alternatively, i’ve found the bulmer peak concept to be entirely real: a drink sometimes helps you to just do rather than spending too much time thinking about if what you’re doing is best… it can help with decision paralysis on the micro scale
that said, you can train yourself out of decision paralysis and as someone gets more experienced this is likely to be less and less helpful
i don’t disagree, but i’d say that humans are, and will be responsible regardless of the system used
we’re living in the most peaceful time ever, with the highest quality of life… i’m not saying that fully socialist systems wouldn’t produce that, but i am saying compared with most of human history, things really aren’t that bad, and i’m not sure that it’s worth paying in human lives for a radical (and i’m using that world to mean big; not bad) change because the outcome is uncertain
Theoretically and practically. We have evidence for this throughout the last 130 years.
it sure is great that the USSR treated ukraine with respect aye… that holodomor sure is a lark
revolution remains the sole path to end the bloodshed
we are living in the most peaceful time in human history… a world with humans just isn’t going to be a utopia - we aren’t that good
Cuba today has much better LGBTQ rights than anywhere else in the world
but you’ve pulled 1 example out of many, many counter examples
Corporate bullshit and stock markets and whatnot are magnified in impact and scale in Capitalist systems
and authoritarian tendencies are magnified in impact and scale in socialist systems because they are by definition centralised - that’s not to say it’s inevitable, just that anyone living under these systems needs to be hyper aware of those issues and respond accordingly
nothing is perfect
As for “trying to keep things small,” that’s been tried. Trust busting was attempted, protectionism has been attempted, but regardless of will, material processes continue.
i think the closest we have to that is the EU with things like the DMA which is making a dent… with strong regulatory authority that’s resistant to capture, it’s not impossible to regulate these things… the same is true of socialism: you need strong regulatory authorities that are resistant to capture to stop people from abusing the system for the own personal interests
As for Socialism being a necessity, it’s true. It will have various forms, but eventually as production gains in complexity it necessitates public ownership and planning to continue to be efficient.
i think perhaps we should define what we actually mean - i think socialism is necessary in some part to tackle the issues we face (healthcare, housing, something akin to UBI, etc)
but i think no single system is going to be the silver bullet to all our problems: it’s going to take a long and sustained effort over many generations to figure out the right mix of all the systems we have, and it’s absolutely not going to happen in a big bang
theoretically
and now you’re arguing for massive bloodshed and forcing people to live the way you want, in potentially awful living conditions for a lot of people (i certainly, as an LGBT person, would not want to live in any previous or current socialist state) for a long time for theoretical improvement
just a symptom of later stages of Capitalism
i don’t disagree of course, and i wasn’t saying capitalism is the only way; i think capitalism like this is absolute trash as well… i’m simply saying that those qualities are neither intrinsic to, nor exclusively found in socialist systems
You cannot maintain the small stages forever
perhaps, but honestly i don’t think we’ve actually even tried. we jumped straight from feudalism to some form of capitalism to some socialism. we’ve never had a system that tried to keep things small - and i’m not saying we should either necessarily
but these arguments are all reasonably theoretical
Socialism is a necessity
socialism is perhaps part of a solution but dealing in absolutes is rarely ever correct
i don’t disagree, but socialism won’t solve that just by virtue of it being different… global socialism, perhaps but on the country level it’s just not. socialism just aligns local incentives
the important thing is not socialism: it’s a government that deals with negative externalities
socialism tends to do better at that simply because often it often does better at long-term planning (but that’s not a given either), but capitalism without corporate bullshit, stock markets, etc (ie actual ownership over a business rather than just ownership over a vague thing where you’re only concerned with line goes up not long term business health) has pretty much the same drivers: long term sustainability and this holding others to account for their negative externalities
all of the above listed counties have very solid healthcare and are not entirely socialist. what’s your point?
socialism is not a requirement for being a place that treats people with respect and dignity; nor is it a silver bullet
and you believe a revolution in the US will help the third world?
socialist countries are plenty capable of being exploitative too. a revolution doesn’t change the people - it changes the power structures
the nordic states seem to be doing pretty well at riding a good line, and whilst australia is far from socialist, what we have is working great too
accident? no of course not… but consistency… a big bang “revolution” is the easy way out… it’s so easy to say you’ll fight for what you believe in when you don’t have to see what it’ll entail or what will come out the other side of it but the reality is far more bloody and is absolutely not what you have in your head afterwards
perhaps, or perhaps it could be replaced by something worse. there are no guarantees
revolution is easy to say on the internet but at the end of the day a lot of people die
it’s a long road with a lot more steps but simply “destroying” the notion that democrats are the good guys simply gets you republicans and that’s gotta be the worst way to shift left ever
i’d say it’s less that people “get very uppity about it” and more that it’s not something that’s particularly relevant. we have no evidence for or against, and the outcome doesn’t really change how we interact with the world
likewise the universe could be entirely chaos and everything that exists in this instant: your memories and understanding of the universe and everything to back it up could just be the current arrangement of things and will be torn apart in the very next instant
but it’s not really a useful position to form conjectures from: if it is, it doesn’t matter what you do; if it isn’t, then you should act as if the universe will be here and that your memories are valid
waterfall:
open source is also very tricky with LLMs: i’d argue if you can’t recreate it from scratch, it’s not open source… deep seek does not contain all the data necessary to recreate it from scratch: it’s open weights (the model itself can be downloaded and run) but not open source… i’d classify it as free (as in beer) software; not open source
to be fair, it’d be fucked up if they did have a plan: it’s not their country, and they kept saying “2 state solution”, so their plan was to sit down with israel and palestinians and hammer out a mutually agreeable situation… anything more would just be making choices without consulting palestinians and that never works out for anyone
when you get good enough that people care more about that than dumb shit like how you dress, being quirky is a massive benefit because it makes you even more memorable
wow yes how was my spelling that wrong and can i blame auto correct?