I swear I’m not Jessica

  • 1 Post
  • 40 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 4th, 2023

help-circle


  • Rotate the compass 45° clockwise, name the new vertical axis to state economy vs private economy, and name the new horizontal axis to left and right. At the far left(green) you have total destruction of hierarchy and flattening of power inequality, while at the far right(blue) you have absolute hierarchy and centralized power.

    State centralized economies(red) lead to increased hierarchy by empowering government officials to become powerful lords. Privatized economies(purple/yellow) lead to increased hierarchy by empowering capitalists to become powerful lords. Trying to reach either the top or bottom tip of the diamond leads you the right tip.

    Horseshoe theory kind of applies to Marxist-Leninists like its pro-capitalists creators imagined, but they didn’t realize that they were the other end of the horseshoe. This is because both capitalism and the state are the dangers. The problem with both stems from allowing the unrestricted accumulation of power.

    Government officials use political capital, while capitalists use economic capital. They can feed off of each other, with the rich helping politicians and the politicians helping the rich. My preferred solution to both is to redistribute capital from the rich directly to the poor, growing the middle class by putting a ceiling and floor on the rich and the poor.


  • It’s the subjective experience of not seeing the wage growth themselves, combined with things not being acceptable for a longer time than Biden or Trump’s presidency. Things are improving right now, but haven’t caught up to people having economic security. When you’ve sunk deep enough, it takes a longer period of rising to finally catch a breath. Basically, the current growth must sustain for longer to get more people into a good position. If things continue on their current path, people will calm down.

    It’s also true that necessities like housing have inflated in price far faster than other goods, again, for longer than a decade. Unnecessary goods might be cheaper than ever, but you NEED things like shelter and there are NO alternatives. Despite good competition, the demand is inelastic, so limited excess supply translates to soaring prices, plus, other factors are at play.

    It also isn’t a good idea ignore subjective experiences in general. Not only are people almost always right to be unhappy on some level, invalidating their lived experiences isn’t a good idea. Democrats will not be successful if they don’t listen to people’s displeasure. Basic economic measures are essential, but not sufficient to make voters happier.


  • I didn’t blame Israel for Hamas killing civilians, I blamed them for letting hamas get so powerful that they could execute such a devastating attack.

    Israel does not care about pushing civilians towards Hamas, as they have mostly done just that for the last few decades. They refused to support more moderate Palestinians forces, instead causing economic hardship for all Palestinians, while stealing territory from the West Bank where Hamas has less power. If they didn’t want a humanitarian crisis, they wouldn’t have blockaded essential resources. They demanded over a million people evacuate from half of Gaza in 24 hours, something that would be nearly impossible in even wealthy countries with functioning governments. Even if Gaza had a government willing to move those people, the request would still be impossible.

    When the government originally said they were “fighting animals,” they did not specify Hamas. In fact, they were telling all Palestinians that they would be cut off from essentials. Bibi and his allies have been trying their hardest to make Israel a less free country, an explicit Jewish theocracy. The idea that the “free world,” would speak up is laughable when fascist parties are serious threats in every liberal democracy. The Republicans in the US have been even more explicitly genocidal against Palestinians than Israel’s government, dehumanizing all Muslims and inspiring hate crimes. It’s nothing new as they have been demanding trans people be banned from public life for the last few years. Most Democrats refuse to speak up enough, as they value their middle eastern ally way too much. The right wing in Israel want to steal Palestinian land and force the people into exile, as they have no sense of irony.





  • The issue is that being rendered homeless could cause people to develop mental illness. There is a strong correlation between rates of mental illness, and income inequality. As income inequality increases, the percentage of the population with mental health issues increases.

    People who don’t want to fix income inequality and economic hardships are motivated to view mental health issues as the cause of people having economic troubles. They think that if they treat people’s mental illnesses, they’ll be to get a job, stable housing, and economic stability.

    However, the idea of increased mental health issues causing economic hardship begs the question, why are people in certain areas more mentally ill than others? Every individual is unique, and people certainly experience economic ruin from mental illness, but why are the rates higher in certain areas? Researchers could study numerous different variables, seeing if different things explain the correlation between inequality and illness, but it’s still impossible to definitively prove causation.

    The only way to determine causation is through experiments. Simulating economic hardship to see if it causes increased rates of mental disorders would be extremely unethical, and probably expensive. Quasi-experimental studies could test how well mentally ill people do on tests that try to measure ability to work a job, but the measure would need to be perfected over numerous studies, and could have major problems with validity. It’d be a huge undertaking.

    Truthfully, nobody knows for certain if treating mental illness instead of fixing our unequal system will be successful, or more akin to treating the symptoms rather than the disease. I personally think we could fix homelessness by improving the broken housing market, making housing a human right, reducing inequality, and providing mental healthcare treatment all at once. We also need to improve other variables that might be the cause of both inequality and illness. That way we will have the best chances of addressing the cause.



  • Except the there are only three real ways for Israel to kill Hamas. Getting rid of every Palestinian so the are no Palestinians to get angry and turn to desperate measures. Enforcing an authoritarian state where all civil liberties are taken away from Palestinians. Or firmly rejecting expansion into areas where Palestinians live, harshly prosecuting any who discriminate against Palestinians, letting them self govern, and energizing their economy to lift standards of living drastically. An end to everything Israel does to hurt Palestinians and help themselves that Israel can do. Huge concessions to try and make up for all the shit they’ve done.

    The ethnical option will clearly not be chosen by the current government, and the US, obligated by their desire to have allies in the middle east, will help them try to accomplish some combination of the first two options. It’s awful.




  • Video editing and compositing are the main things. These don’t seem to specialize in those tasks, while Adobe offers too many features and has too many quality 3rd party plugins to really be replaced. Even if there were programs that could compete, learning how to do things you know how to do in another program is a pain in the ass. The way programs work together is also a key thing Adobe can offer because they own multiple programs. Ideally there would be common standards to allow programs from different teams to work together just as well, but I’ve yet to see it.



  • Most don’t want to move. Immigrants die to get in because their homes were destroyed by global capitalism. Despite all the shitty things about the US, people wanting to leave isn’t a big thing yet. I don’t personally know of many prisons that people are dying to get into. America is more like a casino anyhow.

    As far as communists not having power, I can’t say it’s surprising. ML communism has been an absolute failure, poisoned from early on. The only kind of ML state that has survived without totally embracing capitalism is Cuba, and that’s depressingly thanks to the USA keeping them isolated. Besides, Cuba mostly swore fealty to Marxist-Leninism because of shared interests.

    Communism is dead in the US because it’s dead everywhere. With few exceptions, every so called “existing socialist state” has embraced capitalism and done more to reinforce classism, imperialism, and nationalism than eliminate these vices. Socialism is about getting rid of class differences, uniting the working class across the globe. Most of you self proclaimed “communists” are deluded cultists who make a mockery of the ideas that you claim to represent.

    I’m not blinded by liberalism so much as I’m disillusioned with supposedly communist movements. I will never follow a movement that demands its followers reject reason and evidence in favor of dogma and genocide denial. If not following the divine unquestionable wisdom of Vladimir Lenin constitutes not being left wing, then the left deserves to fail.

    Unfortunately for chuds like you, the left is bigger than your stupid fucking cult, and leftists will make the world a better place with or without your help. No matter how many communities you infiltrate and take over, leftists will just gather again elsewhere. This is because leftists are people who try to make the world a better place rather than falling into cynicism and tribalism. People don’t need Marx or Lenin to know how things suck or how things can be better. Your hero worship is less than worthless.



  • I don’t know, claiming parts of other counties as their own on official maps seems pretty imperialist to me. I also don’t know what your definition of totalitarian is if you believe the US is totalitarian. I’ve heard claims of authoritarianism before, but claims of totalitarianism make even less sense. It seems like an effort to render a word meaningless by misusing it.

    America is imperialist, as is China, Russia, and every other major world power. It’s just what large states tend to do. I suspect MLs view imperialism only through the lens of capitalism, when imperialism far predates capitalism. Capitalist imperialism is only one form of an empire projecting its power.