No, I actually do want some of these. I think housing should be a right, not a privilege. Basic universal income is going to be very important when suddenly AI takes half of our blue-collar jobs bcz rich assholes think they can get by without workers. And actually, I do want corporations to be unprofitable. They're currently profiting off the backs of their employees labor, and i think that should belong to the employees.
I don’t disagree, and everything should be clean energy etc. but, y’know. First things first. Save Democracy, Constitutional right of women to their own bodies, tax billionaires, and such. We’ll meet back here afterwards for next steps
I'm not opposed to corporations being profitable. I just want those corporations to be worker-owned
P e r f e c t
I could get behind that too
I want to share something to provide us with some perspective. There’s the story of the first time two Xavante tribe leaders in Brazil got brought to São Paulo in 1974, as told by Mário Sérgio Cortella, today one of the foremost philosophers of the country.
They eventually were brought to one of the biggest bulk produce markets in the country. The amount of high quality food around them was astonishing, and they were struggling to come to terms with such abundance. Then, one of them turns and asks what a kid was doing. It was a destitute kid collecting spoiled food. “He’s grabbing food”, the hosts answered.
After mulling over the answer and looking around for some 15 minutes, he inquired: “I don’t understand. Why is that kid getting spoiled food when there’s an abundance of good food all around?” They told him you need money to get food from the good pile, and the kid had none. “Why not?” “He’s a child.” “And his parents don’t have it?” “No.” “Why not?” Unable to dodge the questions and unable to bridge the cultural gulf and explain how the capitalist system worked, they waved their hands and just declared “Well, you see, it’s just the way things work here.”
After that exchange, the tribe leaders looked at each other and then requested to leave. Not the market, not the city, but the society entirely. They wanted to go back to their tribes and wanted nothing to do with any of that society that was ok with a starving kid eating garbage right next to a pile of good food.
They should have showed them the yatch they could own if only they pull themselves up by their boot straps.
No joke, works for 99% of the population.
Our society runs on the 1,000,000 arcade tickets model. Keep whacking the moles and you too can have the $10 stuffed animal that cost you $1000 in tokens.
I agree, sort of.
Housing should sort of be like UBI, where there should be a basic apartment block or section of smaller homes for families to fall back on. These tend to be pretty dangerous places though, no body "wants" to live there. If anyone thinks that they have a "right" to a house in any neighborhood that they want, they are unrealistic. Demand and availability is real, there is no world in which people are guaranteed a nice home, with a nice yard, in a nice part of town.
UBI should absolutely be a thing for everyone.
Companies need to generate more than their overhead, or they can't pay their workers. If they are not profitable, they can not grow, if they can not grow, then their only outcome overtime is to shutdown. Why would anyone ever want to risk everything to start a new business then?
I'm all for change and fixing things, but people's "wants" need to be realistic.
Turns out I don't believe in capitalism anymore. That ship has sailed for me when I realized the only thing corporations and the government care about is making sure they make piles and piles of money off my work (hint im an engineer), while they try to offer me a piddley two weeks vacation bcz life is about working until you're dead unless you're rich.
AI isn't going to take half the blue collar jobs in your lifetime.
Most likely, it will take over menial coding, buercratic and management tasks. Anything that requires manual labor is going to take AI and a robot. Imagine an AI + an Autonomous truck trying to pick up a load of pallets, drive cross country, back up/park the trailer and unload the pallets. Or try to imagine how expensive a suite of robots and an AI would be that could do oil changes on just 50% of the cars on the road.
We got plenty of time.
I don't expect elections to deliver the result I want, I want my vote to count
Although a lot of the other points deserve (more?) attention, I just want to share this because I never thought how hard this would feel.
I'm in my early 30s and come from a very apolitical family. About 1.5 months ago I voted for the first time in my life. At an embassy in the fraudulent Russian election.
Of course I knew my vote would not count. I always knew that every Russian election since I was a kid was a fraud. I did it for a statement and to partake in an event that resembled a demonstration, to do the limited thing I can do. But I would have never imagined that feeling that would hit me once I had actually voted.
After standing in line and passing the security checkpoints and ruining the bulletin (which in theory should count as a vote against everyone in the percentages). Once it was done. I was... furious, enraged, desperate. Much more than I thought. On a rational level I knew my vote didn't matter. The results were already calculated no matter what. Even before I got in line. No matter whether I had smuggled in my non erasable pen or not. But once I had actually voted for the first time, I didn't want anything more than this vote to count. Not to win, just for someone to acknowledge that bulletin. I felt so angry and helpless and I wanted to scream until my lungs would start to bleed.
So, yes, this freaking matters. I hope none of you will ever feel this way after voting. And for the love of God, if you have a passport of a country who has somewhat fair elections, please go vote.
I want more than this. I want a single person in LA's vote to count as much as a single person in Oklahoma. Right now, they don't; because of the electoral college, people in densely populated states' votes count for less in the general election than those in the bible belt.
I think your comment distracts from the point of theirs, but we're already here, so: the bigger issue is single seat representation and "choose one" voting. Single seat means that no matter who wins, a large fraction of the population won't have representation. Who do you go to if you're a Democrat but the Republican won? Choose one voting means the voters can't support everyone they like. There are lots of ways to fix these problems, but I like Sequential Proportional Approval Voting with 5 winners per district. It's impossible to submit an invalid ballot, and the voting technique can be easily applied to single seat positions like mayor. With 5 members per district, plus the decay property of the counting method, trying to gerrymander the map is functionally impossible and it's highly likely any given voter will have someone in office who is willing to listen.
Thanks man. There's too many people on this site telling one not to vote because of cocked up ideas of what america is and isn't. It may be a flawed democracy, but at least it's a democracy. I hope you live to see your vote count someday too
Thank you, I hope so too. The good thing about autocratic regimes is that they tend to die with their leaders, and Putin isn't going to live forever. It's a small consolation when you look at all the lives that are lost meanwhile, along with millions of people's lives being destroyed and their futures taken.
And yes, America's voting system is awful. But ffs please go vote. It's something. It's not great but it is something. It isn't nothing.
It's a democracy as long as enough people vote that the results are clear cut. If it's close, it's easier to hide undemocratic behavior to nudge the results.
Thank you for writing this, I'm glad to read it
Your country will get better with more people like you, I hope it happens in your life time.
Thank you. I also hope it will. It surely will.
But once I had actually voted for the first time, I didn’t want anything more than this vote to count. Not to win, just for someone to acknowledge that bulletin. I felt so angry and helpless and I wanted to scream until my lungs would start to bleed.
I feel the same way after voting in Texas. Different method for caging and disenfranchising voters, but the outcomes are functionally the same.
I don't think presuming my vote will be traunched and kettled and rendered meaningless through statistical manipulation feels any better simply because I know it will be counted. Its still a rigged game. The outcomes are overwhelmingly predetermined.
What I want more than anything is for my city of Houston to go its own way. To be independent of the corrupt cesspool of bigotry and fear that dominates the capital building. I don't want to simply be counted in the minority. I want my independence.
Your vote is not just counted, but even meaningful. Shenaningans in Texas try to affect the outcome by playing with things to control the odds and making it more difficult for “the wrong people” to vote. It’s really an entirely different scale.
Texas Conservatives are manipulating the vote with “legal” actions and can only affect percentages. A likely result is very different than a predetermined result. A “legal” manipulation is subject to at least some checks and balances and can be changed, which is very different from something that can just be dictated by those in power
almost like direct (action) democracy is the only thing that matters and all this bullshit is just tricks to tell us we already said our piece and were overruled, so we need to shut up and just do what most people want, which everyone agrees is a bunch of dumb and bad things if you ask them or look at polls.
from California, and I fucking feel you.
I already can guess it was Sunday and it was noon. Noon against Putin.
Exactly. It's great to hear that other people have taken notice of Noon Against Putin! So far I haven't met anyone on the internet or anyone apart from those who came to Berlin.
But I admit we got in line at 8:10 because we came from another city and we had an impatient toddler with us. This way we were done voting at 9:10. When we returned at noon, it was an insane line. Unfortunately our acquaintances who came at 11:30 didn't get to vote before the embassy closed down. The embassy had created an impressive bottleneck with the security checks and cloakroom. But they stood in line until the end.
which in theory should count as a vote against everyone in the percentages
Only if ruined in correct way: more than one boxes are ticked. Or no ticks, but we all know who will receive vote in this case.
Yeah I would not choose to leave all the boxes unticked.
in from California. its not quite as bad, but the electoral college means my vote is ~ 1/5-1/500th (depending on the specific thing) of someone in Missouri's vote (constitution said slaves count as 3/5), and the states presidential votes (where mine matters most; the 1/5th place) always count for whoever the blues run, even if I hate the bastard; my vote literally gets thrown away. first election I remember, 2000; they did count them, then appointed the loser after his friends threw a fit.
also, good job getting out. wish you luck.
the only times i feel my vote counts is for local legislation. I don't think my vote for people ever counted and I've been voting since 2000.
Number 1 is hitting super fucking hard currently, not just with healthcare but science. I'm so fucking angry to see year after year after year NASA gets a budget cut and the fucking military gets yet another massive increase...
It's to the point now that NASA had to decide what currently running missions to cancel not just what future missions are now unfeasible... Chandra X-ray telescope is the only one we have and the entire global X-ray science community relies on it... We're now forced to give it the axe so we can shovel more money at Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin....
My entire life this is all I've ever seen. More military, less science. More military, no healthcare.
and nobody fucking wants it but the billionaires! its great.
direct action or nothing.
Even 30% for housing is pushing it and based on lending limits instead of quality of life. Somewhere between 20-25% would be more reasonable.
It's based on budgeting theory, that you should avoid rent/mortgage payments taking up more than 30% of your income.
Granted these budget theorists also state you should be putting 10/15% to investments, which may be true theoretically, but is not in any way practical for many misfortuned folks.
Yeah, I was gonna say. At 30% you better be paying off your own house.
Just to be clear. I don’t want the Soviet Union. I want workers co-ops to be the default form of employment followed by government employees, and a small portion of unionized companies with private ownership and self employed folks to fill in the gaps here and there with an understanding that over time the unions will buy out the private owners of their shares.
I don’t want the Soviet Union. I want workers co-ops to be the default form of employment followed by government employees
So you don't want a Soviet Union. You just want a... an elected local, district, or national council of workers to control the economy... but, like, a bunch of them in a kind of amalgamated political body?
with an understanding that over time the unions will buy out the private owners of their shares.
Damn. Nobody tell this guy about Lenin's NEP.
i actually do want corporations to be unprofitable. profit is theft, not viability.
not really. a small profit accounts for the risk and work involved in obtaining it. Problem is to often its way outsized and if not the secondary objective is massive loss for the public sector to shoulder.
Profit isn't a bad thing if the employees are the shareholders.
yes. arguably if profit is actually paid out to employees it’s no longer profit as it’s reinvestment into the laborers and thereby becomes a cost. but yes, that’s just semantics and i agree :)
Fuckin y’all bootlickers downvoting this fuckin forgot you’re closer to the gutter than the bank pick a fucking side
the propoganda is real.
CEO pay soared 1,209.2% since 1978 compared with a 15.3% rise in typical workers’ pay but hey that seems totally fair and proportional to the work done 👅🥾
But, but, but – I plan on joining the elite in 10 years by working hard & smart & grinding & then when I get there I want to be able to lord it over the plebes when I do. If we eliminate the underclasses then you’re taking away my future enjoyment after I certainly attain my sadistic goals.
Oh but wait. I’m actually in my mid fifties and I’ve been grinding for 30 years and I’m just middle middle class which means I’m 99.999% closer to being a penniless bum than ruling class wealthy. Uh oh. Seems I’ve wasted my life.
About the best I can do now is assure the future leftist revolutionaries that they can hide out at my place when the police are after them.
That’s a different meme.
Eh, I think corporations should be banned. Make everything individual and worker co-ops. These huge businesses and huge governments do more damage than good.
also, as an actual radical:
yeah pretty spot on with healthcare. this is basic 'having a society' shit.
I don't want a job that pays so much as an actual society I can contribute to and nurture and be a fucking part of that will take care of me some noticeable fraction of how I take care of it. I'd rather not have money involved, if its all the same to you.
I do actually want a free place to live. I'll help build it or whatever, but I'm fucking done compromising with landlord parasites; watched too many of their victims die.
I do not want corporations to be unprofitable; I want them dismantled and their boards executed. worker co-ops are cool. individual enterprise is cool. no more exploitation, no more not having a voice.
I think the entire concept we have of 'democracy' is absolutely cucked. I could write some essays on what real democracy looks like, but the short version is: fuck your bourgoise elections.
kill the billionaires; tjwyre literal monsters who
drink children's bloodsteal and transfuse the blood of the young to grasp vainly at eternal youth while burning our futures. no problem with your party yacht if its green and you built it with your friends, but I think we need a reset on 'wealth'.
I don't want my money for nothing; I want a job that pays for my basic needs
Nah fuck that. We live in a time where technology allows for universal material luxury and plenty of time off. If you're working, you deserve both to have your basic needs met and luxuries.
yeah. we've been creating more and more eficiences, or so every single tucking source has told me; through technology, economies of scale, and expertise. just like non fucking stop for the past 200 years.
so if we're working at least as much as people did 200 years ago, some heads need to fucking roll.
This is great - it’s high time we set the framing straight, just like this. For far too long public discourse has defaulted to conservative framing of issues, and it’s only served to drag the Overton window right. I agree with other commenters that things are more nuanced, but the least we can do is begin discussions from a more left-leaning frame of mind.
This all began almost a half-century ago, when conservatives began pouring billions of dollars into researching language and ideas. They wanted to ensure that they would forever dominate political discourse in the USA by making words mean what they wanted them to mean.
I agree that framing is important. For example, I don't support new taxes or making drugs legal.
I DO support repealing tax cuts and repealing cannabis prohibition.
Still, I suspect that conservatives oppose many of these things regardless of framing, due to an "I got mine" mindset. The trick is to frame these issues in a way that appeals to their self interest.
For example, instead of "universal healthcare is the right thing to do for the dignity of our population", we need to frame it as "universal healthcare will save taxpayers money".
this shit is really moderate and centrist, not even left. just, like 'I want a society and to not be exploited'.
I want everything that's written in black letters.
I want everyone to be given what they need to live comfortably so they don't get so fucking pissed off about the glaring unfairness of the world that they do a bunch of antisocial shit to cope.
Sad that I no longer agree with this. I've become so radical. Socialism or barbarism. I won't be happy until every landlord is in prison.
While a lot of these would be extremely nice, if Capitalism remains so will Imperialism, and so will exploitation and a further eroding of the safety net as wages stagnate with respect to productivity.
It’s sad that if we actually got all of these, it would basically upend the entire broken system in America
I want the government to server the people. NOT the corporations and churches. Keep your religion to yourself and tax churches. (at least the bullshit big ones)
When it comes to tax exemptions for religion, I'm in favor of removing them all.
Religions should be treated as non-profits, if they don't want to pay taxes they need to file paperwork that shows the money is being used for expenses or charitable purposes, and there should be transparency to ensure that if they're doing shady shit like sending donated money to Italy or paying pastors millions or buying private jets, then at least that information is public.
honestly in most places this would be sufficient, but in america I think we need to just ban it all for a few decades first.
Make them legally split into two entities - one that does the religious stuff and one that does the charitable stuff. The latter is a non-profit and can be treated like any other charity. The former should be taxed like any other corporation. The religious side can of course donate to the non-profit and get the accompanying tax break for charitable donation if it wants, but then that funding has to be used for charitable purposes.
Keep your outdated superstition to yourself, and tax or abolish churches.
There, FTFY
I just wanna be happy.
Justice is important independently of happiness
but me too bro
Needs more jpeg
I don't support corporations making a lot of money. I don't support the ultra rich.
And you can't compromise on that. If the company or the person is too powerful, there is no good way to make them play fair.
well actually, counter point, i do want the elections to deliver the result i want, which is a functional system that represents its people fairly.
But wait, I actually do want those things.
Honestly. I do want many of the things in black.
You do want free (at the point of using it) healthcare. You want to have it because when you need it you may not be in a position to pay for it.
Where's Eat The Rich?
yeah I'm down for some ol fashioned neighborhood community guillotine building.
I'll take Things That Will Never Happen for 500, Alex.
I don't want jpeg artifacts on my memes.
You want late-stage capitalism? Because that's how you get late-stage capitalism.
This is your brain on liberalism, folks.
I don't think you know what any of those words mean.
Try me.
Wow, are you a buzzword bot?
Oh... I forget that liberals suffering from liberal brain-rot are still under the impression that capitalism is (somehow) unrelated to their precious liberalism.
Spolier alert... this failure is yours.
There are a LOT of people here that do want everything free.
it's worth noting that there are lot of barriers to income people can use to pay for things - transportation, childcare, disability, training, previous incarceration, access to appropriate work all come to mind.
edit - better writing
To build off this, Our current economic system pushes a psychology that if you dont produce some value to some GDP, then you have no right to eat. Who cares if you need nutrition to be any good to anyone else.
Working to keep your head above ever increasing rent, food prices, along with everything else.
Well there's a reason the song goes "Bread and Roses" We need the means to sustain ourselves but the mind like the body needs to be fed, too. It's not enough to just get by: EVERYONE deserves the finer things in life, yes, everyone.
And until that requirement is met, yes I feel the obligation, as I recognize the irony, to bite the hand that feeds, by the system that affords me the luxury, until everyone has everything they need.
Anything short of that is just talk by class traitors or those employing them.
Dont go ceding the game just because theyve moved the overton window so far right. We are only ever reclaiming that which could never be rightly privitazed and extracted from justly in the first place, I say.
Sounds great though, doesn't it?
For one, I don't have big appetites: give me a small cozy place to live, groceries, and the ability to receive further education and medicine at no cost.
I am a productive member of society, I'm a young scientist, and I'm not driven by money (if I would be, I wouldn't choose public science lol). I just want financial security and ease of mind that comes with not worrying about what I'm gonna eat tomorrow.
Is that truly too much to ask?
Fuck yeah I want everything for free! Is that feasible? No, obviously not. Are there things we can make publicly funded that would benefit everyone long term? Yes of course.
I don't think "a LOT" is a notable enough percentage to justify all caps
Have you seen the comments on any post on the topic.
Everyone here is about free shit.
