I’m currently reading a book which argues that “most people, deep down, are actually pretty decent”. It’s really good, highly recommend to anyone. It’s called “Human Kind” by Rutger Bregman
Both egoism and altruism are human nature. We are capable of both (for the most part). Currently, we have a socioeconomic system that rewards and encourages primarily the former. Why not try it the other way and see where that brings us?
I wonder how well a system would work where you get more money, the more you help people/help solve problems (with problems i mean like pollution or something)
It definitely would be nice if that were the case, but i think the best way to incentivice people is to reward them. Better yet make a competition out of it. Just gotta reward actions that benefit other people.
Like let people be millionaire’s but to get there they need to help like ten thousand people or something
I’d like to point out the viability of cooperatives to accomplish this. A co-op is defined by the seven Rochdale Principles. Among those is open and voluntary membership, democratic member control, cooperation among cooperatives, and concern for community.
Its a stateless form of socialism that gives workers ownership to the means of production and doesnt have to necessarily negate private ownership. They can simply be incentivized by the state similar to how tax breaks and subsidies currently work or by providing workers the framework for which to purchase a company in the case of failure (like after the 2008 financial crash - when competition, greed, and capitalism failed).
Just what ive decided might be the best, or quickest, path to achievement. Wishful thinking, idealist, idea worth spreading. I see cooperatives as a form of peaceful revolution, but how best to achieve a cooperative economy when so few are aware of what it means? One way, I suppose, is for elected officials to advocate for it. Its hard but not impossible to imagine. I suppose there are multiple steps in between that would make that more tangible, and one of those is awareness. There’s already a lot of us in support of socialist ideas where one of the biggest criticisms is for a planned economy, so why not advocate for a stateless form of socialism that expands, rather than possibly, or arguably, restricts, individual and collective freedoms?
Was Lenin aware of cooperatives when he wrote the state and revolution? Its not a theoretical idea. Its already a proven and successful form of enterprise. Why do some of our representatives advocate for workers unions when their existence goes against capitalist exploitation of workers? Seems totally possible to advocate for worker cooperatives in a similar vein.
There’s already a lot of us in support of socialist ideas where one of the biggest criticisms is for a planned economy
Planned economies are good actually, there is a reason semi-feudal russia was able to go to space in 40 years after the revolution, while beating off imperial superpowers like Germany and Britain.
Was Lenin aware of cooperatives when he wrote the state and revolution? Its not a theoretical idea.
There can be no such thing as peaceful revolution, if your political movement is getting anywhere the bourgeoisie will send their dogs to destroy it, and it will be violent. You must only look to history to see how easily the mask of civility slips away and the inhuman, bloodthirsty face of capital is revealed.
I had an ex help organize an event to great success, ultimately accomplishing more than they were asking for from the powers at be. Organizers in the area tried to shut it down, or take over, however because it wasn’t how protests are typically done.
I don’t know enough about Lenin, but do we need violent revolution to advocate for cooperatives and elect officials that will help support them? With the right state sponsored incentives, cooperatives can be a great stepping stone for a peaceful transition of power giving workers ownership to the means of production. I struggle to understand how someone can argue against this idea. Maybe I need to learn more history, or maybe we need to be collectively more optimistic and united. I don’t know how to accomplish this aside from trying to feebly spread the idea here and in my own life. I’m involved and trying to be more involved in the small cooperative movement.
to advocate for cooperatives and elect officials that will help support them? With the right state sponsored incentives, cooperatives can be a great stepping stone for a peaceful transition of power giving workers ownership to the means of production. I struggle to understand how someone can argue against this idea.
So basically the state exists in order to defend capitalism from internal and external threats, and a cooperative movement growing too big is a threat that it is going to respond to violently. Hell, union struggles led to literal battles and aerial bombings, and they only wanted better conditions working for the capitalists.
Right I see. Co-ops are a threat to a capitalist that wants to exploit their workers, and if co-ops got big enough to strain the system I imagine there would be some push back from someone with money.
But co-ops can exist outside the system so it shouldn’t matter, and theyd have the power in numbers. Cooperation among cooperatives is one of the defining principles of a cooperative. So if a housing co-op gets their food from a food co-op who gets their food from a farmers co-op and they all get there energy from an energy co-op, what is a capitalist to do? Its like a free market and if the capitalist fails, that’s just competition.
All that would need to be done is for there to be more co-ops and more people that understand and want them to exist.
I mean if we want to overthrow the system violently, or reject it with violence, we can but I see an alternative here if somehow people can unite on an idea. I don’t know how to do that though.
I mean its the goal… to avoid violent revolution. If it does need to turn to that though, then what will be there to replace capitalism?
Its literally an alternative where workers own the means of production. How is that not outside the system? They already exist in pockets around the world.
Its literally an alternative where workers own the means of production. How is that not outside the system?
Because capitalism isn’t just individual companies, it is also the state, financial systems, markets, etc. If two out of 5 production systems become cooperatives the owners of the last 3 are gonna instruct the police to restore capitalist control to the two.
I kind of fail to see how a life in which all my basic needs are secured as long as I agree for them to be secured for everyone else, thus freeing me from anxiously giving my life to the futile attempt to crawl above others, is “altruistic”. Working your ass off for nothing but your crude survival and the benefit of a handful of others doesn’t seem very selfish if you put it in this perspective.
In any case, whatever is going on right now - it’s… not good, to say the least. Wanting to fix the problem with the problem is horribly naive.
Did you just look at the pictures or did you actually read the text? It’s not about who gets cheered for and who doesn’t. The issue is people (in the US) saying it’s not possible that a Chinese athlete did that and that he somehow cheated, which is not only childish and cringe, but extremely hypocritical given the context.
That’s not even remotely realistic. It takes a freight train about 5-7 days to travel from coast to coast. It takes a team driving a big rig about 3 days to make the same trip. The reason airplanes make it in hours is because they get to fly over that pesky thing thst slows down trains called mountains
Thanks for the reply. For the record I’m talking about exaggerating the tactical utility (or even outright lying) of highspeed rail so normal people can benefit, in a shit post at work to distract myself.
One of the biggest reasons it takes a long time to move freight on American railroads is because they are being run by idiots using stupid metrics which causes unneccesary delays.
China has successfully prototyped a 1000 km/h train, which is faster than commercial aircraft, and is researching the viability of trains moving up to 4000 km/h.
So, you are trusting something moving at near the speed of sound on rails? The first time that derails at speed, ugly won’t even begin to describe the carnage
it was obviously an exaggeration but u would have to be completely brain dead to think freight trains in the amerikkka of all places is in any way representative of the kinds of speed high speed rail can go. Its called highspeed rail for a fucking reason, and even if the speeds where even comparable, guess what highspeed rail wont stop in the middle of the tracks in random places to change crews nor will it get stuck behind massive trains as they unload cargo because bypasses were built for normal train lengths an amerikkkan freight train companies have too much brain damage in their c suites to use normal length trains and they are too broke due to the the aforementioned brain damage to afford to change the bypass.
With about 10% overhead on the travel time, a pretty mainline high speed rail line would take about 15 hours to go from DC to San Fransisco. Each train (assuming Japanese trains like Amtrak is buying for Texas) can carry about 1323 seats, plus standing room. They can run 16 trains per line per hour. So, that’s 21,168 people per hour passing on the rail.
Assuming the 15 hour lead time (and no loading time of note because Sergents are really good at yelling people onto trains), within 24 hours, the Pentagon could move about 211,680 soldiers coast to cost from time t=0 to t=24 hours. That’s coast to coast, mind. If you do it from say the middle of the country to SF, it’s only a 4.7 hour trip, so now you can get 19.3 hours of soldiers moving (and arrived) around 408,542 people delivered by t=24hrs. Then, it’s another 508,032 every 24 hours after that.
Now, while it’s not particularly feasible to have commercially driving HSR across the empty center of the US, the military has a whole different set of priorities, and damn, that’s a lot of equipment & people that could be moved really fast. Yes, planes are faster, but there’s no way they’ll keep up with HSR once the train pipeline fills. This is a latency vs carrying throughput load equation and trains will win it big time. Always have, always will.
The US waywayway behind on building infrastructure. Our infrastructure deficit is trillions of dollars, and our transit modality is decades behind Europe, China, India, japan, and even starting to slip behind sections of Africa. We’re failing as a developed nation because we refuse to invest in modern transit (and many other issues like healthcare, usurious education costs, and losing our democracy to dictator thinking). We’re flailing hard right now. HSR should be a massive investment for our country, along with regional/city rail (trams, metros, heavy regional), but since our population mostly has never ever seen a modern city like Paris, London, Beijing, Tokyo, or Rome so they have no idea what it can even be like to live somewhere well designed for people instead for for cars.
Though, watching the military test the rails by moving a half million people in 24 hours would be hilarious for those of us not trying to coordinate it.
The USA has failed to develop infrastructure because it’s been hollowed out by decades of finance capitalism. The neoliberal government is now not only unwilling but unable to do anything but hand money to billionaires.
brave promised to continue using v2 so that every brave user would continue having the freedom of choice to use ublock and umatrix if they so desired.
Then there’s also the adblocking brave has built in and also adguard for windows.
Also, firefox is full of tracking and telemetry from advertising spyware now. If you want to use a firefox based browser, use Librewolf instead, all of the best parts of firefox with none of the bullshit firefox has in it now.
Just be sure you enable the letter boxing feature inside of librewolf.
There’s was only a very brief period that I would have considered Chrome a better option and that was the period when Chrome had a mobile app and FF didn’t. Other than that, I have never understood why you would use chrome. I know FF didn’t invent tab browsing, but definitely the first to do it successfully.
Manifest v3 was why I switched to FF a while ago - it was going to only be a matter of time even with the delays so I figured I should switch early. I still like how chrome looks a lot more and wish we had tab grouping, but google can take uBO from my cold, dead hands.
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