Here is ramdomthought!

[INNIT]

Materialism: the transition to remote labour actually further centralizes the labour force (in the sense that the labour force is now effectively anyone with an internet connection, and so the capitalist's grasp becomes more or less global) which further reduces the political power of labourers (if this even exists anymore). The idea of scattering while simultaneously conglomerating the labour force seems to me to have some fairly pernicious effects in terms of power relations (a break down of locally concentrated solidarities that maintains the massive labour pool that keeps the worker's autonomy to a minimum). Capitalism used to want to centralize the labour force so that workers couldn't unionize. It's newfound capacity to centralize while decentralizing seems like a more perfect version of this original aim.

[JewTurk]

@JewTurk why do you think it's bad to bring in Silicon Valley money into rural areas? because of gentrification + pushing out the people who currently live there?

Well, that and: just seeing what has happened to the real estate market in the US (specifically states bordering/near CA). People retire from CA, bring truck-loads of money into a different state, and buy property for obscene amounts of money and it pushes out huge amounts of people who used to live there. Just in Boise in the last 5 years we've seen property values DOUBLE. I remember walking around neighborhoods and seeing houses for 150k that are now going for upwards of 400k. That's not any one person's fault but it seems most people point at CA bringing in that kind of money the area had never seen before.

I think the property value issues are more coupled with housing being a scarce resource in a lot of places right now because of AirBnB and co. and who knows how much of an effect each has had.

[fun_yunchables]

(economic) globalization was a mistake send tweet

[alby]

happy birthday to all of our favorite bots today :L

[fun_yunchables]

returning back to the rural/work from home dialectic, i was reading some schumacher essays (a bit anachronistic since they are from 1973), but quite poignant in the points brought up

Spoiler:

Help to Those who Need it Most
The problem may therefore be stated quite simply thus: what can be done to bring health to economic life outside the big cities, in the small towns and villages which still contain - in most cases - eighty to ninety per cent of the total population? As long as the development effort is concentrated mainly on the big cities, where it is easiest to establish new industries, to staff them with managers and men, and to find finance and markets to keep them going, the competition from these industries will further disrupt and destroy non-agricultural production in the rest of the country, will cause additional unemployment outside, and will further accelerate the migration of destitute people into towns that cannot absorb them. The process of mutual poisoning' will not be halted.

It is necessary, therefore, that at least an important part of the development effort should by-pass big cities and be directly concerned with the creation of an agro-industrial structure' in the rural and small- town areas. In this connection it is necessary to emphasise that the primary need is workplaces, literally millions of workplaces. No-one, of course, would suggest that output-per- man is unimportant but the primary consideration cannot be to maximise output per man, it must be to maximise work opportunities for the unemployed and underemployed For a poor man the chance to work is the greatest of all needs, and even poorly paid and relatively unproductive work is better than idleness. 'Coverage must come before perfection', to use the words of Mr Gabriel Ardant.'
'It is important that there should be enough work for all because that is the only way to eliminate anti-productive reflexes and create a new state of mind - that of a country where labour has become precious and must be put to the best possible use.
In other words, the economic calculus which measures success in terms of output or income, without consideration of the number of jobs, is quite inappropriate in the conditions here under consideration, for it implies a static approach to the problem of development. The dynamic approach pays heed to the needs and reactions of people: their first need is to start work of some kind that brings some reward, however small; it is only when they experience that their time and labour is of value that they can become interested in making it more valuable. It is therefore more important that everybody should produce something than that a few people should each produce a great deal, and this remains true even if in some exceptional cases the total output under the former arrangement should be smaller than it would be under the latter arrangement It will not remain smaller, because this is a dynamic situation capable of generating growth.
An unemployed man is a desperate man and he is practically forced into migration. This is another justification for the assertion that the provision of work opportunities is the primary need and should be the primary objective of economic planning. Without it, the drift of people into the large cities cannot be mitigated, let alone halted.
The Nature of the Task

The task, then, is to bring into existence millions of new workplaces in the rural areas and small towns. That modern industry, as it has arisen in the developed countries, cannot possibly fulfil this task should be perfectly obvious. It has arisen in societies which are rich in capital and short of labour and therefore cannot possibly be appropriate for societies short of capital and rich in labour. Puerto Rico furnishes a good illustration of the point, To quote from a recent study:
'Development of modern factory-style manufacturing makes only a limited contribution to employment. The Puerto Rican development programme has been unusually vigorous and successful; but from 1952- 62 the average increase of employment in EDA-sponsored plants was about 5,000 a year. With present labour force participation rates, and in the absence of net emigration to the mainland, annual additions to the Puerto Rican labour force would be of the order of 40,000 ...
'Within manufacturing, there should be imaginative exploration of small- scale, more decentralised, more labour-using forms of organisation such as have persisted in the Japanese economy to the present day and have contributed materially to its vigorous growth.
Equally powerful illustrations could be drawn from many other countries, notably India and Turkey, where highly ambitious five- year plans regularly show a greater volume of unemployment at the end of the five-year period that at the beginning, even assuming that the plan is fully implemented.
The real task may be formulated in four propositions:
First, that workplaces have to be created in the areas where the people are living now, and not primarily in metropolitan areas into which they tend to migrate.
Second, that these workplaces must be, on average, cheap enough so that they can be created in large numbers without this calling for an unattainable level of capital formation and imports.
Third, that the production methods employed must be relatively simple, so that the demands for high skills are minimised, not only in the production process itself but also in matters of organisation, raw material supply, financing, marketing, and so forth.

Fourth, that production should be mainly from local materials and mainly for local use. These four requirements-can be met only if there is a 'regional' approach to development and, second, if there is a conscious effort to develop and apply what might be called an 'intermediate technology'. These two conditions will now be considered in turn.

[INNIT]

returning back to the rural/work from home dialectic, i was reading some schumacher essays (a bit anachronistic since they are from 1973), but quite poignant in the points brought up

This reminds me of a book that I read a long time ago, written by some Marxist whose name I can't remember, that looked at the transition from hydro power to coal power in Europe during the industrial revolution. The ideology of capitalism would suggest that this energy transition took place because of the law of supply and demand: coal became cheaper than hydro and so became the dominant energy source in industrializing nations. What this book discovered was that for the first three decades or so of the transition to fossil fuel, coal was actually far more expensive than hydro, yet in spite of this fact coal extraction skyrocketed and coal-fuelled production steamed ahead. So, why did this transition take place if it contradicts the so-called "laws" of the free market? Well, because hydro power encouraged distributed locals: small settlements along waterways that were materially limited in size and productive capacity. These small, distributed settlements greatly inhibited the power of capitalists, as the scattered towns and villages precipitated by hydro energy were limited in terms of population, and thus did not supply employers with the massive surplus populations that render labourers fungible and thus more vulnerable to the most brutal forms of exploitation. When you're one of two shoemakers in town working at the local shoe store, your employer can't exactly compel you to work unreasonable hours for an unreasonable wage, because if you quit, he's fucked. Why coal then? Because it is transportable, because it allowed capitalists to move great sums of energy into the cities, concentrating the work force and thereby undermining the solidarity of workers. You can't exactly walk out on your employer when there are hundreds of working class folk more than willing to take your place on the production floor. What the book uncovered was that the transition to coal had nothing to do with the law of supply and demand, and everything to do with reorganizing society in such a way that the capitalist's power was increased and the worker's power was diminished.

This suggests four things:

(1) Localization/regionalization is indeed a strong antidote to capitalist exploitation.
(2) However, a localized system is the result of an underlying material reality. In the example above, localization is the direct result of hydro power. This begs the question: is localization/regionalization/de-urbanization achievable in a fossil-powered system? My answer would be a definitive "no".
(3) This means that if we want to re-localize, it would involve a fundamental shift in the types of energy we use to power our grids, and would likely also entail a decrease in productive capacities: we would have to do with less, use less, make less, consume less.
(4) The solution, from this point of view, would be to decrease "productivity" (a loaded, highly subjective term in the first place), to produce less, by powering our grids using forms of energy that are both more difficult to transport and less intense than fossil fuels (e.g. solar, wind, etc.). This solution would obviously require some type of revolutionary force, as capitalism only functions by ceaselessly increasing its productive capabilities. The capitalist presupposition that productivity is "good," in and for itself, is one of the first things that we need to question in these kinds of conversations. What types of work are deemed productive and what are the effects of our highly contingent definitions of productivity?

[fun_yunchables]

if you ever remember the author/book i’d love to give it a read

i see these ideas echoed in schumacher, especially in regards to “suboptimal” production and consumption (coined in buddhist economics/the middle way) — attempts at answering the metaphysical question of the necessity for “growth” in the paradigm as we know it (capitalistic).

self-sufficient localization as a root solution for imperialism/colonialism too. if there is no incentive to require resources outside of a relatively self-sufficient geography, then there is no incentive to establish colonies for extraction of unnecessary resources. ive heard the argument that import/export really is the spine of colonialism — the want for resources not local drove the creation of empires.



there’s also this (https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library ... roy-itself) more anarcho primitivist take but to me, at least in a non cooperative game-theoretic framework, this article seems to be the inevitable (and defeatist) future. as long as on a global scale there exists some kind of competitive market without localized resource control. at least it’s consistent with the fermi paradox i guess

[rjbman]

please send me $1000 via bitcoin. this isn't a scam, i promise. (not promising money back you just give me it, thanks)

[rjbman]

really tho twitter is FUCKED

[rjbman]

@jewturk this is an utterly massive security fuckup that will probably have lasting repercussions on them as a business

though i'm seeing word hackers bribed? some twitter employees to help them pull it off. seems like a colossally stupid move on those employees' parts

[alby]

[JewTurk]

What's going to happen to the US? Please give predictions.

[fun_yunchables]

my doomer guess (using french yellow jacket, hong kong yellow umbrella, chilean protests as optimistic guides)

• persistent protests in the near future (if the fascist police state doesn't crush it first)
• more voter disenfranchisement around presidential election
• rising new cold war tensions with peoples rep of china
• economic shocks around the end of the year when a lot of stimulus runs out -- people aren't going to be suddenly hired right away
• aforementioned economic shocks bring about more or intensify existing tensions
• further increased cold war tensions
• climate change encroaching on equatorial regions, particularly in agriculture
• staple crops around equator die due to 1.5C+ climate changes, prompting famine due to globalised food supply chain
• global famine causes food pricing to go extreme due to shortage -- less privileged people suffer since they can no longer afford necessities
• global famine also causes global protests and riots (let them eat cake)
• governments get desperate due to issues with securing food and other necessities -- perhaps even in the extreme, climate wars break out for limited resources
• self-extinction?

bonus:

Spoiler:

• celebs try to collectively sing "ain't no mountain high enough" but nobody cares any more

Spoiler:

also if any of u work in computational think tank policy joints please hire me i swear i think about these scenarios all the time

[smiles]

Think of the dumbest, most ridiculous outcome and you'll probably be correct.

for example, biden loses presidency but the democrats win the senate and the house. Then nothing happens aside from cold war with china or something.

or biden gets corona and dies after being elected but before being inaugurated.

or the rich will get unimaginable richer and everyone else will get slowly and then all of a sudden a lot poorer.

[popcorn]

Whether or not we become a complete martial autocracy, I see no scenario in which we don't continue to slide in human development indexes.

It's been evident since the 1950s that the United States isn't oriented enough towards community health, education, and real production to warrant the country's growth.

The value of our currency is propped up by military intervention and intimidation, tautology, and the idea that eventually we will orient the state more towards real production (see: the hyperinflation of the valuation and cost of an american university education even though our land grant universities lag behind the standards of some other highly developed countries). The service industries that only provide an affluent lifestyle because they're tied to our currency will collapse.

Is this the cyberpunk thread?

[UnwashedMolasses]

I'm not exactly clear on how a "cold war" is defined as having started or not started but I think the US is already engaged in one against China based on our funding of the HK protests and our attempts to disrupt and destroy the Belt and Road Initiative.

I don't see any scenario in which an actual response to COVID-19 is ever coordinated, which most nurses I know are very worried about as we move into flu season and how much more fucked our medical infrastructure is going to be attempting to deal with both of those at the same time.

Not sure if Trump will lose or win at this point but I'm also not sure it will make a difference. It wouldn't surprise me if they simply suspend the election. Even if Biden wins it's not like he or his allies will do anything about COVID or any of the crises we're dealing with.

Massive amounts of people are going to be facing eviction in the immediate future as the eviction moratorium ends at the same time that unemployment benefits do - state by state numbers show 25% of renters at risk of being evicted is the LOWEST percent, and they go up to 50%. I'm not sure how much of an economic effect that'll have - I want to say there's no way they'll just evict that many people given that there's no one else to fill the places with but that would be assuming that landlords will act like anything other than desperately greedy leeches and I know better than that

[_Organism]

Wynand vs. Roark (Enemies to Lovers, Love Triangle, Slash)

[fun_yunchables]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-63657-6

man i know lotka-volterra models of two species (human and forest) is pretty damn reductive but still i be expecting even more and potentially worse effects when u maybe consider socio-ecological disturbance factors and all but ya lol

[JewTurk]

Do you

a) vote

b) not vote, and hope the systems crumbles so we can rebuild sooner

[rjbman]

don't be a moron fuckwad (thx for the heads up @innit), vote biden.

he sux but 4 more years of trump will probably start ww3 (covid probably has more preventable deaths already than ww3 would)

if you're mad biden got the nom, get out & organize at the local / state level

[JewTurk]

I've been registering people to vote here in town, and it's been going well, but the actual amount of people who whole-heartedly believe in blatant misinformation is startling.

I would say >50% people I interact with think antifa is coming to town to destroy property and that they are doing their civic duty by open-carrying and being prepared to protect other's property.

How do you even begin to level with people who refuse to listen to the news on a local/national level?

[UnwashedMolasses]

I'm gonna be a lil contentious here and say I think it's gross to call people that don't want to vote for Biden "fuckwads"

I know a decent amount of people that yes, are suffering under Trump, but have also suffered under the Obama/Biden administration or especially have suffered due to Biden's past bills

If people have had family deported with Biden as VP or they've had family jailed unfairly and for extreme sentences due to the crime bill, telling them they have to vote for Biden OR ELSE is violent and gross

I'm not saying vote for Trump, I'm not saying don't vote, but don't put the blame on people that have suffered under R and D for decades, especially when Biden refuses to put forward any significant policies or motivations outside of "not Trump"

Most people that don't vote don't feel like any politician from either party will do anything to benefit them and telling them that they're stupid and wrong for that is putting the blame on the the wrong people - the onus should be on politicians to offer something worth voting for

[rjbman]

fair but if the options are "vote" / "dont vote, in order to burn down the system" i don't think having 4 more years of trump will burn down the system. DNC still picked Biden even after the last 4 years.....

[UnwashedMolasses]

I would disagree with the idea that most people who don't vote are abstaining out of accelerationism. Sure, that's a thing on Twitter/online, but when I've talked to people (especially working class people) about why they don't vote, it's never about accelerationism, it's because they've given up on politics. For a lot of people it hasn't mattered who's been in office for the last 20/30 years; they've never seen their life improve from the actions of any administration. Some of them voted for the first time in years for Obama because he at least talked about hope and change and bringing something different to politics but then shit still didn't get better.

I think a lot of people online approach the discussion around "this one fucking sucks but the other one sucks worse" as a situation where obviously, you vote for the one that sucks less, and maybe things get better, maybe they don't, or at least maybe they get worse at a slower rate. The reality I've seen is that when a lot of people are given that lesser-evil choice, they just lose any motivation or interest in the election at all; they disengage from politics altogether. Yelling at those people about how bad Trump is will never be an effective way to drive voter turnout - you have to convince them that the person you want them to vote for will actually change things to a point where they'll feel it in their lives.

I really believe that the BLM protests are one of the most important political actions of the last decade (in America at least), not only for bringing awareness to the horror that is the police in America but also because it reminded people that there are ways to take political action that are much more effective than just voting. It's also one of the reasons I'm scared for voter turnout for this election - I can't imagine how many people said "fuck it" after they spent the summer protesting to defund the police and Biden said "actually, I wanna give them MORE money"

[fun_yunchables]

its not our place to impose on other people’s choices. isn’t that the point of voting? the way i see it, i should have no say about how other people feel

it sucks but not voting is just as much a voice as voting, although realistically the politicians wont care

[jylt]

voting is genocide management or, if you prefer, the reform of genocide. (edit: and sometimes that work is important or all that can be done) (2nd edit: referring here to the US context of presidential voting)

if someone votes, fine. if someone doesn't, fine.

what is important to recognize is that there are other political vernaculars, traditions, ways to build political power that exceed the state. one's engagement & horizon of political imagination should not be based on what is legitimized by the state

3rd edit: i watched this talk tonight b/w mariame kaba and ruth wilson gilmore who i learn so much from. they get at the concerns of what people in this thread have expressed

https://www.facebook.com/theGraduateCen ... 084026178/

[BobbyZamora]

Many good points, but unfortunately America is being taken over by fascism. I worry that too many people are unaware of just how pervasive and insidious fascism truly is, and what it truly looks like in action. It goes beyond simple parallels and has for years now. If at this point you support Trump you are either evil, ignorant/misguided or you wrongfully think it equates to some sort of political table-flip to reset the game. In reality it's a path that leads only to tragedy and travesty.

His followers are quite literally embracing an antisemitic conspiracy cult, I don't know why there's even a discussion at this point- now is not the time to lament the failings of neoliberalism and centrist policies. Bernie lost already, you have only one option to stop this before it goes any further.

[UnwashedMolasses]

now is not the time to lament the failings of neoliberalism and centrist policies. Bernie lost already, you have only one option to stop this before it goes any further.

Trump is bad but he did not personally and singlehandedly set America on the path for fascism, we have been on this path for a long time. He may have accelerated it or taken its mask off but he is not responsible for creating the conditions, he's simply taken advantage of them.

I'm sorry but if you're going to argue that people have to vote for Joe Biden because Trump is uniquely fascist then you're arguing that fascism can be voted out, which is absurd. Fascism does not appear because one bad guy gets voted in and it does not disappear because one bad guy gets voted out. It's not easy to define fascism but historically it has always arisen out of an absolute failure of the institutions of power of a nation to help the majority of the people of that nation. Calling neoliberalism an alternative to fascism is silly because neoliberalism is what guts those institutions, forces them to serve the interests of capital, and disregards the material needs of the working class. It is not an alternative to fascism, it is a pathway towards it.

I understand your frustration but I would strongly recommend looking towards other methods of politically engaging. Vote, by all means, but understand that Joe Biden getting elected does not mean that fascism in America will go away. Significant political change in America has never happened because the right person was voted into power. Political change historically has only happened as a result of mass political action, and sometimes politicians get pressured into doing shit that is good at the end of that. LBJ didn't pass the Civil Rights Act because he gave a shit about black people, he passed it because of the mass political action of the people.

[fun_yunchables]

echoing everyone else — one person at the top is not a sole responsibility for the rise of fascism, despite what the cult of individualism may attribute to them. systematically there are faults appearing that enable fascism.

is this not one of the main critiques? the modern system operates as a series of minor concessions to quell displeasure without major systematic change. is this not capitalistic thinking? maximize profit, minimize effort. change as little as possible to get most people to accept a failing system.

maybe im just deep in it but localized but federated bottom up organizing (eg like the BPP) seems the only realistic viable option. it’s not even a violent revolution in any means — being able to become a self sufficient core means that external forces like capitalism have minimal effect. Jarvis, but is farming is revolutionary?

[UnwashedMolasses]

maybe im just deep in it but localized but federated bottom up organizing (eg like the BPP) seems the only realistic viable option. it’s not even a violent revolution in any means — being able to become a self sufficient core means that external forces like capitalism have minimal effect. Jarvis, but is farming is revolutionary?

Couldn't fit into a rep comment - I definitely agree with this overall, and it's likely the only way broad-scale change happens without it happening as a reaction to a more horrific violent repression. A violent revolution is generally unlikely to succeed in America given the extent we've militarized our police and the amount we've invested in our military.

I also strongly believe that the Black Panther Party was the truest revolutionary organization to ever exist in the United States, and I think studying their history, their writings, and their methodology should be a pre-requisite for people that want to fundamentally change American politics, in the same way the Autobiography of Malcolm X is often considered. It kills me to imagine what America could've looked like now, especially for the working class and non-white peoples, if our government hadn't brutally dismantled the BPP.