After Hitler’s armies, the most destructive and lethal blight to hit the peoples of the former Eastern Bloc was not some “communist crime”. It was the forced restoration of capitalism which led to a neoliberal Holocaust that claimed nearly 17 million lives.
Aral Balkan
boosted
@aral @malteengeler I wonder if I specialized in the wrong niche in order to work on Small Tech. I wonder if there is demand for data engineering in Small Tech.
If I were a web developer, I could spin up something like https://gaza-verified.org myself. If I knew Go or Rust or whatever (and had more ideas), I could build some app or service that helps people in a meaningful way.
But I specialized in organizing data. Like someone who hasn't organized their closet for a long while and calls Marie Kondo to clean up their wardrobe, I'm the Marie Kondo for data. I know how to move (big amounts of) data from here to there, and how to organize it so that information is easily accessible and insights are facilitated. Without people like me, data is just noise.
I was told that data is the new oil/gold/electricity. And I do believe that there are use cases for doing good, still waiting to be discovered. #socialism #PlannedEconomy Otherwise I'd probably already have switched careers.
But my specialization is most useful with large datasets. Small datasets aren't in such dire needs of good organization strategies, same as you don't need Marie Kondo when two pair of shoes and three shirts is all you own.
I wonder if my specialization is useful only to Big Tech.
Does anyone have ideas for how I could use my skills for Small Tech? Does maybe even anyone has uses for someone like me? #FediHire
I didn't study this to be a cog in the ad-tech surveillance machine. 😒
@malteengeler Heck, some might even say, Small Tech 😉
@aral @malteengeler I wonder if I specialized in the wrong niche in order to work on Small Tech. I wonder if there is demand for data engineering in Small Tech.
If I were a web developer, I could spin up something like https://gaza-verified.org myself. If I knew Go or Rust or whatever (and had more ideas), I could build some app or service that helps people in a meaningful way.
But I specialized in organizing data. Like someone who hasn't organized their closet for a long while and calls Marie Kondo to clean up their wardrobe, I'm the Marie Kondo for data. I know how to move (big amounts of) data from here to there, and how to organize it so that information is easily accessible and insights are facilitated. Without people like me, data is just noise.
I was told that data is the new oil/gold/electricity. And I do believe that there are use cases for doing good, still waiting to be discovered. #socialism #PlannedEconomy Otherwise I'd probably already have switched careers.
But my specialization is most useful with large datasets. Small datasets aren't in such dire needs of good organization strategies, same as you don't need Marie Kondo when two pair of shoes and three shirts is all you own.
I wonder if my specialization is useful only to Big Tech.
Does anyone have ideas for how I could use my skills for Small Tech? Does maybe even anyone has uses for someone like me? #FediHire
I didn't study this to be a cog in the ad-tech surveillance machine. 😒
honestly the democratic socialists are THIS || close to "discovering" democratic confederalism, and once they figure it out it's gonna be like "oh shit, so this is what we actually wanted", and I am tremendously impatient about when they actually get there.
I watched an interview with Mamdani yesterday (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbq7DFB8jWE), and he got asked about the Socialist Thing (aka "oh so you want the state to own everything"), and like, "this would not be a gotcha if the political identity you name were the one you're actually describing".
Like he's hitting the nail on the head: It's not actually about socialism vs capitalism vs whatever the fuck. It's about centering people, empowering people, fulfilling people's needs at a livelihood level. And you don't get that by trying to move entire governments. You do that by moving people.
And that's kinda the beauty of democratic confederalism as they do it in Rojava: You don't need a revolution. You don't need a massive, overwhelming election. You just need enough power to carve out your niche, and then you grow your (nazi-less) tent by having people talk to each other
I don't think iterating ad nauseam about what kind of state we should have ruling over us is going to get any of us anywhere (except the ruling class, which always swears THEY have it right, and everyone else stays screwed).
I think we fix things from below, or we don't fix them at all, not really.
p.s. it just so happens that when you start that kind of from-below power, Capitalism just... it's going to go away. It just will. You don't need to rise up against it. You literally can just hold hands and stand firm and organize and make it a positive thing where you imagine a better future.
Some people are just very horny for their Guns and Knives Out fantasies, and I'm extremely not into that. Although of course there's always going to be a reality where communities may need to be defended. But it's no longer states being defended. It's people. And fights look very different then.
@zkat Thanks for saying it this clearly! The left's fixation on the state is pretty much a sell-out: Instead of rejecting the state and its authority, too many just want another clique to be in charge. This kind of authoritarianism is clearly incompatible with what is happening in #Rojava right now, however imperfect its reality might be. #Engels wrote about the transition to #Socialism: "The State is not 'abolished'. It dies out." That is wonderfully close to what you're saying, I think.
Yogthos
boosted
"You cannot trust imperialism. In no way at all! Not one iota!"
- Ernesto Che Guevara
Speech delivered at the inauguration of the combined industrial plant in Santiago de Cuba on November 30, 1964.
"You cannot trust imperialism. In no way at all! Not one iota!"
- Ernesto Che Guevara
Speech delivered at the inauguration of the combined industrial plant in Santiago de Cuba on November 30, 1964.
Stephen Dioxide :TwinPines:
and 8 others
boosted
Over 40 years, we were collectively told to give tax cuts to rich people.
And we were told that if we did that, wealth would trickle down and everyone would be better off.
Over 40 years, pretty much everything got cut to fund these tax cuts.
Schools. Hospitals. Public housing. Public transport. Universities. Roads projects. Mental health services. Welfare payments.
People literally went homeless or starved, so rich people could get tax cuts.
Because the wealth would trickle down.
Eventually the eroding of public goods caused social dislocation.
So governments further cut those public goods to fund more police and prisons. To continue giving tax cuts to rich people.
But they said the wealth would trickle down.
Eventually the climate started changing because of the amount of toxic fossil fuel pollution in the atmosphere.
So governments chose to keep the tax cuts rather than fund infrastructure to reduce emissions.
(Many of those billionaires getting tax cuts made their money selling toxic fossil fuels.)
And as the oceans and atmosphere warmed, the bushfires, droughts, hurricanes, cyclones, floods, and droughts got worse.
But they said the wealth would trickle down.
Eventually people were getting pissed off at the dire state of the world.
The rich misdirected that anger at immigrants!
And First Nations!
And trans people!
And neurodivergent people!
Anyone but the billionaires who got the tax cuts.
So governments chose to keep the tax cuts. (For the rich. Everyone else got new tariff taxes.)
But they said the wealth would trickle down.
So did the wealth trickle down?
Well...
A group of billionaires saw this kinda cool tech demo.
It predicted the next pixel of an image, based on the colour patterns of every image on the internet.
It also predicted the next word in a sentence, based on an analysis of every piece of writing on the internet.
The rich decided that this clearly showed that a sentient computer was just around the corner.
The problem was these tech demos needed servers with a lot of GPUs to work.
So the rich took all the money they got from those tax cuts.
And they bought GPUs.
Millions and millions and millions and millions of GPUs.
All the tax cuts? All the underfunded schools? All the draconian welfare cuts? All the public housing shortages? The delays in funding clean energy.
In the end, it didn't trickle down.
And instead of all the public goods it could have bought...
...We'll be left with millions and millions and millions of GPUs in a landfill.
#ChatGPT #Claude #AI #LLM #capitalism #socialism #business #politics #Nvidia
Is democracy about procedures or results? 🧐
A deep dive exploring China's outcomes-focused political system. Chinese model, built on performance legitimacy, has delivered historically unprecedented improvement in the standard of living and tangible freedoms. As a result, it enjoys exceptionally high public trust.
https://dialecticaldispatches.substack.com/p/rethinking-governance-through-outcomes
Damn I love nerds. It turns out, the rich don't move because of taxes 🤓 💸 dems quit basing policy on economic delusions challenge.
Oopsie data! NYT's claims are, in provable fact, utter bullshit:
> there is little evidence that rich people move for tax reasons. After studying returns from 1999 to 2011, Young determined that wealthy people are more of an “embedded elite,” reluctant to move from where they made it big, than “mobile millionaires” uprooting themselves to save on taxes.
^
And that was in the conservative rag Wweek #Portland #TaxTheRich #NYTGTFO #ZohranMamdani #Socialism
China’s 14th Five-Year Plan marked a historic shift by abandoning GDP growth targets, prioritizing high-quality development over quantitative expansion. The new plan aims for "decisive progress" toward 2035’s basic socialist modernization.
By rejecting GDP-centric metrics, China underscores long-term sustainability, equity, and resilience, reflecting a strategic pivot from growth-at-all-costs to holistic, inclusive progress.
Sean Tilley
liked this activity
Over 40 years, we were collectively told to give tax cuts to rich people.
And we were told that if we did that, wealth would trickle down and everyone would be better off.
Over 40 years, pretty much everything got cut to fund these tax cuts.
Schools. Hospitals. Public housing. Public transport. Universities. Roads projects. Mental health services. Welfare payments.
People literally went homeless or starved, so rich people could get tax cuts.
Because the wealth would trickle down.
Eventually the eroding of public goods caused social dislocation.
So governments further cut those public goods to fund more police and prisons. To continue giving tax cuts to rich people.
But they said the wealth would trickle down.
Eventually the climate started changing because of the amount of toxic fossil fuel pollution in the atmosphere.
So governments chose to keep the tax cuts rather than fund infrastructure to reduce emissions.
(Many of those billionaires getting tax cuts made their money selling toxic fossil fuels.)
And as the oceans and atmosphere warmed, the bushfires, droughts, hurricanes, cyclones, floods, and droughts got worse.
But they said the wealth would trickle down.
Eventually people were getting pissed off at the dire state of the world.
The rich misdirected that anger at immigrants!
And First Nations!
And trans people!
And neurodivergent people!
Anyone but the billionaires who got the tax cuts.
So governments chose to keep the tax cuts. (For the rich. Everyone else got new tariff taxes.)
But they said the wealth would trickle down.
So did the wealth trickle down?
Well...
A group of billionaires saw this kinda cool tech demo.
It predicted the next pixel of an image, based on the colour patterns of every image on the internet.
It also predicted the next word in a sentence, based on an analysis of every piece of writing on the internet.
The rich decided that this clearly showed that a sentient computer was just around the corner.
The problem was these tech demos needed servers with a lot of GPUs to work.
So the rich took all the money they got from those tax cuts.
And they bought GPUs.
Millions and millions and millions and millions of GPUs.
All the tax cuts? All the underfunded schools? All the draconian welfare cuts? All the public housing shortages? The delays in funding clean energy.
In the end, it didn't trickle down.
And instead of all the public goods it could have bought...
...We'll be left with millions and millions and millions of GPUs in a landfill.
#ChatGPT #Claude #AI #LLM #capitalism #socialism #business #politics #Nvidia