If someone claims something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they’re lying.

  • 16 Posts
  • 1.28K Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: April 30th, 2024

help-circle





  • I find the last days of the Qing dynasty China to be somewhat analogous. Institutional rot, rampant corruption, a complete failure to adapt to crises and open hostility to anyone proposing workable solutions or trying to learn from foreign examples. Basically the two voices in government were, “Learn how guns work while completely refusing to understand the scientific principles that allowed them to be developed” and “Learn absolutely nothing.” The “lesser evil” was woefully inadequate, and once the government finally collapsed, both factions that emerged (communists and nationalist) were far more influenced by Western ideas than even the most radical in the Qing government were.












  • Imo classical economists were generally more clear-sighted and honest than modern ones. Of course they had their biases and perspective based on their class (and their audience), but at that point economics was so poorly understood that theorists were legitimately trying to figure stuff out, moreso than trying to produce propaganda. Of course, the industrial proletariat and threat of socialism wasn’t really present yet either, so the class conflict was more about new money bourgeois vs old money aristocrats and landlords.

    Marx and Smith are a lot more similar than most people think, because Marx was writing in the context of various economic assumptions that come from Smith, such as the labor theory of value, which is usually attributed to Marx but actually comes from Smith.

    The thing about Smith though is that his writing style was very dry and repetitive so nobody actually reads him, at best, they might read abridged versions which cut out any inconvenient parts like that. So he just kinda became known as the capitalism guy and is thrown in the same category as Ayn Rand.


  • Bulls on Parade (Hell Yeah Cover)

    Weapons not food, not homes, not shoes (Hell yeah!)

    Not need, just feed the war cannibal animal (Hell yeah!)

    I walk the corner to the rubble that used to be a library (Hell yeah!)

    Line up to the mind cemetery now (Hell yeah!)

    What they don’t know keeps the contracts alive and movin’ (Hell yeah!)

    We don’t gotta burn the books we just remove 'em (Hell yeah!)

    While arms warehouses fill as quick as the cells (Hell yeah!)

    Rally 'round the family, pockets full of shells (Hell yeah!)



  • I live in Illinois. If somehow the heavens and earth move such that Illinois turned red, then there would be absolutely zero chance it would be the tipping point in the presidential election. The vast majority of people in the US live in safe states.

    And for the record, I do vote in down-ballot races, the ones that actually matter, but none of you care because it’s all about genuflecting before the leader of the blue tribe. Which, frankly, just gives me more reason to refuse to.

    “Democracy” doesn’t need our help to be sabotaged, it’s falling apart on it’s own. Every time someone says that the voters have to change en masse to meet the policies of politicians rather than politicians having to respond to what their constituents want, they are the ones taking the axe to democracy. Why the hell would anyone care about upholding or defending a system that we have no say in? Somehow, insisting on popular demands and trying to turn the will of the people into policies that protect the rights of the vulnerable gets translated into “trying to sabotage democracy” equating Anarchists and Marxists alike with fascists.