and i'm not saying "do nothing," i took on a shitload of debt & spent a lot time to, maybe even successfully, secure an ideologically tenable day-job. i'm sure you do a lot of good shit too. but no one here is building bombs in the basement, no one has thrown their bodies on any gears, lets not pretend
drwhat posted:i have no reasonable doubts anymore about it. but at the same time i also firmly believe that the course of humanity is more or less unchangeable at this point and we are doomed to see full blown capitalism through to its most destructive ends; the advertising-consumption-ignorance machine is irresistable.
so i drink instead
why not be a suicide bomber then?
probably for real too
thirdplace posted:drwhat posted:i have no reasonable doubts anymore about it. but at the same time i also firmly believe that the course of humanity is more or less unchangeable at this point and we are doomed to see full blown capitalism through to its most destructive ends; the advertising-consumption-ignorance machine is irresistable.
so i drink insteadwhy not be a suicide bomber then?
and join the legions of suicide bombers that have caused beneficial change?
thirdplace posted:also, i like you swampman, you're funny and good, but i gotta wonder how you're affording room and board for that high horse via the praxis of dog walking.
I make ~$12 per walk that I do, and I do ~40 walks a week. On top of this I frequently board dogs for $30 a day or overnight stays for $50-60 a night for several days at a time. My rent is $550 a month and my student loans cost me $180 a month. Thank you for your inquiry.
what worries me more is that most people seem to treat these problems as a sort of "black box" and just sort of go "well, the USSR existed, therefore planning must work at some basic level, and it can't be worse than what we have now"... which is not really how you approach problems imo.
also even jools' maybe solution, which i tend to lean on myself, which is the idea that socialism is a political problem and not an economic one, that the point is to end exploitation and democratize the economy rather than solve an economic equation, doesn't actually seem to correspond to what people say. i mean i agree with chomsky that there is probably an anticapitalist waiting to be born in every american worker or something, like they hate bosses and shit, but models that infer that rather than depend on its free release by the masses themselves seem like bad ideas and not very humanistic after all.
daddyholes posted:people should keep in mind that the easiest thing to do, bar none, as part of any tendency within a liberal state is to write about how everyone in it is lame and dumb and out of touch and it's going to die any second now
oh it sure is easy. a lot of people even make a profession out of it
jools posted:ie this is bad faith trolling and about as bad as what is being criticised
thirdplace posted:it's liberalism. i'm a liberal now
liberalism owns
What is not fine and in fact dumb is when Jacobin's editors get too big for their britches as a means for infiltrating liberal discourse and start believing that they are benefiting anyone by criticizing those who are criticizing them from what they perceive to be their own left.
Like how the shit did Kilpatrick think it was necessary or correct to attack the idea that radicalism throughout history has involved for the most part personal want and devastating sacrifice. How fucking dumb is that. It seems propelled by a defensive pseudo-Leninism, the belief that because one is fond of Lenin that the political landscape may be laid out with oneself in the role of Lenin in 1917
Angry left-liberals are willing to give Jacobin a chance because capitalism boils their blood; they do not want the Seriousness of denying the 'impossible' for extra imaginary liberal points
thirdplace posted:but no one here is building bombs in the basement,
why do you think that would be less lame/do-nothing right now
what is more that Catholic ethic defines doing so out of pride as the sin avoided by Christ in the desert
discipline posted:central planning would probably be vastly improved with the technological innovations of the last 20 years, everything from internet to better shipping technologies
the soviets had good computer systems but some policymakers said it was like attaching a computer to a plow or something, because the basic model was so inefficient that it didn't fix much.
discipline posted:um actually with the kinds of models they have nowadays, not in the 1980s, we basically do have a planned economy in a lot of ways, in that everything has been carved and cartelled up. imagine if we had the same sort of technology? you could better allocate labor and reform/automize processes so that everyone only has to work like 2 hours per day
discipline posted:um actually with the kinds of models they have nowadays, not in the 1980s, we basically do have a planned economy in a lot of ways, in that everything has been carved and cartelled up. imagine if we had the same sort of technology? you could better allocate labor and reform/automize processes so that everyone only has to work like 2 hours per day
how is that different than previously in the 20th c though
discipline posted:http://manyfesto.net/2013/06/05/reality-check-american-radicalism/here's this thing I wrote and basically it resulted in me being castigated for promoting a second harper's ferry ahahhahaha it's so pathetic they won't even address me directly, they're paper tigers
buying fireworks now. meet in boston fri?
deadken posted:we already live in a planned economy
problem solved! thanks deadken.
jools posted:imo (part of) the reason this is a political rather than economic issue is that the range of options as far as patterns of consumption go are so vast that its basically meaningless to say planning doesn't work given you have that range to play with.
when people saying planning doesn't work they don't mean consumption was low so much as product quality was terrible (exploding tvs), shortages were often the norm, resources were wasted and there were constant bottlenecks, the system was incredibly chaotic with irrational bureaucracy, etc.
as in, moving from markets to planning does not necessarily make the system more "rational" in real life.
getfiscal posted:jools posted:imo (part of) the reason this is a political rather than economic issue is that the range of options as far as patterns of consumption go are so vast that its basically meaningless to say planning doesn't work given you have that range to play with.
when people saying planning doesn't work they don't mean consumption was low so much as product quality was terrible (exploding tvs), shortages were often the norm, resources were wasted and there were constant bottlenecks, the system was incredibly chaotic with irrational bureaucracy, etc.
as in, moving from markets to planning does not necessarily make the system more "rational" in real life.
i guess i should have said production inputs as well as consumption. and yeah, sure, it's not a determined consequence of planning, but i don't think you have a chance of "putting politics in command" without it. i mean lets be real here as well, a lot of the stereotypically bad things about really existing socialism are more to do with russia being peopled by alcoholic pigmen than anything else