered the same thing about academics.

Your academic credentials are void unless even the simplest partisan can see your devotion to the Party.

Yeah, it's poor taste to question someone's academic credentials based on a few spurious problems with an accusation.

If you had seen the portion that I just happened to tune into live you would get my impression. It was her literally saying she did not understand the question "did you or anyone on your behalf talk to a member of congress" during some time which had been specified just prior to where I joined. She then stated that she did not speak to anyone other than her counsel but the person asking the question was trying to ascertain if someone had spoken to congress on her behalf. I would think that it would be very easy to say that she did not and wasn't aware of anyone else doing so on her behalf, if that was true. Now, that's all I watched at that time so I don't know the context of the exchange.

Did he later admit to not being a virgin in college? Actually, never mind. He's a sicko because his daughter says they should pray for the woman. It's easy to get roped into this crap. I have no real idea if he's a good guy or not just like I have no idea if she's telling the truth or being accurate. He has been confirmed and investigated so many times already and some unproveable and unprosecutable accusation that only arises after a confirmation hearing is sketchy no matter how you look at it.

It seems pretty likely that he lied about never drinking to the point of being blackout drunk and about the meaning of various 80s slang that was in his calendar. If he'd lie about details like that while under oath, he'd probably lie and say that he was "100% certain" that he didn't do it, even if he did.

Okay, so your position is he can't possibly really not have done any of that stuff and therefore has to be lying and since he must be lying then he obviously would have lied under oath. That's idiotic.

No, my position is that by telling lies that are easy to disprove he made it more feasible that he's lying about things that are difficult to disprove. Ford says she's 100% certain that the incident occurred, and Kavanaugh says he 100% sure that it didn't. Initially, it there was a problem, because two seemingly credible people were telling stories that conflicted with each other. But after he lied about the meaning of slang terms like "boofing," there's no real reason to believe that Ford isn't telling the truth and that he isn't simply lying.