quavers posted:

we need more projects, less discouragement. and open registration. if we had the organic growth the rhizzone was named for, then hacking imperialism might not be a joke

I agree. Just a note for any lurkers that @bagagehandeler can approve your accounts.

swampman posted:

I agree. Just a note for any lurkers that @bagagehandeler can approve your accounts.

Why not put that in a thread title and stick it?

MarianneSadd posted:

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

swampman posted:

elias posted:

swampman posted:

probably wise to focus on the engineers side of this, as in people who can use arduino or like, fix a truck. auto mechanics probably be better target.

duly noted. i'll invest 200 minerals into making more auto mechanic units.

How about you just go talk to some auto mechanics about setting up a community shop that charges on a sliding scale if you have so much free time to invest minerals

a sliding scale based on what

Their ability to pay... this is usually what sliding scale means.

sliding scale? more like a slippery slope...

MarianneSadd posted:

Their ability to pay... this is usually what sliding scale means.

how do we verify this. tax returns?

MarianneSadd posted:

I guess you are a pretty cynical person.

ya

MarianneSadd posted:

I appreciate the sentiment, but there is a sneering quality to it that is found in nearly every group of people who aspire to something more. There's the guy who is there to beat everyone back, to knock everyone down a peg, to huff and puff about how important everyone thinks they are when actually, we're all just sitting around playing dungeons and dragons or something. This is more projection of the individual's own insecurities than an assessment of the health of other individuals or the group as a whole. This becomes most apparent when the group starts to move towards direct action, or constructive planning, and then the guy in the back whines louder and stops showing up for meetings altogether.

sure but the group we're talking about here is a virtual, informal discussion group, not a class organization united under any particular political programme (or even through geographical proximity). not that there's nothing useful about an informal discussion group, i wouldn't have the politics i do today without this forum probably, our beloved gensec of the cpsu himself got his start in extracurricular study groups. but im skeptical of the characterization of posts like the ones ive quoted at the top of the page as constituting anything resembling constructive planning or a move toward direct action (is anyone here actually planning, in their capacity as a rhizzone poster, to "recruit" {to what???} a computer programmer so we {who???} can hack pacemakers in order to advance the revolution {hey wait dont we need one of those revolution things first???}) . that elevates the role of a public internet forum composed of individuals w/ eclectic personal politics a little beyond its place. ill abdicate the responsibility of articulating my complaint to something i read once that i found instructive

The question 'Who are the masses?' can only be approached through a protracted intervention that links the struggle against the class enemy to the unity of the mass movement. Our task is to systematize, with the masses, the concrete forms of proletarian ideology living in the mass movement. This means that the extent of our knowledge at present is strictly limited by the modesty of our experience and the lack of genuine public summations available to us. In the current moment, small-group communists that respond to strategic questions with detailed battle plans are simply building castles in the air

so sure absolutely lets discuss the class politics of black hat hackers or a materialist understanding of prostitution et cetera, but i think when posters here start earnestly debating the tactical merits of this or that hypothetical chess move from the subject-position of a Party which exists only in their head theyre definitely putting the castle before the horse. like maybe before anyone here gets their noggin going on how the party can raise the automotive technical level of its cadre we should go over square one on how class organizing even works in the real world.

elias posted:

(is anyone here actually planning, in their capacity as a rhizzone poster, to "recruit" {to what???} a computer programmer so we {who???} can hack pacemakers in order to advance the revolution

I think you need to learn to read because definitely nobody was suggesting any of this

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

how do we verify this. tax returns?

that's how it often works, yes, or recent pay stubs. although once someone suggested that there should be a transit pass for low-income people here and a woman at the meeting started crying because such ideas are premised on the idea of inspecting the poor (making them prove they deserve a benefit).

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

i think heard about this in economics class. you mean like, a "price?"

I mean like a price that also takes into account the person who needs the service.

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

honestly i don't think "a statistically significant number of people will pretend to be destitute or more destitute than they actually are for a financial benefit" is even cynical as much as it, like gravity, is an assumption required to participate meaningfully in consensus reality.

Well, I run a business in which I have leeway to give people a discount depending on their individual need. There are a few people I know for a fact I have undercharged based on my own initial perception of what they could afford / should pay. Some of these people have even whined to me about the price and I relented and reduced the price. But, I gain more from my reputation as someone who is fair to deal with, who won't freak out over a statistically insignificant loss that benefits one of my own customers anyway. It seems like if an organization's generosity is getting in the way of its own survival, ad hoc measures can be taken by group in response.

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

honestly i don't think "a statistically significant number of people will pretend to be destitute or more destitute than they actually are for a financial benefit" is even cynical as much as it, like gravity, is an assumption required to participate meaningfully in consensus reality. there's trillions of tiny invisible monsters floating on the air and in the water and breeding on every surface and some of them can make you shoot pus out of your body until you die?? how cynical

you remind me of the daily heil's undercover sting on food banks



also there are loads of things run on a 'pay less if you cant afford, more if you can' basis going since forever... defying the laws of gravity --- good thing we know science isnt real

le_nelson_mandela_face posted:

aside from "i personally hail from the ranks of / happen to known many" worthless indigents, why should we subsidize their existence instead of those whose use-value to society constitutes more than farting out innumerable clones as replaceable and hellbound as themselves

because we shouldn't ask what people should do for their country but what their country can do for them. unless you happen to agree with democratic politician JFK.... are you a moderate liberal, goat?