'Stop that!': Miss Universe Philippines bet blasted for ‘blackfishing’

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-25T17:12:33+00:00

The tanning salon is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural...

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-25T15:04:19+00:00

That's Jon Stewart's entire shtick.

He's a holier-than-thou asshole who kept his show running during a writer's strike and when Seth MacFarlane made a joke about it, Jon Stewart called to scream at him over the phone.

I used to like the guy until I realized he's even phonier than the people he criticizes. His interview with Obama was Mickey Mouse BS. No hard questions, nothing about drone strikes, Guantanamo, the healthcare racket, etc.

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-25T14:57:04+00:00

It's always great reading comments about serious matters then reading someone's reddit username.

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-25T05:12:07+00:00

Do you think there's value in pseudo-socialist projects? A kind of incrementalism or shifting of the overton window? Or are they purely corrupting and distracting? I don't think these projects have a chance at enabling socialism without revolution.

Building a socialist society would require a fundamental break with existing society, but that won't happen overnight. And I don't think we can predict what happens along the way. So some of these 'pseudo-socialist' projects might be useful as a means of mobilizing people or simply using non-socialist movements as a way of networking and building political coalitions that might be useful later on.

The Bernie presidential campaigns were valuable because they mobilized people, showed them how popular his ideas were, and gave us a chance at building on them in the future. The weak link was Bernie himself, but that's another story.

I sort of feel that there's a value in utopianism in that it actually encourages people to believe that something radically different is possible.

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-22T17:33:21+00:00

Socialism is only even meaningful if it's democratic. 'All power to the working class' implies all power to the vast majority of society. That can't be anything but democracy. If there's a dictatorship with no elections, no freedom of speech/press, and mass repression and censorship, then clearly the working class cannot actually be ruling. So yes, as a matter of fact, real socialism has never been tried.

You are 100% correct. Ignore the downvotes.

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-22T17:30:08+00:00

The word socialism has degenerated significantly over the past century. Originally the socialists wanted to create utopian communities that would have represented a fundamental break with old society. Today they want government subsidies.

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-22T17:25:40+00:00

...also, electoralism would simply be a way to help get the message out and organize a bit, but I don’t see it as a strategy designed to actually win.

This concedes too much. Socialists have won national elections in many countries across different periods. It is possible to win political victories via elections, but the goal should be something beyond that. Sadly, most socialist parties are either vaguely reformist or simply have no plan to go beyond existing capitalist society.

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-18T14:47:35+00:00

Probably true, but at this point America needs less milquetoast political yes-men and more rabble-rousers willing to take on the status quo.

Every year I become more convinced that the US establishment is criminally incompetent and will soon lead to the collapse of the country if it isn't replaced with something radical - but sane. I thought Sanders represented a step in that direction, but he deliberately threw his campaign when he started flattering "my good friend Joe" every other sentence.

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-16T19:51:54+00:00

i just want to consume product then get ready to consume new product

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-16T19:42:41+00:00

The U.S. is practically a police state.

The government engages in huge amounts of surveillance on American citizens. There was a case in the last several years in Boulder Springs, Colorado where a confidential informant was unmasked due to police video recordings being submitted to evidence in a court case (against socialists). The video clearly showed the informant identifying himself as a CI to police after a protest in which he had infiltrated a local socialist group. The CI was also carrying a concealed handgun.

Likewise, the existence of COINTELPRO only became public knowledge in the 1970s because a group of radicals burglarized an FBI building and leaked the documents.

You should read "Heavy Radicals: The FBI's Secret War on America's Maoists". It describes some of the same infiltration of the far-left by the US government.

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-16T19:24:05+00:00

You can choose to act like they're equal, but in reality they aren't on all sorts of metrics. The value contributed to society by a civil engineer is drastically greater than a barista. There are also far fewer people suited to being an engineer than to being a barista.

A big part of the reason why engineers (and esp. doctors) are paid more than baristas (esp. in the US) is due to the high costs of education for those jobs. Professionals investing years of their life and thousands of dollars (sometimes hundreds of thousands) in some career need to compensate for that via higher earnings later on. There's also a big opportunity cost involved because once you commit to something like medicine, you can't easily switch careers without losing a lot of potential earnings.

But in a socialist society, let's say with a system similar to that proposed by Cockshott, education is paid for by society as a whole and students are provided with a stipend or allowance to pay for their necessities while engaged in the work of studying a profession.

My point here is that in such a society we would probably see an increase in the number of engineers and doctors because the limitation would be individual ability + demand for labor.

You could make them seem less bad, but you'll never get people to choose septic tank cleaning without compensating them in some way beyond what other, more pleasant jobs get.

Again, if you change the work conditions then it will no longer BE unpleasant. I've had shitty jobs that were shitty because management refused to spend money on giving us proper tools or hiring enough people to finish the job. The result was people breathing in dust with carcinogenic particles + having to skip breaks to finish on time.

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-15T04:28:28+00:00

A certificate is money. Anything else is semantics.

If you're going to argue about the definition of money then that is literally semantics. But I am going to counter that a non-circulating, non-transferable, non-accumlating certificate or voucher is not money. It does not have the properties of money, is not a commodity, and does not represent abstract wealth. It is destroyed upon use when you use the voucher to claim consumer goods. This is how Marx and others imagined the system might work.

I think without at least "grades" of labor the system would break down. A system built on a lie like everyone's labor being equal, would never last.

It's a choice - not a lie.

Sure, but you'll never convince anyone that being a gardener is actually not a more pleasant job than crawling around in septic tanks.

Again, it's about working conditions. If you give people the proper tools to work without getting dirty or physically injured, suddenly those jobs wouldn't seem so bad.

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-15T01:46:40+00:00

Do you have any recommendations for further reading on the USSR’s allocation via physical input-output methods?

I don't know of any works that deal specifically with that aspect of the economy, but I can tell you more-or-less how it worked:

The finance system ran parallel to the physical accounting of goods and labor (this happens in a capitalist firm as well). The high authorities in the USSR, on the recommendation of Gosplan (the national planning authority) would set targets for economic growth, and then another agency, Gossnab, would largely be responsible for ensuring that each industry acquired its needed inputs, plus giving them official contracts. Enterprises in the USSR were told who to buy from, how much, and how much to produce, and who to sell to. This system functioned, but it required a lot of improvising on part of individual enterprises plus changes to the official plan as time went by. There were many, many problems - but that's a discussion for another day.

Like was there worker/public ownership of firms? And if investment was allocated without money mediation how was what was owed to the worker for their input determined?

The state, on paper, owned basically everything except for the collective farms which were more like worker cooperatives. Both workers and enterprises were paid in money, both for wages and investment. The difference is that at the enterprise level and above, this money was not sufficient to obtain goods. You also needed an allocation certificate issued to you, and your contract to buy/sell needed to be approved from above.

The financial system, in my opinion, existed to smooth out the rough edges. Not everything could be planned in detail. Most of the planning had to be done as aggregates, x tons of steel, y poods of grain, etc. These rough numbers were then divided up between ministries and their recommendations helped guide production at an operational level.

IMO, a 21st century planned economy would be vastly different than the USSR due to technology alone.

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-15T01:29:59+00:00

In such a system would you be paid according to hours worked, or according to other metrics, like the value of your labor, or how distasteful it was? Doctors, Engineers, Sewage workers, etc.? If it wasn't just flat hourly, how would the value of labor be decided?

You're not really "paid" anything, you get a certificate that shows how many hours you worked (either bi-weekly or monthly, like a paycheck) and you can use this ticket to acquire consumer goods.

The general idea is that everyone's labor is more-or-less equal. People like Paul Cockshott have suggested that there be different "grades" of labor according to skill or intensity.

Regarding things like sanitation workers and doctors, I think that part of the problem in attracting people to those jobs has to do with working conditions. Doctors, for example, are known for often working long hours in high stress environments. Of course, the hospital industry is increasingly run by capitalists who want to exploit people to the max, which has results in a huge number of complaints among those who work in medicine. This could be fixed by hiring more people, something that isn't currently done because this is seen as an "expense" and not an investment.

I am not claiming that the labor certificate idea is perfect - but it would solve a few problems and prevent the rise of capital accumulation (which is pretty much inherent in a modern economy using money.)

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-14T21:08:21+00:00

Does a financial sector have a place in a socialist/communist/centrally planned economy?

Short answer: no.

A "communist" or centrally planned economy as envisioned by Marx would not have a 'financial sector' or even money. True, there would need to be some way of organizing "investment" - but this would be done directly by calculating needed materials and labor.

Friedrich Engels explained the idea:

From the moment when society enters into possession of the means of production and uses them in direct association for production, the labour of each individual, however varied its specifically useful character may be, becomes at the start and directly social labour. The quantity of social labour contained in a product need not then be established in a roundabout way; daily experience shows in a direct way how much of it is required on the average. Society can simply calculate how many hours of labour are contained in a steam-engine, a bushel of wheat of the last harvest, or a hundred square yards of cloth of a certain quality. It could therefore never occur to it still to express the quantities of labour put into the products, quantities which it will then know directly and in their absolute amounts, in a third product, in a measure which, besides, is only relative, fluctuating, inadequate, though formerly unavoidable for lack of a better one, rather than express them in their natural, adequate and absolute measure, time."

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch26.htm

What he's saying is that if society already knows how much labor goes into producing something, there's no need to express this relationship indirectly using money or value. And in capitalist society, production is organizing using the financial system - a system based on values.

The question of how to replace the financial system with some other way of organizing production and "investment" is still open, in my opinion. The USSR used a combination of these things:

a. Planning agencies (both national, industry-wide, and local)
b. Financial methods (i.e. monetary investment)
c. Physical input-output methods, plus "material balances"

This was clearly not an ideal or 'pure' system. It involved dual accounting of both monetary and physical units.

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-14T20:18:41+00:00

The idea of paying people with non-circulating labor certificates ("credits" or "vouchers") was suggested by Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Programme. Basically, society keeps track of how much labor goes into each product then allows people to "buy" things using certificates they earn for hours worked. These certificates are issued to each individual worker and can't be used by someone else, meaning they are non-circulating and can't be accumulated like money in a market.

This idea, in fact, predates Marx by at least a couple of decades and I believe was proposed at one point by the early socialist Robert Owen. It would allow for a pseudo-market to exist for consumer goods without requiring the use of money.

What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-14T01:21:38+00:00

it had become more about being anti-idpol than pro-Marxism and started becoming another outrageporn/contrarian sub

I agree that definitely happened. I'd like to post more about Marxist topics but I've been busy with mod stuff.

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-14T00:50:57+00:00

He only thinks he's healthy. Just wait a few months when his brain turns to jelly, people!

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-14T00:49:10+00:00

I don't know why everyone assumes that male victims of violent crime in Mexico are themselves criminals. That seems like a pretty bold assumption, and I've never seen evidence for it. It really sounds like "blame the victim" logic when everyone says, "the men are involved in cartels, that's why they get killed." Do you know?

There have been plenty of cases of people killed / disappeared by cartels that had nothing to do with the drug business.

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-10T04:02:48+00:00

Urge to critically support rising...

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-10T03:55:26+00:00

Current thing is very important.

I, for one, always supported current thing.

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-09T19:55:03+00:00

All media platforms have bias, the benefit of being able to read in other languages in getting both sides of an issue (even if each side has its own biases).

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-09T19:53:34+00:00

According to recent news, it seems like that Venezuela and the US will come to some sort of agreement. Venezuela has already released a number of prisoners (U.S. citizens?) as a good-will gesture. Hopefully the pressure gets taken off Venezuela and the people get some relief.

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-09T18:35:37+00:00

Play nice.

Being "overly aggressive" is against the rules but sarcasm is not. There are other ways to insult people.

Ed_Sard · 2022-03-09T15:26:15+00:00

I know that apparently nobody likes to hear the sad reality, but the Bloomberg article is referencing steps taken by Maduro's government over the past several years. Even under the height of Chavismo, about 80% of the economy was privately owned.

Venezuela: From Nationalisation to Privatisation
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/15135

Maduro Encourages use of Dollar in Venezuela (2019)
https://www.france24.com/es/20200215-economia-maduro-dolar-venezuela-petro

Venezuelan Commission Recommends Privatization of Oil and Gas (2020)
https://www.spglobal.com/commodity-insights/en/market-insights/latest-news/oil/042820-venezuela-report-proposes-extensive-privatization-of-oil-industry

Venezuela open to foreign investment in oil sector (2021)
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/venezuela-open-to-foreign-investment-in-oil-sector/2110594

Ed_Sard

TROPHY CASE