I swear I’m not Jessica

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • Rotate the compass 45° clockwise, name the new vertical axis to state economy vs private economy, and name the new horizontal axis to left and right. At the far left(green) you have total destruction of hierarchy and flattening of power inequality, while at the far right(blue) you have absolute hierarchy and centralized power.

    State centralized economies(red) lead to increased hierarchy by empowering government officials to become powerful lords. Privatized economies(purple/yellow) lead to increased hierarchy by empowering capitalists to become powerful lords. Trying to reach either the top or bottom tip of the diamond leads you the right tip.

    Horseshoe theory kind of applies to Marxist-Leninists like its pro-capitalists creators imagined, but they didn’t realize that they were the other end of the horseshoe. This is because both capitalism and the state are the dangers. The problem with both stems from allowing the unrestricted accumulation of power.

    Government officials use political capital, while capitalists use economic capital. They can feed off of each other, with the rich helping politicians and the politicians helping the rich. My preferred solution to both is to redistribute capital from the rich directly to the poor, growing the middle class by putting a ceiling and floor on the rich and the poor.


  • It doesn’t matter what you want the solution to be based on your values. If your solution jeopardizes your values more than the alternative solution would have, all you’ve done is make yourself feel better at the expense of others.

    If you let people accumulate power unopposed, they will use less of it on improving the common good than if it was in the hands of more people. Poorer people give a greater proportion of their wealth to charity. A lower portion of the excess wealth controlled by billionaires goes to improving people’s lives than if that excess wealth went to those who had barely enough, or not enough. Wealth has diminishing returns on happiness. A million dollars to a billionaire won’t be noticed, while a million dollars to 99% of people would be life changing.

    Taking from the wealthy and giving to everyone is tyranny of the majority on a tiny minority. The wealthy would still be on top and live comfortably, but they would now live in the same economic reality as everyone else. They could no longer burn money for fun while their fortune passively accumulates to see a net gain in wealth. Losing a million dollars would actually be felt, and they would need to adjust their lives in reaction to the loss.

    On the other hand, if you rely on voluntary charity in the spirit of freedom, you see tyranny of a minority on the majority. They give far less of their money to the common good, instead spending more of their wealth on protecting their riches. This is what we see in reality. They lobby the government to serve their interests at the expense of the public, or in non capitalist systems, hire guards to protect their interests directly.

    Feudal lords pay their workers wages that are lower than the value their work generates because they control the farmland. They control the farmland by protecting it with guards they pay, think knights and samurai. If the workers complain or try to sell food made on the land without giving the lords their cut, the guards suppress them using violence. The lord’s ownership of the land is only valid if they are protected, with violence, by their personal guards, payed for by the workers.

    Does that sound like freedom? Do those workers sound free? By allowing people the freedom to gain power over a resource, the land and crops on that land, the workers have lost their freedom to see the fruits of their labor, sometimes literally. The fruits they pick are given to the lord, who trades the fruit for resources, but only give the workers enough resources to survive.

    Freedom without limit destroys freedom for most people. Freedom must have a ceiling and a floor, or the freedom of others can be taken by that of another. I value everyone having freedom, which requires a cap on the freedom people can have. No one can be free to horde too much power.


  • I am very much in favor of using violence to take resources from people that don’t give back to the community they rely on. It’s a good thing to take money from the rich and greedy using violence. There is no imaginable society where people should be permitted to not contribute when they are capable of contributing.

    If people are permitted to not contribute excess power, it places more of the burden on everyone else to make up for it. On top of that, as the tax dodger accumulates too much control over resources(wealth), they can use those resources to hire people that then impose violence on the community when they try to take the resources back.

    If anything, an anarchist society should be more vigilant of resource accumulation, forcing each other to contribute through violence and ensuring that large power imbalances don’t emerge. There would be no state to handle redistribution, so it’d be the responsibility of every individual to make sure everyone has enough. There’d be no justification for anyone to have too much exclusive control over important resources, nor would there be a justification to not give excess resources to ensure everyone has the essentials.

    In a society that prohibits excessive wealth imbalance or centralization of control, there’d be power inequality, but there’d also be a well established ceiling and floor to the inequality. That will always require some form of progressive “taxation” or system of redistribution. There’d also need to be taxation on almost all worker productivity to help develop public goods that everyone will benefit from. Everyone would need to chip in what they can if they need a new communal well, or if they need to maintain the roads, or need to put someone’s home out if it caught fire. People would need to contribute even if they don’t benefit from the particular public service, as they might benefit from another one more than others.

    A well functioning society must require people to contribute what they can to maintain & improve the community, must take from those that don’t contribute by force, must tax people even if they don’t consent. This isn’t optional for any system, state or no state. If it fails, exploitation, abuse, and suffering will destabilize the system until it falls apart from under its own weight. A society that taxes properly can minimize violence, maximize efficiency, and be far safer for everyone without exception. Even those on top are constantly in danger of being deposed by someone who wants their position, as well as the people they exploit.

    Tldr: Yes, we must use violence to force contribution. Not doing so only causes more violence. Violence is unavoidable, and can only be minimized by ensuring no one gets too powerful to oppress.




  • Linux users are the homeowners who build and fix everything they can, but look down on people that don’t find craftsmanship fun, claiming that they’re saving money by doing the work themselves. Good on you for having that hobby, but if you don’t enjoy it, spending time to learn those skills costs time that could be spent earning more money than you’d save. Paying an expert to do things you don’t enjoy is usually the cheaper option. They can be found almost anywhere, similar to how Linux users use Apple or windows products from time to time.

    Mac users are suburb dwellers who view their way of life as what everyone should aspire to, ignorant to the downsides of sprawl and reliance on cars to go anywhere. Commute times suck, while walkable neighborhoods with public transit make most people healthier and happier. There’s an important classist component, often bundled with racism, that underscores this ideal.

    Windows users are people that live in urban areas for work, trying to find reasonable rent or home prices as unchecked capitalism makes everything worse, but unaware why things suck. They get annoyed when people share their passion for handiwork, and dislike suburban folks for thinking they’re superior rather than the downsides to suburban life. However, because most people live this way, and live this way for work, they usually don’t have strong identities like suburbanites or handy homeowners.

    Homeless people are those who can’t afford computers, overlapping with actual homeless people, and rural people are those that don’t use computers more than they need to, socializing face to face and literally touching grass.


  • It’s the subjective experience of not seeing the wage growth themselves, combined with things not being acceptable for a longer time than Biden or Trump’s presidency. Things are improving right now, but haven’t caught up to people having economic security. When you’ve sunk deep enough, it takes a longer period of rising to finally catch a breath. Basically, the current growth must sustain for longer to get more people into a good position. If things continue on their current path, people will calm down.

    It’s also true that necessities like housing have inflated in price far faster than other goods, again, for longer than a decade. Unnecessary goods might be cheaper than ever, but you NEED things like shelter and there are NO alternatives. Despite good competition, the demand is inelastic, so limited excess supply translates to soaring prices, plus, other factors are at play.

    It also isn’t a good idea ignore subjective experiences in general. Not only are people almost always right to be unhappy on some level, invalidating their lived experiences isn’t a good idea. Democrats will not be successful if they don’t listen to people’s displeasure. Basic economic measures are essential, but not sufficient to make voters happier.


  • I didn’t blame Israel for Hamas killing civilians, I blamed them for letting hamas get so powerful that they could execute such a devastating attack.

    Israel does not care about pushing civilians towards Hamas, as they have mostly done just that for the last few decades. They refused to support more moderate Palestinians forces, instead causing economic hardship for all Palestinians, while stealing territory from the West Bank where Hamas has less power. If they didn’t want a humanitarian crisis, they wouldn’t have blockaded essential resources. They demanded over a million people evacuate from half of Gaza in 24 hours, something that would be nearly impossible in even wealthy countries with functioning governments. Even if Gaza had a government willing to move those people, the request would still be impossible.

    When the government originally said they were “fighting animals,” they did not specify Hamas. In fact, they were telling all Palestinians that they would be cut off from essentials. Bibi and his allies have been trying their hardest to make Israel a less free country, an explicit Jewish theocracy. The idea that the “free world,” would speak up is laughable when fascist parties are serious threats in every liberal democracy. The Republicans in the US have been even more explicitly genocidal against Palestinians than Israel’s government, dehumanizing all Muslims and inspiring hate crimes. It’s nothing new as they have been demanding trans people be banned from public life for the last few years. Most Democrats refuse to speak up enough, as they value their middle eastern ally way too much. The right wing in Israel want to steal Palestinian land and force the people into exile, as they have no sense of irony.






  • Video editing and compositing are the main things. These don’t seem to specialize in those tasks, while Adobe offers too many features and has too many quality 3rd party plugins to really be replaced. Even if there were programs that could compete, learning how to do things you know how to do in another program is a pain in the ass. The way programs work together is also a key thing Adobe can offer because they own multiple programs. Ideally there would be common standards to allow programs from different teams to work together just as well, but I’ve yet to see it.