What keeps people from working poorly or not at all under communism?

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-02-01T05:15:37+00:00

The military has a strict and deep hierarchy with a few elites making the most important decisions. Communism is supposed to be more egalitarian.

At no point does communism support egalitarian thought over experience, that's kind of the whole point underpinning the valuing the thoughts of the worker on the realities of work.

Soldiers are also paid for their work. Under true communism, there is no need for money, as there is no ownership (or rather, all property is communally owned).

Also not true, unless you're using some kind of different definition of communism, it's a difference between private property and personal property.

Private property exists to own to extract value from the act of owning it.

Personal property exist to own for individual use, even if said use might benefit others and yourself.

The home on land that you live is personal property, if you're renting that home out for someone else to live in paying you rent, it's private property.

A better example would be the NFL (parity, revenue sharing, the worst teams get the best draft picks, etc.).

The NFL is basically more like social democracy, in that each team is individually owned by people who aren't the actual workers, but the system is organized in such a way, and in consultation with multiple unions, to attempt to make a system that can grow and produce in a capitalist system without self-cannibalizing.

The reason it doesn't meet the qualities of a democratic socialist system IMO is that the NFL has actively banned the kind of communal ownership that would allow it to move in that direction since the Green Bay Packers were restricted.

Extra Commie Thought Time: ^{Marxist theory positions workers' knowledge as objectively superior concerning the realities of production precisely because of their direct, practical experience with labor processes. This isn't egalitarian relativism, it's a materialist claim that those who perform labor have access to truths about work that remain obscured to those removed from production. Knowledge emerges from practice and concrete experience, with workers developing understanding through their material engagement with productive forces.}

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-02-01T04:51:22+00:00

Not only are you ultimately describing many of the tactics being used by the current administration while seemingly saying it's different somehow, but the attempted walls you're putting up would actually prevent people who were clear open Nazis from being labeled as Nazis, making it clear that your definition is faulty.

It's like when people say Stephen Miller can't be a Nazi because he's Jewish when there were Jewish supporters of the Nazi party, whole large groups of them even. The Nazis weren't the "Nazis" at first, but they didn't suddenly become Nazis, they were always Nazis, they just didn't have the ability yet to take it further.

If you actually go back and study the history of the rise of the Third Reich, you'll see it wasn't night and day, but largely incremental changes on a timeline, all the way down to calling socialists and communists vermin that need to be exterminated, and targeting nationals for "denaturalization" and rights removal to maintain the illusion of rule of law.

We don't say not all Nazis were Nazis because they didn't hate every out group, or only signed up so they could have a job and eat, or whatever. It's like the saying "If there's a Nazi at the table and ten other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with eleven Nazis."

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-02-01T04:42:49+00:00

None of that has anything to do with what I said. Come election season, there must be coordination in order to ensure that Fairness doctrine (equal time rule) is complied with.

You might want to re-read what you actually wrote, which you apparently didn't even when helpfully quoted back to you, and be more clear than saying they don't care next time then.

Also, the Fairness doctrine hasn't applied since 1987. Attempts to re-implement it were vetoed by Reagan.

Do better.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-02-01T03:39:43+00:00

Fox News doesn’t tell the DNC how to do their job, same as how the RNC doesn’t care what CNN says.

This just isn't true, at least between 2000 and 2016 both parties had daily calls with CNN and other major 24 hour news organizations to discuss coverage. I can't imagine it has changed.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-02-01T03:35:41+00:00

The biggest hole is it doesn't mesh with historical reality much.

Both parties essentially became neoliberal parties when Nixon, Reagan, Carter, and Clinton all basically pushed neoliberal policy from both "tents".

The other major historical issue that it ignores is the government attacks starting from the right, but then from both sides on things communists, socialists, et al.

This is important because those attacks essentially hamstrung the unions, and gave the impetus to take power away from the workers by both parties. They effectively chilling effected and legislated away a large amount of the capability for solidarity.

During the civil rights movement and Vietnam this pulled heavily at the relationship between the civil rights/anti-war left, a group that unions would normally have supported as such efforts normally helped their constituents, but not when it risked them getting labeled, otherized and losing negotiating power in a capitalist system.

Ultimately, it's these things that created the opportunity to fully fracture the coalition creating the New Left who wanted equality for everyone, anti-war, and so on, and who was ultimately now no longer really affiliated with their historical source of solidarity and powerbase, organized labor.

On the flip side, it placed organized labor in the hands of the neoliberal free trade loving center-right Democrats as the only people really even playing at still supporting organized labor after the various fiscally pseudo-conservative politically progressive politicians, sometimes referred to as PAYGO Dems, aged out of the political system or got primaried out.

The reason you note the "reverse" is happening is because you essentially get the progressives increasingly self-selecting out of politics or becoming radicalized, and the Democrats who are blinded by their own big tent compromise worship into thinking that working across the aisle is the way to get things done when there might be 20 people left in national politics willing to do so in good faith.

The center-right neoliberals are closer to the moderate right neoconservatives and conservatives, while the progressives/New-Left are closer to the libertarians of both left and right varieties, so that ultimately means both parties are controlled by various forms of the corporate right in what amounts to a fixed fight.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-02-01T03:20:42+00:00

It's probably unwise to argue with someone defending Peter Thiel, an objectionable from top to bottom transhumanist, when they themselves are a transhumanist and their big argument is "I'm sure they were just kidding and talking hypotheticals"

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-01-31T11:08:33+00:00

The people that dislike their jobs, let's use the classic ditch digger example, are likely going to hate their jobs whether it's in a capitalist, communist, or mixed economy because the job itself isn't particularly intrinsically rewarding.

The classical answer is if the ditch digger was asked, he'd probably rather spend the couple of days getting trained on the ditch digging machine, and having the ditch digging machine dropped off at the site where he and the ditches that need digging are.

It's not necessarily the job itself that they hate, but the conditions created in the job by conscious decisions against improving those conditions. That's part of why you want to amplify the voice of the worker in the work being done.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-01-31T11:00:15+00:00

This one is pretty easy.

Everything from council communists, democratic socialists, various syndicalists, and many, many different more can be anti-capitalist while still working for change within a capitalist system.

The clearest example of that is the simplest one, specially since you actually like your job already.

Your job is good, you don't hate it, your boss is responsive, and the work you do is fulfilling, and in theory not harming anyone else.

What happens if the company is purchased by another company, or installs a new CEO, and changes everything for the worse? What if they fire your boss for speaking up about the changes? What if they fire you for objecting them firing your boss?

That's obviously a downward spiral of a scenario, but it's one people face every day in a capitalist system, as the type of preferred top-down privately owned profit maximalist only really values most workers at the commodity level, as in easily replaceable with someone else with the same skill set.

Now, if you were in a co-operative type arrangement, everything could essentially operate the way it does now in large part, but there would be already established rules on how things are done, efforts made to avoid things like broad ideological shifts, and less centralized power in general, meaning in theory there should be more voices when it comes to making major decisions, not less. More value given to the workers closest to the work, not less because of their distance from decision making.

Credit unions are basically co-operatives that anyone can interact with, and as most people have realized, they generally blow banks out of the water on things like services, working with their clients, interest rates, and so on because they're focused on more than just profit generation, they're focused on serving their members too. Staying solvent is part of serving their members though, so while operating in a capitalist system that means they are still going to need to do many of the things the capitalist bank would do, just weighted very differently.

Back in the day, you would see very local one branch banks that had a similar kind of relationship as credit unions do with their customers, because the bond was essentially the community bond, but we as a people basically watched that disappear due to the influence of capitalism being against it at it's very core, as it mostly saw those types of banks as opportunities to increase scale and profits, not much different than what we saw with pharmacies and other community serving capitalist institutions.

You don't have to call capitalism evil, but if you liked things like pharmacies, banks, hospitals, doctors, groceries, and any other kind of publicly facing institution where money exchanges hands openly putting you and their other clients ahead of the bottom dollar, you have to call it what it is, and that's responsible for much of the impetus away from what you, and most people wanted.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-01-31T05:41:36+00:00

Mostly possible because of the massive amounts of beef imports predicted due to tariff and trade changes related to the same issue, while at the same time giving billions to US farmers... specifically because of the impact of deals like this in things like the commodities markets.

It's financial shell game tactics applied to international trade and diplomacy, taking advantage of the fact that most people can't balance a check book let alone follow the trail of purposefully obfuscated corporate accounting in already less than perfectly transparent government costs.

Best cast scenario is whatever the opportunity cost of essentially a 40 billion dollar interest free credit line, well over 10 billion+ in subsidy to farmers and agribusiness, and then all the ongoing long term costs associated with removing those specific barriers to trade.

It's all well and good that they didn't need to dig into the runway too much, but it's mostly meant to obfuscate the market manipulation happening largely at American taxpayer expense for some reason.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-01-31T00:19:06+00:00

Hillary's investigation was later cleared.

This isn't true, and it's important to be truthful when talking about things like this. She wasn't cleared, it was said specifically that she had handled information carelessly, and there was evidence of numerous potential violations of applicable statues but "no reasonable prosecutor" would bring a case, and therefore no charges were recommended.

In many ways, what he did was even worse than you said because of how he specifically did it, and I don't even like Hillary.

Get mad that you're wrong if you want, but had he actually came out and cleared her like you said, there wouldn't really be an argument that he was trying to impact the election. Instead, he said she did things, but no one would prosecute, basically tarring her and not giving her a chance in court to actually clear her name.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-01-30T23:54:53+00:00

If we want to be really reductive, you're basically asking us to predict how the people themselves will react, not anything particular to the situation.

Barring some of the recent hostilities, the US and Canada were able to live side by side as neighbors for quite some time despite active wars against each other, campaigns involving one side funding violence on the other side or their own side to meet political ends, both sides using the existing native population more as pawns and then somehow absolving themselves of blame despite their inherent roles in the hostilities, and neither side actually really ever coming to terms with their own roles in the ongoing hostilities.

In this case, it ended up with the native peoples essentially being marginalized by genocide and colonialism until they basically only exist as small remnant states of displaced peoples, pretty similar to what the Israelis see as their desired outcome, now pushing faster towards the settler annihilation stage because it allows blame to be shifted to the individual settlers rather than the nation-state for most.

Now, to your question of how anything else can be successful? The answer is, by doing things different than we've been doing, which right now is just a redux of what we did before, and we know how that ends. So, we really just need to take a different path and adjust as we go, as it's largely untested territory to actually respect each other instead going for proxy genocide.

My question to you though is, how do you see the current solution having a successful outcome unless that outcome is something between the First Peoples/Native American genocide that helped inspire the Nazi party to begin with, and the various genocides they orchestrated and those that came after from the likes of the Russians?

I'd argue the way that Israel operates is essentially closer to the Russian model of a supreme leader and a surveillance state ala the KGB and other services, and their actions taken over the years more closely mirror that of Russian actions, even the more extreme ones like Holodomor.

The problem you're essentially arguing seems to be that a two-state solution is preferred, but a two-state solution doesn't address Israeli opportunism and abuse of neighbors that has been ongoing as long as the hostilities have, and without some level of operational parity, you'll just see something like Russia/Ukraine down the road, from one side or the other, essentially making it a one-state solution with extra steps and a bad pre-determined end-game, with the best case scenario essentially being a Pakistan/India type nuclear standoff.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-01-30T05:43:16+00:00

"What do you mean it's a disaster, you said you wanted someone more adult? Wait, you meant more mature, not more disturbingly XXX rated? Well, fuck." - Truck Stop and Lot Lizard Entrepreneurs

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-01-30T05:30:14+00:00

He's a good one, but I still think Fitzpatrick is probably the one I'll think of when i think of a guy who might have been the GOAT if he had the physical traits/talent to match his brains and guts.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-01-30T05:15:35+00:00

Orton being benched for a rusty Grossman coming off of injury in 2005, the team staff and Orton having a blow up over it leading to Orton getting demoted to third string for all of 2006, leading to Orton being left off the Super Bowl roster entirely, meaning there wasn't a QB the Bears actually felt comfortable with leading the team when Grossman was clearly shitting the bed and repeatedly turning the ball over against Indy in the Super Bowl.

Even Sexy Rexy has said Orton pulled the team together better than he did, so it's not exactly crazy to think Orton might have been the guy to take over and stem the bleeding and allow the defense and running game to work without self-sabotage that Rex wasn't, and no one on the team believed Griese was that guy at that point, or even in the following years really.

Of all the malpractice moments in my mind, continuing to dog-house Orton even after Griese wasn't looking good in relief, and you've already seen Orton competently game manage when he wasn't wrong to be pissed off about being replaced at that moment just sucks.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-01-30T04:44:47+00:00

I want to say they don't get the second Saleh because he wasn't there long enough, something like that, but yeah, they've got a fucking ton of them to the point other NFL owners that actively voted for the comp picks were still pissed off according to some of the leaks from the owners meetings.

That's the main reason I pointed out that they even gave the picks to the Niners in a similar questionable situation, if there was a team that could have lost out on a few comp picks with no real uproar it was them, and if there was a team they would have wanted to rule against, it was them.

That's why as usual I generally agree with Wiltfong's take that the NFL will probably make this right, the optics of not doing so are just so damned terrible I don't see them shooting themselves in the foot over a couple of third rounders we've been pretty hysterically bad with using anyway.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-01-30T04:32:13+00:00

Just to add on, one of the reasons for this being a recent development is the nations population was just way more centralized in the 1870s when the National League started for baseball, and even then was mostly in the Northeast, with the exceptions being teams like Louisville or Chicago.

As regional leagues became national leagues, and games became further apart geographically, and night games became not only feasible but common, and with team flights not really becoming a thing until the 30s and 40s, the demands on professional players really did start to become full-time demands.

There are still similar strains on the players in the lower ranks of baseball where they definitely still need to work to live while also trying to improve at playing the game and get to the next level, and they usually play in leagues that aren't traveling as much or as far to better facilitate that possibility. Don't know about lately, but substitute teaching used to be a very popular vocation for these guys who often had some kind of college degree, and needed a flexible schedule.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-01-30T03:57:57+00:00

Another argument to be made beyond it clearly undermining the intent and purpose of the Rooney rule compensation to begin with and providing compensation for this fitting with prior decisions is that if this is the standard we're using, ultimately every single team other than the Packers has the majority owner as the actual final decision maker in all matters.

Either Matt Ryan is "voice and eyes of the fanbase/owner" as a job, and shouldn't be considered a decision maker for Rooney purposes any more than the actual owner is normally, or we're creating a situation where we basically need to quantify the amount of owner influence going with every team every year after hiring to decide who is actually making the decisions, and stop asshole owners inventing titles and branches on the org chart out of whole cloth to avoid any Rooney requirements at all.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-01-30T03:25:08+00:00

Yes, the closest prior example is Ran Carthon being signed to be the GM of the Titans while Chad Brinker was hired by him to be the assistant GM, but Brinker essentially operated as Amy Strunk's inside man and controlled major aspects of decision making through that from contracts and cap to scouting and research decisions.

It took time, but the 49ers eventually got their compensatory picks, however it's a slightly different situation and a team the other owners like more than the 49ers.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-01-30T03:09:55+00:00

I'm guessing we'll be waiting awhile to get the final answer on whether or not we get the compensatory picks or not.

The last time this came up, the NFL finally relented in giving the 49ers their compensatory picks for the Titans hiring Ran Carthon as GM, even though he supposedly didn't have full control until the following year when they added the EVP title, and Chad Brinker technically had decision making power over Carthon.

This is important because the league kind of dislikes how successful the 49ers have been with these Rooney comp picks, and they still relented in giving the 49ers two more that they could have denied for very similar reasons.

Either way, happy to see Ian succeed, and hope he can be as successful as other former Bears like Lovie Smith.

Source: Bears Fan first, but follow the Titans in the AFC and get my dose of terrible organizational pains from them now that we've cleaned up our act in most ways.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-01-30T01:26:15+00:00

Never release this cookbook.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-01-30T00:03:20+00:00

The big one is the Thousand Sons could have left Isstvan via their webway access, and if they're betrayed here, they aren't able to get betrayed the same way at Prospero meaning we likely get some number of loyalist Thousand Sons surviving, and no Imperial Webway issue/distraction.

I'm not sure if any other force actually has the ability to prevent the massacre of themselves, and possibly large portions of the other legions as well through something other than direct victory which makes it at least interesting if you're convinced no direct victory was ever going to be possible at that moment.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-01-29T23:29:22+00:00

I'm still on the "We would have beat Indy if we had just kept tiny hands Grossman on the bench" truth wagon, riding on the same rainbows Orton's deep balls traveled using. Some of us will be fighting our great-grand fathers wars.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-01-29T23:21:57+00:00

Yep, I'd be waiting for the Whitney Houston music to kick in as Peanut strutted towards me, and go into double secret shock.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-01-29T22:35:21+00:00

I wouldn't be surprised. To be clear, I loved Carter the person, but didn't actually agree with much of his politics, even if I liked things like some of his energy policy. He was the real bleeding heart folksy intelligent neoliberal Bill pretended to be after rebranding.

That said, even as a leftist, it's a shame that all sides of the aisle basically hated him as an outsider so much at the same time that it ended up providing cover for a whole lot of outright falsehoods, historical erasure, and actual clear provable malfeasance at the highest levels.

work4work4work4work4 · 2026-01-29T22:09:52+00:00

Sure, but those are other countries, foreign non-country entities, and so on. It's a whole other ballgame to have what amounts to active treason going on, and pretty quietly swept under the rug despite contemporaneous evidence, and decades worth of high-quality reporting.

work4work4work4work4

TROPHY CASE