• 0 Posts
  • 22 Comments
Joined 2 months ago
cake
Cake day: December 6th, 2024

help-circle
  • Any “solution” to “protect” the Commons that involves private ownership of it is always meant to make somebody very wealthy from it.

    The original Commons (things like pasture spaces with no owners and shared use by the community) were all stolen from the community and given owners already way back in Monarchic times (for example, via Inclosure Acts in England) and Capitalism is just a continuation of Monarchy were the reduction of choices for the riff-raff is a bit more disguised so that people think they are free and hence are more productive for the Owner Class.


  • I’m reading his post the other way around: I think he is bitching and moaning about having to offer a lot more money to attract somebody from the competition.

    The situation were somebody has already chosen to leave and the opde employers offers more money as a last ditch effort to keep that employee is a whole different affair with, as you pointed out, the whole element that them offering you more money when you’re about to leave means that they’ve knowingly been underpaying you all along.


  • I was talking only about the individual tolerating or not the intolerant (in ways such as speaking or not against them).

    As soon as Force is also thrown into the equation (which what a Society would use to stop the intolerant) it’s a whole different thing because Force itself has its own much more complex moral framework.

    It’s easy to see the conundrum that one gets around using Force against intolerance by considering that it wouldn’t be acceptable to kill somebody (an extreme use of Force) for merely saying something deemed racist. If there’s an unacceptable use of Force against the intolerant, then is there one which is acceptable and if there is, were does the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable lie in the use of Force against intolerance and who gets to set it?

    Add Force into the equation and it’s just not the same thing as an individual’s moral guidance for nonviolent reactions against nonviolent intolerance.



  • In the job they’re in, people already know the scope of the job they have to do as well as the quality of the work environment and colleagues they have, plus have the comfort of a well established routine, whilst at a new job they don’t - moving jobs is both a disruption and a risk so it is absolutely natural for people to only do it if they either have no other choice or stand to gain from taking that risk.

    Only suckers move jobs for no gain.

    That said, the “gain” needs even not be more pay (for example great career opportunities or interesting projects can also work), it’s just that from the point of view of a prospective employee, more money is a low risk benefit (because it’s pretty much guaranteed since it’s there black and white in a contract), whilst things like promises of great career opportunities or working in interesting projects are high risk because they might just be bullshit, oversold or not materialize for some reason or other, so in the risk-reward calculus in the mind of anybody with even the most basic business sense, a low risk reward is worth more than an equivalent reward with higher risk, so more money tends to be preferred.

    That this guy can’t actually understand what is a pretty basic piece of human Economic thinking leads me to believe that he probably has no other option than to offer more money because either he has nothing else to offer that would attract people away from other companies, people simply don’t trust his promises or overselling of how great working in his company is or they fear that a job at a company he is managing is more likely to be lost due to the company failing.


  • If one tolerates all actions other than those causing harm to non-consenting others (basically “adults can do whatever they want with themselves and with other consenting adults”) which is sort of the traditional maximum tolerance boundary, one will tolerate many practices which, whilst not amounting to causing harm to non-consenting others, do spread intolerance.

    From where rises the Paradox that such choice of putting one’s boundary of Tolerance at the maximum level possible actually ends up in aggregate reducing Tolerance.

    Making it a social contract reduces the boundaries of tolerance by the minimum amount possible that’s needed to just stop Tolerance from allowing the very tools of its destruction to work.

    Under “social contract rules”, at a personal level those who are NOT tolerant of intolerance are, very strictly speaking, being less tolerant, but at a Systemic Level they are actually making there be more Tolerance in aggregate than if they had tolerated the intolerant.

    PS: I actually work in Systems Design (amongst other things) and it’s actually quite common for certain ways of doing things which are perfect at the individual level will in aggregate cause systemic problems making the whole function worse, so the optimal choice for the whole is actually to use a less optimal individual choice. Thinking about it, I would say that pretty much all Tragedy Of The Commons situations are good examples of that kind of thing.


  • The whole idea that Tolerance is a Social Contract seems to be what works best: One is Tolerant towards others who are Tolerant and those who are not Tolerant are breaking the Social Contract of Tolerance and thus are not entitled to be the recipients of Tolerance from others.

    Tolerance as a Principle doesn’t work well exactly because of the Paradox Of Tolerance which is that by Tolerating the Intolerant one is causing there to be less Tolerance since the Intolerant when their actions are tolerated will spread Intolerance (as painfully demonstrated in Present day America, especially with Trump).


  • Acting techniques improved massively during the XXth century, so stuff that relies on that (basically anything but slapstick Comedy and mindless Action) will feel less believable, which impacts mostly things from the 60s and earlier.

    Then there are the Production values: the scenarios in early XXth century films were basically Theatre stages whilst more recent stuff can be incredibly realistic (pay attention to the details in things like clothing and the objects and furniture in indoor scenes in period movies) and Sci-Fi benefited massive from the early XXIst century techniques for physically correct 3D rendering and Mocap techniques so there is a disjunction in perceived realism between even the early Star Wars Movies and something like The Mandalorian.


  • Method Acting (which is a pretty powerful Acting technique for getting actors to genuinely feel the emotions of the character) dates back to the 60s in Movies (it dates back even longer to Stanislavski in 19th century Russia, but its popularity really took off mid 20th century) so before that actors were just faking it whilst after that it will be more and more them reacting genuinely to imaginary circumstances (in terms of the audience it means we will actually empathise with what’s hapenning to the character because the emotions on display are genuine).

    So the quality of the acting in the kind of Films that are now coming into the Public Domain will be lower than what we are use to (though in stuff like Comedy and certain kinds of Action it’s seldom noticeable).

    And this is before we even go into the quality of the Production (in audience terms, how believable are the scenarios).

    I doubt Hollywood will be threatened by this for at leat a couple of decades.


  • Since generally there are at least a few assholes around who will totally enjoy the “power” of fucking somebody else’s life and often the assholes don’t even behave like assholes in every day life (because they usually don’t have the power to be assholes with impunity) so one might not even be aware of their low moral characters, merelly a “if you this to not get involved you won’t be helping the Fascists” line of advice is not enough.

    There has to be something beyond that, at the very least so that wannabe assholes fear being spotted and suffering reprisals if they do act like assholes, which if you want to make it as above the Law as possible (rather than merelly “I know which car you drive and it would be a shame if it got damaged overnight”) does require some form of involving the community to create a perception that those who rat will get into trouble with the rest.

    The problem is not simply solved or even significantly so with a mere “don’t tell the pigs anything” (i.e. “Do No Evil”), even though those who act thus do gain the moral high ground by acting like that.

    I’m sorry that I myself am not really offering a concrete solution, and my contribution is just pointing out that a Passive-Aggressive approach won’t really do much more than slightly delay the Fascists and their dogs.


  • The problems is that there are many people who, even when they themselves are generally powerless and under somebody’s boot, positively relish the opportunity to feel superior to somebody else by helping press the boot on them.

    Sadly, some of the oppressed are only meek or nice out of fear because of where they are in their power structure they’e in and when they get or are given the power to do so without consequences, turn into evil oppressors.




  • That’s traditional Fascism, which is all about the nation.

    Nazism would be “Latinos have been poisoning our White blood”, a whole different ball game and far, far more prone to extreme violence in the form of things like ethnic cleansing.

    If you want to see how present day Nazi ideology manifests itself, look at Zionists: they claim to represent an ethnicity, that their ethnicity are a superior people (“the chosen people”) and that the neighbouring ethnicity whose land they invaded and who they are currently mass murdering are less than human (“human animals”).

    I have yet to see Trump claiming to represent whites, saying that whites are superior and wanting to invade Latin American and murder the latinos because of deeming them subhuman.

    Don’t get me wrong, Trump absolutely is a Fascist. However directly so far he doesn’t seem to be a Nazi and if he is a Nazi because of who he “sits with” then so are the Democrats since they all sit with the Zionists, the biggest and most murderous Nazi-like ideology around.

    The expression Mango Mussolini fits Trump so well exactly because he’s a Fascist in the same vein as Mussolini, not the same vein as Hitler.


  • You’re using circular logic or missing my point entirely.

    The Democrat leadership sat with Nazis because they support Zionists, who are the biggest group around promoting racial supremacy and ethnic cleansing, and even commiting a Genocide along ethnic lines, all of which are ethno-Fascist ideas, the same kind of ideology as Nazis.

    Trump and the Rest of the Republicans sat with Nazis because they too support Zionist as well assupporting white supremacists (a smaller group of Nazis than Zionists and who at the moment aren’t commiting Genocide, but who also have a racial supremacy and ethnic cleansing ideology, same as the Zionists and the original Nazis)

    As far as I know, Trump himself has never defended racial supremacy or ethnic cleansing, so he is not directly a Nazi. However he definitely seats with Nazis, as does Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

    It has nothing to do with seating with each other since it’s perfectly possible for opposing groups to both be Nazis because they both support racials supremacist ideas and ethnic cleansing or support people who support those ideas.

    If sitting with Nazis makes one a Nazi then everybody who supports Zionists, white supremacists or any other kind of extreme racist political movement which believes in their own racial supremacy and sees it as a reason to violently expel or eliminate people of ethnic groups they see as inferior, is a Nazi, which would means Trump, the Republicans, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the Democrats are Nazis since they’ve been sitting with those who follow ideologies like Nazism.


  • That is an absolutely valid take (assuming you really believe the principle rather than merely parroting the slogan), which would mean that Trump, most of the Republicans, Biden, Harris and most of the Democrats are Nazis, as are anybody who supports them in any way form or shape including with a vote, because all are “sitting wit h Nazis” by supportingnthem, which explains why some people simply refused to vote for either party (as they didn’t want support Nazis).

    You have my total respect if you genuinely believe that as a principle and hence apply it equally to all 11 people sitting on that table with the Nazi.

    If however you do not apply that rule equally to all 11 people, and say that only some (Trump) are Nazis for sitting down with modern day Nazis whilst others (Biden) are not Nazis for sitting down with modern day Nazis, then you’re just a hypocrite using the word Nazi as a slogan.

    Sadly a lot of people here are just jumping on the “let’s call Trump a Nazi” bandwagon and do not apply the same rule that justifies caling Trump a Nazi, to those in their own party (which the rule would deem as Nazi since they too wilfully “sit with Nazis”) or accept that many people did not vote for their party or the other party exactly because they sawnthosnwhonsupport modern day Nazis as being themselves Nazis (exaxtly as per the sentence you quoted) and hence refuse to not support such Nazis.


  • Trumps is indeed a traditional Fascist.

    Nazis, however, are ethno-Fascists, a far worse kind of Fascist, whose ideology is anchored on racial supremacy and who are far more prone to extreme violence.

    Although traditional Fascists are violent, they don’t just go around mass murdering people because of their ethnicity, whilst ethno-Fascists most definitely do.

    In the present day the biggest and most powerful group of ethno-Fascists - i.e. the present day Nazis - are Zionists, though there are also white supremacists who are also ethno-Fascists (hence also present day Nazis) even if their violent ethnic cleansing acts are not yet to the level of Zionists and they have different lists of superior and inferior races.

    So if one genuinely believes that people can be deemed Nazis by associating with Nazis (specifically Nazi-like groups, since the National Socialist Party Of The German Worker doesn’t exist anymore, so there aren’t strictly speaking any Nazis anymore), then one must believe that by association Trump and most of their party are Nazis because of supporting both Zionists (whilst they are engaged in genocide-level ethnic cleansing, no less) and white supremacists, AND so are Biden, Harris and most of their party for supporting Zionists.

    If on the other hand one believes people can only be deemed a Nazi if they espouse an ideology of racial supremacy and murderous expulsion or annihilation of one or more races they see as sub-human (“human animals”, “untermenschen”) - i.e. ethno-Fascism - then Trump is not a Nazi, “just” a traditional Fascist (i.e. Mussolini rather than Hitler) and by the same logic Biden and Harris are not Nazis.

    Those people who use one definition of what makes one a Nazi for Trump and a different one for the Democrat leadership, are hypocrites.


  • The hypocrisy of many calling Trump a Nazi is mind boggling.

    As far as I can tell Trump can only be deemed a Nazi by association - he’s not been going around spouting stuff about people’s races making them superior or inferior to others like an ethno-Fascist and instead he’s been mostly using traditional Fascist dog whistles (I.e. about the superiority of the Nation), but since he has indeed cultivated the support of neo-nazis and other ethno-Fascists in the US, he’s associating with Nazis.

    The hypocrisy comes because the most Nazi ideology around right now is Zionism - they’re ethno-Fascists, claiming to represent a race, going on and on about the superiority of their race (calling it “the chose people”) whilst being overtly racist about Arabs in general and even more so Palestinians who they call “human animals”, i.e. subhumans whis is literally untermenschen - and, even more extreme, they’re mass murdering them right now by the hundreds of thousands.

    Anybody who here and now calls Trump a Nazi due to his association with ethno-Fascists but has previously been defending Biden, Harris and most of the Democrat party as not being Nazis all the while they were actively supporting with weapons the present day Nazis who were actively engaged in a genocide along racial lines, is a hypocrite.

    Ditto anybody going around criticizing people who chose to neither vote Democrat nor Republican: it is absolutely understandable that when people only have the choice between two sets of Nazis, many chose “neither”. After all, if one is a Nazi by supporting Nazis, then the Republicans supporting of Nazis makes them Nazis and giving support to the Nazis-Republicans (for example by voting for them) makes one a Nazi and exactly in the same way the Democrats supporting the present day Nazis makes them Nazis, so supporting Nazi-Democrats makes one a Nazi - anybody who does indeed believe people can become “Nazi by association” land does not want to be a Nazi, would refuse to vote for either Nazi-by-association party.

    I truly respect those with the genuine principles and ideological consistency of calling both main American parties Nazis (as I said, if one thinks associated with Nazi = Nazi, then logically they are both Nazis) or at least Nazi-supporting, because they are.

    It’s only the political tribalists for whom one group of Nazi-supporters are Nazis but the other group of Nazi-supporters are not Nazis because the former is “them” and the other is “us” who are despicable hypocrites.


  • The “Party” sits above the “Money” in their power structure, unlike most of the Capitalist countries nowadays were (after 4 decades of Neoliberalism) Money is a power above that of the State (and remember, the State is what the voters supposedly control in Democracy, so that means that Money is a higher power than Democracy, which is why many have pointed out that countries like the US are Oligarchies not Democracies).

    And, for reference, in Fascism too (or, in fact, all other Autocratic systems) the State sits above Money, so I’m hardly saying that by itself that is enough to make that system good

    The real hypocrisy of tankies, IMHO, is that the “Communist” nations they support in a tribalist way still have elites, they’re just not chosen via Money but instead via ability of climbing up the Party ranks (so Cronyism and Sociopathy) whilst genuine Leftwing thinking is about Equality, the very opposite of there being people who get privileged treatment for any reason other than need (that reason being money as in Capitalist system or something else is quite irrelevant in Leftwing thinking)

    If you just see them as tribalists wedded to an ideology shaped by a specific kind of elites who use a specific kind of slogans around Equality to support the continuation of the structure that maintains their elite privileges, (which is parallel to what’s done in Capitalism which similarly has the whole bullshit about how wealth is the product of merit to justify discrimination based on wealth) you can understand why tankies would think what they do about China.

    They’re still mindless simpleton tribalists, but it’s interesting to understand how using as foundation for ones own judgement an ideology controlled by somebody else without doing at the very least some analysing of it just as easily yields a tankie, a Fascist or a (Neo)liberal depending on which ideological bundle of slogans they’ve unquestioningly adopted.