[HN Gopher] 'Mutual aid' is a radical ideal. Some live its commu...
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'Mutual aid' is a radical ideal. Some live its communal spirit
Author : Tomte
Score : 115 points
Date : 2023-02-11 16:10 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.csmonitor.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.csmonitor.com)
| pitaj wrote:
| Mutual aid fraternal societies used to be widespread and provided
| things like cheap healthcare services. Then various government
| policies led to their demise:
|
| - social security / medicare
|
| - AMA licensure monopoly
|
| - minimum lodge rates
|
| http://www.freenation.org/a/f12l3.html
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There _might_ have been a few more aspects to the decision to
| implement those policies.
| blep_ wrote:
| This sounds... not actually that much better, just bad in
| different ways?
|
| Healthcare _should_ be a thing everyone just has by default,
| not a thing you have to (in practice) get by joining a group
| that comes with tradeoffs for other parts of your life[0]. I
| should be able to replace a bad doctor immediately without
| switching insurance companies or waiting for the rest of my
| insurance company to vote on it.
|
| [0] Which, yes, is approximately the employer-provided system
| we have today. This is absolutely not intended as a defense of
| that disaster.
| jasmer wrote:
| Capitalism lead to the demise.
|
| Capitalism is 'mutual' aid, we just exchange with 'aid credits'
| aka 'money' and it's vastly more efficient because people can
| choose their form of 'aid': books, food, video games, and chose
| their form of 'contribution' via division of labour aka one guy
| fixes cars the other makes coats.
|
| The healthcare one is complicated.
|
| Blank panthers are better off just giving money to people if
| they need breakfast. Now, of course we get into the ugly
| problem that said people may not be spending those 'aid
| credits' appropriately in which case you end up down an ugly
| dark hole of social realpolitik that people don't want to go
| down ...
| college_physics wrote:
| The idea that capitalism (as it is practiced) has anything to do
| with "survival of the fittest" and rampant individualism needs
| some serious double checking as it doesnt match the data.
|
| In such an ultra competitive system how does one explain
| oligopolies, cartels, corporate dominance, regulatory capture,
| skyrocketig inequality with the benefits acruing to
| infinitesimally small groups.
|
| If competition was universal society would be much less unequal
| and flat in structure. In fact humans have an instinctive
| tendency to cooperate and this is evident everywhere in social
| structure. Unfortunately that cooperation is seldom extending to
| encompass everybody in the community.
|
| Rather than a simplistic choice of "compete or cooperate" between
| two individuals our societies are dominated much more by
| competition of distinct groups of internally cooperating
| (colluding) _groups_.
|
| Competition is for the fools. The mafiosi find codes of
| cooperation and extract dues from everybody else.
| dennis_jeeves1 wrote:
| Excellent observations. Infact 'capitalism' would not thrive if
| _voluntary_ co-operation didn't exist.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| "Each street in East Boston had a "captain"", whose job was to
| connect with residents and find ways to get them what they need.
|
| What happens today, to attempts to create that "missing middle"
| structure?
| zabzonk wrote:
| good to see the ideas of kropotkin, an anarchist, being presented
| in a positive light. there were a number of anarchist ideas being
| attempted to be put into practice in the last century - for
| example, the wobblies. not so much now.
| jhbadger wrote:
| The thing is Kropotkin's actual book presented it as a
| scientific principle of evolution, which is nonsense. Yes,
| there are biological examples of cooperation (such as eusocial
| insects like bees and ants), but this only works because of the
| unusual reproductive strategy they use where all the members of
| a hive are siblings. That doesn't mean that humans can't choose
| to cooperate, but this choice has nothing to do with biology or
| evolution.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Humanity spent 200,000 years living communally in social
| abundance. This is settled science in anthropology and
| biology [1][2][3]
|
| Social community is an essential requirement for human life
| and the loss of community has now been used as proof of some
| kind of lamarckian anti-social evolution which has zero
| evidence.
|
| [1] Chan, E.K.F., et al. human origins in a southern African
| palaeo-wetland and first migrations. Nature 575,185-189
| (2019)
|
| [2] Graeber, David, Wingrow, David (2021), The Dawn of
| Everything. (126)
|
| [3] Sahlins, Marshall (2009). Hunter-gatherers: insights from
| a golden affluent age. Pacific Ecologist. 18: 3-8
| goatlover wrote:
| If social community/communal existence is an essential
| requirement, then how do you explain the past several
| thousand years, where civilization has come to dominate,
| and the human population has grown to 8 billion?
| Civilization didn't just develop in the middle east, it
| cropped up separately in several different regions,
| including the Americas.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I'm excited you asked as I have a theory that is getting
| real traction that answers precisely that:
|
| https://kemendo.com/Myth.pdf
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| How do you address desirable goods that are really
| scarce?
|
| Such as downtown penthouses, beachfront property,
| spectrum licenses, etc...
|
| Since there will always be some fraction of the
| population who will desire to gamble the shirt on their
| backs for a chance at a larger prize.
| ves wrote:
| Competition in its recognizably modern form only recently
| became the foundational organizational system for
| civilization, and civilization "won" because (in part) a)
| it generally has no problem deploying incredible levels
| of violence and coercion, against people and the
| environment, and b) it promotes continuous population
| increase, even beyond what may be sustainable.
|
| There's about a million places to source this, but I
| might start with something like James C. Scott.
| goatlover wrote:
| Tribal groups did also compete, and our hominid cousins,
| several of who were around the same time as modern
| humans, went extinct.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Competition for resources and violence is seen in
| primates and many mammals. Smaller social groups does not
| necessarily remove this element.
|
| The main difference with humans is that we are capable of
| organizing and coordinating larger social structures.
|
| Large Organizations of individuals require other large
| organizations to defend against
| jhbadger wrote:
| Whether or not this is the case (although a handful of
| papers and one of Graeber's pop-sci books hardly makes it
| "settled"), all this deals with time periods far too recent
| for evolutionary biology to play a role in human behavior.
| Cultural "evolution" has nothing to do with actual
| evolution.
| haswell wrote:
| > _Cultural "evolution" has nothing to do with actual
| evolution._
|
| I can't imagine this could be strictly true. It's not as
| if human's social capacity turned on one day at full
| capacity, and the social hardware was complete.
|
| I do think it's fair to say that society evolves at a
| different pace given the capabilities of our current
| social software, but all such change is still underpinned
| by biological evolution before it.
|
| I sometimes wonder how far we can go as a species before
| we start malfunctioning widely, e.g. recent study [0]
| about schizophrenia that finds it non-existent in
| hunter/gatherer societies, and city living potentially
| playing a factor for some individuals.
|
| - [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S
| 014976342...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| That period was also incredibly violent, as the unit of
| competition was the family, not the individual. Economies
| of scale were similarly inaccessible, which is why agrarian
| societies outcompeted their hunter-gathered kin. We can
| absolutely model our post-industrial society on that pre-
| historic ideal, but that also requires acknowledging its
| brutality and shortcomings.
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| Graeber's last book, The Dawn of Everything, does a great
| job of dispelling a lot of these "brutal and short"
| notions as mostly ideological myths.
| jhbadger wrote:
| This is the same guy who believed Apple was founded in
| the 1980s by Republican ex-IBMers using laptops, though.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Graeber's last book, The Dawn of Everything, does a
| great job of dispelling a lot of these "brutal and short"
| notions as mostly ideological myths_
|
| Anyone casting this as settled science immediately
| attracts scrutiny. Our data from the epoch are spotty.
| But there is evidence it was very violent on a per-capita
| basis [1].
|
| [1] https://stevenpinker.com/reviews-better-angels-our-
| nature
| haswell wrote:
| I agree that calling this "settled science" is
| problematic, but a large point of the book in question is
| to introduce new evidence from the epoch in question that
| directly challenges some of the common narratives,
| especially Pinker's.
|
| It's a thought provoking book worth reading.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _new evidence from the epoch in question that directly
| challenges some of the common narratives, especially
| Pinker 's_
|
| "Challenges" and "theory" may be better terms than
| "dispels" and "ideological myths," then.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I've noticed more and more often that many commenters on
| HN simply don't read the parent comment.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Not sure if directed at my or the preceding comment, but
| I'd note that the top-level comment states "social
| abundance" in pre-historic times is "settled anthropology
| and biology."
| coding123 wrote:
| The everyone is out for themselves, greed is king,
| insurance instead of family, sue thy neighbor is not backed
| by evidence? who knew?
| 7952 wrote:
| That implies that there is a minimum set of relatedness that
| is required for alturism to improve survival. That is just
| not true. And it is not just about direct relatedness but
| shared genes.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Its pretty rich to dismiss Kropotkins theories as bunk
| without evidence btw. He is actually recognised in biology
| for his contributions: see [1]. I mean Stephen Jay Gould one
| of the most eminent evolutionary biologists wrote an essay
| about him tilled Kropotkins was no crackpot [2]
|
| [1] https://www.rsb.org.uk/biologist-features/who-was-peter-
| krop...
|
| [2]
| https://digitallibrary.amnh.org/handle/2246/6494?show=full
| slibhb wrote:
| Gould is a controversial figure. He was a popularizer who
| mixed politics and science to a degree that made some
| uncomfortable.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >because of the unusual reproductive strategy they use where
| all the members of a hive are siblings
|
| Specifically, eusocial insects are haplodiploidic, where
| workers are _more_ related to each other (sharing 75% of
| their genes) than they would be to their own children, which
| reduces the genetic incentive to defect from the cooperative
| structure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplodiploidy
|
| This sounds outrageously strange, but something similar can
| happen in humans: identical twins are also more related to
| each other than to their children.
| wpietri wrote:
| I'm sure his science is bunk. But I'll note that no less a
| person than E O Wilson argues that humans are eusocial:
| https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/human-eusociality/
| cycomanic wrote:
| The book was a direct answer to social darwinism (which has
| very much been proven to be bunk, but many people still argue
| like this almost a 100 years later), not to contradict
| darwinism.
|
| I'm not sure what exactly you call bunk, Kropotkins whole
| point was that for many species communal support and
| altruistic behavior is an integral part of their existence.
| That does not only apply to hive societies. There are for
| example many bird species where young (often males) help with
| raising children even they are not their own. Similarly you
| can find many mammals who live in larger communities and
| where individulas exhibit "altruistic" behavior because it is
| to the advantage of the survival of the community.
| tremon wrote:
| In more traditional societies, the family is the primary
| social structure (and support structure). It's only in
| "modern" society that we let go of that idea and handed the
| responsibility over to government. And when said government
| fails, family is the first thing people fall back on. So I
| wouldn't be too sure that humans are biologically solitary
| animals.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Arguably all multicellular life on earth is an example of
| biological cooperation.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| Even singled celled life is cooperation between the many
| genes using those cells to reproduce.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| If you are looking at the cells of that multicellular life.
| But if you look between multicellular organisms it's not so
| cut and dry. The lion and its prey are in cooperation only
| in some abstract sense of keeping their shared ecosystem
| alive, but are very much antagonistic in practice.
| 7952 wrote:
| The mammalian genes survive regardless. The gene for
| having a neocortex survives in both lions and antelope.
| And that survival may be at the expense of other more
| distant species.
| hourago wrote:
| > The lion and its prey are in cooperation only...
|
| Lions cooperate with other lions, humans cooperate with
| dogs, symbiotic organisms are all over the planet.
|
| Humans are apex cooperators. Our civilization, from
| planes to schools, from the banana that you eat this
| morning to the microchips of your computers, all comes
| from a very complex cooperation between humans. Remove
| the trust to cooperate and we go back to live in caverns.
| Nobody cooperates better than humans, ants or bees
| cooperation is just on basic functions, we are way better
| than that.
| zajio1am wrote:
| but between cells that have the same genome.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Or biological totalitarianism.
|
| Is easy for your privileged brain and nerve cells to claim
| such high-minded ideals.
|
| Meanwhile, your skin cells are treated as disposable and
| have a medium lifespan of 14 days
| pasquinelli wrote:
| that must mean there's a class of cells that keep skin
| cells in their station. which cells are those?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _which cells are those?_
|
| Macrophages, though your immune system broadly [1].
| (Every cell has a variety of programmed death processes
| built in, too.)
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apoptosis
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Humans are biologically non-social?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The problem is that the Bolsheviks killed it all off and
| replaced it with an authoritarian hellscape. When left-wingers
| say "true communism has never been tried", which sounds and is
| outrageously stupid, _this is what they mean_.
|
| Any kind of libertarian[0] ideal is the sort of thing you don't
| implement with an immediate revolution, but frustratingly slow
| long-term change. You don't smash the state pinata and all the
| mutual aid candy pours out. You build mutual aid societies and
| cooperatives from the bottom up and make the state and
| capitalism _obsolete_. But that kind of work is both boring and
| doesn 't _feel_ radical - you 're not burning any cop cars or
| blowing shit up until the very end when you're actually a
| threat.
|
| The Free Software movement is arguably an example of this;
| since Stallman is a devout left-libertarian. Hell, it's why
| Gates and Ballmer called it[1] "communism".
|
| [0] I specifically refer to left-libertarian ideas, though
| Louis Rossman has said the same thing about right-libertarian
| ideas too.
|
| [1] Ok, they were referring to "open source". But that's just
| the "apolitical" version of the Free Software manifesto. The
| politics of Free Software are inherent in the licensing
| structure, not just the page-long manifesto Stallman put in the
| GPL.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| > When left-wingers say "true communism has never been
| tried", which sounds and is outrageously stupid, this is what
| they mean.
|
| i can't say what other people mean, especially when it comes
| to me secondhand like this, but what left-wingers _should_
| mean to say, (and probably do say, but it got garbled in
| _your_ head), is that a communist society has never existed.
| a communist society is a speculated state of social
| development that has never existed. refer to:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_society
|
| you could make the same argument that democracy has never
| existed, and any government calling itself a democracy really
| means--if you're using the most generous interpretation--they
| are self-consciously structured in a way that is more
| democratic than some earlier government. and you'd be right
| about that, btw.
| tough wrote:
| I kinda make this argument and think every time than the OG
| democracy's in ancient greece had also slaves on it's
| society. (which couldn't vote unless freed and given
| citizenship after serving their masters well)
| stale2002 wrote:
| You are not understanding the context of this very common
| "true communism has never been tried" statement.
|
| The context is that says "Communism is bad. Look at every
| single example of all of these people who call themselves
| communists. Their societies suck!"
|
| And then, in order to divert from this valid criticism,
| someone will say "true communism has never been tried", and
| they will do this for every single possible example, of
| criticism of actual real life attempts at communism.
|
| So, the context is that these statements are used to ignore
| criticism of communists.
|
| This is why such a statement is stupid. It is pretty silly
| to say that nobody can criticize communism, because
| apparently every example that people use of communism
| failing or having problems, doesn't count.
| jdgoesmarching wrote:
| I think it's a pointless argument all around because
| there is too much bias in both defining a state as failed
| and agreeing on that's state's political orientation.
|
| I could argue that there are far more examples of failed
| capitalist states, but it would just devolve into endless
| debates of those definitions above based on differences
| in ideology. Even if my goal is to address the many
| misconceptions of "communist" states, it's just not a
| useful way to go about it.
|
| Just to slide a point in here, nearly every leftist of
| every tendency has a long list of criticisms of countries
| who have declared themselves communist. The points just
| tend to be more nuanced than the cartoonishly evil story
| we are taught in the US.
| goatlover wrote:
| > You build mutual aid societies and cooperatives from the
| bottom up and make the state and capitalism obsolete.
|
| That's respectable if it can work, and we end up in a Star
| Trek-like future, maybe aided with AIs/robotics creating a
| post-scarcity society. Although some things, like location or
| rare artifacts, will always be scarce.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >The problem is that the Bolsheviks killed it all off and
| replaced it with an authoritarian hellscape.
|
| I'd rather live in the Soviet Union than in some mutualist
| neighbourhood association because the former was positively
| productive in comparison. There's a good essay called "The
| Tyranny of Structurelessness"[1], showcasing that getting rid
| of formal hierarchies doesn't get rid of power structures, it
| just renders them informal, you're essentially back to the
| state of nature. There's no position on earth that attracts
| worse people than "neighbourhood captain" or the local school
| or housing committee.
|
| Nobody wants to live in a community where you have to vote
| ten times per week if you want to replace a broken door lock.
| And that's not a sarcastic hypothetical, that is a real thing
| I experienced when I lived in a cooperatively owned housing
| complex in Hamburg as a student.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tyranny_of_Structureless
| ne...
| slibhb wrote:
| Well said, voting 10 times a week does sound like a drag,
| but surely it's better than decades in the gulag or a
| bullet in the back of the head.
| dmoy wrote:
| Two things worth noting about the black panther free breakfast
| for children thing mentioned in passing in the article:
|
| 1. It was forcibly shut down by the federal government as a means
| to undermine the black panther's most visible community support.
| Both through subterfuge and direct raids.
|
| 2. The federal government then later realized that free breakfast
| for poor kids was a good thing, and re-implemented it
| forevergreenyon wrote:
| > _2. The federal government then later realized that free
| breakfast for poor kids was a good thing, and re-implemented
| it_
|
| I have a more cynical worldview. they always knew that free
| breakfast was (indeed, _is_ ) a good thing, but it was more
| important for them back then to fuck over this rebellious group
| than feed some poor ol' kids.
|
| Those poor malnourished children? a 'cost of policy' or some
| other rationalized argument with which to ignore the harsh
| truth, that we often prefer to keep our own power safe, than
| feed some other's 'poor' children.
| whitemary wrote:
| Imagine having to think about whether it's good for kids to
| have breakfast. Capitalism is such a despicable disease.
| yesco wrote:
| What does capitalism have to do with this? The two actors
| involved were the black panthers and the federal
| government, both of which were being motivated by politics.
| Not sure where supply & demand or private ownership had any
| influence.
| syzarian wrote:
| My cynical view is that I think our pursuit of profit is
| such that politicos would rather have taxpayers partially
| fund the school breakfast. That way a private company can
| get the contract and provide shitty meals in order to
| extract as much profit as possible.
|
| Capitalism comes into play by barely providing adequate
| service while suppressing wages so that a few can greatly
| profit at the expense of everyone else. In a society not
| attempting to implement the Ferengi society the school
| breakfast would employ people with decent wages and serve
| decent food.
| whitemary wrote:
| Everything. It was the McCarthyist era. The Black
| Panthers were an explicitly Marxist organization and US
| state was the most powerful anti-communist organization
| the world had ever seen.
| cardosof wrote:
| Pretty much all governments in all countries think way
| worse stuff. something something ultimate power ultimate
| corruption.
| whitemary wrote:
| It's what they _do_ that matters, and there is no country
| in the world today which is responsible for nearly the
| amount of brutality, oppression, and exploitation as the
| United States. And child poverty is potentially the most
| alarming example. Despite being the richest nation, the
| domestic United States has proportionally more child
| poverty and child hunger than any other major nation in
| the world.
| luckylion wrote:
| > It's what they do that matters, and there is no country
| in the world today which is responsible for nearly the
| amount of brutality, oppression, and exploitation as the
| United States.
|
| Are you aware that other countries than the US exist that
| aren't Canada or in Europe? Let's pick the obvious one:
| North Korea. There's less _brutality, oppression, and
| exploitation_ in NK than in the US?
| l3mure wrote:
| I think any discussion of North Korea as it exists today
| is pointless without considering the historical context
| it was born in, of which the most important aspect is the
| denial of a locally sovereign political process.
|
| [1]
|
| > The 38th parallel, meant as a line of convenience for
| two armies' temporary operations, immediately took on
| characteristics of a political boundary, infuriating the
| divided people. Just two weeks after his troops landed in
| Korea on September 8, the US commander, Lt. Gen. John R.
| Hodge, sent a message to General MacArthur in Tokyo:
| "Dissatisfaction with the division of the country grows."
| [...]
|
| > Even before reaching Korea, he had instructed his
| officers to view the Koreans as an enemy. When his 78,000
| troops began landing, he ordered Japanese police to keep
| local welcoming crowds away. The police shot and killed
| two Koreans in the process. [..]
|
| > In the fall of 1946, the US military authorized
| elections to an interim legislature for southern Korea,
| but the results were clearly fraudulent. Even General
| Hodge privately wrote that right-wing "strong-arm"
| methods had been used to control the vote. The winners
| were almost all rightists, including [Syngman] Rhee
| supporters, even though a survey by the American military
| government that summer had found that 70 percent of 8,453
| southern Koreans polled said they supported socialism, 7
| percent communism, and only 14 percent capitalism. [...]
|
| > Chung Koo-Hun, the observant young student of the late
| 1940s, said of the villagers' attitude: "The Americans
| simply re-employed the pro-Japanese Koreans whom the
| people hated." [...]
|
| > Seventy of the 115 top Korean officials in the Seoul
| administration in 1947 had held office during the
| Japanese occupation.
|
| Of course the Soviets were offering support in the north,
| but:
|
| [2]
|
| > [They] never established a full-fledged military
| government, moving quickly to local control.
|
| The US even horrifically fumbled what minor concessions
| it was willing to offer to leftist sentiment:
|
| [3]
|
| > The US military government had pleased the farmers by
| decreeing a limit on the "rice rent" of 30 percent of the
| crop. That was on paper. In reality, enforcement was lax,
| landlords still gouged tenant farmers and the military
| government did actual harm with a related ordinance
| lifting price controls and imposing a "free market" on
| rice. That set off a binge of speculation, corruption and
| smuggling of Korean rice abroad, which left subsistence
| rice farmers and other poor southerners with little to
| eat. They exploded with resentment.
|
| > In the southern city of Taegu, people verged on
| starvation. When 10,000 demonstrators rallied on October
| 1, 1946, police opened fire, killing many. Vengeful
| crowds then seized and killed policeman, and the US
| military declared martial law. The violence spread across
| the provinces, peasants murdering government officials,
| landlords, and especially police, detested as holdovers
| from Japanese days. American troops joined the police in
| suppressing the uprisings. Together they killed uncounted
| hundreds of Koreans.
|
| And this is all before the war. In which the US killed
| millions of people in the north with mass bombing,
| attacks with biological weapons, and annihilation of the
| north's industrial capacity. US troops even
| indiscriminately slaughtered thousands of refugees
| fleeing to the south, the same people they were
| supposedly protecting!
|
| It's the same old colonial playbook, rehashed again and
| again. It's not like the US learned anything from this
| experience either.
|
| [1][2][3] - The Bridge at No Gun Ri, pp. 47-53
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Read the post again: _amount of_ those things. The US has
| over 300M people and it is the most advanced industrial
| nation (or perhaps China is now?), so of course it has
| way more impact than freaking North Korea.
| luckylion wrote:
| That's useless for comparisons though. Musk lost billions
| of dollars when Tesla's share price dropped, we should
| all pitch in and help him out, because we didn't lose
| billions of dollars and are therefore much better off,
| right?
|
| If only we were able to look at relative things to find
| out if that's true.
|
| I don't believe that was the intended message of the
| comment I replied to, but even if it was because strange
| ideas: China easily tops the US, and so does Russia.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > That's useless for comparisons though. Musk lost
| billions of dollars when Tesla's share price dropped, we
| should all pitch in and help him out, because we didn't
| lose billions of dollars and are therefore much better
| off, right?
|
| This makes no sense.
|
| > I don't believe that was the intended message of the
| comment I replied to, but even if it was because strange
| ideas: China easily tops the US, and so does Russia.
|
| As for Russia, just in terms of military (if that's what
| you are referring to): One illegal invasion right now. An
| incursion into Georgia. The wars in Chechnya. America on
| the other hand has Iraq and Afghanistan as the most
| recent wars, and in general it seems that it is easier to
| count the number of years that the US has _not_ been at
| war than to count the years where they have. So I think
| the world's largest military which is also used in an
| offensive capacity wins here.
|
| As for China I will probably have to concede the win in
| case you are referring to the Uyghurs, because the number
| of Uyghurs in concentration camps worse than Auschwitz
| must surely number in the hundreds of millions now, if
| the rhetoric of the anti-China crowd is any indication.
| luckylion wrote:
| > This makes no sense.
|
| If you don't take population into the comparison of
| absolute numbers, you're not learning anything. The same
| applies to monetary losses. If you don't take the total
| amount of dollars invested into account, "dollar amount
| lost" is useless. Two people could lose $1000 each, one
| has a billion dollar, the other one has 1001. Are they
| equally affected?
|
| > As for China I will probably have to concede the win in
| case you are referring to the Uyghurs, because the number
| of Uyghurs in concentration camps worse than Auschwitz
| must surely number in the hundreds of millions now, if
| the rhetoric of the anti-China crowd is any indication.
|
| You don't need to. China's prison population is equal to
| that of the US, excluding the Uigurs. Include those and
| it doubles it. And from what is known, China is _a lot_
| harder on their prisoners than the US.
|
| I've never understood tankies that go to insane lengths
| to justify and defend ex-communist countries, while
| they'll equally claim that "it wasn't real communism".
| Why defend it then?
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > You don't need to. China's prison population is equal
| to that of the US, excluding the Uigurs. Include those
| and it doubles it. And from what is known, China is a lot
| harder on their prisoners than the US.
|
| So less prisoners per capita.
|
| > I've never understood tankies that go to insane lengths
| to justify and defend ex-communist countries, while
| they'll equally claim that "it wasn't real communism".
| Why defend it then?
|
| Am I supposed to answer this?
| luckylion wrote:
| > So less prisoners per capita.
|
| Aha, suddenly you want to go all "per capita" instead of
| "total amount"? Yeah, I think we've reached the end here.
| If I bring up North Korea again, you'll say "yeah, but
| it's less in total amount" and we'll just spin in
| circles.
|
| Again, I don't get it. I'd love to understand what can be
| done to get people to not hold on to some ideology for
| dear life, but I guess you can't ask a fish why he has
| gills.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > Aha, suddenly you want to go all "per capita" instead
| of "total amount"? Yeah, I think we've reached the end
| here. If I bring up North Korea again, you'll say "yeah,
| but it's less in total amount" and we'll just spin in
| circles.
|
| My mistake. I forgot the thread for a moment.
|
| > Again, I don't get it. I'd love to understand what can
| be done to get people to not hold on to some ideology for
| dear life, but I guess you can't ask a fish why he has
| gills.
|
| You don't know what my ideology is.
| [deleted]
| whitemary wrote:
| Can you cite actual studies that show China tops the US
| in child poverty or child hunger? I highly doubt this is
| the case, but I'm quite confident we do not have any
| reason to believe one way or the other.
|
| The Soviet Union absolutely had less child poverty and
| hunger, but of course the (many) western definitions of
| poverty cannot apply. We do straightforwardly know,
| however, that the Soviet Union did not tolerate any
| homelessness while the United States has a growing child
| homelessness problem with no solution in sight.
| luckylion wrote:
| > The Soviet Union absolutely had less child poverty and
| hunger
|
| You mean after they've let a few millions starve here and
| there?
|
| Holy fuck, the insanity.
| dmoy wrote:
| World bank, etc.
|
| Keep in mind that there's ~150 million people in China
| who subsist on less than ~$3/day or whatever. Even
| accounting for cheaper standard of living (4x ppp in
| China) it's cripplingly poor by US poverty rates. It's
| the equivalent of living on like $4k USD.
|
| Idk if you've been to rural China at all, but shit is way
| different there still.
|
| When we define the US federal poverty line it's at
| minimum like $12k for an individual, even in the cheapest
| areas. That's 3x higher than the poverty line for data
| you see coming out of China.
| [deleted]
| seneca wrote:
| > there is no country in the world today which is
| responsible for nearly the amount of brutality,
| oppression, and exploitation as the United States
|
| In a world containing North Korea, Iran, China, and
| Egypt, I can't imagine how incredibly out if touch and
| radicalized a person needs to be to truly believe
| something this absurd.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| The US is a powerful country. Which means it has a lot of
| impact. If that impact also tilts towards the negative
| spectrum then they will have a large negative impact.
| Certainly a bigger impact than North Korea, even though
| North Korea is worse to live _under_. (Side-note: but
| America also _exports_ suffering, so it's not just about
| US citizens.)
|
| Chomsky: Today's Republican Party is a Candidate for Most
| Dangerous Organization in Human History (2016)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FC7PsvUjo8
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is not about whether or not it is good for kids to have
| breakfast. It is about whether or not you want to
| redistribute wealth from your actual or perceived tribe to
| another actual or perceived tribe.
| abelsyed wrote:
| It is considered "woke" to admit that the federal
| government always had preferred racial tribes and is only
| now trying to rectify that.
| lliamander wrote:
| To say that it is "only now" trying to rectify racial
| disparities is to completely ignore the last 60 years at
| least.
| abelsyed wrote:
| The civil rights fight in the 60s and the following Nixon
| and Reagan administrations prove my point more strongly
| than yours.
| whitemary wrote:
| It's not a matter of so-called preferences. It's a matter
| of interests. The capitalist state, in aggregate, always
| serves the interests of capital. Chattel slavery was
| literally a system for producing commodities. Jim Crow
| laws were later enacted to undermine solidarity among
| workers in the south and maintain an official underclass
| ripe for exploitation by capital to produce commodities.
| input_sh wrote:
| For the more (most?) recent example, child tax credits
| reduced the number of US children living in poverty by
| 46%[0]. Late 2021, all 50 Senate Republicans + Joe Manchin
| opposed expanding it.
|
| In other words, 51 people decided to put 3.7 million
| children back into poverty. In one month between Dec 2021
| and Jan 2022 the percentage increased from 12.1% to 17%[1].
| Each and every one of those 51 people had the power to
| singlehandedly keep 4.9% of all children out of poverty.
| None of them did.
|
| Why? If you asked all 51 of them, the most common answer
| will most likely be a variation of "no handouts".
|
| [0] https://archive.is/3vZnb (census.gov link, using
| archive.is because census.gov blocks connections outside of
| the US)
|
| [1] https://www.povertycenter.columbia.edu/news-
| internal/monthly...
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| In Manchin's case, he thought parents would use the money
| to buy drugs.
|
| In reality, "Studies have found...that parents have used
| the checks for essential items...like food, clothes and
| school-related expenses."
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1286321
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >In Manchin's case, he thought parents would use the
| money to buy drugs.
|
| I assume he thought that was the excuse most likely to
| benefit his political ambitions.
| blfr wrote:
| Bizarre take. Capitalism is so insanely effective that 22%
| of US teenagers are _obese_ , 25% of all black kids.
|
| It may be a disease but it certainly delivers breakfast.
| And then six more meals, apparently.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html
| whitemary wrote:
| Both can be true, especially under capitalism.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Good health is more effective than ill-health.
|
| Part of the deal with consumer capitalism is that there
| needs to be consumption. Which means that people have to
| consume a lot of their means on stuff. Gullet-stuff being
| one of them.
|
| Blacks are of course poorer than whites. Them being more
| obese is not a sign of overabundance among Blacks.
| blfr wrote:
| You cannot be obese without overabundance of calories.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Calories are cheap.
|
| > A 500g bag of budget pasta is, as we established, 29p.
| That's 5 meals there of 100g of plain pasta, with no
| butter, no salt, no sauce, and no nutrition, and a whole
| 147 calories per gruesome meal.
|
| https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2022/04/12/its-not-about-
| the...
|
| (By the way, that website has a lot of information about
| cheap, nutritious food. Jack's currently running it at
| cost, in addition to all her other work.)
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Boring and useless point.
| blfr wrote:
| I quite like an esoteric theory but it should at least
| sound plausible. There is no need for a convoluted
| explanation with power dynamics and economic system
| denying people access to food when Americans are clearly
| suffering no such problem.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > denying people access to food when
|
| Are you replying to someone else? I haven't said that
| someone/some entity is starving people/denying access to
| food. Try to stay coherent/on track.
| goatlover wrote:
| So are the other economic systems who create even worse
| outcomes for kids. At least capitalism, for all it's faults
| (like democracy), has massively raised the standard of
| living over the past several centuries. Places with a lot
| of poverty have lacked access to free markets because of
| war, politics or the wrong economics.
| ves wrote:
| You might wanna check out some of jason hickel's writings
| in the topic. As someone from such a "place with a lot of
| poverty" I've always chafed at the idea that capitalism
| (and thus colonialism) led to an improvement in living
| conditions, when really it meant mostly murder and
| looting.
| goatlover wrote:
| Capitalism and colonialism aren't the same thing. Yes,
| capitalism can include exploitation. So can any system.
| But the world thankfully has moved beyond colonialism.
| And capitalism as an economic system has greatly improved
| standards of living in many parts of the world such as
| Asia since then.
| runarberg wrote:
| Recently leaked text messages between the Seattle mayor's
| office and the Parks district during the Black Lives Matter
| protests suggests that people in power have no problems
| denying people basics things like water if it is
| politically convenient for them to do so.
| stickfigure wrote:
| [flagged]
| whitemary wrote:
| What? Where did children get breakfast before capitalism?
| Even if there's truth to your claim, does making the
| breakfast then taking it away qualify as a virtue?
| Somehow I'm not convinced.
| orbital223 wrote:
| > Where did children get breakfast before capitalism?
|
| Historically speaking the vast majority of them just
| didn't.
| kxkdodpdl wrote:
| Child mortality was much higher and famines were more
| common before capitalism, and starvation has been a
| common feature in every command economy as well
| whitemary wrote:
| Technology improves livelihoods. That much is
| straightforward. The role of capitalism, however, is more
| complicated. Capitalism is an extremely brutal state of
| affairs and the industrial revolution itself was
| responsible for an incomprehensible number of deaths
| (see: Primitive Accumulation). And in its more modern
| forms, capitalism maintains more poverty than it
| resolves.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_accumulation_of
| _ca...
| coryrc wrote:
| So you're saying there was more starvation after Deng
| Xiaoping's capitalist reforms than during the communist
| era?
| whitemary wrote:
| Opposite because in China Mao navigated primitive
| accumulation so later eras didn't have to.
|
| The first fundamental error with the Russian and Chinese
| revolutions, as Karl Marx warned, was underestimating the
| difficulty and brutality required to achieve primitive
| accumulation. Ironically its the same analytical error
| that Adam Smith made, but in the interest of a different
| end.
|
| For context, Karl Marx condemned revolutionary efforts in
| pre-capitalist nations for these reasons. This included
| Russia and China because they were still feudalist
| states. Karl Marx insisted Germany was the necessary
| focus.
| notahacker wrote:
| I imagine it's more like _there is less starvation and
| hunger in modern mixed economies with their very
| uncapitalistic welfare states_ than during the laissez-
| faire glory years of the Industrial Revolution...
| darawk wrote:
| Most children didn't eat nearly as well as they do today
| before capitalism.
| throw_away1525 wrote:
| Are you starting count from the beginnings of humanity or
| the beginnings of agriculture?
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| But with capitalism they could _earn_ their food! Praise
| capitalism!
|
| https://www.history.com/news/child-labor-lewis-hine-
| photos
| inkblotuniverse wrote:
| The government cynically deciding whether or not to feed
| people doens't seem exclusively or specially capitalist.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I have a different and possibly more cynical (or not?) take.
|
| The government decision-makers actually had no opinion at all
| about whether free breakfast was a "good thing", and didn't
| particularly care about the welfare of poor Black children at
| all. They implemented government free breakfast only to
| undermine the possibility of the Black Panthers or a similar
| group getting support for implementing it themselves.
|
| The Panthers effectively forced the government to implement
| it, by showing them up, they never would have done it at all
| if the Panthers hadn't done it first, and did it only to take
| away the possibility of a group like the Panthers getting
| credit for doing it and using it to build support and power.
| Had nothing to do with the kids or whether it was a "good
| thing" at all.
| hourago wrote:
| "The goverment" is composed of many different people. I
| assure you that some people cares a lot about what is
| better for children, and fight to get this kind of policies
| implemented. Others vote in favor just because it looks
| good on them. Some does not care and may vote against just
| because they can profit from it.
|
| So any cynical view will be true for a few politicians, but
| never for all.
| harvey9 wrote:
| Here's an alternate but still cynical take: Business / The
| Govt needs somewhat educated people in the modern economy
| and its easier to study when you had some breakfast.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| The federal government didn't like that a self declared
| insurrectionist group was spending a lot of time with young
| kids.
|
| Or put another way, would you support "OathKeepers Breakfast
| for Kids"?
| syzarian wrote:
| Nothing scares those in power quite like poor people
| organizing. If poor whites in the U.S. could be made to realize
| that their oppressor is the same as for poor blacks, Hispanics,
| and other ethnic groups then real progress could be made.
| Idk__Throwaway wrote:
| You say this as if you assume poor whites are racist by
| default and the poor of the other races are "enlightened" by
| default.
| syzarian wrote:
| No. I say this because media and those in power have
| perfected the ability to portray black organizing in a
| menacing way. And portraying programs that help poor people
| in racial rather than class terms. So a farmer getting
| government subsidies or a poor white person getting welfare
| can be pissed off at "welfare queens" because the latter
| are associated with being lazy blacks and the former with
| being down on their luck.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Another thing that the media has perfected is jumping to
| conclusions about the inner workings of minds like
| "blacks" and "the white working class". It was for
| example simply assumed that Trump was solely boosted by
| "poor whites", when in fact it seemed that more affluent,
| petite bourgoisie whites played a large role in boosting
| him.
|
| But to the media? Nah, don't have to look too closely at
| the seams: just assume that it is the powerful trailer
| park whites who caused Trump. And then upper-middle class
| [white] liberals--irony of all ironies--lament the class-
| unconsciousness of poor whites, simply because the NYT
| told them that that is how they operate. Oh, but if those
| materially poor whites would only see some reason; then
| we could all band together against the 1%.
|
| Don't count on the upper-middle class to help unify
| anything or anyone, though. Not post-Occupy Wall Street.
| syzarian wrote:
| I'm under no illusion that upper middle class want to
| actually effect change. Upper middle class whites are
| content to put BLM signs in their yards so long as "they"
| don't move into their neighborhoods.
|
| I think though that one should not discount racial
| politics and media bias as a major contributing factor to
| why so many poor whites vote against their economic
| interests. I think LBJ had it right with his quote:
|
| https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lbj-convince-the-
| lowest-wh...
|
| I like how Faulkner put it: In the South they love the
| man and hate the race and in the North they love the race
| and hate the man. Desegregation lead to closed pool
| politics and helped with the decline of union membership.
| There is definitely an aspect of spite within white
| politics. To wit: let's all suffer to keep an undeserving
| minority from getting something.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Nothing ironic about everyone pointing the finger at each
| other for not "getting" their common interest. Nothing at
| all.
|
| Keep getting in touch with the soul of the working man
| through LBJ.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Free meals for kids _is_ a good thing and very important to a
| child 's ability to learn at school and a family's ability to
| fight poverty. Take notice which elected officials try to end
| these programs and hold them accountable.
| bnralt wrote:
| This isn't true at all. The federal government's School
| Breakfast Program started 3 years before the Black Panther's
| program. During it's first year, it was already serving many
| times the number of children than the Panther's program served
| at its peak (despite being a pilot program at the time)[1]. It
| was part of the much larger Child Nutrition Act, which itself
| built on the even earlier National School Lunch Program and
| Special Milk Program.
|
| [1] https://www.fns.usda.gov/sbp/program-history [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_Breakfast_Program
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The conundrum with mutual aid is that it's non-trivial to
| identify the right size community for a given type and/or level
| of aid.
|
| For example, a block or 3 of mixed income households can
| certainly help ameliorate temporary "food insecurity" for some of
| its members. A slightly larger community can probably offer
| significant aid when it comes to providing at home care for
| people with temporary illness or ill health.
|
| But ... covering unemployment or serious illness ... these are
| examples of things that require a much (much) larger societal
| unit to be really effective. The same is probably true for
| providing long term at-home care for the elderly or chronically
| ill.
|
| That doesn't mean that mutual aid makes no sense - there are
| plenty of good reasons to operate with different types of
| organization at different levels. It just means recognizing what
| the limits of a given societal unit are likely to be, and making
| sure there are other structures/organizations in place to deal
| with things that go beyond those limits.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > The conundrum with mutual aid is that it's non-trivial to
| identify the right size community for a given type and/or level
| of aid.
|
| I don't think this is actually a hard problem at all. The
| algorithm is quite simple:
|
| 1. Start with the individual as the smallest community (a
| community of one). 2. Does the current level of community have
| the resources to deal with the problem? If so, problem solved,
| exit. 3. If not, go to the next larger level of community. 4.
| Return to 2.
|
| The problem is that greedy people refuse to provide aid because
| they don't think they'll need aid. In fact, greedy people
| insist on acquiring all the resources which could be used to
| provide aid to others.
|
| Zuckerberg or Musk could end homelessness in the US easily and
| still be in the top 10 richest people in the world.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Does the current level of community have the resources to
| deal with the problem?
|
| and you propose to establish this how, precisely?
|
| ps. I'm skeptical about the "end homelessness" claim. I agree
| that (a) the current superrich should be forced to give up
| some of their wealth (b) that most of it should be diverted
| towards the poor (c) it would help many of them
| substantially. However, problems like poverty (and its
| sidekick, homelessness) are systemic, and recurrent. The US
| has spent several trillion since the 1960s on poverty, and
| while it caused a substantial reduction in levels of poverty
| (especially among the elderly), poverty remains with us as a
| problem. So by all means take from the rich and give to the
| poor, but don't expect that to "end" poverty.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > and you propose to establish this how, precisely?
|
| Depends on the community. Doesn't mean it's difficult.
|
| > The US has spent several trillion since the 1960s on
| poverty, and while it caused a substantial reduction in
| levels of poverty (especially among the elderly), poverty
| remains with us as a problem.
|
| The US has spent several trillion on "end poverty" theater.
| US anti-poverty programs are intentionally designed to
| exclude as many people as possible. Much of the money
| spent, is spent on ensuring that people who conservatives
| have decided don't deserve aid, don't get aid, with reams
| of paperwork to validate that those in need are deserving.
| These barriers are severe enough to prevent many people
| from even being able to apply, and instead of reducing the
| barriers, the solution has been to pay case workers to leap
| some of the barriers for those in need--not only does this
| not work, it also is expensive.
|
| The solution to homelessness is homes. Not shelters where
| you have no privacy or ownership of the space where you can
| keep pets or possessions. Homes. This is not complicated.
| Poverty, mental illness, bigotry, unemployment, etc., are
| all related problems, but they don't have to be solved to
| solve homelessness.
|
| Look at Zuckerberg and Musk's net worths, then look at the
| number of homeless, then look at the cost of land and
| building a modest house, and do some napkin math. Yes, I'm
| aware a sudden demand for housing would drive up the cost
| of land and building houses: double it and the numbers
| still work. Yes, there are other potential issues, but none
| of them are unsolvable.
|
| We need to stop pretending this is more complicated than it
| is.
| GoodJokes wrote:
| [dead]
| kqr wrote:
| > But ... covering unemployment or serious illness ... these
| are examples of things that require a much (much) larger
| societal unit to be really effective.
|
| Really? How many hours of labour per year does it actually take
| to feed, shelter and provide medical care for a person? I'd be
| surprised if it was more than 20 % of the hours I work today,
| meaning I could - barring a system that concentrates the spoils
| of my labour in the hands of the few - provide this assistance
| for four people besides myself. As you may know, the unemployed
| and seriously ill number fewer than half of the population, so
| I think we'd be fine.
|
| I mean yes, that stuff takes specialisation, and _that_
| probably requires a larger community. (If only 0.1 % of the
| population are medical doctors, then we need 1000 people to
| have one doctor). But those numbers sort of work out in the
| world today, so I don 't know why they wouldn't in a different
| world.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How many hours of labour per year does it actually take to
| feed, shelter and provide medical care for a person?_
|
| To medieval standards of medical care and food, sure. Past
| that we need training and specialisation, both of which
| _increase_ the number of people the average person can
| support.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| The standard of care many americans get is already well
| below medieval standard (none)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _standard of care many americans get is already well
| below medieval standard (none)_
|
| This is nonsense. Emergency care, accessible to all, is
| practically magic compared to that time. And preventative
| care largely wasn't a thing.
| mushbino wrote:
| No, it's true. The US has the worst and by far the most
| expensive healthcare outcomes in the developed world.
| Cuba has a higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality
| rate than the US, and generally better outcomes.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| As long as you're okay with being bankrupt
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _long as you 're okay with being bankrupt_
|
| One, dead or debilitated versus bankrupt.
|
| Two, no: Medicaid, charity, _et cetera_. It's not a good
| system. But comparing it to pre-medical care is stupid
| beyond belief.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > Emergency care, accessible to all, is practically magic
| compared to that time.
|
| The absolute minimum of emergency care which is actually
| available to all, by itself, is fairly useless show
| magic. If you've broken something, they don't have to do
| anything for you: I discovered this after breaking a bone
| in a different state from where I was insured. If the
| person is on the verge of dying, you only have to
| stabilize the person enough so they're not immediately
| dying, and you can kick them to the curb.
|
| > And preventative care largely wasn't a thing.
|
| Preventative care largely _isn 't_ a thing for many
| Americans.
|
| Perhaps comparing to "medieval" standards is perhaps a
| bit too far, but the US healthcare system is indefensibly
| bad for many Americans. Third world countries have more
| available healthcare.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _broken something, they don 't have to do anything for
| you_
|
| Usually, yes. I also have a friend who lost range of in a
| finger, a limitation which became apparent only a year
| after the fracture, due to a small mis-set. (It had to be
| surgically re-fractured.)
|
| > _the US healthcare system is indefensibly bad for many
| Americans_
|
| 100% agree.
| aschearer wrote:
| > How many hours of labour per year does it actually take to
| feed, shelter and provide medical care for a person?
|
| If said person has Parkinsons, dementia, etc. the medical
| care/assistance alone is likely to be measured in hours per
| day. Easily approaching most of one's waking hours for bad
| cases.
|
| As boomers enter senescence the strain on the healthcare
| system will be immense, I predict. Whole lot of asses to
| wipe.
| tomrod wrote:
| The argument of linear transfers, which is "my work could
| feed five people," seems logically false since there is a
| very real marginal productivity incentive. If your job pays
| you 20% of your current salary, do you want to work as hard?
| Typically, though of course not always, the answer will be
| no. You'll work less, you'll take on less high-effort-
| required activities, and so on. This effectively means
| transfers are subadditive and you couldn't perform such
| algebra across a society.
|
| EDIT: Note for the numerous driveby downvoters that have
| failed to engage in discussion, thereby decreasing the
| quality of conversation. I am not against using wealth
| transfers where appropriate. My comment simply calls out that
| "my work is enough to feed five people" does not equate to
| "my work will feed five people through wealth transfers."
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think you have a fair point, but it is important to note
| that the drop off in effort and utility depend on whether
| the worker is directly involved in the support of others.
|
| That is to say, it is very different if I take 20% of my
| time and directly give it to someone as support versus if I
| just trust that 20% of my time is taxed and somehow makes
| it too to one of 350 million people in the country.
| tomrod wrote:
| Correct. There are decreasing returns to scale on
| taxation (which also justifies the Laffer curve/supply
| side/Voodoo economics, but that's another set of
| philosophical problems). The literature on optimal
| taxation is large and interesting.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I agree that someone could make an argument about losses
| and effectiveness, but my point was even simpler than
| that. When it comes to someone's willingness to work more
| to help another, I think contact and proximity to the
| recipient plays a big factor in what people are willing
| to do.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| the laffer curve is an abstraction, a thought experiment
| with no axis labelling, and no understanding of whether
| the axes scales are linear or not. it is therefore
| completely useless when it comes to making policy,
| because it provides absolutely no information on whether
| an X% tax will increase or decrease revenues. there are
| possible (imaginary) scenarios where the actual shape of
| the curve will result in increasing tax revenues up to
| above 90% taxation, and others where revenues drop with
| anything above 0% taxation. nothing about the concept of
| "decreasing returns to scale on taxation" is
| quantitative, and it is therefore essentially useless. I
| mean, sure, you can make the theoretical argument that
| "surely above some level of taxation, any further
| increase will result in decreased revenues", but since it
| is impossible to know what that level is, the argument is
| pointless.
| tomrod wrote:
| Indeed. Though there are studies that seek to estimate
| this in various ways (e.g. "no happier once you have $75k
| in wealth").
| kerkeslager wrote:
| > If your job pays you 20% of your current salary, do you
| want to work as hard? Typically, though of course not
| always, the answer will be no.
|
| If my job pays me 20% of my current salary, and gives the
| other 80% to the CEO, no, I would not work as hard. That's
| the situation we're in. That's what "quiet quitting" is.
|
| It's bizarre to look at the current incredible pay
| imbalances in America and assume that a more equitable
| society would give less incentives for the average person.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| We're not discussing a different world, we're discussing this
| one. Your doctor example is a good one. If you actually need
| 1000 people to have 1 doctor, and 1 doctor can treat and care
| for 999 people, then you need a community of around 1000
| people to have "mutual aid" function for medical care (or
| very good luck in happening to have a doctor in a smaller
| community).
|
| This means that mutal aid care based in units of city blocks
| is not likely to work, but basing it in units of
| neighborhoods or larger probably will.
| soco wrote:
| If only we had things like mutual savings banks, or cooperative
| insurances, or...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| i never mentioned savings banks as an example requiring large
| scale. and indeed, they appear to need the "more than a block
| or 2, less than a city" scale.
|
| health insurance is a different story, at least in the era of
| modern health care where particular treatments can cost tens
| or hundreds of thousands of currency units. it is hard to
| make the insurance pool concept work without enough people
| (and enough health-diversity) in the pool. In my home state
| (new mexico) this is a problem given a state-wide population
| of only 2M people and multiple insurance possibilities. i
| don't know what the limit is, but i'd guess that it's at
| least several hundred thousand and possible a few million.
| runarberg wrote:
| Public health insurance seems to work fine for Iceland--a
| country of less than 400,000. I suspect dozens of thousands
| should be plenty given a healthy and diverse economy and
| plenty of preventative care.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Good data point - thanks.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| It also works in Liechtenstein, which is approx. 39000
| folks.
| neilv wrote:
| With photos: https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2023/0130/Mutual-
| aid-is-a...
| Swizec wrote:
| "Helping each other" is a radical idea ... what a strange world
| we live in.
|
| Interesting podcast episode from Freakonomics talking about the
| loneliness epidemic[1] and a related episode from Freakonimics
| MD[2] both mentioning the 1995 Chicago heat wave and how it
| impacted different neighborhoods differently. Living in a
| neighborhood with a communal spirit increases your chances of
| survival.
|
| But here's the kicker: It seems that certain neighborhoods are
| specifically targeted by policies to disrupt said communal
| spirit. Primarily through zoning regulations and methodical
| removal of "3rd places".
|
| [1] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-there-really-a-
| lonelines...
|
| [2] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-will-we-handle-the-
| heat...
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| Neither of your links (nor the source article) references
| zoning or 3rd/third places, let alone "methodical removal". Do
| you have a source for that?
| Swizec wrote:
| Pretty sure I heard it mentioned in the podcast episodes,
| perhaps between the lines. Freakonomics transcripts aren't
| word-for-word from what I've noticed.
|
| I could also be mis-remembering or mixing in yet a 3rd
| episode from the same hosts.
|
| But here is a source for how freeways were designed to
| primarily go through black neighborhoods (and thus disrupt
| them) -> https://www.history.com/news/interstate-highway-
| system-infra...
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Neither of your links (nor the source article) references
| zoning or 3rd/third places, let alone "methodical removal".
| Do you have a source for that?
|
| His links support the paragraph they're referenced in. Why
| would you assume they support a different paragraph where me
| makes a tangential point?
| ericmcer wrote:
| What really kills communal spirit is low rate of home
| ownership. I can walk down my street and tell who rents vs who
| owns based on the front yards. People who own actually invest
| into making it nice, and will be out front gardening or wave
| when you walk by. Why would you do any of that when you're
| going to be gone in a year or two?
|
| It makes more sense that people riot and burn their own
| communities when you realize they are just renting everything
| they have.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Many countries have much higher rates of renters and still
| more communal spirit, so I don't think you can just attribute
| it to renting. One thing that those places typically have is
| protection for renters so they have an actual long term
| perspective. In contrast to other places where your landlord
| can throw you out or raise rent with little notice. Moreover
| in many places renters can't even make improvements to their
| house, I mean in Australia you are not even allowed to put a
| nail in the wall when renting.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| I think what destroys communal spirit is a sense of futility,
| a sense that good deeds get discouraged or outright punished.
|
| Whether that's just local to some environments, I don't know.
| barathr wrote:
| Klinenberg's book "Palaces for the People" is very worth a
| (quick) read. Talks about the importance of physical, "social
| infrastructure" (similar to the idea of "third places") in
| cities that enable people to weave communities ties that then
| lead them to be resilient in times of stress.
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