CaliforniaSpectre 37m ago • 100%
Where's the distinguishing line? Earnest question
CaliforniaSpectre 41m ago • 100%
, unless this is just a bit
CaliforniaSpectre 12h ago • 100%
I've never dated a woman more than 5 inches shorter than me, and this take just seems incredibly baffling to me. If I was much taller than I could have dated the same women and now it's noncey?
CaliforniaSpectre 2d ago • 100%
Care to elaborate? She seemed okay in the Channel 5 interview. BTW I already voted
CaliforniaSpectre 2d ago • 100%
when I'm back in the states I'll take a look at local Green's actions as well as PSL I think. yes DSA has to end its tailism then maybe it has a chance to play a real role
CaliforniaSpectre 2d ago • 100%
I don't think I've heard Jill make a remark on it. I'm not sure if this represents more of the Greens or just Ware having a bit of a moment. I listened to Howie Hawkins "case for an independent left party" the other day and was surprised with how outright socialist the text is. I've heard Greens are also a huge mixed bag depending on chapter.
CaliforniaSpectre 2d ago • 100%
Have you seen Socialism 4 All on YouTube? He's a huge anti-Dengist and even made a community post the other day promoting the Green's over PSL, saying in the comments that PSL are revisionists on China but should know better because of some 2007 article from their liberation school which is I guess harsher on China than they are now. I read some of the article and it seemed to be saying that capitalist restoration sucks, but that any replacement of the CCP would lead to a much worse situation for the Chinese people overall. And then goes into a historical and class analysis of why China ended up where it is. It's annoying because he does great work making audiobooks for everything but he has BadEmpanada streamer syndrome in droves for sure.
CaliforniaSpectre 2w ago • 100%
It's just parody at this point.
CaliforniaSpectre 2w ago • 100%
The extra history on Indonesia tells a very different story about how botched the Chinese intervention in Indonesia was. They ended up helping the original "usurper's" son back to the throne because of several misunderstandings and deceits. Unless they are also oversimplified things.
CaliforniaSpectre 3w ago • 100%
And regarding the hospital example... I think in many well-planned cities there is probably going to be an ideal location near the primary public transportation hub to put something as important as that. If there are two large but disparate population centers in one city, then hopefully the democratic will says build two hospitals, not one shitty one in the middle away from both population centers or simply the one in either center that gets the most votes. Of course I agree choices will need to be made, I'm just interested in balancing these choices with optimal planning. So, if something is better than RCV that's great, but I remain unconvinced that RCV isn't already a good enough improvement to immediately jump all FPTP systems to in the interim.
CaliforniaSpectre 3w ago • 100%
TANS is exactly what I was thinking of. I'll take another look at what he recommends direct democracy for.
CaliforniaSpectre 3w ago • 100%
I do think these weird elaborate examples of a city choosing where to build a hospital (or see above for the Mars colony thing) are a huuuuge red herring. Determining where to build a hospital and all other essential public infrastructure is not a question of democratic political will. The political will demands to make the hospital high quality, free at the point of access, etc. But optimization of those systems are best carried out by city planners coordinating with public transport access etc in collaboration with and overseen by citizen councils. Perhaps on a rare occasion, there really are two equally good choices, but I find that to be very unlikely most of the time with regards to these kinds of hypotheticals.
TLDR: Planning is good and can and will solve a lot of these problems. Democratic will is best imposed as oversight over a scientific planning process and through the setting of social goals. Direct policy votes probably will be appropriate in some circumstances, but I think what exactly will be learned during socialist construction.
CaliforniaSpectre 3w ago • 100%
I agree that figuring out ideal voting systems is an exciting endeavor, and different systems can be more or less appropriate. However, I completely fail to see how the Wikipedia examples represent a "failure" of ranked choice voting.
Most ranked choice voting systems can suffer from a crazy effect where getting more votes makes you lose
For the first election: you're making it sound like Bottom receiving the plurality of votes (45%) in the first round is causing it to ultimately lose. This is not true, Bottom loses because the majority of voters (55%) prefer Center to Bottom which is made clear in the second round after elimination and transfer of preferences from Top. This is good, this is the point of RCV and why it is vastly superior to FPTP.
Now for the second election: claiming that Bottom is all the sudden unpopular and therefore them winning is a bad thing is doing a lot of heavy lifting here to try to make ranked choice voting look bad. Why did all 6% lost from Bottom go into Top but then Center is split exactly down the middle in terms of preference? Those circumstances seem artificially contrived to me and not very reflective of how overlapping ideologies between parties would actually interact, especially as in the previous election the entirety of Top goes to Center as their 2nd preference (not calling you out but the sus wikipedia example). Again, the result is that
The reason I'm going kind of hard here, and I might be going a little crazy, is because I really feel like all this sudden RCV hate is very suspicious. I've had several otherwise "woke" and more-progressive-than-not friends sharing TedX videos giving similarly contrived situations to show that RCV is actually really bad and can totally be just as undemocratic as FPTP (their example was literally about where to put a refueling base for 4 weirdly spaced out Mars colonies). Then there was the recent Veritasium video about how voting is imperfect and can never be solved!!1! (So why bother, right guys?) And yeah, I get this weird feeling that even this incredibly simple reform that could bring a trifling of more authentic democratic representation to our Bourgeois Dictatorship of Capital that we call American Democracy is somehow getting psyoped against in order to maintain the two-party dictatorship. Like, all the big pop science entrenched youtube channels creating these kinds of videos just seems like a PR campaign to specifically dissuade those bazinga types that at least should be able to understand on a logical/mathematical level that RCV is much better.
Anyways, my main take is RCV is good and quite literally always better than FPTP. It's the simplest reform that should be default on any liberal party's platform if they weren't deeply unserious. Whether we end up even having direct elections of representatives or multi-option direct ballot initiatives in socialism I don't feel as strongly about, I'm open to all kinds of ideas. But don't let the RCV hate spread uncritically. If I'm totally off base than someone explain below cause I do feel like I'm going a little crazy here.
CaliforniaSpectre 3w ago • 100%
yikes, didn't catch that on the first read
CaliforniaSpectre 3w ago • 100%
Probably? That's a guarantee
CaliforniaSpectre 3w ago • 100%
Story of my family.
CaliforniaSpectre 4w ago • 100%
Yeah, I was completely mortified by the actual design of the thing. PAD is good but there should be no bazinga "glory" aestheticized out of such a decision. It's revolting.
CaliforniaSpectre 1mo ago • 100%
GOOD post
CaliforniaSpectre 1mo ago • 100%
And it's fucking disgusting that Fartlow is even trying to put herself in the pool of the stereotyped "intelligence" of the Jewish community. No wonder dimwitted freaks like her are so attracted to fascism since they get to try to ride off the accomplishments and talents of whoever else they share whatever superficial "connection" to. I happen to have grown up with many Jewish friends who in several ways, for better or worse, fit into whatever bs people want to say about their community's inherent cultural intelligence, and none of them are fucking zionists.
CaliforniaSpectre 1mo ago • 100%
... was the greatest proletarian revolution in history and led to almost totally equal redistribution among the peasantry.
How did I do
I could have sworn I remember seeing a book about Marxism and the occult mentioned here sometime. But when I look that up all I see is chud shit about le communism and Satan!!!@! So, am I crazy or does a cool book about that topic exist somewhere?
My uncle asked me for a primer on socialism. I was thinking maybe Socialism Made Easy or Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Anything that might be better? For context my whole family are through and through vote blue liberals. It's sad to say but most of them didn't even like/vote for Bernie during the primary cycles. They aren't really hardcore anticommunists though and have always been good on unions and labor generally, moreso the problem is really anti-Trump/pro-Dem brainworms. Maybe there's something more modern to share that I don't know of.
I know we have the react wut ones, but it would be great if we had actual proper emotes for the top BPP members. If someone can let me know a good way to make my own I can try too, suggestions for good pictures also welcome.
I'm putting the emotes in this post to see if I can extract them at a high enough quality. Doubt it but we'll see. ![markkks-juggalo](https://lemm.ee/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hexbear.net%2Fpictrs%2Fimage%2F47817701-1e2f-45db-bfaa-82e2549a62fe.png "emoji markkks-juggalo") ![sicko-fem](https://lemm.ee/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.hexbear.net%2Fpictrs%2Fimage%2F94ce7c13-672a-4963-966b-0f9632ca3a53.png "emoji sicko-fem") ![xi-button](https://lemm.ee/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhexbear.net%2Fpictrs%2Fimage%2F3472894d-896e-490a-85e8-b0841d8c99b5.png "emoji xi-button")
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2486560 > Title says it. Where should I donate that will be the most effective to giving relief on the ground? I have seem some individual fundraisers but I'm not sure how that might translate to material relief given the invasion starting. Is the Occupied Palestinian Territoriy Fund legit and a good org to give money to? > > Side note since the OPTF seems to he officially connected to the UN is that not a tacit admission that Israel is Palestinian Territory?
Title says it. Where should I donate that will be the most effective to giving relief on the ground? I have seem some individual fundraisers but I'm not sure how that might translate to material relief given the invasion starting. Is the Occupied Palestinian Territoriy Fund legit and a good org to give money to? Side note since the OPTF seems to he officially connected to the UN is that not a tacit admission that Israel is Palestinian Territory?
I appreciate everyone's responses a lot. I also think it was good to remove the post because there was some reactionary stuff in the google doc I linked. I found it through one of the articles that Bad Mouse's link led to, not in any of the other comments. I only looked at the "first hand accounts" links in the doc and didn't even double check what else there was so that's my error. I had a feeling the take would be that there are certainly big flaws, as there are in any org, with any group of people, but PSL is still one of the few vehicles for socialist agitation that there actually exists, and by joining it we can help improve it. I'm likely going to be moving to San Francisco when I'm back in the states in case anyone has recommendations about specific orgs in the bay that are certainly good. Also I got to say Bad Mouse's ultra turn also bummed me out a little. It seems like such a baby leftist thing to do to just shit on a socialist party from across an ocean and then refuse to elaborate.
Just saw the new Bad Mouse vid about voting. He had this kind of aside about not voting PSL (along with another one against MLs which just seemed needlessly sectarian). I was really surprised, so I tried looking further, and he linked some aggregate in the comments which leads to a podcast and a huge google doc with a bunch of links to different criticisms and summaries of problems from late 2020 or so. Covering up sexual abuse scandals and apparently even La Riva going on a transphobic rant in some meeting. And generally a very intransigent leadership culture. Anyways, I was just wondering what the Hexbear take is here. Deep pandemic madness? Just a problem with the Philadelphia branch? I was considering trying to join when I'm back in the states, but maybe it would be too much of a headache. https://descentrealizer.medium.com/abuse-counterrevolution-in-the-party-for-socialism-liberation-psl-cult-a-compilation-e5e7d54b7c78 https://docs.google.com/document/d/14wF1Ti5GT2w5GZmwqvhvk6uH4zUss_a-B2GZ9NZEx74/edit?usp=sharing
Maybe I haven't read enough about AES states, but I'm quite curious what people here think is a good model for a free press. While I once thought that maybe you could allow people and/or businesses to still get paid by "customers" for providing press ![yikes-1](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/10d831e7-162b-4260-9b1d-244360440db4.png "emoji yikes-1")![yikes-2](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/16902515-f235-468e-8f95-738d6963b681.png "emoji yikes-2")![yikes-3](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/4c9c801e-9dc8-4980-b4aa-3084573d4bc7.png "emoji yikes-3") , I've realized that that doesn't really make any sense at all. Profit motive and good press will always be at odds, whether through over-sensationalizing or just by reporting what's in the interest of the owners. ![porky-happy](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/b47fa3ca-2a2c-4dff-9375-62a7abb0d512.png "emoji porky-happy") So, I think not allowing the press to be a profiting entity of any kind, nor one that ever runs ads for any reason (of course these go hand in hand) is a no brainer ![centrist](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/42c3c427-17ea-41aa-958e-c3e33ef95186.png "emoji centrist") . And so money to fund the organizations must come from some taxes (I'm thinking of a DoP stage of development ![porky-scared](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/93d1747f-2d0a-4a0e-82ff-28cabbcd6471.png "emoji porky-scared") ). But then what should the press organizational structure actually be? What best way could you separate it from both the state and I suppose the party ![mao-wave](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/568e6581-06b2-45d9-99b8-b40024ef3ff8.png "emoji mao-wave") itself . Should there be press orgs at every municipal level, up through counties and states/national governments? Councils of citizens ![not-a-journalist](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/a1ad291a-abbf-4c6e-af87-80371e599c4f.png "emoji not-a-journalist") which are involved to have some say over organizational policy and journalistic standards (including the journalists in said councils of course). I'm open to all sorts of ideas, just would like to hear people's takes because every day we see more and more just how truly broken our laughable western "press" really is.![dumpster-fire](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/a4153fc1-38d7-4de5-ad2a-6e4ba4c607d4.png "emoji dumpster-fire") Plus anyone who has cool ideas about how socialist school/health systems should work I also love hearing those! ![stalin-feels-good](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/dc5cdd04-5b12-4b9c-93a7-25eb4d3dce9e.png "emoji stalin-feels-good")
Did access to the emoji git repo change after federating? I'm trying to update some of my sticker packs ![juche-rose](https://www.hexbear.net/pictrs/image/358fd77b-b135-4d3c-9c63-e4ff0ba14a46.png "emoji juche-rose")
I still haven't helped yet, I had some friends tell me that donating directly to individuals is one way, but is there a general mutual fund being organized anywhere? Or can anyone point be in the right direction of where would be the best place to donate?
Can anyone explain the new talking point about some miscounted population in China causing economic devastation? First I heard a random acquaintance mention it at some lunch (which was immediately dismissed by our Chinese friend present at the table). Then I just saw the linked YouTube video in my recommended. I couldn't even stomach whatever brainworms they must be hocking to watch it. Just hoping someone can explain whatever the hell they're on about.