Lol I have so many conversations like this. Someone was saying a bunch of people got laid off at their job during covid and they almost lost their house. I said something like “it’s a shame that they didn’t just temporarily decrease everyone’s hours so you all still had work. I mean, the work was going to come back eventually”.

And they of course agreed

I think many will obey the decision, just not the USA, Canada, terf island, the E.U., you know the usual culprits for not following international law.

Within at least physics, there is still a lot of importance placed on “prestigious” journals like Phys Rev. So it’s not so simple. Why would authors trust something published in the “Journal for Comradely Science”? It makes it very difficult to start something just due to the scientific cultural inertia.

Realistically it is 100% possible. But it’s the same issue the rest of the working class runs into: insufficient organization. The push for open source in its current form is just a way to make science open without affecting the profits of these huge journals. It costs the author to publish in a journal (which usually means the government allocates x-dollars within grants to pay for publishing). So it’s a farce tbh.

If there are education and experience requirements imposed on judicial candidates, and then they are elected, this is not an issue. Because those who are elected are accountable to those who elected them

(provided they can be removed from.power by the same people, which is one of those “checks and balances” Western "democracies " have imposed so we can’t remove them).

That way you have professionals/experts who are accountable to the people. Obviously elections can always be tampered with and influenced by powerful and moneyed interests, but by assuming this is true and then making it the default is a bit daft tbh.

I mean, private ownership by those who don’t do the work or consume the product, yet get to make the decisions is to blame, yes. And that is capitalism by definition so… Capitalism is to blame…

The only identity politics I want to see is us against the ruling elite. Everything else is sparkling fascism.

This thread is lit. I’m going to list 4 arrangements of the economy. If you are interested in participating, name what you think each one is:

1: A small group of people own the lands that are worked by another group of people. The leader of these owners is chosen via divine right. The people who work the land keep what they make, however for protection they must work other lands and do not keep what is made from them

2. A small group of people hold dominion of a large group of people. The large group must work for food, lodging, etc. and are forced to do so by the threat of death and physical punishment. They do not get to keep what they make, the economic situation is determined by the generosity of those who hole dominion over them

3. A small group of people own the majority of wealth in the form of businesses, factories, goods, etc. They purchase the time of a much larger group of people who sell their labour to make ends meet. The small group decides what to do with the excess goods, services, and money.

4. A large group of people own the businesses, factories, goods, etc. These people work to make ends meet and decide collectively (democratically or through other means) what to do with the excess goods services, money, etc.

I hope these are both clear and vague enough. Good luck!

I don’t know why this is surprising. Capitalism is an economic system where the goal is profit. So, why would capital do anything other than seek profit? Nearly all technological advances have occurred through government or institutional investments, then capital flocks to it when someone finds a way to profit from it.

Thinking block chain is a solution to anything is naive. It does nothing to change the underlying system, or the incentives that drive our economy. Like any system, the interconnections between the things that make up the system, and the goal of the system must change otherwise everything will just settle back to the status quo.

For example: media streaming is becoming cable tv again. Nothing fundamentally changed about the system of delivering media, or the goal of the system which is to drive profit. Thus, we are moving quickly back to the same model of paying for media (renting it really) and watching ads to increase the revenue of the provider

That’s true in some cases, like being anti-microsoft doesn’t mean I love Linux. But when you are against an ideology that opposes the othering of groups of people to the point of mass suffering and murder that’s different.

Choosing not to support a fight against Fascism is inherently in support of Fascism. The ideology uses manipulation and violence to oppress people, the end goal being a hyper capitalistic ethno state. So opposing the force which seeks to overcome fascism makes it easier for fascism to prevail.