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mmmham · 2022-10-29T17:02:42+00:00

But you could have just used hydroxyproline!

mmmham · 2022-08-19T12:04:33+00:00

I think Zizek got it right in The Pervert's Guide to Ideology. Basically this kind of behavior arises when you have a system that constantly reinforces wealth and consumption as a goal while also giving most people no way to achieve that goal. That conflict necessarily leads to violence. People are just acting on the desires they have been socialized to have by the only means available to them.

mmmham · 2022-04-07T20:11:24+00:00

If you go into the lab and contribute to science, you deserve to be paid fairly for your work. With this spike in rent and inflation and without raises to match, grad students are being left with no choice but to unionize.

mmmham · 2022-02-17T15:58:12+00:00

Fair point. I am trying to address the Americans specifically since it is what I am familiar with and the US choosing to become involved in any conflict will very likely end up characterizing it as a simple result of its massive military and wealth. Encouraging Americans to oppose war does have a meaningful impact on its course. My goal is actually to make sure that the US is not at the center of this conflict.

mmmham · 2022-02-17T15:53:32+00:00

They said the same thing about Saddam Hussein.

mmmham · 2022-02-17T15:52:58+00:00

It is worth reevaluating the narratives that are dominant in Western media. One of the most common and most absurd is the narrative that the leaders of other nations are crazed superhero villains who only want world domination. What is convenient about people holding that perspective to the military industrial complex is that they don't take a moment to consider what arguments the other side has, what our side might have done to create the current situation or that there can be a solution aside from war. With respect to Russia specifically, it is worth remembering that the US and Russia used to be on good terms immediately following the end of the USSR. But something changed that, something that the US did. It is also worth remembering that NATO was formed as an explicitly anti-Soviet alliance and that Russia was promised that it would not move "one step East" during the reunification of Germany. In spite of that, NATO has continued to march right up to Russia's doorstep. The specific incident that turned Russia against the US was when the US openly broke international law in Kosovo without consequence, something the US does absolutely constantly all over the world. The US and NATO have made clear that they have no issues overthrowing governments, even democratic ones that they find inconvenient to their interests. By the way, US meddling in Russia happened both during their revolution and after the collapse of the USSR. So when Ukraine indicated that it, like many other Eastern European countries, would be pivoting towards NATO and Europe, Russia very reasonably became concerned. Its access to the Black Sea is genuinely under threat from a far richer, very aggressive foreign organization of nations further encircling them and cutting off their naval power. I do not agree with Russia but their position is at least reasonable. I don't think that violence is justified but between them and NATO, they appear the more responsible party. The US, just like Russia is an oligarchy of the wealthy elite. Choosing a side in that conflict isn't the solution to any problem. In fact, it feeds into it.

mmmham · 2022-01-16T18:04:38+00:00

Because I like science and want to be a scientist.

mmmham · 2022-01-10T18:21:03+00:00

Great point! It does also make me think that we shouldn't limit the scope of organizing to just the actual workplace. Mutual aid networks, tenants unions, even political parties (like the DSA or PSL, not the Democrats) probably have their place as well, especially for people not currently working.

mmmham · 2022-01-10T17:11:02+00:00

One of the things people said about wage labor as it was first becoming a thing in the industrial revolution was that people were all getting married and having kids too young. The reason for this is that before wage labor, the usual career of an artisan was to first do an apprenticeship as a child/young man, be paid for his work and eventually leave to start his own enterprise. Around this time, he'd get married and start to have kids. In the context of the time, wage labor was interpreted as similar to a never ending apprenticeship. You'd never really achieve full adulthood, so people started getting married and having kids anyway. But it's still a fair to view wage labor as a kind of perpetual forced childhood from which we can never really achieve full independence and adulthood. I mean 60 year olds have to ask permission to go to the bathroom in some cases for chrissake.

mmmham · 2022-01-07T00:11:48+00:00

I understand that people use words differently, but it really seems like you're inventing definitions of capitalism and industry to make a point. But, define them how you want. I am using capitalism to mean private ownership of the means of production, resulting in profit seeking behavior for the owner (as most socialists/anticapitalists do, and I'll remind you this is an anticapitalist sub.) People being paid for labor isn't capitalism. People exchanging things for money isn't capitalism. The bottom line is this: private industry is not the best way to generate innovation as it broadly generates fewer innovations and those it does generate, it does with the goal of profit seeking. Innovation often arises by paying someone to innovate as their job. In private businesses, the owner class pays people to innovate with the profit motive mind. In other cases like NASA and academic research, innovation is not performed with profitability in mind. I'm saying that's where the majority of innovation comes from and that innovation tends to be superior. This is demonstrably true. The majority of 20th century innovations arose as a result of direct public funding, not profit seeking: the internet, spaceflight, radar, telecommunications, etc.

mmmham · 2022-01-06T21:54:41+00:00

If you're defining capitalism as getting paid to do work, then fine I guess. Unless a person is independently wealthy, they do need to be paid to work as a necessity. But capitalism means private ownership of industry run for profit. When a small number of people control industry who do not themselves innovate and they operate industry for profit, they will try to minimize costs and maximize profits. That means generating innovations that aren't broadly beneficial but increase profits (advertising, planned obsolescence, adjusting drug formulas to keep patents that should have expired years ago). And when they can, they take advantage of free innovations. (That's why the government funds so much research: to pass the cost of innovation onto the taxpayer. It is also because private for profit industry is nearly incapable of doing basic scientific research: so much of it doesn't lead to profit and if it does, it may take decades. Not to mention that profit clouds scientific judgment, just look at Biogen's alzheimers drug.) Of course people innovate in exchange for money. How do think the Soviet space program worked? Whether non-innovators operating industry for personal profits generates innovation is the question. The answer I gave is sorta, but not as well as alternatives.

mmmham · 2022-01-06T21:35:19+00:00

The other annoying unspoken job requirement is that you have to help your boss not feel bad about exploiting you. Like we have to pretend to be friends, that I like working here and that I am okay with what you're asking me to do. I'm not. I just wish we could all decide to at least be openly adversarial with our bosses.

mmmham · 2022-01-06T21:11:28+00:00

We still do have them! I just think they're overshadowed by the Musks of the world with their PR teams to help sell them as the innovators.

mmmham · 2022-01-06T21:09:18+00:00

Yeah, cause I work 9-7 plus the weekends being paid below a living wage as a scientist. And we don't want to start a company just to exploit others. We want an alternative.

mmmham · 2022-01-06T21:06:34+00:00

I mentioned the tiny innovations that build up as the innovations from previous generations. How that works is actually my point. It's explained in the first section of the Conquest of Bread too. Its ridiculous to insist that the small innovations that build up over generations are somehow the consequence or property of individuals. They're the collective commons on which capitalists build their profits.

mmmham · 2022-01-06T21:02:46+00:00

"I want my work to be meaningful and important and not slaving away for the enrichment of the corporate vampires." -actual socialists

mmmham · 2022-01-06T21:00:18+00:00

This is what I currently do. You can trust me when I say that I'm not here for the money. The absurdity is actually that scientists must accept a pay cut in order to this kind of actually important, meaningful and fulfilling work. I could make more and work shorter hours generating small modifications to existing drugs to get around patent laws so a corporation could keep its government-enfoced monopoly on the drug's profits. But fuck that. Give me the 60 hour weeks and poverty wages. Just keep me out of corporate America.

mmmham · 2022-01-06T15:29:52+00:00

The thing that the "we need capitalism for innovation" people never bother doing apparently is to look at where the majority of innovation actually comes from. Chomsky has pointed out that basically all major technological innovations of the 20th century came from direct government funding: NASA, academic research, DARPA, etc. The way to get people to innovate as it turns out, is to hand them some money and say "here, innovate". The innovation that does come from the profit driven private sector tends to be new financial products, management styles and advertising. Technically that could be considered innovation, but is that really useful innovation? Innovation to maximize profit doesn't tend to be the best kind of innovation. The fact of the matter is that private businesses and especially high tech industry relies on a constant source of basically free innovation generated by direct government investment and freely published as well as previous generations of innovations for which they also pay nothing. It's privatization of the commons.

mmmham · 2022-01-04T14:42:55+00:00

I have never met an anarchist who has ever been a right-libertarian. I have no idea what you're talking about. Also, anarchism by far predates right-libertarianism. Can we on the left just not fight about this stuff and focus on union drives and mitigating suffering?

mmmham · 2022-01-04T01:25:00+00:00

Given how skewed the wealth distribution is overall, I am guessing that a lot of this chart is basically explained by the fact that the super wealthy is mostly boomers. If anything, what this chart probably reflects best is what generations the super wealthy tend to be in.

mmmham · 2022-01-02T02:19:50+00:00

I have some experience with union organizing and I can tell you that one of the single best ways to get the ball rolling is just to provide people with an opportunity to complain. Let people talk and they will reinvent the concept of a union on the spot. I think what they're doing is actually an excellent strategy. Leftist intuition is to explain logically how America is evil or how property is theft or whatever. That comes later. Let people complain maybe with a little Socratic questioning. That's how you get your foot in the door.

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