I still see it as short-lived. I think there is stuff we can learn from that example but I don’t see a reason to just automatically assume everything they did was the best. There have been leftist movements all over the world with varying degrees of success which we can learn from and look at what examples have produced what results.

Another reason I’m skeptical of short-lived projects is because people tend to project perfect idealized visions of what could’ve been. The result is somewhat backwards where only the projects that fail can serve as models for emulation. It’s important to remember that the stakes of failure can often mean decades of fascist rule. Survival is more important that perfection.

A state does not have the capacity to be trustworthy, to have human relationships, to do good for humans. When we accomplish those things, we do it despite the state.

During COVID, at around the same time that USians were packing into grocery stores to panic-buy toilet paper, the government of Vietnam arranged for groceries to be delivered right to the doorsteps of people in affected areas, completely free of charge, to prevent them from having to leave the house and potentially catch or spread the disease. Later on, Vietnam would actually wind up sending medical aid and supplies to the US to help with the crisis.

Go back 50 years and not a person alive would believe you if you told them that would happen. What has happened in those decades is that Vietnam has recovered from the devastation we inflicted on them and built a functional society, while in the US everything’s been gutted for profit, with emergency supplies being sold off just before the pandemic arrived being only one example.

This assumption that the government will always make people suffer as a condition for helping is not an inherent quality of governments, but of capitalism and the mentalities and philosophies associated with it. It is possible to build a government that actually just helps people and does good things, and I see Vietnam as one example that demonstrates that.

A state is just a tool, and when that tool is in the hands of capitalists it will of course be used in shitty ways. But if the capitalist class can be dealt with and reliably kept out of power, then it’s a question of whether the tool of the state is actually useful to our own ends, and I would argue that it is, that there are many advantages of having a central organ that can collect taxes and fund public works and so on.

Some people actually need help. If everyone’s fending for themselves, then for example people with disabilities will be reliant on charity, which tends to be unreliable, inconsistent, and underfunded. The most generous people would give the most while the greedy would build up their resources to the point of being able to establish a new government.

Could such a system work, if enough people were willing to cooperate? Sure, possibly. But if the government is gone something must have happened to get rid of it, and that probably means there’s some kind of major crisis going on. And in times of chaos, people aren’t always at their best. When things aren’t consistent, when there’s supply chain disruptions and grocery stores aren’t getting food in, when public services aren’t getting funded, people are going to want to make things consistent and reliable again. Which generally means a new government, and fighting that tendency is like trying to fight the waves of the ocean. This is before we even get into the fact that the US is full of fascist paramilitary groups that will see it as an opportunity to go open season.

Also, there are governments that are way more functional than the US government where we already have evidence they can work and make significant improvements to people’s lives. Meanwhile, the proof of concept for societies with no state is what, a small group of guerillas in Mexico, with a low population of farmers in the mountains? The Paris commune that lasted like a week?

Anyway the main problems we’re facing aren’t because of government in general, but because of a specific government. It’s better to just replace that with one that works than to get into this scope creep of trying to create a perfect idealized system.

I can say anecdotally that when I was a teenager and a dumbass privileged libertarian, my sister just said something once like, “Some people actually need help” and it changed my entire worldview because I had literally just never considered it.

I was just going off my own experience of having parents/teachers/the government tell me what I can and can’t do and was like, “government is bullshit, fuck authority.” And then as I grew older and more mature I came to realize that government does have a role and is actually important for the functioning of society. Just not, you know, my actual government in the US which is a dysfunctional fascist clusterfuck that needs to be torn down and replaced, obviously.

Anyway, the thing about privilege is that people often don’t realize that they have it and that it’s shaping their thoughts in ways they aren’t even aware of. It takes sustained effort, and actually wanting to to identify and correct for one’s own bias. Otherwise, it really is a hell of drug which causes your perception to be incredibly warped.

I don’t know too much about that year in particular.

It’s always very funny to me when people react to socialist accomplishments with literal disbelief. Because when I show you a scientific paper backing up the claim in the meme, you’re now in the position of either trying to rapidly backtrack and pretend that the thing you considered so good it was literally unbelievable is actually not that impressive, or doubling down and accusing Western sources of being compromised by some insidious communist conspiracy, that somehow survived the collapse of the USSR.

So which one is it gonna be?

Your preoccupation with incomes and percentages makes you look anti-revolution and maybe even capitalist

Math is capitalist now? Since when???

Like if you’re awake can you say “no I’d rather die on the street and let the city have to clean up my corpse”?

They will disregard that request and charge you anyway, which has led to people literally fleeing from ambulances to avoid the expenses. But it gets even worse.

Many mental health hotlines will contact the police if they think you present a danger to yourself and others. You can then be taken to a hospital and forced to stay there against your will, and by the time you’re able to leave you’ve accumulated a mountain of medical debt. Which, if you’ve been driven to contemplate suicide due to material circumstances, isn’t exactly going to help things.

However, for anyone thinking of calling a helpline, there are ones that don’t contact the police. You just have to look it up.

Like if you can’t afford any of it? And say you’ve already gone bankrupt and have no assets to seize or no job to garnish wages off of? Is it jail time? Do they just expect you to starve to death after?

The whole thing has gotten so inflated that people not being able to pay is pretty normal. What that means is that it is possible to haggle it down somewhat and negotiate on monthly payments. The actual value of these debts to the companies that hold them is a tiny fraction of the actual dollar amount of the debt, because they know a lot of them won’t be repaid. However, the companies will be try to get every drop they can squeeze from you, and even if you negotiate the payments down to something you can afford, the principal will be hanging over your head, likely for the rest of your like.

If you can’t pay, there’s no jail time, but there’s bankruptcy and foreclosures. If you own any significant assets, like say your house or car, that can potentially be seized in the event of bankruptcy, leaving you homeless or forced to pay rent, which is generally more expensive than mortgage payments, and potentially unable to get to work.

They won’t put you in jail (not until you’re homeless and charged with sleeping in public), but they will drain every drop of blood from your body like the vampires they are. In some cases literally, given that some people resort to selling blood to make ends meet.

• Subnautica

>“Atmospheric” game

>Looks inside

>Water.

The three words?

• Git reckt bozzo

Curiously, written in English.

So true, bestie. When you completely make up nonsensical positions and assign them to people, completely unrelated to what they say or believe, those positions are indeed nonsensical!

That really tells us a lot about the world 🤓

The other person was being sarcastic.

long standing contracts

That graph he just posted kinda pokes some holes in this narrative that it’s just “long standing contracts” when there’s a massive increase in aid during his term.

There’s also the reality that you lot tend to ignore/deny which is that Biden bypassed congress to send additional weapons.

And you describe the US as “the biggest weapon manufacturer in the world” as though that somehow makes it better instead of worse. We’re already producing ridiculous numbers of bombs, and then we’re sending even more bombs to arm a genocide, and that’s somehow OK?

It’s so ridiculous. All the US is doing is having Israel do it’s dirty work so it has plausible deniability that rubes and partisan hacks can hide behind.

“If you were a doorknob, I’d start drinking heavily… so that way we can get turnt together.”

I’m afraid my brain is just too wrinkly to allow facts and evidence to just slide off it and just imagine that reality is whatever I feel like based on absolutely nothing, like you can.

China is just bribing people to continue living by providing material improvements to their quality of life. That’s cheating 😤

And once again, this is an argument against factory farming and inhumane practices, not farming and domestication in general.

Yes, because that’s what 99% of the decisions of 99% of people involve. Just because it’s theoretically possible to imagine a situation where these things are done ethically doesn’t mean that’s actually an option that is practically available.

I am not particularly interested in criticizing small farms with relatively ethical practices. My position, from my original comment, is, “But surely in the present state of affairs where that treatment is not the norm, veganism is the only ethical approach, no?”

Is there a hypothetical situation where it’s ethical to kill an innocent person?Suppose some space aliens say they’ll destroy the world with a giant laser if you don’t. That hypothetical does not change the fact that not killing innocent people is still a good general rule in the vast majority of situations you’ll actually encounter in life. To throw out all reservations against murder just because of that hypothetical would be making a rule from the exception.

Likewise, I’m sure you can imagine a hypothetical situation where it’s ethical to consume animal products, but unless that situation is an actual, real thing in your life, that you’ve looked into to verify is the case (which the example of eggs in Germany suggests you haven’t), then what you’re doing is throwing out a generally good rule based on an unrealistic hypothetical, just because following the rule would be inconvenient.

What about wool, honey, milk, eggs.

Again, it’s a matter of whether you’re looking at things in the abstract, or in terms of how things actually work.

Take eggs for example. Eggs aren’t just a byproduct of having chickens around, there are specific breeds that are dedicated to egg-laying. Because only a small number of males are needed for reproduction, most male chicks are put on a conveyor and ground to death. While I can’t claim to be an expert in German laws, I did find that German courts have allowed this practice.

It’s a similar story with milk. Because dairy cows are a different breed, male calves are typically slaughtered at birth. Dairy cows are kept in a constant state of pregnancy, suffer the stress of being separated from their young, and are killed as soon as the milk slows down, typically a quarter of their natural lifespans. Dairy is also similarly bad for the environment as beef, and there are widely available plant-based substitutes like oat milk that taste just as good, if not better.

No matter what animal product we’re talking about, maximization of profits is almost always going to involve cruelty, environmental harm, and selective breeding to the point that any expectations about natural by-products aren’t true. Even with regulations (which can be difficult to enact effectively), there are tradeoffs: limiting cruelty can increase environmental impact (as well as the price). If animal products were appropriately priced based on offsetting the harm they cause, they would be unable to compete against plant-based alternatives.

The way I see it, the tiny fraction of meat that’s produced ethically should go to the tiny fraction of people with dietary restrictions that require meat.

The vast majority of people are not going out to investigate small farms to see if their practices are ethical. They are buying meat from a grocery store, and if they consider it at all, they might pick one with a label slapped on like “organic,” completely meaningless thanks to lobbying.

Practically speaking, it is almost always a choice between torture products and nothing.

Labels like “organic” are essentially meaningless.