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Electricity Is Expensive
Capitalists don't care about democracy. Some may tolerate some forms of national democracy, but only conditionally. Many capitalists are avidly opposed to all forms of democracy. All capitalists are opposed to democracy in the work place, that's for sure.
Defenders of capitalism swear up and down that democracy and capitalism are not incompatible, but they clearly are. You might be able to get capitalists to, again, tolerate some form of probably very limited democracy, but only conditionally, and that means only temporarily. The death of democracy under capitalism isn't a matter of if but when.
The decline in manufacturing, however, is less a story about policy blunders than one about the long progress of the US economy, which has to a large extent graduated out of producing stuff like phones and cars and into the delivery of services, like finance and healthcare – a process similar to that followed by other countries that moved up the ladder of success.
I think this way of thinking is massively flawed. I really hate this idea that economic "progress" must necessarily mean making and building fewer things, and instead "delivering services."
One, "delivering services" often means charging rents, meaning you're moving from an economy that creates real value to an economy that extracts rents. A rents and service fee economy isn't really an economy, it's just a machine that creates inflation.
Two, no matter how far your economy moves up the "ladder of success," people are always going to need material goods. Houses can't be built of financial services and food can't be grown on spreadsheets. We need real stuff to have a real economy. So what this means is that the "graduated" economies must become net importers of real, physical stuff, and/or net importers of poor people to do the work here that can't be as easily moved to another country. We must therefore become dependent on other nations to make the stuff we need. How can a nation maintain its independence if it is completely dependent on other nations for all of its vital products? That's not an independent nation, that's a vassal state.
Three, all of this assumes that there will always be countries in the world who never "graduate" to our economic level, otherwise who would make everything? But isn't the idea for every country to strive to reach our level of "success?" If so, who will make all the stuff when most of the world's population is rich, working white collar jobs? Martians? And doesn't this create an incentive for us to try and keep at least some countries poor so they can supply us with the cheap goods and migrant labor we need?
Real economies make things and create real value, they don't just move money around and charge rents. People don't just stop needing material goods once they get rich enough, and someone has to make and build that stuff, it might as well be us. Otherwise, if we come to rely on other people to make our stuff, we lose our independence and our ability to be self sufficient. That's not the road to "economic success," that's the road to economic ruin.
Capitalism has no more solutions because it is only concerned with one thing: maximum profits for owners and investors. The capitalist theorists swear up and down that exclusively focusing on profit maximization will inevitably lead to better lives for everyone, albeit indirectly or incidentally, but that is clearly not true. Maybe it was true enough at various points in the past, but it is absolutely not true anymore. Under capitalism today, the exclusive focus on profit maximization is REDUCING access to a better life for many people, not increasing it.
Everyone in here saying, "why don't you stand up to him, Dems?"
Guys, the Democrats don't do that. I don't think they even know how to do that. The whole concept is so alien to them you might as well be asking them to surf the rings of Saturn. No, no, the Democrats don't stand up to rich and powerful people, they gargle their balls. They can get those things so deep in their donor holes that they can tickle the scrot with their uvulas.
If you're looking for the Dems to stand up to Trump, you're barking up the wrong tree, friends.
More dense urban areas certainly should be more affordable than suburban or rural areas, but they're often not. Or at least not as much as they could be.
One reason is I think many suburban and rural areas are being subsidized by urban areas, by using urban tax revenue to pay for suburban infrastructure.
But I think the biggest reason is that urban areas are often in much higher demand, because that's where most of the jobs and housing are located, but the supply of housing is simply insufficient to meet the demand, thus driving up housing prices. And other prices, too. There's a supply demand imbalance for a lot of things in many higher density urban areas. And part of that is by design. The "suppliers" of homes, that is landlords, don't want to oversupply the market with housing, relative to demand, because that will push down rents, and they want rents to be as high as possible, because rents are their source of revenue.
Until urban areas find ways to significantly increase the supply of housing relative to the demand, housing prices in those urban areas will remain higher than they could, or should be. Non-car transportation infrastructure also needs to be significantly improved in many urban areas, but that takes money. Money that many urban residents either don't want to pay, or can't pay because so much of their income is going to housing, and other costs of living. Edit: Plus, these infrastructure projects are often poorly managed by politicians, causing cost over runs and long delays.
Finally, there's a social/cultural element to this that almost no one talks about because it's seen as problematic or taboo. People don't necessarily want to be surrounded on all sides by people they don't consider to be a part of their cultural or ethnic group. I'm sorry, I know, reading that makes a lot of people's butt holes clinch, but it's true. I think people would be much more willing to live in more densely populated urban areas if the people in these areas were more like them (culturally, ethnically). You can choose not to believe that because it makes you uncomfortable, but, uncomfortable though it may be, I think it is nonetheless true.
Edit: I want to add that I think there is also a class element to this, in addition to the cultural/ethnic element. Many people move out to the suburbs because they don't want to be around people they see as being of a "lower class" than them. Edit, again: also, where there are higher rates of poverty in urban areas, there are often higher crime rates. Many urban areas are often very unequal, with wealthier areas that are better maintained with better schools, very near much poorer areas that are more poorly maintained with worse schools.
Final edit: so, for better urban areas we need: to stop using urban tax revenue to subsidize suburban infrastructure. We need to significantly increase the supply of housing relative to demand, even perhaps oversupplying housing to drive housing costs down as much as possible. We need better non-car infrastructure and better leadership to better manage the building and maintenance of that infrastructure. We need to reduce poverty and inequality in urban areas as much as possible. If we do those things across all urban areas, I think the ethnic and cultural issues will work themselves out.
Why would you want a majority of people using the same distribution?
I don't, necessarily. I just think it's the only way we will ever see widespread adoption of Linux on desktops. But, maybe I'm wrong. Honestly, I hope I am. I hope through changes in the culture and more education, people will make the switch. But, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't skeptical.
they will complain that MSO, Photoshop, Premiere doesn't work
That's true. They will. But maybe if enough users switch to SteamOS, Adobe, and other software developers might port their software to it. That's really the only hope for widespread Linux desktop adoption.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe more people will be willing to endure a learning curve for the freedom and openness of Linux, but I think that path to widespread Linux adoption would take a long time, if it happens at all.
Until there is one, single distribution that the vast majority of people can install on their existing hardware, that just works, easily and conveniently, Linux will remain a relatively niche desktop OS. I think when Valve finally releases the desktop version is SteamOS, that might do the trick.
The national guard is a reservist group for the Federal military. There's way too much Federal involvement. No, new, independent state militias would need to be formed.
The colonial empires of Europe didn't just convert to democratic nations, they were destroyed, through revolutions and wars, including two devastating world wars. And from the rubble of the old European empires, nations were formed, many of which are democracies, though of varying quality. The US is a legacy of those European colonial empires. So, for the US to follow the same path, the US empire must be destroyed (although hopefully in a more peaceful, less harmful manner), so that new democratic nations can be formed in its place.
The US was always doomed to fail. You can't make a nation out of an empire. You can't build a democracy on top of slavery, colonialism and genocide.
I think there are some well meaning people trying very hard to make it work, and god bless them, but they're certain to fail.
The only thing to do now is try and find a viable exit strategy. The US Federal government will soon be completely and permanently taken over by the terrorist organization that is the Republican party. It's time for states to start forming their own, independent militias while the 2nd amendment at least still exists. We can hope that peaceful secession will be possible, but we certainly cannot plan on it.
The Republican party is a terrorist organization. They have to be stopped. We have to wrestle power away from them by any means necessary. If we do not succeed, if the Republicans are able to seize total, permanent control of the Federal government, secession will be our only other option.
Edit: it may be necessary for states to establish their own militaries, completely separate from the Federal government. It might be time for the 2nd amendment's true purpose to be realized.
We can get those numbers up.
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The thing is, most people don't form identity around shared class interests. That's what the Marxists realized in the 20th century when the international, proletarian revolution never fully materialized. Most people from identity around shared culture, shared language, shared traditions, beliefs, history, etc. It's not that class antagonism doesn't exist or doesn't matter - it does - but it matters within a cultural/national context, and it's only within that cultural/national context that class conflicts can be resolved.
Edit: I want to clarify what I mean when I say that "most people don't form identity around shared class interests." I mean class interests in the Marxian sense, ie, ownership of the means of production. In Marxian theory, a person is a member of the capitalist class if they own the means of production, and they are working class if they do not own the means of production. Most people do not form a class identity around ownership or non-ownership of the means of production, but that doesn't mean that people don't form a class identity. They do. But, that identity is formed around cultural markers that define their class, within their broader, national/ethnic culture. For instance, an ethnically White person in the US might identify as working or upper class based on their job, the neighborhood they live in, the car they drive, the clothes they wear, the schools they attended, etc. So, nations/ethnicities are defined by shared culture, language, history, beliefs, etc, but within that that there are also class distinctions, but they are also cultural.
It is here that people in the upper classes can use this to their advantage, by trying to stoke conflict between nations/ethnic groups, in an effort to deflect away from class conflicts. That is true, but that doesn't mean that different nations of people aren't actually distinct from one another, in the ways that I've already outlined (culture, language, traditions, etc).
This reality is especially confusing in the US, because the US is an empire masquerading as a nation. But empires are not nations. The US had been able to maintain the appearance of a nation for sometime through establishment of a violent, White hegemony. The national identity of the US was maintained through violent repression of all non-White ethnic groups. That White hegemony has been getting consistently weaker, however, since about the mid part of the 20th century, and with it the idea of a single, US national identity. And that is where we are today.
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This US is just a bunch of different ethnic groups competing for ownership and control of the country's cultural and political assets.
Videos @lemmy.world Canada PM's Speech at the WEF
News @lemmy.world Analysis: The fertility crisis is here and it will permanently alter the economy | CNN Business
The goal shouldn't be a "multipolar" world, the goal should be international democracy and the rule of law. Yes, laws require enforcement and that means some kind of state, with a monopoly on the legal use of violence, must exist. These ding dongs want the US to continue to fill that role. But there are a couple problems with how the US has played the role of global rule enforcer: one, the US is unelected and unaccountable. For a state to govern legitimately, it must have the consent of the governed. Outside of NATO, and perhaps a few other countries, no consent was given, or for that matter even sought. Two, The US seeks to protect its own interests, and that of our allies, not to enforce laws for all countries equally and objectively. Does that sound like the rule of law or a corrupt cop?