Wouldn't it be great if we had community owned cafes and shops?
Community cafes where fresh food is grown on site and seasonal food is made to serve. Anyone is welcome even if you can't pay. Rent is heavy reduce as it's council owned.
We have local repairs shops that have experts and volunteers to help you fix items for free. Or you can donate it and it'll help them raise money to put back into the repair shop.
This is normalised across the country and it's access to everybody.
I believe this would change mind sets and give a huge sense of community and purpose along with create jobs and opportunities which benefits the local community.
Sorry for the rambling 😅

There are currently 1.8 jobs for every employable person in the US. Post pandemic people have chosen not to go back to work or to work on their own terms without fearing the consequences. Much of this is funded by the trillions stashed during the pandemic and logically must get spent eventually but attitudes to work have shifted dramatically. What used to be benefit ‘safety nets’ are now viable alternatives to work. How this will ultimately be funded is the great conundrum of our times….

The whole system is rigged from the start and people falling into poverty is the plan of the global 1%. UBI does not work in our current system because of inflation and how businesses would just raise the price of everything even if we got UBI. People on UBI would live just to turn their light bulbs on and nothing else( no holiday, no new tv, if something breaks you have to not eat for 3 months etc). Unfortunately they see poor people as dumb peasants that should be slowly eradicated."You live pay check to pay check it's your fault you are too stupid to improve your life."

Agreed on it being a rigged system - economic inequality is not a flaw but a fully intended design feature to keep a large proportion of the population under the oppressive and inescapable boot of capitalism

Pretty much every member of the 1% benefits from people getting richer not poorer. Whatever asset they own is more valuable when prosperity grows.

Perhaps we should stop relying on China for all our stuff and bring manufacturing jobs back to the West?

Provide simple solutions to complex problems

nonnation.xyz ... Nations as we know them are over in the west ... This is the only way forward .. read up on this and understand just how decentralised this rabbit hole goes.

Stop printing money and just let the markets sort it out.
Problem is, this is politically unpalatable.
Nothing was fixed structurally after the 2007/8 shenanigans, they just kicked the can down the road.
The system is doing exactly what it is designed to do.
The only thing which will bring back jobs - jobs that actually add value, is a huge crash, moving to a sound money system and a move away from globalisation.

Whilst I like the idea that a UBI would bring people out of poverty if it was subject to change with inflation, whilst not destroying the notion of a meritocracy, I think it would have a devastating impact on GDP for a number of reasons that are extraneous to us who haven't tried it.
Simply, there's been no evidence that it can work yet.
I think honestly, the solution to these problems will come from decentralisation.
If there was no divergence from the bitcoin white paper, btc would be considered a commodity. In it's current form of a 2017 air dropped segwit copy, which needs payment processers to complete a transaction - it is a security.
Something will be released in the web3 space that will change the game for merchants and retailers, I am pretty sure of it.
It will likely come without warning as chatGPT seemed to.

do commmune's count?

FB had something to say about the normalization of corruption that describes our time:

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”

Do what thou wilt, and harm none

if anyone can parse this bs on wikipedia id love to see it

Here's a shot: true liberty results in the destruction of capitalism.

is that from abundance or indifference?v

B.s confirmed. The libertarian/authoritarian is a different axis from the left/right paradigm. The left/right axis doesn't really matter anymore. Classic liberalism much more akin to Conservative values.
The more relevant terms when talking of the laissez-faire ideas are whether you are a consequentialist, or deontological libertarian I.e: do consequences matter or is it the rules that matter?

Very interesting perspective but who determines the consequences or the rules?

The government determine the rules, generally speaking don't they?
The consequentialist libertarian generally would say that they are not against force (by government)per se, but they believe in strong private property rights because it generally makes people happy and prosperous when they have them.

I find today’s liberal left to be very authoritarian in nature. They use all the kind fluffy buzz words but ram it down your throat with a hot poker.

it makes sense: private property for what we create, public property for what's already sitting on the planet.

The Beano is as much an encyclopedia as Wikipedia. https://libcom.org/article/libertarian-marxist-tendency-map + any anarcho history from Bakunin and Stirner onward.

It's Leftism without the authoritarianism.

A true president like that and the only one in the world is Milei Argentina , guy saved his country from crashing down due to importing US values in mostly a Traditional hard working country.

We're in the widening gap phase now for sure, or at least its becoming clear how far the gap already is.

The final step in every Marxism based cycle is the uprising of the proletariat, so that's the fun bit we need to look towards.. lol :)

WS

The Man realised a long time ago ;-)

"Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That's the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system." Martin Luther King, Jr.

0% interest rates, meme stocks, puts and calls going up simultaneously, sure looks like an end game scenario.

The big flaw of capitalism..
One day all the super rich (super useless) will realize the world seizes to go round without ground level hard workers and skilled people.

you mean robots, right? ;0

I doubt Communism unfolded exactly how he predicted... so at least he got it half right.

Cheers BB 😁👍🍻💚

Not quite. "The working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes".

Too true 😅

Absolutely. I encourage you all to read the manifesto if you haven't already. It will blow your mind how accurately he describes the current situation in capitalism. I'm a proud member of the one of the fastest growing communist party worldwide, and we're working had to organise and educate people on how communism would work in the 21st century. DM me if you're interested. I could talk communism all day long.

whats the elevator pitch?

I love these talks....but let me take the opposing side of the view and say the real reason capitalism works and proven to work than communism (even communist countries like China has no option but to conform to capitalist notions)...Is because of it's destructive & Contradictory nature which allows room for error, destruction and reconstruct....Flexibility like biology of trial and error that leads eventually to efficiency....So yes there are aspects of communism that needs to be involved and would allow under capitalism....But not necessarily Viseversa....

Finally Communism has historically tried and Achieved Growth without sustainability.....So it has already proven not correct in REAL TERMS!

BUT we should look for a confluence between two and integrate to create a better system....again think of China and their growth spurt over the last 2-decades....this is after they have allowed Capitalist ideas to be joined with communism....

I just said all my perspective and please forgive me if there is anything incorrect ...this based on my limmited knowledge

lot to agree with here and anytime something reconciles with evolution

Who has provenance to the soda bread and fadge sham? Thats the real economic crux hi. Without the potato bread we shall no longer be sucking diesel.
I

Innovation is always the best answer for this shit; a technology that makes it possible to compete without a huge investment will end the monopoly. Then low and behold the old guys won’t be sucking your blood anymore they will be alive and competing!

Waiting for the White Knight like this is great for the long run but it doesn’t change what everyone has to face right now.

There's an old solution for monopoly suppliers, Cooperatives. If a monopoly is owned by its users then the whole conflict between greed and utility just disappears. Cooperatives been around for farming since before my grandfather’s time I don’t know exactly how long but they were used to buy big tools and grain elevators that every farmer could share.

Yes if you organise you get some of the power of the cooperative just by virtue of having done it. I would think this is the best solution, to actually start the cooperative and keep an open ear to the monopolist, seeing if things can be settled at the earliest possible stage.

If the users organize a boycott it can force the monopolist into better behavior. Though it can be kind of ugly and tends to leave a bitter taste for both sides. A theatrical action before this could be a petition or media generation on social networks.

theres already enough of this bullshit in the world, we need to do something constructive not cry for scraps

i think the other flaws of communism would eventually come to the fore anyway. Would be very interesting to see what A.I does with state capitalism however.

What are the flaws of communism? Communism > capitalism surely 🤷🏼‍♀️

The original term ‘communism’ is surely people living together harmoniously in a commune? After all communes date back to the Stone Age where groups co existed.
It worked throughout history, invaders and tribal warfare repeatedly tried to derail what was an effective system of existence….

Marx & Engels write quite a fair bit about this "primitive" communism. Its part the Marxist/Communist argument against Capitalism.

Im sure we have all heard the phrase "oh but capitalism is human nature" but this couldn't be further from the truth. Capitalism has only existed 200 odd years for most of Human existence we have lived in more communistic communal ways.

when Darwin said survival of the fittest, this was not him saying the strongest wins, it is the species being able to adapt and the adaptive trait that shot Human kind straight to the top was cooperation not Capitalism.

surely there is no single element to human nature when it comes to economics. of course people share as well as trade, hoard and borrow to keep it all flowing.

capitalism and communism both arise naturally, it's not hard to see their equivalents among animal populations that fight over the same resources that they share in other circumstances.

more communistic communal ways 200 years ago - what do you mean because serfdom is what comes to mind.

I said capitalism has only 200 years not communes existed 200 years ago. But feudalism was still more communal than Capitalism. Peasants worked together on a plot of land that they paid for and were not dragged off to choking factories and confined to dense urban populations like the 1800s.

Before feudal rule however & things like the Enclosures in Europe, tribal community was the default for most human beings.

I recommend reading Marx and Engels early works or if you prefer a more modern take there are plenty of authors who have covered this section of history.

"what if those people were a.i. programmed to control the system" - we have this part, try working for uber.

"at 0 cost" - this is the communism part. possible with open source ;)

think of what c - suite execs are paid and every one of them can be replaced by an a.i. with existing technology. lots of them are just figureheads already.

Until technology is liberated from the capitalist mode of production & the private patents that create AI, then no. A.i under a communist government or socialist state could be used for good and help toward automation. Look to china where sophisticated computing has been used in public spaces to better traffic flow, keep public transport running and deliver goods and services. But A.I alone wont create communism. For communism to be achieved Revolution must happen first and the dominant ruling classes replaced so the means of production for AI are utilised by workers and not elites.

Also nice to know LB has comrades ;) nothing to lose but our chains baby !

China was the first to weaponise AI with the social credit system they are/were introducing.

As an aside, China just like the USSR before it, remain the barrier against actual communisation. When state capitalism dies out as an valid idea and there's no more pretence of an alternative, libertarian communism will gain traction.

Just a reminder that the China "credit score" myth was a false story pushed by American war hawks and imperialists in the state department -

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/chinas-orwellian-social-credit-score-isnt-real/

Nor have they weaponised it anymore than say Europe has when it comes to taking out a bank loan or buying property.

"From the early 2010s, some cities indeed started scoring pilots. However, these gradually became controversial – even in China. The city of Suining reportedly deducted points for government petitions and online comments, Suzhou planned penalties for reservation no-shows or cheating in online games, and Rongcheng for littering or jaywalking. Many of these pilots were later criticized by official media or failed to materialize. The most common critiques were that scores illegally restricted citizens’ legal rights or tracked behavior totally unrelated to the notion of “credit”. "
https://merics.org/en/comment/chinas-social-credit-score-untangling-myth-reality

Going by the UK, if they've tried it, it means they're open to it. And again, vis a vis Europe is not the yard stick an actual revolutionary program would be using. Maoism in 2023 is mental (except about landlords).

Your own source sums it up pretty well -"The idea that China gives every citizen a “social credit score” continues to capture the horrified imagination of many. But it is more bogeyman than reality."

The point remains, one capitalist state may or may not be better than another. Neither have anything to do with communism.

I mean i think you're talking about tendency, when this particular post was talking AI.

I get your point you think Chinas capitalist.

I quite obviously disagree and so do most academics and Marxists at that.

not quite sure a.i. is thinking "under"

It could.

Capital owners already exploit technology to reduce costs and lay off workers, ai is just another part of that.

AI and automation could be used to give people more time off, pay more for less work, improve work life balance etc, or it could be used in the way described above.

As with a lot of things, AI could be used to benefit people or it could be used to make billions of dollars, or anything in between.

Do you mean people living in or taking part/contributing to a commune?

A.I. will be the boss and the lowliest worker, humans fit inbetween.

cory doctrow has an interesting perspective on this, saying that all the displacement from global warming and increased healthcare needs will keep humans busy for a very long time.

I doubt a computer could do my job ;)
I work in safety/security

with all due respect it can take a bullet, sacrifice its life, and draw on millions of previous occurrences. that's a helluva start.

What if the people who's lives are at risk all get replaced by robots? Also, isn't that what a self driving car is doing constantly?

cars have relatively simple rules and a very fixed environment. interpreting a dangerous human is a much, much harder problem

Excellent joke:)

AI is well past any notion or idea we can fathom. AI dosent follow ANY rule we stand by.
We as humans will never quite grasp the entire picture, while AI has already found the end of the road. there are things in basic sciences kept from most people, like gravity drives, the TIME axis (think twister/tornado), scalar waves, over unity devices, etc... AI wont follow the bounds because its supressed by money or greed...
we as humans can TRY to think what will happen, but in all reality, were already in the losing seat without any hope for a "comeback kid story"
Stop thinking in a 3rd dimension mindset, and learn quantum physics a little. (want to be totaly mindblown?? look up QUANTUM radar- and how its actualy In use RIGHT NOW!)
--note-- the united states has 3 confirmed quantum computers in use! (i accidently came across one when i traveled for work, but most people wouldnt know to look at the cryogentics involved)
Machine-in-a box- experiment has already proven even the smartest among us, would lose.
me,myself ,personaly, am clueless what outcomes will unfold, but without any doubt , humans are not top priority when AI is really awake. current neuro-nets are mind boggling and google themselves admits they cant explain how its AI created child AI even works. (yes, AI created its own second AI) want to me mind blown again,years ago it was used, look up the AI that was tested in new yorks hospital system. the smartest doctors from the world STILL dont understand what that AI did , and how it was so correct/right 97%.)
i wont lie and say its all terminator 2JD, but that is one possible outcome. we as fellow fleshy companions should enjoy life now and every moment. we wont have many opertunities when AI is out of the box.
Note: its not IF , but WHEN, and WHEN happens?? ---will humans stand a chance or will an outaide force be required? (aliens, god, let your mind wander)

If there is work for humans it has to be something A.I. can't do. We are all teaching it to do everything, even (especially) right here.

I think its like retirement age is on the horizon and humans need to decide what they are going to do with all the free time.

I totally disagree. AI is the continuation of the same pyramid model of which history has proven that it's bound to fail. The resources needed are of a scale that requires heavy (and never ending) financial investments. The food eaten by AI is data. The provider: humanity.

The larger the scale of data one can feed, the better the AI (and it's owners) can fingerprint, the more refined it's targeting.

Let's take an example of "AI" that we all know:

Software Antivirus:

Supposed to be the guardian that protects an operating system against 'threats' and 'threat actors using a variety of techniques to identify them. Pattern based detection, behavioural analysis and heuristics (an expensive word for: 'guesstimating' or an 'educated' guess). Your antivirus is part of a swarm that provides the antivirus vendor with data on new threats and their geographic impact.

However:

The data you provide is 'free', there is no reward or any form of renumeration for the infrastructure that you provided. A computer is not free, internet is not free, the power needed is also not free and although there are free AV solutions, most demand a subscription fee.

In return you get a product and service which does not provide any guarantees that it will adequately protect you against 'threats'.

In reality AV is becoming a relic.

Human intelligence has outsmarted AV and found ways to circumvent it using the 'Trojan horse' approach or by simple social engineering.

As there was no incentive to find or report security vulnerabilities, the data needed to feed pattern/behavioural dried up.

Heuristics is gambling with historical data, if that data is worthless so are heuristics.

And so is any form of AI hence all media and marketing efforts to portray it as the next best evolution. The driver: more profit less people.

The touted theories about a minimal wage without having to work for it are a continuation of AI Utopia. It would make people dependent on their nations through a socialist measure.

That spells national socialism and fascism.

Think twice before you give out data for free in exchange for a freemium service.

data,the new oil. put it in an old ford and it leak evertwhere.

AI are and will be good for work and a suitable replacement for humans, but even when that happens AI will always need us in case something goes wrong. I mean humans created AI, so in the end we’re always gonna have the more important jobs. AI is just there to do jobs in a more efficient way.

AI will come about one day with baby steps at first to "aid humanity" then all of a sudden the rich wont need people to make the food, cars and entertainment.
we will have an outbreak or a massive global reaching catastrophe while they are all hiding in the bunkers lowering the population to around 10% of what it is now and for a while whats left of humanity and the AI that serves them will live in a new golden ages of peace and prosperity ..........




i might of grew up reading a lof of scifi and fantasy


might just be high

not so far from reality...

im not so sure, anything a human does to recover the system seems doable with a very separate AI

Yes but conflict between AI's might be the most dangerous thing we are looking at here. We are incidental casualties from that perspective. By we I mean humans :)

Yes all the Scifi is about humans vs AI but AI on AI is such a real possibility especially when you consider the fact that governments are mega funding military robots to fight each other.

I'm looking forward to the futher development of AI, especially General AI. I just think it would be so cool to have an amazon alexa sytle AI that you could take round with you and chat to and have a proper engaging conversation with because sometimes I really can't stand to talk to anymore humans aha

in my opinion, there are some "things" machines/AI will never be able to do. inspiration for instance.

fear of AI dominance, as i think, comes mainly from our knowledge-without-understanding of the fact that we are not doing some things that we are supposed to do.

The inspiration process is largely about open mindedness, computers are inherently better at this. If you look at some of the early entrees into the arts like painting and even screen writing they are off to a helluva start.

Music isn't so hard

There are AI playlists on Spotify that generate new music based on current trends and preferences.

if you change communism to community then you dont have to go very far for an answer

If you shit in a pint glass, it looks like mud!

if you put mud in a pint glass it takes like shit

the family fridge

German Peasant's War (where the word communism derives), Paris Commune, two Russian revolutions minus the Bolsheviks, Makhnochina, Spanish revolution, German revolution, May 68, etc. etc. etc.

Losing in the first half don't mean the game's over.

I don't think Communism has ever worked as Capitalists are always creaming off the top.

A great book on the subject is Eat The Rich by the US satirist (and huge drug consumer) P.J. O'Rourke. I think his and my politics are probably polar opposites, but you could get fucked up at a party with him and have an amazing time. Anyway, good book. Breaks down all sorts of different political stances, and Good Communism is one chapter, and Bad Communism another. He's a funny guy, but maybe don't consider it as in depth reasoned academic analysis.

Ah, fuck. He died in 2022. No future parties.

kibbutzes

The reason you don't hear any success stories is because there ain't none.

Come on down voters give me a success story if you don't like the truth?? Bloody Marxists never except that it doesn't work. What ever iteration you can think of it WONT WORK!!!! everyone being the same sucks the fun out of life accept that hard work pays!

I'm not advocating for Communism but our society is full of people grafting their respective genitalia off that are still struggling financially. The idea that hard work pays ( properly) is a idea propagated by people seeking to exploit the labour of others. Nobody should need to claim benefits whilst working full time and yet...
Fwiw, I do advocate for a mixed economy. Nationalised energy, health, water, public transport etc and luxuries at the will of the free market.

You shouldn't be allowed to claim any benefits while in full time employment. It's crazy, we are basically subsidising employers who ought to be paying more.

And I hope that, one day, employers decide paying a living wage is more important than ever increasing profits such that in work benefits are no longer necessary. I propose a link between maximum and minimum pay within an organisation. Let's say; no pay ( overall package including bonuses, perks and dividends) higher than 5x the lowest full time salary.

it wouldn't even have to be a regulation, the government does business with so many companies and beneficiaries. if they don't have these multiples in place no people's funds.

employers don't make that call so much as owners do and when the owner is the stock market it's quite blind to anything but profits.

when the owners are the employees this changes priorities.

Exactly this - capitalism needs the grafters, the hardworking cogs to keep coming in to replace those that fall off or fall through the cracks.

"that hard work pays" is often true and the capitalists don't only pontificate this to the masses they teach it to their children. children they practise communism with.

I’m sure there are loads they just don’t teach us about them. Capitalism doesn’t work either does it? Too many greedy pocket filling bastards. We are all the same having money doesn’t make you better than anyone else, the fact you are here spouting this shows what a sad state the world is in 😞

under capitalism hard work has never paid and never will pay lmfao. communism actually prioritises labour, capitalism is about fat pigs at the top skimming off 99% of the profit we produce for them. do you not find it utterly insane tesco has like 5 different in-house brands with varying prices for essentially the same product? or that having less money means you have to settle for lower quality products that are worse for you and spoil faster?

So, you don't think lifting 4/5ths of the world out of relative poverty can be considered "paying off"?
OK Che, communism good 🤣👌

there are children starving in this very country

do you have a source for this? not trying to challenge so much as i would like to learn more about it. maybe there is even a way the community could help.

food for the hungry is legit and accepts crypto

there are community outreach programs and obviously government funded systems like food banks to help, but the crisis only really exists because the capitalist system is designed that way. we have the resources to end world hunger but it's not economically beneficial so it will never happen

these are sources on food insecurity in the uk for 2023 and 2024:
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9209/
https://foodfoundation.org.uk/initiatives/food-insecurity-tracking#tabs/Round-15

Does the existence of those children make anything I said less true?
Strawman though. I didn't make a claim that there is no poverty in any country. I think you missed the qualifiers "relative" and "4/5ths" of the world.
I would say, that "starving" inarguably applies to way less than 1 in 5 children in the UK, US or anywhere in the West which makes your point about the ills of capitalism fairly moot in context.
I am no fan of cronyism, and I don't think capitalism is utopia, but it's insane to try and persuade anybody that communism would do better than this.
Thanks for the downvotes. I have over a thousand upvotes and less than 30 down.
Drop me a line next time you are tipping your bathwater into the atalantic. I'll do it too 🤣

"I have over a thousand upvotes and less than 30 down"

This is one of the saddest things I've ever read on the internet xD

TLDR

Ah, the Lords prayer of the troll world.
In other words, you have nothing worth saying because you are too vacuous to argue your way out of the little communist hole you dug 🤣
Thick.

found the reddit moderator 😂

Do you mean the actual communists who don't want to respond to fair and cogent points about their lack of reasoning?